Beza Tesfaye, MPA
What is the first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions Somalia? Failed state. Sadly Somalia is indeed the epitome of what state failure entails—a weak government with power limited to the capital Mogadishu, a famine that threatens the lives of millions, rampant piracy and lawlessness, and an amorphous militia claiming to control most of the country under a strict version of Sharia Law. Yet Somalia’s recent and historical problems can only be fully understood in light of external involvement in Somali politics. The recent move by the Kenyan government to send troops into Somalia to fight Al Shabab warrants a brief discussion of how foreign invasions contribute to the perpetual crisis in Somalia.
Many of us vaguely remember seeing images of dead US soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu on the evening news. Before this decisive turning point, a UN humanitarian mission backed by US forces was involved in a large-scale humanitarian intervention to bring famine relief to starving Somalis. At the time, the US made an imprudent decision to kill and/or capture Somalia’s most powerful warlord, Mohamed Farrah Aidid. The mission ended in failure and embarrassment for the US government and with a tacit agreement to no longer directly interfere in the volatile nation’s affairs.
Some time passed and it seemed Somalia had fallen off everyone’s radar, with new crises emerging in other African countries like Rwanda, Liberia, and Congo. The popular image of Somalia remained, a “basket-case” country without a fixed state and governed by clan-based warlords. However, it was during this time that a semblance of stability and governance began to emerge under a network of Islamist courts known as the Islamist Courts Union (ICU). This loosely-organized group was able to bring peace and began to provide basic social services such as education and healthcare that had been non-existent for years.
Despite this brief window of stability in the early 2000s, the situation in Somalia has deteriorated far worse than anyone could have imagined. For reasons that have never been well articulated, the Ethiopian army – with financial and military support from the US – invaded Somalia in 2006, destabilizing the ICU. Three years later, the Ethiopian forces gave up the intractable military mission having achieved nothing and inadvertently fueling the growth of an unmanageable force that has since consumed Somalia—Al Shabab.
Less than three years after Ethiopia’s failed invasion and departure, Kenya has now joined the class of nations that try to “fix” the Somali problem through force. On October 16th, Kenya launched Operation Protect the Nation, sending hundreds of troops across the border into neighboring Somalia. Despite the Kenyan government’s rationalization that sending troops into Somalia was for the purpose of maintaining territorial sovereignty after a recent string of kidnappings within Kenya, this action has been met with mixed reactions. Below I highlight a few issues of concern that question the rationality of this decision:
1) First, it is important to note that Al Shabab has not claimed responsibility for the recent kidnappings of foreign tourists and aid workers along the Somalia/Kenya border (a rare precedent for an organization that has never shied away from limelight when it comes to acts of terror it has committed—e.g. the July 2010 bombings in Kampala, Uganda). More likely, the crimes were committed by Somali pirates or bandits seeking ransom rather than any type of political statement. This raises the important point that the problem with Somalia is not just Al Shabab—it is also lawlessness, underdevelopment, poverty, and a lack of institutions to effectively govern the fragmented society. A foreign invasion, even if it is able to rid Somalia of Al Shabab, is probably unlikely and unwilling to address these deeper-rooted structural sources of conflict and instability in Somalia that have inevitably spilled over into neighboring countries like Kenya.
2) The Kenyan government for some time has maintained a hands-off approach towards Somalia, seeking to secure its porous border areas, rather than involving itself directly in Somali internal affairs. Kenya has also been accommodating towards hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees and the beleaguered transitional government of Somalia. It is surprising, then, that Nairobi should suddenly make such an unpredictable policy change at this point—possibly opening the nation up for retaliatory attacks from aggrieved extremists. It should be noted, for example, that northwestern Kenya has been plagued for years by attacks from Ethiopian Toposas and Merrile cattle raiders, but the idea of invading southern Ethiopia to stop these killings has never been entertained. Succinctly put, Kenya is not an aggressive nation, and the recent declaration of war raises important questions about what or who urged the Kenyan government to invade Somalia.
3) Most importantly, what will this new foreign intervention mean for Somalis who are already suffering from the worst famine to hit the region in 50 years? The implications are hard to predict but what is certain is that fighting between Al Shabab and Kenyan troops as well as Kenyan air raids are likely to result in civilian casualties. Inevitably, this is a common cost of any armed conflict but one that is often justified by clear positive outcomes. In this situation, it is unclear what end results the Kenyan government seeks to achieve. If the aim is to completely eradicate Al Shabab, then Kenya is setting itself up for a long and potentially unwinnable conflict against a militant group that may be able to diffuse into Somali society and remerge even stronger. This is particularly likely if Somalis perceive the invasion as an unwelcome foreign incursion on their homeland, as was the case with the Ethiopian and U.S. military interventions. By attacking Somalia when Al Shabab was beginning to lose legitimacy and control in the country (having retreated from Mogadishu just this summer), Kenya may have grant the extremist group an unexpected lifeline. Without speculating too much of what will happen in the coming months, it suffices to say that war is detrimental to Somalis, especially a poorly-planned invasion with only vague objectives.
