There seems to be a new wave of empathy amongst Arab Muslims towards Indian Muslims. Intellectuals, primarily in the various emirates have woken up to the acute discrimination faced by Indian Muslims. As if not to be left behind, some members of royal families have condemned the current wave of Muslim phobia orchestrated by the Hindu right wing. Some Arab lawyers have said that Muslim persecution in India is a fit case to be presented before the International Court of Justice and that they are collating evidence to do so. At least one Arab country, Kuwait, has already taken public position against India’s treatment of its Muslim minority. Earlier the OIC had passed a resolution to same effect. To be sure, most Arab countries have not taken any official position on the issue, neither have they lodged any displeasure with the various Indian consulates. However, the very fact that India had to publicly assure the world of its ‘hallowed’ secularism and ‘equal protection of all its citizens’, is sign enough that such sentiments amongst Arab Muslims have made the present government concerned. 

After all, the government cannot be oblivious of the fact that tens of thousands of Indians, mostly Hindus work in the Gulf. It is also a fact that as compared to Muslims, Hindus in these countries occupy higher strata of occupational structure. If there is any negative feeling about Hindus, then their position will be become insecure and as a result the remittances to India will suffer a major blow. The Arabs have no love for democracy or freedom of speech. Citizens and especially non-citizens living in these parts know fully well the implications of angering their Arab masters. And yet, over the years, we have seen a certain section of right-wing Hindus getting emboldened and brazenly posting stuff on social media considered offensive and derogatory to Islam. In the last six years, this government has worked hard on fostering a strategic partnership between India and the gulf. It seems that for some supporters of this government, this has translated into a triumphalist war cry against an imagined enemy. In the process, they have frittered away years of hard work which Indians of all faiths have put together to earn goodwill amongst the Arabs.

It is too early to say what caused this sudden feeling of solidarity amongst the Arabs. After all, the Arabs have hardly bothered about Muslims in other parts of the world, including the Palestinians, Rohingyas and the Uighurs, who have been facing persecution since decades. Barring the ritual condemnation through OIC, respective Arab governments have largely treated such problems as internal to respective countries. The Arab racial superiority has been satisfied by giving alms rather than taking active position against Muslim persecution. Perhaps for the first time in the Arab world, a civic engagement has emerged regarding the treatment of Indian Muslims.

Prejudice against Muslims in India is not new. They have been routinely killed through organized violence and even by institutions of the state, notably the police. However, these pogroms were followed by periods of relative calm, wherein Muslims were ‘allowed’ to get back to their business of life. What Muslims are witnessing now is something entirely different. In the last five years, attacks on Muslims have become relentless. This attack is not just physical but also psychological with the express intention of making Muslims insecure in their own surroundings. Muslims have been lynched, they have been made insecure regarding their citizenship status, they have also been accused of spreading the pandemic, and their businesses closed or boycotted. When the whole world is concentrating their energies on fighting the ongoing pandemic, Indian police are busy arresting Muslim students on flimsy grounds. And all this has been happening without any respite. Earlier, the world took notice of Muslim killings but was also appreciative of India’s management of diversity during the relatively peaceful interlude. In the recent years, the world has kept seeing images of India’s Muslim persecution and has also noticed the silence and abetment of its government. Social media has flattened boundaries. Painful images of Indian Muslims have singed the world, the Arab world being no exception.

Social opinion and its public expression is largely controlled in the Arab world. That’s why the media is closely monitored. It is next to impossible to criticise the ruling establishment. It is difficult even to criticise friendly countries. Arab media watchers, however, have observed that over some years, there have been a flurry of negative reportage on India, especially with regard to its treatment of Muslims. The very fact that such reports were allowed to appear can only mean that there exists a torrent of adverse domestic opinion on the issue. Those who think monarchies do not care about public opinion are wrong. Precisely because they are not democracies, they are more sensitive towards public opinions. The very fact that such opinions were allowed to be published can only mean that the monarchies are aware of their subjects’ anger against India. They must also be realising that people’s anger against India is also simultaneously directed against their own monarchies for being too close to the Indian government. 

