Food For Thought For Those Worried About Islam Smothering Feminism
Posted: March 27, 2012 Filed under: Political | Tags: Feminism, Homosexuality, Islam, Religion, Secularism, SexGenderBody, Taliban 1 Comment »Excerpt from: http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/4506/the-uprisings-will-be-gendered
A second prevailing mode of framing, gendering, and politicizing the uprisings is the fear of Islamists. As Islamists gain ground in Egypt, Tunisia, and Syria concerns over their potential gender policies continue to fester. While such concerns and interest are certainly important, why do they gain such momentous traction only when it comes to Islamists? After all, have non-Islamist Arab political parties and powers had such wonderful and progressive gender policies all this time? This selective fear of Islamists rests on familiar assumptions about Islam (scary) secularism (redemptive and progressive) and other religions (huh?).
Thus the victory of Islamists in Egypt’s elections is cause for anxiety (about what they might do) among international feminists and gender activists, in addition to groups and individuals such as The Center for Secular Space and Hillary Clinton. But spitting on eight-year-old girls or stoning women (yes, stoning) who violate the gender code of Orthodox Judaism is a headline, not a discourse on women’s rights and patriarchy in Israel or in Judaism. But I am sure that if women were stoned and/or spit on in he streets of Homs for not wearing the hijab it would be about Islam and about the dangers that the Syrian uprising poses to Syrian women. Similarly, the victory of Islamists in Tunisian elections is scary because of what they may do in regards to women’s and LGBTQ rights. But Rick Santorum’s bible-fueled anti-woman and anti-gay campaign/crusade says nothing about the gender politics of Christianity. Traboulsi also makes the important point that now that they are in power, Islamists will actually be held accountable for all the fantastical promises they have made for decades. We will now get to see, for example, if Islam, or this brand of it, is truly the answer to a chronically clogged sewage system in Cairo.
Gender equality and justice should be a focus of progressive politics no matter who is in power. A selective fear of Islamists when it comes to women’s and LGBTQ rights has more to do with Islamophobia than a genuine concern with gender justice. Unfortunately, Islamists do not have an exclusive license to practice patriarchy and gender discrimination/oppression in the region. The secular state has been doing it fairly adequately for the last half a century.
Pakistan Does More From Time To Time
Posted: May 18, 2011 Filed under: Humour, Political | Tags: Do More, Pakistan, Taliban, Terrorism 1 Comment »At the outset, let me clarify that I do not normally depend on Yahoo! for my news consumption. Having said that, there was a report tweeted by HM Naqvi yesterday enumerating the list of all ‘top’ al-Qaida and Taliban leaders arrested and/or killed in Pakistan.
I’m going to reproduce those arrests and assassinations that were carried out and/or aided/facilitated by Pakistan’s police and armed forces:
- May 2011: Security agencies on Tuesday arrested Al-Qaeda Senior leader Muhammad Ali (Sohaib Al Makki) from Karachi.
- May 2010: Mustafa al-Yazid, al-Qaida’s No. 3 leader and top commander in Afghanistan, was killed in a missile strike in the North Waziristan tribal area near the Afghan border.
- February 2010: Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s No. 2 leader and top military commander, was captured in Karachi.
- February 2010: Mullah Abdul Kabir, the top Taliban commander in eastern Afghanistan, was arrested at an unknown location.
- December 2009: Saleh al-Somali, a top al-Qaida commander responsible for the group’s operations outside Pakistan and Afghanistan, was killed in a missile strike.
- August 2009: Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the Pakistani Taliban, was killed in a missile strike in the South Waziristan tribal area near the Afghan border.
- January 2009: Usama al-Kini, a top al-Qaida operative suspected of involvement in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa, was killed in a missile strike.
- January 2009: Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan, a top al-Qaida operative suspected of involvement in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa, was killed in a missile strike.
- October 2008: Abu Jihad al-Masri, a top al-Qaida operative, was killed in a missile strike in North Waziristan.
- September 2008: Abu Haris, a senior al-Qaida commander who led the group’s operations in Pakistan’s tribal areas, was killed in a missile strike in North Waziristan.
- July 2008: Abu Khabab al-Masri, a top al-Qaida commander responsible for the group’s chemical and biological weapons efforts, was killed in a missile strike in South Waziristan.
- January 2008: Abu Laith al-Libi, a top al-Qaida commander in Afghanistan, was killed in a missile strike in North Waziristan.
- December 2005: Hamza Rabia, a senior al-Qaida commander, was killed in a missile strike in North Waziristan.