Showing posts with label terrorism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label terrorism. Show all posts
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Friday, May 6, 2011
Islamophobia and the etymological roots of the King Hearings, Part III: The public policy implications of language use
Editor’s Note: This is the third of a three-part series on Islamophobia in America. Part I discusses the premises and implications of the King hearings. Part II examines the emerging semantics of Islam and Muslims in the West.
Nazir Harb, MPA
With the death of bin Laden, the world faces another opportunity to re-evaluate status quo assumptions and modes of operation. However, this is also an important time to think critically about how we use language to describe the events occurring in the Middle East and the “War on Terror.” Obama was right to describe bin Laden not as a Muslim leader but as a mass murderer of Muslims—having orchestrated the killing of, according to several studies, x38 more Muslims than non-Muslims in his lifetime. But among bin Laden and al-Qaeda’s most insidious contributions to the targeting and vilification of Muslims everywhere is their malicious manipulation of Islam’s idioms, phrases, and its co-optation and distortion of sacred Quranic conceptions. Unfortunately, as I discussed last week, post-9/11 anti-Islamic sentiment led many to unwittingly adopt al-Qaedaists’ language and its corresponding ideology that perpetuates both the network’s self-portrayal as defenders of Islam and the notion that Islam is a geo-political entity rather than a world religion that is not only devoid of the terrorist organization’s political agenda but in fact contravenes it at every turn.
In short, I argue, language matters a lot—the way we talk about Islam, Muslims, and Arabs in the United States impacts people in the Middle East in real ways. Not only insofar as the United States is participating in a third major combat operation in a Muslim country—Libya—but also on a social and cultural level. The way English-language media describe events and people affects Arabic media and, critically, innocent lives are often lost in translation.
The adoption of English media norms by Arabic media
Research I conducted on English and Arabic media prior to 2011 indicated that certain politically-charged discourse items in Western English-language media ranging from “Islam” and “Muslim” to “terrorism,” “threat,” “violence,” or “fundamentalism” tended to readily go in and out of Western political discourse following crises where, whether true or not, Muslims or al-Qaeda were suspected of inciting or carrying out violent acts. After their respective frequencies would peak, these terms did not always decrease to pre-crisis levels but they generally experienced a period of significant decline until another event triggered them. However, the usage of these same discourse items in Arabic media, once becoming politically-charged in the context of a crisis situation (e.g. terrorist incident) and introduced into Arabic political discourse in popular media (Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabiyya, etc.), tended to escalate increasingly from that point onward with no abatement, and in many cases exceeded the limitations of charts and graphs over time.
Since 9/11, the use of terms relating “Islam” and “Muslims” to “terrorism” or “extremism” in Western English-language discourse has been steadily rising—by now there is a conflation of the words “Islamist” and “threat” such that “Islamist” has come to imply a threat in its own right. In Arab media there is a time lag as these terms creep into the Arabic language environment initially via translation and secondary-source references. As such, phrases that conflate “Islam” with words like “terror” (irhab), “terrorism” (irhabiyya), and “violence” (‘onf) had an average frequency of 8.27/year pre-9/11. After 9/11, the rate escalated rapidly, especially after the invasion of Afghanistan and the beginning of the Iraq war. There was another peak after January of this year with the onset of the Arab revolutions across the Middle East. On average, since 9/11, the conflation of Islam with terror and violence in Arab media has increased to the unprecedented level of 1,222.57/yr.
Why? What is the difference between the Arabic-language political environment and its English counterpart? Why might a post-crisis politically-charged word’s or phrase’s frequency not just linger on but continue to rapidly increase in the former environment but not the latter?
How do ideas become paradigmatic?
An April 2011 study by the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London reported that new word associations form ideas in the mind by physically creating synaptic connections through the process of potentiation—a finding that challenges prior assumptions about the brain’s ability to learn new ideas after a certain age. This cerebral plasticity, the brain’s ability to learn and change, was found in adults over the age of 18. The Centre found that new connections are triggered by repeated novel sensory experiences, which include new combinations of words.
The fact that Arab media are repeating phrases that associate Islam with violent extremism and terrorism should concern U.S. policymakers. While al-Qaeda recruiting numbers remain very low in absolute terms, there is a correlation between new recruits and the increased incidence of new phrasings that cause neurological associations between the words “Islam” and “Muslim” with “violence,” “terrorism,” and “al-Qaeda”. Though U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East remains overwhelmingly the most commonly cited motivation for violent extremism, language plays an important role in individual and collective national identity formation in the Middle East. (Suleiman 2003) This factor to date has been largely ignored—at our peril.
