August 2020

I think it is time to take the Moulana Dawood Sampson debate to a different level. We have all had our outrage, our evaluations of the impact of his words, and the extent of rebuke by his peers among the clergy. The strategic question, now with just a few days to go in August — Women’s Month — is how we ensure that we can rid Muslim women, the Muslim Community and the general human and women’s rights community of this pandemic of sexism and misogyny, often masquerading as faith and religion?

So let me get 3 issues out of the way: firstly, we are a forgiving, Allah-Maaf, community and Moulana Dawood has asked for forgiveness. Those who can should forgive, but if there are women whose hurt and revulsion are so deep, then we who cannot experience that pain, cannot prescribe their response. But as for me: Allah Maaf!

Secondly, the man has confessed that he lacks emotional intelligence, so we have a duty to him, those who believe as he believes, and those who jumped to his defence — the entire “Mute-Cute” Brigade — to bring them to the light, through a combination of rehabilitation, re-education and regulation.

And thirdly, let’s get out of the way the issue of polygyny: there is a dominant belief, supported by interpretations of Shariah, that marrying more than one wife is permissible, some believe, recommended, and a few even believe it’s compulsory. Let’s accept that polygyny is permissible. We may need to shift to the ‘how’ of polygyny.

“Out of Difficulty comes Ease” — The Quran

If we want to learn the lessons and ensure that we emerge a better community from this difficult incident, then let’s search for the ease. Our point of departure, therefore, is not to make this a Moulana Dawood moment. It is a moment rather, where Muslims have recoiled from a raw, honest, boastful — even lustful — glorification of polygyny. For us to move forward, we must be thankful that we had gotten insight into the minds, the desires and the theological reasoning of some proponents and practitioners of polygyny and the underlying attitudes and beliefs about women. As one woman who is the first wife in a polygynous marriage said about her internal wrestling with her husband’s motive and his religious justification to marry a second wife: “I accepted it dutifully as Sunnah, even though I thought it was ‘belustigheid’ (lust). The Moulana showed me I was not mad or rebelling quietly against Allah!”

Let’s also be grateful that someone lacked the sophistication to dress a dubious intention (niyyah) with sophisticated words, as so many do. This was also not an uncharacteristic moment of jest, because utterances like “a woman is cute when she is mute” suggest a consistent pattern. Now we all have a good diagnosis from which to start curing our community of the underlying lack of respect for women and their role in society and their voice. “Mute is Cute” is the way the unsophisticated tell women to shut up. The sophisticated Sheikh will tell a qissa of advice to the bride at her wedding to put a toothpick between her teeth so that there is no danger of saying anything that could trigger an abusive husband. Similarly, the sophisticated will say beat her lightly with a toothbrush, whereas the unsophisticated say: “’n pak op ‘n dag!” (a beating a day)!

Did We also Fail Muslim Women?

As an activist in 1990, at the National Muslim Conference, where we influenced those who were writing the Bill of Rights and New Constitution for South Africa, we had dreams that we will have a society where all will enjoy equality and rights and freedom from discrimination, violence and indignity. We were torn between ensuring that Muslim Personal Law — which would right the apartheid wrong regarding Muslim marriage and divorce — be simply recognised by law, or that it be recognised but that we should still have a civil, court marriage, or that we should have a recognised nikah and we will suggest our own regulations. Subject to the other provisions of equality, dignity and rights in the Constitution, we agreed that we must recognise polygyny and we will — with the ulema — work out the regulations later.

Maybe we must ask maaf that 30 years later, and the ANC government should take responsibility also, there is no Muslim Personal Law and our divorces, marriages and polygyny are a free for all. This must be the moment to set it right and we must mobilise the whole Muslim community, not just the ulema, the whole women’s movement, not just Muslim women, the government, the courts, and the human rights agencies to ensure that we make right what we have neglected for 30 years.

