An Open Letter To George Fulton

Written by Arsalan Khan and seconded by me.

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Dear George,
After reading the rejoinder to your original op-ed titled “Don’t act surprised” in the Express Tribune, it has become obvious to me that you are a little confused about why people are incensed by your obvious bigotry. Those that condemned you for being a racist and a bigot were not responding out of a “knee-jerk” or “designer” (whatever that means) patriotism that blinds them to the realities of Pakistan. Nobody doubts that violence has become a pervasive fact in Pakistani life, and we know that there are plenty of people that justify violence under certain circumstances and especially against certain kinds of people. We believe that there is a need to scrutinize the underlying factors that generate such violence and examine why some forms of violence have become defensible for so many people in Pakistan. Unfortunately, your argument has not advanced our search for answers in the least bit. We found your article offensive not because we feel we need to suppress the “truth” from ourselves or hide it from our enemies but because of the way your argument reduced our complex problems to an essential and seemingly inevitable aspect of “our” culture. The rejoinder makes more or less the same point that the original made with only a slight shift in language, but it is even more insulting because it tries to deflect legitimate criticism by portraying critics like myself as people driven by some kind of irrational and emotional patriotism. So, I would like to take this opportunity to provide you as well as your supporters with a basic outline of what we mean when we say your argument is racist. I do so only with the faint that you might refrain from spewing such inane bigotry in the future.

Let’s start with the basics. It is in fact racist to think that violence in a particular society, regardless of how pervasive, is a product of a savage and bloodthirsty “culture,” period. Saying that you did not mean “all” Pakistanis are violent and barbaric does not make it any less racist. The most obvious aspect of racism in your argument is that you have made a sweeping, negatively charged generalization and feel absolutely no need to specify who you are talking about or what it is about their culture that makes them so barbaric and violent. For all we know, the barbarians could be people that are actually engaged in violent activities, or it could mean all 170 million of us because we all share in this culture of barbarism and brutality, or it could mean most of us except the handful that have accepted “enlightened” values like yourself and those that agree with your shallow perspective on Pakistan. It’s really hard to know because you don’t say anything specific about this “culture” of “ours” nor do you provide any evidence except the fact that many people in Pakistan think Maula Jatt, a Punjabi film character, is entertaining. So, here’s the first point about racism. Racists make sweeping, negatively charged generalizations about people that are different from them, rarely being specific about who or what they are talking about, and support their efforts to stigmatize others with nothing more than anecdotal evidence.

Moreover, racist arguments are usually based on some form of circular logic like your claim that Pakistani culture is violent and we should not be surprised when a violent culture manifests itself in violent ways. According to you, the existence of violence proves that we have a violent culture and the fact that we have a violent culture explains the existence of violence. If you can’t see that this is a tautology, then you definitely should not be writing for a public audience. The point is that nothing you say tells us anything about why so much violence (which is not really one thing anyway) exists in Pakistan or what factors motivate such violence. Like most racist arguments, you rely on your audience to fill in this gaping hole with their own negative stereotypes, which fortunately for you many of your readers have in abundance. But, this always runs up against a basic problem, which is that the evidence suggests that most Pakistanis neither engage in violent activities nor condone them. The outpouring of grief across the country over the brutal murder of the young boys in Sialkot suggests that the majority of people in Pakistan are actually shocked and horrified by this incident. They are looking for some way to understand how such tragic events can happen. Shouldn’t this raise doubts about your conclusion that we have a barbaric and blood thirsty culture that revels in violence? It should, but it does not because if Pakistanis don’t live up to your stereotypes then it is not because there is a problem with the stereotype, it is because these Pakistanis must be “the exception” and not the rule. The people celebrating your “brilliance” in the comments section are clamoring to find a place as “the exception” in your world, but this has nothing to do with the strength of your argument. It has to do with the fact that they, like many colonized elites, are more concerned with distancing themselves from their fellow citizens than they are with questioning and critiquing power. So the second feature of racism helps structure your argument: racists systematically ignore the existence of evidence that runs counter to their stereotypes and relegate all evidence that does not conform to these stereotypes to the status of “the exception.”

Now, the reason your critics, the more thoughtful ones at least, were outraged by your article is not a product of some kind of knee-jerk patriotism that makes them blind to Pakistani realities. It is because of how you as a white man of British origins who recently acquired citizenship on a reality tv. show are situated relative to Pakistani society. People that say you should not be commenting on Pakistan because of your foreign origins or the odd manner in which you acquired Pakistani citizenship are missing the point. You have every right to comment on Pakistan. What you do not have a right to do is erase the historical and political realities of this country, realities that have been profoundly shaped by British colonialism and continue to be shaped by an exploitative world system dominated by Western powers like Britain and the United States. This erasure is most conspicuous when you mention the violence of Partition but fail to acknowledge the role of the British in creating the conditions for mass violence in which Muslims were as much victims as they were perpetrators. What is also conspicuously absent is any mention of the unimaginable level of human suffering in Pakistan. This suffering is a product not of some “culture” but of an exploitative, profit driven world system which inflicts a daily toll of violence (structural violence!) on the vast majority of people in the world (ex, poverty, inflation, unemployment, dire working conditions, health disparities, malnutrition, child mortality, ecological degradation etc). This incident in particular, a mob attack on two suspected thieves, should make you at least consider how factors like the break down of our civil and political institutions, unemployment, rising price levels, and host of others might contribute to the making of violence in Pakistan. It takes a very special (racist?) person to engage in such blatant forms of erasure, and this erasure is especially heinous in your case because, well, as someone who has benefited tremendously from the history of British colonialism and our current inequities, you should at least feel some sense of responsibility or at the very least empathy. This brings me to the third feature of racism in your article, which is that racists erase historical and political complexity in order to mask and/or justify their undeserved power and privilege.