The Arabs should not judge all Hindus through the actions of some bigoted ones. Therefore their criticism of right wingers should not extend to a general condemnation of all Hindus or of Hinduism as a faith system. This has been a worrying undertone as some Arabs have made veiled threats to expel Hindus from their countries. They must remember that most of these Hindus have been law abiding migrants and their hard work has contributed immensely in changing the fortunes of Arabs. To blame all Hindus for the fault of a few will be a travesty of justice.

It also needs to be underlined that not all criticism of Islamic practice should be treated as Islamophobia. The allegation against the noted singer, Sonu Nigam, is a case in point. An old tweet of his has resurfaced wherein he had expressed annoyance at being forced to get up early in the morning due to azan from a loudspeaker. His views on azan may not be palatable to many but certainly it cannot be equated with rabid Islamophobic opinions that are calling for the wholesale expulsion of Muslims from India. Indeed, there are many Muslims who have similarly called for ending loudspeaker azan due to various reasons. Muslims are in a precarious situation today and therefore it is all the more important that they pick their fights sagaciously.

Indian Muslims have charted out their own political course after independence. Despite the odds, they have always been faithful to the constitution and firm believers in India’s democracy. They have never looked for any kind of foreign help. Today, the situation has become so helpless that Muslims are both relived and jubilant at the support they are receiving from Arab Muslims. Within Muslims there is a section which now wants to relook at our earlier principle to remain autonomous from the larger Muslim world. They are calling this as a grand conspiracy against Indian Muslims to keep them away from the ummah. These Muslims must realise that while the support of Arab Muslims may be important at this juncture, ultimately this fight against bigotry has to be led by Indian Muslims themselves.

—

Arshad Alam is a columnist with NewAgeIslam.com

Courtesy:newageislam.com

The post Arab Solidarity is Welcome, But Indian Muslims Must Remain the Vanguard appeared first on SabrangIndia.

He may not be fasting even as a token gesture, but Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made sure he spares a few words of solidarity towards the Muslim community as Ramzan gets underway. Over this weekend, the PM has made sure to mention Ramzan, and ‘connect’ with the Muslim community twice already. Of course there has been no connection with those openly targeting Muslims across the country, blaming them for ‘spreading Coronavirus’, and using the Covid-19 lockdown as an excuse to carry out their hate speech, and discrimination.

Instead, the Prime Minister greeted the Muslim community in his Sunday radio talk ‘Mann Ki Baat’ and stated the obvious: “Ramzan this year is taking place while we are in the midst of the battle against Covid-19. Let’s take the right precautions today so that the coming Id-Ul-Fitr can be marked in the same way as it has been done earlier,” he said.

At first listen, it appears that the PM in his Mann Ki Baat, sounded hopeful that the Coronavirus pandemic, and/or the nationwide lockdown and the conditions emerging due to this situation will be under control in time for Eid next month.

His optimism comes as the same time as his ‘gentle reminder’ to the community that Ramzan is also a time for “patience, harmony, sensitivity” and most important, “service” toward others. “The holy month of Ramzan has begun. Last year when Ramzan was celebrated/ observed no one would have thought this Ramzan we will have to face such big troubles this time.” 

Ramzan this year is taking place while we are in the midst of the battle against COVID-19.

Let’s take the right precautions today so that the coming Id-Ul-Fitr can be marked in the same way as it has been done earlier. #MannKiBaat pic.twitter.com/gVtIHKrkuv

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) April 26, 2020

“But now that the trouble has come” the PM said there was also an ‘opportunity’ that had revealed itself. He urged everyone to “observe this Ramzan with patience, harmony, sensitivity , empathy, service to others… this time let us pray/ devotion more than before. So that by the time Eid comes, we celebrate with as much enthusiasm as before.” 

