BEWARE OF AGENDAS THAT DEMONIZE ISLAM
Ramadan begins at sundown today! If you, like me, are not Muslim, all the more reason to learn, share and celebrate. Americas’ promise of a perfect union includes diversity. Americans do not automatically acknowledge how our modernized world was largely advanced through Islamic leadership.
When ancient civilizations like Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome and Egypt were collapsing, Muslim-led societies preserved and rescued their accomplishments. Islamic rulers planned new cities on the foundations of ancient ones to practice them as diverse, commercial, cultural and innovative centers we claim as modern cities.
Early Islam was astutely aware that progress hinged on inclusion. Its mission saw diverse peoples as a resource to be integrated; as building blocks to advancement. People from far and wide were invited to create and share an advanced base of knowledge. Accomplishments include the founding of the first university by a Muslim woman, and the advancement of mathematics, astronomy, navigation, medicine, surgery, botany, municipalities, literature and the harmonic scale. Indeed, what we consider “Western” originated in the Arab-Muslim cities spreading their exchanges from China to Andalusia.
Yet today, the myths of backwardness about Islam persist, often used to justify Western aggression. Christian Arabs, like myself, are sometimes caught between reality and myth. I grew up with pride and questions about how Islam fit into my Arab identity. In my lifetime, fabricated narratives about Islam and Arabs have grown as a cottage industry of Western projections and intergenerational lies. The “West’s” habit of lies rely on ignorance to justify all forms of atrocities and war crimes. A Western vacuum of empathy sucks the oxygen out of knowledge. I can predict it. I feel how it derails Muslims and Arabs here and abroad. I daily scan the news to find lingering agendas that demonize Islam throughout the “Western” world.
Among the more subtle derailments of language is when we unthinkingly use the term “Judeo-Christian.” In so repeating the phrase, do we erase the ethics, traditions, and harmonious codes of engagement and innovation Islam channeled and built? After all, Islamic innovations and codes abound, and are the ones we are most familiar with. “Judeo-Christian,” absent Islam, is a term glazed with myopic supremacy and it should not be grasped for so readily or so unintelligently. For example, without Islamic-led advancements, the European Renaissance could not have existed. Perhaps the problematic term is exclusivist, geographically divisive and should not be used at all. If used, could we consider refreshing it to Judeo-Christian-Islamic?
My Christian parents and extended families participated in the lifeline of Islamic cities such as Cairo, Alexandria, Baghdad and Beirut. Their lives, along with other minorities, were filled with pride and opportunity. Their love for the Arabic language and Arabic songs from the past and recent past to the popular songs and dances of today eased their days as they ease mine now. Yet they were quick to believe false histories, even the backwardness of their own cultures because of how colonial privilege or Orientalism, a term created by Palestinian American literary theorist Edward Said, played on their hearts and minds. Inherently contradictory myths were and are conveniently plucked from incorrigible human darkness and continue today.
Does human darkness turn into scapegoatism? We need not look far. San Diego County has recent examples from a church today that promotes, on the eve of Ramadan, a revisionist film banned in Europe whose aim is to reverse the roles of perpetrators and victims in the Bosnia-Serbian conflict, to the near erasure of the 2019 arsonist fire in the Escondido mosque during Ramadan. Local voices, like the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee, repeatedly brought the arson crime up, especially in the context of the tragic shooting at the Poway Chabad, which happened shortly after and resulted in the death of a beloved congregant. Let’s remember these linkages of tragedy because they bind us and focus our work against hate. I was a professor at California State University San Marcos at the time and witnessed chaotic rumors on campus among students and an administrator that Muslims and Palestinian solidarity groups were responsible for the Chabad tragedy and conduct of a White supremacist, who was also a Cal State San Marcos student.
Will the first days of Ramadan, a time of celebration, prayer, and fasting for Muslims, be used to put forth Christian supremacist narratives that wipe out recent and past Muslim suffering? We must be vigilant about our local history and protect our minority populations, lest we veer toward chaotic remembrances that give a pass to hate. Given recent history, let’s be especially sensitive and open this year. After all, the processes of Islam preserves the steady promise of America moving toward a more perfect union.
Early Islam was astutely aware that progress hinged on inclusion. It recognized diverse peoples as building blocks to advancement.