Archives for June, 2005

In April 2004, 20-year-old Israeli Sergeant Wahid Taysir shot and killed Thomas Hurndall, a 23-year-old British photographer and International Solidarity Movement volunteer. For 9 months, Hurndall lay in a London hospital in a coma; he died this January.

At the time of the shooting, Hurndall had been escorting Palestinian children home from school. He was shot in the head while attempting to move a Palestinian girl out of the range of Israeli gunfire. Taysir initially claimed that Hurndall had been inside a closed zone and was armed and dressed in combat fatigues. Taysir had apparently mistaken him for a Palestinian militant in camouflage.
Photographic evidence shows that Hurndall had been wearing a fluorescent orange jacket and no weapons, besides his camera.

“All the troops [in Rafah] fire without approval at anyone who crosses a red line.”

Taysir was initially cleared of all charges by the military. However, the Hurndalls, with the support of the British government, began pressuring the Israeli government. The case was reopened, and this time Taysir had a different story. He claimed that the commanders “tell us all the time to fire; that there is approval. All the troops [in Rafah] fire without approval at anyone who crosses a red line.” and so he shot first and then reported it to his superiors. “I told him that I did what I’m supposed to; anyone who enters a firing zone must be taken out. [The commander] always says this,” Taysir said. He also said that he had not meant to hit Hurnball, but had aimed four inches from his head, intending to “teach him a lesson.”
“But he moved.”

“But he moved.”

Taysir’s lawyer also made the claim that Hurndall did not die from his wounds, but was basically killed by hospital staff, with the consent of his parents. His argument was that doctors denied Hurndall antibiotic treatment and ODed him on morphine.
Other reports of the shooting show that Hurnball had no access to medical aid immediately after he was shot, because Israeli forces prevented him from leaving the area.

Yesterday, Taysir was convicted of manslaughter. The tribunal ruled that Taysir had created a “broad campaign of lies and falsehoods to throw off the expected investigation and exonerate himself of any guilt.”
However, in Jocelyn Hurndall’s words, “It is very difficult to feel any sense of satisfaction. So much remains unexposed. It is clear to us that this soldier is the smallest link in a chain of command that lives under a culture of untruth.”

“It is clear to us that this soldier is the smallest link in a chain of command that lives under a culture of untruth.”

One right-wing demonstrator said, “Mr Hurndall knowingly placed himself in a war zone. If anyone should be on trial it should be the International Solidarity Movement.” Right-wing Israeli protestors are now in full support of Taysir, who is an award-winning marksman from the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) desert patrol (Bedouin) battalion. He is also a member of the Arab minority in the Israeli army – and this where things become interesting.

There is the double dose of racism to consider in this story.
First, we have the nationality of the victim. There is no doubt that had it been a young Palestinian man in Hurndall’s position, this death would have gone by unremarked. Many people would have gone so far as to say that being young and male and Palestinian (a deathly combination for everyone concerned), this hypothetical youth most probably was a terrorist, or at least had terrorist tendencies. And it is just that world should be rid of such horrors.
So says Taysir, “If he was a Palestinian, the army would have closed the case along time ago.”

“If he was a Palestinian, the army would have closed the case along time ago.”

Then we have Taysir, who is in the acutely uncomfortable position of being an Arab in the Israeli army. Whatever his own opinions may about the security of the state of Israel, how he is treated by the Israelis and Palestinians and others is largely defined by the observers. In other words, how the Israeli army treats him now will be representative of their own perception of the Arabs within their midst. Taysir again brought up the issue of race when he said, “If I were Jewish, I would have been freed a long time ago. It’s because I am a Bedouin.” Clearly, in his eyes, Arabs in the Israeli armed forces have to be careful that they shoot no one but other Arabs.

“If I were Jewish, I would have been freed a long time ago. It’s because I am a Bedouin.”

I have a hypothesis. I believe that had Taysir killed a Palestinian, the Israeli right-wing would have reacted very differently to this story. The only attention they would have paid to it would have been to crow that one Arab had killed another. Whether or not that fulfills beliefs of all Arabs (and by connection, all Muslims) as inherently savage is another, more complicated, issue.

This is the real world.

Related Links:

• http://rafahpundits.com/2004/06/wahid-taysir-updated-again
• http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-1-1139855-1,00.html
• http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=3453
• http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0130-05.htm

You can have brushes with death and walk away untouched, unchanged.
At least, I suppose so.

