Archive for the ‘9/11’ Category

My Interview With RT News- I am suspicious of my fellow Muslims at the Mosque

Posted: May 28, 2012 in 9/11, Affad Shaikh, American Muslim, CAIR
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…and the Dhol Bhajaa continues at the after party

Posted: May 24, 2012 in 1L, 9/11, Activism, Affad Shaikh, American Muslim, Asian American, identity, Justice, law school, Politics, Progressive, race in america, Social, Social Media
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(Dhol is Urdu for drum; Bhajaa is Urdu for horn)

I haven’t been as prolifically bloggertastic these past five months but that doesn’t mean that the interweb is not moving forward.  While I was experiencing the throes of my second semester at law school, processing all my misgivings about being a law student and becoming a practicing attorney, I didn’t have much time to process a pretty significant event taking place on the digital platform but now its time to reflect and put to rest a very good thing that happened to me through its discovery.  This is a goodbye and thank you to Sepia Mutiny, a blog for South Asian politics, culture and discussion that ceased its html contribution back in April after 8 years of amazingness.

I was saddened by the news but also compelled to add a few pixels by code to express my sadness a month on.  When a blog shutters its doors very little is heard except for frantic tapping on the plastic tabs of the key board, and then there is forever of silence, except those that relied on it, like me, in whom the blog continues to shape and express itself.  In my frantic typing to catch up with the events that transpired there is a great degree of significance of the gratitude and appreciation I am publicly offering to Sepia Mutiny and the Mutineers.

As a silent observer I was very much in awe of the very existence of a “South Asian American” community, let alone one that shared my progressive world view.  To understand this, please bare with me on my jaunt through my own South Asian identity awakening.  I am a Pakistani, born in Karachi, that knows very little of Pakistan or experience being a Karachiate.  My Pakistani experience was instilled into me by my parents because I was two (maybe three) years old when I came to the United States.  I have known only America and “Pakistan” was a parental experience, a familial relation that was colored by the British Raj experience of my Grandparents.  Luknow and Pune, India were my roots; Karachi, Pakistan was my transplanted experience- the complexity and diaspora of the Partition of India were very much my contextual basis of understanding who I was as a child.  I never quite fit into this South Asian identity growing up in America and by the time I got to High School I was very much American.

I kept a distance from “Brown” people because I just didn’t find myself fitting in, maybe because I didn’t feel a shared experience; my parents weren’t very “Pakistani”.  It was easier to identify as an American until 9/11.   Suffice it to say experience, politics and life choices lead me to embrace Islam and reconcile that religious identity with being an “American” “Muslim” with “progressive values”.  I felt at ease and complete having gone through years of this process.  That was until I lost my Grandmother (Nani, my Mom’s mother) and a few months later my Grandfather (Dada, my Dad’s father).  Around that time I also met Taz.

Taz introduced me to the Sepia Mutiny world and ya’all plunged me into a whole new aspect of my identity.  I saw the light!  I couldn’t reject the history- rich, vibrant and complex; the culture- spicy, wonderful and brilliant; because it represented universal struggles and sacrifices of my parents, my grandparents generation and a BILLION people who had the same sufferings and triumphs I had.   Sepia was the gateway for me to discover that part of me, begin a new course and seek out knowledge from a civilization that represented the cornerstone of humanity.

What a splendid mutiny it has been!  Incredible because i found people that showed me the potential of a dormant part of me and the place I have in this larger community.  A mutiny is a bold risk, borne on the shoulders of honor, duty and values of high moral principles; or its simply a treacherous deed wrought in the deepest most inner ego of greed, desire and selfishness.  This Mutiny has been both and oh so skillfully, like a masterful and dutiful surgeon wielding a blade, balanced between these two sides of the mutiny all these years.  As sad as it will be to say Goodbye, new adventures always begin with endings of some sort.  And furiously on some flickering screen and keyboard a new adventure is forming, a new mutiny is conspiring, inspired by this bold endeavor to mutiny.  South Asian Americans are whispering, clamoring amongst themselves about the rights, honor and empowerment owed to them; about the injustice requiring justice, the dignity requiring a voice, but most importantly for a piece of that damned American Pie that belongs to us.  These are the things yearning to once again be let loose into a unified voice on the web.  i am certain some familiar characters will pop up bringing along new conspirators in this new tale.  As long as things fare progressive, you will find a friend, supporter and fellow mutineer in me!

Good luck to all you industrious mutineers, you “whitish brown” people and may your future rabble rousing be as successful, wonderful, joyous, inspiring and appreciated as this one.

Passing Down the Legacy- You’ve waited so long, excited? (I know I am!)