- May 2005: Abu Farraj al-Libbi, al-Qaida’s No. 3 leader, was detained in northwestern Pakistan.
- July 2004: Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, an al-Qaida operative suspected in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa, was arrested after a gunbattle in Gujrat in eastern Pakistan.
- June 2004: Nek Mohammed, a top Taliban commander, was killed in a missile strike in South Waziristan.
- March 2003: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, was captured in Rawalpindi.
- Sept. 2002: Ramzi Binalshibh, a would-be Sept. 11 hijacker who could not get into the United States, was detained in Karachi.
- March 2002: Abu Zubaydah, al-Qaida’s suspected financier, was arrested in Faisalabad.
Stuff it, do-more naysayers!
Liberals Are Dead! Long Live The Liberals!
Posted: March 11, 2011 Filed under: Humour | Tags: Class, Pakistan, Taliban, The Left 2 Comments »I’m not sure if you’ve heard but word on the street is that there’s an important species about to become extinct in Pakistan.
Even if you’ve not seen one yourself, chances are you hear about them every single day. Nary a day goes by without reading about this particular breed of being in every single newspaper and magazine published here. We’re collectively bombarded about this group’s existential crisis so much that it seems that it is perhaps the most important group in Pakistan.
If it’s not obvious enough, I’m talking about the so-called death of liberals in Pakistan. Liberals as a species are dying and soon enough will be extinct. I should know because I am one. Suddenly we seem to have woken up to the idea that our existence is under threat because of some amorphous, intractable, violent monster also known as the “Other”.
Because we are the educated, well-heeled lot, having had access to all institutions this country has to offer, we obviously know better than “all of them” who are the illogical, dangerous lot out to kill us. Of course we do not blame anyone but them for their lack of education, opportunity and “middle class” mindset. Had they just tried hard enough like we all did, they too would have been smarter, successful and better smelling. And of course to ‘us’, they are a unified, homogenous entity with an agenda: the liberals versus the non-liberals, the hoity-toity versus the hoi polloi, the You-and-Me’s versus the All-of-Them’s. There’s no one left in between ‘us’, the enlightened, and ‘them’, the emboldened!
The audacity of these non-liberal sorts is getting appalling. Why, just the other day I was at the signal waiting for the red light to turn green, when the pesky little kid started cleaning the windshield of my car without my consent! Have they no manners? And that irritating lady who simultaneously continued rapping at my car window while I was just trying to listen to my music in peace? The woman had no sense of privacy or decency! How dare they intrude on my life? I certainly do not intrude on theirs, do I?
What could possibly be more ridiculous than forty thousand of these illiterate buffoons showing up on the streets to celebrate the murder of one of us? Is there a more stark proof of how utterly outnumbered we are on the streets of Pakistan? Our once impervious, protected space has been hit by a stampede, and now ‘they’ are not taking no for an answer.
As if that wasn’t enough, now more and more of them want better wages. Worker strikes have become commonplace due to some bizarre imagination on their part. (That must be it, right?) They have suddenly realized that they should get the sort of wages us liberals do without getting even remotely more educated or talented.
I went to a meeting recently where concerned liberals who owned these companies were discussing how to get rid of their employees with minimum inconvenience. One of the smartest liberals in the meeting said that we should tell these workers to “suck it up”. Because this particular clever liberal owns an NGO and had obviously thought a lot about poor, ignorant people, we all thought it was indeed an astute observation.
I’m not sure when we ceded political space to these goons we love to hate, but I have a dreaded feeling we never really participated in the national conversation in the first place. This intellectually superior group of ours (or the most recent mutation of it anyway) was always too busy to attend a political rally, too pensive to distribute pamphlets door-to-door, and far too wise to mingle with the masses. It is beneath us to persuade the proletariat, dahlin’.
So how do we escape this horrible situation? How do we ensure that our dying breed survives? We’re not willing to reproduce as much as them. We’re not willing to become less intelligent or attractive either. We don’t even want to meet these people to learn about their survival instincts. (Natural selection, anyone?)
The only way we can overcome this existential threat is to utilize a three-pronged approach. First we need to build an even more robust infrastructure that keeps the non-liberals out of our space. We need to have more clubs, hotels, restaurants and airports that are exclusive and inaccessible to anyone who does not subscribe to our liberal lifestyle. Secondly, we need to make private education and private healthcare even more expensive. The former will ensure our liberals are smarter and richer, and at least a few them can employ critical thinking if there is an extreme need for it. The latter will ensure that non-liberals die out by way of natural selection. Lastly, we need to continue writing and ranting in English newspapers (like this one) so that fellow liberals are aware of our dilemma. Everyone needs to know just how bad things are for us now that we can’t even publicly announce that we will not fast or pray at work.
