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As Laura mentioned in her most recent post, this week I got the chance to hear Dr. Dalia Mogahed speak at Goucher College to present some of Gallup’s findings in their recent Poll of the Muslim World. While some of her presentation simply seemed to reinforce what I already knew (or believed), other points took me more by surprise.
When she mentioned poll results which showed statistics like 75% of Saudi men believe that a woman should be allowed to hold any job for which she is qualified, I was a little bit skeptical – remember, in Saudi Arabia it is currently against the law for a woman to drive a car. It reminded me of reading recent media speculation on the “Bradley Effect,” the tendency of (white) American voters to tell a pollster that sure, they have no problem voting for an African-American candidate…when, in fact, they really do, and it affects their decision on election day. Americans don’t want to appear racist. Isn’t it fair to believe that Saudis don’t want to appear sexist? And when that’s the case, how can you trust these numbers?
I put this question to Dr. Mogahed during the Q&A session of her presentation, and her answer was: well, you can’t completely. There are a certain number of people who are giving the answer they think they should, rather than the one that’s true. But, even if the numbers aren’t completely accurate, the responses at least indicate the number of people who believe that that’s the desirable answer. It’s called an espoused value: the positions or beliefs that a society aspires to, even if we’re not yet there.
In my mind, then, numbers like these become a way to measure society’s potential. Our hope for the future. If 3 out of 4 men in Saudi Arabia at least feel that they ought to feel that women should have equal opportunities to men, then it paves the way for progress.
(Although how we’ll get an accurate measure of that progress, I certainly don’t know.)
This afternoon Kate, Arya, and I attended “Is there a Clash of Civilizations? What a Billion Muslims Really Think”, a presentation by Dr. Dalia Mogahed at Goucher College. Dr. Dalia Mogahed is a senior analyst at the Gallup Poll and executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, which recently concluded a poll of 1.3 billion Muslims in more than 35 nations. The poll addressed a variety of political and cultural issues, many of them related to international relations and how Muslims view the West. Some interesting points Dr. Mogahed discussed included:
- When asked respondents were asked what they admire about the West, the top two responses in both Western and Non-Western countries was Technology , and Liberty and Democracy
- Most Muslims value Democracy and Self-determination, but most of those surveyed did not believe the US is sincere in its committment to spreading the former or supporting the latter except in Afghanistan
- In a survey of how religion is portrayed in the Western media, Christianity was represented by religious leaders (such as clerics, members of a church institution, etc) 68% of the time, while most representations of Islam (53%) came from militant radicals
- Muslim respondents aspired towards the levels of development found in the West, but – like conservative Christians in the U.S. – most wanted their society to progress without sacrificing their core values
- Respondents’ “dreams for the future” centered around jobs and education for their children – in fact, with 25% of the global population planning to migrate away from their home country permanently in pursuit of better employment, Dr. Mogahed predicted that Jobs are becoming the “new global resource” driving human migration and motivation
This is a just a small, unrepresentative sample of some of the points and findings that were discussed at the event. Overall, I found Gallup’s findings to be very interesting and relevant to US foreign policy, and even more so to U.S. public opinion. As Dr. Mogahed pointed out, a successful democracy needs an informed public, and as many as 57% of Americans claim to know little or nothing about Islam, even now (Gallup 2007). But don’t take my word for it (as LeVar would say) check out http://www.muslimwestfacts.com/mwf/109345/Issues.aspx for more information on the Gallup’s Poll of the Muslim World and look for some more posts from Kate and Arya!
Where do you stand?
I’m curious.
With the Sudanese Teddy Bear Crisis (say that with a straight face) now at an end and Ms. Gibbons safely returned to England, I find my own sense of justice befuddled and confused. There can be no doubt that many in the western world saw her arrest as an overreaction, but this is just part of a larger issue that goes beyond one case of cultural ignorance. Just as with the Danish cartoons several months back that brought death threats found around the Islamic world or a recent news story from India where protests have pressed for a ban on books carrying the Prophet’s picture, (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/south_asia/7126217.stm) this is a case of where exactly should freedom of speech end and respect for religion begin?
In this county few religions are spared intentional torturous insult. The religion of my family, Catholicism, is a magnet for jibes ad ridicule. Judaism, Hinduism, Wiccan, they all have a myriad of jokes and insults that have developed in our culture. True believers of these faiths do not enjoy being belittled, yet through out the world no religion is quite as taboo as Islam. Why does Islam deserve more consideration than any other religion?
