[Reader-list] Normalizing Hate Speech: A Response to Prof. Varadarajan's "Going Muslim"

[Anand Vivek Taneja]

This is an article written by a friend of mine, Aysha Ghani, who is a PhD
candidate at Stanford.
Given the latest debates on the list, I thought it would be of interest.

Anand


Normalizing Hate Speech: A Response to Prof. Varadarajan's "Going Muslim"

Let me begin with this disconcerting premise: that we live in a world where
anti-Islamic sentiments are becoming increasingly less recognizable as hate
speech - that is, as speech that attempts to injure through
essentializations produced as ‘facts’. The most recent example of this
‘phenomena,’ emerges in “Going Muslim,” the article written for Forbes
Magazine by NYU Stern Professor of Business  and Hoover Institute Fellow,
Tunku Varadarajan. In search of answers for why and how this widening space
of acceptability is being produced, I turn to the rhetorical form and
content of his article for Forbes.

Varadarajan begins by locating his argument in the context of the horrific
Fort Hood killings undertaken by Nidal Hassan on November 5th. In attempting
to understand how Hassan becomes ‘representative’ of American Muslims -
indeed, to the extent that it necessitates the production of his theory,
“going Muslim” - I have to assume that his narrative, although provoked by
recent events at Fort Hood, is affected by an admixture of discourse around
9/11, the War on Terror and widespread American Punditry on what is referred
to more generally as ‘the Muslim Problem.’

Embedded in his analysis is a warning to the American people, of the
presence of an enemy within: the seemingly integrated American Muslim who
can, at any moment, drop the American and emerge simply and dangerously as a
Muslim. The fundamental equivocation in this argument: lose the American and
the threat of the Muslim emerges. While he attempts to add a
characteristically American flavor to the notion of “going Muslim” by
placing it in conversation with a ‘phenomena’ more familiar – going postal -
he quickly delineates their differences. If going postal describes a person
who experiences a psychological snap, then going Muslim refers to a person
who, in discarding “the camouflage of integration,” goes Muslim.  Whereas,
the actions of the ‘postal’ individual are devoid of calculation, the acts
of the ‘Muslim’ are over-determined by calculation. Instead of presenting
the possibility that one who ‘goes postal’ might have desired enacting the
events leading up to that final fatal snap, or that Nidal Hassan may have
been a psychologically unstable individual, Varadarajan leads us to believe
is that the most important lesson to be learned from the Fort Hood incident
is that Nidal Hassan is not a singular individual but rather a type of
Muslim – one who reveals a tendency that ought to be understood as an
emerging threat from Muslims in America. The coherence of Varadarajan’s
narrative depends upon a suspension of logic.

If the occlusion of possibilities presented thus far doesn’t compel a
critical reading of his theory, then the set of assumptions that emerge in
his analysis, particularly concerning what he has decided it means to be
Muslim, ought to. The conflation between Islam and violence, of integration
into American culture as an unreliable solution to the problem of Islam, and
the equivocation between being Muslim and ‘being calculating’ are the
epistemic basis of his argument.  Yet, the absurdity of these assumptions
does not restrict the possibility of Varadarajan's audience.  Why? My own
feeling is that this reveals something of the condition of the world we live
in, a world in which these disturbing and homogenizing assumptions no longer
strike us assumptions, and that this is particularly true when they are
assumptions about Muslims.

In an attempt to get at the heart of the problem, Varadarajan then beseeches
the U.S. government to relinquish political correctness and get down to the
business of protecting Americans on the basis of this singular and
totalizing fact:  that “Going Muslim” is – to invoke the language of the
1994 Hollywood blockbuster hit - a “ clear and present danger” in the United
States. The fundamental flaw in this argument is that it requires we accept
that the United States is concerned with political correctness, and more
particularly, that is concerned about this correctness when it comes to
Muslims. It requires that we accept this even as the U.S. government
continues indiscriminate and unconstitutional practices and policies like
indefinite detention targeted at Muslims and carried out in the absence of
due process and established evidentiary standards. It requires that we
accept this even as the last decade of American history provides evidence
for two detrimental wars that have undoubtedly changed the face and future
of the Arab and Muslim world. It requires also that we ignore the evidence
produced on a 'smaller' scale:  that we shut our eyes at border control
offices filled by an overwhelming presence of Muslims, and that we forget
that in the not so distant past, we listened as candidate Obama reaffirmed
that he was a “church going Christian” in order to evade the possibility of
losing the election because of an ‘allegation’ deemed tantamount to slander:
that he might be Muslim.

