Kate McCulloch was among hundreds of Camden residents opposed to the Muslim school

Opening prayer rooms, mosques, Muslim schools, or even kebab shops is becoming an issue of ‘values’, and I am not referring here to economic ones. The values are often referred to as  ‘western values’ and they appear to come in various shapes and colors (Italian, Australian, American, British and so on).  Yet all have at least one similarity – feeling threatened by so-called ‘Islamic values’. In other words, much of the current debate on ‘values’ in western countries  is today shaped by the rediscovered presence  and practices (they have been in the West for centuries) of Muslims living in what an  increasing number of people perceive as a sort of secular Christendom. Each day we can discover one place or another claiming to be the last bastion against the ‘Islamization of the West’.Camden is today, at least for some of its few souls, such a place: the OZ version of Poitiers, it is the site of the last fight against the barbaric Saracen. The Saracen army, this time, is formed by about 900 children who may one day (though I strongly doubt it) attend a controversial proposed Qur’anic school. The project was initially rejected for ‘urban planing’ reasons, but an appeal was later granted and today we are waiting for the final decision.  I am not so interested, as an anthropologist, in what  can only be described as a provincial fracas. It is clear that some protagonists, such as Kate McCulloch have found a quick way to have their ten (or possibly more) minutes of fame (not easy when you live in a rural town of 3000).

Instead, I am more interested in the conceptualization and development of the idea of ‘values’ and how these kinds of incidents are shaping them. To do so, we need to look at some of the statements made to the press to justify the opposition not just against the school but clearly also against Australian Muslims in general. A letter submitted to Camden’s council and signed by some Christian churches describes Islam in general as  ”a private religion . . . driven by a powerful political agenda” and also as “an ideology with a plan for world domination”.

I am particularly interested in the definition of Islam as a ‘private religion’. I am curious about how the writers of the letter arrived to this conclusion and how they define a ‘public’ and ‘private’ religion. Also interesting is the accusation that Islam is driven by a political agenda – especially as this assumes the Christian movements and churches in Australia do not have  a ‘political agenda’, which, in reality,  the very letter they wrote demonstrates. Indeed, to a call by Reverend Glenda Blakefield (the associate general secretary of the Uniting Church’s national assembly) to understand the Camden affair from a multifaith perspective,  the Right Reverend Bruce Meller (whom vehemently opposes the Muslim school) has replied, ‘we are a Christian organisation and we want to see the teachings of Jesus be pre-eminent’.

Of course, I would be very surprised if a committed Christian would not have wished that the ‘teachings of Jesus’ were  pre-eminent, and of course his/her own church hegemonic to a level that could perhaps even induce the state to obey ’God’s Will’. There is nothing strange about it. Christianity, as any other religion (monotheistic or not) is about ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ and how to promote ‘good’ and forbid ’evil’. Hence, in this respect, committed and outspoken Muslims are no different from their ‘brothers and sisters in faith’ as  Reverend Glenda Blakefield would say.

As we have seen, one of the reasons for which the Qur’anic school (and by extension all Muslims)  is perceived as alien and dangerous to the Australian ‘way of life’ and ’society’ is that, according to the critics, Islam does not recognize ’secular law’. I have discussed elsewhere the fact that there is no ‘Islam’ per-se (other than in the mind of God), and there are instead only Muslims to embody it.  Thus, opinions about human law and God are many and diverse.  The heart of the issue here is that all monotheistic religions declare a superiority of the divine over the worldly.

Islam of course is much more scrutinized today than others, and a Catholic Cardinal recently clearly expressed this very same idea and asked (successfully) that a state (Italy) would legislate according to ‘God’s Law’ (of course, the Catholic version in this case).  Could you imagine if, instead of a Cardinal, the same request was made by an imam? So, we have to go back to the real reasons behind the opposition to the school  and scrutinize what is a more complex, and today more global, issue: what I have called the clash of  civilizers. This means that to understand the phenomenon (including the Camden affair) we need to discuss the (in this case western) genealogy of ‘civilization’. However, we cannot do so if first we do not look at the concept of the ‘West’ in itself.