Conversely, I am sympathetic to cultural understanding and respect. Ms. Gibbons’ offense may not have been criminal, but it was a mistake made out of ignorance. Additionally, state sovereignty, that is, the fact that this world is no longer colonial, means that an individual country should be free to make law that follows the political will of its people. If the majority of a population is Islamic and religiously sensitive, it would behoove a government to enforce policies that protect and respect the faith of their people as their people believe it should be respected.
What is your opinion on this matter? In this globalized world, is freedom of speech, or global respect for a cultural morals and values more important?
On Feministe, Jill wrote the following short post in response to the Times (UK) headline: "France stunned by rioter’s savagery."
Here’s Jill’s post, which is short but to-the-point.
“Savagery”
Headline writers choose their words deliberately. And when they choose the word “savage,” they are trying to paint a very specific picture for you — and can guess the colors they’re using (hint: white is not on the palate).
A commenter smartly wrote: "The term ’savage’ has a lot of racist baggage from its use in colonial and post-colonial discourse in Western societies."
This is true, but the Times article (while not good) was not, by any stretch of the imagination, the worst article or commentary piece on the recent riots. The worst, in my opinion, were those from far right bloggers and newspaper columnists that attempted to paint riots about race relations and social exclusion as Islamist activities.
Debbie Schlussel, frequent Fox News guest and owner of one of the most popular political blogs, referred to the riots as “punk jihad” and the rioters (not all of whom are even Muslim to begin with) as “unrequited 72 virgins yearning romeos.” Other right-wing opinion-shapers have stressed over and over again their annoyance with the “mainstream media” for not including in every piece on the violence the fact that the rioters came from Muslim and non-white backgrounds.
What really disturbs me is that Schlussel, Steyn, Malkin, the “Little Green Footballs” crowd, and the rest know very well that the riots in France have nothing to do with religion and everything to do with discrimination. However, they see in the images of cars aflame and teenagers with dark complexions hurling stones at riot police a ripe opportunity to bolster their theories of a “clash of civilizations,” a European takeover by Muslims (the “Eurabia” theory), and the unassimilability of non-white, non-Christian peoples into majority white, irreligious, and Christian European societies.
At the heart of these theories (which do differ slightly, and thus require different methods of de-bunking) is white supremacism, and a profitable kind of white supremacism, too. The bigoted blogging of Michelle Malkin and Debbie Schlussel and the multimedia Islamophobic, Europhobic, eugenicist, and sometimes even genocide-justifying screeds of Mark Steyn generate cash. Their authors know they’re full of you-know-what, but they also understand that there is an international market for their kind of bigotry. This makes them morally far worse than the thousands of idiots who buy into their absurd, fever-dream theories wholeheartedly.
I used to think the best ting to do with people like Malkin, Steyn, etc was to ignore them, to not dignify their prejudice-inciting ramblings with an intelligent response. I also felt like this was the best way to handle Holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis, coincidentally. A European professor of mine changed my mind when she very persuasively argued that Holocaust denial should not be criminalized anywhere outside Germany or Austria, and that instead of jailing or fining Holocaust deniers, they should be encouraged to enter into public debates with legitimate historians and social scientists. This, she argued, would result in the hate-mongers’ public humiliation and banishment to the realm of obscurity. Now, I believe that all purveyors of hatred must be confronted head-on, in the public sphere, and in ways that not only disprove their theories, but show them to be the malevolent charlatans they are –in other words, shame and discredit them completely.
What I’m advocating here isn’t "fighting fire with fire." What I’m advocating is fighting hate propaganda with the full force of reality.
In a story reported by the Washington Times, the Defense Department’s recent liaising with various Muslim groups has been attacked as demoralizing the American people on the war on terror. Various officials note that during the Cold War, the Pentagon did not invite Soviet groups for caviar and vodka; thus American liberals’ influence in involving Muslim groups has now risen to a level of that is detrimental to US security.
However, organizing an iftar (breaking of the Ramadan fast) with an American Muslim group seems to me to rather be an effort at dialogue and showing the American Muslim populace a sense of solidarity – that the US government is not fighting them or including them as enemies in this war. These same groups that allege this move was rather an effort to derail the war also claim that the Muslim group invited by the Pentagon (the American Muslim Alliance) is a terrorist group because it has recently had dialogue with the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim Public Affairs Council, some of whose members have expressed support for Hamas and Hizballah. Again, dialogue does not equal complicity – it is merely an effort to understand an alternate viewpoint.
