America’s ‘Moslem’ problem

Muslim societies are the greatest violators of Muslim rights, i.e. mob killings in Bangladesh, public floggings in KSA

“I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that,” said Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson recently. When prodded further, Carson invoked sharia law and Islam’s alleged incompatibility with the US Constitution, in defence of his statement, while simultaneously giving Christianity — his professed faith — a free pass. Were such words uttered by a tattooed, toothpick-chomping Yank in some trailer-trash suburb of America, the world would have made perfect sense. After all, the only thing scarier than the ‘Moslems’, in the redneck’s imagination, are the zombies in The Walking Dead. Or even if Carson equalled Sarah Palin or Ted Cruz in their mental capacity, it would make matters explicable.

But Ben Carson is actually a smart man. Anyone in doubt has probably not viewed the man’s resume. A former neurosurgeon, Carson became director of paediatric neurosurgery at John Hopkins Hospital at the age of 33 — the youngest in the hospital’s history. And it doesn’t just end there. Carson was the first surgeon — ever — to successfully separate twins conjoined at the head. So when he makes a crass remark about Muslim ineligibility for US presidency, ignoring the obvious detail that private belief does not disqualify one from high office(JFK was Catholic), it raises some concerns, not the least of which being Carson’s own mental health.

Here, it is useful to note that Carson is not your average free-thinking Deist who just culturally identifies with Christianity; the man actually believes the world to be 6,000-year-old and has publicly refuted evolution and the big bang. All of this may point to the brain’s remarkable capacity to perfectly compartmentalise mutually conflicting ideas — yes, even a brain as sharp as Carson’s — but more than that, it simply points to how polarising things have become, not only in the US, but the world at large. Carson could be accused of playing to his Republican ‘Moslem’-fearing gallery, but his genuine fear of the Moslem hordes is equally plausible considering how ubiquitous the fear actually is.

Consider the context. A majority of Republicans view Muslim Americans unfavourably. The fear of Muslims in America is also on the rise. Recently a Sikh-American, Inderjit Singh Mukker, who wears a beard and a turban, was beaten bloody in the streets of Chicago for the mistake of looking like an Arab. A mistake which can prove fatal these days. And here is the scary part: even liberals like Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins are busy stoking anti-Muslim fires. In a recent appearance on the Bill Maher show, Dawkins, on the subject of burqa, thundered, “Such cultures can go to hell.” Known for his firebrand anti-theism, Maher yelped passionately in response, chortling the whole time like a giddy teen.

Regardless of your views on burqa, it is easy to see how such a statement coming from a ‘rationalist’ like Dawkins can be music to the ears of the trigger-happy white supremacist. This becomes all the more troubling when incidents like the recent Oregon mass-shooting remind us of the great American fetish for guns and gore. But the perpetrators of these incidents are rarely ever viewed as ‘terrorists’ by the American media. Rather, these white American spree-killers and mass-murderers are deemed ‘victims’ of mental illness. Best to reserve the ‘terrorist’ label for men in beards and Kalashnikovs, it appears.

Carson, and the trash-talking yahoos at Fox network, may do well to examine America’s homicide rates and gun violence that dwarf those of other Western countries like Australia, Canada and the UK. The New America Foundation recently found that twice as many people have died in attacks by right-wing groups in America than by Muslim extremists since 9/11. Part of this is, of course, because of poor gun regulation, as Barack Obama made clear in the aftermath of the Oregon shooting, but there is another dimension to this which often escapes comment: American culture. From its founding fathers like George Washington — military commander-turned-politician — and Alexander Hamilton — who died in a Clint Eastwood-type duel with Burr — to its more sophisticated weaponry today (America is one of the most prolific arms dealers in the world), it is clear that the US is not shy of blood and bullets. And now that Native Americans are non-kosher or rather non-existent, it is in hunting sports and shooting-ranges where this latent fetish finds much-needed release. And nothing excites the dormant fancies of the blood fetishist more than the heady mantra of ‘exceptionalism’ and ‘city upon a hill’, and it is in this combustible mixture that an enemy is born — the shifty Jew, the sly communist, and now the suspicious Muslim.

But the biggest perpetrators of anti-Muslim bigotry are Muslims themselves. Yes, Muslim societies are the greatest violators of Muslim rights — a whole new level of sadomasochism. The mob killings in Bangladesh, the public floggings in Saudi Arabia, the state-sanctioned lashes in Iran; if Muslims were subjected to any of this in a non-Muslim country, there would be a global outcry. As for Pakistan, try running for high office as an Ahmadi, but only if truncating your life expectancy has long been on your bucket list.

None of this, though, justifies the trivialisation of Muslim lives in American media. Just recently, a suspected American aerial attack killed innocent people in a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan. Imagine the outrage if the same ‘mistake’ had been committed by a Muslim country on American soil. Think of the media blitz, the White House threats, the right-wing rage, the head-shaking and arm-flailing, and promises of redemption in bullets and bombs. But when ‘precision’ bombs ‘mistakenly’ rain down on weddings and schools on foreign soils, barely a passing reference is made on the news ticker. But let’s face it, none of this will change until Muslim countries reform themselves first. Because the principle is both simple and universal: if you treat your minorities worse than farm animals and dehumanise those you don’t agree with, chances are the world will return in kind.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 13^th, 2015.

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