“… if you fear injustice…” — The Quran

But let us say immediately that setting it right is about doing it according to the Shariah! Allah indeed says on polygyny, in a verse dealing with orphans, that we can marry two, three or four wives, but, if we even fear an injustice, then we should take only one, and again ends the verse with the exhortation to “to prevent you from injustice.” (Quran 4:3). We must, therefore, act to eliminate the possibility of injustice and have it written into the law, because we have proven incapable of managing it ourselves. So, what are the issues of consensus that should be written into law?

“Actions are According to Intentions” — Hadith

We obviously cannot write intention into the regulations. But because all who practice or advise polygyny invoke love for the Prophet (s) as their intention, we must test intention against prophetic practice. The Prophet (s) had affection for all of his wives and particularly loved some — Khadija and Aisha come to mind — but never was lust ever a motive or sexual prowess ever a condition. There was a general category of intention where some women faced enormous hardship (Sawda was 55 years old and lost her income after conversion to Islam); some were widowed by war (like Hafsa & Zaynab), while Umm Salama had no one to care for her and her children. The true sunnah was about alleviating hardship, even marrying older than you, but accepting to care for a destitute family, rather than leaving your own family destitute when marrying younger. Others were married to strengthen relationships with other communities (Rayhana, the Jew; Maria, the Christian; and Juwayriyyah of the Banu Mustaliq). We must, therefore, let each Muslim man, and the Iman who performs the nikah, be the ones who examine their consciences as to niyyah.

“Trust in God, but Tie Your Camel” — Hadith

But as to justice, we must regulate. Because people are weak and forgetful, we must tie our camel so that the law ensures the compliance with the Shariah regarding polygyny. If the Shariah demands transparency, we must outlaw secret marriages and insist on a letter or certificate of knowledge, if not permission, by the first wife. If a religious criterion is affordability, we should write in the need to produce an income statement that shows that all families will be cared for. If the Shariah includes financial equity, we should either have the estate divided at the point of the second marriage or a garnishee order written so that no family is financially neglected. And we must have a bureau which a woman in a polygynous marriage, who is not receiving equal treatment, has recourse to: if the Prophet (S) was so scrupulous in ensuring that each wife had an equal visitation rotation, then we who claim to love the Sunnah must be scrupulously held to that standard. Maybe we should address this in advocating for a Muslim Marriages Act consistent with the best values of the Bill of Rights and Constitution, rather than the ambitious project of Muslim Personal Law.

“Organise or Starve!” — Oscar Mpetha

We thought that people and the ulema will simply do the right thing. Thirty years later, we see that unless Muslim women are organised into a mighty movement in coalition with others, we will starve, as Oscar Mpetha told the food and canning workers who were suffering. This must translate into an active plan that mobilises a movement and coalitions for gender justice with capacity and resources to lobby lawmakers, petition the courts, hold scholars and leaders to account, pressurise the perpetrators and rehabilitate offenders.

This must also — if we fail to self-correct — lead to appropriate action against the serial offenders of the “Mute and Cute” Brigade, those who seek to silence women, who practice hate speech that denigrate women, and those who perpetrate gender-based violence. We may have to embark on ‘name and shame’ measures: you may get away with things in your home or mosque, but your bosses in government or the private sector must know that they’re employing someone who is violating the codes they’ve committed to upholding. We must petition the various Commissions (from gender to religious rights) so that alleged perpetrators could be tested in front of the Equality Court.

And we must find consensus on the best provisions to be inserted into a Muslim Marriages Act that acts in the interest of Muslim women. Most importantly, we must insert Muslim women into the mainstream of the Women’s Movement so that we act in pursuit of a gender equal society, rather than allow an island of Muslim exceptionalism that allows some to say and do things outside of the main values of society.

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6 April 2020

The Prophet Muhammad (s) is reported in Bukhari as having said: “The likeness of the one who observes the limits prescribed by Allah and that of the one who transgresses them is like the people who get on board a ship after casting lots. Some of them are in its lower deck and some of them in the upper deck. Those in the lower deck, when needing water, go to the people in the upper deck and say to them: ‘If we make a hole in the bottom of the ship we shall not harm you.’ If the people of the upper deck leave them to carry out this plan, they will all be drowned. But if they do not let them go ahead, all of them will remain safe.”