Furthermore, just because an organization’s members have certain political beliefs does not mean that the organization has the same opinions. That would be like saying the NRA is pro-choice because some of its members happen to be both gun-lovers and pro-choice. It sounds ridiculous from a different angle doesn’t it?
These groups are also upset that the American Muslim Alliance’s purpose of existence is to get Muslims elected to high levels of government. This article and its proponents make it sound like a conspiracy theory. However, this goal is no different than that of Emily’s List, another nonprofit that works to get women elected to high levels of government. That doesn’t sound like a conspiracy for women to take over the US government does it? It is more like a grassroots effort at affirmative action. However, any time a Muslim group is thrown into conversation among members of this neoconservative administration, the conspiracy theories abound and rationality ceases to work.
As world leaders descended onto the United Nations Headquarters in New York City a month ago, one fact permeated the tense atmosphere and scathing rhetoric, that humanity has few places to turn, few leaders to look up to, and little options left in tackling the great woes of the 21st century. The fog of disillusionment does not only hang over Washington DC, but also over London, Beirut, and Tehran along with other places, as extremists consolidate power, or attempt to, and moderates evaporate amidst a landscape that is burning from the fires of climate change, religious fundamentalism, and neo-imperialism. This is the world we live in.
People are becoming increasingly agitated on all fronts, as the social fabric of the United States strains under the pressure it endures from all sides, each trying to seize and claim it as their own. The same situation is taking place in Lebanon, as well as many other Middle Eastern countries as the long era of American backed authoritarian dictators decays amidst the rising power of Political Islam, which is as authoritarian and undemocratic as the regimes it is toppling.
Ahmadinejad, the neo-conservative and religious fundamentalist leader of Iran along with the help of the miscalculations and juvenile blunders of the United States, has been able to consolidate power in a country that 6 years ago was about to undergo a democratic revolution against its ruling theocracy. But why would the Iranian people want Democracy now, when the supposed democratic experience in Iraq has led to the deaths of 1 million civilians as well as a brutal occupation by the United States? According to another neo-conservative who has proclaimed himself a mouthpiece for a religion and perverted it just like Ahmadinejad, President George W. Bush now claims that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. A truly familiar situation considering weapons of mass destruction were apparently all over Iraq in 2003, one reason why we invaded that country, toppled its dictator and sparked a civil war that did not reveal WMD’s but only barbaric internal ethnic and religious divisions. Now the U.S. has equated Iran’s nuclear program with nuclear weapons, something that the state of Israel, Washington’s longtime ally will not stand for. Both Israel and the U.S. are now considering a pre-emptive strike against the Islamic Republic.
What is particularly distressing about this situation, as well as the situation of the Middle East in general is that the American people have been given two choices: Choose between Islamic Fundamentalism or American Imperialism, the latter of which many Americans see as taboo and refuse to address. Religious fundamentalism seems to be permeating many governments that are or will be involved in conflict in the coming years including the U.S, Israel, and Iran, three countries run by religiously influenced governments, especially the latter. No matter the religion, religious fundamentalism does indeed result in the decay of a country’s religious and political authority via demeaning propaganda and grotesque misinterpretations of religious texts and political ideology. What seems to be taking form is a clash not between civilizations, but between religious fundamentalists in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam that have taken control of their respective country’s political establishments, education systems, armed forces, and moral authority and are driving their populations towards intolerance at home, and armed conflict abroad.
American Imperialism has only made the situation worse. The War on Terror, and the invasion of Iraq precipitated a sharp decline of the United States image as the world’s innocent victim of terrorism and defender of liberty and freedom. Instead, the image of the U.S. as an imperialist empire that has devastated Latin America via free trade agreements and the drug war, supported Israel’s harsh policy towards Arab states, witnessed a sharp increase in domestic hate groups, and done little to help people in Darfur and Myanmar, has now become a permanent image of this country. Worse yet? Al Qaeda has seen its number of recruits skyrocket, Hezbollah is now the most powerful political party in the Middle East, Ahmadinejad along with Hugo Chavez are well admired, and the Europeans see the Americans as the greatest threat to world peace, even more so than Sudan, or Myanmar, or North Korea. The United States’ policies have exacerbated social tensions not only throughout the Middle East where Political Islam is making major gains, but in Europe where radicalized Muslim immigrants have the ability to bring down the dream of a secular Europe without borders via terrorist campaigns and assassinations, all vented towards America and her allies.
