On a phone call the other day with a new friend, Zay, we ended up on the topic of religion. “Did you attend madrasah?” I asked her, referring to the Arabic schools that offer primary and secondary education where subjects like the linguistic characteristics of Arabic and Islamic theology and jurisprudence are taught.

She responded yes, but that she no longer remembers most of the things she was taught there. “I can still write my name in Arabic, I can still write Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem, and oh, yeah, I can still write some of the 99 names of Allah,” Zay said.

Zay’s experience is reflective of people of my generation in the southwestern part of Nigeria, where I’m from. Most only attended madrasah when they were young, before dumping it when they emerged more fully into life. Some, like Zay, told me they ran away from madrasah because their teachers, or ustadhs, flogged them too fiercely. But others told me that they dropped out to focus on their Western education, which they knew was the more economically sound path.

For me, balancing these two schools of knowledge has always seemed normal and natural. Growing up, I attended Western school Monday through Friday and attended madrasah on Saturdays and Sundays. The reason my experience was different was thanks to my father, who spent his life promoting Arabic and Islamic learning in Nigeria. The more I’ve learned about his efforts, the more I’ve realized why it meant so much for him to encourage Nigerians to be proud to speak Arabic, and study at madrasah, rather than let this education fall by the wayside in a country where there is little profitable motivation to pursue it.

In the 1960s, the author’s father established the Arabic studies school at the family house in Iwo. Courtesy of author.

Growing up, I knew, even as much as my mother tried to conceal it from me, that my father had died when I was still in her stomach. As I got older, I started to ask for more information. When I was 10, she pointed at an old landscape photo that hung above the window of our living room. In the picture, my father, a Black, plump man, is standing amid Arab men, smiling. Later, when I was 15, I came across an undated, self-published book my father wrote, titled “The Presence of Arabic Language and the Religion of Islam in Southwest Nigeria.” In the introduction, he observed that Christian missionaries were “snatching the children of Muslims into their English schools in order to get them to abandon their religion and take up their religion or believe in any other religion.”

To understand what he meant by this, it’s important to understand the history of Islam and Christianity in Nigeria. Both are understood to be colonialist ideologies because Nigeria, before it became Nigeria, had its own traditions. But both belief systems have permeated Nigeria thoroughly (today approximately 51% of the country identifies as Muslim and 47% identifies as Christians).

My father was likely writing in the 1950s, at a time when more students began to leave Arabic schools for English schools. The Christian missionaries, my father posited, were able to sell them on a Western education because it promised them more opportunities for advancement. Arabic studies, at the time, only promised to teach a better understanding of how to worship God—seemingly at odds with a growing and modernizing economy. He recognized that if something didn’t change, it would put the study of Arabic and Islam on a path of gradual erasure in the Nigerian educational system. So, he thought: Let me establish something similar in Arabic so as to attract back the Muslim children.

In the 1960s, he began this work, establishing his own Arabic school, which originally started at the family house in Iwo, before it took on a modern classroom-based learning setting in 1962. He called the school, which I later attended, Markaz Shabaab–l–Islam, or the Islamic Youth Center. Other scholars in the region, like Sheikh Adam Al-Ilory, created similar educational programs to build standards and structure around Arabic studies at the time.

The author’s father (middle) with the students of his school. Courtesy of author.

Despite their work, the present structure of the Nigerian education system offers fewer and fewer opportunities for advancement for those who attend madrasah. That’s why, though the number of Arabic students produced every year in its junior schools equals, if not exceeds, the number of students produced in Western schools, the drop-off point that follows for secondary school is steep. Unlike madrasah, Western schooling offers students an opportunity to dream of, for instance, attaining government or white-collar jobs. When students finish madrasah, there should be something equivalent in the system which guarantees them an application to higher institutions, for instance, without sitting for external examinations, to incentivize further Arabic study.

I think about what it would look like if Nigeria valued Arabic education more and rewarded the efforts of those who are still passionate about learning the language. It is not about Islam, the religion, but Arabic itself, because faith is different from knowledge, just as a Western education is different from Christianity. The way I see it, for the Arabic language to have permeated our culture so thoroughly since its introduction in the 11th century through the northern part of the country, disseminating through trade and migration with North African countries like Egypt and Sudan, makes it even more deserving of study. This is especially the case in a complicated region like the southwest, where our Indigenous language—Yoruba—does not share similar phonemes with Arabic.

Though my father’s struggle was a long time ago, his determination inspires me today; he started his Arabic studies at a young age, learning the rudiments of the Qur’an from his paternal grandfather, Sheikh Bukhari. To learn modern Arabic, he traveled to different Arabic-speaking countries. His first trip, to Saudi Arabia in 1942, came at a time when such a trip necessitated taking camels and horses. When such transportation was not possible, he trekked on foot. What made it worth the struggle? I think the answer is that faith and a thirst for knowledge can be chronic.

Before I read my father’s book, I was unconsciously starting to throw myself wholly into Western education, because that’s understood to be the path to thrive in the country. But his writing has helped me recognize how important it is to not throw away his work, and this legacy of being a student of two schools of knowledge.

The final pages of my father’s book include three photographs. The first is a group picture of my father and his first set of students at the Islamic Youth Center. Tiny in the picture, he looks way younger than the photo my mother first showed me of him. The second picture is of him, flanked by older men, robed in Agbada, embroidered, traditional Yoruba attire. All of them wear caps and firmly-knotted turbans. The caption under this picture reads, “a picture taken by friends and well-wishers as send-off for Al-Hadj Ahmad Muhaly Al-Bukhary on his trip to Mecca and some Arab countries.” The third picture is an isolated picture of the first building in the school my father established. A wooden signpost rests against the wall of the building, the door and the windows shut. The caption below the picture reads, “Here is the picture of Islamic Youth Center in Iwo.”

Staring at these pictures, I wonder if my father knew that all his hard work would make a difference. But the more I look, the more I am certain he knew that the school he built would. It was his way of ensuring that he could share his wisdom and teachings with generations to come—offering inspiration to me and others who continue to matriculate through that door captured in the photograph.

The post My Father, the Madrasah, and Me appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

“This is my son’s taqdir,” said my father—my destiny. “If I kicked him out for being who he is, then I reject what Allah has destined for him, for my family.”

My father’s supportive words came eight years ago, when I started gender-affirming hormone therapy after being diagnosed with gender dysphoria, confirming what I had known for a long time: that deeply I have always been a man.

It is a complicated and mixed reality to be queer in Indonesia, the country with the world’s largest Muslim population. But despite some conservative interpretations of Islam here, I have leaned into my faith and my family in order to understand my trans identity, and to practice an inclusive theology.

Because I grew up expected to be a girl by my family and society, I wore a hijab beginning in junior high school. Being dishonest and untruthful to myself was suffocating throughout my childhood—everything felt disoriented. I became riddled with anxiety and depression. I did not know who I was, and I did not understand why my body, my identity, and my faith felt disjointed.