I call to mind this hadith in response to the lawyer’s letter sent to the South African Government by a maverick lawyer on behalf of two so-called clergy bodies who, by their own admission, represent only 20 mosques in South Africa. They want the Government to let Muslims continue their 5 daily ritual prayers in the mosque, making the case firstly, that prohibiting this is an infringement of Muslims’ rights to freedom of movement and the free practice of their religion. Secondly, they assert that: “Considering the Shariah, Muslims are required to pray five times daily IN THEIR MOSQUES.” (My emphasis)

This is what happens when a radio mufti, a Muslim tabloid, a bogus council and a maverick lawyer converge: they claim rights, but shun responsibility; they pretend that the right to worship is infringed; they then confuse a fard — the obligation to pray — and a confirmed sunnah — the recommended tradition of prayer in mosques; and thus expose a character flaw of not being honest, not even with established facts in Islam. The hadith asks us to distinguish between those who observe the limits prescribed by Allah and those who transgress them.

They are also opportunistic. Previously charlatans argued against the Coronavirus by resorting to conspiracy theories, calling it a Chinese virus, a hoax or hype, a punishment for all kinds of people, and a disease imposed by God and one that would be removed by God without human precaution. As the global Muslim community takes precautions like closing mosques for prayers and jumuah, and even the Saudis are weighing up the prospect of continuing the haj for this year, these arguments fall away. The tracing of infections to tablighi gatherings in Kuala Lumpur, Delhi and Raiwind have also removed any moral force from their arguments.

Now they appear to plead for concessions. Suddenly the Minister of Transport is their model. The misguided cannot guide other misguided: if 100% or 75% full taxis is misguided, so is gathering people in the mosques. These are the people of the lower deck wanting to make a hole in the bottom of the boat. As the Prophet said: “They will all be drowned!” They do not seek so much a concession as they seek to deceive — as with the name Jamiatul Ulema they have claimed for themselves — and open the floodgates of extremism.

My advice to the government is to probe if indeed it is such a ‘spiritual depression’ — the Arabic word they invoke is ‘Qabdh’ — to be separated from congregational prayers in the mosque, then why does the affliction of qabdh only affect men, and not women? How many of their mosques relieve or cure women from qabdh or spiritual depression by allowing them into the mosques? What if Christians and Jews have the equivelant of spiritual depression for Shabbat or Easter?

But the clear instruction from the Prophet Muhammad (s) in the hadith is absolutely unequivocal: we cannot let them go ahead. We have to stop them from making a hole in the bottom of the boat lest we all drown! We have tolerated them when they were supportive of, or ambiguous about, ISIS and violent extremism, when they blocked legal recourse for women against misogyny, when they trade insults so regularly against those revered in our community, when they refer to the same government they now petition as a ‘Kuffaar” and evil one, and so forth.

The only challenge we now have is to find the best wisdom to implement the instruction of the Prophet (s) and devise ways of stopping them. This is no time for a false unity and solidarity with those knocking a hole in the boat. How do we defeat the people of the lower deck? The mainstream Muslim leadership must speak as one to tell the authorities that the people of the lower deck are a fringe, if vocal, minority; that they are misguided and seek to misguide; that, like all extremists, their extremism is now inert, but as soon as they find a source of power they will unleash destruction; and that together we have a responsibility to think of all the occupants of the boat.

More importantly, we need Muslims and all South Africans to understand the distinction between the mainstream and the fringe so that they don’t believe that the fringe speaks for us. If we do not, the resultant Islamophobic backlash will be severe when they see mosques open and churches closed. This is the time for leadership, despite our internal nuances and difference of opinion. Our differences are a source of mercy and blessing. Our difference with the fringe is a matter of drowning or not.

