Amal A is Arab-Palestinian woman, whose blog, Improvisations: Arab Woman Progressive Voice provides news and commentary on “Arab Women, Palestine, Cultural Politics, and Everything in Between.” She describes these improvisations as neither a manifesto nor a treatise, because she believes that life is too complicated for either. She is an Arab-Palestinian woman with “a progressive point of view always under construction,” as she puts it, “because (she) often finds herself caught between anti-Arab racism and arab reactionary politics, both of which threaten to gag (her). I’m raising my voice against both, hoping in the process to contribute an improvised note to a progressive Arab blogosphere.”
Yesterday I saw this interesting presentation by Amal entitled, East is East and West is West?, dated Saturday, March 17, 2007, which expresses the frustration that occurs when, in the political climate that Bush and company have served up for us since 9/11, Arab and Muslim women (and men) have had to defend themselves against antiArab prejudices and rediculous Islamophobic stereotypes.
East is East and West is West?
This
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/16/AR2007031601941.html
is an annoying and shallow article by Genivive Abdo in The Washington Post. According to her, the Muslim world is becoming more Islamic instead of more Western. In presenting her evidence, she lumps together everything Muslim or Islamic: political parties (Hamas, Hizbollah, Muslim Brotherhood), Islamic feminists, CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), women wearing hijab on Cairo streets, young Muslims in America embracing religious symbols–all are examples to show how Muslims are not moving towards secularism. She predicts that the future will be even more Islamic.
Hence her advice that instead of trying to convert Muslims to secularism and instead of supporting the small minority of secularists that held a Secular Summit recently, the US should try to listen to the majority of Muslims who are becoming more Islamic as we speak. The representative in the US of this majority is CAIR.
There are several problems here:
First, she is falling for an either/or logical fallacy: There is the secular West on one side and there is the Muslims on the other. The Muslims are not part of the secular West (they are visiting on temporary visas; no wonder people tell them to “go home” whenever they are angry with them). The West is all secular and there is a western consensus as to where religion belongs. Christians and Jews can embrace their religious symbols in the West without being seen as anti-secular. Christian kids in the US can attend Christian summer camps without anybody thinking twice that maybe they do not belong to this country. Only Muslims are the odd ones out. Her essay reinforces this faulty perception big way.
Second, she is giving me two options; no wonder I feel I’m suffocating: either Ibn Warraq and co. or CAIR. Frankly, I don’t care for either group. Ibn Warraq and co. don’t represent secularism as much as they do a political agenda that uses secularism to bash Arabs and Muslims, and CAIR doesn’t represent all Muslims in America as much as they would love to believe they do.
Third, she takes the neo-conservatives as representatives of the “Western attitude to Islam.” In reality, things are more complicated, and the neo-conservatives are being challenged in the US and in other parts of the western world. Unlike Bin Laden, I don’t believe there is a western conspiracy against Islam. ACLU is western, those demonstrating against the war are western, the first amendment that protects CAIR is western, and Rachel Corrie is western. On the other side, some of the closest allies of the US are self-identified Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
Forth, while she feels confident making glib generalizations about were the Arab world is heading (what are her qualifications exactly?) and how Muslims are becoming more Islamic, she doesn’t bother give any explanations for any of this. It’s all happening in a historical vacuum. But who needs an explanation for what everybody always already knows: i.e. the Muslims are becoming more religious!! When did they really stop being that when seen through “western” eyes? Muslims, by definition, are religious and can’t be anything else. This is why no explanation is offered. Just her advice: give it up; these people will never change. Hence the precious conclusion:
“What all this means is that Western hopes for full integration by Muslims in the West are unlikely to be realized and that the future of the Islamic world will be much more Islamic than Western.”
There is nothing original here. E. M. Forster said it many years ago: “East is east, and west is west, and never the twain will meet.”
Well, they’ve been meeting, clashing, embracing, screwing, and breeding for centuries.
Amal’s blog may be read here: