On Being a ‘Muslim’ Atheist

To disbelieve in the existence of God in the Arab world is no easy thing. Yet more and more of us are coming out of the closet

Khaled DiabKhaled Diab is a journalist, writer, and author

September 14, 2021

Muslim on paper / Getty Images

Names are not always just names. They can signify very different things to different people. I was reminded of this during a recent visit to Crete, where I encountered an Egyptian from Alexandria.

Ayman moved to Crete 30 years ago after falling in love with the Mediterranean island, which reminded him of his coastal hometown but was quieter and more orderly. Nevertheless, he retained a very Egyptian outlook when it came to names.

“But isn’t Iskander a Christian name?” Ayman asked in confusion, after I introduced our son. His confusion was compounded by the fact that my name is Khaled, which people in Egypt and some other Arab countries associate with Islam. However, neither of these assumptions are correct — nor is the assumption that a Muslim father must necessarily pass on his religion.

Although the vast majority of people named Khaled are Muslim, I have encountered non-Muslims with that name, which is not uncommon among Christians in Lebanon, for example. This is particularly the case among pan-Arabists because Gamal Abdel Nasser’s eldest son was called Khaled.

Just as there is nothing especially Islamic about the name Khaled, which predates Islam, there is nothing terribly Christian about the name Iskander (Arabic for Alexander), which predates Christianity. In fact, Iskander is a fairly common boys’ name in Tunisia, where my son once had two other boys with the same name in his class when we lived there. Before that, the only other Iskander he had met in person was an aging Assyrian Christian in Jerusalem.

Iskander is also a common name in Turkic countries, Iran and some other Muslim-majority countries. In Turkey, it is even the name of a popular kebab dish. When we took our son at age 5 to taste “Iskender kebap” in Istanbul, he refused to touch it until we reassured him that it was not made of young boys named Iskander.

Derived from Aléxandros, which means “defender of the people,” the Greek version of my son’s name was popular in Ancient Greece. In addition to the ease with which Iskander can be pronounced by most people, its lack of association with any (living) religion was a major factor behind its appeal to us.

Before Iskander was born, it was important to my wife (who is Belgian) and me to find a neutral name that did not presuppose a particular faith, because we are both of the firm conviction that our son should be entirely free to choose the belief system that appeals most to him.

And with a few exceptions, like in Egypt and Palestine, it has worked. In Europe, only people with knowledge of Arabic know where the name comes from, with many Belgians assuming, for some bizarre reason, that it is a Scandinavian name.

“We want our son to learn about his dual heritage, but we also want him to decide for himself what his beliefs are,” I explained to Ayman, who is raising his children in the Christian faith and sends them to a small Coptic church in Crete.

This is important not only because of our abstract belief in freedom of religion and of conscience but also because, on a personal level, I did not really enjoy that liberty growing up, and I don’t wish my son to have to struggle with labels he did not choose.

Long before I could even grasp what faith meant, I was branded a Muslim from the moment I entered this world. My Egyptian birth certificate marks my religion as “Muslim,” which is also true of my adult identification papers.

Luckily, despite her own profound faith, my late mother raised us as Muslims but never pushed any of us to practice Islam against our will. She also raised us to question even established religion, out of the belief that the only true path to faith was one of self-discovery and knowledge.

Though this worked for some of her offspring, unfortunately for her, my doubts only grew and multiplied with time, until eventually I abandoned not just Islam but religion in its entirety. While my absence of religious faith broke her heart, and probably made her fear what awaited me after death, she knew I was an atheist before I came out of the closet about it and accepted the reality without recrimination or anger.

My family’s and friends’ acceptance of who I am has made my journey in life much easier than for many others who leave Islam and are disowned, rejected or ostracized by their families and communities.

Out of dread of this social excommunication, some decide to keep their lack of faith to themselves. Becoming what you might call crypto-atheists, they must suffer the agony of deception and dissimulation, living their lives pretending to be what they are not.

In countries where atheism is outlawed — it’s punishable by death in countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia — many must keep their skepticism secret not just from family but also from society.

In Saudi Arabia, one of the most repressive theocracies in the world, those found guilty of atheism or “apostasy” can be flogged pitilessly or receive capital punishment. For example, in 2017, one man, named in the media as Ahmad Al-Shamri, who allegedly renounced Islam and Muhammad on social media, was reportedly sentenced to death.

A thriving community of skeptics and atheists exists out of sight 

Despite the enormous risks involved, a thriving community of skeptics and atheists exists out of sight and beneath the radar of the Saudi authorities, connecting mostly online but sometimes also in the real world. Even though Saudi Arabia is where Islam was born and sees itself as the leader of the Muslim world, a full fifth of the population say they are not religious and 5% are “convinced atheists,” according to a Gallup Poll conducted in 2012.

Some of these atheists are drawn to break cover and seek out like-minded individuals because of the profound sense of loneliness evoked by leading a double life. “I’m as closeted as ever. It makes me feel anxious and I struggle with myself. I sometimes ask myself: What if I’m wrong and everyone who is on the opposite side is right?” Maya (not her real name), an Egyptian who abandoned her faith while living in Saudi Arabia, told me. “That self-confidence I have when I’m surrounded by other nonbelievers or slightly open-minded people, like in Egypt, for example, makes me want to leave here asap.”

Though Egypt is more open-minded and tolerant than Saudi Arabia, it, too, is no paradise for atheists. The contemporary Egyptian state and society possess something of a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde attitude toward unbelief.

On the one hand, the constitution, rhetorically at least, guarantees absolute freedom of belief and there are no laws explicitly outlawing atheism or apostasy. This enables some atheists to openly express their rejection of religion without any harm inflicted on their person or their freedom.

On the other hand, Egypt has draconian blasphemy laws that are exploited by some elements of the state and crusading vigilante Islamist lawyers to selectively and randomly crack down on and persecute some skeptics and atheists.

One person who has fallen afoul of these laws is Sherif Gaber. The young freethinker first entered the public eye when he was a student at Suez Canal University following a smear campaign in 2013 by faculty members.

In 2015, Gaber was released on bail pending a retrial. He went underground but courageously refused to be silenced by the state or vigilantes. Gaber runs a popular anti-religion YouTube channel where the videos he produced have been viewed millions of times.

When attempting to flee Egypt in 2018, Gaber was arrested at the airport. After his release, he went into hiding again until he could work out an escape plan. Despite repeated attempts to leave Egypt and solidarity from abroad, Gaber appears to still be in Egypt and in hiding.

Compared with people like Gaber, I have had it easy. I have spent over a dozen years openly writing and speaking about atheism, as well as criticizing Islam and religion, not just in the Western media but also in some Arab publications. The worst I have experienced to date is occasional online abuse and threats but nothing serious enough for me to fear for my safety. In the real world, I have angered and riled up some religious conservatives enough for them to lose their tempers and call me unpleasant things. However, no incident has yet come to blows, though there have been some close calls.

Atheists and atheism are also widely misunderstood by many Arabs and Muslims. At one extreme, there are those who believe us to be Satanists, partly out of the conviction that those who do not worship God must, by implication, bow down to the devil.

There are others who believe that we have no moral compass and that we are debauched degenerates and disillusioned depressives. “An Arab atheist is usually a parasite — someone who claims to be knowledgeable but is not and will probably eventually commit suicide,” wrote a columnist in a Saudi newspaper. “An Arab atheist is usually a drunk, certainly a degenerate and has definitely nothing to offer.”

This insulting and ignorant attitude springs partly from the fact that many have not knowingly met an atheist. It is also influenced by the conviction that morality springs from religion, despite the findings of modern anthropological studies that show it is religion that springs from our innate sense of morality.

Although I disagree on many moral and ethical issues with religious conservatives, such as when it comes to sexual freedom and gender rights, I do not feel I am immoral or amoral in comparison. Moreover, I do not feel that the absence of God has made my life poorer or more depressing — quite the contrary.

Some Muslims, including some who claim to be enlightened and progressive, accept my right to believe what I want but do not believe I should talk about it publicly because it offends believers and supposedly challenges and threatens the social fabric.

This view not only does not stand up to intellectual scrutiny, but also is highly bigoted and offensive. There are people in Europe who find Islam to be offensive and a threat to the social fabric. Should European Muslims then be forced to conceal their faith?

