[Peace-discuss] Re: [Peace] Wednesday, December 3 Thursday Jihad talk

[David Green]

I was disturbed by this lecture (see below), on a number of levels. It was informative to learn something about the Islamic perspectives that rationalize terrorism. It was not so informative to hear from the speaker that terrorism motivated by certain Islamic beliefs is somehow qualitatively different (and more reprehensible) from state-sponsored terrorism motivated by U.S. and Israeli interests. He seemed to be encouraging the U.S. to draw back from the Middle East for pragmatic reasons (we're getting Muslims stirred up), rather than moral reasons (we've killed millions of them).
 
I continue to maintain that religion is not the central or primary issue, whether used "positively" or "negatively", on either side; resistance may be organized around religion, violent or otherwise, but it is a response to material/power conditions, and in this case filling a vacuum created by the suppression of secular nationalist movements in the Arab world by U.S. and Israeli policies. The ideological framework of resistance cannot possibly place those responding to oppression (however dysfunctional the response) on a lower moral level than the perpetrators, in this case the U.S. and Israel. Pragmatism and ethical dilemmas are the privileges of victims, not of perpetrators; they are the privileges of those who "do as they must," not those who "do as they can." A rejoinder to this might be that Muslim perpetrators come from among the privileged in those societies (this was stated by the speaker, in response to my comments), and that they exploit
 conflict for their own ends; this may be superficially true, but is irrelevant to the larger argument, especially in terms of our own responsibility.
 
The speaker claimed that terrorists (that is, Muslim terrorists) should not be permitted to do "anything and everything" in the name of resistance. I asserted that the U.S. and Israel do "anything and everything" themselves, a point with which he disagreed. But I suppose he's right. When you can bomb people from airplanes or from drones, you don't need to blow yourself up. I found it disturbing that he seemed to be making a moral distinction in favor of the U.S. and Israel. Who is invading and occupying whom?
 
The speaker also responded to my concerns by saying that as an American Muslim who has lived here all his life and has never experienced discrimination, he feels that it is his obligation to focus on violence perpetrated in the name of Islam. He's welcome to explain how Islam is being used to justify violence, and the ins and outs of al-Qaeda's ideology and tactics. But I feel that it is disingenous of him to claim that as an Muslim-American he has a greater moral obligation to be critical of violence in the name of Islam in the Middle East than Amerian-Israeli violence in the name of his own country. He has no influence in the Islamic world, zero. He has influence in his own country, and that would be better used to work with Muslims and others against U.S. policies that kill Muslims. Isn't that obvious? Does he not think that virtually every Muslim in this country is as appalled by violence in the name of Islam as he is? Who among the non-Muslim
 population in this country does he think need to be re-assured that terrorists don't represent "true" Islam? Has he heard of Muslim political prisoners in this country? (not just Guantanomo, but Sami al-Arian, Holy Land Foundation, etc.)
 
I also found it troubling that this lecture was sponsored by the Department of Religion. That context I think narrowed the scope of debate, or "the limits of allowable debate," as Chomsky would say. As an aside, there were few Muslims in attendance--not surprisingly--but it might be useful to ask why. It was clearly more about politics than religion, but in a repressed fashion. But OK, so religion and politics are inseparable. So let's make them inseparable for other religions too. Let's have a serious discussion about whether any religion is a fundamental cause of political violence, especially those professed by the genuinely powerful people in the world.
 
For example, let's have a speaker to address the issue of whether violent Jewish settlers in occupied Palestine are acting on religious beliefs, as an extension of Israeli/U.S. imperial policies, or both. Oops, we have an "Israel Studies" component of the Program for Jewish Culture and Society that is a brainchild of the Jewish Federations of Metropolitan Chicago (Israel Lobby), invites only Zionist Jewish speakers, and ignores the voices not only of occupied Palestinians, but Palestinian citizens of Israel. I guess we won't be having that lecture anytime soon, since essentially the PJCS is an apologist for settler violence, not to mention Israeli/American violence in general (see such previous invited speakers as Hillel Halkin and Yossi Klein Halevi). This is not hyperbole on my part.
 
In too many important instances, academia has a way of being tone deaf, to say the very least.
 
David Green
 

________________________________

From: Marilyn Booth <mbooth at uiuc.edu>
To: kmedina at illinois.edu
Cc: peace at lists.chambana.net; peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
Sent: Tuesday, December 2, 2008 12:07:27 PM
Subject: Re: [Peace] Wednesday, December 3 surveillance talk / Thursday Jihad talk

Here are the details for the Thursday talk:

2008 Fall Lecture in the Department of Religion
>
> Sohail Hashmi
>
> Associate Professor of International Relations at Mount Holyoke College
>
> "When the Far Enemy Became the Near Enemy: The Changing Place of the
> United States in Jihad Discourse"
>
> December 4, 2008 at 7:30pm
>
> Levis Faculty Center, 3rd floor (919 W. Illinois St., Urbana)
>


      
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