I’ve done my part in helping to save us by letting you know what’s really plaguing our country. I can now relax in liberal complacency and enjoy being the cleverest liberal on the block.
Speak now or forever hold your piece.
This piece was published in The Friday Times on 11 March 2011 and also be read here.
Terrorism Is A Modern And Heterogeneous Phenomenon
Posted: May 27, 2010 Filed under: Academia, Political | Tags: Imperialism, International Politics, Islam, Religion, Taliban, Terrorism, The Left, US Politics 1 Comment »Islamist terrorism, unfortunately for those who need an uncomplicated enemy to hate, is not a heterogeneous edifice run by similarly intentioned malevolent men wanting to take control of the world. It is borne out of various ideas and histories and has roots in many parts of the world.
Olivier Roy uses two different ways to study terrorism. The first would be the vertical method wherein one can establish the genealogy of all kinds of radicalisation in the Quran and Islamic history and trace it to Islamist radicals today. This method does not take into account definitive roots of terrorism and subjectively distinguishes ‘Muslim’ violence from manifestations of violence. The second approach is horizontal and frames terrorism in the context of contemporary phenomena of violence affecting all modern societies.
The second approach is more productive in understanding Al Qaida as a movement unlike many other movements borne out of dissent. I find Roy’s use of the words modern and contemporary while talking about Islamist terrorism particularly intriguing and will dwell a bit more on that below.
The Islamist brand of terrorism is a modern manifestation of violence and dissent. I use the word modern deliberately and cautiously. I say it to contest the opinion that Islam, Islamist terrorism or Muslims are not modern and do not belong in the modern times, which would suggest that there is something barbaric, ancient or other worldly about them . I argue that terrorism is not only a modern phenomenon; it is specifically a product of our globalised, interconnected, ultra-modern zeitgeist.
Firstly, the word modern is technically defined by a particular point in time, in particular after the Age of Enlightenment and Age of Reason in Europe post-fifteenth century. Any idea or event that takes place after that point in time, be it Modern Art or birth of the internet, is necessarily a part of modernity. Because it is associated with the colonial Master’s domain and defined in the Master’s language, it is assumed that Europe has the patent to enlightenment and modernity, and that all others from the third world must only consume modernity defined by Europe. It is the most civilised of civilizations that is the purveyor of modern culture and all Others must adopt and follow suit. If we, instead, take the formal definition, then all forms of Islamist terrorism have to be categorised as modern. It cannot be otherwise.
To quote Talal Asad:
In an important sense, tradition and modernity are not really two mutually exclusive states of a culture or society but different aspects of historicity. Many of the things that are thought of as modern belong to traditions which have their roots in Western history.
When people talk about liberalism as a tradition, they recognize that it is a tradition in which there are possibilities of argument, reformulation, and encounter with other traditions, that there is a possibility of addressing contemporary problems through the liberal tradition. So one thinks of liberalism as a tradition central to modernity. How is it that one has something that is a tradition but that is also central to modernity? Clearly, liberalism is not a mixture of the traditional and the modern. It is a tradition that defines one central aspect of Western modernity. It is no less modern by virtue of being a tradition than anything else is modern.
Such questions need to be worked through before we can decide meaningfully whether there are varieties of modernity and, if there is only one kind of modernity, then whether it is separable from Westernization or not.
Secondly, there are subjective connotations of the word ‘modern’ which may not define it so rigidly. Modern can be used interchangeably with ‘current’, ‘civilised’, ‘fashionable’, or even ‘up to date’. Even if we do take these terms facetiously, we will find that there is nothing out-dated or old about Islamist terrorism.
To argue that Islamist terrorism is not civilised is an incomplete statement without further accepting that all forms of violent dissent are uncivilised and barbaric. It would be difficult to qualify a statement that says anti-imperialist, anti-state movements such as the Baader-Meinhof Group in Germany, the Red Army in Russia, the Maoists in India or even Che Guevara are modern conceptions while Islamist terrorism is not. While there are several distinctions among these, I argue that they are all forms of modern, violent dissent to the global status quo.