While many argue that an integral part of the “War on Terror” is combating al-Qaeda’s narrative, it is not easy to come up with a counter-narrative when many do not understand the master narrative of the Arabic-speaking and, for that matter, non Arabic-speaking Muslim world, let alone its complicated, radical offshoots—or what socio-linguists would call a “restricted narrative,” i.e. the particular idiom of al-Qaeda and its affiliate networks that portends to re-appropriate Islam’s vocabulary such as “Ummah” (community) and Quranic spiritual concepts like “Jihad” (striving for self-improvement and closeness to God). Countering this narratology requires considerable expertise. Such a campaign may not be possible in the near future given the low levels of even the most basic Islamic literacy among average Americans, policymakers, and leaders in the “War on Terror” the world over. But we can help to change this by educating ourselves. And the first step can be as easy as how you spell the word “Muslim.”
Get involved! Please sign our petition to stop the targeting of American Muslims: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/hearings/
Nazir Harb, MPA
With the death of bin Laden, the world faces another opportunity to re-evaluate status quo assumptions and modes of operation. However, this is also an important time to think critically about how we use language to describe the events occurring in the Middle East and the “War on Terror.” Obama was right to describe bin Laden not as a Muslim leader but as a mass murderer of Muslims—having orchestrated the killing of, according to several studies, x38 more Muslims than non-Muslims in his lifetime. But among bin Laden and al-Qaeda’s most insidious contributions to the targeting and vilification of Muslims everywhere is their malicious manipulation of Islam’s idioms, phrases, and its co-optation and distortion of sacred Quranic conceptions. Unfortunately, as I discussed last week, post-9/11 anti-Islamic sentiment led many to unwittingly adopt al-Qaedaists’ language and its corresponding ideology that perpetuates both the network’s self-portrayal as defenders of Islam and the notion that Islam is a geo-political entity rather than a world religion that is not only devoid of the terrorist organization’s political agenda but in fact contravenes it at every turn.
In short, I argue, language matters a lot—the way we talk about Islam, Muslims, and Arabs in the United States impacts people in the Middle East in real ways. Not only insofar as the United States is participating in a third major combat operation in a Muslim country—Libya—but also on a social and cultural level. The way English-language media describe events and people affects Arabic media and, critically, innocent lives are often lost in translation.
The adoption of English media norms by Arabic media
Research I conducted on English and Arabic media prior to 2011 indicated that certain politically-charged discourse items in Western English-language media ranging from “Islam” and “Muslim” to “terrorism,” “threat,” “violence,” or “fundamentalism” tended to readily go in and out of Western political discourse following crises where, whether true or not, Muslims or al-Qaeda were suspected of inciting or carrying out violent acts. After their respective frequencies would peak, these terms did not always decrease to pre-crisis levels but they generally experienced a period of significant decline until another event triggered them. However, the usage of these same discourse items in Arabic media, once becoming politically-charged in the context of a crisis situation (e.g. terrorist incident) and introduced into Arabic political discourse in popular media (Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabiyya, etc.), tended to escalate increasingly from that point onward with no abatement, and in many cases exceeded the limitations of charts and graphs over time.
Since 9/11, the use of terms relating “Islam” and “Muslims” to “terrorism” or “extremism” in Western English-language discourse has been steadily rising—by now there is a conflation of the words “Islamist” and “threat” such that “Islamist” has come to imply a threat in its own right. In Arab media there is a time lag as these terms creep into the Arabic language environment initially via translation and secondary-source references. As such, phrases that conflate “Islam” with words like “terror” (irhab), “terrorism” (irhabiyya), and “violence” (‘onf) had an average frequency of 8.27/year pre-9/11. After 9/11, the rate escalated rapidly, especially after the invasion of Afghanistan and the beginning of the Iraq war. There was another peak after January of this year with the onset of the Arab revolutions across the Middle East. On average, since 9/11, the conflation of Islam with terror and violence in Arab media has increased to the unprecedented level of 1,222.57/yr.
Why? What is the difference between the Arabic-language political environment and its English counterpart? Why might a post-crisis politically-charged word’s or phrase’s frequency not just linger on but continue to rapidly increase in the former environment but not the latter?
How do ideas become paradigmatic?
An April 2011 study by the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London reported that new word associations form ideas in the mind by physically creating synaptic connections through the process of potentiation—a finding that challenges prior assumptions about the brain’s ability to learn new ideas after a certain age. This cerebral plasticity, the brain’s ability to learn and change, was found in adults over the age of 18. The Centre found that new connections are triggered by repeated novel sensory experiences, which include new combinations of words.
The fact that Arab media are repeating phrases that associate Islam with violent extremism and terrorism should concern U.S. policymakers. While al-Qaeda recruiting numbers remain very low in absolute terms, there is a correlation between new recruits and the increased incidence of new phrasings that cause neurological associations between the words “Islam” and “Muslim” with “violence,” “terrorism,” and “al-Qaeda”. Though U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East remains overwhelmingly the most commonly cited motivation for violent extremism, language plays an important role in individual and collective national identity formation in the Middle East. (Suleiman 2003) This factor to date has been largely ignored—at our peril.
