Stirring up hate will do America no good

It seems that we have a new contender for smearcasting.com's list of prominent Islamophobes.

If ever there were a poster boy for Muslim-bashing hate-speech published in the mainstream press, Tunku Varadarajan's unreconstructed Bharatiya Janata Party-like far-right mantle would hit it right out of the park.

The New York University (NYU) Stern School of Business professor on Monday wrote an article in Forbes magazine describing in vivid terms the threat of simply being a Muslim in America.

"The difference between ‘going postal' in the conventional sense,'" writes Varadarajan, "and ‘going Muslim', is that there would not necessarily be a psychological ‘snapping' point in the case of the imminently violent Muslim."

Varadarajan then takes the reader on the extraordinary leap into self-delusional psychiatry; "Instead, there could be a calculated discarding of camouflage — the camouflage of integration — in an act of revelatory catharsis."

It gets worse; Varadarajan is an expert on the malaise of psychological warfare; "In spite of suggestions by some who know him that he had a history of ‘harassment' as a Muslim in the army, Major [Nidal Malek] Hassan did not ‘snap' in the ‘postal' manner."

Apparently the professor is also privy to the classified and as yet ongoing outcome of the FBI investigation (how much hope does even that hold, given the recent FBI assassination of Imam Luqman, one wonders).

Worse still are the horrid conclusions he arrives at — prescribing inequality for Muslims: "But like all values, the appearance of equality is not infinite in its appeal — especially if it flies in the face of common sense and self-preservation."

Advocating lynch-mob style injustice, he encourages vigilantism. "A short time after the shootings at Fort Hood, President [Barack] Obama asked us not to jump to conclusions. To many Americans, this was a grating request."

What next; ‘Going Hindu' equated with adopting BJP slogans and gunning down children in Gujarat? One would hope not.

‘Distorted reading'

The ire raised towards Varadarajan was nothing in comparison with that facing the Dean of NYU Stern School of Business, Thomas Cooley, in his stock response to complaints: "Your complaint is duly noted. I read Varadarajan's article very differently than you did. I think it is a very distorted reading to call this hate speech. Read it carefully. In any event I would not censor it or rebuke him for having written it. We are an institution that treasures free speech and open dialogue. You need to think more about what this means since you don't seem to understand it."

Perhaps both Forbes (with its huge presence in the Middle East and North Africa) and NYU are guilty of double speak, which is often, paradoxically, levelled at Muslims — taqiyyah in its most absurd form; i.e. we'll take your money, we'll bolster your education system, but at home in New York we'll stump up when it comes time to persecute your religious identities.

Hard to miss

The irony of Muslim countries supporting US institutions that uphold the so-called right to persecute Muslims in the West is hard to miss.

What about those in America who are subjected to the vitriol and day-to-day hate crimes? My cousin is an American Muslim soldier in Fort Hood and I'm left wondering how she is faring.

I've spent the time since the Fort Hood shoot-out interacting with the American Muslim activists leading the efforts and seen them go into overdrive, under immense pressure and stress to respond, seeking solutions that mirror the experiences seen at the Muslim Council of Britain in the 1990s.

American Muslims are caught in a quagmire. Stand down and conscientiously object along the lines of Mohammad Ali and risk court-martialling and the stigma of jail and ‘fifth columny', or parrot military loyalty towards what the world knows is genocidal aggression. Are these the only options? Come on America!

The only real response is not to engage in Muslim-bashing-taqiyyah but to look deeper, search wider, and struggle farther to find ways in which ordinary lives of American Muslim or atheist soldiers, or of Iraqi Muslim or Christian civilians are once again deemed sacred.

It is surely the height of patriotism in a democracy to stand against what John Pilger has described as a genocide in Iraq. And this is what America must internalise. Obama seemed to do so when he realised that attacking others can only make Americans of all kinds — Muslims and non-Muslims — more vulnerable.

Major Hassan, if he in cold blood was proved to have attacked others, is living proof of this. America will see more and more splintering and fragmentation at the sides as long as it continues its aggressions against Afghanistan and Pakistan. NYU's Varadarajan and his ilk should not issue war cries, any more than Muslims should respond to them.

Habiba Hamid is an independent writer based in Dubai.