Super Moderator
Location: essex ma
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muslim for a month
in some recent posts in the context of debates about the "war on terrorism"
i found myself linking the war on terrorism to domestic racism. by coincidence, i ran across the following on al jazeera's english website--an article/advert for a new documentary from morgan spurlock, the guy who made "supersize me"---read on:
Quote:
Being a Muslim for a month
by Kris Evans in the United States
Thursday 07 July 2005 9:20 AM GMT
From eating McDonald's to being a Muslim for 30 days, a new documentary series by Morgan Spurlock of Super Size Me fame delves into the lives of Muslims in America.
For 30 Days, a Christian from the Bible Belt lived with a Muslim family in Michigan. The result? Heated arguments, religious confusion, and the start of a beautiful friendship.
Spurlock single-handedly took on the world's largest fast-food chain with his first documentary, Super Size Me, which saw the filmmaker eat nothing but McDonald's for 30 days.
The documentary was nominated for an Oscar in 2004, and although they deny the film was a motivating factor, McDonald's has now stopped the Super Size option in the US.
"After the test screening of Super Size Me, we knew we had something great that tapped into something visceral and personal in people," says Spurlock over breakfast in a Los Angeles diner.
"We don't get any happy Muslim stories. We don't get 'Here's a great thing a Muslim did today' and I wanted to do a show that would demonstrate what it is like to be a Muslim in America"
"We don't get any happy Muslim stories," he says. "We don't get 'Here's a great thing a Muslim did today' and I wanted to do a show that would demonstrate what it is like to be a Muslim in America."
Experiment
The stage was set: Spurlock would take an ordinary American - if such a thing exists - and have him live with a Muslim family, observing all their customs, for one month.
Finding the participants was not easy, Spurlock on one hand being careful to weed out those looking for Reality TV-style fame while at the same time trying to find a Muslim family who did not feel they were walking into a trap.
"As with most communities, the Muslim community is very tight knit and very protective, especially in post 9/11 America," says Spurlock. "They scrutinise any journalistic integrity and you can see why, with what's happened."
The guinea pig in this experiment would be Dave Stacy, a 33-year-old insurance sales executive from West Virginia.
Stacy is described in the show as a "beer-drinking, pork-eating American". As a practising Christian with no knowledge of Islam, Stacy admitted - before embarking on his 30-day journey - that he had felt reassured after 9/11 when he saw Muslims profiled at airports.
When Spurlock pressed him for what came to mind when someone said the word "Muslim", Stacy replied: "A man with an AK-47, at war with someone."
Mutual scepticism
The scepticism was not only on Stacy's side.
"We were worried that this was someone very opinionated about Muslims," says Shamael Haque, a first year resident in neuropsychiatry at Henry Ford hospital in Detroit.
Haque, along with his wife Sadia Shakir, who attends the Thomas Cooley Law School, put these reservations aside and opened their Dearborn, Michigan, home to this stranger from the Bible Belt.
"I had a lot of sleepless nights, the days were 15 hours of heated debates, often about global economics and politics, something which - like many Americans - I don't know that much about. It was information overload"
During his 30 days, Stacy lived, ate and prayed with his Muslim hosts.
He also read the Quran, tried to learn Arabic and visited a halal slaughterhouse. In one very tense scene, he went out on to the street to petition Americans into signing a bill to stop the profiling of Muslim Americans.
Looking back at the experience, Stacy recounts how he would often hear shouts of "Faith Traitor!" and "American Taliban!", while in Muslim areas he was approached by people who, as Stacy says, "thought the whole show was a conspiracy to make them look bad".
Traditional dress
Stacy was dressed most of the time in a salwar and kurta, something which initially bothered Sadia Shakir Haque.
"I did think 'Why are you wearing this clothing when none of us wear this?' It's not realistic," she says.
But the producers were adamant that Stacy make this change in his dress as well as grow a beard. Their insistence on this point certainly created a more eventful trip to the airport where Stacy, dressed in his new Pakistani attire, felt what many Muslims have gone through at airports since the September 11 2001 attacks on the United States.
He was stopped for the first time in his life, searched, and stared at throughout the journey.
Stacy laughs, looking back on the flight. "A lady sitting next to me on the plane was so nervous she couldn't knit," he says.
Discussions
During the daytime, while the Haques were at work, Stacy took regular meetings with a local imam. But their sessions did not produce the clear answers and explanations Stacy was searching for and he started to look elsewhere.