While many argue that an integral part of the “War on Terror” is combating al-Qaeda’s narrative, it is not easy to come up with a counter-narrative when many do not understand the master narrative of the Arabic-speaking and, for that matter, non Arabic-speaking Muslim world, let alone its complicated, radical offshoots—or what socio-linguists would call a “restricted narrative,” i.e. the particular idiom of al-Qaeda and its affiliate networks that portends to re-appropriate Islam’s vocabulary such as “Ummah” (community) and Quranic spiritual concepts like “Jihad” (striving for self-improvement and closeness to God). Countering this narratology requires considerable expertise. Such a campaign may not be possible in the near future given the low levels of even the most basic Islamic literacy among average Americans, policymakers, and leaders in the “War on Terror” the world over. But we can help to change this by educating ourselves. And the first step can be as easy as how you spell the word “Muslim.”
Get involved! Please sign our petition to stop the targeting of American Muslims: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/hearings/
Friday, April 29, 2011
Islamophobia and the etymological roots of the King hearings, part II: The emerging Western semantics of Islam and Muslims
Editor’s Note: This is the second of a three-part series on Islamophobia in America. Part I discusses the premises and implications of the King hearings. Part III examines Islamophobic language trends in major English and Arabic media outlets and their implications for public policy.
Nazir Harb, MPA
Ludwig Wittgenstein said, “The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for.” I recently gave a talk on the semantics of talking about Islam and Muslims in America as part of a new series, Islamic Literacy at the Woodrow Wilson School, which took place throughout April. During the talk we briefly examined the etymology of Islamophobia—that is, the words, phrases, and orthographies that exist in our language and its history that convey anti-Muslim or Islamophobic sentiment. While some of these terms have fallen out of popular usage, they are increasingly coming up on anti-Muslim and Islamophobic websites and in books and articles written by Islamophobes. As future policymakers it is important, if only for analytical purposes, to be able to identify these thinly-veiled lexical forms of bigotry.
Descriptor or epithet?
The word “Moor” is a derogatory term for a Muslim that arguably stems to 8th century Muslim Spain—it is related to the Greek adjective for “black” and referred to someone from Mauritania. It took on a racist connotation when it became the slur used to refer to all Muslims. Another egregious term for Muslim is “Saracen”: a Roman Crusader word for Muslims that harks back to the 11th century. Some may also come across the word “Mohammedan,” or its derivation, Mohammedanism. This is an archaic construction that referred to a Muslim and was common in Western and English literature, taken from the 14th century Latin word “Macamethe.” The use of such words today is not only inaccurate, as they are no longer conventional, but it’s also derisive: it disregards the words and names that Muslim people have chosen for themselves and for their religion. It should therefore be avoided by anyone who is trying to maintain a measure of inter-communal tolerance or by academics attempting to use sterile terminology.
Moslem or Muslim?
While not always necessarily Islamophobic, the way a word is spelled might also raise a red flag; like other groups, Muslims have reached a consensus regarding the preferred spellings of words that pertain to their identity. As such, “Moslem” is now obsolete. The preferred spelling is “Muslim,” as it better approximates the correct pronunciation of the word. “Muslim” is a proper noun, and so one can refer to “a Muslim” or to “Muslims” in the plural. “Muslim” is also the adjective that pertains to a Muslim, so while it is grammatically appropriate to refer to a “Muslim person,” “Muslim man,” “Muslim woman,” or the “Muslim people,” it is incorrect to write, “Islamic person.” (Needless to say, "Islamic" is exclusively an adjective, so certainly "an Islamic" is also not a correct way to refer to a Muslim person.) Furthermore, a country cannot be “Islamic”—it may contain a population that has a Muslim majority, in which case it is a “Muslim majority country” or “Muslim majority society,” but it is not an “Islamic country,” nor is there an “Islamic world.” “Islam” refers to the religion and “Islamic” is an adjective that is reserved for cases wherein something has a distinctly Islamic property, as opposed to “Muslim” that refers to something or someone pertaining to a Muslim person or persons, i.e. Muslim identity.
Thus, an “Islamic government” is a government which is, or asserts itself to be, in accordance with sharia (Islamic law), not merely one that presides over a preponderance of Muslim adherents or is run by government officials who are Muslim. (Note though, that it is usually a misnomer, or at least a subjective articulation. Many Muslims take issue with claims by governments in the Middle East, North Africa, and South East Asia that claim to be "Islamic" or assert that they govern in accordance to sharia because such usage disingenuously implies that there is indeed one clearly-defined way to govern Islamically or that sharia somehow exists in a book or a written decree that can readily be referred to, easily interpreted, and facilely lends itself to political implementation.)