Of course not. And I am a vociferous opponent of any forces that try to limit the freedom of belief or expression of Muslims in Europe, so why do some Muslims feel they are entitled to limit my freedom of conscience?

Moreover, do such people really prefer that I and other skeptics live a lie as hypocritical Muslims, rather than be honest and open atheists and unbelievers? If they can live with that, I cannot. My convictions are an integral part of my identity and so hiding or distorting them would involve a personal denial of who I am.

Although I possess no missionary designs and have zero desire to “convert” people to my beliefs, I also find it important to be open about who I am because there are many out there who share similar doubts but are in no position to express them, with the sense of abject isolation and loneliness that engenders. I want people like that to realize that they are not alone and that they are most certainly not freaks.

This kind of concealment also plays into the hands of conservatives and radicals who wrongly claim that atheism and skepticism are foreign imports that have no place in Muslim societies because Islam is so self-evidently true (and probably better than its rivals) and belief is the natural state for Muslims. However, the more I have delved into the three Abrahamic faiths, the more I have become convinced that the differences among them is like the differences in branded sportswear: indistinguishable to the agnostic and heathen but a source of great pride and identity to the wearer.

Skepticism and unbelief have always been and will always be integral to Islamic societies, at some times and places tolerated and celebrated, at others suppressed and persecuted.

In medieval times, for example, Middle Eastern societies were far more accepting and accommodating of irreligiosity, irreverence and unbelief than their European counterparts.

Take Abu al-Alaa al-Maarri (973-1057), the blind Syrian poet, philosopher, rationalist and hermit who was not only skeptical of religion but was also an early advocate of extreme birth control, convinced, as he was, that humans should not reproduce at all.

Despite his irreverent views, al-Maarri was a highly respected scholar of his day who turned his small hometown of Maarra, near Aleppo, into a magnet for poets, philosophers, students, princes and other admirers who were drawn by his philosophy, humility, hospitality, generosity and asceticism.

In one verse, al-Maarri intuited a view confirmed a millennium later by modern anthropological research: that humans are generally, despite the irrationality and contradictions of religion, predisposed to believe in a god and the afterlife and possess a religious “instinct.”

Now this religion happens to prevail
Until by that religion overthrown,
Because men dare not live with men alone,
But always with another fairy tale.

As a sign of how far matters have apparently regressed more than a thousand years after al-Maarri’s death, jihadists from the Nusra Front decapitated in 2013 all the statues of the blind poet it could find. They would have probably beheaded the revered poet and philosopher himself, or at least flogged him and tortured him until he “recanted,” if he were alive today.

But it would be a mistake to think that skepticism died after the so-called golden age of Islam. It continued to survive, and sometimes thrive, at different intensities depending on time and place.

For instance, al-Maarri’s “The Epistle of Forgiveness,” which depicts a fictional journey to the afterlife in which pagans and irreverent poets live in a highly bureaucratic heaven, inspired the Iraqi poet Jamil Sidqi al-Zahawi to write “Revolution in Hell” (1931). In this epic poem, humanity’s most daring and original thinkers have been condemned to eternal damnation as punishment for their courage, while the obedient and pro-establishment are rewarded with everlasting paradise, in a remarkable parallel to how Arab patriarchal dictatorships operate. The subversive inhabitants of hell, led appropriately enough by al-Maarri, storm heaven and claim it as their rightful abode, perhaps mocking the widely held belief that atheists are Satanists.

Despite the apparent rise of radical Islamism, I feel recent years have marked a major turning point

Despite the apparent rise of radical Islamism, I feel recent years have marked a major turning point toward the acceptance of and demand for freedom of belief and expression. The violence of conservative Islamic regimes and nonstate groups is, in my view, a sign of weakness, vulnerability and retreat, not strength, confidence and advance.

Not only do surveys and anecdotal evidence point to a rise in irreligiosity and religious skepticism across the Middle East, millions of people of faith are losing or have lost faith in political Islam and want religion removed from politics — the very definition of secularism.

I have witnessed this on a personal level, too. Since I came out of the closet about the abandonment of my faith, I have encountered not only a healthy number of skeptics but also a surprising level of tolerance and acceptance of unbelief by many ordinary Arabs and Muslims.

I am regularly and pleasantly surprised that my writings on religion and Islam, including my book “Islam for the Politically Incorrect,” have generally been well received, including by some conservative Muslims who, even if they don’t agree with many of my conclusions, appreciate both my honesty and the nuanced reality I depict.

It is my hope that, in these tumultuous times of rapid social change and upheaval, it is this tolerant, pluralistic, open and honest streak that ultimately gains the upper hand. 

SEE

 LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for ARAB ANARCHISM

http://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2006/02/my-favorite-muslim.htm

 

Why Muslim countries are quick at condemning defamation – but often ignore rights violations against Muslim minorities

Ahmet T. Kuru, Professor of Political Science, San Diego State University

THE CONVERSATION

Sun, June 12, 2022,

Supporters of a Pakistani religious group burn an effigy depicting the former spokeswoman of India's ruling party, Nupur Sharma, during a demonstration in Karachi, Pakistan. AP Photo/Fareed Khan

The Indian government finds itself in a diplomatic crisis following offensive remarks by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson, Nupur Sharma, on national television about the Prophet Muhammad and his wife, Aisha. The BJP has suspended Sharma from the position, but that has not been enough to quell the crisis. Over a dozen Muslim countries, including Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia, have condemned the Indian government and asked for a public apology.

This is just another incident of hate speech against Muslims, which has been rising in India since the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led BJP government came to power in 2014. The government has been criticized for several lynchings of Muslims by Hindu mobs with police indifference and judicial apathy over the past years. In 2019, the BJP passed a new citizenship law that discriminated against Muslims, and its Islamophobic attitudes recently encouraged some schools and colleges to impose a headscarf ban on students.

These discriminatory policies have a global significance because India has the world’s third-largest Muslim population, after Indonesia and Pakistan. Out of the estimated Indian population of 1.4 billion, about 210 million – 15% – are Muslim.

As a Muslim, I am aware of the deep reverence for Prophet Muhammad, and I understand Muslim individuals’ resentment. The reaction of Muslim governments, however, reflect their political regimes. As my book “Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment” explains, most Muslim governments are authoritarian and concentrate on condemning sacrilege against Islam – more than advocating to protect the rights of Muslim minorities abroad.

Aisha: a powerful woman

The recent Indian case focused on Aisha’s age when she married the Prophet. Aisha is one of the most important, vigorous and powerful figures in Islamic history. The favorite wife of the Prophet, she was the daughter of the Prophet’s successor and closest friend, Abu Bakr. She became a leading narrator of hadith – the records of the Prophet’s words and actions – the teacher of many scholars and a military leader in a civil war.

According to a hadith record, Aisha was 9 years old when she got married. Some Muslims accept this record and see it normal for a pre-modern marriage, whereas other Muslims believe that Aisha was either 18 or 19 years old by referring to other records.

It is not possible to know the true facts of Aisha’s age. As Islamic scholar Khaled Abou El Fadl stresses, “we do not know and will never know” them. Sharma thus used a single narration, while ignoring alternative Muslim explanations, in her remarks.

Prioritizing blasphemy, not human rights

This is not the first time that Muslim governments have reacted to defamatory actions against the Prophet. The long list of incidents includes Iran’s Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini’s 1989 call on Muslims to kill novelist Salman Rushdie and the 2006 boycott of Danish products throughout the Middle East in reaction to a dozen cartoons published in a newspaper.

An interesting pattern is visible in Muslim governments’ attitudes: They are very vocal when it comes to the cases of verbal or artistic attacks on Islamic values, whereas they are generally silent about human rights violations against Muslim individuals.

Muslim individuals in India have complained about the violations of their rights for almost a decade, but Muslim governments did not show a noteworthy reaction to the BJP until this defamation incident.

Another example is China, which has been persecuting 12 million Uyghur Muslims for many years. No Muslim government showed any major reaction. Instead, these governments have focused on their material interests and disregarded how the Chinese state treats its Muslim minority.