I grew up in a traditional Muslim neighborhood in Java in the 1990s. Since 1973, my family has owned and operated an Islamic school. As a kid I stayed in a girls’ dormitory, engaging in religious activities both in and out of class: memorizing the Quran, performing tahajjud (prayer), attending Islamic studies classes, practicing the rebana (a traditional percussion instrument similar to a tambourine).

Apart from my confusion surrounding my gender identity, I enjoyed my experience growing up with rich Islamic and Indonesian traditions and I felt part of the ummah, the community of believers I called my chosen family.

At that time, people in Indonesia could not easily access information on gender and sexuality. It wasn’t until I attended a local college that I learned to think critically about gender in Islam. This was a turning point, for I started to understand that Islamic theology is not a monolith and to question faith-based queerphobia. Ultimately and inevitably, I began to accept my true gender identity.

Still, with this newfound clarity came more questions. I decided to seek out professional help.

It took me a while to find a queer-friendly psychologist capable of understanding my experience. Several told me I needed to be “cured,” that there was a demonic, monstrous desire within me that I had to dispel.

The legal dictates of queer life in Indonesia are a mixed bag. While same-sex marriage is illegal, Indonesia does not have a law that criminalizes gender and sexual minorities, despite attempts by conservative groups, including after a moral panic in 2016. But in December 2022, under strongarm President Joko Widodo, the newly revised criminal code limited various human rights and outlawed extramarital sex, which critics have argued will disproportionately affect LGBTQ people.

Indonesian families commonly force a therapy called “ruqyah” on queer people, wrongfully citing it as an Islamic practice of conversion therapy. A trans man friend of mine was abused through ruqyah, which used “corrective rape” as a method. The “therapy” was initiated by his own family.

I was scared to come out to my family. I thought my parents would disown me. Instead, things went unexpectedly. After I came out, my mom hugged me and said, “I love you more than before.” And I did not expect my father’s supportive words about my own taqdir.

Not everything went so smoothly, though. My brother and sister tried to discourage me from continuing my transition based on their religious and cultural understanding of how Islam interprets my identity. Eventually we agreed to disagree—except on the fact that we are family no matter what. They disagree with me but they support my right to live my life and to practice what I believe. “My duty as a brother is to support him,” my brother told BBC Indonesia in an interview. “And our duty as human beings is to be kind to one another.”

And my sister provided testimonial support during a court hearing to change my legal name. Indonesian people can submit an application to the local court to change their name and gender as long as their family provides witnesses to support the application—a doctor, a psychologist, and a theologian.  The first successful name and gender change in an Indonesian court took place in 1973 with an Islamic scholar’s support. But even today, many judges reject the gender and name change due to their personal religious views.

When people mocked and questioned my mom for accepting me, she always cited a Qur’an verse (36:82) that translates to: “All it takes, when Allah wills something to be, is simply to say to it: ‘Be!’ And it is!”

She died in 2018. This verse has a special place in my heart—because it shows how Allah created diversity and because it helps me to remember my mom’s love.

If it was not for my family’s acceptance, I would have left my religion. Instead, I am pursuing an academic career in theology and religious studies and have become firm in my faith and thinking about gender diversity in Islam. I always tell people that it is demeaning to believe that God could not create gender and sexual diversity. Faith communities of all kinds—particularly patriarchal ones—do not realize that these queerphobic narratives make their religion irrelevant, inhumane, and unjust.

Those of us who are part of such communities, or who have left them as a result, have let our faith give up when it can be a powerful source of solace and empowerment. It is thus a divine action to reclaim the narrative around queerness and make space for an inclusive theology where everyone, regardless of their gender identity, expression, and sexual orientation, is welcomed and embraced with full dignity and unconditional compassion.

Perhaps this is my taqdir.

The post Destined to Be Trans, Muslim, and Indonesian appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The feminist uprising in Iran—sparked by the beating, arrest, and death in police custody of Mahsa (also known by Jîna) Amini, a young Kurdish Iranian woman accused of “improper hijab”—is generating previously unimagined ideas, images, and possibilities. The current movement, led by women and girls, has forced us all to rethink the glorified figure of the revolutionary as a militant, often militarized, and individual masculine subject. It also invites us to understand the complex history of women’s struggle in Iran—not as counterpoised to or lagging behind Western feminism, but rather on Iranian women’s own terms.

Indeed, this breathtaking moment builds on decades of feminist activism in Iran and underscores the significance of the women’s movement in the country in the decades following the revolution. The 1979 Iranian Revolution, sometimes referred to as the Islamic Revolution, was a broad-based movement against the corrupt dictatorship of the Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, whose U.S.- and U.K.-backed rule had benefited a small and powerful elite and violently squashed dissent. The Shah implemented reforms in health, fertility, and education, but they helped primarily middle- and upper-class women. And so, the revolution captured the imagination and participation of many women, including those who were excluded from the Shah’s economic and social reforms—including rural, working-class, poor, and traditionally religious women.

The revolution also created a vast social welfare state with programs and services that dramatically increased literacy rates and life expectancy for women and men and increased the percentage of women in universities. Iranian birth rates also dropped drastically, by more than 70%—the average woman in the 1970s under the Shah gave birth seven times, a number that by 1985 had dropped to 5.6, and by 2000 had fallen to two. As the freedom of women’s and girls’ bodies is so central to this current uprising, it is critical to acknowledge that the post-revolutionary society invested in conditions that improved many women’s life chances, freeing them from poverty, illiteracy, inadequate healthcare, and lack of education. Nonetheless, these improvements were exacted at a very high cost for women: a discriminatory legal structure that legitimizes patriarchal control over and violence against women and girls.

In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, buoyed in part by their improved health and education, women mobilized to end the legal discrimination that was increasingly at odds with their growing social presence in Iranian society. Generally, an end to compulsory hijab has not been the central or most pressing issue around which feminists have organized. Rather, they’ve been compelled by issues like citizenship status, which until only recently was conferred through the father, rights in marriage and divorce, and custody of children, all of which seemed potentially winnable.

In 2006, following a demonstration in Haft-e Tir Square in Tehran, women activists launched the One Million Signatures Campaign, a local and transnational effort to end discriminatory laws against women, drawing on the unfulfilled promises of the revolution to grant women equality. The campaign sought to collect signatures from one million people in support of changing gender-based discrimination in Iran and demonstrating that these laws were not consistent with Islamic principles. The laws the campaign sought to challenge were mostly family laws pertaining to custody, marriage, inheritance, and divorce—in total 46 articles embedded in Iran’s Civil Code, 22 in the Penal Code, and one Constitutional article used to ban women from seeking the office of the president.