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22 March 2020

A Moment of Rupture

Globally the community of Muslims has had to make an almost unprecedented decision: whether to close the mosques for both the communal daily prayers as well as the Friday prayers in response to Covid-19 or coronavirus. That the majority of clergy and congregations have taken the cautious and preventative route is a tribute to the reasonable, and maybe survivalist, gene within this community. It is an acknowledgement that we are experiencing unprecedented, if not existential, challenges today. Coronavirus has created a moment of crisis, if not rupture: our assumptions and traditions are disrupted, our fault lines are exposed and stark decisions confront us.

Copying Trump — A Radio Mufti, A Muslim Tabloid & A Bogus Council

Crises have a way of not only exposing your thinking, your intellectual disposition or your theological reasoning, but more importantly, your character. We can debate thought and theology, but not the character that denigrates those who sincerely try to do the right thing as ‘scum worse than pigs’ as a Muslim tabloid has done. We can debate thought, but not thought based on the ultimate suspicion — conspiracy theory — as a statement from a so-called ulema body does (in imitating Donald Trump by calling coronavirus a ‘Chinese Virus’) or as a prominent radio Mufti (also drawing from Trump’s ‘hoax’ playbook) does when speaking about a ‘media’ hype. Such suspicion, in a time of fear and danger, may well be the kind that could be sinful because it is without wisdom and it facilitates danger. Crises separate the chaff from the wheat, the charlatans from the scholars.

Islam — Religion of Mercy

If the response to fear and danger is to turn to God, then how we experience the divine is crucial. If God is ‘Most Merciful’ and the Prophet (s) is ‘a mercy unto all creation’ why do we listen to those who appropriate God and the Prophet for aims which are unmerciful, callous and refuses to see humanity in others? When the pandemic was seen to be affecting only China, it was divine punishment for their persecution of the Uighurs, and then it moved to Iran, and it was punishment for being Shias, and, I suppose the Italians were being punished for exposing us to their Catholic Carbs. Now it’s affecting the world and the punishment narrative continues as if God is punitive in essence, not forgiving and merciful; destructive and not the creator and sustainer; indiscriminate and pernicious, not just, kind and discerning. Especially those who rehearse the many names of God should display clarity of God’s attributes in the face of character flaws in the charlatans who carry weighty titles, wear the garb and talk the language, but display none of the wisdom, compassion and attributes of God and the Messenger (s).

Obstinacy + Blackmail + Labelling = Destruction

This logic takes another turn, however, when the virus is mainstreamed among Muslims — Sunni ones. For these charlatans it’s a test about whether you trust God or the evidence of your eyes. The evidence of your senses will tell you that about 16000 members of the Tabligh Jamaat refused to suspend their gathering (ijtima) in Kuala Lampur resulting in 50% of Malaysia’s infections being traced to the gathering. Today the entire Malaysia has shut business and communal worship. It’s a test of the strength of your faith as if faith is now defined, not by whether you pray, but if you pray in congregation! What’s the obligation and what’s the recommended supererogatory? To get his point across, at least the Mufti mostly uses emotional blackmail (like his fellow traveller, the Louisiana evangelical pastor, who defiantly told his defiantly convened congregation: ‘shake hands or are you sissies?’). However, the so-called ulema statement has no such scruples. For them they use the term ‘haraam’ in saying categorically that it is forbidden to close the mosques, to do compulsory prayers at home or to restrict numbers in the mosque. One would think them familiar with Imam Nawawi’s work that says even prayer in family congregation at home, will reap the rewards of the congregational prayer.

A False Choice: God IS Science!

The test for them is whether you have faith in God or faith in science and medicine. It’s a false choice! Scientific and medical knowledge were intrinsic to the very definition of knowledge in Islam until it was restricted to only the knowledge of worship. Before this we were leaders in science and in establishing the canons of medicine in pursuit of the Prophet’s (s) challenge that for every ailment, except old age, there is a remedy. If the charlatans today are so convinced that they are right to ignore science and medicine, then they should take an oath never to take any medicine or seek any treatment for any ailment they may have. This is the truthful path if you indeed believe that what afflicts you comes from God and the healing will come from God without any human precaution or intervention.

The Mosque — Spiritually Enriching for Men & Women?

