Islamophobic sentiments and language

I remember my first brush with Islamophobic sentiments like it was yesterday. I remember where I was, what I was eating and how scared and how less it made me feel. I am not Muslim even though my name suggests I am. The correct pronunciation of Ashma leaves out the ‘h’ sound. It was given to me by my grandmother who was Muslim and her seamstress. I personally never thought much of my name except for how interesting it made my identity: a Christian girl with a Muslim name who grew up performing Jhandis.

Still it did not matter until I was sharing the news with an elder, over a decade ago in 2008, that I was leaving to study in the UK. The war in Iraq was ongoing and I suppose his suspicions, which were amplified through Western media, got the best of him. I was an impressionable 19-yearold who had never known a life outside Guyana and this elder made me feel like a guaranteed suspect in a white society. The advice he lent was how careful and how non-Muslim-looking I should appear to be because my name was already a “clear indicator”. His words filled me with fear and constant worry.

When such things happen, one hardly ever has the words. It shocks you and snatches your voice. Sometimes it can take years to process what the words do to you and how they go on to impact you. I still carry them with me today. Not necessarily because I hold a grudge. I don’t. But I think about how isolating it could be for any Muslim to show out when there always seem to be cultural and religious vendettas against them which usually serve as the ‘okay’ for others to carry out acts of violence for political and economic interests, in addition to imposing their socalled superiority.

There I was in Guyana as a young adult experiencing something that made me really uncomfortable and the motivation for it came from miles away. We love to operate as if we live in an isolated state with just our community troubles. That would perhaps be less of a burden, but we simply just don’t. What takes place across globe, be it economic, social or political can have ramifications within the geographical coordinates that define Guyana.

In other words, bombs might not be dropping on us but partaking in the demonization of others helps onlookers turn a blind eye to the violence taking place.

Language and the way we use words can and do serve as powerful tools to ostracize, isolate and in some cases instigate violence. A few days ago, I read a letter to the editor in this newspaper from a religious leader, suggesting that as mosques were being used as vaccination sites and the distribution was not equitable amongst all other places of worship, this indicated some sort of religious preference. I thought it was both reasonable and reaching.

It was reaching in the sense that the majority of people subscribe to Christian and Hindu belief systems. Islam is still regarded as the minority religion. If there is ever to be a fair argument for dominance, it should be angled at Christianity, the religious belief that I still choose to subscribe to. The way we still make children subscribe to repeating Christian prayers in public schools is covert dominance even though our state is supposedly secular.

Personally, I think vaccination sites at places of worship is a good idea because it serves as reassurance for people who are hesitant and are more likely to take/trust the advice of religious leaders and do so in the intimate surroundings where they perceive God to be. Should vaccination sites be positioned in or around places of worship for all religious groups? Absolutely. And we can advocate for such without insinuating a superiority that really doesn’t exist because when we do so, we allow Muslim stereotyping to become even more normalized. It becomes easier to use the anti-Muslim narratives developed by the West to demonize Islam, such as classifying them all as terrorists and Taliban, to fuel our arguments and suspicion.

The hijab ban might be taking place in France, the burqa ban in Switzerland, while Denmark continues to marginalize Muslims economically and socially so they feel so desperate as to return to their war-torn countries, but the ramifications can be felt the same way I felt them in 2008. Global issues are not disconnected, and the trickle-down effect is there even in our little Guyana. We must learn to be careful with how we use language.