In the face of this contrasting understanding of the presence and function
of political correctness in the United States, particularly in matters
concerning Islam and Muslims, I am left to believe that the Professor and I
reside in the same country but experience very different worlds. Yet, in the
aftermath of "Going Muslim", I shudder to think that in expressing these
sentiments, I too might be categorized as an un-integrated American Muslim.

Of, course Varadarajan’s argument would be incomplete without policy
recommendations for the State. To this end, he proposes “practical changes.”
 But if one takes a closer look at the language in these recommendations,
there is a clear shift: he steps away from the heavy Muslim-centered
approach of the preceding sections, now taking on more opaque language and
logic. Why this inconsistency? If his policy changes emerge in response to
the growing threat of Muslims in America, then why shy away from spelling it
out in the policy, particularly after he ostracizes the American state for
its alleged political correctness? In the third of his four-part list of
policy recommendations, he reveals this more ambiguous approach par
excellence. In reference to instances in which military personnel suspect
remarks or behavior of fellow members that might indicate unfitness for
duty, he suggests: “there should be a single high-level Pentagon or army
department that follows all such cases in real time, whether the potential
ground for alarm is sympathy with white supremacism, radical Islamism,
endorsement of suicide bombing or simple mental unfitness.”

Is Varadarajan saying that white supremacists might be ‘going Muslim’ as
well? I must confess, I’m a little confused. After expounding upon the
inherent tendencies, and thus dangers, of Islam, will I now be told that the
'Muslim' part of the phrase ‘going Muslim’ is less of a noun and more of a
‘verb’? That he is using this phrase to describe the calculating nature of
individuals ‘like’ Nidal Hassan, who might technically be found amongst
white supremacists as much as amongst what he, in this instance, for the
first time, refers to as ‘radical’ Islamists? How am I to interpret this
shift in language from “going Muslim” to ‘radical’ Islamists? As an attempt
to conflate Muslims and radical Islamists, or an attempt  to distinguish
between them in the final instance? Is this Varadarajan’s way of telling me
it’s nothing personal? Of presenting his rhetoric as nothing, at least
ultimately, injurious? And, am I supposed to interpret this shift as
ingenious or insidious?

If that’s not the point either, or at least not the entire point ( and I say
this because I think Varadarajan’s argument requires moving between all
sorts of points - at times totalizing, at times discriminating - in order to
avoid being reduced to hate mongering), then in combining the theory -
“going Muslim” - with his more general policy recommendations, he seems to
be asking the government to continue doing what is has been doing for a
while: produce seemingly indiscriminate policies on paper only to then
exercise them in discriminating ways. If that’s the case, then no worries,
Prof. Varadarajan, the state has got your back, but thank you for presenting
them with a case for using this age-old technique in yet another context.
 It’s a potent reminder that Huxley was right when he noted the following
about our experience of history: “from age to age, nothing changes and yet
everything is completely different”. I’ll end with another one from Huxley,
but this time it’s dedicated especially to you: “A fanatic is a man who
consciously over compensates a secret doubt.” Calling upon and speaking for
the nation in order to assuage your own fears is not a new idea, the
previous administration provides evidence for this, but let me know if it
works. You see, I’m currently developing a few of my own fears, in
particular, concerning the possibility of being under the tutelage of a
professor who’s not only frightened by my Muslim presence, but who expresses
this fear through hate speech that is neither recognized nor condemned as
such.

Aysha Ghani
aghani at stanford.edu