Lastly, it is dangerous to even think about Islamist terrorism as a blanket concept that can possibly define Al Qaida, the Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah and countless other groups in a singular narrative. At the outset of this essay, I remarked that they are not homogeneous organizations producing one type of a terrorist. For example, there are marked differences between islamo-nationalist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah that do not have any agenda outside their own political conflicts, and the global jihad of Al Qaeda that is not territorially defined.
To deal with the threat of Islamist terrorism, it would perhaps be more effective to think about it from a political perspective (a struggle for territorial control) instead of an ideological perspective (wide spread imposition of sharia law). I conclude with thoughts from Olivier Roy who says that “the process of radicalisation is to be understood by putting it into perspective with the other forms of violence among youth and any process of de-radicalisation should address youth populations, and not an elusive Muslim community, which is more constructed than real”.
Being Anti-War And Having A Plan To End Militancy
Posted: April 23, 2010 Filed under: Political | Tags: Economic Development, Imperialism, Pakistan, Rants, Taliban, The Left 3 Comments »Liberal support for military operations, be it hesitant or apologetic in the case of civilian casualties, makes me angry. It becomes difficult, nay impossible, to carry the discourse forward once the argument reaches the “but what else is the alternative to wipe out the Taliban?” impassé. Within the Peoples’ Resistance community in Pakistan, there is of course no conclusive response to that rhetorical question even though many of us identify ourselves as being anti-war.
Imagine my surprise and delight when I came across an email by Adaner Usmani from the Peoples’ Resistance Google Group shared by Abira Ashfaq on a recent thread on Kayani’s apology for ‘collateral damage’. Adaner sent this email exactly a year ago in May 2009. A year later, it is still the most clear-headed response to pro-war, trigger-happy liberals. Many will dismiss it as being leftist, socialist, idealist wankery. Some, like myself, will applaud it. I hope it at least amuses everyone.
Without further ado, I reproduce Adaner’s email (with some necessary highlights and edits):
——
the notion that the military operation is a “practical” alternative beggars belief. how do you justify this claim–our PM sahib can make it in a television address dripping of choreographed patriotism, but surely you, a—– and f—–, see the holes in this hollywood narrative (drop our bombs and “whaddyaknow”, the bad guys are no more!)?
what evidence do you offer that will lead me to believe that bombs, artillery, and khakis will lead to a decline in “terror”? note that i am making this argument assuming that i ought to accept unreservedly the State’s definition of who these terrorists are. if i begin to dispute that definition, and start to argue that, really, our State has long allied itself with select tribal warlords in these areas that are hardly less mad or misogynistic than the “Taliban,” i think the burden of proof on the pro-war side becomes greater still, as it indicates that our State/Military has an interest in fighting certain forms of misogyny and extremism while patronizing others. (and then, on top of this, of course, there is the small matter of direct State terror).
in sum, what i am arguing is that neither of the two options you are asking civil society to choose between are solutions. in other words, both option (1) peace deal/ceasefire with non-representative mullahs, and option (2) military operation, promise to make the problem worse, not better. they may both deliver short-term benefits (unlikely), but the medium-to-long-term effects on the region and the country will be frightening.
….
at the same time, i don’t think we need to over-exaggerate the scale of the crisis that we face–perhaps i’m being too optimistic, but i don’t think that these insurgencies are dramatically different from, for example, the problem of the Maoists in India (who have a presence in roughly 1/3 of indian districts, don’t forget), the problem of paramilitaries in Colombia, or even the problem of street gangs in El Salvador, etc. the hard-on-terror approach will not work for any of them in any sustainable, holistic way, nor will it work for us. (do you think, for example, that Sri Lanka is really solving any of its problems, in any sustainable way, with this recent campaign against the LTTE?)
To mainstream feminists and other ‘liberals’: we are not about to fall to the Taliban. the problem of creeping fundamentalism in our cities, is distinct, sociologically, from the terrorism of the TTP and TNSM (this is why i object to WAF’s recent framing of the issue of the dramatic rise in misogyny as “talibanization”–it is unhelpful and analytically very lazy). bombs in Swat will do nothing to free women or minds in karachi.
————–
nonetheless–you want an alternative, so i will offer it to you. again, i don’t think that what i am putting forth is “practical,” simply because i don’t think that there are any “practical” solutions. progressive forces have very little claim on the State and the Army; they are not about to listen to us.
what’s very clear, nonetheless, is that all this demands an end to today’s military operation.
……….
my fantasy plan has 12 parts, presented in haphazard order. feel free to add.
- announce a radical land reform program (no compensation, no exceptions) effective immediately.
