The Real New York After 9/11

I was scrolling through Twitter and came across the below thread:

Now, this is not to take attention away from 9/11 victims and those affected by loss. This thread interested me because I came across an earlier tweet where someone mentioned the infamous “Mess with one of us, you mess with all of us” scene from Spider-Man (2002).

Scenes like this are supposed to represent how united America, and New Yorkers in particular, were following 9/11. While this Spider-Man scene (and another in the Andrew Garfield reboot) might be a bit on the nose, the notion of a truly united NY is very uplifting, but also very romanticized.

The stories of innocent Muslims in New York, and brown people as a whole, paint a very different picture and it is good to see a dose of reality get injected into the mainstream “we are the children” narrative that is spun every time September 11 comes around.

I don’t assume these specific stories are true. The statistics on spikes in hate crimes on brown people following 9/11 are all the evidence I need.

Ignorance in Action

As many of you know, the US midterm elections wrapped up recently. There were some upsetting losses, such as Beto O’Rourke coming close in Texas. I’m still f****** proud of him.

I was scrolling through this feed on Twitter, since it was offering live updates on the election results. While Beto may have lost, the Dems flipped the house and there were still some promising moments. For one, the US elected its first Somali American congresswoman.

This is a great moment. It shows a rejection of the bigotry that, at times, seems omnipresent in America. This candidate is a bright spot, but we must not let it pull a blindfold over our eyes and let us think that the problem of prejudice in the US is solved.

Case in point:

So this was a response.

I already pointed out some of the assumptions this (idiotic) user makes.

I want to elaborate on the second point. I’m willing to give this person the benefit of the doubt and say that the quotes from the Quran are real ones (I wouldn’t be surprised if they are not). People have used the “Christian values” argument to deny a gay couple marriage licenses, and to deny gay couples wedding cakes. It is a case of people avoiding critical thinking and using the Bible as a manual for life. Therefore, these people must have a hard time accepting that someone can read the Quran and reject some parts of it e.g. “If I believe in my holy book blindly you must believe in yours blindly too.” I think this understanding actually demistifies all the people who point to the Quran as the only proof they need that Islam is inherently evil, even though the Bible has its own questionable passages. In the linked experiment, an interviewer wraps a bible with a Quran cover, and gets passerby to read sexist and bigoted sections from the Bible. This also shows that the people who reach for “Christian values” to defend homophobia are selective readers or followers of the holy book.

When I decided to engage this user he said that the congresswoman is actually a terrorist sympathizer and sent me screenshots of articles from Robert Spencer, who co-founded an organization that is viewed as a hate group by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Centre. When I asked if he had any other sources he responded with this.

The old “fake news” argument e.g. the real news is being suppressed by liberals. He then recommends a book by another figure who has been criticized numerous times for being anti-Muslim.

Here’s a quote from Gabriel: “The difference, my friends, between Israel and the Arab world is the difference between civilization and barbarism. It’s the difference between good and evil [applause]…. this is what we’re witnessing in the Arabic world, They have no SOUL !, they are dead set on killing and destruction. And in the name of something they call “Allah” which is very different from the God we believe….[applause] because our God is the God of love.”

Gabriel will typically defend her thoughts by saying they are targeted at radical Muslims, but this quote seems to contradict that, and there are many more like it. If these are the people you want to use to defend your views, then it is obvious your views are skewed by ideology more than fact. The equivalent would be me pointing to articles from the New Black Panther Party (seperate from the original and recognized as a hate group) to defend my points.

Islam is Not a Race- But Islamophobia is Real

I was watching some highlights from the previous year’s Golden Globes, and as I scrolled through the comments I couldn’t help but focus on one that attacked Ben Affleck. As the commenter writes, Affleck is an idiot for defending Islam and insinuating that Islamophobia is a real thing, since Islam is not a race. Affleck has received a wave of right wing backlash for his comments, being interpreted as another liberal who refuses to criticize Islam.

The sentiment that Islamophobia is an invalid, politically correct creation is even shared by former Muslim Salman Rushdie. After a fatwa was declared against him by the Ayotallah of Iran, Rushdie’s life was put in jeopardy by zealots who believed he insulted their religion. Zealot is the proper word to refer to people who would actually try to kill someone for insulting their religion, but I believe that this word is overused when it comes to Islam.

After the Danish newspaper Jylland’s-Postens depicted the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist, demonstrations predictably broke out amongst many Muslim populations. I am not here to defend violent extremists. However, I could never help but notice that even instances of peaceful protest  by Muslims are often seen as proof of their zealotry. Comments online indicated Muslims should learn how to take a joke, like people of other religions can. Can we agree that this cartoon is pretty offensive?

Maybe people will be quick to argue that it doesn’t matter, since the Prophet was not an angelic figure anyway. Whenever Islam as a whole is insulted, many people turn a blind eye since they see it as a religion that is inherently violent and misogynist. Even if critics can recognize that not all Muslims are terrorists, they still argue that the religion itself feeds into corrosive vices. It is easy to think this when we look at a nation like Saudi Arabia, but seeing nations such as Dubai and Egypt should make it clear that interpretation is just as important as content when it comes to religion. To those people I think it is important that they see this experiment, where people are given a copy of the Bible covered with a Koran jacket. The only thing better than seeing people express their amazement at how backwards the “Koran” is, is seeing their reactions when it is revealed they were reading the Bible. Watch the video, and read the comments to see Christians defending the bible and denigrating Islam. It seems like the Christians can’t just take a joke.

This experiment also highlights the key issue I wanted to discuss. There are far too many people out there who pat themselves on the back for recognizing Islam is not a race, thinking they can end the argument about Islamophobia with that sentence. There are recognized phobias of buttons and clowns, no one is trying to say there is a racial component for those. There is also homophobia, which we can see in people’s attitudes towards topics such as gay marriage. “Phobia” does not have to imply race. However, “Islamophobia” is a valid term due to people’s reactions to Islam, or what they perceive to be Islam. Islam is not a race, but racial ignorance can contribute to it. Following 9/11 there were hate crimes committed against Middle Eastern people of all religions, including Sikh. The fact that the people attacked weren’t Muslim is irrelevant. The attackers intended to attack Muslims, and their ignorance led them to attack people of a different faith. White people who convert to Islam have testified to being treated poorly by friends and family for their decision, due to their association with a religion perceived as backwards and violent.

It is easy to see Muslims as a faceless, terrorist horde with all the negative things we may hear from Trump, the news and maybe even our social circle. I don’t like throwing out the “I have ___ friends” argument, but I am curious to know how many people who relentlessly criticize Islam as the root of all evil actually have close relationships with Muslims. My own exposure has led me to people who rarely mention their religion and never criticize me for mine. They respect their religion, but they aren’t hellbent on killing or converting the infidels surrounding them. Exposure to moderate and liberal Muslims (the majority of them) isn’t a foolproof strategy, but it is something that can demistify and humanize the people we’re accustomed to thinking of as a threat to the safety of progressive Western societies.