Jeanne Magnetti The Religious Nature of Conflict Before reading “Who Speaks for Islam,” I was aware that it was only a minority of Muslims who committed acts of terror, but I was wholly unaware of the nature of their motives. After learning that the motives of these terrorists are political in nature, one particular paragraph seemed to warrant further investigation. “In recent decades, religion has become a significant factor in wars of liberation and resistance as well as in acts of terrorism throughout the world. We see this in conflicts between Sikhs and Hindus in India; Muslim Bosniaks, Croatian Catholics, and Orthodox Serbs in former Yugoslavia; Christian, Muslim, and Druze militias in Lebanon’s civil war; Catholic and Protestant militants in Northern Ireland; Muslims and Christians in Nigeria; and Muslim and Jewish fundamentalists in Israel and Palestine” (76). I was already aware that the Protestant – Catholic conflict in Northern Ireland is not in fact religious in nature. The conflict centers on Loyalists and Unionists, those loyal to Britain and those who want freedom from Britain. Although the Loyalists support Britain because they are both protestant, while the Unionists are Catholic, the conflict is political; the religious aspect is exaggerated by Britain in order to disguise the nature of the conflict, and the ensuing war crimes committed by Britain. This information, along with the knowledge that the Western – Islam conflict is not actually religious led me to research the other religious conflicts listed. The Sikhs in India have been fighting to form and independent nation since the country was partitioned by Britain, because they feel that their rights as a minority group will not be threatened. Former Yugoslavia was a nation arbitrarily created by the allied powers after WWI. The main ethnic groups in the nation split up shortly after WWII. Slovenia and Croatia declared independence from the rest of the country. The Orthodox Serbs in Yugoslavia failed to invade Slovenia, but succeeded in invading Croatia in the name of protection of the Serbs that lived there, as the Croat Catholics were known to have Nazi ties during WWII. When the Serbians invaded Croatia, they slaughtered hundreds of Croats in a genocide. The Lebanon civil war occurred because the French colonial powers guaranteed the nation as a safe haven for Maronite Christians. When the Palestinians were displaced by the creation of Israel, the sudden influx of refugees to Lebanon created conflict. The conflict between Palestinians and Israelis arose when the Palestinians were displaced by the creation of Israel. It can be observed in all of these instances that the conflicts are political in nature, mostly occurring over the issue of land division and national boundaries. In fact, these conflicts appear to begin when a manipulative colonial power attempts to create a national boundary with no knowledge of or regard for the people who live there. In conclusion, it would appear that using religious identities to define conflicts is oversimplifying and even misleading. Realistically, it doesn’t make sense that people would kill each other over the issue of theocracy, because religions are traditional moral codes; killing someone because their moral code is inferior to your moral code is an inherently contradictory concept. Moreover, it is counterproductive to attempt to solve a conflict when the nature of the problem is erroneously defined. It seems that, in the future, people should be skeptical of the legitimacy of any acts of violence committed along identity lines; we must instead uncover the true nature of the problem in order to solve it.
Establishing a basis for understanding Islamic teaching, perspectives, and culture is important before moving into works that deal specifically with Islam, so that we can accurately judge the depictions of Muslims in these works. I am also an International Relations major with a concentration in war and peace study, specifically in the Middle East. I’ve therefore taken a lot of classes about Middle East Politics and the situation of Islam in this are in particular. Although much of the information in the book Who Speaks for Islam was therefore not new or very surprising to me, I think that the way the information is presented in the book is particularly useful. Instead of just presenting information in tables or straight up facts and statistics, the authors of this book contextualize this information in such a way that it is meaningful to an average American reader. The authors first present stereotypes commonly held in the West about Islam and ask relevant questions that are often asked in the media. Then they present information either to corroborate or discredit these commonly held beliefs based on quantitative information. Numbers and statistics are a better way to inform people than through vague generalizations that people often get if they just take a cursory glance at the news from Muslim majority countries, or listen to stereotypical statements made in society about Islam. One section of the book in particular that I liked was the section about women. Questions and statements made about women in the Muslim world are often quite simplistic and black-and-white: they are oppressed, we should help them, Islam takes rights away from women, etc. Who Speaks for Islam does an excellent job of problematizing our simplistic approach to women’s rights issues in the Middle East. The first thing it does is break down the idea of the monolithic “they” (they being Muslim women, everywhere). Once this façade of the standardized “they” is removed, there is room to complicate and better understand the issue of women’s rights. The authors provide statistical analysis about women’s education and employment, as well as opinions from both men and women about gender roles in Islamic society. They also do a good job of addressing the West’s relationship to the subject, referring to our desire to help Muslim women as based in a “rescue mentality”.
When I read the book Who Speaks for Islam? I immediately felt I had a better understanding of the religion and the people who practice it. The beginning of the book gave me insight of the fundamentals of the religion in which I really had no understanding of. It also frustrated me that when I was reading the book I felt that I had been lied to by the media of what the religion really consisted of. Getting further into the book and learning about the culture and modern Islam today I don’t understand why the West categorizes Islam with terrorism. The religion and the majority of the people who practice it are not radicals at all and do not condone any type of extremist. “Faith and family are core values in Muslims’ lives, and Muslims regard them as their societies’ greatest assets.” (28) But why should any of this be a surprise to me? Is it because I was born in the U.S.? Or is it because I went to catholic schools my whole life and was never introduced to these concepts? I feel that neither is a good enough answer. The U.S. is supposed to be the land where all differences are accepted and embraced. My catholic schools are not suppose to practice the Islamic faith but I am suppose to learn about it in my history classes. Why did I only learn specific chunks of the Islamic culture in school? I found out after watching the PBS program, Islam-Empire of Faith, that I only knew select parts of the Islamic history. Why was I always encouraged to think that the Greeks were the ones where modern medicine and science came from? I sat dumbstruck at my computer not understanding that paper had come from this faith as well. That is one of the biggest contributions that I myself recognize in the modern world. Why didn’t know any of this? I don’t believe it is because of what kind of school I went to because I consulted with friends from three different cities who went to public schools and told them of the new knowledge I had learned. I had asked them if they had knew all the great success’ that the Islamic faith was responsible for and if they had learned about them in school or knew of any of the history of the religion itself. They were as awe struck as me and could not believe that this had been left out of our history books. Why is this religion taken away from history? It is one of the most influential aspects of early history that is so important to today’s life. Is it because the U.S. does not want to give credit to a religion where many view it ignorantly as dangerous?
Western Media and the Depiction of Muslims by Kristen Fisher
Who Speaks for Islam? by John L. Esposito and Dalia Magahed is a very informative book that provided a firsthand perspective into the wants of Muslims and their reactions to recent developments in the relationships held between the East and the West. I found this book quite refreshing and believe that it has challenged some of my own understandings about Islam and the real opinions that Muslims hold about their religion and religious practices. Yet, this book did reflect upon one issue regarding East/West relationships that I was already quite familiar with, the portrayal of Muslims in Western media. Being a communication minor I have had several classes in which we have discussed the biased portrayal of Muslims in movies and television; Muslim characters are most often stereotyped as deeply rooted in tradition or as the villain. As Esposito and Mogahed explain, in “a survey of 900 film appearances of Arab characters…the vast majority were outright racist caricatures” (88). This negative portrayal still is found in a majority of movies and is only contributing to the misunderstandings found between the East and West. Western media is the most prominent throughout the world as almost all other countries import more movies and television than they export. Thus, the West controls how Americans think about the ‘other,’ but also negatively impacts their relationships with other countries as nations are faced with the stereotypes the West chooses to endorse. Esposito and Mogahed’s book surprised me though in regards to the questions they asked Muslims about their problems with the West and the changes they wished would take place. When asked about why many Muslims felt resentment towards the West many responded that their frustrations stemmed off of the West’s “hatred of Muslims” which the media assists in spreading to the Muslim countries (88). But I was surprised that instead of expressing anger towards the West, a majority of Muslims stressed that they did not want the West “to change who they are,” but to instead “respect Islam and Muslims” (89). Ironically, many Americans would like to force Muslims to change who they are because of the biased portrayals they are faced with in their own media. I believe that there is a great potential for the relationship between the East and West to improve, but the US and the West must take the first move by willingly choosing to show a realistic portrayal of Islam; Western media needs to show its audience how this Islam is not that different from Christianity and that Muslims are not stuck in their ways or evildoers. If the Western media was to show a true portrayal of Muslims I believe that attitudes would slowly change towards the ‘other’ and that there would be less fear towards Islam but instead a newfound sense of understanding.