The PM said that he had “faith” that those observing the Muslim holy Month will do so as guided by the local administration. “I have faith that this Ramzan while obeying the instructions of local administrations, we will strengthen this fight against Coronavirus. We need to follow physical distancing rules more than ever,” he said in his Mann Ki Baat  telecast.

It is important to repeat here that all religious places of worship, especially of Muslim, Sikh, and Christian communities have been shut for over a month now. No religious congregations are allowed and clerics have asked people to stay home and pray. Even as the Ramzan crescent moon was sighted, this message was repeated by Muslim community leaders, and clerics once again. 

According to news reports, clerics across the country, including the  Shahi Imams of Jama Masjid and Fatehpuri Masjid in Delhi had appealed to Muslims to offer namaz during Ramzan from home, and strictly follow the lockdown guidelines to prevent the spread of Covid-19. Much before this eminent community leaders such as  Delhi Minorities Commission Chairman Dr. Zafarul-Islam Khan had already written to the community to observe all the guidelines listed under the Coronavirus lockdown protocol.

The PM has noticed this and had a word of appreciation for them too, “today I also am grateful to those community leaders who have made people aware of keeping ‘two meter’ distance, staying at home…”  

As a ‘patriarch’ is wont to  sometimes compare siblings the PM reminded listeners that the Coronavirus pandemic had changed the way we celebrate community festivals. He counted the harvest festivals and community new years such as Bihu, Baisakhi, Vishu, Oriya New Year, and said that he saw how they were celebrated ‘simply, and at home,’ under the lockdown. “We saw how people stayed home and celebrated these festival…  other times they go out and celebrate joyously with friends and family.” 

A special mention was made of the Christian community celebrating, “Easter at home,” this year, he lauded those actions and said such, “responsibility towards society and country was important. That is how we will defeat the pandemic like corona”. 

This was the second time in three days that the PM had taken notice of the Muslim community. He had greeted the nation on Friday after the Ramzan moon was sighted and the beginning of the Muslim Holy month of fasting, prayer, and charity, had been officially announced across the country. 

Ramzan Mubarak! I pray for everyone’s safety, well-being and prosperity. May this Holy Month bring with it abundance of kindness, harmony and compassion. May we achieve a decisive victory in the ongoing battle against COVID-19 and create a healthier planet.

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) April 24, 2020

“Ramzan Mubarak! I pray for everyone’s safety, well-being and prosperity,” he tweeted.

The attention from the Prime Minister, towards the community which has been made the target of hate, in speeches and actions, across the country is the latest, and the most elaborate since April 19. When he himself had tweeted that “COVID-19 does not see race, religion, colour, caste, creed, language or borders before striking. Our response and conduct thereafter should attach primacy to unity and brotherhood.”

COVID-19 does not see race, religion, colour, caste, creed, language or borders before striking.

Our response and conduct thereafter should attach primacy to unity and brotherhood.

We are in this together: PM @narendramodi

— PMO India (@PMOIndia) April 19, 2020

This message had come after scores of Arab influencers began calling out the way the Muslim community was being treated in india under the Coronavirus lockdown. The latest is a statement from Kuwait ministers as shared by news anchor, Ahmad Alwahidah, “ Kuwait concern about the ethnic attacks against Muslims in India and calls on the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the international community to take the necessary measures to stop these attacks and to preserve the rights of Muslims and inject their blood.”

Kuwait concern about the ethnic attacks against Muslims in India and calls on the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the international community to take the necessary measures to stop these attacks and to preserve the rights of Muslims and inject their blood.#india #Muslim pic.twitter.com/dUlYwIPB7J

— أحمد الوهيدة (@AHMAD_ALWAHIDAH) April 26, 2020

He and other Arab journalists, eminent personalities, Emirati royalty, including Princess of Oman, Mona bint Fahd al Said, have been active in keeping a record of, and sharing online, the many instances of discrimination against Muslims in India. That the world is watching how India is treating its minorities once again, the attention has been so intense from the Arab nations, that Indian diplomats had to warn Indians working there, from speaking ill against the Muslim community. News reports about discrimination against Muslims in India has gone viral globally.

