The Raven Foundation

My wife and I sat on the couch as we watched the first episode of TLC’s reality show All-American Muslim.  We were both excited to see how the show would portray life for Muslims living in Dearborn, Michigan.  But my wife was really excited.  Earlier in the day she saw a commercial for the first episode.  She laughed as she explained the commercial to me: Suehaila Amen, a woman on the show, was flying to Washington DC.  While in her seat, a woman sitting behind her said:

See that veiled woman? I’m very uncomfortable.

To which Suehalia responded,

Then you get your ass off the plane because I have a meeting to get to to educate people like you.

It was a very human response.  And that’s the purpose of the show.  The website for All-American Muslim claims, “Each episode offers an intimate look at the customs and celebrations, misconceptions and conflicts these families face outside and within their own community.”  The show follows 5 families composed of members who are remarkably diverse in their religious devotion and life’s passions.  There are conflicts on the show between husbands and wives, parents and children, coaches and athletes.  But despite those conflicts, the people on the show are devoted to their families and to their community.  In this sense, these Muslims represent the best that America has to offer.

They even like football.

But not everyone is enamored with All-American Muslim.  The Florida Family Association, a Christian group in Tampa Bay whose goal is to improve “America’s moral environment,” has led a campaign to urge companies to pull advertisements from the show.  The FFA makes the old and tired scapegoating claim that you just can’t trust Muslims.  On the top of their website they claim that “TLC’s ‘All-American Muslim’ is propaganda that riskily hides the Islamic agenda.”

Here’s the thing:  In order to “improve” our moral environment, humans have frequently gone to the old standby solution: Find a common enemy.  The FFA sees a problem with morality in America and needs to find someone to blame for it.  Muslims, especially since 9/11, are an easy target. So, the FFA points a finger of accusations against All-American Muslims and advertisers are following their lead.  On their website, the FFA claims to have influenced 65 companies to pull their advertisement from the show.  Only one company, Lowe’s, has actually admitted to pulling their commercials.

What I find interesting, and also sad, is that finding a common enemy is a contagious, escalating cycle.  When one group invites other groups to join them against a common enemy, that “enemy” will usually respond by inviting other groups to join them in uniting against the group that accused them.  And that’s what is happening.  Articles like “Say No to Bigotry and Lowes and Support ‘All-American Muslim,” “Corporations Pulling Ads From All-American Muslims Are Engaged in Jim Crow-Style Discrimination,” and “All-American Muslim Meets an Un-American Advertising Pullout” are directing us to view the FFA, Lowe’s, and any other advertisers who pull ads from the show as our common enemy.  This is interesting to me because all humans find a sense of unity through scapegoating.  As much as I hate what the FFA and Lowe’s are doing, I’m not taking the bait to make them into the enemy.  The enemy is the spirit of scapegoating.  The enemy is finding a common enemy to unite against.  That’s the problem.  The FFA and Lowe’s decision to follow their scapegoating lead against All-American Muslim are only symptoms of the disease.  But let’s not fool ourselves.  The reverse is also a problem.  As much as I detest the FFA and Lowe’s’ decision to boycott American Muslim, any boycott of the FFA and Lowe’s is mirroring the same scapegoating mechanism.

This is a deadly trap.  What I find so important in our religious traditions is that they are honest about the human tendency to scapegoat (which is why there are violent passages in our sacred texts), but they also critique that mechanism.  It is vitally important that we acknowledge and affirm Islam for doing just that.  When someone verbally or physically attacks you, the Qur’an says to, “repel evil with what is better and your enemy will become as close as an old and valued friend, but only those who are steadfast in patience, only those who are blessed with great righteousness, will attain such goodness” (41:34-35).

It takes courage to repel evil with what is better.  To repel an act of scapegoating with forgiveness makes us vulnerable.  But that’s exactly the type of courage we need from our religious, political, and economic leaders.  Maybe then we and our enemies “will become as close as an old and valued friend.”

For more on Islam, see Adam’s Islam 101 series by clicking here.

Adobe Flash Player not installed or older than 9.0.115!