The people that have focused their criticism on your foreign origins are simply pointing out that it is easy for you to condemn “our” barbaric culture because you can reasonably claim not to be a part of it. Those whose families have lived her for generations, those that have grown up in this country, and even those of us that have to deal with the stigma of being “Muslim” or “Pakistani” in the West do not have that luxury. Being Pakistani for us is not something we can opt in or out of, not even by acquiring foreign citizenship. Certainly the people who are being targeted by US and NATO bombs for being too Muslim or too Pakistani (barbarians!) do not have that luxury. And, did you forget that those drone attacks are also meant to eliminate violence and barbarism from the world? Anyone with half a brain can see that your use of the pronoun “we” masks some very real differences, and we know that when you talk about “our” barbaric culture, you really mean only those people that were raised to be violent and bloodthirsty, a category that obviously does not include you. Or, did you grow up aspiring to be Maula Jatt too? So, the use of the pronoun “we” actually functions in your piece as a way to deflect charges of racism and bigotry, not as a genuine expression of empathy. You are really talking about a “they” and what is most offensive about this is that “they” necessarily includes some of the people that suffer the most in our society. One has to wonder if the two boys that were brutally murdered in Sialkot or the many children that are registered in American and British newspapers as “collateral damage” are also a product of “our” barbaric culture, or maybe they are “the exception,” who knows. Here we have stumbled upon the fourth distinctive feature of racism, one that follows directly from the erasure of complexity to justify undeserved privilege, which is that racists shift blame away from themselves and place it onto those people who by any normal, non-racist standards would be considered victims.

As for the Pakistanis that are showering you with praise, they actually think a lot like you. They also believe that there is a pervasive culture of barbarism and violence in Pakistan that they neither contribute to nor participate in (after all, they are “the exception”), and like you they don’t really take responsibility for Pakistan’s problems. In their world, it is always someone else that’s the source of the problem (the “uneducated” masses, the mullahs, the pirs, the feudals, and the corrupt politicians). Pakistan’s problems are a product of some culture that lies elsewhere, usually among the poor and weak as opposed to in the halls of power and privilege. Those that took shots at you for being a white man who has been in Pakistan for no more than a few years are not really concerned about the colour of your skin or even your lack of experience in Pakistan. They are angry about the kind of argument you are making, a racist one that blames people for their own plight by systematically erasing the historical and political causes of this plight and making their circumstances seem like a natural, inevitable outgrowth of their “culture.” The fact that such arguments were once made in the service of British colonialism and continue to be made by American and British neocolonialists today should lead you to reflect on your own place in the world. That is, if you truly want to contribute to the cause of justice in your adopted society or in any society for that matter.

It is deeply troubling that instead of taking heed of these criticisms, you have tried to reverse the argument by accusing your critics of being the real racists. So, you have decided to play victim in the very moment that you are excoriating a population of over one hundred million (depending on how wide you cast your net) for being violent and barbaric. This brings us to the last point I want to make about racism. Racists possess a level of moral certainty about themselves and their own place in the world that usually comes from a life of power and privilege. This means that when their bigotry is challenged and exposed, they respond not by rethinking their perspective but by claiming to be the victims of an unfair, irrational assault on their character (Or, as you have put it, playing the man and not the ball!). This often leads them to wrongly believe that a critique of their racial attitude is itself racist and allows them to continue on as if nothing substantial was ever said.

George, I’m sure you are a well meaning person and not someone that imagines himself being a bigot or a racist, but it is precisely the well meaning bigots and racists that seem to do the most damage in the world. As Pakistanis and Muslims, we are subjected to racially motivated attacks emanating from the Western press on a daily basis, and we do not need more of it from people who have been granted a platform in our own media. What we want to see in the news and in opinion pieces are thoughtful and sincere efforts at finding explanations for the violence that threatens to overwhelm us, not simplistic drivel that blames some fictional thing like “our” culture and supports it with a reference to a Punjabi film character. Of course a thoughtful and sincere effort at finding answers requires not only serious intellectual labour but also moral courage because a true search for answers will necessarily implicate you, me, and all of the other privileged people that are reading your articles. You shouldn’t be surprised that so many of these people are willing to celebrate your “brilliance.” It keeps them from actually dealing with reality, and the reality is that we are complicit in this system of violence and much more so than some poor Punjabi farmer who grew up wanting to be Sultan Rahi. So, you are entitled to comment on Pakistan. Whether you are or are not really Pakistani doesn’t concern me. I just ask that the next time you do, you at least make some effort to address the conditions that generate such deplorable forms of violence and suffering rather than reach for the most simplistic and racist explanations for our collective, though very unevenly distributed, plight. Maybe then we can have a constructive conversation and begin to chart a path forward.

Sincerely,
Arsalan Khan

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[Emphasis in this letter is mine alone]