Action or Compulsion? Some Thoughts on Resistance and Reaction

Action or Compulsion? Some Thoughts on Resistance and Reaction

Deliberate insult or cultural miscommunication? Last year a Danish newspaper published cartoon images of the Prophet Muhammad, including one that shows him wearing a turban in the shape of a bomb with a lit fuse. Protesting the continued publication of such caricatures of the Prophet, a recent boycott has brought sales of some Danish products to a halt in Arab countries across the Middle East, in a case pitting freedom of the press against religious sensitivity.

In recent days, Saudi Arabia and Libya have even recalled their ambassadors to Denmark, protests have been staged in Dubai and Arab and multinational companies have placed ads in Middle Eastern newspapers to deny any connection to Danish companies. “This is a public uprising," said Louis Honoré, a spokesman for Europe's second-largest dairy company. "This has spread through the region like wildfire. And the boycott has been practically 100 percent.”

Mashallah! But while it might please us to see such solidarity, is this actually an over-reaction and an injustice? After all, Danish authorities have stated that they have freedom of the press and can't get involved in these kinds of matters. Understanding those limitations, is it really fair to target all Danish goods?

Did Sanctions work with Saddam, or simply impose suffering on the Iraqi people? And will modest sanctions moderate the political behavior of his former opponent Iran? Will withholding monies from Palestine to protest the new government really pressure Hamas in a positive way or just maintain a balance of terror and hostility? When are boycotts appropriate?

Like Strikes and Fillibusters, boycotts should be focused and well designed to ensure success. It is very important to choose achievable goals. Otherwise it is just hot air and hysteria.

Therefore, let us ask ourselves: understanding our own limitations, it is wise to target all goods from the US, Israel, and the Quartet nations? However, The National Association of Muslim American Women (NAMAW) is calling upon all Muslims, and Muslim nations and other people of conscience and compassion join in an international boycott of Israeli, and Quartet country goods and services in response to their refusal to recognize the Palestinian election results, and threats to withhold humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people.” Is this really achievable?

And is it not understandable that donors do not wish to donate to a political group that is sworn to destroy an ally? However, as former President Carter suggested, donors who wish to avoid Hamas can always donate to the United Nations programs that deal directly with Palestine.

This business of not recognizing the reality of Israel means maintaining a fiction that Israelis will some day move peacefully. It means having a convenient distraction from social justice issues within our own communities. It is based on a militant, history-based version of Islam that is no less a caricature and deserves to be protested even more. This version is demagogic and not democratic; for example one recent message calling Turkish nationalist leader Kemal Atarturk (who successfully resisted the imperialist European invaders) a Jewish British agent; and insisting “We will never accept the existence of Israel. Any Treaty with Israel by any Muslim Regime or any Organization is NOT Binding on Muslim Ummah by the Quraan and the Sunnah. The Sun May Have Set, But It Will, Allah Willing, Rise Again and Islam will dominate the World inshAllah.”

But surely there should be no compulsion or domination in religion. The revolutionary spirit of this approach is really wrong in my view. And until we take longer term and more respectful, inclusive approaches, our community will continue to self-isolate and weaken. The rhetoric may be sweet to some; but the Hizb and other killer bees make poisonous honey.

Two years ago Pat Robertson’s international charity, Operation Blessing, started with 108,000 in government grants; but under the Bush faith based initiative it has ballooned to $14.4 million. Though the religious right likes the program, it is subsidizing evangelistic activity and religious discrimination in hiring. Very little of it is going to Muslim groups, you can be sure! And none will go to our communities if we do not regulate our speech and actions as required by our faith.


A colleague named Judy Andreas writes, “In anti-oppression theory, as I understand it, each prejudice lives in society through stereotypes, and is embedded (how appropriate for our media in Iraq) in our thought processes, our attitudes, and our beliefs until we actively discover how they remain in us & until we actively reject them. I find this process liberating and connecting. I also find it ongoing. Especially since, like in the New York Sun article you mention, each stereotype against each group is continually reinforced. Instead of recognizing the prejudice itself as the problem, it's easy to fall into the Jew vs Muslim/Arab dichotomy…

The fact that some Muslim scholars are questioning holocaust numbers is not hopeful. Western science has a long and ignoble history of racism and prejudice, including against Arabs, Muslims & Jews. How can Jews experience such questioning any other way than as a heartless response? And if portions of the Muslim community are participating in this questioning, how difficult is it for Jews to avoid being pulled into Islamophobia when they (and the rest of the world) are continually pushed to see Muslims as the enemy? The divide then widens. Healing is more difficult.”

Some prefer their victim status to healing. For example, conservative populists like to depict themselves as society’s victims... yet “Donning those goggles distorts our vision of reality in many different ways, but its most significant political effect is to let the most powerful force of our time—the almighty market—off the hook”. Thus, in Anti Liberalism in Theory and Practice (Harpers February 2006), Thomas Frank seeks to explain how our way of thinking leads us to neglect important issues like ownership, wealth distribution, institutions, structures, demographics and technological change.

And in the same issue, Garret Keizer observes, “Here is where we might note a critical distinction in the ways in which the Democratic and Republican parties recommend themselves to their supporters. A typical Democrat offers to validate your identity….The Republican Party doesn’t offer to validate your identity. It offers to give you an identity…the identity if offers to give you is that of a player…. We’re the players. We play the same game that the big boys do…Exclusion is contained in the very definition of the player. If everyone is a player, then no one is a player. When everyone comes onto the “field” it’s no longer the field. It’s a park.”