These same people cry crocodile tears that the absence from the mosque and congregation is such a spiritual affliction that robs the believer of feeling connected, that diminishes the sense of ummah and that detracts from spiritual and ritual completeness. Yet, callously and without reflection, the Mufti fires off that ‘women have no business to be in the masjid!’ The first advice from those trying to hold off the closure of mosques is to prohibit women. This can’t be God speaking who holds each of us — men and women — equally accountable for our spiritual and worldly lives, nor can it be the Prophet (s) speaking who addressed and equally led men and women in congregational prayer. How is it that women have been deemed immune to the need for community, connectedness to the ummah and in need of spiritual and ritual completeness?

In this moment of rupture, when new habits and insights are formed, what do the charlatans really fear, other than that all women may now understand the benefits of being in the mosque and assert their right to be there, with the same passion that men now express in the face of its temporary closure? Or do they fear their irrelevance to the daily lives of Muslims. When you have driven theology with the sole mechanism of compliance to rules, and in times of stress and danger, those rules are then pragmatic rather than absolute, the enforcer of the rules may become less important.

What Do the Charlatans Fear?

They fear their monopoly over the intricacies of rules may be over as ordinary people work out for themselves the hierarchy of the maqasid (intents of Islam): they have learnt in this crisis the primacy of the preservation of life over other intents, and can therefore work out the primacy of ensuring your prayers individually or congregationally at home over your desire for praying in congregation in the mosque. They may also fear that pragmatism may enter the Muslim community where before we were dominated by absolutism: trust in God is absolute, but tying your camel is essential. God intervenes in human behavior through investing humans with common sense, not stupidity; wisdom, not memorized aphorisms; a sense of the common good, not self-righteous selfishness.

Most importantly, they fear their game may be up. For decades these charlatans have leveraged their interpretations of Islam to excuse the inexcusable and tolerate the intolerable and justify the unjustifiable. The result is that in the context of a predatory superpower we often allowed them to compromise the compassionate religion by equivocating on suicide killings, terrorist attacks on civilians, widespread misogyny, and internal takfirism (excommunication). Now that coronavirus has presented itself as predator that even attacks the superpowers, the exhortations of the charlatans to be patient, to withstand the test, to prohibit women, to defy governments, to expose yourselves and others to danger, and to disregard science and medicine carries less ambiguity. It is evil.

The Sunnah — Our Gift to the World

The charlatans have proven unhelpful, not only to Muslims, but also to the world. The world comes knocking on our door today to alert us to what we as Muslims have been doing forever. But we have been taught to do it in imitation, not out of understanding the real intents as taught by the Prophet (s): today the world practices intermittent fasting as a great health intervention and secular scientists have done the science on it; today the world prescribes the black seeds — after doing the science on it — as an antidote to digestive and respiratory problems and we learn these benefits from them while having the prescription from the prophetic tradition; and today we are amazed at the importance of hand washing in preventing disease, while ritually doing it forever.

A Test from God — Confronting Our Mortality

A test from God is not a punishment from God. A test is not to determine whether you are sinful or pure. That is divinely known already. A test is not about how stoically you suffer or how bravely you die. A test from God is to strengthen your sense of mortality, to build your resilience, to encourage self-reform, and to then live better! A test from God is to teach you responses to calamities and challenges: you consume less to mitigate climate change; you find cures and vaccines for diseases and illnesses; and you change lifestyles.

The post CORONAVIRUS — A CRISIS THAT REVEALS MUSLIM FAULTLINES: The Mainstream Adapt, The Charlatans Panic. appeared first on World for All.

President Cyril Ramaphosa may have reduced foreign affairs to five sentences in his State of the Nation Address (SONA), but make no mistake, that is not an indication of the level of priority he attaches to international relations. It is through South Africa’s foreign relations that he will seek to achieve his domestic priorities.

The SONA was a clear articulation of those priorities – improving economic growth, which has been hovering around 1%, by increasing business confidence, wooing investors and expanding trade, which will translate into job creation and poverty reduction. These objectives cannot be achieved without a robust foreign policy that focuses on economic diplomacy.