“Who Speaks For Islam: What A Billion Muslims Really Think”, by John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, was in extremely eye opening and perspective changing book for me. The book overall attempts to systematically survey just exactly how Muslims generally view democracy, the western world, the status of women, and civil rights. Furthermore, the most important statement I feel the book aims to reveal is how similar the citizens of Muslim nations are to people from the West, such as myself. As we began to unpack the various statistics embedded throughout the book, it became clear to me how similar the two binaries in reality are. In recognizing the faults in Islam, many of the major faults in our own system became apparent. For example, the issue of Sharia law, a notion in which many Westernized civilizations look down upon, and yet we have in a sense been subject to it despite the fact that we are even aware. This caused me to question whether or not an ideal model of democracy, which embraces religious principles and democratic values can actually exist. Over the weekend, I spent a few hours watching documentaries on Netflix and youtube which to my surprise presented a radically different view and opinion of Islam than we have been learning about. For instance, this particular documentary stated that the Quran is an inherently violent text, which in turn breads a nation of violence. I was honestly in shock because of the facts I had just read in “Who Speaks for Islam?”, and I found myself overall confused. Furthermore, many of the documentaries included the issue of oil and how that was a major source of conflict between The United States and many Islamic nations, and I was disappointed that Who Speaks for Islam? failed to include any information or statistics on the majority of Muslims opinion on this issue. In addition to this, the issue of women’s rights was extremely emphasized and I was utterly shocked when a particular video highlighted the fact that in many Islamic countries women are still not allowed to drive, just recently gained the right to own their own identity cards, and are not allowed to get a divorce unless they have judicial consent. Who Speaks for Islam? left me with the belief that women are in a sense considered as equals to men as we discussed the Quran’s depiction of both Adam and Eve taking part in eating from the forbidden fruit, and yet as I watched further this was not entirely true. Upon reading this book however, I felt that I was able to go into watching or speak about issues of the west and east a bit more familiarly, as more of an authority then many of the people who claim they know it all. It became obvious to me how ill-informed a majority of American’s are given that the book highlights the common use of misquoting within the Quran to prove that they preach violence, when in fact this may not be true.
Upon reading the section on extremists in "Who Speaks for Islam?" I learned that the minority of Muslims who believe terrorist actions to be justified identify bullying, "colonizing"/"imperialist" actions on behalf of the American government as the offense that justifies that response. Here I feel the United States to be caught in a Catch-22. We are identified as the strongest and most powerful country in the world because of our ability to enforce our will on other nations, be it economically or through military power. The moral thing, the right thing, to many other nations would be for us to simply stay out of their affairs. However, in a global world, it would be increasingly foolish not to protect our interests abroad, especially while we have the ability to do so. This is simple politics. If any other country had that power, they would likely exercise it. Furthermore, those that criticize the United States for attempting to impose their morals on the Middle East (for example, the perceived oppression of women) also cite disapproval of the United States' morals as a reason for anti-Americanism. The US is identified as being "too decadent" and "loose" with morality and sexuality. Just as we criticize the Middle East for being too morally rigid and strict, they criticize us for being too lax. The result is that the hatred is not wholly on one side. Some Muslims reported, accurately, that the US caricatures Muslims and Muslim women in particular, as subordinate oppressed and obedient burqa-swathed figures. However, Esposito and Mogahed report that Muslim men and women resent the US for "promiscuity, pornography and indecent dress - perceptions that can be traced to Hollywood images". The East, then, is just as guilty of caricaturing the West. After all, how many young women in Geneseo dress or behave like the cast of Baywatch or Jersey Shore? While improving relations with civilians- "winning the hearts and minds of the people"- in the Middle East is an admirable goal, those that approve of hatred and murder of civilians are wrong, and are not to be catered to. Their criticisms (promiscuity, decadence, bullying) do not justify terrorist acts.
"Who Speaks For Islam?" was probably my favorite book of the semester so far. As a nonfiction book, it was mostly all facts, and I was worried that it would come off as dry or biased. I was pleasantly surprised when I found that the authors had found way to keep the reader engaged, and the statistics and factual information was completely eye-opening. I learned so much that seemed contradictory to what we had always been taught in class, and I think that it would be to everybody’s benefit to include it in the high school curriculum. I really liked the anecdote about Adam and Eve in the Bible vs. the story in the Qur’an. The stereotype is that Islam looks down on women and views them as inferior, whereas Christianity has a much greater respect for them; so I found it interesting that in the Qur’an, Eve and Adam share equal blame for eating the proverbial apple, and face their punishment together. In the Bible, Eve is blamed, and the pain of childbirth is her punishment; so really, in terms of this story it is actually Christianity that looks down on and blames women, and Islam that treats the genders equally. As I said before, I learned a lot from this book; and I would like to preface this anecdote by assuring you that my mother is not at all a racist. However, I was telling her about one of the statistics that surprised me most, which is that freedom of speech and democracy are two things that Muslims find most valuable about Western civilizations. She was interested and engaged, but responded with the mindset that since Muslims do not have freedom in their countries, it makes sense that they would admire it in our culture. I was a little exasperated, because though she was very receptive and interested in the statistics, she viewed them through an Orientalist lens; it forced me to realize that it isn’t enough to spout statistics if the media insists on portraying Islam as a primitive, traditional culture.
Ellen Walpole “Who Speaks for Islam?” Response April 2, 2013
Fact vs Fiction
While reading “Who Speaks for Islam?”, I was very surprised at some of the facts. Having taken a class with Dr. Akman last semester, I felt like I kind of had the gist of thing, and wasn’t startled by much this time around. However, this factual book was yet another insight to the Islamic Religion that I have been previously blind to.
The first alarming fact I read was in Chapter 1 when it was stated that the Virgin Mary is mentioned more times in the Qur’an than she is in the New Testament. I’m not that familiar with the Bible, but I was raised Catholic and found that very startling. I know a lot of branches of Christianity do not worship or acknowledge Mary like Catholicism does, but to know she is so apparent in the Qur’an is unexpected. Having not been a practicing Catholic for many years, this I told my mom about this fact and she did not really have a response.
Furthermore, the book challenged classic Orientalist stereotypes that by now we’re used to hearing. It was interesting, though to have actual numbers broken down to prove the point. For example, the fact that Arab’s make up only 20% of the global Muslim population would catch most people off guard. I do not think that people normally think of Africa or Asia as Muslim continents. When I used to think of Asia, I thought of China and Japan and Islam did not come to my mind. In Africa, I pictured a lot of different tribes and religions; ignorant as always.
I found it helpful to read such a straightforward book after the novels we have been studying. “Who Speaks for Islam?” has helped distinguish fact from fiction and eliminate outstanding falsehoods that I assumed about Muslims.
This book is seeming to be an eyeopener for me and is filled with many facts that I have never really heard of before. This book has really been an insight into the Islamic Religion to me. In class we have talked a lot about important facts and statics throughout the chapter but there is one thing that I wanted to talk about that we did not get time to talk about in class.