Activists went door to door to gather signatures, organized house meetings and public gatherings, and in general, built a movement based on collective participation and dialogue. In her book about the campaign, women’s rights activist and campaign co-founder Noushin Ahmadi Khorasani argued, “The power of the civil and democratic movement of the Iranian people must come not from blood, clenched fists, bulging veins, and zealous revenge-seeking, but rather from life-affirming endurance, persistence, and thoughtfulness.” Khorasani’s call for these last three traits challenges the ubiquitous figure of the charismatic and lone revolutionary male leader—for instance, Ayatollah Khomeini, who consolidated his power in and after the 1979 revolution and became, subsequently, Iran’s first Supreme Leader—offering instead a politics informed by feminist principles and organizational practices of collectivity, dialogue, and a deep embeddedness in the ordinary lives of people.

The campaign didn’t always succeed at being non-hierarchical—some campaigners received more attention and visibility than others, and class and ethnic divisions did emerge. Still, it was largely characterized by an emphasis on the importance and capacity of each participant, and an insistence on women’s rights as an integral component of Iran’s overall self-determination. Campaigners hoped to present the signatures to Parliament in the form of a bill, but ultimately they were unsuccessful at reaching the one million mark. Despite this shortcoming, the One Million Signatures Campaign and similar pragmatic efforts exerted sustained pressure on the state to address political demands for women’s rights. Moreover, they created organizational cultures based on deeply feminist visions of social change.

Khorasani and her fellow campaign activists also put forward an ethical, feminist, and everyday vision of Islam that stands in stark contrast to the state’s patriarchal interpretations of Islamic law. It is that vision that informs one of the many utterances of the present uprising: that compulsory hijab is un-Islamic, as is the state’s horrendous violence against women. As women in the current uprising defy compulsory hijab, they are not arguing against Islam, but against the conscription of their bodies into gender-differentiated regimes of power. They are making links to the bans on hijab in India and France, as well as to the bans on abortion in the United States. In this sense, they are challenging the binary between the “free” women of the West versus the “unfree” women of Iran, instead crafting transnational connections around the patriarchal and authoritarian attacks on women’s bodies.

This legacy of feminist activism is woven through the current uprising, which also might well be the unfolding of a distinctly new kind of feminist revolution. In the streets, schoolyards, universities, restaurants, shops, and homes of Iran, women and girls are demanding their freedom and autonomy and, in the process, creating relationships based on mutuality, solidarity, love, and care. Unlike their predecessors, however, they are not interested in negotiating within the parameters set by a patriarchal authoritarian state. In the multiple and extraordinary acts of celebration and defiance—removing and burning hijabs, dancing in the streets, eating in restaurants without hijabs, graffitiing walls, kissing in public, creating art, singing, cutting hair, taping sanitary napkins over surveillance cameras—women and girls are occupying space with their bodies and creating a new world of political symbols, ideas, practices, and visions.

This is their moment, no longer deferred to a future that never comes. Whatever the outcome of this exquisite movement, the women and girls at its heart are the new revolutionary figures on the world stage, showing us all a different path forward.

The post Iran’s New Revolutionary Figure Is Feminist appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

One girl, a 3-year-old Australian, has been in the Kurdish-run refugee camp al-Hol and was about to lose her fingers to frostbite because of the lack of heating and infrastructure at the camp. The other Amira, a Canadian, was discovered last year walking through the rubble of Baghouz after both her parents were killed in the aerial bombardment that heralded the end of ISIS’s territorial control. This Amira was also held at the al-Hol camp until international pressure forced the Kurdish authorities to move her to a safer location.

These parallel cases have ignited new debates about what to do with children from war zones, who now find themselves without country, citizenship, protection—or much compassion. The countries from which ISIS children originate are confronted with a grave humanitarian crisis. Leaving children to languish and die in refugee camps and prisons is an unconscionable abuse of human rights. The longer the children remain, the more they could be exposed to trauma and deprivation, and now, even face the threat of an outbreak of the novel coronavirus, all factors compounding the problems of their eventual adjustment. Furthermore, there is concern that children enduring harsh conditions of refugee camps will be even more vulnerable to radicalization in the future.

These children had little or no say in whether their parents took them to ISIS territory in Syria and Iraq. Governments debating whether to allow those children to return must understand what they experienced as a first step to reintegrating them into society. What were the children coerced to do while they were the so-called “Ashbal al Khilafah” or ISIS “cubs,” the name given to them by the terrorist group? What did they witness as observers of ISIS war crimes? And what might have been done to the children themselves? ISIS would not be the first violent extremist organization whose members sexually abused children they recruited.

The historical context of children in violent extremist groups is complicated. The numbers of such children mostly declined in the two decades following the 1996 publication of the United Nations’ Machel report, which described the impact of armed conflict on children. But in more recent years, groups that once avoided using children on the front lines began to revive the tactic in new ways, with children as car bombers and executioners.

ISIS heralded its exploitation of children. In ISIS propaganda, children were featured giving their “about to die” eulogies; ISIS also distributed propaganda videos of executions carried out by boys as young as 10. ISIS’s tactics led to an urgent call by Western governments and security agencies for increased efforts to prevent radicalization and violent extremism across the globe. But so far, there is little empirical evidence for effective prevention of such radicalization and violence around children. Prevention is challenging because armed groups employ so many various methods of indoctrination for children, and use children in so many different roles in conflict. ISIS’s approach to educating children demonstrates the breadth of the challenge.

By 2014, ISIS had assumed de facto control over schools in the areas under its control in Syria, which had been in chaos since its civil war began in 2011. The chaos came to the classrooms. Female teachers were dismissed immediately from all of their duties. While many male teachers remained in their positions, they were forced to teach an ISIS-controlled curriculum to gender-segregated pupils. These lessons included weapons training and intense ideological conditioning in which every element of education was imbued with military imagery to routinize violence. The mathematics textbooks had the students counting bullets and tanks, and students learned to tell time with clocks fastened to bundles of dynamite.

The schools provided ISIS recruiters with the opportunity to scout for talent or specific traits. For example, children with an aptitude for communication were deployed as recruiters themselves, adopting public-speaking roles to conscript other children, as well as adults, on the Dawa caravan. The goal of child recruiters was to engender a sense of pride, prestige and competition among what ISIS referred to as the “cubs of the caliphate” to increase their status. Students earned this “cub” status in one of the dedicated training camps where they learned the military, tactical, and combat skills needed to become a militant.

The evidence of how children were brain washed is chilling. Between May and July 2015, ISIS released three videos featuring children aged between 10 and 15 years old. A video from February 2015 showed 80 children—some as young as 5—wearing camouflage, standing in formation and engaging in military exercises with guns. They were taught how to behead people and use AK-47s. Clearly, ISIS pioneered a form of individual resilience by combining intense physical and military training with deep levels of ideological and psychological indoctrination. The group designed a systematic process of education, religious indoctrination, and physical training to generate competent militants who were not just mindless drones, but who embraced every aspect of its teachings.