Bonnet (2004) in his book The idea of the West has provided an interesting, and provocative, reading of ‘the west’ as a concept. He has suggested that the historical development of the modern idea of the West cannot be understood in isolation, but rather as part of the cultural and political effort to differentiate human society. The key, according to Bonnet, is to observe the change in fortune of another powerful European myth, the superiority of the white race. If today the expression ‘Western civilization’ is widely used and accepted, ‘one only has to look back some hundred years or so to find that something called “white civilization” was once also taken for granted’ (Bonnet 2004: 14). Bonnet, through an analysis of works written between 1890 and 1930 in Britain, has observed that literature that supposedly had to celebrate white identity highlighted in reality the vulnerability of such a social category. By the 1930s, ‘with hindsight, its decline and eclipse appears foretold in its own propaganda: for even the most ardent advocates of white solidarity found the idea inadequate’ (2004: 23).

One of these vulnerabilities was the lack of a proper history; the myth, in this case, had to be rooted within nature and the scientific domain. Bonnet is very careful not to directly connect the decline of whiteness and white solidarity with the development of the modern idea of the West. He has, however, rightly observed that the fading of the former has made the latter central to the European discourse of superiority since, ‘the idea of the West helped resolve some of the problematic and unsustainable characteristics of white supremacism’ (2004: 36).

When Western colonialism was at its height, it was said that the West was in its death throes. When communism spread in East Asia, and as Asian and African countries achieved independence, it was said, perhaps with more justification, that the West was in retreat. Yet even minor phenomenon, like the rise of youth culture or the decline of classical music, have been interpreted as signalling the end of Western civilization. (2004: 36)

Recently, two British scholars, Dr. June Edmunds and Prof. Anthony Glees have clashed over the popular topic of Islamic extremism within, in this case, British universities. This has been since 2006 a very ‘hot’ topic for the press and a long term ‘hot potato’ for deans at universities. Yet for some students and researchers, it has turned into a real nightmare. The two scholars, of course had opposing views. Dr June Edmunds, whom has conducted a University of Cambridge research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), has concluded,

The government’s reaction to new security threats, in particular an increasing surveillance of Muslim students, is a public-relations exercise to satisfy popular demands for tough action. The portrayal of a disproportionate threat from the Islamic community does not reflect informed opinion about how most young British Muslims – and university students in particular – live their lives. In this respect, it could well be counter-productive, alienating a law-abiding part of the British population.

This of course, contradicts previous alarmist research conducted by Prof. Anthony Glees for The Social Affairs Unit, one of an increasing number of  think-tanks, often right-wing oriented, mushrooming today in the UK . Prof. Anthony Glees (together with Chris Pope ) wrote the pamphlet When Students Turn to Terror, which listed 24 universities where radicalism, particularly when Islamic, flourished. Prof. Anthony Glees, contrary to many other academics, welcomed the British government to create a ’surveillance’ culture within British universities.  It does not come as a surprise that Prof. Anthony Glees vehemently rejected Dr June Edmunds’ research:

That Cambridge should issue a press release as grandiose as this, trumpeting research so flimsy and uncompelling as Edmunds’s, is curious.This research was based on only 26 interviews (of which eight were not even conducted in person). Hardly “detailed”.

Prof. Anthony Glees proceeds to list the methodological reasons for which Edmunds’ research should be considered ‘weak’, and among the ’sins’ listed we can read: not quoting Prof. Martin Innes’ study, which however, focused on the disaffection of young Muslims with the British police and politics, and was commissioned by the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo); not using media reports of terror arrests, trials or convictions, and, the most capital of all  sins, not basing her research upon any polling evidence, such as that conducted by YouGov on behalf of the right-wing think-tank, the Centre for Social Cohesion.

Although I want here to discuss something different, we need to observe some important aspects of  the Edmunds vs. Glees quarrel.  Dr June Edmunds never declared that her study was a ‘definitive’ one nor that some students were not involved in radical movements or held extreme views, but instead only claimed that ‘young Muslim students are not disproportionately involved in extremist politics or susceptible to such radicalization.’ 