This comes from Chapter Four What Women Want? On page 117 it says " The World Health Organization estimates that the practice, sometimes also called female circumcision, affects 100 million to 140 million girls and women a year, both inside and outside predominately Muslim societies..." it then goes on to list places in which females are circumcised. This really struck me as different a surprised me because I have never even heard of females being circumcised before. It also surprised me how many females go through this a year. Something I would like to know that this does not really touch on is if the females have a choice to be circumcised or not, and why is it done just so that they do not have children? I thought that this was important because this seems to affect so many girls and women. "At least 90% of all women are circumcised in Egypt, Mali, Guinea and Sundan..."( pg 117)
When I read a book I always go to Amazon and read the entire one star reviews from readers. When I read the reviews for Who Speaks for Islam I see a common theme from people about why they have a problem with the book. I always think it is a good idea to see how people think about certain information about a topic. The book presents itself as data collected from millions of Muslims from many different areas around the world. The data is from survey-formatted research, collected by Gallop poll. This platform for a book seems like it should be some of the most raw and unbiased form of research, but some of these casual readers seem to disagree. They claim that the questions are bias, and the way that they were presented was biased. Obviously commenters on Amazon are not a valid source for historiography but it does give an interesting perspective to what we are reading, which asks us to question things. Do I agree with it? I don’t know.
The first commenter named “The Elder” was disappointed with what his expectations were of the book; “I had hoped to see the raw data in an appendix of the book. Unfortunately, this was not the case.” He complained that the information that was presented in that it left out information. “When the authors say that only 7% of Muslims worldwide consider the 9/11 attacks ‘completely’ justified they do not say how many consider the attacks ‘somewhat’ or ‘mostly’ justified. Then, the authors go on to label the 93% who may or may not consider the 9/11 attacks somewhat or mostly justified to be ‘moderates’. This is absurd, and it appears that the reason that the authors do not release the raw data is because they realize that the detailed poll findings would not conform to the spin that they decided to clothe their results in.” This is a very interesting claim, because it does ask the question about leaving information out.
Another commenter by the name of “Browne Street Skeptic” wrote what seems to be an entire book on why he hates Who Speaks for Islam. He starts off by talking about how the author had mistranslated the word “Islam” as “a strong commitment to god” when in reality it means “submission to god”. When you read his entire comment you start to realize that he has something against the religion of Islam by using very bias phrases like calling scholars “loud-and-proud Islam apologists” whatever that means. He also states that Esposito has been pushing his “pro-Islam Bias”. In his last paragraph he finally ends with a humble statement: “this is the first book I'm throwing out”.
When I read these arguments that are claiming bias research against the authors I become angry (I love it, this is why I always read the one star comments) because these commenters start to sound bias themselves. Yes maybe this book does stretch the truth, but is that a bad thing. If one collected data and compiled a book called “What people think of Islam” I am sure that it would not be very accepting responses. So maybe it is ok that these authors took loads of information and compiled it into a book that everyday westerners can read and start to understand the east. We need to start to understanding Muslim people rather than generalizing them so that we can create peaceful relations with each other.
In the novel Who Speaks for Islam? I was particularly interested in the chapter about women. I was raised by a single mother, and I was always taught about feminism and equality amongst gender roles. My mother always wondered how could the Islamic women handle being inferior to a man and obey the rules forced upon them. Something I had not considered until now was that these women do not feel oppressed and choose the life they lead.
I always believed that Islamic women were oppressed by their need to wear the headscarf and carsaf. I thought that this was close to enslaving women since they had to suffer under clothing that constricted their bodies. Something discussed in the chapter, What Do Women Want, was that Islamic women believe that our Western society oppresses women through the lack of these clothing items. While we often believe women are enslaved by men to cover their bodies, Islamic women believe Westerners are enslaved by their lack of modesty in clothing. This opposition in beliefs is interesting because it shows that there is oppression everywhere. Many Islamic women choose to cover their skin and it is there that women are given power. Feminism has adapted to realize that while it is sometimes oppressive to cover skin, it is empowerment when women make that choice willingly. The novel presents the idea that Islamic women want to cover their skin by choice and not because they are forced to by men.
This novel was a great way to show the common misconceptions about women in the Islamic world. While some believe that their treatment of women is backwards, the novel shows that a lot of beliefs have been adapted to meet the modern world. Instead of the image of the submissive wife, Islamic women are becoming educated and opinionated so that they are growing in equality.
Perhaps the most eye-opening quote I found while reading “Who Speaks for Islam?” was in the chapter entitled “What Makes a Radical?” Esposito and Mogahed state that “the vast majority of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil have been perpetrated by Christian terrorist groups in the past 15 years” (76). Christian—not Muslim.
Although I understood before reading this book that only a small percentage of Muslims worldwide endorse terrorist acts or attacks, I didn’t expect the majority of terrorist attacks in the U.S. to be carried out by Christian groups. According to the text, “Catholic, Lutheran, and Presbyterian activists have bombed gay bars, shot or killed abortion staff, and bombed their clinics” (76). While I know from the news that many conservative Christian groups are against homosexuality, abortion, and other ideologies perceived as “liberal,” I didn’t realize the violent extent this stance has taken in the past. Gay marriage and abortion are two of the most controversial issues in the U.S. at this time, and yet I can’t recall a specific instance in which I’ve watched the news and heard about extremist Christian groups bombing a clinic or taking violent action against homosexuals. In fact, when I googled “Christian extremism” the only specific result I got was of the gunman of the 2011 Norway massacre who killed over 60 teenagers at a summer camp. While I don't know the specific details of this incident, I thought it had more to do with the gunman's political beliefs rather than Christianity. On the other hand, nearly every terrorist attack that I can think of that's been carried out by a Muslim (like 9/11) has been portrayed by the media as a result of extreme devotion to Islam. Why is this?
The only reason I can think for this distinction between Christian and Islamic extremists is the fact that the United States is majority-Christian. According to Wikipedia, roughly 80% of the U.S. identified as some type of Christian in 2007 while less than 1% were Muslim. It seems like the U.S. media tries to slant the stories they report on to reflect American culture (and thus Christianity)- because a majority of Americans identify as Christian, American media sources tried to distance themselves from the gunman of the Norway massacre by labeling him a "right-wing political extremist" rather than an ultra-conservative Christian extremist. In the "us vs. them" dichotomy central to Orientalism, American media didn't want to admit that terrorists can exist within the Christian "us" as well as the Muslim "them."
Perhaps one reason for my surprise at the statistics within "Who Speaks for Islam?" is because I have very little memory of a pre-9/11 era. The attacks on the Twin Towers occurred when I was in 3rd grade—I was 7 years old. Since 2001, the types of stories that have dominated the news are those of Islamic extremists taking aggressive acts against Americans, and of American attempts to ‘liberate’ the Middle East. So, for 12 years virtually the only perspective I’ve gotten on Islam has been representations of a small percentage of Islamic extremists in Western media. For someone who grew up not knowing any Muslims personally, media representations of extremist Muslims seemed like a representation of the entire Islamic faith. I thought that, since virtually every time I turned on the TV reporters were talking about suicide bombers or terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims, most terrorist attacks committed in the U.S. would be by Muslims. "Who Speaks for Islam?" really opened my eyes to the influence the media has over peoples' perceptions of entire religions and groups of people.