Many people have argued that ISIS’s exploitation of children is no different than the past creation of child soldiers in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Darfur. Yet ISIS’s strategic use of child recruits is very different than the way child soldiers in African were employed. On that continent, such children were recruited throughout the 1980s and ’90s not for the future, but for the immediate exigencies. Most of the children fighting in African militias were killed in battle and few survived to progress through the ranks to become leaders.

This difference between the ISIS approach and the African example has important implications for the rehabilitation of former child soldiers. What may have worked for several Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) programs in Africa—trying to transform children’s roles with the aid of family, community, educational and religious authorities—may not work as seamlessly in Syria and Iraq, where the religious and education institutions were thoroughly co-opted, controlled, and distorted by ISIS’s control from 2014 to 2018. As a result of post-traumatic stress disorder, these children will likely lack empathy, suffer from attachment problems, and struggle with socialization.

Given that ISIS indoctrination in many cases started at very young age, the children have to unlearn their knowledge of the Islamic faith that was profoundly distorted by ISIS and re-learn basic life skills. They also should participate in vocational training to facilitate their transition to everyday life. This transition requires a long-term process, longer than the standard three-month rehabilitation program that exists in the Kurdish camps where so many ISIS children go.

If Western countries, human rights organizations, and civil society are to have any hope of reintegrating the children who survived being used by ISIS, there must be a level of coordination and creativity not previously employed in any DDR program. Demobilization of the children demands a multi-pronged approach that combines vocational training, psychological intervention, and religious reeducation to address the trauma suffered by witnessing executions and participating in acts of violence. Normalization will be all the more challenging if members of their own families encouraged or exposed them to violence.

In Pakistan, there exist successful programs to treat children who were members of violent extremist organizations (for example, the Pakistani Taliban TTP). The child’s family is expected to play a positive role in their reintegration. However, in the case of ISIS, the families who encouraged and exposed the children to the violence in the first place are less than ideal. To prevent recidivism or re-engagement, the children might have to be separated from their family members. That is far from standard practice, but there is little that is standard about the challenges of reintegrating children of ISIS fighters.

Mia Bloom’s research is supported in part by the Office of Naval Research “Documenting the Virtual Caliphate” #N00014-16-1-3174. All opinions are exclusively those of the authors and do not represent the Department of Defense or the Navy.

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It opens with a small single-story structure made of chain-link fence standing alone in a flat expanse of sand, crowned by a small dome and a gold crescent moon. A minaret rises above one corner of the building, while a semicircular niche in one wall marks the direction of Mecca. When the call to prayer sounds, a group of men and boys enter. They kneel to pray; then stand and line up against one of the chain link walls, grasping it with their hands and facing directly into the camera. Two men in orange jumpsuits sit in a corner of the building as the sun sets. When the “prayer service” is over, the green lights of the minaret flicker off, leaving only the blackness of the desert night.

The video raised many questions for me: Was Gharem equating mosques with prisons? Was he suggesting that conservative forms of Islam like those supported by the Saudi government confined people in cages of hatred and violence? Or, as one Saudi cleric suggested, had he constructed a beautiful, open-air mosque in an act of great piety and devotion?

It is this uncertainty of the art’s meaning that makes it both powerful—and possible.

Saudi Arabia’s vibrant contemporary art scene will surprise many Americans because its very existence contradicts stereotypes of the country as a breeding ground for terrorists and as an ultraconservative theocracy of rich sheikhs in white robes and oppressed women in black veils. A close look at the work of some of the best young Saudi artists provides us with more nuanced and complex images of a country I’ve been fortunate to visit twice in order to conduct research on Saudi art and Saudi culture more generally.

“Modern art is booming here, ” the director of an art gallery in Jeddah told me when I visited that city on the Red Sea coast in 2016. Drawing inspiration from many different sources—Arabic calligraphy, traditional Islamic art, European high art, and American popular culture—Saudi artists are producing street art, pop art, installation art, performance art, and conceptual art. New art galleries have opened in Dhahran, Jeddah, and even in Riyadh, one of the most conservative cities in the kingdom.

Any attempt to understand contemporary Saudi reality must begin by recognizing that it is not the inevitable product of some immutable form of Islam or a timeless version of “Arab culture.” Rather, Saudi Arabia is the result of relatively recent historical and political events. Among these: the development of its vast oil reserves in the 1960s (which produced previously inconceivable wealth); the 1979 Iranian revolution and, in that same year, the violent takeover of the Holy Mosque in Mecca by Wahhabi fundamentalists (which forced the royal family to reverse its policies of cultural liberalization in order to placate conservatives); and the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, and the controversial American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that followed (which posed a challenge to the kingdom’s pro-American foreign policy).

The Saudi government’s response to these challenges—which threatened the regime by destabilizing Saudi society—has been a precarious balancing act. The Saudi royal family seeks to satisfy conservative religious clerics and their followers on the one hand, and more liberal, reform-minded segments of the population, on the other.

Now, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman has emerged as the de facto ruler of the country, the power behind the throne of his father King Salman. He has adopted new and more aggressive domestic programs, with the goal of loosening the grip that conservative Wahhabi Islam has held on the country since 1979. He recently announced new policies that will allow women to play a larger role in society and diversify the economy by reducing the dependence on oil. But in a nod to conservative forces, he has initiated a more belligerent foreign policy by boycotting Qatar, interfering in the internal affairs of Lebanon, and conducting an increasingly violent war in Yemen. (Other components of Mohammad bin Salman’s long-term plan for the transformation of Saudi society can be seen in his ambitious document Saudi 2030.)

Arwa Al Neami’s “Never Never Land” documents “family night” at an amusement park in Abha. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Among the themes being explored by contemporary artists is the role of women in Saudi society, in particular the consequences of the ban on women driving, which is scheduled to be lifted in June 2018. Powerful examples of this work include Arwa Al Neami’s documentary photographs and videos entitled “Never Never Land,” which show Saudi women enjoying “family night” at an amusement park in Abha, a conservative city in the mountainous southwest. The most striking images depict young Saudi women dressed in long black flowing abayas driving brightly colored red, yellow, blue, and green bumper cars a smooth, black floor.

The title, “Never Never Land,” is not just a reference to the fantasy of eternal childhood imagined by J. M. Barrie in Peter Pan. It also refers to the signs at the entrances to the amusement park rides, reminding women that, “it is strictly prohibited to carelessly lift the abaya and expose your trousers, or to scream during the rides.” “Never Never Land” evokes both an imaginary place where dreams come true, and the very real Saudi Arabia, where women are met with constant messages about what they can never, never do: marry or divorce, open a bank account or start a business, attend a university, or travel abroad without the permission of their male guardian.