Similarly, while the awkward phrase “Islamic terrorism” has become a frequently used buzz word in popular discourse, I would argue that it is, strictly speaking, grammatically incorrect. It would be better (grammatically) to say “Muslim terrorist,” as neither the act of terrorism nor the actor carrying out the terrorist action is “Islamic.” One way to employ the phrase without legitimating it grammatically is to write it between quotation marks.
Mohammed or Muhammad?
On a related note, “Muhammad” is the standard spelling of the name when it refers to the last prophet of Islam; “Mohammed” is a common spelling for other people who have that name. The spelling is the same in Arabic in either case, but in Arabic the Prophet’s name is customarily followed by an honorific. In English, the honorific usually appears in parenthesis immediately after every use of the Prophet’s name. The one generally used is “(pbuh),” an acronym for “peace and blessings be upon him.”
Koran or Quran?
While some continue to argue that the spelling “Koran” is “more germanic” and better follows standard English spelling conventions, this spelling is largely considered obsolete and most Muslim scholars or scholars of Islam use the spelling “Quran.” This is due to the fact that Arabic has two different letters, “kaf” and “qaf,” each pronounced differently. The first is pronounced similar to the English “K” while the second has a more guttural sound, officially transliterated with a “Q” (with no necessary “u” to follow, as in Iraq). The holy book of Islam is spelled with the latter. Thus while in English the pronunciation is “kəˈrän” (kor-aan), the word should be spelled “Quran” (alt. Qur’an, Qur’ān).
Islam or ‘Islām?
Not to worry – “Islam” is the correct and conventional spelling. (‘Islām is the official academic transliteration.) It is grammatically correct to refer to “the religion of Islam” or, similarly, “the religion of Muslims,” or “the Islamic faith.” However, “Muslim religion” is inaccurate and ungrammatical because “Muslim” is either a noun or an adjective that describes someone who practices Islam—the religion of Islam is not “Muslim.”
Moderate or Mainstream
In response to the uptick in the use of phrasings that conflate Muslims with extremism, fanaticism, radicalization, fundamentalism, “jihadism,” and terrorism, many – including some Muslims – have started adding the word “moderate” as a neutralizing adjective to indicate a Muslim who is not radicalized. However, scholars such as Saba Mahmood and Talal Asad agree that this only perpetuates the collapsing of the terms “Muslim” and “terrorist”—thus, appending the word “moderate” before “Muslim” implies that “Muslim” itself is inherently pejorative. Without “moderate,” a Muslim is therefore presumed to be a violent extremist or a terrorist. If this newfound convention prevails, then Western discourse would have accepted al-Qaeda’s worldview wherein “(true) Muslims” sympathize with or engage in violent global jihad. For al-Qaeda, Muslims who do not sympathize with them are “nominal Muslims,” a term which refers to the same people as the phrase “moderate Muslims.”
“Al-Qaedaist,” Not Islamic or Islamist
There are 1.5 billion Muslims across the globe; al-Qaeda’s total membership is less than 30,000 people. Academics and specialists agree that for those relatively few Muslims who join al-Qaeda or affiliated networks, Islam is not the primary motivating factor, let alone the only one. Al-Qaeda pulls from Islamic and non-Islamic sources alike—they quote Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations alongside Islamic sources (usually quoting him in context while distorting Islamic sources). Still, al-Qaeda’s actions are not characterized as “Huntingtonian terrorism”—it is wrong to allow al-Qaeda to appropriate and unquestionably claim Islam, Islamism, and Islamic terminology. It is best then to describe their operations and ideological tenets as “al-Qaedaist,” (granted, a bit tautological) as well as for the actions and conceptions of those who are affiliated with al-Qaeda or sympathize with their views and methods.
Al-Qaeda’s “Jihad”
It is critical to consider that in the phrase “commit jihad,” for example, what is implied is that jihad is in itself an action (or even a crime) that is committed—this is at least true on the syntactical level. That connotation, however, is not correct according to mainstream Islam and is disingenuous to Muslims for whom the term maintains a certain spiritual, completely non-violent, resonance. In avoiding the use of al-Qaeda’s vocabulary, it is important to resist its militant misappropriations of spiritual and theological terms like “jihad.”
Arab/Muslim
When talking about American Muslims, it is important to consider that most estimates hold that there are between 6-7 million Muslims in the United States. Most of them are of South Asian origin. Thirty-eight percent are African American, born and raised in the US. Only a minority are Arabs or of Middle Eastern origin. Additionally, though the Arabian Peninsula is the birthplace of Islam, only 12% of all Muslims are Arab. The top five largest Muslim majority countries are Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, and China—none of them an Arab country. Moreover, not all Arabs are Muslim. In fact, in the US most Arab-Americans are Christian.
Next week I will discuss the implications of this terminology (and its use in the media) for public policy.
