Burning Korans = Not A Good Idea

One of my readers recently asked me how Moroccans were reacting to the controversy over the proposed mosque/Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero. Honestly, no one has mentioned it since I've been back in Morocco, and I haven't brought the subject up. But I have been following the ruckus online and have been disappointed with the way the debate (shouting match?) has developed.

Since my audience is generally Western, let me start with something unfamiliar: a video making the rounds in the Francophone Muslim world that a number of my Moroccan Facebook friends have posted on Facebook.



The video begins with footage of Muslims dressed in Western style, cheering Western sports, and playing Western-inspired game shows like "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" while these words appear (in French):

While we sing, dance, eat, and imitate their civilization...

...look what's happening in their civilization.

It then flashes to a CNN interview with Pastor Terry Jones, whose church has decided to burn Korans in commemoration of 9/11 and protest against Islam. As the Facebook posts testify, this is far from helpful to relations between Islam and the West. The American interviewer is obviously hostile to such a stupid idea, and Pastor Jones cannot respond satisfactorily to his line of questioning. More text appears:

While a Muslim scholar does his duty...

The video then cuts to footage of Khalid Arrachid, an Islamic scholar who was apparently jailed for "defending the prophet in the Muhammed cartoon controversy". I can't find anything online to confirm he was jailed, but in this video he describes the Danish cartoons of Muhammed and then cites a Koranic passage about being "severe with the disbelievers" to demand violence against those who mock the prophet. He decries the shame and disgrace Muslims suffer, calls Muslims to show their manhood and defend the prophet, mocks the "effeminacy" of Europeans and their "freedom of expression", and laments the lack of visible leadership of Muslim nations.

After lamenting the imprisonment of this Islamic scholars for "doing his duty", the above video ends with seemingly threatening footage of a man with a gun trained on someone off screen. The last words to appear are:

Islam is a religion of peace but not of humiliation.

It's no viral sensation, but the video does have over 11,000 views now.

A Facebook group entitled "tous contre l'acte de bruler le coran le 11 septembre 2010" ("Everyone Against Burning the Koran on September 11, 2010") was started in opposition to this proposed Koran burning. Currently it has 13, 799 members. The comments on the group's page range from exhortations to defend Islam's honor a la Khalid Arrachid to quotes of Koranic ayas (verses) to prophecies that Pastor Jones and company will burn in hell to pleas for non-violence because violence would only confirm American stereotypes about Islam. It's a mixed bag, but at least some of it is quite troubling.

I draw a few observations from this Facebook activity:

1) Moroccan Teenagers Have a Liberalized, Western Outlook
Moroccan teenagers' desire to defend their religious tradition is only one of their many interests and concerns, and a good number of them actually conflict with the message of the video. The majority of items they post on their Facebook walls represent the Westernizing tendency the video decries: Western sports stars and celebrities, American music videos, and quizzes about love and sexiness. They may strongly and defensively identify as Muslim, but the way their interests and concerns are unconstrained ideologically or legally is not that different from the situation of Westerner teenagers. As time goes on, these tendencies will only strengthen. The Arab world is westernizing faster than many realize.

2) Islam Currently Has Illiberal, Violent Tendencies
The maker of the YouTube video obviously does realize how quickly this westernization is happening, and he is opposed to it. Khalid Arrachid is not alone when he opines on the victimized state of Muslims, the effeminate nature of Western culture, the manly necessity of defending Islam and its prophet, and the possible violence such a defense will require. Now his cries may fall on deaf ears among middle and upper class Moroccan youth because they are financially and politically secure, but they still are deeply angered by insults to Islam and to Mohammed. Moreover, immigrants in Europe (and to a lesser extent the United States), citizens of less developed Muslim countries, and lower class Moroccan citizens often do not share that security, and so their anger is more likely to express itself violently.

3) There Are Legitimate Questions About Islam In Pluralist Societies
These phenomena raise serious questions about how such an Islam can fit into pluralist, secular societies. Those on the right tend to ignore the nuances of these questions as they raise voices and money in crude and xenophobic populism. They gloss over cherished American values like religious freedom, freedom of association, and property rights. But those on the left similarly ignore the illiberal, violent tendencies of Islam as they work themselves into an indignantly righteous rage against the other side's crude, xenophobic populism. They fail to understand how religion works, the historical development of Western political-religious involvement, and, in their intense emotional obsession with this moment in time, the broader sweep of the complicated process of assimilation into the American mainstream.