Last month, I came a few words shy of changing my life. Does that sound cliched? It would to me, if I didn’t know the specifics. But Lord – what’s there to say?
Suddenly, my life was falling away at my feet and every time I had ever believed I could control my own life came back to haunt me, to mock me. Everything was happening at once; I could not live for all the lives crowding in on mine. There were big words involved, all capital-letter words, things like Betrayal, Hope, Pride, and Future. I had never before seen them so stark against the blankness of the rest of the world, and they hurt my eyes with their blinding hypocrisies.

In true form, I let these things blur into the past. It makes writing this report hellish, because I’m being forced to ignore things that hover persistently at the edges of every word I write.

I know only one way of surviving the worst pains: denial. Not that I won’t mention them, but only to people already in the know, and then only in passing. Not that I won’t pretend it didn’t happen, but only so far as to say it did.
I forget with a passion, a dull, pounding passion, that works its magic in my sleep.

This is how I deal with grief: I sleep, heavily. When I wake up, I have a pounding headache and I feel clammy. I channel my pain into these physical manifestations and then “move on.”

Moments when the sharpness cuts through the pretence, I shut my eyes tight, swear at myself, swear that I will not make a fool of myself and then carry on doing whatever it is I was doing.

It’s hard, though.

My brother came into my room on the pretence of getting a book from me. No one’s allowed in my room except my sister when it’s bedtime, but I let him stay (grumbling for effect all the while, though) while I looked through the stacks of novels in my cabinet.

The majority of the books in the dented steel cabinet are Victorian novels, these being the only books my parents allowed me to read in my childhood. By grade four I had read David Copperfield, Nicholas Nickleby, and Mill on the Floss, among others, in their entireties. By the time I hit middle school, I tried to rebel and gorged on RL Stine and Sweet Valley under the dining room table. Those were thankfully short years.

I pulled out a few books, and then found Kim, by Kipling. I had first read it when was around 12 and it went right over my head. I’d put it away, disgruntled; Kipling’s eye for detail was irritating. And confusing in a heady sorty of way.

I read it again a few years later and this time it took my breath away.
When I pulled it out now, I said, “This is a good book … or I used to like it, anyway. Now, not so much, because …”
My voice trailed off, because I didn’t want to hand him a book that had been pre-bashed.
“Because it was racist,” said my brother, in a slightly bored voice, without even looking at the book.

I rummaged deeper in the drawers, trying to bite back my wry smile.
Am I really all that transparent.

When we were finally able to creep out, I blinked in confusion. It looked like sunrise was nearing – but we couldn’t have waited that long, in that stifling room with the sleeping bodies. Our whispered words had marked the passing time; it hadn’t been that long.
But this wasn’t sunlight.
For the first time that I could remember, I could see by the light of the moon. There were no streetlights, no blinking signs, no cars even. Nothing to intrude on this silver light that spilled everywhere.
The stone well gleamed, a squat cylinder rising ponderously from the dark velvet sand. There were shadows, actual shadows at night; there was that much light.
Everything was so clear. This was no confused stumbling in a narrow midnight hallway.
I could see, when I turned her way, the line of her cheekbones, as clearly defined as though we were standing under a noon sun. But their angles glinted differently; they were not golden. The dark of her eyes were made blacker for the night and they shone brighter under the moon.
We sat down near the well, and I dug my feet in the sand, felt the silky grains lodge between toes. In that wind-carressed silence, it was hard to talk. It seemed disrespectful to break that stillness with our voices, made weak by that liquid light.

The first night there, I spread my mat on the sand and prayed out in the open, under the moon.

Sundays too my father got up early
And put his clothes on in the blueback cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

- Robert Hayden

In Kalmunai, I was often serenaded by Zeenath, a four-year-old in whose I spent a few days.
She recited the following:

The Jaguar. (The capitals were audible, exceedingly so.)
One day the jaguar saw its spots
Lots and lots (preferably pronounced “lotht and lotht”)
Oh my, oh me.
Oh me, oh my.
Who did this to me -
And why. (Stress on that last word.)

Yes, and why.
The nostalgia becomes tempered with pain. And just a little bitterness, just a little anger.

If I do send out an email – and my fingers are itching to click send – it will be the following.

——–

When France passed its anti-hijab laws, the hue and cry at this particular MSA was non-existent. When Iman Muhanna Mohamed was murdered last month, a blatant hate crime that took as its victims a young Muslim woman and her unborn daughter, no one on this list thought it worth their while to send out a short email of condolences or solidarity or even simple and honest fear. Mohamed was a Qur’an teacher, founder of a local Islamic school, and graduate of the Islamic University in Gaza.

Meanwhile, Amina Wadud did what has been done in Toronto before, and Western media leaped out and we couldn’t resist. Monkey see, monkey do. Emails sped the globe and we added another name to add to the very long list of infamous renegade Muslim women.