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In the great journey of any earthly life there are only two fixed points, the origin and the destination. In moments of great tragedy or loss these are the two fixed points we invoke to give comfort and meaning. We invoke it with finality – God has claimed that being! We evoke it with resignation – what can you do about it? And we invoke it with gratitude – the being has fulfilled its task.

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High on the Swiss Alps, in the cold and fog, the World for All Foundation and the Carter Center convened clergy and community leaders from countries in Europe and North Africa to discuss a response to islamophobia and extremism. Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool told the gathering:

“The year 2017 is a crucial one for the world. In the wake of Brexit and Trump, and with the prospect of le Pen in France, Wilders in Holland, Alternatif in Germany and similar movements rising globally, we are now explicitly in the Age of Extremisms! Informal, marginalized extremism in the name of Islam that is spawning unspeakable horror is now confronting formal, mainstreamed extremism in the West with an even greater capacity for devastation. It has the capacity to command armies, make anti-human laws, and legalize discrimination because it runs governments. Our task as the middle-ground is even more urgent to confront all extremisms, fight all discrimination and protect all human dignity!”

January 24, 2017

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“The Call of Islam was an organisation that was militant but not violent; radical but not fundamentalist; and revolutionary but not extreme.” In the nuances of each of these binaries lie the possibility for Muslim organisations across the world who live under occupation, despotism, military rule, extremism and other forms of rule that inhibit their dignity and distort their faith. Such regimes require radical and revolutionary change and need to be confronted militantly. But in the latter parts of these binaries often lie the seeds of the undoing of Muslim organisations; the penchant for violence, fundamentalism and extremism!” Ebrahim Rasool

South Africa is going through a fairly traumatic time. The vacuum in leadership opens the possibility for all kinds of forces to try and occupy the leadership terrain and exploit the space for protest and struggle. As we witness the rise of an iconoclastic protest group -disrupting education, burning art and suggesting a sell out by people like Nelson Mandela — we are reminded by a formulation by Ebrahim Rasool, drawn from lessons from the anti-apartheid struggle. He wrote it in 2014 in the forward to Adli Jacob’s biography of the Call of Islam. It may well be relevant for those engaged in legitimate struggle and protest in South Africa today.

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13 Mar 2015 08:11 GMT

The beginning of March 2015 saw again the convergence of forces that employ fundamentalist religious impulses to win support for their causes. Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel, in the midst of an Israeli election, came to Washington to become the most frequent foreign head of state to address the joint Houses of Congress.

He came at the invitation, not of the president of the United States, but of the leadership of the Republican Party that dominates both Houses of Congress, the party that, in response to the 911 atrocities, launched a crusade against Afghanistan and Iraq, driven in part by a right-wing evangelical zeal.

Netanyahu did not simply come as the prime minister of Israel but as the leader of the Jewish state. The recognition of Israel as a Jewish religious state has become the precondition for any settlement in the Middle East. He came to warn his hosts that their counterpart, Islamic extremism, if armed with a nuclear capacity was a danger to both the Jewish state and western Christian civilisation.

To emphasise this point, he painted the Islamic Republic of Iran as having a “voracious appetite for aggression” and said that it already controlled Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut and Sanaa. To stretch the point further he declared that there is no difference between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL).

WWII imagery

His hosts in the United States, of course, had previously obliged his warnings about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, by unleashing the destruction of Afghanistan and Iraq, and allowing the further occupation of Palestine, both of which created the breeding ground for all manner of extremists who operate in the name of Islam.

As if the arbitrary connection of dots was not fearful enough, he again drew on imagery from World War II and the Holocaust to invoke Jewish suffering and the initial tardy response from the West.

All of this was put at the service of torpedoing any possible positive outcome from the nuclear negotiations with Iran. The Republican Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, immediately obliged by tabling the Iran Agreement Review Act that would compel US President Barack Obama to submit any negotiating outcomes with Iran to Congress for review and approval.

