This is the written transcript of panelist Shujaat Wasty’s statements as part of a discussion organized by the United Muslim Students Association (UMSA) and the International Socialist Students: “Expression, Freedom, or Islamophobia?”.  The event took place on April 5, 2005 at Concordia University’s School of Community and Public Affairs in Montreal, Canada.   Shujaat Wasty is a member of UMSA and CERAS (South Asian Research Centre).  He can be reached at: shuj@b2b2c.ca

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The caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad: Expression, Freedom, or Islamophobia?

Shujaat Wasty - April 5, 2006

Caricatures

As seen with the recent fiasco involving the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), the Western mainstream media in general portrayed Muslim as a “backward” or even "barbaric" and "primitive" people. The visual footage showed anger, destruction, emotion and all around negativity - as is often the case when showing Muslims.

The media shamelessly hyped a minority reaction and portrayed it as a majority one, despite the fact that newspapers and eyewitnesses from countries around the world reported that there were only a few hundred or a couple of thousand of people who were protesting. Anyone who has ever been to Karachi, Dhaka, Teheran, Cairo or Jakarta knows that a few hundred people in a sea of millions is nothing.

The media seemed to ignore the fact that caricatures are meant to be a mockery of something, and thus it was the intended reaction of the cartoons to hurt and mock the central figure of God's faith; to attack the very core of Muslim belief and to demonize the Islamic faith.

It was then reported that it is forbidden to show images of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) or any other Prophet of God; therefore Muslim anger is being stirred by their belief in censorship and opposition to freedom - they completely ignored the fact that it was the intended insult that had understandably raised Muslim passions.

The Western mainstream media regularly paints a horribly misconstrued picture of Muslims as being enemies of progression, which is synonymously seen as “humanness” and the very definition of "good". Muslims are essentially accused of living an antiquated lifestyle, which is projected to be a major obstacle in holding humanity back.

The line of thinking that links hate speech as freedom of expression or democratic is completely false and the exact opposite; the fact is that it is deeply rooted in fascism. The greatest insult to all those who sacrificed much for freedom of speech is to class such hatemongering under the guise of freedom of expression and speech. It is utterly despicable and should be wholeheartedly condemned by all well-intended individuals.

Pattern of Islamophobia

Something that began quite a few years ago was associating the religion of perpetrators of crimes only with Muslims. It seems the title of “Islamic Fundamentalist” in the 1980’s evolved into “Islamic Extremist” in the 1990’s to now being labeled as “Islamist”, a term of the new millennium. Yet why is something like this associated strictly with Islam, or at least more often than not. Why are Protestant fundamentalists called “Evangelicals”?

This is despite the fact that renowned leftist Tariq Ali recently pointed out that Protestant fundamentalism is one of the worst forms of fundamentalism. Protestant fundamentalism, of English or Dutch origin, was responsible for a genocide in North America; it wiped out the indigenous population in the name of progress.

This is something that Muslims have never done nor do they aspire to and ironically, going back to my earlier point, it is the same progress that Muslims are seen to be standing in the face of, owed greatly to their firm belief in Islam.

As well, the Butcher of the Balkans, Slobodan Milosevic, was never seen as an Orthodox Christian extremist, despite the strong Christian tones throughout the genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the early 1990's and then in Kosova in 1999.

Faith-Based Arbitration Law

In Canada, faith-based arbitration law was in place in Ontario since 1991, and many communities were taking advantage of it, including Jews, Catholics and Ismailis. When Muslims arranged to exercise their right under the same law, many groups, both right wing and leftists spoke out against it.

The problem was not the debate between the pros and cons of the law but that the Ontario government succumbed to the noisy minority and ignored the opinion of the silent majority and decided that rather than allowing Muslims to have the same right as everyone else, they would rather remove that right from everyone. That is a very dangerous and utterly racist message.

In Quebec, things took an uglier direction as hate-filled comments directed at Islam and Muslims were made at the government level. An MNA with an Arabic name does not constitute an expert on Islam, Ms. Fatima Houda-Pepin is no exception. Her proclamations in the media that anyone who supports Sharia' is a "fundamentalist" was absolutely despicable.

The case of Paris Riots & Europe

As well, on November 7, 2005 even a relatively balanced Western network like CBC became guilty as the news, “The National”, depicted the rioters in Paris as "mostly Muslim men" which served only to further label Muslims for crimes that would otherwise not have a religious identity had the perpetrators been from another religious background. No categorization of the religious identity of looters in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana was ever made, as the fact that most of the people looting were Christian had no relevance to that event.

In a letter to CBC, Montrealer Adil Siddiqui mentioned that while the rioting is certainly deplorable, anyone with a basic understanding of race relations in France would hardly find this surprising. In a country where visible minorities are systematically marginalized through unabashedly discriminative laws, such unrest was clearly in the making.