Al Neami’s portraits of Saudi women enjoying themselves driving even as they conform to the rules of their society evoke a bittersweet combination of humor, irony, and pathos. Al Neami has written that with “Never Never Land” she wanted to take her viewers with her “to live and feel what it is like for women in the theme park with all its fun and its restrictions.” As Al Neami told me, when we spoke in 2016, “Saudi women have a lot of fun, even though they are subject to social control.”

Ahmed Mater’s “Evolution of Man” shows Saudi Arabia’s complex relationship with its national treasure, oil. Image courtesy of the artist and Pharan Studio.

Other Saudi artists have focused on their country’s immense oil wealth, which has made Saudi Arabia one of the world’s richest countries. Ahmed Mater’s “Evolution of Man” explores his country’s complex relationship with this “national treasure” as both a blessing (bringing tremendous affluence) and a curse (contributing to extreme inequality, authoritarian government, and violent conflict).

“Evolution of Man” consists of five jet black rectangular light boxes hanging next to one another. Each displays a slightly different X-ray illuminated from behind by a bright blue light. The X-rays morph from a sharply outlined gasoline pump at one end, to the skeletal image of a man holding a pistol to his head at the other. In the middle three images, the nozzle of the gas pump gradually turns into a human hand holding a pistol, while the body of the gas pump grows progressively more irregular and curved, until it becomes the X-ray of a human head and torso.

Mater, who has called himself “the son of this strange and scary oil civilization,” discussed “Evolution of Man” with me in his studio in Jeddah. Mater recognizes that his work lies on what he calls “the red line of censorship.” And he knows precisely where that red line is and how it moves.

“When I produced [the piece] in 2008 or 9, it wasn’t easy to show it inside Saudi Arabia. Now I can see they like it more; now I can show it. As the era of big oil comes to an end … my message becomes more acceptable. In a post-oil economy, this work is less controversial. I’m talking about how this kind of economy, this oil-dependent life, is becoming very dangerous. Not just in this country; it’s a worldwide message.”

Abdulnasser Gharem’s “Ricochet” combines images of a jet fighter and traditional Islamic architecture. Image courtesy of the artist and Gharem studio.

The impact of war and violence is another area that Saudi artists are exploring. Abdulnasser Gharem, one of his country’s best-known artists, grew up in the southwestern corner of Saudi Arabia near the base used by the Saudi Air Force to launch bombing runs against Houthi rebels in nearby Yemen. He also went to secondary school with two of the Saudis who participated in the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center, and he served for 20 years as an officer in the Saudi army at a post on the Saudi-Yemeni border.

“Ricochet,” one of Gharem’s most powerful works, presents a frightening image of a jet fighter that emerges like an avenging fury from a turbulent cloud—a cloud of swirling turquoise and gold air currents that eerily evoke the small vaults and domes of traditional Islamic architecture.

The precise relationship between the fighter jet and the mosque is ambiguous. Is the mosque being transformed into a jet fighter? Is the jet coming from the mosque? Has it just flown through (and destroyed) the mosque? Standing in front of “Ricochet,” which was on display in an American gallery, a Saudi visitor observed sadly: “Our culture is not producing beautiful mosques anymore; we are producing jet fighters. Instead of spreading religion and peace, we are spreading terror and war.”

With powerful works like these, contemporary Saudi artists are providing a bridge between our world and theirs. As their art becomes accessible to Western viewers at galleries in Venice, London, New York, and Los Angeles, these artists, as individuals with distinct political voices, are able to convey their insider perspectives on a country that has been defined by the stereotypes of outsiders. At its best, this art transcends, without denying, the differences between Saudis and the outside world, and those within Saudi society itself.

The post What Saudi Arabia’s Vibrant Art Scene Says About Its Internal Struggles appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The fear, suspicion, and ill will, if not active hatred, that Burmese Buddhists bear toward Muslims is pervasive. It is a kind of ideological indoctrination that permeates the society in ways both subtle and overt. Buddhists across Burma (also known as Myanmar)—whether they are Buddhist monks, nuns, or laity—have expressed fear that their Burmese Buddhist identity is under threat of extermination. In Myanmar, it is popularly understood that to be Burmese (the nation’s largest ethnic group) is to be Buddhist. As such, a threat to Burmese Buddhism is seen as an existential threat to the nation.

The escalating persecution and genocide of Myanmar’s Muslim minority, the Rohingya, has deep roots in the country’s Buddhist institutions. The Ma Ba Tha that U Rarzar refers to translates to Association for the Protection of Race and Religion. It is well-known for its community outreach programs, legal clinics, donation drives, and its advocacy for Buddhism. Its membership consists of both monastic and lay Buddhist members.

The Ma Ba Tha is also known for its members’ active persecutions of the Rohingya Muslims in far western Burma’s Rakhine State. The attacks against the Rohingya in recent weeks have aroused international condemnation of Burma’s military government and of Aung San Suu Kyi, the formerly revered Nobel Peace Prize-winning politician who is Burma’s de facto civilian leader.

The Ma Ba Tha has been among the most vocal promoters of the notion of an imminent Muslim takeover in the country. In order to address these concerns, in 2015 the Ma Ba Tha supported the passing of four laws, collectively known as the “Race and Religion Protection Laws.” These laws were specifically designed to control the Muslim population’s growth through regulating birth rates, marriages, and conversions. Yet even with these laws in place, there is a rising fear and anxiety among Burmese Buddhists, who believe that the Muslim threat of extermination is nigh.

In fact, the country’s statistics show no such threat. Home to 55 million people, Myanmar has a population that is roughly 88 percent Buddhist. During the 1970s and 80s, the Muslim population stood at 3.9 percent. In the most recent census data from the Burmese Ministry of Labor, in 2016, the Muslim population had risen to 4.3 percent. However, the largest concentration of Muslims in Myanmar is the Rohingya, who have lived in Rakhine State, on the border with what is now Bangladesh, since the 1800s. While their numbers have increased over the years, their proportion of the national population has remained relatively constant.

If these numbers are accurate, why do Myanmar’s Buddhists exhibit such anxiety and fear?

Part of the answer lies in history. During the British colonization of Burma (1824-1948), there was a steady flow of South Asian immigrants into Myanmar. The British interpreted the developing South Asian Muslim community as evidence of modernization. Unfortunately, this colonial preferential stereotyping also divided South Asian Muslims from their Burmese Buddhist counterparts.

The British occupation of Burma, promotion of Christianity, and the lauding of non-Burmese Buddhists, sparked organized Buddhist responses, such as the Young Men’s Buddhist Association (YMBA), which sought to revitalize Burmese Buddhism. At the same time, South Asian Muslims were derided with the derogatory label “kalars,” due to their religion and darker skin color. Burmese Buddhists viewed South Asians as both polluting the reputation of the country, and as contributing to the eradication of Burmese Buddhists within their own country.