Enter Ameer, his Arabic teacher. In the fun and relaxed atmosphere of an English speaker trying to get his mouth around Arabic pronunciation, Stacy made his first tentative steps into understanding the religion.
"Ameer initially was there to teach me Arabic but it was so much more," says Stacy. "It's so strange for me, as fond as I am of him, to think that he was one of the people I was vilifying. It's really opened my eyes."
That is Stacy talking now, but at the time the amount of new information was almost too much.
"I had a lot of sleepless nights, the days were 15 hours of heated debates, often about global economics and politics, something which - like many Americans - I don't know that much about. It was information overload. At night I had time with my thoughts - thoughts I had not had before."
In one scene, Stacy is clearly taken aback to learn that Muslims are part of the same monotheistic tradition that he follows himself.
It seemed to highlight simultaneously how little most Americans know about Islam, and how much work American Muslims still have to do in taking control of their image.
"We need to make a better effort in how we are represented," says Sadia Shakir Haque, echoing a point she made in the documentary. "We take it for granted living in Muslim communities, and we must not forget how we are perceived by those outside it."
Sadia Shakir Haque's experience living in Miami's melting pot, where it was common to see Jewish women - not to mention the Catholic nuns on her college campus - covering their hair, helped her give some context to Stacy while educating him on the hijab.
"I explained to him that Muslim women were continuing that sense of modesty."
September 11
A dinner discussion where Stacy questioned why Muslim Americans had not come out more strongly and condemned the attacks on the World Trade Centre created one of the most illustrative scenes on the divide of viewpoints.
"There are deeper issues about Muslims in that region (Middle East)... We can't just say these people are crazy. We need to ask what would make them so crazy that they would do that"
Shamael Haque, Stacy's host for 30 days, speaking about 9/11
Shamael Haque's view was that in post 9/11 America the key questions were simply not being asked.
"There are deeper issues about Muslims in that region, and what would lead a person to do something as irrational as that. But if people do ask questions, then they are viewed as unpatriotic," he says.
"We can't just say these people are crazy. We need to ask what would make them so crazy that they would do that."
Stacy was clearly uncomfortable facing up to this question.
"I had these feelings that I was being unpatriotic," he says, but adds that since the documentary was finished he has found himself engaging in political discussions more often.
Friday prayers
Stacy's other major obstacle was praying in a mosque, something which he said at the start of the documentary he would not be willing to do.
Spurlock says: "For me the best line of the episode is when Dave is conflicted about going to his first juma and he is overcome with emotion and goes to Imam Husseini and says, 'I just don't know if I believe this, what you're saying.' And the imam replies, 'David, you're here to learn, not to believe.'"
A participant in another of Spurlock's documentaries in the series quit before the end of his 30 days, but Stacy lasted the course, eventually taking part in the prayer at the mosque.
Stacy and the Haques have kept in contact and are planning on meeting this summer.
"We expected him not to know the principles," says Shamael Haque. "But he was very receptive, open to learning."
Harsh words
Where the rest of the nation is concerned, Spurlock ends with some harsh words.
"We can't demonise six million American Muslims. There are 270 million Americans out there and the last time I checked, Timothy McVeigh wasn't a Muslim. So I think that we just need to preach a little tolerance"
"We're a country where 15% have passports. We don't think beyond our borders so why should we think beyond our own towns? We are in this protective world. We're a nation that doesn't read newspapers, we don't read books.
"For me, that's why a show like this is important, to get some information out there to educate people. We can't demonise six million American Muslims. There are 270 million Americans out there and the last time I checked, Timothy McVeigh wasn't a Muslim. So I think that we just need to preach a little tolerance."
Aljazeera
By Kris Evans in the United States
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source: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exer...8FF3390E08.htm
there is much of interest in the above which goes beyond the pr function of the article as a whole:
1. the apparent lack of information about the most basic features of islam abroad in the states--i find the quote from dave stacy taken from the start of the adventure that defines a muslim as "someone with an ak-47, at war with someone" to be a dispiriting reflection of the way in which islam is framed by the major media apparatus in the context of marketing bushwar as if it was a rational response to 9/11.....