In “Who Speaks for Islam?” I was less surprised by the factual information regarding Islam, and more surprised at the ignorance of many “Westerners” about Islam. Coming into this class, I didn’t know a whole lot about Islam, and I assumed that the gist of the class would be: “Here’s what you think you know about Islam, and here’s how you’re wrong.” Here and there, I’ve been struck by a sort of reverse stereotyping, in which we just assume that “Westerners,” by default, don’t know anything about or are hostile toward the East. This is simply not true. Most of us don’t have any particular grudge against Islam; we simply don’t know about it, thanks to an, admittedly, biased educational system, and, in some cases, parenting. However, coming into the class, I certainly underestimated American ignorance, writing it off as an example of the “East” stereotyping the West. Thus, statistics in “Who Speaks for Islam?” such as the fact that 6% of Americans believe that attacks targeting civilians are “completely justified” horrified me. After some thought, sure, I could rationalize that number. These people are ignorant, and simply cannot, in their minds, separate the perpetrators of the 9/11-attacks (and other terrorist attacks) from Islam as a whole. This is not necessarily their fault – at least, not entirely. To some extent, this is a product of an environment favoring bombastic, self-indulgent patriotism – we have mistaken freedom of speech for freedom to gloat. However, the statistic I simply could not rationalize was that 22% of Americans said that they would not want a Muslim as a neighbor. This is an enormous number, much larger than the 6% who said that targeting civilians was justified. Almost a quarter of Americans would not want to live next to a Muslim person. In some cases, I’m sure, this is born out of fear – a lack of accurate information and rampant patriotism combining into a vitriolic paranoia against an “enemy.” But, the fact of the matter is, the world isn’t separated into the good guys and the bad guys. No matter how much simpler this makes things, it simply isn’t true; the world is made up of myriad factions, moderate and extreme, interacting with one another in a chain of historical events leading up to today. I suppose what surprises me about these statistics is the extent to which some Americans are capable of dehumanizing other human beings. Of course, if they do not see Muslims as human beings, instead turning them into suicide bomb-laden demons from elsewhere, this, unfortunately, makes sense. But the fact that Americans, in a country, as said, which supposedly stands up for human rights, can look at Muslim individuals and immediately become fearful, hateful, and entirely antagonistic is a sign that maybe we, as a country, need to grow up.
Watching Islam: Empire of Faith alongside Who Speaks for Islam was helpful in understanding the basic historical and cultural components of Islam without fiction getting in the way. I believe that the books we have read up until now have been very true to history but I can see why supplementing the class with non-fiction literature is an important part in understanding the fiction of the East. As was pointed out in Who Speaks for Islam, Westerners who are educated about Islam tend to appreciate its teachings and come closer to understanding Muslim issues and politics. Without that background knowledge, reading historical fiction about the east might be taken as purely fiction and not rooted in some historical moment. For example, Mehmet the Conqueror plays an important role in The Bellini Card; his portrait is the subject of the entire book. Goodwin does a fairly good job telling us why this portrait is so valuable to the sultan and to the empire as a whole but we never get the scope of Mehmet's historical importance. The documentary filled in some of the blanks and really put the Ottoman Empire into context.
I also liked how the documentary largely focused on the Muslim world in isolation from the west. To get the most intimate picture of Islam, I think it should be first taught on its own terms before introducing any perspectives or issues between the East and West. As Western readers, there is a lot we don't understand about Islam by itself. For instance, many of the statistics in Who Speaks for Islam did not make sense at first. Iran alone is way more liberal and sensitive to the right of women then I would have ever thought and it's because our education cannot talk about the East without first talking about the west, thus placing it in a subject position that glosses over the value of its history.
I found the chapters about democracy and women in Who Speaks for Islam interesting because it made me more aware of the way the West often uses rhetoric to rationalize the domination of Islamic culture. In my Developing World Politics class, one of our vocabulary terms is “The Islamic Free Elections Trap.” Essentially, this is a concept coined by political scientists who claim that free elections in Islamic countries will never result in lasting democracy. They argue that citizens will always vote for Islamist parties that will eventually curtail their rights. This idea seemed wrong, because it suggests a fundamental incompatibility between Islam and a peaceful, rational government system. It also assumes a tendency towards radicalism on behalf of Muslim people. Who Speaks for Islam does concede a palpable desire for Sharia law among people in some Muslim majority states. For example, 1/5 of Nigerian Muslims want the Quran to be the only source of legislation (Esposito and Mogahed 37). However, the book also explains that all those who support an Islamic government do not necessarily support an oppressive government. Rather, as writer Sheikha Sajida put it, “I see no conflict between Islamic law and human rights. On the contrary, applying Islamic law in Muslim states safeguards human rights against the oppression of some Arab rulers” (36). It seems that the westernized understanding of Sharia stems partially from the abuse of the term by politicians and Muslims with an unconventional or limited knowledge of the Quran. Therefore, although concepts such as the Islamic Free Elections Trap are helpful in understanding certain political viewpoints, it seems like a dangerously fatalistic assumption that could fuel the rhetoric for Western domination in the Middle East. If Islamic countries are viewed as incapable of making choices for themselves, it will soon become an argument for further unwelcome intervention.
Additionally, my textbook section on gender used examples of violence and human rights abuses against women in Pakistan, Guinea, Saudi Arabia, and Somalia, all of which are predominately Muslim states. Although these are all important cases, I think we have to be careful not to focus completely on Islamist societies when discussing gender inequality. It is a global problem prevalent across all cultures and religions. According to Who Speaks for Islam, women make up the majority of university students in Iran and the UAE, while only 4% of women largely Christian Brazil pursue a post-secondary education. I think that the West usually find it easier to blame the “other” for gender-related issues and use it as part of an excuse for our dominant presence in the “less civilized” Middle East, then to confront the problem in our own society. In fact, the CEDAW treaty for the prevention of gender-based discrimination has been ratified by 180+ countries, including Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, but excluding the United States.
When reading about Egyptian women in “Chapter 4: What do Women Want?” of Who Speaks for Islam? I recalled an article I read from November of last year in The New York Times about women’s treatment in Cairo. The article “Harassers of Women in Cairo Now Face Wrath of Vigilantes” explains how a group of young activists roam the streets of Cairo hoping to expose those who heckle, grab, threaten, or violate women. The author Kareem Fahim, a journalist on Egyptian affairs, states that women were frequently harassed and mistreated in public during authoritarian rule. Policemen too were known to ignore the growing issue in Egyptian society, a claim that was supported by Madiha el-Safty, a sociology professor at the American University in Cairo. The group of vigilantes sought to protect women’s rights by “[staking] out different parts of Cairo’s downtown” and either forming “human chains between women and their tormenters” or using force towards harassers by “smacking around suspects before hauling them off to a police station”. Many of the vigilantes did resort to violence, as it became harder to avoid it.
Fahim mentions that the vigilantes tried to rationalize the harassment towards women and found “no sure answer in the blame often laid on poverty or religion, society’s indifference or the state’s contagious chauvinism”. This particular quote seemed very relevant to our discussion today, as it makes note of the common stereotypes the U.S. holds on Islamic extremism.
In Who Speaks for Islam? We learn how Egyptian women feel about women’s rights. I found it a very interesting statistic to read that “88% of Egyptian women [say] that they should be allowed to work at any job for which they are qualified” and that women make up a third of “professional and technical workers” in Egypt. Contrary to popular belief this book refutes the common stereotype the West has on the status of women in the Arab world, especially in Egypt. Though women do seem to be mistreated to some extent, this book and the article from the New York Times provides evidence that women are respected in Egyptian society and are given opportunity to pursue academic and professional careers. When I first read this article I found it impressive that men and women are working together to continue protecting women’s rights on the streets of Cairo, and making great strides to hold harassers accountable.
They mused on the reasons for the frequency of the attacks on their sisters, mothers and friends, finding no sure answer in the blame often laid on poverty or religion, society’s indifference or the state’s contagious chauvinism.