This double standard can be explained by the widespread authoritarianism in the Muslim world. Out of 50 Muslim countries, only five are democratic. Most authoritarian governments in the Muslim world have blasphemy laws that punish sacrilegious statements and suppress dissenting voices. That these governments should demand the punishment of blasphemy and defamation from India or other non-Muslim countries follows from these policies.

Another characteristic of authoritarian Muslim governments is their own violations of the rights of religious and ethnic minorities. In Pakistan, these violations have targeted the Ahmadiyya, Shia, Hindu and some other religious communities, while in Iran, ethnic minorities, including Azerbaijani Turks, Baluchis and Kurds, faced discrimination in education and employment. A rights-based discourse abroad, therefore, would contradict these governments’ policies at home.

Authoritarianism in the Muslim world has tragic consequences for Muslim minorities in India and elsewhere. Muslim governments’ short-term, emotional reactions to some defamation cases do not help improve the conditions of Muslim minorities, who actually need a more consistent and principled support.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Ahmet T. Kuru, San Diego State University.

Read more:

• Beheading in France could bolster president’s claim that Islam is in ‘crisis’ – but so is French secularism

• Execution for a Facebook post? Why blasphemy is a capital offense in some Muslim countries

A Muslim Teen In Biden's New Campaign Ad Says She Doesn't Support Him, But Was There To Press Him On Climate Change

"I was there for asking a question and he does not have my support."

Brianna SacksBuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on February 4, 2020



Sabirah Mahmud


Sabirah Mahmud was watching one of Joe Biden's new Democratic presidential campaign ads recently when she got a shock: her own face flashing across the screen as part of a montage of fans.

In fact, the 17-year-old doesn't support the former vice president. Mahmud, a supporter of Bernie Sanders, had only attended the Biden event to ask him a question about climate change policy.

The high school junior from Philadelphia told BuzzFeed News she did a double-take when a friend sent her the Biden's recently released two-minute promo video on YouTube. Around the 1:30 mark, the camera pans over an enraptured crowd listening to Biden and lands on Mahmud, wearing glasses and a soft pink hijab.

"I honestly have no idea how that happened," she said, laughing. "I found out last night and was like, What the heck?"

Last May, during Ramadan, the high schooler and activist went to Biden's kickoff rally on a sweaty Saturday in Philadelphia. A national leader with the US Youth Climate Strike, Mahmud, along with several other organizers, decided to attend the event in hopes of asking Biden if he would commit to a debate on climate change. At that time, the grassroots movement was asking each Democratic presidential candidate whether they would stand up, address, and debate climate change.

After Biden had finished speaking, she said he walked through the crowd. That's when she got up the courage to ask if he would commit to participating in a forum dedicated to debating climate policy.

"I screamed I have a question and I was so nervous and I felt I was going to puke," she said. "And then midway through he interrupted me and didn't let me speak and mansplained that he was an expert on climate change."

US Youth Climate Strike tweeted a clip of the moment right after it happened, telling Biden that "we didn't get to finish [asking] if you would commit to a #climatedebate."

"In the video, I was saying my name, where I live, and my experience with the campaign, and before I could ask the question, he cuts me off and told me to go to his website and see his work, like he has been doing this forever and had better authority," Mahmud explained. "He said, 'Send your question to my staff.'"



US Youth Climate Strike 🌎@usclimatestrike

Hey @JoeBiden, we’re happy to hear you care about climate policy, but we didn’t get to finish. We were gonna ask if you would commit to a #climatedebate. Will you? @KBeds @SymoneDSanders @BillR @DrBiden @TDucklo11:38 PM - 18 May 2019
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She remembers feeling frustrated. Biden never handed her a card or gave her a way to contact his staff before walking away.

Filming the crowd at political rallies and speeches is routine for nearly all campaigns, organizations, and activist marches. Hopeful candidates often use photos and videos from their events for their social media platforms and future ads. Biden's staffers have put up filming notices at his gatherings marking areas where people who do not want to be captured on camera could stand. A spokesperson for Biden did not say whether those signs were at his Philadelphia kickoff.

On Sunday night, when a friend sent her a screenshot of her quizzical face from Biden's new campaign ad, Mahmud was shocked.

"I don't look happy to be there," she said. "I look critical and I remember while I was there they were having a Christian prayer and I was one of the few Muslims there."

Mahmud says she wished his campaign knew the context of why she was there. She couldn't help but feel like she was included "for face value."

"I feel like it isn't right," she said. "Biden barely gave a piece of mind to what I was talking about and mansplained climate change action to me but my family is Bangladeshi and I have seen the firsthand effects of climate change and for a white man in a position of power who has not done a lot for climate change to tell me to go to his website. This affects my own identity and people."

Mahmud added she decided to tweet about the Biden ad to clarify her position, pointing out that, a few days earlier, she had posted a series of selfies for the popular Twitter campaign, #hotigirlsforbernie.

"I tweeted about it and it started to get a lot of hype and then I was doing my AP US History homework in my room and my phone started blowing up," she said



sabirah ☾@sabirahmahmud

was just used as hijabi clout for the @JoeBiden campaign, too bad i'm #hotgirIsforbernie 🥵😌03:07 AM - 03 Feb 2020
Reply Retweet Favorite


More than 1,800 accounts have retweeted the post. People's replies were akin to a massive face-palm emoji and thought the whole thing was hysterical.


"This is my favorite tweet," read one reply.

"YES MA’AMMM!!" another person wrote.

Biden's campaign declined to comment to BuzzFeed News on the ad, Mahmud's tweet, or allegations that she was included because of how she looked.

Mahmud said it's hard to not feel like the Biden campaign chose her because she is a "brown, Muslim, 17-year-old girl."

"I think, yes, it’s infuriating that I’m used as a token, but I didn’t really also think that this would have gotten the attention it did," she said in a text. "If I did have the chance though, I would 100% love to have a conversation to ask why I was put in the video/the motive of me being in it."

---30---

A Modi Win Will Only Mean More Trouble for Indian Muslims

A Muslim woman is casting her vote in the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) at a polling station during the sixth phase of the Indian General Elections in New Delhi, India, on May 26, 2024. Kabir Jhangiani

—NurPhoto/Getty Images

TIME\IDEAS
BY ISMAT ARA
MAY 31, 2024 9:14 AM EDT
Ismat Ara is a New Delhi-based journalist. She covers politics, crime, gender, culture and environment.

More than two years have passed since a picture of me, picked up from my personal social media handles, was put up with a price tag for auction on the internet. It was part of a website called Bulli Bai, a religious slur used for Muslim women in India.

Why was I targeted? Likely because of my reporting. The perpetrators wanted to shame and humiliate a journalist who was determined to expose the failures of the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party’s gender, caste, and religion-based violence. But more importantly, they wanted to shut up a Muslim woman who had dared to be vocal in Modi’s India.


When the photo was posted, I wondered how the main perpetrator, a 21-year-old student from Assam, who created Bulli Bai could be so consumed by his hatred that he felt compelled to auction Muslim women online for their outspoken criticism of the BJP—journalists, social workers, actors, and politicians. A recent meeting with my lawyer about my case against the Bulli Bai creators, who are still being investigated by the Delhi police, was a painful reminder of the targeted harassment faced by outspoken Muslim voices critical of the ruling BJP.

As the ongoing election in India is set to finish on June 1, it has once again offered deeper insight into how political dialogue is fueling this culture of hate.


Particularly, the political campaign of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP has leaned into anti-Muslim sentiment, progressively making Islamophobia one of the defining features of this election.

It was most prominently on display when Modi, in a thinly veiled reference to Muslims, referred to the 200 million Indian Muslim population as “infiltrators” at a BJP campaign rally while addressing voters in the Western state of Rajasthan on April 21. The Prime Minister also accused the opposition Congress party of planning to distribute the country’s wealth to Muslims.


Modi, in his speech, asked, “Earlier, when his [ former Prime Minister and Congress Party member Manmohan Singh’s] government was in power, he had said that Muslims have the first right on the country’s property, which means who they will collect this property and distribute it to—those who have more children, will distribute it to the infiltrators. Will the money of your hard work be given to the infiltrators? Do you approve of this?”

Read More: How India’s Hindu Nationalists Are Weaponizing History Against Muslims

This 2006 statement by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh emphasizing that minorities, particularly Muslims, should have the first claim on resources to help uplift their socio-economic status, has been often quoted out of context in political rhetoric, distorting its original intent to uplift marginalized communities.