While the threat of a diplomatic crisis has made the PM, and his ministers take notice, the voices closer home are yet to be heard. Even those from Delhi, where the PM resides. For example, issues raised by the Delhi Minorities Commission who have alerted authorities in the deteriorating situation in the quarantine camps where Muslim inmates are denied basic amenities even as they observe Ramzan. “Saturday was the first day of the fasting month of Ramzan but the inmates at Wazirabad kept fast on empty stomachs because pre-dawn food was not supplied. Then for breaking their fast at sunset yesterday, they were provided each with just two bananas and three dates while again no pre dawn meal was provided,” said the DMC in its latest letter to the authorities. Eventually the Jamiat Ulama stepped in and provided the people with predawn food or sehri.

Perhaps, this situation too may be discussed by the highest offices of the Indian administration once the Arab world takes notice.

The post Will the Ramzan edition of Prime Minister’s ‘Mann Ki Baat’ help placate the seething Arabs? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

An op-ed in the French Le Monde followed by yet another one titled, ‘The Sexual Misery of the Arab world’ in the New York Times by award-winning Algerian journalist, Kamel Daoud, has raised the hackles of many, including some who are otherwise his admirers

In a controversial NYT op-ed, the Algerian journalist and prize-winning author Kamel Daoud weighed in on the infamous events of last New Year’s Eve in Cologne, Germany. He wrote of the sexual harassment and rape authored by Muslim migrants and refugees as symptoms of a “sick” relationship with sex and women in general, and that this “disease” was now spreading to Western lands.

This spectacular episode of sexual violence had managed to turn what had been general sympathy for refugees fleeing terrorism into anger, fear, and hatred. A large group of men had congregated at Cologne’s central train station before breaking off into smaller groups to commit robberies and sexual assaults.

Subsequently, Angela Merkel’s “open-door” asylum policy was roundly criticized, as well as the lack of police response to the crimes as they happened. The event also led to a miraculous occurrence, the alignment of secular left and right-leaning voices in a unified stance: new checks on migration and asylum policy were now being proposed in the name of feminism and the protection of women’s bodies, in conjunction with the already familiar call to limit the influx of non-Christian men in the name of preserving Europe’s traditional “character.”

The sudden influx into Germany over the course of last year—of more than 1.1 million asylum seekers fleeing the aftermath of US intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan and civil war in Syria—threatened to become a ticking “sexual time bomb,” if sensational press headlines were to be believed.

This controversy recently took another turn when a group of respected academics, some of whom are Algeria specialists, published a letter in Le Monde taking Daoud to task for the Orientalism and especially the Islamophobia they attributed to his article [published in Le Monde], which contained myriad generalizations linking Islam with sexual delinquency (translated and later published on Jadaliyya).

On the one hand, these scholars saluted Daoud’s courageous journalism in the face of real threats to his person during the Algerian civil war between Islamists and the military government, referred to as “The Dirty War.” However, his brave condemnations of violent puritanism in Algeria signify differently when transposed to a Euro-American context: in this way his formerly minoritarian secular voice joined the choir of an “Islamophobic majority.”

On the one hand, these scholars saluted Daoud’s courageous journalism in the face of real threats to his person during the Algerian civil war between Islamists and the military government, referred to as “The Dirty War.” However, his brave condemnations of violent puritanism in Algeria signify differently when transposed to a Euro-American context: in this way his formerly minoritarian secular voice joined the choir of an “Islamophobic majority.”