- announce an end to the political and State patronage of maliks, khans, walis, etc. in fact announce a program to confiscate the luxury assets of all elites, including our various royal families. re-distribute these equitably to those militants who agree to lay down arms, as well as to working-class people everywhere (i’m sure we can find more than enough for everyone.).
- announce the end of all research and development expenses in the army budget. end our nuclear program, dispose of our nuclear bombs. cut the rest of the military budget as drastically as is plausible (but raise salaries of sepahis). redistribute army bungalows, army lands, army hospitals, army companies to a transparent, democratic authority, which will decide how they will be further distributed. reform the army’s hierarchy. abolish the ISI.
- announce a comprehensive legal reform package that includes the decolonization of FATA (repeal of FCR, for example), protection of minorities and women. promulgate an order requiring all stalled cases to be heard and resolved within 6 months, across the country.
- propose a holistic anti-corruption policy (including raising of lower-level police salaries and aggressive prosecution of corrupt elites)
- rehabilitate our peasantry by crafting a policy aimed at achieving food sovereignty. if this requires aggressive subsidies and our fantasy gov’t is running out of money, fund the program with reparations the US will pay us for having implemented, historically, strategic and significant subsidies and tariffs in industry and agriculture (and/or for their murderous foreign policies, and/or for the ecological unsustainability of their development model. let them pick).
- announce an aggressive pro-poor pricing policy for all utilities. in other words, their “decommodification”–the more you use, the (much) more you pay. until the point that basic needs are met, though, they will be free.
- nationalize the madrassas, integrate them into a revamped public education system, ban private education; redistribute the assets of private schools to the public system. propose a plan to integrate education across classes, so the sons of bankers go to school with the sons of unemployed polio victims. convene a transparent committee (comprising especially of minorities and women) to draft a comprehensive new curriculum. (if you’re having trouble funding this, demand reparations from Britain for multiple decades of intentional underdevelopment and brutal colonial rule–remember to give a good chunk of this to bangladesh. officially beg forgiveness for 1971).
- convene an assembly radically more democratic than our parliament: (seats reserved for peasants, minorities, and workers) to write a new, minority-friendly, secular constitution.
- formulate an industrial policy that prioritizes the building of internal linkages within the space of the nation. with this announce the radical overhaul of trade union legislation in consultation with genuine working-class organizations. announce a living wage policy.
- announce a free/single-payer public health system. like with schools, expropriate the assets of all private health facilities and put private doctors to work in public clinics. desegregate the health system, focus on preventative care.
- announce a massive literacy campaign enlisting especially elite youth in a 6-month campaign, modeled on the cuban or nicaraguan experience.
———————-
i cannot go on any longer. it is too much fun, and i simply am setting myself up for disappointment when i wake up in the morning.
sincerely,
adaner
Left Of The Taliban
Posted: March 14, 2010 Filed under: Political | Tags: Imperialism, Islam, Pakistan, Taliban, The Left 2 Comments »An excerpt from Madiha Tahir’s letter regarding a recent controversy on the Left involving former Guantanomo detainee and human rights activist, Moazzam Begg and head of Amnesty International’s gender unit, Gita Sahgal. The debate exposes a larger division on the Left about where it stands with respect to the global war. The post can be found here: http://progpak.wordpress.com/2010/03/14/left-of-the-taliban/
The larger issue, however, is this: why do our so-called allies constantly demand that we articulate our disavowal of the Taliban? Do they perhaps believe that in some deep dark religious corner of our lefty Pakistani hearts, we nurture a secret love for the ruthless brutish bearded circus called the Taliban? Why are we being constantly asked to prove our bona fides as secularists and as humanists (in the sense that we believe in the dignity of *all* humanity)? And that too by those who appear to have little qualms about retracting dignity from a man whose words and appearance unsettle us but who has done nothing – in terms of his actions – but run a girls’ school in Afghanistan and, now, defend the rights of precisely those that the American empire has reduced to ‘bare life.’
Now as attacks on ‘mainland’ Pakistan increase, the liberals have suddenly discovered their love of human rights (for certain humans), represented by a fear of the Taliban and a love of the army. These are the same liberal Pakistanis who have not cared enough to do anything about the far more insidious manner in which a public culture of religiosity has taken over in Pakistan except when it interferes with their narrow and decidedly elite preoccupations. After Swat, I spent a long evening in Islamabad with a Pakistani personality and other assorted liberals discussing the army attack on Swat and the Taliban threat. It was good and necessary, he said. We all knew the army had ties to the Taliban, so I asked him how it was that he expected the army to exterminate those it finds useful? He may not have trusted the army or the government in the past, but he trusted them now, he replied. He admitted that he could point to nothing that justified this change of heart, but yet somehow he ‘had faith.’ And that’s all the Pakistani Army requires: ‘faith, unity and discipline.’