The reemergence of conspiracy theories like “Love Jihad,” alleging a covert agenda by Muslim men to ensnare and convert Hindu women, by Modi, has surged back into public attention, prominently surfacing at an election rally on May 28, days before the seventh and last phase of the ongoing elections, in the Eastern state of Jharkhand.

The alarming rhetoric about Muslim population growth too have dominated the election discourse, fueled by the BJP's top leader, Modi, who has been criticized for his Islamophobic remarks, evoking memories of Gujarat's 2002 riots. While he later denied singling out Muslims in an interview with an Indian news channel, his history of linking them to population growth fuels a Hindu-majoritarian conspiracy theory.


Following the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat during his tenure as chief minister, Modi faced scrutiny regarding his administration's lack of assistance to relief camps, predominantly established by non-profit organizations and Muslim communities. During a campaign rally, Modi then insinuated that these camps might transform into "baby factories," implying that Muslims could potentially have families as large as 25 children.

In his Jharkhand rally in May of this year, Modi spoke of "unseen enemies" working to divide society and claimed that the opposition parties were playing into the hands of “infiltrators”. He warned against "Zalim (cruel) love," alluding to Love Jihad.

As the elections progressed, Modi’s speeches transformed slowly from issues such as “development” to anti-Muslim rhetoric. Unlike previous elections, Modi's campaign strategy this time has shifted towards overt Hindu-Muslim politics, drawing attention to his past record and raising concerns among Indian Muslims, as evidenced by the Election Commission's intervention in a campaign video by the BJP inciting hatred against Muslims.

The video, shared by BJP Karnataka wing with a cautionary message in Kannada, depicted a cartoon version of Congress’s Rahul Gandhi placing an egg marked "Muslims" into a nest alongside smaller eggs labeled with categories such as "Scheduled Castes," "Scheduled Tribes," and "Other Backward Castes.” The narrative unfolds as the "Muslim" hatchling is shown being nourished with financial resources, eventually growing larger and displacing the other hatchlings from the nest—implying that a Congress government will give away all resources to Muslims.


This came days after another animated video shared by the BJP’s official Instagram handle was removed on May 1 after a large number of users of the platform reported the video for “false information” and “hate speech.” The video repeats the BJP’s rhetoric on the Congress party, who they allege are“empowering people who belong to the very same community [of] invaders, terrorists, robbers and thieves [who] used to loot all our treasures” while the voice-over says, “If Congress comes to power, it will snatch all the money and wealth from non-Muslims and distribute them among Muslims, their favorite community.”

Despite its controversial content, the video amassed over 100 thousand likes before being removed.

Both videos come after claims by Modi during his campaign speeches that Congress was planning to “steal” reservations in educational institutes and government jobs among other benefits from Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Castes and redistribute them to Muslims.

Modi may be the foremost leader, but he's not alone in setting the tone; other top-tier BJP leaders are also walking in his footsteps. Home Affairs Minister Amit Shah's remarks linking voting for the Congress party to "jihad" in the South Indian state of Telangana have also stirred controversy.


Read More: The Modi-fication of India Is Almost Complete

The India Hate Lab, a Washington D.C.-based group that documents hate speech against India’s religious minorities, in its report of 2023 paints a grim picture of rising hate speech incidents against Muslims, totaling 668 documented cases.

These incidents, often featuring calls for violence and spreading divisive theories, were predominantly concentrated in regions governed by the BJP, particularly during key election periods like in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana, and Chhattisgarh. Additionally, the report highlighted stark differences in hate speech content between BJP and non-BJP-governed areas, with BJP leaders more frequently involved in non-BJP territories as they strive to expand political footholds.

When leaders resort to fear-mongering, it legitimizes the dehumanization of minorities, creating a fertile ground for extremists. This often isn’t just about one app or incident. It’s about the pervasive atmosphere of intolerance that such rhetoric by the BJP leaders breeds. And those who oppose this type of hate speech want to ensure that no one—regardless of their faith, gender, or caste—has to live in fear of being targeted for who they are.

Modi’s statement received widespread criticism from the opposition, the intelligentsia community including authors, writers, scholars, academics, and the minority Muslim population of India. The Congress party even filed a complaint with the Election Commission, alleging that Modi's remarks violate electoral laws that prohibit appeals to religious sentiments. Despite public outcry and demands from activists and citizens for action, the Election Commission has so far taken no appropriate action.


Modi's Islamophobic statements, which have fueled fears over and over again among India's Muslim population, must be viewed within the broader context of his party's strategies—which often invoke religious and communal sentiments to galvanize their voter base. And this time, the aim is to break all previous records by securing 400 plus seats in the 543 seat parliament.

If the BJP is able to secure such a huge majority in the parliament, Hindu majoritarianism will remain unchecked. The hostility towards the minorities could escalate even more, and opposition parties may bear the brunt of state agencies and crackdowns if they ask questions.

During Modi’s previous terms, Muslims have seen an increased marginalization and discrimination fueled by Hindu nationalist agendas—ranging from difficulty in securing a rented accommodation in urban cities, erasure of Muslim names from roads, cities and railway stations, to the underrepresentation in government jobs and discrimination and vandalism of shops of small Muslim vendors.

Today, India, a country which once took pride in its ganga-jamuni tehzeeb—a term used to refer to the fusion of Hindu-Muslim cultures—has become a global epicenter of divisive politics. While elections will come and go, the impact of the irresponsible words of Modi and the BJP will stay with the 200 million plus Muslims in the country.


These words have real and dangerous implications for the safety and security of India's Muslim population. Muslims in India currently face increased social ostracism, economic boycotts, and even physical violence. And another victory with an overwhelming majority will only mean more trouble.

Proud Marvel super fan, Iman Vellani, stars in ‘Ms. Marvel’

By ALICIA RANCILIO

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Iman Vellani, star of the Disney+ series "Ms. Marvel," poses for a portrait, Thursday, June 2, 2022, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

NEW YORK (AP) — Iman Vellani, who stars as Kamala Khan in the new Disney+ series “Ms. Marvel,” has a conundrum. Now that she’s a part of the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe), does she remove the Marvel posters from the walls of her childhood bedroom or leave them up?

“Brie (Larson) is on my wall and she’s in my phone book. So, like, that’s weird,” said Vellani in a recent interview.

“Ms. Marvel,” debuting Wednesday, is 19-year-old Vellani’s first professional acting job. Already an avid reader of the comics, Vellani learned of the open audition from her aunt. She went to the audition. Lo and behold, Vellani got the job.

The first month on set was spent in prep, rehearsing and stunt training. She had to give up her high school diet of McDonald’s and Oreos and build stamina, but Vellani wasn’t interested in changing her shape too much. “I was 17. Kamala was 16. I wanted her to look like a normal high school kid,” she said.

“My first proper day of filming — that was intense,” said Vellani. “It was all of the stunts that I had to do in the real Captain Marvel suit. The one that Brie gets to wear. It was an extremely uncomfortable day. That suit is not made to move in. You’re just supposed to stand and walk like a mannequin, and that’s what it’s made for. There’s so many pieces and it’s just really uncomfortable, and the scenes were pretty intense. So I came home with all these bruises and everything. My mom was like, ‘Oh my God, what happened?’ And I’m like, ‘I’m a superhero. That’s what happened.’”

Vellani just may be the first Marvel actor who is also a massive fan. She especially loves Robert Downey, Jr. and has proudly re-watched “Iron Man” “more than the average person.”

“They really are just a projection of real life and make you feel like you’re a part of something. Isn’t that what we all kind of want, to feel like we belong? And I know it sounds super cheesy, but for the Marvel fandom, it’s comfortable. It’s what we know. We can recite everything under the sun about the MCU.”

Sana Amanat, the co-creator of “Ms. Marvel,” jokes that having an actor who is a stan (or, really big fan) as they say, has its challenges.

“Sometimes she would just pull up in the producer’s chair next to me and just give lots of thoughts and opinions on, you know, either the show or the rest of the MCU. And I’d be like, ’That’s cool, but I need you to just act right now,” she laughed, adding, “Iman brought so much life and love to the character and it just made the entire process so much easier.”