This failure to address power differentials (as well as the shifting sands of majority minority balances) when one moves from the global south to the north, is actually a quite common characteristic of what I’d like to call the anti-Muslim or “secularist Arab select,” who find a ready audience in the Euro-American press. Recently, a Jadaliyya article profiled commentators the mainstream media has chosen to weigh in on the greater significance of ISIS: among them one finds a select group, Arab polemicists who repeatedly occupy center stage in US coverage, who claim ISIS shows “the true face of Islam.”

When gender and sexuality are added to the equation, this seems to amplify the process by which Arab secular or anti-Muslim voices are called upon, and indeed deemed qualified, to represent the Muslim point of view. Often this comes at the expense of qualified voices whose research has been dedicated to understand the complexities of Arab gender and sexuality in an international frame.

Brigitte Gabriel, Nonie Darwish, Jeanine Pirro, and Wafaa Sultan—now stars of US conservative media—have all presented themselves as refugees and/or critics of their sexually intolerant “home” cultures and have obtained pulpits that specialists of gender and sexuality in the Islamic world can only dream of reaching.

With much drama, Daoud declared on February 20th that he would no longer pursue journalism, as resolved in a public exchange between himself and his friend Adam Shatz, an American essayist. Daoud cited the “immorality” of academics, privileged in their ivory towers, who would “pronounce him guilty of Islamophobia” from comfortable shelters “in western capitals (or) café terraces where comfort and security reign.”

He went on to say that he found it shameful that specialists who have never lived through what he has survived were inciting “local hatred” against him by imposing the verdict of Islamophobe, a sentence that “today can also be used as a tool of Inquisition,” he claimed.

Indeed, some of the signatories to the letter accused of being too comfortable on café terraces are Algerian, and are all too familiar with the ravages of war: historian Noureddine Amara penned an open letter to Daoud stressing this point, marveling at how quickly his signature had landed him in the “gang of academics” said to be bullying Daoud.

Allegations of bullying are hard to support when Manuel Valls, the security-minded Prime Minister of France known as the “muscle” to President François Hollande’s “softness,” publishes a letter in support of Daoud and in condemnation of the “peremptory” academics’ “indictment.” Valls praised the path Daoud has tread, a path that “France (also) treads, making it known to all those who have abandoned thought, that a Muslim will never by essence be a terrorist, not any more than a refugee will ever by essence be a rapist.”

This statement however seems to lose all meaning when placed in conjunction with Daoud’s assertion that “sex is the greatest destitution and deprivation (misère) in Allah’s world,” a place where “woman is negated, refused, killed, raped, imprisoned or possessed.”

While Daoud’s lament is poignant, it takes on the tonality of a journalist upset at the fact-checkers for checking his facts. His is a familiar refrain, one that those in positions of influence use to conveniently deflect critique, especially from those who bring persuasive arguments against their right to speak for entire groups of people.

Professor Jocelyne Dakhlia, one of the signatories of the Le Monde letter, weighed in again when a throng of voices coalesced in defense of Daoud saying that, by asking for more critical perspective after the Cologne attacks, the academic signatories were in some way justifying them. With the frustration of someone who has to underline the obvious, Dakhlia wrote that “a public personality must expect that they’ll have to respond to objections or critiques, and it is surprising that a man who has held strong against the Islamists for so long, a man whose Algerian chronicles I’ve personally admired, a man of his moral stature, would withdraw from debate after only two critical texts.”

She went on to decry the fact that very few media outlets were giving a voice to male migrants condemning the attacks, and lamented the lack of media coverage of reports from Cologne’s refugee camps that Muslim women were being sexually harassed by camp guards. She also underlined the basic unoriginality of Daoud’s claims, caught between two pre-existing French representations, that of the 1970s isolated migrant worker whose lack of sexual outlets leads to depression (seen in Tahar Ben Jelloun’s psychiatric study The Highest of Solitudes), and that of the 1960s spectre of the Algerian “rapist,” which anti-immigration forces promoted during the Algerian War and in the aftermath of decolonization.