Now Senate Republicans have written to hardliners in Iran telling them that no agreement with Obama would hold water. Hardliners were provoking hardliners to erode any middle ground. The table is being laid, once again, for war.

Where seemingly different, even antagonistic, messianic or fundamentalist religious impulses converge is in their predilection for conflict and militarism as the default policy response. Where the counter-instinctive is attempted, as in the engagement and negotiations with Iran’s middle ground, the goal is to replace it with an environment of perpetual conflict.

All three have the capacity for devastating violence. All three read texts literally, whether their scriptures or constitutions. All three feed on fear and ignorance and exploit an instinctive suspicion of those who are different.

In such a conflict, Israel is freed of any obligation to facilitate Palestinian statehood and, in fact, has grasped the opportunity to extend and expand Israel towards what it considers the historical Jewish state.

In such a conflict, the militarists and its attendant industry in the United States retain their hold over foreign policy and continue to demand the lion’s share of an ever-shrinking US budget.

In such a conflict, the existence, and sometimes projection, of Muslim extremist forces waging war and sowing mayhem over the Muslim world put the objectives of the Arab Spring on the back burner, and increases the currency of dictators, military or otherwise.

No monopoly on extremism

The convergence of these fundamentalisms shows us that Muslims do not have a monopoly on either fundamentalism or extremism. While the Muslim version thereof is non-state, informal and on the fringe of the global Muslim community, its counterpart in Judaism is in government, formal and mainstreamed, while in the US, the Tea Party and the rightwing Christian evangelical groups are, through the Republican Party, are in control of Congress and equally mainstreamed.

All three have the capacity for devastating violence. All three read texts literally, whether their scriptures or constitutions. All three feed on fear and ignorance and exploit an instinctive suspicion of those who are different. All three cultivate theologies and theologians espousing intolerance, cruelty and divine harshness.

Those who see the clear and present danger posed by these fundamentalisms have the obligation to be uncompromising in our opposition to them. We cannot pander to them nor be panicked by them into precipitous action. Our best response is to continue believing in the veracity of soft power and the counter-instinctive. But we must also undercut the subtle allure they have over people resulting from long memories of victimhood in the past or vivid imaginings of impending doom in the future.

But we must also be responsive to the growing discomfort many have about living in a world where faith, tradition and culture are not being reformed but denigrated and eroded, leaving people without anchors in life, and where a crucial part of their identities is lost in the great uniformity of a networked world. In such alienation do the siren songs of false certainty find an attentive audience.

Ebrahim Rasool is the former South African Ambassador in Washington, DC, and founder of the World for All Foundation.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

Source: Al Jazeera

Originally published at www.aljazeera.com.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ebrahim Rasool

Ebrahim Rasool is the former South African Ambassador in Washington, DC, and founder of the World for All Foundation.

I observed the two terrible atrocities committed by the extremist movement, known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), while in London. This may ordinarily be the stuff of headlines that impinge on your soul as all stories of untimely, random and horrific death and destruction should: They must interfere with the busy-ness of your own life.

But the actions of this particular extremist group and its antecedents have long ceased to impinge in the same way as other stories of death and destruction. This is because these atrocities and acts of barbarism are committed in my name, by people who pray like I do, eat how I eat, read the same texts and claim to follow the same God that I do. So in addition to the outrage every human being should feel, people like me — Muslims — also have to battle to ensure contradistinction with such barbarism and its perpetrators. We have to proclaim: not in our name!

This act of contradistinction says “I am different!” and “I am against!” It is an act of reclaiming the symbols, rituals and values of our faith and to deny extremists any legitimacy or even a minority share over our faith.

Contradistinction is not an act of obsequiousness, laced with apology and the reeking of guilt. The few, shared characteristics should not elicit, at minimum, suspicion of the innocent, or at worst, the equally barbarous idea of collective punishment.

Colonialism, genocide and slavery

It is for this reason that so much of the world continues to coexist with people of a particular colour, religion and origin despite their complicity in, or benefitting from, colonialism, genocide and slavery.