Vellani was browsing a local comic book store when she discovered the “Ms. Marvel” comics and immediately felt represented in a way that is not common in mainstream media.

“I saw a girl who looked like me. She was Muslim and Pakistani and a superhero fanatic and I was Muslim, Pakistani and a superhero fanatic, so it worked out quite well. And I think my favorite part about the comic books was that it wasn’t about her religion or her culture or her ethnicity, it was about a fanfic-writing nerd, who just so happened to be Pakistani and just so happened to be Muslim. Those parts of her life motivated her and drove her as a character. she used her religion as a moral code. .. She never neglected her culture. It was something that kind of uplifted her journey.”

One of the things about South Asian culture that Vellani says “Ms. Marvel” gets right, is the importance of family. Kamala’s parents and brother feature prominently in the series.

“Showing those close, tight-knit family relationships, showing parents that are alive in the MCU, how rare is that,” said Vellani. “We wanted to hopefully get the ball rolling on Muslim representation in the media because there’s 2 billion Muslims and South Asians in the world, and we cannot represent every single one of them. But I do hope that people find some sort of comfort in Kamala’s character or through her brother or her parents or anyone in her community.”

Vellani is not only thrilled to represent in the MCU but also to be entrusted with its secrets.

“It’s an honor to keep these secrets. For some people, power is money. For Marvel fans, it’s knowledge and secrets and all the inside scoop on all the movies that haven’t been released yet. I have it. I have that power and I love it.”

US Academia and the Censoring of an Anti-Zionist Professor

BY FAWZIA AFZAL-KHAN     JULY 19, 2024

LONG READ

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Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

In this essay, I will describe my activism on behalf of Palestinians’ human rights and their right to self-determination, from my graduate student days on a US campus, to the present in my position as a tenured full professor, and the ways in which I’ve experienced attempts at silencing and censorship. These attempts today are more blatant and worrisome than ever before on anyone speaking up for Palestine in the USA, in the wake of the deadly genocidal massacre and famine unleashed by Israel on Palestinians in Gaza after the Oct 7^th 2023 attack by Hamas; an attack, which whilst condemnable for loss of 1200 innocent Israeli civilians, must be seen in light of the 75+years of ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and people with far more dead, injured and imprisoned than Israelis to date.

When I arrived at Tufts from Pakistan at the end of the 1970s, as a graduate student in English, I was hardly aware of the outsize influence Israeli Zionist ideology exercised on college campuses, an extension of its hold on the halls of Congress and US politics in general. Like many who grew up in what was then called the Third World, especially a new country like Pakistan which for the decades I was growing up was very much in the US camp and through the influence of mass media (TV and cinema in those days)—my generation really bought into the vision the US presented of itself as the bastion of free speech, equality, and a haven for immigrants of all races, colors and creeds. The history of its genocide of Native Americans and the enslavement of African peoples to fuel its capitalist paradise for the few were of course, facts that were entirely obscured in the popular narrative of America as the Land of the Free and the Brave.

Very quickly after my immersion in my graduate studies in 1979, my political education began to be shaped by cataclysmic global events such as the Iranian Islamic revolution that succeeded in ousting the West’s puppet, Reza Shah Pehlavi, the Afghanistan debacle unfolding on the borders of my home country- yet another example of Big Power rivalry ruining the lives of millions of brown-skinned peoples- and the rejection, by the Arab Summit Conference’s General Assembly, of the Camp David Accords for failing to uphold the UN’s charter, that included the right of return, national independence and sovereignty in Palestine and participation of the PLO in all decisions pertaining to the future of Palestine.

Recognizing, with some of my other fellow international students from Lebanon and Iran, that most students were either quite ignorant of events and histories beyond the borders of the USA, or unaware of the biases of their news media toward the “third world”—we decided to focus on one particularly egregious example of this lack of information: the case of Palestine. Becoming a founding member of the first-ever Student-led Committee on Information about Palestine on my campus, I learnt first-hand how dangerous it was to speak out on behalf of Palestine and advocate for their rights when our event posters were torn down and threatening messages left on our answering machines (in the era before cellphones). Consequences we are seeing today for students and faculty protesting against Israeli genocide in Gaza are much worse, when people like myself and my comrades from Tufts would have been doxxed, our student group and its activities suspended or banned. Back then, the reactions to our efforts at presenting an alternative viewpoint on the question of Palestine were limited to messages meant to intimidate, but did not actually result in a loss of future employment as they have for many unfortunate student supporters of Palestine today.

My own professional trajectory proceeded fairly smoothly from finishing my graduate studies to landing a tenure-track position in the Department of English at Montclair State university a year after I graduated with my Phd. from Tufts. Aside from a few Visiting Professor gigs at places like Harvard, NYUAD and several higher ed institutions in my home country of Pakistan over the decades, my tenure home has remained Montclair State, which has gone from being designated as a College when I joined the faculty as an assistant professor in 1987, to becoming a University. My 37-year career is, I contend, a study in surviving, at times even thriving in academia, despite the many obstacles small and large that are thrown into the paths of faculty like myself who dare to challenge the normative political narrative around Zionism, the singular issue that defies and denies all other progressive viewpoints.

First Rebellion

During my second year at MSU (then MSC)—I attended what was then an annual feature of our campus life: the annual Presidential Lecture. That year, our speaker was the famed New York intellectual, Susan Sontag, who was introduced a deferential group of administrators including the Acting President, and a leading member of our English Department faculty. The esteemed Ms Sontag spoke on the unit of the decade—what it is, what it signifies, how it came to be a temporal marker and so on—the usual arcane stuff intellectuals like to ponder. She honed in on a specific decade to provide some concrete examples to buttress her larger philosophical argument: the decade that the world witnessed the holocaust of the Jewish peoples in Nazi Germany, which was horrific in every sense. What got my goat, however, was the fact that this was the same decade—the 1940s—that also witnessed the creation of the state of Israel on Palestinian lands and concomitant Nakba—catastrophe—visited on the Palestinian natives of those lands, thousands of them forced to flee the onslaught of Israeli forces, many who became victims of massacres and destruction of their homes, their olive and lemon groves, their villages, their past. When I raised this point as a question for Ms Sontag to comment on, as to why she had not alluded to this other group of people affected so badly during the decade under scrutiny—she started to tremble visibly on the stage, and ultimately responded with anger at the audacity of my question.

I remember how several junior faculty approached me as we streamed out of the auditorium asking what I was thinking, and wasn’t I afraid of jeopardizing my tenure and promotion at the institution? The following day I received a summons to the Chair’s office, who proceeded to school me in the true meaning of Jews being the Chosen People of God, and why I had in a way, disobeyed God’s laws by questioning his favorite humans! It was an extraordinary meeting, and I was tempted to laugh at the absurdity of it all, except that I knew it was a serious matter, that I had to proceed with caution if I was going to get through the next few years and past the tenure decision with success. Luckily for me, I had a wonderful defender in the person of a senior member of the department, a very well-respected colleague who had brought some major grant monies into the department and college. She wrote a very strong op-ed for the campus student newspaper, The Montclarion, defending my right to free speech and expressing disdain for a globally renowned author who could not respond to a fair question except by berating me for simply asking the question. In the weeks that followed, I was amazed to discover daily messages left in my voicemail by colleagues—both staff and faculty—whom I did not know, acknowledging my courage in speaking out on a topic that most are trained to fear touching.

Since these were the days before social media, I was protected by the fact that such comments like mine could not go “viral” and hence avoid what today would surely be some sort of “cancellation.” Several years later I did get my tenure—but no promotion. For that, I had to fight hard, to the point of threatening a lawsuit, but again, luck prevailed and I got promoted to Associate Professor level the following year.

Post-tenure Obstacles and Resistances

The politics of fear that I observed amongst non-tenured faculty especially and also amongst those aspiring to leadership positions in the department and institution, operated on the unspoken assumption that criticism of Israel was unthinkable, a sure way to end a career, and hence resulted in a self-imposed censorship on the part of the majority of faculty at the university. Only one other senior tenured faculty member of my department and I, were vocal in our support for the right of Palestinians to self-determination and we were the only two who would speak out against the increasingly obvious Israeli apartheid state policies and its massive and brutal military response to stone-throwing Palestinian kids during the 1^st and 2^nd intifadas.