We can read the short Cambridge based research as a trend indicator instead of the ‘final answer’ to an issue, which, as we shall see, is more complex than we can expect. Yet Prof. Glees’ criticism of Dr Edmunds’ research tells us more about his idea of research than the possible weaknesses of the Cambridge ESRC project.

First of all, Prof. Glees attacked Edmunds’ research because it was allegedly based on 26 interviews. Although the number is low, it is still better than the foundation behind the astonishing revelation made in 2005 by Prof. Glees who claimed that York University was harbouring BNP extremists.  Based on very little evidence and in an attempt to augment what appeared to be very anecdotal evidence, Prof. Glees resorted to a Rumsfeldian style: ‘absence of evidence in this field is not necessarily evidence of absence.’

Prof. Glees has also an endemic allergy to any independent research (as to the state university system in general), since, as he has suggested in his criticism of Dr Edmunds’ research, what really matters is media reports of terror arrests, trials or convictions and even dubious polls conducted under the control of partisan organizations such as the Centre for Social Cohesion. Serious scientific research, based upon strong methodology, ethical guidelines and peer-reviews are, fro Prof. Glees, just obstacles to the ‘right’ way of ‘fighting’ extremism.

Indeed, Prof. Glees among others in certain ‘charities’ known as think-tanks are not engaging in scientific research but rather taking advantage (including economic advantage) of the infrastructures which the ‘war on terror’ have provided. While, together with others, Prof. Glees provides the mass media with the alarmist food they need for their news and inspires the government to suggest certain types of policy making (sometimes extremely disturbing in order to maintain enough attention).

He, like others in the same field, cannot explain why, in which way, or for what reason we have a phenomenon called ‘extremism’.  In conclusion, although Dr Elmunds’ research should be understood as a pilot research for further and more in-depth research, Prof. Glees’ criticism were surely short of academic strength.

Leaving aside the Glees vs. Edmunds polemic, we may wish to ask  a more serious question which targets the center of the University and extremism issue. Is all this debate about universities beings hotbeds of Islamic radicalism just a waste of energy, effort, money and resources? Are we engaging in a futile ‘exercise’ called ’spot the radical in the gown’? Let us observe some simple points.

First of all, we cannot discuss extremism, fundamentalism, or radicalism without defining it. Depending upon how we define it, we may then can classify whom, or which group, is the extremist. Of course, there are many definitions available and they are highly debatable – so the debate soon becomes endless and unproductive. It is thus better to move from this view and just ask: are there serious criminal activities taking place in universities? Surely, through my experience, the most serious crimes on campus tend to involve drugs.

However, such widespread problem does not attract much in the way of attention.  Indeed, your child, today at any university, is more at risk of becomming a drug addict or alcoholic than a political or religious extremist – yet where is the publicity surrounding this danger?

Secondly, why are we discussing whether universities are places where extreme ideas are developed? They are and they have always been. The most extremist political movements have grown up within universities – to name only one, The Red Brigades and their most important ideologue, Renato Curcio. Universities are places in which ideas, some positive and others negative, are debated, formed, deconstructed and redeveloped. To try to control this process is a futile effort. So, the question is not whether  ’extreme Islamic ideas’ (or fascist, racist, anti-gay, Christian fundamentalist, and so on) are discussed, offered, or developed in certain university environments but whether they attract a majority of students, in this case Muslims.

No study can claim that the majority of Muslim students in British (or any other to the best of my knowledge) universities are attracted to, or even come into contact with, such ideologies. Indeed as I have suggested in my last book, radicalism and extremism have more complex dynamics than  simple indoctrination.

Thirdly, it is true – fully true – that there is frustration among Muslims in the UK about the government, the mistakes made, the reluctancy to admit those mistakes and the singling out of an entire community. This is a reality which affects an entire community and not just students. The issue is called ‘dystopia’.