Posted: December 7, 2011 in 9/11, Activism, Affad Shaikh, American Muslim, Asian American, CAIR, identity, Islam, Politics, Progressive
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Two months ago I shared a trailer for a documentary and told you it will be coming out in December.  Well its bloody December and where is that documentary?  Ah, life, its been keeping me busy, but mostly he folks behind the amazing documentary Mar Kitazawa and Alex Margolin have been pouring over the whole thing working out the bugs and making it purdy.

They shared an extended teaser with me, and I thought, I been such a tease already, why not tease you some more!  Whats incredibly fortuitous about all of this is that today was the 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor.  In fact, if you don’t know this, its also the last official memorial that will be organized.

Each year there are fewer and fewer survivors of the generation that really came to define American Exceptionalism, sadly these are the same folks the Washington crowd wants to eliminate medicare for, keep from getting cheaper prescriptions and allowing their hard work to be decimated by the few and greedy wall street folks who just don’t get what America is all about.

But the thing that is fortuitous is that while its the 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor attacks, it soon will be the 70th anniversary of the Darkest and most fundamentally altering historical developments in our nations history- Executive Order 9066 and the Civilian Exclusion order no. 41.  It effectively stripped American citizens of Japanese ancestry of their rights- yes even their economic rights to own a business, own property, so much for capitalism during a time of war- and put 110,000 Japanese Americans into 12 concentration camps across the arid, rugged inhospitable west and south west.

While the survivors of Pearl Harbor dwindle with each passing year, so do the number of internees.  That is why I am proud of the work I got to do to help preserve American history and remind my generation about a very dark period in America.  While we remember the valor of the Americans in Pearl Harbor, don’t forget the fear and marginalization that was forced onto an entire segment of Americans, those who were as afraid about the war and the impact that racism, exclusion and stripping of legal rights that ensued in its path.

Passing Down the Legacy Teaser from Marissa Kitazawa on Vimeo.

The Bridging Community program means a lot to me, because in a way it was a means for me to help high school kids deal with a lot complexities they are faced with while growing up.  The most challenging I believe is dealing with IDENTITY.  I strongly believe that the challenge we face as American Muslims today, are internal more than external.  The primary challenge being that of our IDENTITY.  If we don’t know who we are, we are just going to be lost among all the other folks trying to find out who they are.  In America’s great tradition of cultural mixing and boiling, identity politics was critical component to ensuring that your ethnic community was able to transcend to the larger share of the American pie.  But entire communities were excluded from even that opportunity through outright racism, as presented by institutionalized slavery, or through legislation as expressed in preventing mixed race marriages or through overt discrimination “Irish need not apply” or covert through discriminatory hiring practices or banks giving out loans (effectively creating what we call “ghettos” today).  Black Power, Yellow Pride, the ethnic explosion of asserting racial identity were effective responses to decades of oppression, repression and marginalization.  As a Muslim community, we walk down that well trodden path, except we got the shoulders of giants to stand on.  But before we can, there are fundamental questions we as a community have to grapple with.

What does it mean to be an American and a Muslim?  How do we demarcate these identities, reconcile them, create separate and unique identity potentially?  What makes you part of the “in” and what excludes you from the group?  Part of this deals with the challenges of group identity and individual identity and the fundamental tension we face as American Muslims is the contradictory external aspects of being socialized in an environment that emphasizes the individual and a internal culture where we have a type of structure- hierarchy- that is often conflicting between culture and religion that emphasizes the collective.  I think its just the tip of the ice berg when it comes to identity, but I clearly see it play out, especially recently I wrote about this at some length with All-American Muslim reality show on TLC.

That is a clear example of individual and group identity tension.  A good preview of the struggle for defining identity and also more importantly the authority within our community to define identity.  So much!  But Bridging is a wonderful program because it explores, challenges, deconstructs all these things and does it by utilizing historical civil rights issues, racism, American Constitution and personal experiences of the students.

Check this video out of the Manzanar Pilgrimage that CAIR did a few years back to get a better scope of what I am jabbering about.

Bridging Community- The Documentary Trailer, 2011

Posted: October 20, 2011 in 9/11, Activism, Affad Shaikh, American Muslim, CAIR, identity
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Passing the Legacy Down Trailer from Marissa Kitazawa on Vimeo.

The Day after 9/11

Posted: September 20, 2011 in 9/11, Affad Shaikh, American Muslim, identity, Islam, Politics
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The day after 9/11.  That first day after where everyone began to grapple with the “meaning” of the new reality we found ourselves in.  Something that I found tugging at my heart in all the reflection was spread through out the twitter and Facebook status world:

On 9/11, I’ll mourn the nearly 3,000 lives lost, over 6,000 injuries, the infrastructural carnage and devastation in NYC, and the humiliation of my country, all perpetrated ignorantly in the name of my religion.