Adam discusses the importance of Ramadan. Ramadan critiques the popular misunderstanding that the God of Islam is a God of power, might, and conquest. Ramadan claims that the God of Islam is the God who cares about the poor, hungry, and marginalized of culture. Muhammad critiqued the pre-Islamic Arabian view that Fate was in control of life. The Jahaliyya, or Age of Ignorance, believe fate controlled who was rich and powerful and who was poor and marginalized. There was little incentive for the rich to care for the poor. Muhammad challenged this view, and fasting during the month of Ramadan forces Muslims to identify with and care for the poor, weak, and hungry.

I’ve had a lump in my throat since I heard about the terrorist attack in Norway. Youth, for God’s sake. Talk about literally killing hope. For Americans dealing with the aftermath of our own terrorism, the implications are chilling, for this was not an Islamic terrorist. This was a Norwegian killing his own in order to promote his political agenda and he took inspiration from American right wing ideologues he found online. The New York Times printed this quote from his 1,500-page manifesto: “The time for dialogue is over. We gave peace a chance. The time for armed resistance has come.” Just when you think you know who the enemy is and where he is hiding, someone destroys your certainty.

One thread of the attempt to make sense of all this is very similar to the aftermath of the Arizona shooting in which 6 people were killed and 14 wounded, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, by Jared Loughner. Who or what could inspire such a grotesque act of violence? It’s a natural question, and the right one to ask in both cases. The finger is being pointed at far right politicians and bloggers who proclaim that European identity must be defended against an onslaught by Islamic immigrants. For an excellent overview of the state of Islamophobia on both sides of the Atlantic, I encourage you to read Roger Cohen’s article Breivik and His Enablers. Cohen well chronicles why overt fear mongering against Islam on the part of the Christian West should remind us of facism and we should be chastened.

There’s just one thing I’d like to add to the debate. What should be making us queasy is a weird paradox: Christian and Islamic extremists insist that there is no way to compromise or co-exist with the other yet they seem strangely similar. It certainly gave pause to Thomas Hegghammer, a Norwegian terrorism specialist, who was quoted in the New York Times as saying that Breivik’s rhetoric reminded him of bin Laden’s and other Al Queda leaders. He said of Breivik’s manifesto, “It seems to be an attempt to mirror Al Queda, exactly in reverse.” Hegghammer misses that this is no conscious attempt on Breivik’s part, but an odd characteristic of enemy relationships. The more each side insists on its absolute difference from the other, the more the two sides mirror each other becoming what René Girard calls enemy twins. Enemy twins only appear different to each other – to outside observers who have no stake in their fight all differences vanish. Why? Because while the adversaries only hear their own voices loudly rehearsing the litany of abuse they have suffered at the hands of their opponent, all observers see is that they share a belief in the legitimacy of violence and that shared belief speaks much louder than the supposed differences between them.

The problem is actually much bigger than these particular enemy twins. The problem is the universal belief in violence as a legitimate method to achieve ends, even good ends like peace and security. The entire world is captive to a culture of violence that traps governments and good people everywhere into a perverse logic that allows us to justify our own violence while condemning that of our enemies. It is no wonder the Breivik or Loughner or Bin Laden and his deputies believe in violence, or that Americans can support drone attacks and military campaigns in which thousands of innocents, including youth, are killed. We cannot condemn them without falling under the same condemnation. If we are searching for the inspiration for acts of terrorisms, the truth is closer to home than we might want to admit. The enemy, it turns out, is us.

The only way to distinguish ourselves from violent extremists is to become truly different than they are which means we must abandon our faith in violence at both a personal and institutional level. Americans must demand that our government abandon faith in military means to achieve our ends. The Raven Foundation is inviting Americans to take the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks to begin a year long examination of what it would mean for our nation to continue to pursue peace, justice and democracy for the world, but to do it by peaceful means. Please join this important conversation by going to our website, Honor Their Memory – Be a Hero for Peace to see what we can do to get the lumps out of our throats. Peaceful people need to find our voice so we can be heard in political conversations. Be a hero for peace – start today.