After Hamas’ electoral win in Gaza in 2005—and it bears noting that Israel helped create it as an alternative to the secular PLO in 1987 after the First Intifada—Israel, despite agreeing to a truce that held for a number of years, staged a raid by the IDF on members of Hamas, killing six of them on Nov 4^th, 2008. This led to retaliatory firing of rockets by Hamas, and on Dec 27, 2008, Israel attacked the Gaza strip by land and air in what it dubbed Operation Cast Lead, killing, over a 3 week period, a total of 1419 Palestinians of whom 1167 were civilians, according to the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights, whilst Israeli Human Rights group B’Tselem reported 1385 Palestinians killed. The use of white phosphorus bombs on civilian targets including two hospitals (Al Quds and Al Wafa), as well as on the UN compound in Gaza City, was declared a war crime by several human rights organizations such as Amnesty International as well as the Goldstone Report, as were family massacres conducted by IDF forces, and killing of Palestinian civilians fleeing homes holding aloft white flags. During Operation Cast Lead, total number of Israelis killed was 4: 3 civilians and 1 soldier, and 518 wounded.

When I tried to organize a day long teach-in with scholars and artists at my university to educate our student body as well as the larger community on the scale of atrocities being committed by Israel during Operation Cast Lead, allowing for debate and discussion on Zionism as a political ideology, the creation and role of Hamas in Palestinian resistance struggles as part of a rise in Islamist or political Islam which many countries in the grip of US imperialist policies, rightly or wrongly saw as a strategy of resistance–I was taken aside by certain department members who later held leadership roles, in an attempt to discourage me from inviting some of the speakers I had lined up—specifically, the anti-Zionist academic activist, Norman Finkelstein. When I asked why, I was told that “he is not a scholar.” This, despite the fact that even before being declined tenure at DePaul university, Prof Finkelstein had already published 3 books with major academic presses which most “scholars” would be honored to have their books published by: University of California Press, University of Minnesota Press, and Verso, plus a fourth book by Henry Holt and Company, an imprint of Macmillan Books—also very prestigious, being one of the oldest publishing companies in the US.

Obviously, the issue had little to do with whether he was or wasn’t a scholar; rather, as a son of holocaust survivors, the fact that he was writing exposes of Israel as a fascist, apartheid state, with a book entitled the Holocaust Industrystriking a blow to the sacrosanct status of the Holocaust as sui generic and untouchable by any sort of critique, followed by another on the “mis-use of antisemitism and abuse of history”—well, the Zionist industry had to silence him and unfortunately that was the effect my colleagues’ persuasive tactics resulted in; in the end, I invited Joseph Massad, a scholar of Palestinian history at Columbia, who at that point in time, hadn’t yet become the target of Zionist student attacks demanding his ouster for teaching, in their opinion a “one-sided” perspective on Israel-Palestine, effectively smearing him as an anti-semite in the process.

I want to be clear here that the colleagues in question are themselves respectable scholars in their respective fields, and have been kind and gracious in their dealings with me through the decades.  I’m sure they wouldn’t recognize or even agree that what they were doing was a form of censorship by invoking the dreaded spectre of antisemitism. Their approach to censoring opinions like mine are far more sophisticated than the more outrightly course and obvious intimidation of some other colleagues, like, for instance, a self-proclaimed Christian Zionist who was Chairperson of our College’s department of Religion and Philosophy for many years, and had affixed to his office wall, a large Confederate flag. For displaying an obviously racist emblem extolling the virtues of a slaveholding past in the South, this colleague was never sanctioned or told he couldn’t fly the flag in full view of students (and faculty) walking past his office, many of whom were surely intimidated or felt harassed or unsafe by in the presence of such a symbol. Yet in recent days after the Oct 7^th 2023 Hamas attack on southern Israel that immediately resulted in Israel’s massive deadly assault on Gazan civilians and which was clearly genocidal in intent—the little Palestinian flag I affixed to my office door (courtesy the Students for Justice in Palestine on our campus)—drew notice and condemnation from several faculty members, including my current dept chair(one of the two colleagues who in 2008 had argued against issuing an invitation to Norman Finkelstein) who told me during a private exchange that he was hurt to see this display of support for Palestinians so soon after Hamas attacked Israel; never mind that as I pointed out in our friendly exchange of views, and without endorsing Hamas actions, that there really was no comparison in terms of number of lives lost—27,000 vs 1200 to date—nor had the attack resulted in damage to civilian infrastructure on the Israeli side anywhere close to what Israeli counterattacks on Gaza’s schools, hospitals, homes delivered in retaliation. The sign on his door, announcing his office as a safe space for all students experiencing “anti semitism, anti Zionism, Islamophobia,” has, by equating anti-semitism with anti-zionism, opened up a dangerous space that encourages attacks from students on those of us who proffer critiques of Zionism as a racist nationalist ideology that is unacceptable to many people of the Jewish faith too. Sure enough, a student in one of my classes this past semester brought a charge of anti-Semitism against me, which I managed to effectively debunk because of meticulous record-keeping I have learnt to do precisely to ward off such attacks. Whilst within a week of my putting up the little Palestinian flag in a display of solidarity, it was gone, vandalized, my Chair’s sign remains on his door. Despite our cordial relationship,  I cannot get him to see how the fallacious conflation it endorses, poses a grave threat to freedom of speech in our classes. The passage of HR 3016 into law recently will have a similar chilling effect.

To return to my Christian Zionist colleague, who is now long-since retired—back then he was a very powerful faculty member, who headed up for over a decade, our college’s committee that decided annually who would be awarded the prestigious University Distinguished Scholar award. It would be an important recognition legitimizing the kind of schol-activist work I had been doing, combining literary with cultural critique to avowedly advance a social justice agenda. And I believe that was precisely why it was important for the neoconservative cohort to deny me such recognition, which could open the door to many other scholars (and students)—to follow this path.

I had to apply 10 years in a row before I got it—and that was only once I brought a complaint against my self-proclaimed Christian Zionist colleague, insisting he be relieved of his chair’s position on this committee as no one is supposed to serve continuously for that length of time. To demonstrate how egregiously biased this individual was and yet managed to control the actions of a diverse body of faculty in his attempts to prevent an award/recognition I had clearly earned through my numerous publications when I started applying for this award, I will share the following point of information. One year, the committee under his leadership, decided to vote for another faculty member who had applied for this award so as to prevent me from being in the running, which proved to be such a ridiculously partisan decision that even the university President (no supporter of mine)—that year was forced to deny their decision, with the humiliating result that NO ONE was awarded this honor that year. How do you vote for someone to be given a Distinguished Scholar recognition when they haven’t published anything of note—except a few newsletter entries and an article in a non-peer-reviewed journal? Thanks to someone with a sense of justice on that committee, I managed to have a look at this other faculty’s application dossier (all of 2 pages long!)—and used the information I gleaned to later write to the President as well as the Dean of my College to let them know I wasn’t going to abide the current Chair of the Award Committee being allowed to serve another term. In that letter, I detailed the decisions taken over the past 10 years which according to what I knew about research and publication records of applicants including myself, had wronged me by refusing to acknowledge both the breadth and depth of my scholarship.

The next year, sure enough, with the threat of legal action by me as well as perhaps, a few awakened consciences—I got what by rights I should have received a decade earlier. Perhaps because my scholarly publications have nothing to do with the Israel-Palestine issue, I was helped with a strong case made on my behalf by my department representative to the Awards committee, the same colleague who is in disagreement with my anti-Zionist views.

This is where things get trickier and murkier.

People obviously have/should have, a right to their views, but when holding a particular set of views puts someone’s career in danger, and brings them into the line of censure and censorship, then dangerous precedents curbing free speech are being set.

In the cases I experienced involving the two colleagues described above, one has been very subtle in this area of curbing my right to free expression through a soft “guidance”, at times even by helping me advance certain career goals, whereas the other made blatant attempts to deny me a platform of visibility and scholarly prominence due to my views on a particular issue with which he was in disagreement. The real problem is that these two very different types of censoring actions, one within the bounds of friendly collegiality the other not—are united under the banner of a shared Zionist ideology that has huge clout in academia and politics and works to isolate people like me in an effort to curb our ability to grow in numbers and strength. As an illustration of the latter claim I’m making, despite pleading for the past two decades to my department colleagues to back a request to the upper administration for a tenure-track line in Arab and Arab American literature and culture, or hire even another postcolonialist like myself who could teach within my areas of interest such as the course I created called Images of Muslim Women and which currently gets offered only when I am available to teach it—my requests have been effectively sidelined. Hiring another brown South Asianist like me or an Arabist has proved impossible over the past 37 years, and we remain a white-dominated dept.

