Now we seem headed toward a rhetorical 9/11.
A zero-sum collision of views more imbued with heat than light over that proposed Muslim complex near New York’s Ground Zero. The one with the secularly-sanitized name, Park51, that threatens to further polarize this politically-partisan society as well as ratchet up the global confrontation between Islam and the West.
The one that would be the ultimate desecration to some of those who lost family at the Twin Towers conflagration. The one that would symbolize defiance of those who pervert Islam. The one that would stand as a testimonial that the United States isn’t just mouthing platitudes when it says it’s steeped in religious tolerance.
But, no, the $100-million, 13-story Park51 should not be built two blocks from where 3,000 people cruelly perished at the hands of murdering Jihadists. In fact, Daisy Khan framed it appropriately. She is the head of the American Society for Muslim Advancement and the wife of Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam behind the plans for the Park51 Islamic center.
“We know that we have the right to do this,” she said. “But what is right for the larger community, or the larger good of the larger Muslim community?” Valid questions and pertinent context. And better than a Newt Gingrich or Sarah Palin sound bite.
This is no place for a constitutional pyrrhic victory: One that could be claimed by the tolerant as well as the terrorist. Best to err on the side of respect and sensitivity for victims and their families. That is no sign of disrespect for Islam. And it’s not as if New York City is mosque challenged; it has more than 100.
However well intentioned, Park51, the erstwhile Cordoba House, two blocks from Ground Zero is the wrong place to exercise an acknowledged right. No less than a Shinto shrine in the shadow of the USS Arizona Memorial.
Because you can doesn’t mean you should.
Mr.Smith:
Thank you for sharing. It must be beyond frustrating for mainstream Muslims to suffer the stereotypes of Islamic branding — and witness all that is bad that is done in the good name of Islam.
But other questions persist as well.
Why is it that mainstream Islam is so easily perverted into an anti-infidel, uh, crusade? Why is it that mainstream Islam practitioners — including governments and government-controlled media — don’t loudly and universally rally to out, condemn and purge those in its midst who misrepresent the otherwise good-faith religion?
Whether it’s Old Testament outrages or Sharia affronts, when religion is the societal driving force, it leads to zero-sum confrontations with non-believers. Followers can cherry pick the Koran as easily as the Torah and the Bible.
Sure, separation of church and state is not for everyone. But the separation of live and let-live should be a concept we can all welcome.
Thank you again for being on the side of those trying to bring sense to a world imperiled by all that has historically been done in the name of religion.
Sincerely,
Joe O’Neill
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subj: J-I-H-A-D is Not a Four-Letter Word
Dear Mr. O’neill,
Ask almost any American how they feel about the words; ‘Islamist’ or ‘jihad’ and the reaction will likely include either or both of the following adjectives – angry and fearful.
Our limited understanding of Islam or what it’s like to be a Muslim in the western world – or anywhere in the world, for that matter – makes us more susceptible to the negative branding associated with the these words as they relate to the ongoing War on Terror.
Author and practicing Muslim, M. Salahuddin Khan explains the impact our perceptions are having on Muslims in the thoughtful commentary pasted below. In it, he explores the simple fact that perception is not always reality. I hope you will consider sharing it with your readers.
To learn more about Khan or to read his blogs, visit him at http://www.sikanderbook.com.
Thank you and best regards,
Lonnie McCullough
Account Manager
Smith Publicity
New Jersey • New York • London • Los Angeles
856-489-8654 x 318
[email protected]
JIHAD IS NOT A FOUR LETTER WORD
The old saying that ‘perception is reality’ has never been truer in today’s brand conscious world.
Just look around you, travel anywhere, watch TV or surf the web, and you’ll notice the omnipresence of brands. Why do we have them? After all, we’ve done without them for most of human history. As the industrial revolution brought with it the ability to replicate products, selling to individual customers gave way to the advent of marketing to several and ultimately, courtesy of Mr. Henry Ford, to the masses.
So what does a brand do? Its foremost job is to communicate a “package” of meanings in a coherent image by being invested with that meaning by clever marketers. If a brand meets or exceeds expectations, it reinforces the claims of the marketers. If not, it falls flat on its face. What marketers want us to feel is the reassurance of a promise proclaimed by the brand.