So here comes one article that touches on the underlying prejudices that often lead to hate crimes, hate crimes that do target young Muslim woman. This article, in no uncertain terms, points out that American Muslim women are discriminated against because of their faith.
But we knew that long ago. We’ve learned to accept that, that Muslim women in hijab will continue to be dismissed by the Western world. We’ve accepted it so well, that we can dismiss them now, too. Thus, our defensive strategies become limited to a flurry of letters to the editor when a really obvious bigot visits campus. That’s a lot easier to do than actually admit that prejudice is a part of daily life and that we’re too much of cowards to actually do anything constructive.

Why is it that I can take a course where the nonMuslim Professor can unequivocally assert that Canadian Muslims are discriminated against and then, when I send an article out that lists the physical manifestations of that discrimination, be told by Muslims that these kinds of articles only create trouble?
Why is that? Are we afraid of admitting we’re treated like second-class citizens?
Face it, if you’re going to live here as a visible Muslim, you’re going to be treated like a second-class citizen, if you are at all even noticed.
Why is it that proclaiming present day injustices against fellow Muslims is somehow disrespectful of the trials the Prophet (SAW) and the Sahaba underwent? I’m afraid I can’t make that leap in logic.

Muslim women are pigeonholed into lower paying jobs. They are taunted on the street. Their teachers underestimate their intelligence. The only things expected of them are silence – or at best, broken, heavily accented English. They are seen as lacking initiative, courage, and creativity. They have been effectively dehumanised.
What I find ludicrous is that I now have to add that I do realise that the Prophet (SAW) and the Sahaba were horribly mistreated, tortured and murdered. Yet somehow it seems that by listing the ways in which we are mistreated now, we are being disrespectful of that past.

In Quebec, some schools have outlawed the hijab. In local Kingston schools, the hijab is more of an identifier than skin colour. In Queen’s, fellow students, under the cloak of night, scream obscenities at Muslim women.
These are facts. (But perhaps, all of us not being Muslim women, we did not choose to discuss it.)

Given these facts, what do you, Queen’s Muslim students, intend to do? Cover your eyes, stick cotton in your ears? Pretend nothing’s happening, because it would make us even more visible to stand up for ourselves?
It’s a policy of see no evil, hear no evil, do no evil.
So I send out an article that lists the way Muslim women are ill-treated. In reply, we receive blanket condemnations by people who chose not to read the article, and we receive claims that we should not talk about the wrongs of today because doing so is dismissive of past wrongs.
Apparently, it would be too much to expect one person to say, “Yes, we’re treated like crap here. And no, there is no reason we should accept it.”
Instead, we sell ourselves to the Western media. We look through their eyes – in reverse. But we can only see in their eyes. And what do they see – ways to put us down. So all the people they praise, we condemn.
But where Western media does not go, we do not venture.
We do not notice when a pregnant Muslim woman is murdered. We do not say anything when Muslim women are prevented from getting an education. We are awkwardly silent when Muslim women are followed by curses on the street.
We have gotten so used to never talking about the fact of our discrimination, that we cannot let go of silence – even when it makes cowards of us.

Recently, I read a thesis work by Shabana Mir, entitled “You can’t really look normal and dress modestly:” the Problem of Dress & American Muslim Women College Students (more info here). I had expected that the paper would outline how hijab marginalizes Muslim women and prevents them from contributing to American societies and suggest that the hijab is the sole reason for the maltreatment of Muslims in America. But just in case I was wrong, I read the paper.
It was in fact a survey of the experiences of American Muslim women who do and don’t wear the hijab. The paper was concerned, not with debunking the hijab, but with how women who do wear the hijab deal with the repercussions of that choice and the image is associated with the hijab. The paper does not, in my opinion, suggest that women should or shouldn’t wear hijab, but asserts that Western societies are limited in their understanding and depictions of women who do wear the hijab.

It also considered the idea of being a “representative of Islam” – a duty incumbent on all Muslims – and how it has become increasingly the duty of women who wear the hijab. It’s an idea that I’ve had to struggle with a long time, especially when it becomes gendered. Take your average American Muslim male college student who in the summer wears (below the knee) shorts and has carefully gelled hair and is beautifully clean-shaven. Because the boy comes to prayers five times a day, it appears his duties are fulfilled. Meanwhile, for the girls who do wear the hijab, their words are watched – by nonMuslims, because these are beings from another world, and by Muslims, because they’re afraid of what they’ll say and perhaps even reveal about the true state of the Muslim world. The implication is this – it’s not as important for the boys to wear their faith on their sleeves, as it is for the women. Having done that, it’s not as dangerous.

