A High Wind in Jamaica

The hurricane arrives in empty evening streets like drunken fool alone. Or like a demented preacher, promising ruin and retribution. Here in Jamaica, Abdullah el-Faisal might come to mind, as one such violent force of nature. Deported from Britain after years as a lay preacher at the Brixton mosque, el Faisal gave lectures telling his audiences to kill Hindus, Jews and other non-Muslims like "cockroaches". Bookstores sold tapes of him declaring, "This is how wonderful it is to kill a kuffar... You crawl on his back and while you are pushing him into the hellfire you are going into paradise." Germaine Lindsay, one of the UK suicide bombers of 7/7, attended his lectures and listened to his tapes.

Now at home, families wait by fragile candle light, listening to the wind increase in violence outside the walls, wondering how well constructed they really are. The Jamaica Building Society has published phone lines in the US to help family members call home (954 535 5761 and 954 535 5762) and begins to prepare for new building orders. Perhaps the phone lines will work. Members of the Muhammad Mosque in Kingston prepare food distribution and anti-looting patrols.

As the hard heavy, salty rain comes down through darkening air the old man raises an eyebrow. “That house pass through two hurricanes with hol heap a leakings, “ he says to the local newsman; “and neither the state nor fishery do nutten fi help me still.”

I do not know much about the relative capacity of the Jamaican government, let along its budget for disaster response. But we can recall how the US government has failed again and again to assist the thousands of victims scattered by the winds and floods of Katrina two years ago.

In combining the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Emergency Management, the US government has also brought disaster preparedness and crime prevention into strange proximity. How the government deals with the threat of natural disasters depends on weather forecasts, risk analysis, federal funding and local organization. But the government seems to hope that the threat of terrorism can be dealt with through similar scientific models as well. And it almost does seem they have given the job to the Department of Fisheries; since law enforcement depends so much on fishing expeditions to get their materials.

Both the recent NYPD report on terrorism and the current Holy Land Charity trial in Texas have thrown the nets of suspicion over our community quite broadly. The trial has named 300 “un-indicted co-conspirators” including most leading national Muslim American organizations.

In an interesting Newsweek article earlier this month, Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball quote an unnamed government official who admits that this is merely tactical; “By listing the groups, it makes it easier for prosecutors to introduce documents, tapes and other evidence mentioning them and which relate to what the government charges is a wide-ranging conspiracy to raise money in the United States in support of Hamas.”

The government is following the Daniel Pipes theory that our leading institutions are all arms of a vast conspiracy. In this theory, Hamas itself is the “Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.” Conservative Islam is seen as a monolithic and coordinated threat, like Communism was seen to be during the wonder years of the Cold War—yes those were the good old days!

However, leading Muslim American groups have been complaining. ISNA issued a strong statement condemning both terrorism and the misuse of law to slander Muslim institutions. Similarly, Ibrahim Hooper of CAIR denounced its listing as an "unindicted co-conspirator" as "completely unjustified." He added: "When you're named in this way, you have no legal recourse."

The recent NYPD report shares the burden of justifying the War on Terror. Perhaps understandably, it seeks to answer the question how diverse and “unremarkable” men become jihadists; but it illustrates its premise with a range of real and imagined plots. Instead of actual social context and psychological detail, it creates pseudo-scientific models. Nothing is said of prevention or of community relations with Muslims. Instead, young men “searching for meaning” are seen as The Threat.

So the feds throw nets to snare the threat. And the cops send their shadows over the waters of our community as well. In this context last week, our brave and glorious lawmakers once again realized that they, “in a frenetic, end-of-session scramble, passed legislation they may not have fully understood and may have given the administration more surveillance powers than it sought.”

So the War on Terror trawls the internet; while other nets of extremism move through as well, may Allah protect us all from the shadow passing over us. And some media continues to manipulate fears, catching good people in lies and misrepresentations. The political storm is destructive; but the Building Society moves in its wake, arranging funding, offering loans. Perhaps you and I should join that caravan.

But I feel better in the storm. There is an eye to a hurricane, midway through the wind. It is a wonderful moment of blue sky, fresh air and the silence of humbled humanity. But then the winds begin again.

How does one stand in a storm? Others have shown me by example. There are ways to dance with the wind, as there is also the dignity of lamentation. I have been swimming in a hurricane twice, fleeing the nets like a fish, freedom in shining white trembling waters. But each time was after the main winds had passed, with just the occasional loud snap and crash of a tree as a reminder.

There is the eye, midway; but also the “I” within. There is the storm of others; racism, injustice, war, materialism, untruth and waste; there is the storm of self, delusions, desires, fears and dissolution. Sans eyes sans teeth we stand like Lear howling in the heath in the night wind. No guarantees, only loans and groans. But like the mad preacher of the wind we will have our say.