Despite such a dire situation, it would be asinine to say that everything is irreversible. If the American people do not elect a sensible and progressive leadership in the near future, and if the average everyday American continues to lead a life of excessive materialism, and intensely damaging apathy, our country will be plunged into an abyss of political turmoil, paralysis, and overall mistrust.
This would not only bring down this country, but the rest of the world as well.
Hey guys,
Just thought I’d draw your attention to a new web-based radio station that has been getting quite a bit of press here in the UK. It’s called ‘Salaam Shalom’ and it describes itself as "an online radio station broadcasting a mixture of music and speech and focus on the many aspects of Jewish and Muslim life and allow two cultures which have been linked for thousands of years to talk together and share their experiences."
Salaam Shalom is run by young Jews and Muslims and claims to speak on behalf of the ‘moderate majority’, whose voices are rarely heard in a mainstream media.
Here’s the website if you want to check it out www.salaamshalom.org
An incident this weekend (which I may or may not go into in a future post) got me thinking about multiculturalism and cultural relativism.
Cultural relativism and multiculturalism are too often used as synonyms, when, really, they are two different (if not mutually exclusive) concepts. In the modern state system, multiculturalism is the tolerance of different cultures and identities within a political unit. It can manifest in anything from allowing public schools to use multiple languages for instruction to making room for the holidays of multiple religions in federal holiday schedules. Of course, multiculturalism can also be the individual, personal acceptance of other people with different backgrounds, cultural practices, and religious expressions.
Cultural relativism, on the other hand, is the acceptance of different ethical and legal standards for different groups within a population on the grounds of culture. People in the human rights field generally love multiculturalism and abhor cultural relativism. Here’s why: while multiculturalism helps facilitate the fulfillment of social and cultural rights, cultural relativism makes the application of universal human rights principles, especially in the areas of civil and political rights, extremely difficult. By its very nature, cultural relativism is anathema to the ideology of human rights.
If human rights are universal, and non-derogable rights are, well, non-derogable, then, logically, that leaves no room for the argument that, because of culture real of imagined, some people are less entitled to rights than others.
The most common argument that these themes play out in is the argument over women’s rights in Muslim societies. While one side argues that a woman in Riyadh and a women in Brussels are fundamentally equals in rights, regardless of religion, the other argues that history, cultural norms, and religious beliefs should be taken into account when assessing the rights of both women. This argument also plays out within societies. Take almost any Western European country as an example. The debates over the hijab continue, ferociously in some circles. But here’s where the argument gets tricky. Too often, equal rights are used as a mallet to pound personal expression. Example: the French hijab-in-schools ban. If one really believes that a woman or girl should be free to choose what garments she wears –with rare exceptions for public safety and common sense, obviously– it is just as bad to tell her she cannot wear her hijab in the classroom as it is to tell her she must wear one. Conversely, cultural relativism is just as destructive, if not more so, to human rights. Take the example of a German judge who, in March of this year, refused a German woman of Moroccan origin a fast-track divorce from her abusive husband because of the "Moroccan cultural environment in which it is not uncommon for a man to exert a right of corporal punishment over his wife." (The judge was removed from the case shortly thereafter, by the way, and the German public was outraged at the first decision.)
Balancing multiculturalism with human rights means allowing for different cultural and religious identities and expressions, while applying the same laws to everyone and keeping respect for all human rights as a universal minimum standard.
Whenever Turkey is in the international news (as it is now because of elections), otherwise calm, reasonable people lose their heads entirely. Because I don’t have much time, here, briefly, are my thoughts on the general "Turkey issues."
- So, the Justice and Development Party (Turkish initials "AK") won. Don’t pop a blood vessel, people. Most news sites refer to AK as an "Islamist" party, and while that may be nominally correct, the term itself has a connotation, especially in the West, of violent, intolerant radicalism, which has definitely not been a hallmark of AK’s time in power so far. It is not the Near East’s answer to Hamas. It is not the Muslim Brotherhood. In reality, AK is not even the Muslim equivalent of the Poland’s Catholic fundamentalist party, the League of Polish Families, as some more generous commentators have asserted. A more apt characterization might be the Islamic equivalent of the EU’s conservative Christian Democrat parties. According to its history of governance, and many, many statements by its leaders, AK has no intention of imposing Sharia law on secular Turks or anyone else, as the more hysterical pundits have suggested it does.
- Turkey’s first lady wears a hijab. So what? If that sends you into a fit, you need to grow up and start acting and thinking like an adult. Judge the woman based on what she says and what she does, not the piece of cloth she chooses to wear on her head.