This is the url for the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/06/world/middleeast/egyptian-vigilantes-crack-down-on-abuse-of-women.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Jeanne Magnetti
ReplyDeleteThe Religious Nature of Conflict
Before reading “Who Speaks for Islam,” I was aware that it was only a minority of Muslims who committed acts of terror, but I was wholly unaware of the nature of their motives. After learning that the motives of these terrorists are political in nature, one particular paragraph seemed to warrant further investigation. “In recent decades, religion has become a significant factor in wars of liberation and resistance as well as in acts of terrorism throughout the world. We see this in conflicts between Sikhs and Hindus in India; Muslim Bosniaks, Croatian Catholics, and Orthodox Serbs in former Yugoslavia; Christian, Muslim, and Druze militias in Lebanon’s civil war; Catholic and Protestant militants in Northern Ireland; Muslims and Christians in Nigeria; and Muslim and Jewish fundamentalists in Israel and Palestine” (76). I was already aware that the Protestant – Catholic conflict in Northern Ireland is not in fact religious in nature. The conflict centers on Loyalists and Unionists, those loyal to Britain and those who want freedom from Britain. Although the Loyalists support Britain because they are both protestant, while the Unionists are Catholic, the conflict is political; the religious aspect is exaggerated by Britain in order to disguise the nature of the conflict, and the ensuing war crimes committed by Britain. This information, along with the knowledge that the Western – Islam conflict is not actually religious led me to research the other religious conflicts listed. The Sikhs in India have been fighting to form and independent nation since the country was partitioned by Britain, because they feel that their rights as a minority group will not be threatened. Former Yugoslavia was a nation arbitrarily created by the allied powers after WWI. The main ethnic groups in the nation split up shortly after WWII. Slovenia and Croatia declared independence from the rest of the country. The Orthodox Serbs in Yugoslavia failed to invade Slovenia, but succeeded in invading Croatia in the name of protection of the Serbs that lived there, as the Croat Catholics were known to have Nazi ties during WWII. When the Serbians invaded Croatia, they slaughtered hundreds of Croats in a genocide. The Lebanon civil war occurred because the French colonial powers guaranteed the nation as a safe haven for Maronite Christians. When the Palestinians were displaced by the creation of Israel, the sudden influx of refugees to Lebanon created conflict. The conflict between Palestinians and Israelis arose when the Palestinians were displaced by the creation of Israel. It can be observed in all of these instances that the conflicts are political in nature, mostly occurring over the issue of land division and national boundaries. In fact, these conflicts appear to begin when a manipulative colonial power attempts to create a national boundary with no knowledge of or regard for the people who live there. In conclusion, it would appear that using religious identities to define conflicts is oversimplifying and even misleading. Realistically, it doesn’t make sense that people would kill each other over the issue of theocracy, because religions are traditional moral codes; killing someone because their moral code is inferior to your moral code is an inherently contradictory concept. Moreover, it is counterproductive to attempt to solve a conflict when the nature of the problem is erroneously defined. It seems that, in the future, people should be skeptical of the legitimacy of any acts of violence committed along identity lines; we must instead uncover the true nature of the problem in order to solve it.
Establishing a basis for understanding Islamic teaching, perspectives, and culture is important before moving into works that deal specifically with Islam, so that we can accurately judge the depictions of Muslims in these works. I am also an International Relations major with a concentration in war and peace study, specifically in the Middle East. I’ve therefore taken a lot of classes about Middle East Politics and the situation of Islam in this are in particular. Although much of the information in the book Who Speaks for Islam was therefore not new or very surprising to me, I think that the way the information is presented in the book is particularly useful.
ReplyDeleteInstead of just presenting information in tables or straight up facts and statistics, the authors of this book contextualize this information in such a way that it is meaningful to an average American reader. The authors first present stereotypes commonly held in the West about Islam and ask relevant questions that are often asked in the media. Then they present information either to corroborate or discredit these commonly held beliefs based on quantitative information. Numbers and statistics are a better way to inform people than through vague generalizations that people often get if they just take a cursory glance at the news from Muslim majority countries, or listen to stereotypical statements made in society about Islam.
One section of the book in particular that I liked was the section about women. Questions and statements made about women in the Muslim world are often quite simplistic and black-and-white: they are oppressed, we should help them, Islam takes rights away from women, etc. Who Speaks for Islam does an excellent job of problematizing our simplistic approach to women’s rights issues in the Middle East. The first thing it does is break down the idea of the monolithic “they” (they being Muslim women, everywhere). Once this façade of the standardized “they” is removed, there is room to complicate and better understand the issue of women’s rights. The authors provide statistical analysis about women’s education and employment, as well as opinions from both men and women about gender roles in Islamic society. They also do a good job of addressing the West’s relationship to the subject, referring to our desire to help Muslim women as based in a “rescue mentality”.
Rachel Reff
ReplyDeleteReality of Education
When I read the book Who Speaks for Islam? I immediately felt I had a better understanding of the religion and the people who practice it. The beginning of the book gave me insight of the fundamentals of the religion in which I really had no understanding of. It also frustrated me that when I was reading the book I felt that I had been lied to by the media of what the religion really consisted of. Getting further into the book and learning about the culture and modern Islam today I don’t understand why the West categorizes Islam with terrorism. The religion and the majority of the people who practice it are not radicals at all and do not condone any type of extremist. “Faith and family are core values in Muslims’ lives, and Muslims regard them as their societies’ greatest assets.” (28) But why should any of this be a surprise to me? Is it because I was born in the U.S.? Or is it because I went to catholic schools my whole life and was never introduced to these concepts? I feel that neither is a good enough answer. The U.S. is supposed to be the land where all differences are accepted and embraced. My catholic schools are not suppose to practice the Islamic faith but I am suppose to learn about it in my history classes. Why did I only learn specific chunks of the Islamic culture in school? I found out after watching the PBS program, Islam-Empire of Faith, that I only knew select parts of the Islamic history. Why was I always encouraged to think that the Greeks were the ones where modern medicine and science came from? I sat dumbstruck at my computer not understanding that paper had come from this faith as well. That is one of the biggest contributions that I myself recognize in the modern world. Why didn’t know any of this? I don’t believe it is because of what kind of school I went to because I consulted with friends from three different cities who went to public schools and told them of the new knowledge I had learned. I had asked them if they had knew all the great success’ that the Islamic faith was responsible for and if they had learned about them in school or knew of any of the history of the religion itself. They were as awe struck as me and could not believe that this had been left out of our history books. Why is this religion taken away from history? It is one of the most influential aspects of early history that is so important to today’s life. Is it because the U.S. does not want to give credit to a religion where many view it ignorantly as dangerous?
Western Media and the Depiction of Muslims
ReplyDeleteby Kristen Fisher
Who Speaks for Islam? by John L. Esposito and Dalia Magahed is a very informative book that provided a firsthand perspective into the wants of Muslims and their reactions to recent developments in the relationships held between the East and the West. I found this book quite refreshing and believe that it has challenged some of my own understandings about Islam and the real opinions that Muslims hold about their religion and religious practices. Yet, this book did reflect upon one issue regarding East/West relationships that I was already quite familiar with, the portrayal of Muslims in Western media. Being a communication minor I have had several classes in which we have discussed the biased portrayal of Muslims in movies and television; Muslim characters are most often stereotyped as deeply rooted in tradition or as the villain. As Esposito and Mogahed explain, in “a survey of 900 film appearances of Arab characters…the vast majority were outright racist caricatures” (88). This negative portrayal still is found in a majority of movies and is only contributing to the misunderstandings found between the East and West.
Western media is the most prominent throughout the world as almost all other countries import more movies and television than they export. Thus, the West controls how Americans think about the ‘other,’ but also negatively impacts their relationships with other countries as nations are faced with the stereotypes the West chooses to endorse. Esposito and Mogahed’s book surprised me though in regards to the questions they asked Muslims about their problems with the West and the changes they wished would take place. When asked about why many Muslims felt resentment towards the West many responded that their frustrations stemmed off of the West’s “hatred of Muslims” which the media assists in spreading to the Muslim countries (88). But I was surprised that instead of expressing anger towards the West, a majority of Muslims stressed that they did not want the West “to change who they are,” but to instead “respect Islam and Muslims” (89). Ironically, many Americans would like to force Muslims to change who they are because of the biased portrayals they are faced with in their own media. I believe that there is a great potential for the relationship between the East and West to improve, but the US and the West must take the first move by willingly choosing to show a realistic portrayal of Islam; Western media needs to show its audience how this Islam is not that different from Christianity and that Muslims are not stuck in their ways or evildoers. If the Western media was to show a true portrayal of Muslims I believe that attitudes would slowly change towards the ‘other’ and that there would be less fear towards Islam but instead a newfound sense of understanding.