If Catholics in America are any indication, the prognosis for a future assimilation of Muslims into an American consensus is good. Pre-Vatican II and pre-JFK, there were some very serious questions about whether Catholics, with their illiberal tendencies, could function well in a pluralist democracy. But after theological recognition of pluralist democracy and after a charismatic leader who made necessary concessions to an already existent American consensus on religion and politics, Catholics gradually became a surprisingly normal and uncontroversial part of our nation's political and religious mosaic.

Protesting an Islamic cultural center directed by a Muslim leader who goes on speaking tours for the U.S. government and burning Korans are most definitely not intelligent, serious ways to engage these questions, but even if the overly mediatized, populist right cannot address them as they should, they remain important questions. And until they are resolved as they were with Catholicism half a century ago, they will continue to inspire inarticulate and emotional resistance to Muslims.

4) There Is A Denial About The Islamic Inspiration For Terrorism
Partially as a reaction to the hateful and xenophobic reaction against Muslims as a whole, both secular Westerners and Muslims comfortable in liberal, secular society tend to ignore that attacks such as 9/11 are in fact inspired by a certain interpretation of Islam. Instead, there is a tendency among the secular elite to attribute terrorism's motivation solely to economic and political considerations.

While European colonialism of the Arab world (including Zionism), cozy relationships between the United States and Arab governments, and continuing difficult economic circumstances play important roles in Islamic terrorism, the religious motivation cannot just be swept aside. This form of terrorism is inspired, justified and praised by Muslims with a certain historical and religious hermeneutic...a hermeneutic that will not just go away with a wave of the magic wand of secular liberalism.

Of course, neither can Islam be treated as a monolithic entity, as too many conservative commentators tend to do. Only a small minority of Muslims share Al-Qaeda's ideology, although a good many may sympathize at least in part. But that doesn't detach Al-Qaeda's hermeneutic and actions from the Islamic tradition. "Islam is a religion of peace but not of humiliation", a mantra shared by most Muslims, necessarily implies violence and resistance towards liberal, pluralist Western governments at some point in time.

Since the Enlightenment, for better or for worse, religion in the Western world has been viewed more or less as an internalized set of personal convictions and beliefs. This necessarily conflicts with a religion like Islam that is less focused around orthodoxy (correct belief) than around orthopraxis (correct action). European Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan has proposed an interesting solution to the conflict. Time will tell if his or some other synthesis will prevail in the Muslim community. In the meantime, non-Muslim Westerners are unlikely to have any positive influence in those debates, but, at the very least, we can recognize that they are happening.

American Study Abroad Ctd

The New York Times piece I commented on yesterday provides more fodder for the "other great ways not to understand a culture" file. Jilian York analyzes the journalist's framing of the story:

The problem, then, is not Americans, but the Times itself. Its journalists are not the average American; they can afford to, or are sent to, places like Cairo from where they report on stories like this. They experience it firsthand, and yet every time, come back in shock at how “strange” and “different” the Arab world is.

One need also ask: If this is how the Times reports on a subject like studying abroad, how can we possibly expect them to be relevant in their news coverage of the Middle East? How can we expect these journalists, who can’t seem to move beyond how “exotic” the Middle East is, to be fair and balanced in their reporting of it?

In my opinion, we can’t. The New York Times has a massive budget (at least in comparison to other media outlets) and has reporters in numerous places across the region. It can, and does, cover stories that other outlets can’t or don’t. And it has a few good journalists who seem to “get” the region.

At the same time, its MidEast bureau shows consistent bias toward Israel and the United States’ occupation of Iraq.

Sassa, one of Jilian's commenters, sees careerism at work:

But the students – I hope most of them *don’t* end up as journalists. From the handful I’ve come across in recent years, many of them seem to be war tourists travelling to the exotic Arab World to confirm their stereotypes, who return to the EU/US to write about the region as ‘experts’.

It all seemed to change in 2003. Before the Iraq war, many of the students I talked to were genuinely interested in immersing themselves and learning about Syrian/Jordanian/Lebanese culture. They had passion for the region, they didn’t just see a career opportunity.

The Gaza Flotilla Seen From Morocco

As in much of the world the intercepted Gaza-bound "Peace Flotilla" has also been in the news in Morocco the past few days.