Get involved! Please sign our petition to stop the targeting of American Muslims: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/hearings/
Nazir Harb, MPA
Ludwig Wittgenstein said, “The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for.” I recently gave a talk on the semantics of talking about Islam and Muslims in America as part of a new series, Islamic Literacy at the Woodrow Wilson School, which took place throughout April. During the talk we briefly examined the etymology of Islamophobia—that is, the words, phrases, and orthographies that exist in our language and its history that convey anti-Muslim or Islamophobic sentiment. While some of these terms have fallen out of popular usage, they are increasingly coming up on anti-Muslim and Islamophobic websites and in books and articles written by Islamophobes. As future policymakers it is important, if only for analytical purposes, to be able to identify these thinly-veiled lexical forms of bigotry.
Descriptor or epithet?
The word “Moor” is a derogatory term for a Muslim that arguably stems to 8th century Muslim Spain—it is related to the Greek adjective for “black” and referred to someone from Mauritania. It took on a racist connotation when it became the slur used to refer to all Muslims. Another egregious term for Muslim is “Saracen”: a Roman Crusader word for Muslims that harks back to the 11th century. Some may also come across the word “Mohammedan,” or its derivation, Mohammedanism. This is an archaic construction that referred to a Muslim and was common in Western and English literature, taken from the 14th century Latin word “Macamethe.” The use of such words today is not only inaccurate, as they are no longer conventional, but it’s also derisive: it disregards the words and names that Muslim people have chosen for themselves and for their religion. It should therefore be avoided by anyone who is trying to maintain a measure of inter-communal tolerance or by academics attempting to use sterile terminology.
Moslem or Muslim?
While not always necessarily Islamophobic, the way a word is spelled might also raise a red flag; like other groups, Muslims have reached a consensus regarding the preferred spellings of words that pertain to their identity. As such, “Moslem” is now obsolete. The preferred spelling is “Muslim,” as it better approximates the correct pronunciation of the word. “Muslim” is a proper noun, and so one can refer to “a Muslim” or to “Muslims” in the plural. “Muslim” is also the adjective that pertains to a Muslim, so while it is grammatically appropriate to refer to a “Muslim person,” “Muslim man,” “Muslim woman,” or the “Muslim people,” it is incorrect to write, “Islamic person.” (Needless to say, "Islamic" is exclusively an adjective, so certainly "an Islamic" is also not a correct way to refer to a Muslim person.) Furthermore, a country cannot be “Islamic”—it may contain a population that has a Muslim majority, in which case it is a “Muslim majority country” or “Muslim majority society,” but it is not an “Islamic country,” nor is there an “Islamic world.” “Islam” refers to the religion and “Islamic” is an adjective that is reserved for cases wherein something has a distinctly Islamic property, as opposed to “Muslim” that refers to something or someone pertaining to a Muslim person or persons, i.e. Muslim identity.
Thus, an “Islamic government” is a government which is, or asserts itself to be, in accordance with sharia (Islamic law), not merely one that presides over a preponderance of Muslim adherents or is run by government officials who are Muslim. (Note though, that it is usually a misnomer, or at least a subjective articulation. Many Muslims take issue with claims by governments in the Middle East, North Africa, and South East Asia that claim to be "Islamic" or assert that they govern in accordance to sharia because such usage disingenuously implies that there is indeed one clearly-defined way to govern Islamically or that sharia somehow exists in a book or a written decree that can readily be referred to, easily interpreted, and facilely lends itself to political implementation.)
Similarly, while the awkward phrase “Islamic terrorism” has become a frequently used buzz word in popular discourse, I would argue that it is, strictly speaking, grammatically incorrect. It would be better (grammatically) to say “Muslim terrorist,” as neither the act of terrorism nor the actor carrying out the terrorist action is “Islamic.” One way to employ the phrase without legitimating it grammatically is to write it between quotation marks.
Mohammed or Muhammad?
On a related note, “Muhammad” is the standard spelling of the name when it refers to the last prophet of Islam; “Mohammed” is a common spelling for other people who have that name. The spelling is the same in Arabic in either case, but in Arabic the Prophet’s name is customarily followed by an honorific. In English, the honorific usually appears in parenthesis immediately after every use of the Prophet’s name. The one generally used is “(pbuh),” an acronym for “peace and blessings be upon him.”
Koran or Quran?
While some continue to argue that the spelling “Koran” is “more germanic” and better follows standard English spelling conventions, this spelling is largely considered obsolete and most Muslim scholars or scholars of Islam use the spelling “Quran.” This is due to the fact that Arabic has two different letters, “kaf” and “qaf,” each pronounced differently. The first is pronounced similar to the English “K” while the second has a more guttural sound, officially transliterated with a “Q” (with no necessary “u” to follow, as in Iraq). The holy book of Islam is spelled with the latter. Thus while in English the pronunciation is “kəˈrän” (kor-aan), the word should be spelled “Quran” (alt. Qur’an, Qur’ān).
Islam or ‘Islām?