Interpreting The Truth
ReplyDeleteDia Seskin
“Who Speaks For Islam: What A Billion Muslims Really Think”, by John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, was in extremely eye opening and perspective changing book for me. The book overall attempts to systematically survey just exactly how Muslims generally view democracy, the western world, the status of women, and civil rights. Furthermore, the most important statement I feel the book aims to reveal is how similar the citizens of Muslim nations are to people from the West, such as myself. As we began to unpack the various statistics embedded throughout the book, it became clear to me how similar the two binaries in reality are. In recognizing the faults in Islam, many of the major faults in our own system became apparent. For example, the issue of Sharia law, a notion in which many Westernized civilizations look down upon, and yet we have in a sense been subject to it despite the fact that we are even aware. This caused me to question whether or not an ideal model of democracy, which embraces religious principles and democratic values can actually exist.
Over the weekend, I spent a few hours watching documentaries on Netflix and youtube which to my surprise presented a radically different view and opinion of Islam than we have been learning about. For instance, this particular documentary stated that the Quran is an inherently violent text, which in turn breads a nation of violence. I was honestly in shock because of the facts I had just read in “Who Speaks for Islam?”, and I found myself overall confused. Furthermore, many of the documentaries included the issue of oil and how that was a major source of conflict between The United States and many Islamic nations, and I was disappointed that Who Speaks for Islam? failed to include any information or statistics on the majority of Muslims opinion on this issue. In addition to this, the issue of women’s rights was extremely emphasized and I was utterly shocked when a particular video highlighted the fact that in many Islamic countries women are still not allowed to drive, just recently gained the right to own their own identity cards, and are not allowed to get a divorce unless they have judicial consent. Who Speaks for Islam? left me with the belief that women are in a sense considered as equals to men as we discussed the Quran’s depiction of both Adam and Eve taking part in eating from the forbidden fruit, and yet as I watched further this was not entirely true.
Upon reading this book however, I felt that I was able to go into watching or speak about issues of the west and east a bit more familiarly, as more of an authority then many of the people who claim they know it all. It became obvious to me how ill-informed a majority of American’s are given that the book highlights the common use of misquoting within the Quran to prove that they preach violence, when in fact this may not be true.
Upon reading the section on extremists in "Who Speaks for Islam?" I learned that the minority of Muslims who believe terrorist actions to be justified identify bullying, "colonizing"/"imperialist" actions on behalf of the American government as the offense that justifies that response. Here I feel the United States to be caught in a Catch-22. We are identified as the strongest and most powerful country in the world because of our ability to enforce our will on other nations, be it economically or through military power. The moral thing, the right thing, to many other nations would be for us to simply stay out of their affairs. However, in a global world, it would be increasingly foolish not to protect our interests abroad, especially while we have the ability to do so. This is simple politics. If any other country had that power, they would likely exercise it.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, those that criticize the United States for attempting to impose their morals on the Middle East (for example, the perceived oppression of women) also cite disapproval of the United States' morals as a reason for anti-Americanism. The US is identified as being "too decadent" and "loose" with morality and sexuality. Just as we criticize the Middle East for being too morally rigid and strict, they criticize us for being too lax. The result is that the hatred is not wholly on one side. Some Muslims reported, accurately, that the US caricatures Muslims and Muslim women in particular, as subordinate oppressed and obedient burqa-swathed figures. However, Esposito and Mogahed report that Muslim men and women resent the US for "promiscuity, pornography and indecent dress - perceptions that can be traced to Hollywood images". The East, then, is just as guilty of caricaturing the West. After all, how many young women in Geneseo dress or behave like the cast of Baywatch or Jersey Shore?
While improving relations with civilians- "winning the hearts and minds of the people"- in the Middle East is an admirable goal, those that approve of hatred and murder of civilians are wrong, and are not to be catered to. Their criticisms (promiscuity, decadence, bullying) do not justify terrorist acts.
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ReplyDelete"Who Speaks For Islam?" was probably my favorite book of the semester so far. As a nonfiction book, it was mostly all facts, and I was worried that it would come off as dry or biased. I was pleasantly surprised when I found that the authors had found way to keep the reader engaged, and the statistics and factual information was completely eye-opening. I learned so much that seemed contradictory to what we had always been taught in class, and I think that it would be to everybody’s benefit to include it in the high school curriculum.
ReplyDeleteI really liked the anecdote about Adam and Eve in the Bible vs. the story in the Qur’an. The stereotype is that Islam looks down on women and views them as inferior, whereas Christianity has a much greater respect for them; so I found it interesting that in the Qur’an, Eve and Adam share equal blame for eating the proverbial apple, and face their punishment together. In the Bible, Eve is blamed, and the pain of childbirth is her punishment; so really, in terms of this story it is actually Christianity that looks down on and blames women, and Islam that treats the genders equally.
As I said before, I learned a lot from this book; and I would like to preface this anecdote by assuring you that my mother is not at all a racist. However, I was telling her about one of the statistics that surprised me most, which is that freedom of speech and democracy are two things that Muslims find most valuable about Western civilizations. She was interested and engaged, but responded with the mindset that since Muslims do not have freedom in their countries, it makes sense that they would admire it in our culture. I was a little exasperated, because though she was very receptive and interested in the statistics, she viewed them through an Orientalist lens; it forced me to realize that it isn’t enough to spout statistics if the media insists on portraying Islam as a primitive, traditional culture.
Ellen Walpole
ReplyDelete“Who Speaks for Islam?” Response
April 2, 2013
Fact vs Fiction
While reading “Who Speaks for Islam?”, I was very surprised at some of the facts. Having taken a class with Dr. Akman last semester, I felt like I kind of had the gist of thing, and wasn’t startled by much this time around. However, this factual book was yet another insight to the Islamic Religion that I have been previously blind to.
The first alarming fact I read was in Chapter 1 when it was stated that the Virgin Mary is mentioned more times in the Qur’an than she is in the New Testament. I’m not that familiar with the Bible, but I was raised Catholic and found that very startling. I know a lot of branches of Christianity do not worship or acknowledge Mary like Catholicism does, but to know she is so apparent in the Qur’an is unexpected. Having not been a practicing Catholic for many years, this I told my mom about this fact and she did not really have a response.
Furthermore, the book challenged classic Orientalist stereotypes that by now we’re used to hearing. It was interesting, though to have actual numbers broken down to prove the point. For example, the fact that Arab’s make up only 20% of the global Muslim population would catch most people off guard. I do not think that people normally think of Africa or Asia as Muslim continents. When I used to think of Asia, I thought of China and Japan and Islam did not come to my mind. In Africa, I pictured a lot of different tribes and religions; ignorant as always.
I found it helpful to read such a straightforward book after the novels we have been studying. “Who Speaks for Islam?” has helped distinguish fact from fiction and eliminate outstanding falsehoods that I assumed about Muslims.
Brittany Staie
ReplyDeleteIslam 101
Women
This book is seeming to be an eyeopener for me and is filled with many facts that I have never really heard of before. This book has really been an insight into the Islamic Religion to me. In class we have talked a lot about important facts and statics throughout the chapter but there is one thing that I wanted to talk about that we did not get time to talk about in class.