Image: Reuters

One wonders if the academics’ “hostility” is truly to blame, or rather, Daoud’s unwillingness to engage in uncomfortable debate with those who might have the research credentials to contest his claims? While some leftists and post-colonial academics do indeed occupy a position of relative privilege, they are “first responders” of a sort: they have historically come to the defense of the otherwise defenseless, alerting the public to ethnic scape-goating before it is too late, cautioning against generalizations that could later lead to violence, and always pointing out differentials of power so easily ignored in the sensational media.

Daoud however believes that it is excessive to ask him to pay attention to power differentials, maintaining that he cannot be held fully responsible for the uses to which others put his (very strong) words in outside contexts. With mock irony he states: “I suddenly find myself responsible for what will be read differently in different lands and in different atmospheres. Denouncing the surrounding theocracy here at home becomes an Islamophobic argument elsewhere. Is it my fault? In part. But it’s also the fault of our times.”

European Muslims are the ones who will have to deal with the aftermath of being painted as potential rapists, who will have to face angry stares in the metro, and passersby changing over to the opposite sidewalk, among other consequences of guilt by association.

This kind of statement is of a piece with the common refusal of those who belong to the secularist Arab select to consider the politics of instrumentalization, to question how criticism of a religion held by the majority in one country changes meaning when transposed to a country where that religion is under the microscope.

He justified his withdrawal from journalism by interrogating the very role of Islam Insider he had comfortably occupied up till that point: “The writer who comes from the lands of Allah today finds himself the object of intolerable press solicitations. I can’t do anything about it except subtract myself from it: via caution, as I had once thought, but also via silence, as I have since chosen.”

A similar argument to the one Daoud makes about the incitement of “local hatred” could be made in reverse: Daoud, in generalizing about Muslims and their “sick” relationship to sex, has imperiled the image of Muslims living in Europe (and indeed that of all Muslims living in the “West”).

European Muslims are the ones who will have to deal with the aftermath of being painted as potential rapists, who will have to face angry stares in the metro, and passersby changing over to the opposite sidewalk, among other consequences of guilt by association.

In their collective op-ed, the academics asked “Of what is Kamel Daoud the name?” Those of us working on North Africa who were overjoyed to see Daoud decorated with prizes for the Meursault Investigation were less so when it became clear that proponents of Islamophobic secularism were citing him in order to anchor their xenophobic arguments.

Nowadays, when I am asked for the umpteenth time if I have read (and enjoyed!) this or that piece authored by Daoud, I feel a certain apprehension in regard to the real reasons behind Daoud’s popularity and almost universal celebration in the European and American cultural spheres.

Even Daoud’s good friend Adam Shatz told Daoud, after the latter’s turn to sexual demonization in the New York Times, that it was “hard to imagine you could really believe what you have written.” He brought up a hidden transatlantic parallel, the portrayal of Puerto Ricans in the US, in his letter to Daoud: “I remind you that we saw similar events, not on the same scale of course, but still, at the New York Puerto Rican Day Parade a few years ago. The Puerto Ricans who had molested women in the street were not under the influence of Islam but of alcohol… Without proof that Islam was acting on the spirits of those men in Cologne, it seems curious to make such propositions (as the ones you made), and to suggest that this ‘sickness’ threatens Europe.”

This parallel between North Africans in France and Puerto Ricans in New York, both of them populations settling in the colonists’ mainland in the aftermath of colonialism, both routinely accused of machismo, has an infamous precedent: the late Charles Hirsch, Paris police prefect in the 1950s, had compared North Africans, who were for him “an endless source of conflicts,” to the “Puerto Ricans in New York” and “wetbacks in Texas.”^[1]

The sexual demonization Daoud has reinforced has a still longer history. Borrowing from lingering Orientalist ideas about the Islamic sexual menace, this portrayal usually targets young male Arabs and Muslims and emphasizes a lack of civilization rooted in an inability to contain one’s primal urges. Medical historian Richard Keller amply documented this racialist view in his book on the Algiers school, a group of psychiatrists in colonial French Algeria that made the first “scientific” links between Islam and sexual delinquency.