Not to worry – “Islam” is the correct and conventional spelling. (‘Islām is the official academic transliteration.) It is grammatically correct to refer to “the religion of Islam” or, similarly, “the religion of Muslims,” or “the Islamic faith.” However, “Muslim religion” is inaccurate and ungrammatical because “Muslim” is either a noun or an adjective that describes someone who practices Islam—the religion of Islam is not “Muslim.”
Moderate or Mainstream
In response to the uptick in the use of phrasings that conflate Muslims with extremism, fanaticism, radicalization, fundamentalism, “jihadism,” and terrorism, many – including some Muslims – have started adding the word “moderate” as a neutralizing adjective to indicate a Muslim who is not radicalized. However, scholars such as Saba Mahmood and Talal Asad agree that this only perpetuates the collapsing of the terms “Muslim” and “terrorist”—thus, appending the word “moderate” before “Muslim” implies that “Muslim” itself is inherently pejorative. Without “moderate,” a Muslim is therefore presumed to be a violent extremist or a terrorist. If this newfound convention prevails, then Western discourse would have accepted al-Qaeda’s worldview wherein “(true) Muslims” sympathize with or engage in violent global jihad. For al-Qaeda, Muslims who do not sympathize with them are “nominal Muslims,” a term which refers to the same people as the phrase “moderate Muslims.”
“Al-Qaedaist,” Not Islamic or Islamist
There are 1.5 billion Muslims across the globe; al-Qaeda’s total membership is less than 30,000 people. Academics and specialists agree that for those relatively few Muslims who join al-Qaeda or affiliated networks, Islam is not the primary motivating factor, let alone the only one. Al-Qaeda pulls from Islamic and non-Islamic sources alike—they quote Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations alongside Islamic sources (usually quoting him in context while distorting Islamic sources). Still, al-Qaeda’s actions are not characterized as “Huntingtonian terrorism”—it is wrong to allow al-Qaeda to appropriate and unquestionably claim Islam, Islamism, and Islamic terminology. It is best then to describe their operations and ideological tenets as “al-Qaedaist,” (granted, a bit tautological) as well as for the actions and conceptions of those who are affiliated with al-Qaeda or sympathize with their views and methods.
Al-Qaeda’s “Jihad”
It is critical to consider that in the phrase “commit jihad,” for example, what is implied is that jihad is in itself an action (or even a crime) that is committed—this is at least true on the syntactical level. That connotation, however, is not correct according to mainstream Islam and is disingenuous to Muslims for whom the term maintains a certain spiritual, completely non-violent, resonance. In avoiding the use of al-Qaeda’s vocabulary, it is important to resist its militant misappropriations of spiritual and theological terms like “jihad.”
Arab/Muslim
When talking about American Muslims, it is important to consider that most estimates hold that there are between 6-7 million Muslims in the United States. Most of them are of South Asian origin. Thirty-eight percent are African American, born and raised in the US. Only a minority are Arabs or of Middle Eastern origin. Additionally, though the Arabian Peninsula is the birthplace of Islam, only 12% of all Muslims are Arab. The top five largest Muslim majority countries are Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, and China—none of them an Arab country. Moreover, not all Arabs are Muslim. In fact, in the US most Arab-Americans are Christian.
Next week I will discuss the implications of this terminology (and its use in the media) for public policy.
Get involved! Please sign our petition to stop the targeting of American Muslims: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/hearings/
Friday, April 22, 2011
Islamophobia and the etymological roots of the King hearings, part I: The premises and implications of the King hearings
Editor’s Note: This is the first of a three-part series on Islamophobia in America. Part II discusses the emerging semantics of Islam and Muslims in the West. Part III examines Islamophobic language trends in major English and Arabic media outlets and their implications for public policy.
Nazir Harb, MPA
Despite opposition from the Obama administration and a wide array of American minority groups, especially major Arab-American and American Muslim organizations, on March 10th the House Committee on Homeland Security convened a hearing entitled “The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community’s Response.” It was truly a tragic event in our nation’s history but unfortunately only the beginning of a year-long series of hearings that attempt to put Islam and Muslims on trial. The next hearing is supposed to take place in the next few weeks. Representative Peter King (R-NY), who chairs the committee and is the driving force behind the hearings, has been rather enigmatic about the exact dates of these show trials.
The title of King’s hearings is telling in and of itself, as it reveals the innate biases of the Congressman and his witnesses. The hearings attempt to legitimize a premise that is not only baseless and untrue, but also brazenly racist, prejudicial, and provocative. They antagonize a susceptible, peaceful community that constitutes a diverse multi-national and multi-cultural American minority with a longstanding history of contributions to the United States and the world.