The first time I heard about the event, I didn't really understand what was going on. As I was leaving the cafe in the morning, one of the waiters approached me and started talking to me quickly. All I could understand was the word "Israel". He kept motioning towards the TV, where Al-Jazeera news plays non-stop except when soccer games are on. He didn't seem happy, but that's about all I could gather.

Only when I returned home and read the news online did I realize what had happened. Israel had boarded a ship in international waters and killed a number of activists who were trying to break Israel's blockade of Gaza in order to deliver humanitarian supplies. The following coverage of the event from sources on three continents has been interesting.

Some American sources are reflexively pro-Israel to an extreme, and some American and European coverage was quite balanced. I suppose it goes without saying that Arab media is reflexively pro-Palestine. However, the coverage by Al-Jazeera has been in general quite good. They had reporters aboard the flotilla and were able to give a perspective other news organizations couldn't. Of course, on the other hand, they were also confused about the legality of boarding a ship trying to break a blockade in international waters.

Naturally, people who only view one source of media are convinced everyone else is misled. When I spoke with the same waiter a few days later, I explained that I didn't understand what he was referring to when we first spoke, but that since I had read much about the subject. His first question was a suspicious one: "But from American news?" I told him I read a little from a number of sources and he seemed slightly more satisfied.

The general perception here tends to be that American (and to a lesser extent European) media is controlled by Jews and gives a biased picture of the Middle East. Without getting into conspiracy theories, I will concede that, for whatever reason, you are much more likely to see scenes of Palestinian suffering in the Arab media than you are in the United States. And the lack of such stark imagery does have its effect. Most Americans in their support of the much persecuted Jews fail to realize the plight of the Palestinians.

In one of my classes, we were studying passive modal statements ("...should be done...", "...must be established...") So I asked my students to propose what should be done in response to Israel's raid. The responses were tepid at best. My Moroccan students, like much of the Arab world, are disgusted with the impotence of Arab governments and world deliberative bodies to do anything to relieve the suffering of Palestinians. So while they had a very strong moral outrage at the events, their answers lacked an earnest belief that anything they proposed could actually happen.

As is usual, I just let them speak, correcting their grammar errors. But at the end one student asked me what I thought. I hesitated at first, but then I explained my view. I pointed out that I thought Israel's response was disproportionate and politically counter-productive, but that the activists had attacked the Israeli soldiers--they were not Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr.'s by any stretch of the imagination. I also tried to draw attention to the issue of the blockade itself. If you admit that Israel has a right to keep Hamas from getting any sort of building materials because they can be used for purposes of war, then Israel clearly can stop boats. That's what a blockade is all about. However, if the blockade is unjust (and it does keep an awful lot of things out of Gaza that Palestinians could use for non-military purposes), then breaking the blockade is morally permissible and then we can start talking about the way it should be done. My students didn't seem to agree. They were pretty sure anything the Israeli military did was unequivocally wrong. Eventually I had to just cut off the discussion and move on to a boring grammar exercise.

This event had personal ramifications for some Moroccans. One of the teachers at the center had a brother-in-law aboard another ship of the flotilla. A handful of other Moroccans were on board and were received back in Morocco later in the week with a hero's welcome.

On Thursday, a noisy march a few streets away disrupted my night class. The only other time I had heard such a din was after soccer games. I asked my students what was up and they told me it was a march in support of the Palestinians. I nodded my head and continued my regularly planned lesson.

Geopolitics According to Moroccan Students

In general, Arabs love to talk about the United States and its role in the world. So when we started the unit on "would have", "could have", "should have", I thought it would be a good opportunity to talk about the relationship between the United States and the Arab world. How could the relationship have been better? What should have happened?

Surprisingly, most of my younger students couldn't care less. The issue isn't as pressing as it is in other parts of the Arab world; they live comfortably now. Solidarity is a bit passe. When they expressed their dislike for the topic, I asked for alternative topics. The most popular one was "relationships between parents and children".

Below I have posted the essay of one of my older students.

A long time ago, the relationship between the U.S. and Arab world was good until the problem of Palestine appeared. Every day Palestinians suffered and [were] murdered, while the whole world was watching those crimes without moving a finger.

Another thing, since the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001, the policy of U.S. has changed, They consider every muslim as terrorist and they succed to convince the American citizens by using a dangerous weapon is the media of course.