- You are entitled to hold the personal opinion that Turkey is not European. But ask yourself, what is European? Defining Europe as a solely Christian makes little sense. Many European countries have more atheists than practicing Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians. Furthermore, defining Europe (and thus Europeans) by Christianity relegates Europe’s millions of indigenous and immigrant Muslims to an undefined and permanent second-class status –quasi-European? Not European? What?
- Turkey is a transcontinental state. The currents of the world’s major faiths and empires met and bled together in the Mediterranean, Southeastern Europe, and the Caucasus, creating cultures, nations, and (much later) states that fit uneasily into simple categories like "European" "Asian" "Christian" and "Islamic." In the end, however, for practical and political purposes, we must categorize them. And the rules are neither set nor universal. There is wide acceptance of Georgia, which is geographically in "Asia," as a "European" state, Armenia likewise, but the verdict is still out on Turkey and Azerbaijan. And to muddy the waters even more, think about this: an ordinary Cypriot, in many ways, has more in common with an ordinary Lebanese than a ordinary Swede, yet both Cyprus and Sweden are members of the EU and categorized as "European." If it were up to me, I would define Europe as anything now in the Council of Europe. Within that sphere, I would let the question of near or distant future EU membership remain open –not guaranteed, mind you– but open.
- Making hysterical statements about how Turkey is now an "Islamist-run state" on the verge of becoming Saudi Arabia is alarmist, dishonest, and ridiculous. It distracts from Turkey’s real problems of repression of minorities, too much power held by the military, human rights abuses by the police, rural poverty, and simmering inter-communal conflict.
- Dredging up atrocities committed by the Ottoman Empire from the 1800s back is unhelpful (note: I am not including the Armenian genocide here.) The Ottoman Empire overran what is now Bulgaria, OK, as a student of history I know that’s fact. But Britain overran and ruled Ireland for far longer, and Germany and France both spent much of their histories attacking their neighbors and bloodying the fields of Western Europe. Anyway, the Ottoman Empire was no worse than any of the other empires of its time. In a few respects, such as its treatment of Europe’s long-persecuted Jews, it was better. Europe as a whole has been the most violent place in human history, with no country capable of claiming innocence. But, again, that shouldn’t be the point at all. Turkey has problems today, especially in the area of human rights, and those should be the focus of reasoned, balanced, and unemotional discussions of Turkey’s politics and EU candidacy.
- And finally, anyone who says "But Turks aren’t ethnically European!" does not deserve a response, and should be ignored.
All the time we hear about "radical Islam" and our fight against it, but never a clear definition of what that either "radical Islam" means or what our fight against it entails exactly. Too many people, pundits and politicians prominent among them, have decided that the West (whatever the heck that means anymore) is at war with Islam in general –all sects and expressions thereof– and every part of the world where Islam is the dominant faith.
Fareed Zakaria injects some desperately needed sanity into the discourse:
The split between Sunnis and Shiites—which plays a role in Lebanon as well—is only one of the divisions within the world of Islam. Within that universe are Shiites and Sunnis, Persians and Arabs, Southeast Asians and Middle Easterners and, importantly, moderates and radicals. The clash between Hamas and Fatah in the Palestinian territories is the most vivid sign of the latter divide. Just as the diversity within the communist world ultimately made it less threatening, so the many varieties of Islam weaken its ability to coalesce into a single, monolithic foe. It would be even less dangerous if Western leaders recognized this and worked to emphasize such distinctions. Rather than speaking of a single worldwide movement—which absurdly lumps together Chechen separatists in Russia, Pakistani-backed militants in India, Shiite warlords in Lebanon and Sunni jihadists in Egypt—we should be emphasizing that all these groups are distinct, with differing agendas, enemies and friends. That robs them of their claim to represent Islam. It describes them as they often are—small local gangs of misfits, hoping to attract attention through nihilism and barbarism.
The greatest weakness of militant Islam is that it is unpopular almost everywhere. Even in Afghanistan, where the Taliban has some roots, it was widely reviled. And now, when Taliban fighters occasionally take over a town in southern Afghanistan, they disband the schools, burn books, put women behind veils. These actions cause fear and resentment, not love. Most Muslims, even those who are devout and enraged at the West, don’t want to return to some grim fantasy of medieval theocracy.
And by the way, in Sarajevo, a city estimated to be more the 80 percent Muslim, no one gives a hoot about Salman Rushdie’s knighthood.