Religious extremism was and is fed by the billions in arms sales and funding by the US to the Pakistani military as well as by the drone attacks, the incursions on Pakistani sovereignty, and the American-led reinforcement of the Pakistani army. Thus when we talk about the army, we are talking about the Taliban. When we talk about the imperial war, the drone attacks, the military funding, we are talking about the Taliban. All we are saying is stop focusing on the Taliban egg alone while the imperial hen runs out and lays a dozen more. Talking about the Taliban outside of the context of this history and this present context makes no sense. If there’s a cogent argument about why/how one can end the Taliban – indeed, religious militancy in Pakistan more generally – without dealing with the American imperium or its arm, the Pakistani military and its intelligence agencies, then please put it out here. But enough of the faith-based initiatives, and the requirement that those of us who are talking about imperialism must present our anti-Taliban credentials in order to be allowed into the club of true Lefties. It’s a silly and pointless game at this late stage when the American war is expanding into Pakistan.
in solidarity.
The Uncivilised, Barbaric, Illiterate, Crazy, Violent ‘Other’ In Our Midst
Posted: October 22, 2009 Filed under: Academia | Tags: Islam, Rants, Religion, Taliban Leave a comment »Each of us is capable of anything. It just takes being in the right situation – Michael Haneke
I refuse to write off the Taliban as the quintessential bad guys. I’m not going to allow myself to feel moral superiority over a suicide bomber, something I won’t assume I am not capable of. When we impose a binary division on the good and bad guys, we limit our understanding of the world and all its microcosms. We absolve ourselves of that responsibility by reducing the definition of who the enemy is.
I’ve always believed myself to be somewhat of a pacifist, I couldn’t imagine myself hurting an animal, let alone another human being. Lately I have realized I’m not only capable of wishing harm on others, I can also envision violence and plan on carrying it out one day. The point is, there are no good or bad people and it’s not us (conveniently of the blameless lot) vs. them (the heartless and the culpable).
Here’s a mental exercise. Ask yourself this: Had I been born a male-bodied individual in Waziristan, what would my story have been? What would my socialization and learning have amounted to? What grievances would I have with the world for denying me inclusion and participation in the global majority?
I think about the Red Army Faction, the early anarchists, the Bolsheviks, the Weatherman, Tamil Tigers, Hamas and all the way up to Al-Qaida and the Taliban. I wonder what the pre-conditions are for terrorism, whether it comes from the right or the left, and whether it’s politically or religiously motivated. Haneke reckons that wherever people are in a hopeless, unhappy and humiliating situation, they will grasp at any straw that is handed to them.
I have lived a privileged middle-class life. I am able, economically privileged and my gender and sexual preferences are acceptable to the middle-class affluent majority. For the most part, I don’t know what it feels like to be marginalized. I can’t speak on their behalf because I can’t even imagine what suffering their stories have entailed. Who the hell am I then to assume I’m the better person, or rather, gasp, the more educated and intelligent person? Who put me on the moral high ground to dictate the terms and conditions of everyone’s existence?
Let’s not delude ourselves.
When we condone, support and encourage military operation against a group of people, we are in essence expressing our desire to keep our privilege at the expense of their lives. We don’t want to share our privileged lives. We fear the inclusion of the ‘other’ in our perceived mainstream. Their difference from us makes us uncomfortable and our violent treatment of them justifiable (at least to us). Violence begets violence and we find ourselves in a deep hole we can’t dig ourselves out of. Ironically we think bombing the smithereens out of them is the solution.
It’s not.
Disclaimer: I’m not condoning ‘terrorism’, bomb blasts, suicide bombs or any violent attacks. If you think that then you are misreading me and fuelling the same binary that I’m warning about. It is not a binary, it is NOT an either or situation. Don’t fall into the Bush rhetoric of “either you’re with us or against us”. I’m not with either. Just because I don’t wish to obliterate a people out of existence does not mean I support their violent means. I’m just saying if I was that person living that life in Waziristan or Swat, who is to say I would not pick up the bomber’s vest today.
Disclaimer No. 2: I’m not a journalist, blogger, political analyst or any other form of expert. I don’t have anything original to say, usually. These are mostly incoherent, probably deeply flawed thoughts at 4 a.m.