This comes from Chapter Four What Women Want? On page 117 it says " The World Health Organization estimates that the practice, sometimes also called female circumcision, affects 100 million to 140 million girls and women a year, both inside and outside predominately Muslim societies..." it then goes on to list places in which females are circumcised. This really struck me as different a surprised me because I have never even heard of females being circumcised before. It also surprised me how many females go through this a year. Something I would like to know that this does not really touch on is if the females have a choice to be circumcised or not, and why is it done just so that they do not have children? I thought that this was important because this seems to affect so many girls and women. "At least 90% of all women are circumcised in Egypt, Mali, Guinea and Sundan..."( pg 117)
Who Speaks for the Haters?
ReplyDeleteWhen I read a book I always go to Amazon and read the entire one star reviews from readers. When I read the reviews for Who Speaks for Islam I see a common theme from people about why they have a problem with the book. I always think it is a good idea to see how people think about certain information about a topic. The book presents itself as data collected from millions of Muslims from many different areas around the world. The data is from survey-formatted research, collected by Gallop poll. This platform for a book seems like it should be some of the most raw and unbiased form of research, but some of these casual readers seem to disagree. They claim that the questions are bias, and the way that they were presented was biased. Obviously commenters on Amazon are not a valid source for historiography but it does give an interesting perspective to what we are reading, which asks us to question things. Do I agree with it? I don’t know.
The first commenter named “The Elder” was disappointed with what his expectations were of the book; “I had hoped to see the raw data in an appendix of the book. Unfortunately, this was not the case.” He complained that the information that was presented in that it left out information. “When the authors say that only 7% of Muslims worldwide consider the 9/11 attacks ‘completely’ justified they do not say how many consider the attacks ‘somewhat’ or ‘mostly’ justified. Then, the authors go on to label the 93% who may or may not consider the 9/11 attacks somewhat or mostly justified to be ‘moderates’. This is absurd, and it appears that the reason that the authors do not release the raw data is because they realize that the detailed poll findings would not conform to the spin that they decided to clothe their results in.” This is a very interesting claim, because it does ask the question about leaving information out.
Another commenter by the name of “Browne Street Skeptic” wrote what seems to be an entire book on why he hates Who Speaks for Islam. He starts off by talking about how the author had mistranslated the word “Islam” as “a strong commitment to god” when in reality it means “submission to god”. When you read his entire comment you start to realize that he has something against the religion of Islam by using very bias phrases like calling scholars “loud-and-proud Islam apologists” whatever that means. He also states that Esposito has been pushing his “pro-Islam Bias”. In his last paragraph he finally ends with a humble statement: “this is the first book I'm throwing out”.
When I read these arguments that are claiming bias research against the authors I become angry (I love it, this is why I always read the one star comments) because these commenters start to sound bias themselves. Yes maybe this book does stretch the truth, but is that a bad thing. If one collected data and compiled a book called “What people think of Islam” I am sure that it would not be very accepting responses. So maybe it is ok that these authors took loads of information and compiled it into a book that everyday westerners can read and start to understand the east. We need to start to understanding Muslim people rather than generalizing them so that we can create peaceful relations with each other.
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ReplyDeleteIn the novel Who Speaks for Islam? I was particularly interested in the chapter about women. I was raised by a single mother, and I was always taught about feminism and equality amongst gender roles. My mother always wondered how could the Islamic women handle being inferior to a man and obey the rules forced upon them. Something I had not considered until now was that these women do not feel oppressed and choose the life they lead.
ReplyDeleteI always believed that Islamic women were oppressed by their need to wear the headscarf and carsaf. I thought that this was close to enslaving women since they had to suffer under clothing that constricted their bodies. Something discussed in the chapter, What Do Women Want, was that Islamic women believe that our Western society oppresses women through the lack of these clothing items. While we often believe women are enslaved by men to cover their bodies, Islamic women believe Westerners are enslaved by their lack of modesty in clothing. This opposition in beliefs is interesting because it shows that there is oppression everywhere. Many Islamic women choose to cover their skin and it is there that women are given power. Feminism has adapted to realize that while it is sometimes oppressive to cover skin, it is empowerment when women make that choice willingly. The novel presents the idea that Islamic women want to cover their skin by choice and not because they are forced to by men.
This novel was a great way to show the common misconceptions about women in the Islamic world. While some believe that their treatment of women is backwards, the novel shows that a lot of beliefs have been adapted to meet the modern world. Instead of the image of the submissive wife, Islamic women are becoming educated and opinionated so that they are growing in equality.
Perhaps the most eye-opening quote I found while reading “Who Speaks for Islam?” was in the chapter entitled “What Makes a Radical?” Esposito and Mogahed state that “the vast majority of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil have been perpetrated by Christian terrorist groups in the past 15 years” (76). Christian—not Muslim.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I understood before reading this book that only a small percentage of Muslims worldwide endorse terrorist acts or attacks, I didn’t expect the majority of terrorist attacks in the U.S. to be carried out by Christian groups. According to the text, “Catholic, Lutheran, and Presbyterian activists have bombed gay bars, shot or killed abortion staff, and bombed their clinics” (76). While I know from the news that many conservative Christian groups are against homosexuality, abortion, and other ideologies perceived as “liberal,” I didn’t realize the violent extent this stance has taken in the past. Gay marriage and abortion are two of the most controversial issues in the U.S. at this time, and yet I can’t recall a specific instance in which I’ve watched the news and heard about extremist Christian groups bombing a clinic or taking violent action against homosexuals. In fact, when I googled “Christian extremism” the only specific result I got was of the gunman of the 2011 Norway massacre who killed over 60 teenagers at a summer camp. While I don't know the specific details of this incident, I thought it had more to do with the gunman's political beliefs rather than Christianity. On the other hand, nearly every terrorist attack that I can think of that's been carried out by a Muslim (like 9/11) has been portrayed by the media as a result of extreme devotion to Islam. Why is this?
The only reason I can think for this distinction between Christian and Islamic extremists is the fact that the United States is majority-Christian. According to Wikipedia, roughly 80% of the U.S. identified as some type of Christian in 2007 while less than 1% were Muslim. It seems like the U.S. media tries to slant the stories they report on to reflect American culture (and thus Christianity)- because a majority of Americans identify as Christian, American media sources tried to distance themselves from the gunman of the Norway massacre by labeling him a "right-wing political extremist" rather than an ultra-conservative Christian extremist. In the "us vs. them" dichotomy central to Orientalism, American media didn't want to admit that terrorists can exist within the Christian "us" as well as the Muslim "them."
Perhaps one reason for my surprise at the statistics within "Who Speaks for Islam?" is because I have very little memory of a pre-9/11 era. The attacks on the Twin Towers occurred when I was in 3rd grade—I was 7 years old. Since 2001, the types of stories that have dominated the news are those of Islamic extremists taking aggressive acts against Americans, and of American attempts to ‘liberate’ the Middle East. So, for 12 years virtually the only perspective I’ve gotten on Islam has been representations of a small percentage of Islamic extremists in Western media. For someone who grew up not knowing any Muslims personally, media representations of extremist Muslims seemed like a representation of the entire Islamic faith. I thought that, since virtually every time I turned on the TV reporters were talking about suicide bombers or terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims, most terrorist attacks committed in the U.S. would be by Muslims. "Who Speaks for Islam?" really opened my eyes to the influence the media has over peoples' perceptions of entire religions and groups of people.
In “Who Speaks for Islam?” I was less surprised by the factual information regarding Islam, and more surprised at the ignorance of many “Westerners” about Islam. Coming into this class, I didn’t know a whole lot about Islam, and I assumed that the gist of the class would be: “Here’s what you think you know about Islam, and here’s how you’re wrong.” Here and there, I’ve been struck by a sort of reverse stereotyping, in which we just assume that “Westerners,” by default, don’t know anything about or are hostile toward the East. This is simply not true. Most of us don’t have any particular grudge against Islam; we simply don’t know about it, thanks to an, admittedly, biased educational system, and, in some cases, parenting.