In the case of the more blatant approach, it led my Christian Zionist colleague in the aftermath of 9/11, to posting outrageously racist and xenophobic comments about me on a 3-4,ooo strong faculty and staff listserv, such as “Go back to the caves you crawled out from”—when I insisted on historicizing the 9/11 tragedy, bringing to the fore arguments being made by activist writers like Arundhati Roy about the many 9/11s that preceded what happened on US soil, in so many countries of the global south thanks to unrelenting military and economic interference by the US’s military-industrial imperialist complex. Part of my own historicizing argument was to link unqualified US backing of the Zionist colonial-settler Israeli apartheid nation to the state of general distrust and dislike of the US by the majority of the world’s brown and black peoples. I also published an anthology of writings by Muslim women called Shattering the Stereotypes in which I made these links between US’s destructive imperialist policies around the globe, including its egregious support for land theft and killing of native Palestinians by Israel, to the rise of Islamist extremism as a form of opposition to what its sympathizers and followers perceive as the unchecked hegemony of the western bloc of nations led by the US of A.

Making such links obviously did not go down well with people like the former Chair of Religion and Philosophy at Montclair. Accordingly, he made vocal and visible attempts to silence me, but in effect, this just exposed his bias ever so clearly, to the chagrin of more sophisticated minds, some of whom may have shared similar reservations about my politics and point of view.

Without going down the path of assuming I know what lay in the hearts and minds of colleagues as well as administrative leaders, I can attest to the fact that a strange confluence of pressure built up around me in the decades after 9/11, wherein I became the “Muslim Woman” made to emblematize both the exception to the rule of Muslim fundamentalism in western academic locations, as well as to be looked at with suspicion for harboring sentiments which, because they were at odds with the US-Zionist machine of Empire, rendered me unpatriotic (hence a traitor) in the eyes of many. Several students especially in classes where I taught Palestinian writers like Ghassan Kanafani or Arab feminists like Nawal el Saadawi who also exposed the links between Zionism, US imperialism, patriarchy and racial capitalism, as well as so-called Islamic fundamentalism —called me anti-USA, complaining about me in student evaluations. At times some Jewish students expressed anger at my views, although in more recent years, the number of Jewish anti-Zionist students has grown exponentially on campus, as a result, perhaps, of exposure to oppositional views of Zionist discourse taught by people like me. In any case, the net result of the confluence of both admiration as well as distrust for what I stood for, for the views I espoused unambiguously in my teaching and my writings, exposing the links between all manner of pieties, combined to result in a number of eventualities.

The first of these was the discovery that my name was on the AMCHA list of professors “inimical to Israel” and hence to be avoided and denounced. Here is what the Amcha Initiative’s website announcement of their stated objectives:

IMPORTANT: Share this list with your family, friends, and associates via email, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, or word-of-mouth.

As the fall semester begins, many students will consider taking courses offered by Middle East scholars on their respective campuses, in order to better understand the current turmoil raging in the Middle East, especially the Israel-Gaza conflict. AMCHA Initiative has posted a list of 218 professors identifying themselves as Middle East scholars, who recently called for the academic boycott of Israel in a petition signed. Students who wish to become better educated on the Middle East without subjecting themselves to anti-Israel bias, or possibly even antisemitic rhetoric, may want to check which faculty members from their university are signatories before registering. (my emphasis)

From MSU, apparently, I’m the only such signatory listed:

Montclair State University
Fawzia Afzal-Khan, Professor and Director, Women and Gender Studies

During the 2016-2017 academic year, after a semester teaching abroad at NYU in Abu Dhabi, I returned to MSU and because of a sudden departure of the woman who had succeeded me as Director of Women and Gender Studies after I’d completed two terms in the position, I was requested by colleagues teaching in the program, and at the behest of the then Provost, to take up the post once more so as to keep the program running smoothly. I agreed to do so for one year, stating that we needed to find someone else to take on these leadership responsibilities as I had done my duty and had agreed to resume my position only for a year to ensure that a program I had built up over the past 6 years and in whose success I was invested, would not fall apart. Over the summer months preceding the Fall term, I then worked pro-bono to restore some order in the program prior to moving into the AY, which included finalizing the hiring of 2 new adjunct instructors to teach several of our required courses which were already at capacity with registered students. One of these new instructors, who had already met with, and whose credentials had been vetted by, the outgoing Director, who had offered both him and the other instructor jobs for the coming year, apparently had tweeted a comment sometime over the past year, expressing his disgust at President Trump and stating, “Trump is a f—ing joke. This is all a sham. I wish someone would just shoot him outright.” I did not know of these political opinions of said instructor or about this social media posting expressing a strong wish to see the current President of the US dead, but even if I had, I would have treated it as his right to free speech particularly in off-campus fora. A few weeks prior to the start of the Fall term, I was asked to meet with the Dean of my college, who informed me that I had been relieved of my position as Director of the program.

The reason I was given for this ignominious “firing” from a leadership position that I had been invited to—nay begged—to fill, was that a letter had been sent to the President of the University, from an outside source asking how someone calling for the assassination of our country’s President, had “slipped through the cracks” in the hiring process without being properly vetted.  Since I was the Director in charge, the barb was clearly pointed at me, and as such, had its desired effect: not only the instructor in question, but I too was relieved of our positions. Here is how I saw what happened, as I outlined in an article published soon thereafter in CounterPunch.

I believe strongly that my “firing” was in response to the Islamophobic rant sent to the President, Provost and Dean of my university by right wing columnist James Merse (who writes for a rag called the Daily Caller in NJ)—and on which he also copied me. In this email he threatened the university, claiming he and his “cohort” of right-wing supporters would have marched in protest onto the campus had the admin not fired Allred! He kept asking in that email “how did Allred’s hire slip through the cracks” (he had previously stated such things publicly)-and since I was the new Director in charge of the Program at this time, the question was obviously pointed at me. Now all the administrators knew I had had nothing to do with hiring this Allred guy—so why remove me then? It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that these right-wing nuts like Merse knew of my public writings exposing their outfits and the individuals that head them and that right now in the US, these scary folks are exercising their financial and political clout to pressurize university administrators to fire or otherwise silence voices like mine who are anathema to them.

A particular article I had published a few years prior, also in Counterpunch, traces precisely this money-trail of funders of Islamophobia which I argued in the article, is quite clearly linked to Zionist and pro-Israeli sources and conservative think-tanks. My research into these links was prompted in the fall of 2012, by seeing huge billboards appear at my Hudson Valley town’s train station, touting nakedly Islamophobic ads. I wrote:

I was stunned to see an ad on a billboard staring me in the face from across the train tracks stating the following:

19,250 deadly Islamic attacks since 9/11/01. And counting. It’s not Islamophobia, it’s Islamorealism.

The ad was paid for by two organizations called “Jihad watch.org” and “Atlasshrugged”. Jihad Watch is a program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and its Director is a man named Robert Spencer who is the author of twelve books, including two New York Times bestsellers, The Truth About Muhammad and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades). According to the Jihadwatch website:

Spencer has led seminars on Islam and jihad for the United States Central Command, United States Army Command and General Staff College, the U.S. Army’s Asymmetric Warfare Group, the FBI, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, and the U.S. intelligence community.  Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs (Regnery), is a supposed “expose” of how jihadist groups are advancing their agenda in the U.S.