The rioting in France had everything to do with discrimination, institutionalized racism, despair and poverty and nothing to do with religion, given the millions of Muslims in the country who were not involved in the unrest. However it was painted as an "Islamic movement" or “Islamic revolution” by many in the media to promote fear in the Western populace and has since been exploited by right wing extremists throughout the Western world.

The situation in France is not different from the rest of Europe; a right wing movement in Denmark officially declares Danish Muslims as a "cancerous disease in the Danish society." The party's spokesperson, Martin Henriksen, said that "Islam, since its beginning, has been a terrorist movement," and he warned against allowing Danish Muslims candidacy to the Parliament or city councils. Henriksen describes Danish Muslim converts as "moral criminals" and takes pride in the fact that "criticizing Islam is the official policy of [his] party."

The hateful rhetoric used is almost verbatim as to what Hindu Nationalists say in their quest of a Hindu-only India, at the expense of exterminating the local Muslim and Christian populace, as seen with the genocide of Muslims in Gujarat state in 2002. It is also virtually identical to what the British National Party regularly proclaims in the UK as well as other fascist political parties throughout Europe.

Religion & Politics

Muslims are condemned in various spheres for being too involved in their religion and mixing religion with politics. Yet following World War 2, in Poland, the Church played a significant role in the struggle against the Stalinist regime. In the West, its role was greeted with enthusiasm. So why is there a double standard when it comes to Islam?

The only logical conclusion one can come to is that Islam definitely poses a threat to the hatemongerers as it talks against prejudice. Islam does pose a threat to capitalism and economic imperialism as it is against greed and hoarding. Islam does pose a threat as its system of governance is just and is the only form of democracy in the truest and most just form. Islam does pose a threat because it talks of human rights and women rights as opposed to mistreating people and treating women like objects.

If these are antiquated values, then I'm proud to say that my middle name is Methusaleh.

Thank you.

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Conclusion/Closing Remarks

Unfortunately, the poison of Islamophobia is hitting us very close to home, as we speak. There was a Montreal Muslim man who was shot dead by police as he returned home from the Mosque after the dawn prayer just a few months ago; the reasoning given by the police has been far from satisfactory.

Since the caricatures issue, there have been at least 4 incidents of Mosques being attacked and vandalized in Montreal alone. There was also the stabbing of a visible Muslim Imam in the metro.

At the University of Toronto, there was an absolutely hateful and misleading exhibition on "extremist Islam" that had the chutzpah to equate cultural perversions like female circumcision with religion.

More recently, not only was there distribution of Islamophobic material on campus at U of T, but there were verbal and physical attacks on visible Muslims, including girls with hijab getting egged. When a protest was launched, University of Toronto president David Naylor dismissed the racial nature of the attacks. This type of attitude will not help.

A specific community, in this case the Muslim one, cannot do it by themselves; they need the help of all of society. Following 9/11, after some Sikhs were targeted by bigots who mistakenly associated them with Muslims, some Sikh groups protested and tried to clarify the distinction between them and Muslims - the objection being that it was the mistaken association that was wrong and thus the message essentially being that attacks on Muslims were tolerable or understandable.

Similarly, after the Ontario government decided to scrap faith-based arbitration for everyone, some Jewish groups immediately demanded why they were being punished for what is commonly perceived to be inadequacies within Sharia (Islamic jurisprudence), as opposed to acknowledging that Muslims are equally entitled to the rights enjoyed by any other citizen.

These type of negative approaches have to stop and every member of society has to start working in a positive and unified way. There needs to be a coordinated effort by all communities to ensure the safety, respect and dignity of all citizens.

Politicians and government officials have to help instead of spewing hate speech and intolerance. They are paid civil servants who are supposed to look after their citizens, not demonize them and make unfair and inflammatory remarks about them. In the case of Ms. Houda-Pepin, I would like to use the example of Haji Malik el Shabaz and ask the house Negro to speak with goodness or not to speak at all.

Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban, the Syrian expatriates minister, in his case that Islamophobia will lead to a 2nd Holocaust, cited the example of how Nazis accused Jews of violence and terrorism. They launched media wars of hatred against their faith and sanctities. The result was the Holocaust; one of the ugliest crimes against humanity.

Dr. Shaaban also proposed that as Europe has recently passed a law that forbids doubting the Holocaust, today it should pass another law that bans racist insults against Muslims and Islam. I second this proposal and hope that the Canadian and American governments implement the same. As Dr. Shaaban said, it is more prudent to prevent the making of a new Holocaust, than to wait for more European apologies to Jews and Muslims alike.

Thank you.