Also read: Without initiative, Paris attacks will change nothing

But contradistinction is necessary in a world where people are judged, not by the content of their character but by isolated characteristics. It is necessary through contradistinction to establish deeper levels of complexity and meaning in a world where people express themselves with limited characters and with a simple choice of like or not.

Contradistinction is necessary in a world where people are judged, not by the content of their character but by isolated characteristics.

Contradistinction is also crucial in an attempt to surprise victimised communities with empathy and solidarity so that their victimhood does not become testimony to the mistakes and atrocities committed by their governments or their ancestors or those with whom they share isolated characteristics.

Contradistinction is a battle with your own soul: a battle to quell your own ambiguity and ambivalence. Atrocities such as those in Paris are always stalked by the darkness of memory of historical and contemporary missteps. So when your instinct inclines towards “I told you so,” your better angels should let the light of human empathy and solidarity shine through.

Conferences are the places to unpack history, not funerals. Funerals are the places to celebrate the equal worth and value of all human beings and the sacredness of all life. Funerals are the places to reflect on the fragility of life and the pernicious must of death. Funerals are the places to mourn loss, not least the loss of our humanity.

Ambiguity and ambivalence

In the context of death and in the desire to restore the equal worth and value of all life, the headlines I have read in the course of a terrible week for humanity intensified my ambiguity and ambivalence and, therefore, the battle within my own soul: “Bibi’s Excellent Washington Adventure!” “All is forgiven, Mr Modi!” “Hezbollah bastion attacked!” and “Carnage in Paris!”

Indeed, extremism knows no religion, colour or shape. Extremism can often appear palatable because it stands at the head of a government or wears the garb of victimhood.

More often than not, extremism prefers to be free of responsibility so that its carnage is unfettered. Whatever its appearance, extremists are the alter ego of its fellow extremists, and often the best recruiters for each other.

Contradistinction requires that we must be different to, and against, all extremism. Habib Battah in a blog published in Al Jazeera, sharpens our ambivalence and ambiguity, and therefore the battle in our own souls, even further. He illustrates how the victims of the same barbarous, extremist group are not accorded equal value in the global public imagination.

ISIL attacked Beirut on November 12, killing over 40 people, and attacked Paris on November 13, killing 130 people. For Beirut, no monuments were lit up in the Lebanese colours and no major president interrupted his schedule to express outrage and condolence.

Every major global landmark was decked in French colours and, led by US President Barack Obama who decried the Paris bombings as an “attack on all humanity”, every major president rose in solidarity with France.

In contrast, the Beirut victims, living in a Hezbollah bastion, were not deemed worthy of such an outpouring of support and sympathy.

Beirut’s massacre

Some media, in their analysis of Beirut’s massacre, even suggested that it was a matter of time before such an attack would take place because of the predicament of the Shia community living in a Hezbollah stronghold. They hoped that this community would now come to question the Hezbollah mission in Lebanon.

Instead of the fulsome and justified outpouring of sympathy for the powerless victims, imagine an analysis of the Paris tragedy saying that it was a matter of time before France’s colonial and militaristic chickens came home to roost and that this was a predicament of a nation that bans the headscarf in pursuit of the strictest laicite.

This is unacceptable by any standard and should be condemned if it were ever to be used on the victims of New York, London, Madrid or Paris. But this is the tale today of two cities suffering under one barbarism.

If we are to fight extremism successfully, then we must fight all extremism, value all victims equally, condemn all perpetrators and decry all actions that reek of extremism.

Our greatest ally in the fight against extremism is moral consistency. Our greatest weakness in the fight against extremism is to favour some victims over others. The unsustainability in the fight against extremism is to nurture the cub and then to fear the tiger.

The greatest homage we can pay the victims of Beirut and Paris is to find the courage to be unwavering in our resolve to defeat ISIL and all extremism, and simultaneously to advise allies to close the factories of extremism by tempering the intolerance of their theologies and the attachment to their victimhood.

Ebrahim Rasool is the former South African ambassador to the US and founder of the World for All Foundation.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

Source: Al Jazeera

Originally published at www.aljazeera.com.

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