But a moment of quiet reflection at our own thought processes in response to brands reveals something else. By compressing complex meanings into a single image, a brand effectively invites us to suspend further analysis in drawing the reassurances of its inherent promise. Take a look at a bare can of fruit or a soda with no labels and not only don’t you know whose product it is, but you don’t even know what it contains. Put a brand label on the same can, say, a white rectangle with the word “Cola” and it won’t engender the same feeling as a well known brand label.
So why is this important beyond the obvious points made above? The core issue is that the “suspension of analysis” that a meaning-laden brand is able to convey leads to all kinds of consequences.
Today, America is locked in a struggle called the global War on Terror. Leaving aside the evocative nature of such a label, American leaders have been at pains to reassure the Islamic world – Mr. Obama with perhaps a little more conviction – that America is not at war with Islam. I believe this to be true. However, everything we’re doing to prosecute that war is being “branded” in ways which convinces most of the world’s ordinarily moderate Muslims otherwise.
Consider the words, Jihadist and Islamist. No confusion about the images there, and why should there be? Here’s the rub. To Muslims, the word Jihad is an extremely positive concept. That’s not because we’re manic hordes armed to our teeth with weapons and malice who delight in deploying both, but because it’s a word signifying a valiant struggle against evil, and yes, in some of its uses it refers to a war, in every way similar to the war implicit in, say, the theme of “Onward Christian Soldiers”.
“Islam” as a word hardly bears explaining for its positive connotation for Muslims. Even “fundamentalist” is seen in many moderate Muslim circles as a positive reference to a steadfast, resolute resistance to dilution of Islam’s core principles by so-called “reform.”
The reason these word choices are significant is that when we label a person a Jihadist, we’re conveying nothing evil or negative to virtually the entire Muslim world. Rather, a positively imbued word is being projected upon some of the most heinous people in existence. So, instead of achieving alignment with the Muslim world to join the war on terror, we have drawn suspicion that despite overt claims to the contrary, the not so subtly hidden agenda is anti-Muslim. Moreover, many in the otherwise moderate Muslim world, while not themselves terrorists, certainly feel inclined to rush to the defense of “fellow” Muslims when the believe their ‘Islamic’ identity has been questioned.
Little wonder we draw rolling eyes of skepticism from Muslims the world over when they hear that America is not at war with Islam. The foregoing “Jihadist” example is even more transparently obvious when we use the word Islamist. So, the generally accepted wisdom of “divide and conquer” has been turned on its head. Instead of driving a wedge between the terrorists and mainstream Muslims we have used labels to remind each what they share in common.
To drive the point home, consider a band of murderous terrorists who, acting in the name of, say, unorthodox beliefs about Jesus Christ (peace be upon him), decide to blow up buildings and kill innocents and proudly proclaim they’re acting in the name of Christ. Now consider the non-Christian world labeling them as ‘Christianists’. To virtually all Christians we will have conveyed nothing of the inherent evil in the terrorists but used the positive attributes of Christianity and projected them upon such bad people. Most Christians would take offense that such terms do nothing to draw the distinction between positive Christian icons and evil people. Others might see an attack on such ‘Christianists’ as an attack on themselves or their beliefs. Any way you cut it, the label didn’t help anyone but those using it to separate their own side from the bad people.
The effect of this kind of ‘branding’ works in both directions. As much as Muslims are either offended that their positive icons are being used to describe evil people, or feel more alignment with terrorists because of a “shared” positive icon, the reverse is also true. Most Americans today have no doubt that Jihad is a negative word. They’ve been conditioned to see it through only the filter of the “Jihadist” brand. Indeed, the label’s origin is likely to be borne of a residual negative attitude to the word and therefore seemed appropriate to apply to such people. Likewise, even though rationally we may get that mainstream Islam is not the same religion as that of Islamist terrorist versions, viscerally the labels are quietly doing their work eroding such separations. The result is a difficult and dangerous polarization, enlarging the gulf between people and making mutual understanding a receding possibility.
M. Salahuddin Khan is the author of Sikander. Visit him http://www.sikanderbook.com.