On 9/12, I’ll mourn the nearly 1,000,000 lives, the 10s of millions of injuries, the infrastructural decimation in 3 countries, and the humiliation of my religion, all perpetrated ignorantly in the name of my country.

That really expresses something visceral.  How as a Muslim I am caught in the politics of identity negotiations. It would be simplistic to draw the conclusions that Muslims present a loyalty separate from their American identity.

Thats not what this statement represents, this statement represents the humanity that is espoused by Islam and the human emotions that create conflict and crises within the human psyche.

Leading up to 9/11′s 10 year memorial (not an anniversary) I knew a few feelings that were strong- 1. I have  nothing to apologize for, yet I found the Muslim community going out of its way to overcompensate a message of repudiation of the barbaric attacks; 2.  There was a tense feeling of what “might happen” 3. The country was so focused on the events of that day, but there was no reflection of the 10 years since that day and the costs in so many aspects to us since then.

What was glaringly obvious from all the commentary that I had a chance to read or hear was the significant absence of the lack of value placed in the humanity of others.  I guess I myself presented a reflection that was selfish, and thats why #3 seems to be justifiable response because 9/11 happened to us, and rightly so those who lost their family members have every right to claim 9/11 for what they wish it to be.  But I find it hard to imagine how folks who don’t have any right to the 9/11 pain- directly, and not as a consequence of being an American- can talk from a frame that diminishes, or worse neglects to acknowledge the death, destruction, pain and suffering following 9/11.

The millions that died had very little to do with what happened to America on 9/11.  It seems like their burden is just as great as ours as Americans, right?  What was interesting is to hear 9/11 family members having to tell of their loss, and then have the other individual talk about the “hardship of 9/11″ for them when they were in New York, “oh, they shut down the subways so I couldn’t get home and had to walk for blocks”- really, you’re talking about walking for miles to a person who lost their family member?

If you don’t understand me, then its not your fault.  Its partly how I am wired, the way I was raised.  When I hear a Rabbi recite the last messages of folks in the WTC buildings and the planes to their loved ones- I cry.  When I hear parents talk about what their child meant to them and the significance of their loss, I cry.  When I hear a child talk about how he did’t want his dad to just be another “faceless casualty“, I am significantly affected by that pain.  I empathize very easily with this and I think it’s me having a really emotional constitution.  But I feel that way when I hear that America’s drone strikes in Pakistan have killed 168 children, a report that was shelved in the back of the bus a month ago.  I feel that way when listening to the relatives of Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh man murdered by a Arizonan “patriot” after 9/11.  When I listen to kids who are now amputees and blind and left scarred by our wars- I feel for them as well.

Life is sacred for me in all its form.  Its from the teachings of the Prophet that I understand this – The Prophet SAW said “‘Help your brother when he is the oppressor and when he is oppressed.’ His Companions replied, ‘O Messenger of God, we do understand helping him when he is oppressed, but how can we possibly help him when he is the oppressor? The Prophet replied, ‘Seize him by his hands!’”

I love America, but my love doesn’t diminish my desire to care for other humans, the environment or the betterment of life.  I don’t think there is any reason that this is exclusive or that my “American-ness” is dented or lessened by it, right, that what America enshrined, to be an example for the world to help those who are oppressed, who are rising against tyranny, choosing (hopefully what works for us here!).

Reflection On the Past Ten Years- inadequate, selfish, but real

Posted: September 10, 2011 in 9/11, Affad Shaikh, American Muslim, identity, Islam
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“I got mad respect for you now, you got to be disciplined to do that shit five times a day” exclaimed a classmate who found me with my forehead on the ground in between a stack of dusty library shelves praying.  The secret was out; there was no denying it now- I was a Muslim!  But until that moment of discovery, no one would have guessed, I was just another student.

I am tired of being a representative of an entire religion and the 1 billion people who adhere, relate or find themselves associated with it.

Ten years after September 11, continuously pushed into defining and defending my American identity- initially unwillingly while in college, soon there after professionally as a community advocate working for the “American Muslim” community’s largest civil rights organization- I find being a token Muslim is an unavoidable challenge in contemporary Muslim life.  In my new law student life I didn’t want my religion to define me- Islam, or being an observant Muslim.  I wanted an unqualified or non-hyphenated life.

