Combating Islamophobia in America

“If you are painting 1.5 billion people with the same brush of violence and extremism [as al Qaeda], you’re a bigot,” said Reza Aslan, in one of his passionate television appearances discussing the American impressions of al Qaeda, which are frequently transferred onto the Muslim community as a whole.

A popular commentator on a heated controversy in New York – he says that the issue should not be spoken of as “a proposed mosque at ground zero” but rather an “Islamic cultural center (much like the Jewish cultural centers we see across the country) a few blocks away from ground zero” – Aslan aims to expose an unknown side of the Muslim world to the American people.

His intention to reveal the diversity of the Muslim population is apparent in his commentary, including one of his recent columns on The Daily Beast titled “Why Obama Can Be Proud of Indonesia”:

At a time when most Americans believe that Islamic values and democratic ideals cannot be reconciled, Indonesia has proved otherwise. Home to nearly 15 percent of all Muslims on earth, as many Muslims as there are in the entire Arab world, Indonesia is not only the richest, most stable, and most populous county in the Muslim world. It is the Muslim world. While Muslims in the Middle East are still fighting each other over whose vision of Islam will rule them all, Muslims in Indonesia have almost effortlessly fused their Islamic identity with the requirements of a modern constitutional state.”

Aslan is a scholar of religions and a contributing editor at online news site The Daily Beast. He will be speaking Monday, November 29 at the Club office in San Francisco. The Inforum program will begin at 6:30 p.m.

Obama Seeks New Understanding with Muslim World

Watch CBS Videos Online

"America is not, and never will be, at war with Islam," President Obama pledged to an audience in Cairo, Egypt. "We will, however, relentlessly confront violent extremists, who pose a great threat to our security. Because we reject the same thing people of all faiths reject: the killing of innocent men, women, and children."

Today, President Obama gave his long-anticipated speech in Egypt, addressing head-on perceptions and misperceptions between the United States and Islam.

The CBS video of the speech is above. In it, Obama spends considerable time drawing connections first between himself and the Muslim world and then between the United States and Muslims, harkening back to the country's founding and even the first country to recognize the United States' independence: Morocco. In short, he's trying to build an alliance with Muslims to take on common challenges (such as radicals of all sorts, including Islamist terrorist groups) and to help build a new relationship in this age of globalization.

"Any world order that elevates one nation, or group of people, over another, will inevitably fail," Obama told the crowd. "So whatever we think of the past, we must not be prisoners to it."

Obama's speech has already begun to be picked over in detail, but it will be interesting to see what is said about the speech from people who have been covering the Islam-U.S. relationship for years. Paul Barrett, director of the investigative reporting team at BusinessWeek, spoke to The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco February 20, 2007. His speech talked about assimilation and identity among Muslims in America -- a topic Obama proudly touted in his Cairo speech. (See Barrett video below.)



On January 23, 2007, Dinesh D'Souza took the topic and viewed it from a different angle. D'Souza, a conservative Catholic, looked at America as he thought Muslims might view it. (See D'Souza video below.)



And, to add a humorous aspect to this (but one with a serious point), political cartoonist Khalil Bendib spoke to The Commonwealth Club September 18, 2008, about Islamophobia -- and reminds any who needed reminding of the broad range of Muslims and attitudes.

In Farewell Bush Is Unrepentant Until the End: A Personal Reaction

President Bush looked tired. His hair gray. His neck visibly thin, barely filling his starched white collar. His farewell address last night revealed that certain charm that initially created a brief bond with a certain swath of America. He thanked Dick Cheney, had loving words for his wife, daughters and even mom and dad. You almost felt sorry for him. Some tender part of you might miss him -- maybe not his policies -- but his goofiness, his rebellious smirk and the ubiquitous notion of him as the Everyman-in-Chief.

Empathy for President Bush only goes so far, though. He can't hide from his cocky hubris. It is so much a part of his soul that he cannot stifle it. Many early news reports of the address focused on one quote: "We must never let down our guard." It was as if we were transported just for old-time's sake back to 2003 when the mainstream media walked in line with everything we now know was false about the invasion of Iraq. Bush is still fighting the terrorists while the rest of us are fighting the debt collectors.

Bush's retro bravado is not the most intriguing part of the speech. Instead, three sentences beforehand, he says, "America did nothing to seek or deserve this conflict." The United States did nothing to provoke the ire of the perpetrators of 9/11 and the Middle East? The line is a sharp jab in the eye to the entire region.