Take this essay for instance. I found it an interesting read; it put into words things that I had begun to see underlining my own experiences as a Canadian Muslim woman in Canadian societies. For instance, there is the fear that your every silence will be taken as proof of your being repressed and oppressed. Among other Muslims, your hijab is seen as proof that you know when to keep your mouth shut, that you will not be inflammatory, that there are some opinions that good Muslim girls simply do not voice.
Needless to say, this gets under my skin.

So I sent a link to this essay out on the MSA mailing list. Immediately one of the MSA boys sent a reply. And what a reply. He had no qualms informing everyone that he hadn’t deigned to read the paper – apparently the title had been enough. He then compared Mir to Manji, Mernissi, and such, called her a “sell-out,” and a “so called ‘marginal’ Muslim.” All this and he hadn’t even read the paper.
That says a lot. That we’re an over-reactive bunch. That we believe we can judge without knowledge. That we like to categorise. That Muslim women should be wary what they say for fear of being forever branded a member of the infamous Manji clique.

So now I’m sitting here wondering what it was I was thinking when I sent out that link – did I really expect anyone to reply with anything interesting to say? My MSA in particular is adept at suppressing opinions that clash with the majority. The sad thing is, while a few get the crap for disagreeing, there are many who just keep their mouth shut. That’s what some people call caution, but to me it’s just cowardice.
I remember when I was much younger I used to wonder how it was that people could be afraid of an idea. Ideas do not live, they do not kill, they do not die. Sometimes, in flashes of understanding, I see that ideas are the only thing that can really inspire fear. They give meaning to pointless lives, make immortal dead humans, they inspire the unborn.
The fear of the non-tangible is alive and well.

But to continue with my story.
The next day, another MSA guy wrote in. He said he’d read the article and gleaned nothing of any use whatsoever from it. In his opinion, the article had just been a bunch of women complaining. He also claimed that these kinds of articles create Fitna (the dreaded F word). His basic point was: “if we are complaining of the hardships of this deen then what should the believing women and men of the Prophet Muhammad’s SAWS who suffered the most sever [sic] persecutions and hardships have to say.”
So be it. To him, this article, because it outlined the difficulties Muslim women face every day, is dismissive of the pain the Prophet (SAW) and the Sahaba (both women and men) had to undergo.
I think the logic is faulty. First of all, to cite your difficulties is not the same as to complain. Only when we understand where we’re being mistreated can be go about righting those wrongs. (Dare I suggest that because these are Muslim women who are speaking, they are ignored? Too often we link the hijab with jihad. While that’s there – few people are more visible than women in hijab, that isn’t all there is to it. The second-class behaviour should not be tolerated just because the some Muslims believe that is definitive of the hijab. That takes away, entirely, the spiritual aspect of it.) Secondly, and more importantly, every record of present-day discomfort and discrimination is not a judgement on the trials the first Muslims underwent. That’s like saying, don’t talk about Kashmir or Guantanamo Bay or Palestine or Kosovo or anything at all. Don’t talk about individual hate crimes, about Maher Arar, about France’s anti-hijab laws, about anything at all. Because we all know the Prophet (SAW) went through worse.
So we’ll just sit here, shall we, and stew in our own blood and bitterness.
I think there’s another element of fear involved here. I think we’ve become afraid of insisting on equal treatment. There are, as I can see it, multiple aspects to that. Firstly, we’re afraid that without the discrimination, we will have nothing to define ourselves by. That’s problematic because the it reduces Islam to conflict. Rather than believing that we can exist peacefully and respectfully with others, we believe that we will always be put upon. We, like all other people, like to inspire guilt in others. We feel pious only in pain. Secondly, we’re afraid of standing up for our rights because we’re cowards. Also, we falsely believe in the homogenous West. We do believe that good Muslims do not live here. The minute we fight for our rights we imply that we intend to live here, thereby removing our status as “good Muslims.”
But whatever, the boy replied. He had an opinion and he’d read the article.

This morning, I find another email in my inbox. (It’s been a long time since the mailing list has seen such a flurry of activity.) This guy, after expressing his “100%” agreement with the last email, writes, “For muslims [sic], the best source of Guidance is Quran and Sunnah of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH), which have solution of every problem for all times, whether is 7th or 21st or 24th century.” That is the extent of his email.
The implication is that this article somehow suggests that Muslims shouldn’t follow the Quran.

This is where I throw up my hands in disgust and irritation.
Disgust, because no one thought it worth their while to listen – just listen. Maybe feelings are overrated, but you’d think, in the interest of helping out their worldwide Muslim family, people would be interested in how their front-line soldiers were doing. Disgust, also because, though there are people who agree with me, not one person could write for the defence. Then again, I wasn’t really expecting that. Names get attached to opinions; people feel too strongly about their reputations to risk getting them damaged. That’s the way of the world, and especially of my MSA.
Irritation, because it is my best friend and walks with me wherever I venture.