Certainly insisting that radicals and extremists are winning the hearts and minds of a majority of Muslims (something fully untrue at this time but possible in the future) does not help to address the causes at the root of extreme ideas, not just among Muslims but among human beings in general.

Hence, focusing on universities, and singling out a specific environment as the ‘alma mater’ of potential religious violence, and engaging in long diatribes on whether extremism is there or not, does not provide any real or useful answer. Yet there are people with extreme ideas, and not only  ”Islamic”, in universities as there are in any other environment of where many different kinds of people come together.

In reality, some of my research tends to suggest that the strongest extreme ideas, including religious and “Islamic”, can be found not in universities but rather in high schools.  

Yet we have also to take into consideration the age of the students: how many of us have been ‘extreme’ in our way of thinking at the age of fifteen?

Rohingya children studying the Qu'ran at the Madrassa

Today another 200 Rohingya refugees have been rescued while drifting away in a wooden boat near the coast of Indonesia. It is pretty clear that the Rohingya are becoming the ‘Roma gypsy‘ of Southeast Asia, and similar to the case of Roma in Europe, the discussion is not about them, as human beings or to address their issues, but rather about how to get rid of them as quickly as possible. Degrading camps, expulsions and even ridiculous statements that these refugees, who bear the physical scars of their oppression, are actually economic migrants seem at this stage to be the only solutions offered. Islamic parties and even extremist groups are not interested in the destiny of the Rohingya people – or as we shall see below, at least not from a humanitarian and ‘political’ viewpoint. For instance, 193  Rohingya Muslims tried to find refuge on Sabang Island in Aceh Province, but are today facing deportation and possibly torture or death in Burma. Yet Irfan Awwas, chairman of the Indonesian Mujahidin Council, or MMI, said,  ’our attention has been focused and our energy has been exhausted on the Palestinian issue.’ In other words, this hard line Indonesian group tells us that it has screamed so much for Hamas and the Palestinians that it suffers from a hoarse ‘political’ voice.

Although this shows the real faces and intentions  of many Islamist movements around the world, particularly the most extremist, the Rohingya Muslims may surely be better off with the silence of such movements. This also means that there is space for a real voice that can help to resolve their issues. The US , with the UN, has to take the issue of the Rohingya people seriously and call for a forum to resolve the historical denial of an entire ethnic group. Rohingya Muslims are an ethnic group and have a traceable history in Burma which dates back to the early 7th century!  

However, I know very well that the world of international politics is cynical and Machiavellian, and no action will be taken until the countries in South Asia (and the West) fully understand the consequences of this ‘no-action’ policy. I have not very much time to go into detail here, but I wish to offer a brief  rationale for which not only Rohingya Muslims are suffering from their situation, but also how we can end badly in terms of international security; the only thing, unfortunately, which seems to matter to politicians today. 

Let me only address the situation in Bangladesh where there are possibly more than  26,000  Rohingya refugees. The camps there are in a shocking condition and host to some of the most appalling, unhygienic and poor situations that can be found in refugee camps. Many women have lost their husbands, mothers their sons, and children are often without proper education. Depression is palpable everywhere; but so too is anger, resentment and a readiness to face even death if this means to escape such a miserable and unjust life.  

In my most recent book I have discussed how emotions and what I have called an ‘ethos of justice’, which can turn into an ideology of justice, may increase the risk of, if not produce, what scholars have defined ‘fundamentalism’. Camps such as this one, in which so many Rohingya Muslims live and suffer as refugees, can only increase the resentment towards other states, people, and situations. 

Certainly it is not a surprise that some Rohingya Muslims may end in prison for petty crimes and that, as in the case of the Gypsies in Europe, people may show very little empathy towards them and their lives. Yet Rohingya have very few choices and possibilities. This is also true in the case of education, which is mainly religious and in Bangladeshi madrasas. The religious teaching in these madrasas is at the best very traditional and at worst dangerous for the education and formation of frustrated and poor new generations of displaced Rohingya Muslims. 