In the 1930s, Burma began boycotting “Indian goods.” Authoritative organizations such as the Legislative Council of the Governor of Burma characterized the continual immigration of South Asians as turning Burma into a dumping ground. The racialization of South Asian Muslims was not unique to Myanmar. In other Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand, South Asian Muslims and Malay Muslims have been labeled with the derogatory term khaek, another reference to skin color.

From the 1930s onward, there were periodic anti-Muslim riots and pogroms. According to Nyi Nyi Kyaw, a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Asian Legal Studies, at the National University of Singapore, who has written extensively on the history of anti-Muslim feelings in Myanmar, the Burmese Buddhist attacks focused primarily on the South Asian Muslims, such as Bengali Muslims. Many of these people emigrated from the Indian state of Bengal and what is now Bangladesh. These attacks continued throughout the Burmese military junta’s reign, from 1962 to 2011.

This background becomes crucial in understanding the power behind the recent Rohingya narratives in the media. When high-ranking Buddhist monks such as U Wirathu remind their Buddhist audiences about the dangers of Islam, and reference the kalars—likening the Rohingya to wild dogs or African carp—they are making use of a well-rehearsed racist narrative. This racism fuels fears of pollution, and stokes the fires of hatred and desire to commit violence. It also allows the Burmese Buddhists to see the Rohingya as the “Other:” a caricature of the foreign as sub-human, with very little moral worth.

This campaign of dehumanization has been disastrous for the Rohingya. After widespread anti-Muslim violence in 2012, the Burmese government placed many Rohingya in camps. Despite severe criticism from international organizations including Human Rights Watch, International Crisis Group, and Amnesty International, the government forced more than 120,000 Rohingya to live in cramped spaces, without sufficient food, water, or medical attention. In 2014, The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof identified these areas as concentration camps and noted that physicians, including Doctors without Borders, were removed from the camps and not permitted to re-enter.

Buddhist authorities have fostered another narrative in Burmese history: the invasion and pollution of the Burmese Buddhist female body. With Myanmar’s Race and Religion Protection Laws, the Ma Ba Tha made women’s bodies the staging ground of a battle for Buddhism. The “Religious Conversion Law” “protects” Burmese Buddhist women from marrying Muslims and converting to Islam. U Wirathu has delivered sermons claiming that the Muslim strategy is to convert Buddhist women, impregnate them, and raise Muslims as enemies against the country. This tactic has not been overlooked by Hindu nationalists in India, who recently made allegations of Muslim plots to “seduce” their women.

Women’s bodies are not only protected, they are revenged in this narrative, with violent retaliation for the “pollution” of Burmese Buddhist womens’ bodies. The most recent chapter of anti-Muslim violence began in June 2012, over allegations that Rohingyas had raped a Rakhine Buddhist woman. Even though there was no legal verification of the attack, the Rakhine Buddhists burned the villages of the Rohingyas. More than 100,000 Rohingya became refugees by the end of 2012—and were soon placed in Myanmar’s concentration camps.

In his book Colors of Violence, Indian psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakar examines the roots of Hindu-Muslim violence in India. He argues that during a conflict, an attack on a female body escalates a conflict and dissolves any possibility of civil discourse. Kakar writes: “Rape makes such interactions impossible and turns Hindu-Muslim animosity into implacable hatred.”

The violence also focuses on Rohingya female bodies. Burmese Buddhist soldiers have raped Rohingya women as a means to exert their dominance. While Buddhist monks like U Wirathu allege that the Rohingya are raping Burmese Buddhist women, there have been steady reports coming from UN-sanctioned shelters of Rohingya women being raped by Burmese Buddhist soldiers. Annette Ekin, reporting from a Bangladeshi shelter for the Rohingya, details 20 year-old Ayesha Begun’s recounting of soldiers killing the men, tearing a baby away from a mother, and gang-raping Ayesha and the other women. The New York Times reporter Jeffrey Gettleman narrates an equally brutal example with a young Rohingya woman called Rajuma.

It would be easy to discount the atrocities taking place in Myanmar as an aberration. Unfortunately, the country’s history offers a very different assessment. Sadly, this is not a new issue. It is but a new chapter of Buddhist-inspired violence, racism, and sexist rhetoric. The actions do not reflect a new development in Buddhism, or a unique strain within Burmese Buddhism.

Whether it is Japanese Zen Buddhist masters, Tibetan lamas, or Sri Lanka monks, history provides examples of Buddhist religious authorities engaging in violence, and supporting wars and conflicts. In addition they have a tradition of methods in which Buddhists support gender discrimination and military forms of governance.

I cannot emphasize enough that these dark elements do not reflect general Buddhist sentiments on a global level. More than 1 billion people practice some form of Buddhism. The vast majority of them actively support peace and contemplative behavior. But that generality does not mean that Buddhists are immune to racist tendencies, acts of rape, and other forms of violence. Instead, atrocities such as those in Myanmar serve as a grim reminder that humankind is vulnerable to vices, regardless of religion or nationality.

The post The Origins of Burma’s Old and Dangerous Hatred appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The dome at the Omar ibn Al-Khattab mosque is largely decorative, as most domes are. Inside a large chandelier hangs heavily from a chain attached to the apex of the dome, crystals reflecting shards of light. Windows situated along the rim of the dome collect sunlight and disperse it throughout the hall. When the Imam finally makes the adhan, the call to prayer, it echoes elegantly throughout the room, the sound magnified as it travels along the arch. But as domes go, it is a modest one, its interior painted in white.

The domed structure predates Islam. It became a dominant form of architecture because there was no wood for roofing in the Middle East in the seventh century. Instead, they used clay bricks to build, arranging the blocks in circles to form a dome. Domes soon became hallmarks of royal architecture, adorning the buildings honored, says historian Oleg Grabar, with “princely presence.” The Islamic civilizations that came to pass would adopt the architectural form for their own holy buildings, inheriting the reverence they once conferred to secular palaces.

Omar ibn Al-Khattab mosque in Los Angeles.

Domes acquired a functional use, helping Muslims orient themselves toward Mecca for prayer. But they acquired symbolic meaning as well, as vaults to heaven. “In actual fact,” writes Nebahat Avcioglu in Identity-as-Form: The Mosque in the West, “Neither the Koran nor Traditions—the sayings of the Prophet—dictates a shape for a mosque or its accompanying structures. Few Muslims would even disagree with the idea that there is no need for a mosque to pray.”

And yet mosques all around the world bear domes. In Turkey, domes behave as lighthouses for roving believers in search of quiet places for prayer. Tourists cluster in the back of mosques to take photos of the dome interiors, painted extravagantly with Koranic scripture and geometric design. In Iran, these patterns coat the dome exteriors, rendered in vibrant colors. In Southern California, too, these domes dot the landscape. The King Fahad Mosque in Culver City is topped with a smaller dome, but its interior is painted decadently with red and white inscriptions and overlaid with gold filigree. The Omar Al Farouk Mosque in Anaheim is topped with an extravagant rose gold dome. A green dome sits on the roof of the Islamic Society of Orange County in Garden Grove. Collectively, these mosques constitute a topography of Muslim-American existence in the Los Angeles, each one a center for faith-based community-building.