Anyway, I replied to the first guy who wrote, he who did not read the article and could not see why he even needed to pretend he’d read it. I wrote a lengthy reply. I thought that would be the end of it. These two last then followed in quick succession and it’s the last one that really irritates me. Dismissive and completely missing the point and smug and condescending.
I don’t think I’ll be sending out another reply. It’s just disheartening. My name is attached to all two of the emails that did not condemn this work, making it look like everyone, but everyone (minus the obvious one), agree on its worthlessness.
Again, I have to shake myself. Really, was I expecting anything else? This how the world works.

Just so irritating.

This is the morning after, weeks after.
Has it been weeks?
Kingston timelessness has set it, warping my mind, slowly rotting my memories. And there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

There has to be a report soon, something tangible, at least some semblance of proof. Labelled pictures, reams of hole-punched paper, plastic covers. Perfectly parallel lines of words, one following the next, everything in beautiful order. Everything so neat, all the boxes carefully closed. Nothing untoward, nothing not fitting in.

And I cannot do it. I cannot make the words fit the pictures, because we drove by so fast and while I was taking the pictures I wanted to be seeing outside a camera lens. I cannot make the words reflect the voices, because written words are flat, lacking character and nuance and sound. I cannot explain the silences that were unavoidable, gut-wrenching, and even now dark. Because that has nothing to do with why we said we went, and everything to do with everything.

So I give up on this report. Instead I open up a Word document, insert the dates and let the words flow. The ones that no one will read, the ones that make sense, the ones that blur more than they reveal. Everything. Weeks late, I attempt to detail everything that happened. And find to my sickening horror that too much has faded away. In characteristic fashion, my mind has failed me. Again.
Is nothing holy?

I cannot believe now that I was anywhere but here, in the cloying heat of an unnaturally subdued street in the “better” half of a formerly famous town, now with more than its fair share of high-security jails.
I was never one to believe, never could accept inevitabilities. This last month it was my saving grace, so perhaps there is some sort of grace in our failings.

I want to capture everything now, everything. Every blink of the eye. Every curve of the mouth. Every word, every sound, every glint of light. And I can’t.

He was your textbook example of the benevolent racist, a man with assumptions buried so deep, I quickly dismissed the possibility of easily dismantling them. That is not to say that he was a “bad man,” per se. It was just that he couldn’t see how he was racist, even – especially – when he was going on about some culturally-educating encounter he’d had.

Case in point:
We were waiting in Heathrow (but it might have been Doha, after a while it was all just cold metal), and he asked me, “So do you feel Sri Lankan now?”
I replied more sharply than I expected, “I’ve always felt Sri Lankan. I’ve never doubted that.” I did not tell him that I’ve never known and still don’t know what it means to claim a specific nationality, especially Sri Lankan. I was a stranger, and I never felt it more than in the town where I’d been raised. But I couldn’t have explained this to him – it would have required a different understanding of the world entirely for him to have seen what I meant.
And he asked, “Would you live there?”
This I had decided weeks ago. “As long as it was on my own terms.” And then, almost vicously, “I wouldn’t live in Canada, if it wasn’t on my own terms.”
Surely not a surprising sentiment to hear from a kid who’d just been through the hell I’d been through. But he started back a little and his eyes widened; he hadn’t expected that.
Again, I didn’t explain to him what it meant to me to be able to “live on my own terms” – mostly because I know that I never will live on my own, and only my own, terms. Life requires compromise – there’s a wonderful bit of cliche for you; it rolls off the tongue beautifully.
But I knew what I meant specifically, if not generally, and I had no desire to explain myself to him.
He blustered, “Well, but the weather and all …”
And then I felt a little guilty for having perhaps have read too much into his questions. But only a little. Why ask loaded questions if you’re expecting superficial answers?

Big D. would have been proud of my answers.
They echoed the last words he’d said to me.
I’d been scrambling to have one last conversation with him, because I didn’t know when I’d see him again. The van was waiting in the front yard. All the luggage had been loaded. Everyone was dressed, even me.
So I asked him about Kuwait. Asked him if he’d liked living there.
Never one for small talk, he replied, “I can’t say I didn’t like it.”
“Why not?”
“If I didn’t like it I shouldn’t have stayed there.”
I protested that there’s more to life than black-and-white morality, that sacrifice might be involved, making what is undesirable necessary. But I stammered and stuttered, smiling inside, because this was classic BD and I loved him for it.