Should we be surprised that violent radical groups may target or exploit the desperate reality of these people?  I am not. I expect that if the situation of Rohingya Muslims is not addressed quickly, with an emphasis on justice and their rights, their refugee camps can easily become a security issue for the world and a prolific breeding ground for future extremists and possibly even cheap terrorists (yes, indeed, terrorism is often a paid job!).

There is enough desperation among the Rohingya Muslims, who fear terribly for their lives and the lives of their loved ones in Burma, that exploitation of their emotions and needs would perhaps be an easy vulnerability for a radical organization. 

If anyone can gain from the desperation of the Rohingya Muslims as people and individuals, it is certainly neither the Southeast Asian countries, nor the Western ones, but rather those extremist, violent, “jihadi” groups that today have more and more difficulties to recruit people for their bloody plots.  Now we may ask ourselves: are the silent, hoarse voices of radical violent Islamic groups so innocent?

I have discussed and provided some information about the quite unknown tragedy of Rohingya Muslims elsewhere in this blog. Normally, Rohingya Muslims make news only when there is a dearth of other stories. Today, more people know who the Rohingya are because of shocking reports in which some tourists in Thailand have  witnessed and documented the severe mistreatment of refugees by the Thai army on Thai beaches. The UN has asked access to the refugees, some of whom have been expelled, and an investigation into the alleged mistreatment.  Rohingya Muslims are virtually stateless, and to define them as ‘economic migrants’, as the new Thai government has attempted to, is unrealistic no less than the full probe they have promised, which however is to be conducted by the same Thai army involved in the international scandal.

It would be easy to present Rohingya Muslims as the victims of ‘evil’ Buddhists, but the reality is very different:  Rohingya Muslims are  victims of their lack of strategic value, both for their native Southeast Asia and the wider international community. Similarly to the tragic reality of Black Muslims in Darfur, their lives have no economic, or political, value for the rest of our cynical world. In a certain sense, since Rohingya Muslims are also unable and unwilling to start a conflict in the region, this also diminishes the chance that their tragic odyssey from place to place will be terminated soon.

Muslim countries such as Bangladesh are no less responsible for Rohingya Muslims’ suffering than the other states in the region. Indeed, about a half-million Rohingya escaped during military crackdowns in 1978 and 1991 and continue to try to escape the persecution they face from the Burmese military dictatorship;  the majority of them tried, and continue to try, to reach Bangladesh, while many others are in exile in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Thailand and Malaysia.

Since 2006, Bangladesh has made it harder to get passports, so the Rohingya began making the dangerous journey by boat to Thailand, and then overland to Malaysia, in order to better their life or avoid starvation.  Bangladesh is a Muslim country with a majority of Muslims, but it is clear that the Islamic concept of ummah has little value when compared to political interests. Rohingya Muslims in Bangladesh, as in other Muslim countries such as Indonesia or Malaysia , are no more welcomed than in Thailand. Rohingya Muslims have protested, even recently, and tried to make more and more people aware, especially other ‘brothers’ and ’sisters’, of their intolerable condition. Yet who is really listening to them?

Nearly nothing, beyond the humanitarian aspects and refugee studies, has been written about Rohingya Muslims; there is, as far as I know, no anthropological monograph or extended article which focuses on their life, culture, traditions and so forth. I would be extremely interested to know more about the traditions and culture of this Muslim group which risks being silenced forever. Indeed, we should recognize that, distant from the eyes of most, and ignored by the economic and political interests in the Southeast Asian region, the Rohingya Muslims are not just enduring their longterm diaspora looking for new homes and embarking upon dangerous odysseys in the pacific, but also facing a slow, silent cultural genocide.

Can I expect to see Muslims around the world campaigning together to ask that the Rohingya have the right to a home, their own home, and that the international community takes serious steps to protect, so guaranteeing a decent peaceful life to the Rohingya community? Of course, I know very well that this will not be the case. Maybe we may find some, mainly non-Muslim, organizations trying to make the Rohingya Muslim tragedy known and to organize humanitarian support.  However, the majority of Muslims, even those so ready to violently scream and shamefully misbehave in the name of a free Palestine, will not whisper even a single word to help these ‘brothers’.  How many Muslims have heard an imam mention the name Rohingya during his supplication (Du’a) for Afghanis, Palestinians, Iraqis and even perhaps the Chechen muhajedeen?