(For an earlier look into the president's thought process on defense and America's priorities, read the text of Bush's 2002 speech to The Commonwealth Club, or listen to the audio.)

If this was the rationale for the crumbling of the next six years, was it all worth it? I don't think so. Actually Bush's imperviousness to the facts is the hallmark of his presidency. His perception in a highly insular world allowed him to think he could repeatedly lead the nation wherever he wanted to take it, but like he once said, "Fool me once, shame on ... shame on you. It fool me. We can't get fooled again."

I don't think there was a singular event that caused al-Qaeda to attack seven years ago, but over 50 years of American intervention in the region. Arrogance that continually slapped the region's downtrodden adherents of Islam in the face, though in a usually covert manner, rarely as upfront as the style Bush preferred. The U.S. overthrew the democratically-elected leader of Iran because he wanted higher earnings from the oil he sold to the West. We have bankrolled the seats of power, at some point, of nearly every nation in the region, more often than not, propping up murderous despots who ruled their nations with iron-fists. Since seas of oil were first discovered on the Arabian Peninsula, it has always been about oil.

I think the U.S. did plenty to deserve 9/11. It did not deserve the loss of 3,000 innocent people, but then again, our government has not been very careful in differentiating insurgents from innocents, either. Bush long ago staked his presidency on the invasion of Iraq. By stubbornly clinging to the idea the U.S. was attacked without reason, the arrogance that so many Muslims sense from our government continues to permeate until Bush's last days in office.


--By Steven Tavares

Do you agree with Tavares that the U.S. provoked the 9/11 attack? Do you think President Bush is correct that it was unprovoked? Are you sad to see President Bush exit the national stage, or are you eager to have him gone? Leave a comment and share your thoughts!

How The Mumbai Attacks Change Everything in India

ATTACKS WERE NOT ANOTHER 9/11, BUT INDIAN SOCIETY WILL CHANGE

Stanford professor Rafiq Dossani wrote in a paper titled, "Prospects Brighten for Long-term Peace in South Asia" that radicalism in Pakistan relies on the military, and Indian economic growth made armed conflict unreasonable.

Dossani, who will appear Dec. 11 at the Commonwealth Club of California to speak about India's future as a world superpower, may have made a controversial reading of the future of the Indian subcontinent when he wrote: "Hindu radicalism in India, though gaining in both popular and political support, is insufficiently popular to support irrational aggression against Pakistan."

That was until last week's terrorist attacks in Mumbai changed everything.

Robert D. Kaplan writes a fascinating, yet boiled-down version of Indian relations between Muslims and Hindus on theatlantic.com. There are 154 million Muslims in India. Only Indonesia and Pakistan has a larger population. According to Kaplan, India has more to lose from Islamic fundamentalism than any other nation. With the rise of India as an economic powerhouse, the ruling Hindu middle class has created a new national narrative that has excluded the region's Islamic history:

Indians, especially the new Hindu middle class, began a search for roots to anchor them inside an insipid world civilization that they were joining as a result of their new economic status. This enhanced status, by the way, gave them new insecurities, as they suddenly had wealth to protect.

Just as 9/11 hardened national securities issues supported by many military hawks in the U.S., experts believe that the Mumbai attacks could push Indians toward a government more strident in its view of radical Muslims.

The party leader of the opposition Indian People's Party (BJP) is already ratcheting up an aggressive stance against Pakistan before national elections in a few months from now.

"Let us not forget, the 26/11 strike is not just another terrorist incident," said Rajnath Singh, "This is a declaration of an open war against India by terrorists and their perpetrators."

Criticism of the Indian government and reaction to the world media's use of September 11 imagery to describe last week's siege has been skeptical. A New York Times Op-Ed yesterday says "9/11" is not an apt metaphor for the attacks, and a column in The Nation says Mumbai is a domestic issue, not a part of a so-called "global jihad."

Dossani along with Sabeer Bhatia, co-founder, Hotmail and Arzoo.com; entrepreneur
Kanwal Rekhi, managing director, Inventus Capital Partners; venture capitalist; philanthropist, and Ananya Roy, Ph.D., associate dean of Academic Affairs International & Area Studies, UC Berkeley, will discuss India's future growth toward superpower status at The Commonwealth Club of California Dec. 11 at 6 p.m.