The challenge in being a Muslim in America today is the dramatic rise in anti-Muslim sentiment in the US.  Dramatic because when only 37% of Americans say they have a favorable view of Islam, as reported by the 2010 Washington Post-ABC poll, it’s hard to feel like you aren’t living life on the defensive.  A 2010 Time Poll says that 62% of Americans claim to have never met a Muslim, yet according to the Post-ABC poll the vast majority of Americans have a negative view on Islam, by extension Muslims.  Feeding into these perceptions is an industry that has honed its skill in propagating misinformation and fear mongering of the Muslim community, buttered by $43 million from seven charitable groups.

If we accept that Muslims are to be feared or at the least have extra scrutiny applied, we still run into a an obstacle- who is a Muslim?  The fundamental question of what a Muslim looks like or behaves like is not easily answered.  The American Muslim community is the most diverse religious groups in America, in fact the larger part of the community is made of “indigenous Americans”- Caucasians, Blacks, second and third generation Muslims and a growing Hispanic convert community.  A large percentage of the immigrant Muslim community and their children are actually South Asian.  The very notion of what it means to be an “American Muslim” is a raging battle within the diverse Muslim community in America.

Inevitably, Muslims are a minority with all the historical race issues associated with minority status.  Today it’s not just about “driving while black” but “flying while Muslim”; not just asking about “where you from?” but “how do you feel about the Iraq war?” or “how often do you pray?”  The $43 million dollar anti-Muslim, or Islamophobia, industry feeds into the mainstream those stereotypes and vilification of Islam and Muslim rooted in 17th century crusader lore.  The fact of the matter is as a minority community that’s constantly in the news and in discussions, being Muslim makes you inherently a representative of a billion people from around the world who practice Islam.  That reality is unavoidable.

Being perceived within a stereotypical frame is not a unique American experience; in fact for me it takes on the form of “tokenism.”  America is such a diverse country, on the one hand the argument goes, see we have our “Muslims” but on the other hand, there is this constant stream of “can we trust them?” vibes.  I am reminded of Mr. Miyaga from Karate Kid, who represented all the stereotypes of an Asian man- subdued, quite, passive, if not even submissive, but explosive in the dangerous arts of kick-your-ass-dom.  The undeniable underlying message is the myth that Asian men can’t be trusted, because they never seem to be what they appear to be.

Todays hate sludge fund pushes organizations like ACT! for America and Stop the Islamization of America or SOIA (both organizations have been named hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center) to fuel similar perceptions of Islam and Muslims, not just Muslim men.  The question their supporters pose first is “where are the moderate Muslims?”  But in their view there is no moderate Muslim, because Islam teaches its followers to lie and be conniving in order to perform “stealth jihad” to take over America from within.  Stealth what, don’t ask me I only learned about it from the ACT! experts?!

That’s the pervasive reality of the Islamophobia industry.  This same industry has tried to destroy the fundamental freedoms we hold dear in this country- particularly freedom of religion.  Everyone was focused on Park 51 Islamic Center, but few knew that some 47 American Muslim communities from places like Alpharetta, Georgia to Temecula, California also faced a concerted, organized and stiff opposition to their freedom to worship (no doubt funded by the $43 million dollar sludge fund for hate).

SANE even published a “Manifesto on How to Stop a Mosque in your Community” to organize opposition against local Muslim communities from building houses of worship.  The common charge of locals was this notion that “we can’t trust what’s being taught” or “they could be a secret training camp for Al-Qaeda.” There is no way to appease hatred, bigotry or ignorance then to marginalize it to the fringes of our society.

Ten years after 9/11 I mourn with my fellow Americans, but I offer no apologies because I have nothing to apologize for.  I, like all Americans, was brutally attacked.  I refuse to let that day dictate what it means to be an American, or the values we as Americans cherish.  Further, that day or subsequent (or prior) atrocities in the name of Islam do not represent Islam.  Ideology might spawn from within Islamic theology, but ideology spawns from all sorts of secular and sacred sources, Islam is no more or less prone to the usurpation of its tenants by those who claim to adhere it, than Americans (Christians?) are today for slavery.

Ten years after September 11 does not make the reality of our situation any easier to cope with.  We face challenges to our security in more forms then we did after 9/11- our economy, Internet rights, individual freedoms to name a few.  Part of the reality for me, happens to be the unavoidable circumstance of a maligned representative of Muslims in America. Getting caught praying by a fellow classmate might lead to awkward conversations, but that’s one less American who hasn’t met a Muslim.  That is one more American who can reject the politics of fear, bigotry and ignorance gripping our country and eroding its very essence today.  That is a means of stepping up to the challenge and taking it head on.