Defining people by one story

I've been thinking about my last post and the comments made after it for nearly a week now. Instead of responding directly to any one comment, I've been taking some time to consider my reactions to them in hopes of finding a fresh path for this post; a path that would start from the last comment and yet lead to a new place. After something I heard this morning, I think I'm ready to do that.

When writing about people or places, we must be very careful, perhaps extraordinarily so, to avoid relying on one story. This was the message in this morning's talk given by a Nigerian-born writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (available here: http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html). While I would not do her talk justice by recounting its contents here, I think the overall message is a strong one. More than that, it speaks directly to my previous post, some of the comments made after it and the more ambitious goals of my research.

If we rely on only one story of Muslims, several things happen. First we group a huge amount of people into one group; people who come from different countries and cultures, who speak different languages, who practice different customs and who interpret their religion differently (that's a point of importance only because we choose to identify them primarily through their religion insinuating that there is only one Islam, which we know is false). By doing this, we not only rob those individuals of a vast diversity and their very individuality, but we create a false picture. We flatten a multitude of experiences into one all-encompassing vision or story. Second, we write that story negatively. In other words, the one story we develop to define Muslims is one which characterises them as belligerent, intolerant, cruel, irrational, 'fundamentalist' (forgetting that the word 'fundamentalist' actually stems from Christianity to describe a certain branch of Christian believers), illiberal and otherwise barbaric.

To add insult to injury, how many of us even know a person who's Muslim? And if we know some, can we claim to know ALL in a way that would be sufficient to support claims of how Muslims act, what Muslims want or when they should do any of these things? Who do we mean exactly when we talk about Muslims? For those of us who grew up in the US, at least, making such grandiose statements about, say, African-American people would be unthinkable (or at least should be with our awareness of the value of letting others speak for themselves and the detriment that befalls others when they aren't allowed that voice). Why, then, are we so willing to group Muslims together and then to discuss what's wrong with them?

This question leads me to a discussion of media coverage and the hegemonic messaging that it promotes, but I will leave my comments there for a while and leave it all to you.

Shocking intolerance

I've just been reading the comments following a column posted in a local web-based news magazine. There is a Muslim man who writes a weekly column about various topics, generally about the day-to-day living of a Muslim in Britain. It's well written and thought-provoking. His existence, or the contents of his columns, is not what is driving me to write today. It's the comments that follow them.

I've never paid too much attention to comments until I noticed that there were upwards of 200 comments to one 500-word column. It seemed like an excessive amount, especially when I noticed that the column itself wasn't saying too much. It was advocating a stance of engagement with negativity and differing opinions, over a dismissal of them, in order to help quell misinformation and misunderstanding (specifically about Muslims). It seemed a fair and even enough stance to make--no finger pointing, but rather a call for more understanding and discussion. It turns out that the short column was the columnist's extended explanation of a week's prior column, which was met with such a torrent that all comments were taken off the posting and no further ones were allowed. He was writing this week (the one I'm talking about) to apologise for the erasure of so many comments, something over which he had no control, and to take the opportunity to say that he believes that such erasures do nothing to advance deeper understandings or common grounding between people with different ideas, opinions, or notions of the good.

That all seemed healthy and politically positive enough. But the comments (remember I said there were so many) were all manners of venom. Take the following several examples from various posts:

"is...misunderstanding...anything to do with the atrocities committed in the name of Islam, supported by the teachings of Muhammed? Or is it because of the special status you demand as Muslims, special treatment that other people in this country do not receive."

"You claim to want better understanding of your religion and people, and want better integration, yet your people isolate themselves in "communities" like ghettos."

"What we need are Muslims protesting against terrorism, not against cartoons and teddy bears"

First of all, it's a joke to try to insinuate or just blatantly claim that Muslims get anything like 'special treatment' in any western society in which they live. They generally (based on actual statistics of several western European countries) live at the worst socio-economic levels, have the least access to formal education, and must contend with serious prejudice rooted in and fired by associations with terrorism, backwardness and perceptions of being anti-Western.

Second of all, claiming that people 'isolate themselves in communities like ghettos' shows a SERIOUS lack of appreciation for the element of choice absent in the experience of ghettos (and, some might add, Muslims' experience of choosing where and how to live in Britain). Ghettos aren't places where anyone chooses to live, but where people were and are MADE to live based on the majority's discrimination against them. It's practically laughable that a contributor could accuse Muslims of choosing to put themselves into something which is not chosen.

The third comment which claims Muslims aren't being active enough against terrorism not only insinuates their complicity with it, but also suggests a levity to their political and religious concerns, making it seem as though they only get excited over 'child's play' issues (cartoons and teddy bears). This does a great disservice to Muslims, yes, but it does a greater one to the people of Britain as a whole, characterising them as a shining example of the intolerance they seek to ascribe to Muslims.

I'm generally shocked that people have the nerve to post such things, freedom of speech or not. That 'freedom of speech' covers all manners of sin, it seems to me, although I don't mean to suggest we throw it away. Merely that people seem to use is as a crutch to support what can be, essentially, hate speech; ugly, misinformed, ignorant thoughts meant to make other people feel unwelcome. In the same tone as several of these comments were ones which seemed to accuse all Muslims in Britain of not integrating and feeling a part of the society. In light of these daggers, it's no wonder they might struggle to feel a part and yet so many of them do. We should all take a bit more time to feel inspired by that.

Talk about...what?

Admittedly, this 'blogging' thing is harder than I thought. Or, at least, what I'd like to get out of it is harder to get than I thought. Of course, it's easy to sit here and type whatever pops into my head. It's easy to go on in such a one-sided manner...sending words out without any knowledge of how, when or if they'll be received by anyone. Does that really make them public? Or does it make them more like something I've thrown into a bin...

What do YOU want to talk about?

Post a comment and let me know what is interesting to you, what you're thinking about at the moment...