By consequence, the U.S. military attacked Iraq and pretended to spead peace and achieve democracy to Iraquians but their major target is to control the sources of petroleum.

After that, the U.S. Army attacked Afganistan and tried to get Ossama Ben laden dead or alive, the friend of yesterday becomes the enemy of today, during the cold war between U.S. and URSS, the U.S. gave him weapons to fight against Russians but the things has totally changed now, he becomes the terrorist number one in the world.

In my opinion, the U.S. should be more [fair] about the Palestinian issue. It should also be aware about the danger of nuclear weapons in the middle east.

As a conclusion, I guess the relationship between Arabian governments and U.S. still strong but the citizens are disappointed about the U.S. policy.

This essay pretty accurately represents the average Arab's understanding of these issues. This student simplifies the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Iraq war, and how the media works a bit, and he has a mistaken chronology of Iraq and Afghanistan, but otherwise he has a fairly decent understanding of world geopolitics. In fact, I would go so far as to say that he understands some of these issues much better than the average American.

As an Arab and a Muslim, of course, he is well-informed about the post 9/11 profiling of Muslims and the situation in Palestine. The average Arab has seen hours upon hours of footage from Palestine, but Americans rarely get a glimpse of Palestinian suffering. Unlike many Arabs, I am not a fan of conspiracy theories to explain this phenomenon, but the fact is: it exists.

Notice also the student's distinction between Arab governments and Arab citizens. The governments are allies of the U.S. The people (or the majority that cares enough to pay attention), strongly dislike (hate, detest?) American policy in the region.

And that's why this essay is important.

It demonstrates the average Arab's understanding of geopolitics. And when enough people believe something, exaggerated or true, it has profound effects in the real world.

Morocco on European Levels

An alert reader points out this BBC graphic, which shows how Morocco is the only African country with internet usage comparable to Europe.

Morocco is the only African country with Internet usage over 31%, putting it in the same category as the developed world. Other Muslim countries making the cut include Iran, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Malaysia.

They join almost all of Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, Russia, Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, and Colombia.

La révolution DARIJA

If you are American, imagine for a moment that all the billboards along the US interstate system are written in Middle English. Further imagine that all the written advertisements that you daily encounter in stores, newspapers, and around town are in that same Shakespearean English and those that aren't are instead in French.

Fortunately for you, in this imaginative world, television advertising is in modern day English, but that's about it.

You have now glimpsed in part the Moroccan linguistic situation.

Until just a few years ago all advertising was either in standard Arabic or in French. If the French connection sounds a bit strange to you, it's not. Almost a millennium ago, England was colonized by the French-speaking Normans for 200 years, irrevocably altering the Germanic tongue we now call Old English. Even after they left, French was still the language of prestige--what you spoke when you wanted to impress your boss, a girl or a literary audience. Today Morocco is no different. French colonialism has irrevocably altered Moroccan Arabic and Moroccan culture.

English-speaking peoples have had a good 700 years to move past these societal effects of French colonialism, but in Morocco, French language and culture still maintain a prestige that neither their own tongue (Moroccan Arabic, or Darija) nor standard Arabic (Fus-ha) holds.

Since the advent of Moroccan advertising in the 1970's, French and standard Arabic have been the languages of choice. The language that people actually speak in their homes and even in most places of work was used only in television advertising.

Now, though, that is beginning to change. For the growing lower middle class, written advertisements are being produced more and more in Darija, a phenomenon that was discussed in the February 20-24, 2010 issue of the Moroccan weekly Tel Quel.

At the end of the day most Moroccans are still swayed more by French, but this shift is yet another movement towards a greater usage of Moroccans own language.

True Variety Radio

Most American radio stations self-identifying as "variety radio" don't hold a candle to the true variety on Moroccan airwaves.

While having breakfast this morning, I was listening to a Moroccan radio station. When I started listening, it was a news report in Fusha (standard Arabic). Next, the DJ started talking in French about various songs and local events, dropping in a few words in Darija here and there. Then the station's jingle came on. The jingle itself is half in French and half in English. The first part is in French and the last half brags about the station's "music and news".

The first song that came on was "The House of the Rising Sun", performed by the Animals. Then there was a Beach Boys' song. A little later, there was a contemporary French song.

After "You Can Call Me Al" came on, I turned the radio off. Less than thirty minute: news, talk, and music in four languages.