This portrayal is highly ambivalent in the way it presents Muslim men as both sexually conservative in their views of women and sexually aggressive in their frustrations about them. In contemporary times, researchers like Nacira Guénif-Souilamas have explained how this portrait of the young Arab as sexually unassimilated has given new life to what should by now have been a moot question: that of the integration of Muslims born in Europe, already several generations removed from their immigrant ancestors.

In this way, the figure of the brown sexual menace has provoked feelings of sexual nationalism, and caused politicians who previously had sought to curtail the rights of women and homosexuals to suddenly come to their defense in the face of a common “foreign” enemy. The “black sexual menace” and the “black peril” are American tropes that we have, one hopes, critiqued to the point of their unacceptability: such rhetoric about black men’s violent designs upon white women have been exposed for their obvious racism.

However, similar rhetoric appears about European Muslims today in a different form, not yet politically incorrect. These tropes shape women as well: the Arab woman mute and hidden away, and the white woman taught to be careful.
In response to fear-mongering about this menace, the Netherlands and the German state of Baden-Württemberg decided in the 2000s to create what Daoud euphemistically called “guides to good conduct” in his New York Times article. In reality, these were nothing other than citizenship tests designed to highlight Muslims’ supposed incompatibility with European sexual values; Germany’s test for instance was divided between questions about national security and questions of a sexual nature, implicitly asking whether it is appropriate to, for example, beat one’s wife, kick out one’s gay son, or oppose a daughter’s mixed marriage. These European sexual values find little consensus among European nations, who cannot agree on them even within EU frameworks.

While Daoud’s lament is poignant, it takes on the tonality of a journalist upset at the fact-checkers for checking his facts. His is a familiar refrain, one that those in positions of influence use to conveniently deflect critique, especially from those who bring persuasive arguments against their right to speak for entire groups of people.

Despite what some sensational European media outlets may imply, it is important to stress that no religion or ethnicity has the monopoly on sexual violence or harassment. Cases in point are the public beatings of homosexuals in Eastern Europe, or closer to home, the mob sexual violence committed on college campuses (as evidenced in the remarkable documentary on the epidemic of rape in our nation’s universities, The Hunting Ground). Yet the calls for an honest analysis of the Christian or Caucasian “tendency” toward sexual violence have not been forthcoming.

Daoud often alludes to the “sexual misery” of young Muslim men — uneducated, poor, without marriage prospects. This is rhetoric that we have more familiarly heard from far-right politicians in Europe stoking fears about the culture of poverty and how it imperils the daughters of the nation: young and unemployed young men of color, haunting Europe’s housing projects, whose dissatisfaction with life supposedly translates into sexual violence against the women they can’t “have.”

It would be hard to imagine a white, male politician repeating any of the generalizations and un-sourced claims about Muslim sexual violence contained in Daoud’s op-ed without facing serious criticism. It is possible for Daoud to not only say but get away with this kind of character assassination because he is part of the secularist Arab select the xenophobic right (and now left) depends on to say unsayable things about Muslims, who can declare whatever he likes in the name of cultural “authenticity.”

The danger here is in engaging in what researcher Eric Fassin has called a “sexual clash of civilizations,” a line in the sand that will lead to new and fictitious distinctions between Muslims, secularists and Christians.

In many ways, Orientalism makes possible such fictions of difference by erasing distinctions of time and space, such that Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi fundamentalism and the highly dynamic societies of Indonesia and Tunisia can be mentioned in the same reductive term repeatedly employed by Daoud: “the lands of Allah.”

It is ironic that Mr. Daoud’s op-ed would mention Orientalism, a critique of demonizing and Othering representations, just as he reinforces the most stale Orientalist stereotypes about the Middle East’s “intolerant and intolerable” sexualities.

(Republished with permission from Jadaliyya).