Spencer was joined in weaving his web of anti-Muslim (and more specifically, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian) conspiracy theories—which are still being taught to and ingested by the US military forces—by his colleague Pamela Geller, an acolyte of the early 20^th c. writer Ayn Rand, a libertarian conservative and uber-capitalist—hence the name of the blogsite she sponsors, Atlasshrugs.com. which today has become https://gellerreport.com/ and is spewing forth venomous stories repeating unsubstantiated Israeli hasbara claims about Hamas ‘ rapes of Israeli women (which have been proved to be utterly factitious, relying on uncorroborated accounts of two unreliable witnesses belonging to a very suspect and morally compromised militia group called ZAKA, which in Israel itself prior to Oct 7^th, had been subject to incessant criticism, investigations, and demands to dismantle it).[1]

As I was researching the links between Islamophobic content of Spencer and Geller’s work and their support for Israel, it became clear that theirs was a racist agenda that also appealed to neoconservative white supremacists in Europe. So I pointed out how

The attacks on Muslims and those thought to be Muslim which … are linked to racism in general, are hardly confined to the US. The terrible massacre of innocent children at summer camp in Norway by Anders Brevik a few years ago can be linked to the hate-speech of bloggers Geller and Spencer who are cited as important influences by Breivik in his Manifesto.

As I argued in the conclusion of that essay, there was (still is!)–a confluence of several dangerous discourses that coalesced in August 2012 in the anti-Muslim ads such as those posted on MTA train stations in NY. Jihadwatch and AtlasShrugged were also behind another series of ads posted on municipal buses in San Francisco and on municipal buses, and here is what these proclaimed:

In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man.

Support Israel, Defeat Jihad.

The equation of “civilized man” with the State of Israel, the “savage” with that of the absent Arab, is lifted verbatim from a 1974 lecture by American author Ayn Rand, which have been echoed by Golda Meir and other past and present leaders of Israel:

The Arabs are one of the least developed cultures. They are typically nomads. Their culture is primitive, and they resent Israel because it’s the sole beachhead of modern science and civilization on their continent. When you have civilized men fighting savages, you support the civilized men, no matter who they are. Israel is a mixed economy inclined toward socialism. But when it comes to the power of the mind—the development of industry in that wasted desert continent—versus savages who don’t want to use their minds, then if one cares about the future of civilization, don’t wait for the government to do something. Give whatever you can. This is the first time I’ve contributed to a public cause: helping Israel in an emergency.

(lecture delivered in 1974)

Connecting the Dots

What I’ve tried to do throughout my academic career, is to connect the dots between phenomena the academy wishes to keep separate and de-linked via its erection of disciplinary walls, zealously guarded, even when lipservice is given to the virtues of interdisciplinarity. Most of all, drawing connections between Zionism, US militarism, racialized capitalism and exposing, as I have, how these disparate formations are threaded together in ways that permeate and inform the hallowed halls of academia, is clearly the kind of display of disobedience to the norms of our profession that must needs be punished.

It was, therefore, no surprise that the University President took the occasion of a threat toward the campus made by the reporter for the Daily Caller (a Fox News affiliate, founded by Tucker Carslon and Neil Patel), who stated in an email to the top brass that he had been prepared to “organize and lead significant peaceful-but loud—protests and campaigns” to hold the university accountable had it not terminated the adjunct instructor’s position– to not just fire that adjunct, but also “punish” me by publicly dismissing me from my position as Director of WGS.  Doing so can be read as a decision made possible by a serendipitous confluence of factors, to appease a university President wary of someone espousing my politics “leading” and setting policy and curricula goals for a small but thriving program with a reputation for disobedience, as well as to do the kind of damage control needed to prevent conservative donors allied to the individuals, media outlets and think-tanks the Daily Caller reporter had links with, to withdraw their financial support.

What I had argued several years prior to my wrongful dismissal–that a confluence of interests in the US political and cultural sphere threatened to overcome the polity with hatred, zenophobia, Islamophobia, racism—these same factors came together a few years later to ensure the following outcome in my professional life: as a brown Muslim woman who had painstakingly exposed links between Zionism and these other ills, I would not be given a public-facing position that might result in persuading others to what is clearly anathema in US discourse. Here is what I had written in 2012, following the Islamophobic and anti-Palestine poster campaign orchestrated by Geller and Spence:

What this uncritical support and valorization of the State of Israel and its Jewish citizens leads to, as the world has seen in the past 60 years or so since Israel was founded and Palestine reduced to a series of occupied settlements, is ongoing war between unequal opponents in Israel/Palestine.  Such a state of affairs based on injustice toward the Palestinians who have been refugees in their own lands since 1947, with more than 4 million of them displaced in the Palestinian diaspora, has contributed to many of the troubles we face today as the world becomes a full-scale conflict zone from East to West, North to South. The mentality of the Gellers and Spencers of this world has infected the good sense of people on all sides of this and other related debates on human rights worldwide, and exerted undue influence on the foreign policy of the USA; it has shaped presidencies and policies, and now, if unchecked,  such a mentality could bring together discourses of racism, zenophobia, class and gender politics together with Islamophobia, that may push the electorate into voting for people who would lead the country back into the Dark Ages of a second McCarthy era.

Well, as it has turned out, whether you are Trump or Biden—the Palestinians remain as fodder to be served up to the Israel lobby.

Where I Am/ We Are Today

We are obviously all under surveillance and today we are seeing the terrible consequences of speaking truth to power affecting students and faculty across our campuses who dare to condemn Israeli genocide and show empathy with Palestinian civilians being butchered in the thousands.

Once again, with a handful of other faculty on my campus, I am active on our campus discussion list in posting analysis and information beyond state-sponsored media narratives. Once again, we are the victims of name-calling and one of us on my campus has been publicly silenced due to complaints against him of “creating a hostile work environment.” I have in recent months, published an essay outlining this outrageous turn of events.

While dangerous moves to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism are afoot as witnessed in a US Congressional Resolution passed last December, the temper of the masses has changed. This has been unambiguously on view as millions of people many of them of the Jewish faith, across the world continue to take to the streets in protest of the Israeli genocide–a word that following the ICJ’s ruling, will now forever be attached to the Israeli state.

On US campuses, as well, while firings and suspensions of untenured faculty who are vocal in their support of Palestine are on the rise, as is the doxxing of Palestinian and pro-Palestinian students from many of whom job offers have been rescinded, this is all being countered by many more of us than ever before, refusing to be silenced or intimidated. Helped by several colleagues, I am proud to announce that we have joined FJP National with the creation of our university’s chapter of the same, and are slowly seeing numbers of members rise, though many have requested anonymity.

While I have at times elected to, and at others been deliberately sidelined in the decision-making apparatus of university life, I believe that justice will always prevail in the end. I am proud of having remained a disobedient voice, of questioning the norms that compel us to be compliant to the norms of authority in, or outside of, academe. Indeed, I am currently the plaintiff in a case to investigate and discipline my Dean who at a public event in February of this year, refused to greet me or my husband civilly when I walked up to him to say hello, and instead launched into a hostile diatribe against what he claimed were antisemitic remarks I had made on the campus listserv.

I’d like to end by citing a passage from Steven Salaita’s latest essay, in which he pulls no punches regarding the compromises we as scholars working for remuneration and rewards make; at the same time, he exhorts us to do the right thing, to embrace disobedience and class disloyalty, in order to refuse compliance to a genocidal world order:

Maybe it’s time for scholars to disobey our own compunctions—that we’re important or even indispensable, that our education gives us special insight, that innovation would die if we suddenly went away.  Our main compunction, as with all the professions, is to obey class loyalties.  Disobedience should be introspective, then.  We have to disrupt the norms and procedures that advantage the compliant.  How can this be done?  It’s hard to say.  But that it needs doing is by now beyond doubt.

(“Customs of Obedience in Academe,” Feb 12, 2024))

Steven paid the ultimate price for disobedience—he was fired from his faculty position even before setting foot on the campus that had hired him, for a series of tweets condemning Israeli slaughter in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead. I am lucky I managed to get tenure, and within the constraints and privileges afforded by it, have tried and will continue to try to speak truth to power—including going after those, like my Dean, who think they can get away with abuse of power in their attempts to silence us.

Notes.

[1] See Nadine Sayegh, “Israel’s ‘purple-washing’ and the dehumanisation of Palestinian men and women.” The New Arab. Feb 8, 2024. https://www.newarab.com/features/purple-washing-and-abuses-against-palestinians

Fawzia Afzal-Khan is University Distinguished Scholar at Montclair State University in NJ. Her latest book is Siren Song:Understanding Pakistan Though it’s Women Singers. She can be reached at:  fak0912@yahoo.com