O’ Brother where would a Muslim Thu?
In our post 9/11 political hype and spin era, Muslim-Americans have been spied on, monitored; their brains have been scanned for any trace of violence-inspired thoughts. Searched and frisked; I have been randomly frisked at airports so many times I started to enjoy it; A Muslim American wouldn’t mind any human touch these days regardless. This is a new Islam-phobic era where the Muslim identity is constantly under assault, led by an incompetent, paranoid, faith-based administration along with bunch of conservative evangelical fanatics whose primary agenda is to discredit Islam and Muslims in this country. Every day, American media - especially radio - is dominated by conservative talk show hosts (according to a study released recently by Free Press and the Center for American Progress talk radio is a chorus of right-wing voices, the number is a scary 91%) venting senseless news about the Islamic terror that is lurking in our neighborhoods. The flood gates of smear attacks have opened in this country, creating a strong cultural xenophobia of Islam and Muslims. Front-page coverage of Muslim suicide bombers rampaging senselessly without any context, the mindless terror alert color system posted everywhere you go, putting our national security squarely on the shoulder of the vigilant patriotic public, a high profile arrest of alleged Muslim terrorists handing the American people their daily fix of Islam-phobia, the spin, the hired security analysts, and the self-righteous military generals who come together to agree that now Islam is the cause of all the world’s problems. The “Evil Empire” anti-communist era of Ronald Reagan’s time has evolved into an axis of Islamic evil.
The assault on my Muslim identity never stopped creating a constant nagging self-examination of my religion and my culture, is Islam/Muslim necessary? If not, where would a disgruntled and culturally homeless Muslim like me go for salvation? Will I be forced to accept Pat Robertson’s assertion that Islam is evil, and it is not really a religion? I have the video I was a guest. It is ironic that people like Robertson turn very secular when debating Muslims. For them, building a feet-bath for Muslim students in a local community collage constituted a threat of Islamic Shari on our secular nation. Otherwise, when discussing gay marriage or abortion, for example, Pat Robertson and his ilk would assert that we are a Christian nation. When comparing and debating the Muslims Ahmad Atif Ahmad, Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies at UCSB, described the situation to me this way: “They compare the best of the Christian west to the worst of the Islamic east.”
What is Islam? 1,500 years of history and 1.5 billion adherents and still not recognized or respected by the Christian west. Is there any other cultural or religious space for a deserted Muslims, or are we trapped in the medieval cave of self-exile, between the Christians west’ mistrust and disdain and the Islamic extremists who are behaving like vengeful, abused foster children?
If Islam is led by ignorant leaders who lost their moral compass and authority, Christianity with its few commandments won’t help that much, and Judaism with too many commandments that are hard to crack. We don’t have to go deep in history for a curious Muslim to find out that Islam produced evils like Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein; and turn to the civilized Christian west and realize that Christianity is not far behind in evil production efficiency with people like Hitler and Dick Cheney; and Judaism is one of the same divine robe that produces people the likes of Sharon with his military industry nuclear arsenal on the holy land, where David became Galleria. Islam doesn’t have a monopoly on violence. In fact, Muslim violence is carried out mostly by those who are out of legitimacy and aren’t democratically elected, the so-called terrorists who are on the run and spend most of their time in caves, whereas Christian west violence is mostly done by the so-called civilized people who are inside the legitimacy power and democratically elected. So, which is more dangerous to our human survival: a bad Muslim carrying a machine gun hiding in a cave with a tape recorder, or a good Christian living in an oval office with billons of dollars worth of weapons that he’s itching to use? If a Muslim really wants salvation for his soul it isn’t going to be in the space of another monolithic religion; history tells us that they all had behaved badly when in power and failed to produce a sustainable coherent doctrine to live by. Instead they are all a sort of Abrahamic religion, telling the same stories, true or not. That is why, unlike Christians, most disgruntled Muslims who leave Islam don’t rush in droves to join Christianity or Judaism - that wouldn’t solve or add anything substantial to a Muslim’s burning soul! Most of the discontented Muslims have no spiritual space to resort to so they desert religion altogether, which as an Egyptian Imam once said, “leaves them swearing to Allah that they are really atheists”.
Ahmed Tharwat 7/25/07
Producer and Host of the Arab American TV show
BelAhdan
Airs weekly on public TV