The post ‘Sexual Misery of the Arab World’ or the ‘Fantasies’ of Kamel Daoud? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

‘Coexistence’ in one of Israel’s major mixed cities means Palestinian citizens must forget who they are, where they were born, and whom they were born to

Two eighth grade girls from Ramle’s Juwarish neighborhood stabbed a security guard at the central bus station last Thursday (February 4, 2016). Following the incident, I thought a lot of about Ramle. I was born and raised there, and many of my family members still live in the city. Ramle is, for better or for worse, the landscape of my childhood, the place I always go back to. As a child, I participated in various “coexistence” activities with local Arab children. We met at the pool, at summer camp, at school. But I did not live in a “mixed city” — I lived in a segregated city: I did not know their language, and it took me time to understand why our neighbors put up a Christmas tree in their living room, or why fireworks lit up the sky on Christmas Eve.

And though I lived in a segregated city, Haaretz recently published a list of education experts and local leaders who praised the city for its coexistence, among them was Mayor Yoel Lavi, who said: “Ramle is a multicultural city where Jews coexist alongside Arabs as neighbors. We will continue to be good neighbors with no difference between sectors.”

In an interview in 2005, Lavi said: “There are homes in Juwarish that are nicer than those in Kfar Shmaryahu. How can people call it a refugee camp? There is an excellent school there…and houses that are reminiscent of the Loire Valley.” In that same interview, Lavi talked about the local elections and his relations with the Arab population of the city:

“I come crawling on all fours, begging that they vote for me. Someone gets up and says: ‘How can we vote for you when you have a sign that says ‘The people are with the Golan?’ I did not let him continue. I told him, ‘Listen. I don’t like your wisecracks. I didn’t come to talk about national issues. I came to deal with the fact that you don’t have water or sewage infrastructure, that you don’t have roads and sidewalks. If the Arab sector wants to talk to me about national issues, I will be the first to shoot you. I have a lot of life experience. Every time I shot at Arabs I stayed alive and they didn’t. Fuck off.’ So I left. I solved all the infrastructural problems in Juwarish. There is a reason they vote for me. Whenever they break the law I strike. But I am the first to defend them when it comes to their rights.”

Palestinian citizens of Israel are part and parcel of this place. Infrastructure, water, sewage, education, professional opportunities, cultural budgets — these are all rightfully theirs. Talk of acting “for them” or “in their name” is nothing but a patronizing distraction from this truth.

In those same years, Lavi refused to give Arab names to the streets in Ramle, saying that those who don’t like the decision can either move to Arab towns or “change their Allah.” He later apologized, although two years later Israel’s attorney general decided not to appoint him to head the Israel Land Administration (ILA). Even the chairman of the ILA, one of the most discriminatory and problematic bodies in Israel, cannot stand Lavi’s remarks and policies.

Lavi’s remarks show exactly what kind of “coexistence” is acceptable to him: the kind in which people are made to forget who they are, where they were born, and whom they were born to. The kind where people are made to forget their language, their culture, and their god. People will talk endlessly about brainwashing or fanatical identification with the Palestinian struggle, while forgetting one simple fact: Palestinian citizens of Israel are part and parcel of this place. Infrastructure, water, sewage, education, professional opportunities, cultural budgets — these are all rightfully theirs. Talk of acting “for them” or “in their name” is nothing but a patronizing distraction from this truth.

As usual, words of wisdom come directly from those we refuse to listen to — those we prefer to forget. At the end of the Haaretz article, the children of Juwarish say, “On the bus ride here we felt that everyone was staring at us and was afraid of us. It’s frightening to be children in this city because everyone suspects you.” I don’t know which city Yoel Lavi lives in. Probably a different one altogether.

(Courtesy: +972 Magazine. Zohar Elmakias is an editor for Haokets, where this article was first published in Hebrew).
 

The post Israel: What ‘coexistence’ looks like in a segregated city appeared first on SabrangIndia.