The Sultan Ahmed Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey.

I used to go to the mosque with some regularity, and when I did, seeing the dome peek up from the skyline as I approached that corner of Jefferson and Exposition boulevards always evoked in me in singular feeling of belonging. This city is so hostile to so many inhabitants, its extensive sprawl isolating and alienating and its public services meager and allocated selectively. But L.A. had inscribed a place made specifically for me—a Muslim-American—and marked the territory with one of the most recognizable symbols of Islam, the dome, along with its sister symbol, the minaret.

There is power, however minute, in visual representation. Ernst J. Grube, a historian of Islamic art, surmised that this was, in fact, the role domes played in Islamic architecture. “The dome appears to be a general symbol, signifying power, the royal city, the focal point of assembly; it can therefore serve both religious and secular purpose,” he wrote in Architecture of the Islamic World—Its History and Social Meaning.

This is also the case in the contemporary U.S., where domes decorate the tops of government buildings and other secular facilities. I once mistook the domes of the Shrine Auditorium for those of a mosque. Located only a few blocks away from the Omar ibn Al-Khattab mosque, the Shrine, now a popular event venue, has all the signifiers of Islamic architecture—arched doorways, a dome at each corner, ornate geometric etchings. Los Angeles architects John C. Austin and G. Albert Lansburgh wanted the building to emulate a Moorish palace.

The Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.

Before a fire ravaged the building and necessitated a renovation in 1920, the Shrine was called the Al Malaikah Temple. It served as a meeting place for members of Shriners International, a masonic fraternity that has borrowed other symbols of Moorish tradition, all the while distancing itself from any Islamic or Middle Eastern connotations. “The Order of Shriners International, so far as the historical record shows, is an American institution,” they write on their site. “Oriental signs, tokens, and costumes were adopted by those who originated the Order for the sake of pageantry. The jeweled costumes, the picturesque Arab and Fez, all appealed to the organizers and the result today is the greatest Fraternal Order the world has ever known.”

Sometimes I still drive by the Shrine Auditorium and feel a Pavlovian heart-tug at the sight of those domes. The building’s outline has the appearance of something that should belong to me. But its architecture is a facile homage to the culture that gave birth to it. Its domes, after all, are not visible on the inside. There is no adhan echoing within its walls. At the prayer hall of the Omar ibn Al-Khattab mosque, our whispered supplications are dispatched up and collected in the hollow of the dome.

The post The Dome Is Where the Heart Is appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

“Integration is a complex process. It’s not something that immigrants, refugees, or their host communities can achieve in isolation overnight,” said John Emerson, the U.S. Ambassador to Germany, in his opening remarks to “What Does Muslim Integration Look Like?” a Zócalo Public Square event in Berlin on Thursday night, produced in partnership with the Alfred Herrhausen Gesellschaft and NPR Berlin. His introduction kicked off a far-reaching panel discussion, moderated by Rick Stengel, the U.S. Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs.

Stengel, a former managing editor of Time, centered the conversation on integration in Germany, which in recent years liberalized its nationality laws to provide citizenship to the German-born kids of immigrants, with a provocative question. “The old idea of the nation state based on blood is going away. Nations have to be based on ideas,” he said. “So what’s the idea of Germany?”

Before the panelists weighed in, Riem Spielhaus, a researcher at the Erlanger Center for Islam and Law in Europe, gave a brief overview of the present state of Muslims in Germany, and spelled out three basic problems with the way people talk about them. First, she said, was the “Islamization” of immigrants; despite Muslim immigrants’ wish to be identified as German once they gain citizenship, they’re still referred to as Muslim. Meanwhile, non-Muslim immigrants from Poland or the Balkans or elsewhere who might face their own set of challenges now go ignored in a new context that equates, almost by definition, “immigrant” with “Muslim.” Second, Spielhaus said, mosques and Muslim communities themselves are only talked about as sources of alienation, instead of being recognized as facilitators of integration, despite the fact that many provide tutoring and counseling for new arrivals. And third, German law, for all its professions of equality and non-discrimination, still doesn’t treat Muslims as equals when it comes to the practice of one’s faith. The burial of the dead according to Muslim customs, for instance, is not allowed in every German state.

These are three major obstacles that keep Muslims at arm’s length in German culture, Spielhaus argued, and demonstrate the scale of change that still needs to take place: “Integration is never only about the incoming,” she concluded. “It’s also about the society.”

Özcan Mutlu, a Green Party member of the federal Bundestag, or parliament, advocated for the power of symbolic measures. Even though German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been widely criticized within Europe for sticking to open-door immigration policy, Mutlu said Merkel has yet to make welcoming gestures akin to President Obama’s trips to mosques (including to one in Baltimore this week) and his hosting of various religious celebrations at the White House. “It costs nothing to invite religious leaders to the Chancellery and say, ‘You are part of this country,’” he said. “It is not enough to say, ‘Islam is part of Germany.’ I always say walk the talk … People see the signs.”

Cemile Giousouf, also a federal legislator of Turkish ethnicity, aligned with Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, argued that symbols only go so far. “This is all about structures,” she said. “We can build up our own imams [Muslim religious leaders]. And we can also have our own teachers at schools who can teach Islamic education. I think Germany is the country in all of Europe that is working most successfully on these points.” Even amid rising Islamophobia, “90 percent of very religious Muslims are saying ‘Germany is my country,’” she pointed out.

Idil Baydar, an actress and comedian, was particularly passionate on the topic of immigration. “Young [immigrants] want to be a part of this country, but it’s very confusing, because they’re always hearing you can only belong if you deny the identity of your parents,” she said. Born to Turkish immigrants, and a teacher of young immigrants herself, Baydar argued that it is essential for Germany to create a system that embraces minority perspectives. “I had a student whose grades were fantastic. Another teacher told her, ‘Well, that’s fine, now you can apply to Aldi [a discount German supermarket],’” Baydar said. “This is happening so much in German schools. We do not have institutions that will protect migrants.”

One power that’s leveling the playing field, Baydar pointed out, is social media. Baydar herself has thrived on her YouTube channel, and she believes new platforms are giving voice to otherwise voiceless groups. “It’s an advantage, an opportunity for minorities to express themselves,” she said.

Audrey Singer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, compared Germany’s immigration to America’s, noting that America now has the highest proportion of foreign-born residents in roughly a century. Overall, she praised America’s openness, but noted that achieving that openness took generations. “We have a very different starting point than Germany, in terms of the way we think about our nation,” she said, and “[w]e’ve been working on immigration for longer.” She also cautioned against generalizing about national situations when immigration is grounded in specific places, “where people live, work, go to school, shop—all in their localities. Cities and suburbs all have different histories of immigration.”