2. the kinds of questions that seem obvious to be asked about 9/11 and other such attacks from the two commuities being brought into contact across the theater of this film are also quite interesting: the question of analysis, of understanding why somone would undertake an irrational action on the order of flying jets into the trade center seems evident, fundamental--from this viewpoint, everything about the bushresponse to 9/11 is beside the point, was beside the point, remains beside the point.
what i find really quite interesting is stacy's response to encountering this way of thinking about the bushwar on "terror"--he thought he was being unpatriotic by considering such questions.
this is like peering down into a vast tunnel of structuted idiocy--and it confirms (in a backhanded way) the otherwise bizarre tendency in right ideology of the past few years--the equation of learning, the desire to learn--when it comes to the main signifiers that prop up the bush administration--with weakness. this boundary--the one that distinguishes "patriotic" and "unpatriotic" in the view of someone like stacy is interesting: what is this boundary? where does it comes from?
or: how did we arrive at a place where wondering about context as it shapes/impinges upon political action something that could possibly be understood as "unamerican" or "unpatriotic"? what is the inverse of this? ignorance=patriotism? where did this come from? i am genuinely bewildered by it...
i am not making any claims about the film--i havent seen it, this is a bit of buzzcreation--but nonetheless these issues are quite interesting and i for one am glad they are being raised.
another index of the racist effects of the way in which this administration has chosen to frame its Adversary:
Quote:
US group says anti-Muslim crimes up
by
Thursday 12 May 2005 5:01 AM GMT
California recorded the highest number of anti-Muslim crimes
A leading US Islamic civil rights group has released a report that indicates anti-Muslim hate crimes in the country have increased by half in the past year.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations' (Cair) study - the only annual investigation of its kind - outlined 1522 incidents and experiences of anti-Muslim violence, discrimination or harassment in 2004.
The figure, according to Cair's Unequal Protection report published on Thursday, is 50% higher than an assessment made in 2003.
The rights group said factors contributing to the sharp increase in reported incidents included the lingering impact of post-9/11 fears, increased awareness of civil rights issues in the Muslim community and a general increase in anti-Muslim rhetoric.
Other factors for growth in the number of incidents may also include an increase in local Cair chapters reporting cases and alleged abuses associated with the implementation of national security policies.
Worst offenders
Ten states accounted for almost 79% of all incidents reported to Cair in 2004, with the majority of attacks reported in California, followed by New York, Arizona, Virginia, Texas, Florida, Ohio, Maryland, New Jersey and Illinois.
By far the greatest increase over last year, in both real and proportional terms, occurred in the areas of unreasonable arrests, detentions, searches/seizures, and interrogations.
"These disturbing figures come as no surprise given growing Islamophobic sentiments and a general misperception of Islam and Muslims"
In 2003, complaints concerning law enforcement agencies accounted for only 7% of all reported incidents. In 2004, however, these reports rose to almost 26% of all cases.
But not all the news was bad. There were drops in certain categories from the previous year's report.
For example, workplace discrimination complaints constituted nearly 23% of complaints in 2003, but dropped to just under 18% of total complaints in 2004.
Complaints involving governmental agencies decreased from 29% in 2003 to 19% in 2004.
Report comments
Cair Legal Director Arsalan Iftikhar, also the report's author, said the findings "come as no surprise given growing Islamophobic sentiments and a general misperception of Islam and Muslims".
Iftikhar said the phenomenon of Islamophobia would be addressed at a Cair conference, called Islamophobia and Anti-Americanism: Causes and Remedies, to be held on Saturday in Washington DC.
Cair Executive Director Nihad Awad added that the rights watchdog called on "President Bush ... to once again speak out against Islamophobic attitudes".
Awad also called on Congress to hold hearings on the findings of Cair's report.
Cair began documenting anti-Muslim incidents following the 1995 attack on the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The council is America's largest Islamic civil liberties group, with 31 regional offices and chapters nationwide and in Canada.
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linked from the story above....
what do you make of all this?
caveat: i know, i know--the folk from the right are going to see aljazeera linked and immediately revert to repeating the rumsfeld platitudes about it that you see relayed and ridiculed in "control room"--that al jazeera is somehow "unamerican" because it does not operate within the frame of the american press pool, does not simply focus on questions framed in such a way as to reasure americans of the rightness of everything they think, say and do. i have thought this accusation bullshit from the earliest phase of its repetition...i doubt seriously that anyone from the right will have anything substantive to say or post about al jazeera that goes beyond these television cliches about it. ....
[[note: my apologies for the typo in the thread title--drinking my morning coffee while typing has some consequences it seems.....]]]
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
Last edited by roachboy; 07-27-2005 at 06:28 AM..
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