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

[Rahul Asthana]

Hi Anand,
Do you know what your friend means by Muslim world below:

>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 


What are the characteristics of Muslim World and how has the face and future of Muslim World changed? 


Thanks

Rahul






--- On Wed, 11/18/09, Anand Vivek Taneja <radiofreealtair at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Anand Vivek Taneja <radiofreealtair at gmail.com>
> Subject: [Reader-list] Normalizing Hate Speech: A Response to Prof. Varadarajan's "Going Muslim"
> To: "Reader List" <reader-list at sarai.net>
> Date: Wednesday, November 18, 2009, 8:37 PM
> 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
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