“This is a defining moment in German history,” Singer said, and added that she believes Germany is on the right track. Major shifts in attitude, and the change to laws that once stigmatized German-born kids as “guest workers” signal big changes in the country’s approach to Muslim immigrants.

Baydar, Mutlu, and Giousouf all shared this guarded optimism. Mutlu declared that integration has succeeded in Germany—but still has a lot of problems to work out. And Giousouf said she sees Germany as in an in-between state: “Being an immigrant and being German are not opposites,” she said. “But it’s also still not normal to be Turkish and in Parliament.”

During a lively question-and-answer period that engaged the standing-room only crowd, Nariman Reinke, a German soldier of Moroccan descent in her 12th year of military service, said: “I’m a German soldier, look which flag I’m wearing.” And yet, the military doesn’t offer the same religious support for Muslims as it does for Christians. “[While deployed,] I’d always ask myself, what if I get killed?” Would a Christian chaplain inform and comfort her Muslim mother?

This is one of the many subtle ways in which everyday life hasn’t caught up with Germany’s loftier aspirations, leading Reinke to wonder: “Why are we only discussing this now?”

Stengel, for his part, was careful to remind the audience that the United States had also been slow in its quest for equality before the law. The Under Secretary cited Martin Luther King Jr.’s description of our Constitution in his “I Have a Dream” speech as a promissory note that has yet to be fully honored—a metaphor German Turks can appreciate.

The post Yes, I’m Muslim—and German appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Widespread protests against German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s generally welcoming policies toward refugees fleeing the wars in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan quickly followed. Germany has taken in more than a million people in the past year, many of them raised with a religion that the Western world has come to associate with extremism and violence. And, like most countries in Europe, Germany still hasn’t figured out the best way to bring them into the mainstream of society.

For some Europeans, the only solution is xenophobia: “Islam not welcome” and “Rapefugees not welcome” have become two popular slogans. But other Europeans recognize that the vast majority of incoming Muslims are not violent extremists or criminal threats, and policies cannot be based on those assumptions. So how can countries balance a need to protect the citizens who already live there and also make newcomers feel welcome and capable of contributing to their new homes?

In advance of the February 4 Zócalo/Alfred Herrhausen Gesellschaft/NPR Berlin event, “What Does Muslim Integration Look Like?,” we asked experts in European politics and culture: What changes in planning, policy, and attitude does Europe need to better integrate Muslims?

The post Europe Has a Problem With Immigrants, Not With Islam appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

In trying to make sense of these attacks, security analysts have looked at the social profiles of the terrorists in London, Madrid, Paris, and Boston. But there is no clear pattern to be discerned. There is no pattern of poverty, no pattern of being oppressed, no pattern of poor education, no pattern of training in terror camps.

But it’s clear to me, as a historian, that what the murderers have in common is a narrative. It is a story they share in which the West has always oppressed Muslims, in which the West is inherently and uniformly against Muslims, in which the West is the very opposite of Islam. I’ve traveled to the Muslim world every year for the last 25 years. In my travels and conversations with Muslims, I have heard that narrative a thousand times.

Fortunately, not every Muslim who recounts the legend that “the West is against us” or “the West is the opposite of us” regards violence as the answer. Many opt to simply ignore and exclude Western culture from their lives, even if they have to live in Las Vegas. But there are others who see the answer in a call to arms. Like most acts of political violence—from Nazism in the 1930s to Serbian nationalism in the 1990s—Islamist violence claims justification through stories of oppression. The violent paint themselves as the truly oppressed: They are not so much fighting as fighting back.

But it wasn’t always that way. In my research on the earliest Muslim encounters with the West, I discovered a journal written in Persian by a young student who, with five fellow Iranians, came to London in the early 1800s. The diary reveals that Muslims certainly have lived peaceably in the West in the past—they admired the London of Jane Austen, and moreover, were admired there in return. It wasn’t necessarily an easy moment to arrive in England—evangelical Christianity was on the rise at that time. But even as they faced challenges, their story offers a counter-narrative to the founding myth of Muslim (and non-Muslim) neo-cons that Islam and the West are irreconcilable. Finding Mirza Salih’s diary felt like unearthing a lost testament to coexistence.

Salih came to England with the others to learn the advanced sciences—engineering, medicine, and chemistry—that the country was known worldwide for developing. He wanted to bring the knowledge back to his home country. At the time, Iran was trying to defend itself from the Russians, who had invaded. Reaching London in the fall of 1815, Salih and his fellow students first struggled to make sense of the culture they saw around them. Women went unveiled and mixed freely with men; moreover, they received education and wrote books that men both read and admired.

But through their own curiosity and the good will of their hosts, the young Muslims came to understand, and then admire, this strange land where people did things differently. They overcame their alarm at this strangeness through a commitment to understanding. Rather than regarding the Christians as their enemies, the students saw them as people from whom they might learn, morally and politically, as well as scientifically. It was much harder to be a Muslim in England in 1815 than today: Compared to the hundreds of mosques in 2015, back then there was not a single mosque in the whole country. But the students still found a way to get along by focusing on what they had in common with the people they met.

A Much-Admired Woman: The Writer Hannah More

One of the most moving scenes in the diary occurred when the students made a kind of feminist pilgrimage to pay respect to the novelist and social reformer Hannah More, the high-minded rival of Jane Austen. As the author of numerous books—some of them huge bestsellers—she appeared to them the epitome of the England that Salih called the vilayat-i azadi, or “land of freedom.” The students praised her learning and library; she gave them signed copies of her books, which they promised to print when they returned home.

On another occasion, they passionately discussed the parallels between Christianity and Islam with the Unitarian minister Lant Carpenter, whom they begged to found a Sunday School for the poor children of his parish. Far from being from narrow-minded promoters of their own faith alone, they saw the value of a Christian education and of Christian values more generally. England’s charity schools were one of the things that most impressed Salih. Through many such encounters, the young Muslims built a different narrative from the Crusades and colonial wars that are only a part of the encounter of Islam and the West.

The fact is that futures are built out of the past. Political and religious violence is based on stories about the past, stories that prompt “fighting back” as the proper response. The same process is true for political and religious compromise. And yet, for Muslims and the West, there are few narratives from which to build such a peaceable future.

This year we’ve been bombarded by stories about people who have been killed in the name of Islam. Even I have personal stories to share about the violence I have seen firsthand all across the Muslim world, from Morocco to Yemen and Afghanistan. But there are enough books about that. There also need to be books about the friendships that are the other half of the historical record. Salih and his friends are important because their story can reassure Westerners that Muslims are not inherently opposed to their way of life; and no less importantly, it can show Muslims how their learned forebears admired and respected Western norms. As a historian, all I can hope to do is show how such coexistence was, and still is, possible.

The post When Muslims Admired the West and Were Admired Back appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.