ReplyDeleteHowever, coming into the class, I certainly underestimated American ignorance, writing it off as an example of the “East” stereotyping the West. Thus, statistics in “Who Speaks for Islam?” such as the fact that 6% of Americans believe that attacks targeting civilians are “completely justified” horrified me. After some thought, sure, I could rationalize that number. These people are ignorant, and simply cannot, in their minds, separate the perpetrators of the 9/11-attacks (and other terrorist attacks) from Islam as a whole. This is not necessarily their fault – at least, not entirely. To some extent, this is a product of an environment favoring bombastic, self-indulgent patriotism – we have mistaken freedom of speech for freedom to gloat.
However, the statistic I simply could not rationalize was that 22% of Americans said that they would not want a Muslim as a neighbor. This is an enormous number, much larger than the 6% who said that targeting civilians was justified. Almost a quarter of Americans would not want to live next to a Muslim person. In some cases, I’m sure, this is born out of fear – a lack of accurate information and rampant patriotism combining into a vitriolic paranoia against an “enemy.” But, the fact of the matter is, the world isn’t separated into the good guys and the bad guys. No matter how much simpler this makes things, it simply isn’t true; the world is made up of myriad factions, moderate and extreme, interacting with one another in a chain of historical events leading up to today.
I suppose what surprises me about these statistics is the extent to which some Americans are capable of dehumanizing other human beings. Of course, if they do not see Muslims as human beings, instead turning them into suicide bomb-laden demons from elsewhere, this, unfortunately, makes sense. But the fact that Americans, in a country, as said, which supposedly stands up for human rights, can look at Muslim individuals and immediately become fearful, hateful, and entirely antagonistic is a sign that maybe we, as a country, need to grow up.
Watching Islam: Empire of Faith alongside Who Speaks for Islam was helpful in understanding the basic historical and cultural components of Islam without fiction getting in the way. I believe that the books we have read up until now have been very true to history but I can see why supplementing the class with non-fiction literature is an important part in understanding the fiction of the East. As was pointed out in Who Speaks for Islam, Westerners who are educated about Islam tend to appreciate its teachings and come closer to understanding Muslim issues and politics. Without that background knowledge, reading historical fiction about the east might be taken as purely fiction and not rooted in some historical moment. For example, Mehmet the Conqueror plays an important role in The Bellini Card; his portrait is the subject of the entire book. Goodwin does a fairly good job telling us why this portrait is so valuable to the sultan and to the empire as a whole but we never get the scope of Mehmet's historical importance. The documentary filled in some of the blanks and really put the Ottoman Empire into context.
ReplyDeleteI also liked how the documentary largely focused on the Muslim world in isolation from the west. To get the most intimate picture of Islam, I think it should be first taught on its own terms before introducing any perspectives or issues between the East and West. As Western readers, there is a lot we don't understand about Islam by itself. For instance, many of the statistics in Who Speaks for Islam did not make sense at first. Iran alone is way more liberal and sensitive to the right of women then I would have ever thought and it's because our education cannot talk about the East without first talking about the west, thus placing it in a subject position that glosses over the value of its history.
Response to Who Speaks for Islam
ReplyDeleteI found the chapters about democracy and women in Who Speaks for Islam interesting because it made me more aware of the way the West often uses rhetoric to rationalize the domination of Islamic culture. In my Developing World Politics class, one of our vocabulary terms is “The Islamic Free Elections Trap.” Essentially, this is a concept coined by political scientists who claim that free elections in Islamic countries will never result in lasting democracy. They argue that citizens will always vote for Islamist parties that will eventually curtail their rights. This idea seemed wrong, because it suggests a fundamental incompatibility between Islam and a peaceful, rational government system. It also assumes a tendency towards radicalism on behalf of Muslim people. Who Speaks for Islam does concede a palpable desire for Sharia law among people in some Muslim majority states. For example, 1/5 of Nigerian Muslims want the Quran to be the only source of legislation (Esposito and Mogahed 37). However, the book also explains that all those who support an Islamic government do not necessarily support an oppressive government. Rather, as writer Sheikha Sajida put it, “I see no conflict between Islamic law and human rights. On the contrary, applying Islamic law in Muslim states safeguards human rights against the oppression of some Arab rulers” (36). It seems that the westernized understanding of Sharia stems partially from the abuse of the term by politicians and Muslims with an unconventional or limited knowledge of the Quran. Therefore, although concepts such as the Islamic Free Elections Trap are helpful in understanding certain political viewpoints, it seems like a dangerously fatalistic assumption that could fuel the rhetoric for Western domination in the Middle East. If Islamic countries are viewed as incapable of making choices for themselves, it will soon become an argument for further unwelcome intervention.
Additionally, my textbook section on gender used examples of violence and human rights abuses against women in Pakistan, Guinea, Saudi Arabia, and Somalia, all of which are predominately Muslim states. Although these are all important cases, I think we have to be careful not to focus completely on Islamist societies when discussing gender inequality. It is a global problem prevalent across all cultures and religions. According to Who Speaks for Islam, women make up the majority of university students in Iran and the UAE, while only 4% of women largely Christian Brazil pursue a post-secondary education. I think that the West usually find it easier to blame the “other” for gender-related issues and use it as part of an excuse for our dominant presence in the “less civilized” Middle East, then to confront the problem in our own society. In fact, the CEDAW treaty for the prevention of gender-based discrimination has been ratified by 180+ countries, including Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, but excluding the United States.
Women in Egypt
ReplyDeleteWhen reading about Egyptian women in “Chapter 4: What do Women Want?” of Who Speaks for Islam? I recalled an article I read from November of last year in The New York Times about women’s treatment in Cairo. The article “Harassers of Women in Cairo Now Face Wrath of Vigilantes” explains how a group of young activists roam the streets of Cairo hoping to expose those who heckle, grab, threaten, or violate women. The author Kareem Fahim, a journalist on Egyptian affairs, states that women were frequently harassed and mistreated in public during authoritarian rule. Policemen too were known to ignore the growing issue in Egyptian society, a claim that was supported by Madiha el-Safty, a sociology professor at the American University in Cairo. The group of vigilantes sought to protect women’s rights by “[staking] out different parts of Cairo’s downtown” and either forming “human chains between women and their tormenters” or using force towards harassers by “smacking around suspects before hauling them off to a police station”. Many of the vigilantes did resort to violence, as it became harder to avoid it.
Fahim mentions that the vigilantes tried to rationalize the harassment towards women and found “no sure answer in the blame often laid on poverty or religion, society’s indifference or the state’s contagious chauvinism”. This particular quote seemed very relevant to our discussion today, as it makes note of the common stereotypes the U.S. holds on Islamic extremism.
In Who Speaks for Islam? We learn how Egyptian women feel about women’s rights. I found it a very interesting statistic to read that “88% of Egyptian women [say] that they should be allowed to work at any job for which they are qualified” and that women make up a third of “professional and technical workers” in Egypt. Contrary to popular belief this book refutes the common stereotype the West has on the status of women in the Arab world, especially in Egypt. Though women do seem to be mistreated to some extent, this book and the article from the New York Times provides evidence that women are respected in Egyptian society and are given opportunity to pursue academic and professional careers. When I first read this article I found it impressive that men and women are working together to continue protecting women’s rights on the streets of Cairo, and making great strides to hold harassers accountable.
They mused on the reasons for the frequency of the attacks on their sisters, mothers and friends, finding no sure answer in the blame often laid on poverty or religion, society’s indifference or the state’s contagious chauvinism.
This is the url for the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/06/world/middleeast/egyptian-vigilantes-crack-down-on-abuse-of-women.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0