Obama administration officials have stressed that the hearings are condemnable and that their premise must be amended to investigate radicalization in America in general as a phenomenon independent of Islam or Muslims. Instead, the hearings present a forgone conclusion damning an American minority without so much as giving it the opportunity to speak for itself. Indeed, during the first hearing, each of the speakers was well-known for harboring and fomenting Islamophobic and anti-Muslim sentiments (save Rep. Keith Ellison, a Muslim congressman from Minnesota). Their testimonies that day predictably served King’s fear-mongering and self-aggrandizing political agenda. While some of King’s witnesses were “practicing Muslims” who admittedly had very negative—but undoubtedly unrepresentative—experiences with Islam and Muslims inside or outside of the US, their testimonies thus far have supported the sort of abominable and unwarranted claims that Rep. King has recently made, such as that “85% of mosques in America are ruled by the extremists.” To quote King, who has faced relatively little castigation for such statements, his hearings are meant to demonstrate that Muslims in the United States are “an enemy living amongst us.”
Notably, countless American Muslims and non-Muslims who have requested to testify, including specialists who would represent the counterargument to these allegations and provide for real debate on the topic, have been declined the right to testify. There could therefore be no doubt that these hearings are political show trials which target a vulnerable minority that is politically difficult to defend in public. Fortunately at least Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) had the fortitude to use his own bully pulpit for such a noble purpose and convened a Senate hearing on March 29th on threats to American Muslim civil rights.
Sadly such mistrust and public aspersions on the loyalty of American citizens is not without precedent in our recent history. These events recall the regrettable and horrific treatment of Japanese Americans following the tragedy of Pearl Harbor. True, these hearings don’t rise to the level of mass internment (though something of the sort did take place immediately following 9/11), but we cannot stand by as another American minority is profiled, singled out, and blamed for a foreign attack. American Muslims have begun protests and educational programs to emphasize that this is a critical matter of civil rights which concerns every American, and is not what Rep. King has characterized as strictly a “Muslim problem.” Attorney General Eric Holder is right to assert that anti-Muslim bigotry is “the civil rights issue of our time.”
Get involved! Please sign our petition to stop the targeting of American Muslims: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/hearings/
Nazir Harb, MPA
Despite opposition from the Obama administration and a wide array of American minority groups, especially major Arab-American and American Muslim organizations, on March 10th the House Committee on Homeland Security convened a hearing entitled “The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community’s Response.” It was truly a tragic event in our nation’s history but unfortunately only the beginning of a year-long series of hearings that attempt to put Islam and Muslims on trial. The next hearing is supposed to take place in the next few weeks. Representative Peter King (R-NY), who chairs the committee and is the driving force behind the hearings, has been rather enigmatic about the exact dates of these show trials.
The title of King’s hearings is telling in and of itself, as it reveals the innate biases of the Congressman and his witnesses. The hearings attempt to legitimize a premise that is not only baseless and untrue, but also brazenly racist, prejudicial, and provocative. They antagonize a susceptible, peaceful community that constitutes a diverse multi-national and multi-cultural American minority with a longstanding history of contributions to the United States and the world.
Obama administration officials have stressed that the hearings are condemnable and that their premise must be amended to investigate radicalization in America in general as a phenomenon independent of Islam or Muslims. Instead, the hearings present a forgone conclusion damning an American minority without so much as giving it the opportunity to speak for itself. Indeed, during the first hearing, each of the speakers was well-known for harboring and fomenting Islamophobic and anti-Muslim sentiments (save Rep. Keith Ellison, a Muslim congressman from Minnesota). Their testimonies that day predictably served King’s fear-mongering and self-aggrandizing political agenda. While some of King’s witnesses were “practicing Muslims” who admittedly had very negative—but undoubtedly unrepresentative—experiences with Islam and Muslims inside or outside of the US, their testimonies thus far have supported the sort of abominable and unwarranted claims that Rep. King has recently made, such as that “85% of mosques in America are ruled by the extremists.” To quote King, who has faced relatively little castigation for such statements, his hearings are meant to demonstrate that Muslims in the United States are “an enemy living amongst us.”
Notably, countless American Muslims and non-Muslims who have requested to testify, including specialists who would represent the counterargument to these allegations and provide for real debate on the topic, have been declined the right to testify. There could therefore be no doubt that these hearings are political show trials which target a vulnerable minority that is politically difficult to defend in public. Fortunately at least Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) had the fortitude to use his own bully pulpit for such a noble purpose and convened a Senate hearing on March 29th on threats to American Muslim civil rights.
Sadly such mistrust and public aspersions on the loyalty of American citizens is not without precedent in our recent history. These events recall the regrettable and horrific treatment of Japanese Americans following the tragedy of Pearl Harbor. True, these hearings don’t rise to the level of mass internment (though something of the sort did take place immediately following 9/11), but we cannot stand by as another American minority is profiled, singled out, and blamed for a foreign attack. American Muslims have begun protests and educational programs to emphasize that this is a critical matter of civil rights which concerns every American, and is not what Rep. King has characterized as strictly a “Muslim problem.” Attorney General Eric Holder is right to assert that anti-Muslim bigotry is “the civil rights issue of our time.”
Get involved! Please sign our petition to stop the targeting of American Muslims: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/hearings/
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