It would be too long to explain here the reasons for this widespread disinterest among the majority of Muslims about the destiny of Rohingya Muslims. Let me only say that many of the reasons are political: many Muslim governments have their hands dirty with Rohingya Muslims’ blood, but still play the ‘Muslim ummah’ card, as in the case of the Danish Cartoons,  when it is needed for their political games – but never when ordinary Muslims, like the Rohingya, without political value to barter with, find themselves oppressed.

Yet we cannot be surprised that the camps in Bangladesh can become a very easy recruiting ground patronized  by  the “talent scout”  of extreme violent groups which can offer a pay, a jihad to believe in, and the way to express accumulate frustrations, especially those of young people. It is not too late to try to improve the lives of these people; and if governments do not wish resolve the Rohingya issue for humanitarian reason and the right of international justice, at least they should  for their and global security. 

I hope that more anthropologists, despite the difficulties and inevitably the danger they may face, can show more interest in writing ethnographies and accounts of the lives of Rohingya Muslims and also document the suffering that they endure, before one day we may discover that it is too late.

I am pleased to inform my friends and readers that my latest book Understanding Muslim Identity Rethinking Fundamentalism, is finally on the bookshelf of (more or less virtual) book shops.

Another book on Islamic fundamentalism?’ I can hear the question echoing among friends, colleagues and readers. Since 2001, more than 100 books and 5,600 articles have been published on Islamic fundamentalism. Broadening the research to agnate labels – such as Islamism (about 200 books and 243 articles), political Islam (345 books and 4,670 articles) and Islamic extremism (only 16 books and 1610 articles) – we can appreciate the amount of scholarly publication pressed into the past seven years.

So, why write another book? I have tried to explain the reasons in the Introduction, which you can read for free. The book provides a very different analysis of what has been labeled ‘Islamic fundamentalism’, and what I prefer to call ‘emotional Islam’.

By rejecting culturalist and essentialist reductionist approaches to it, I have suggested that we need to understand ‘fundamentalism’ not as a ‘thing’ (i.e. cultural object) but as a ‘process’, and start from the individual before looking at the group. Of course, it is only the reader whom can decide whether a book may be interesting or not, but I am sure that Understanding Muslim Identity Rethinking Fundamentalism provides something new to the scholarly debate on radicalism and religious violence. Indeed, although I focus on Muslims, the argument presented in this book is not limited to them, and the theory on which it is based may be tested on other forms of ‘emotional religions’ or even ‘emotional secularism’.

Unfortunately the book is not free (I do not get very much from royalties and free academic books remain my dream!) and today more and more academic books published by serious academic publishers tend to be in hardback – my  book is not cheap (but among the cheapest in hardback!) .

Nonetheless,  I hope that, if the sale ranks are good, the publisher may decide to reprint the book in paperback. So, if you cannot buy the book, ask your library to buy it. I will be very happy to discuss the topic, chapters and ideas of the book with you.

Israel’s military has bombed whatever stands, lives and moves in Gaza, including the UN facilities and aid. No other state in the world has behaved, without facing dire diplomatic consequences, in such a way. The Israeli state which, although located in the Middle East, claims a ‘western’ civilizational link and heritage has surely fallen short of it. The Israeli government has failed totally in its actions: Hamas is still able to rocket blast South (and possibly North) Israel, the Israeli military actions have killed 130 ‘militants’ sacrificing about 630 civilians, it has prevented the rescue of the injured, causing the Red Cross to condemn the actions, and has attacked UN convoys (a “deja vu” since the Israeli army has a certain preference for “mistakenly” bombing the UN). Among the disturbing facts of the Israeli Kadima government  is  that  257 children have been killed and 1,080 wounded. It is a massacre, and one which only one ‘democracy’ in the entire world has the ‘privilege’ to perpetrate.

We may wish to ask: is this a collective punishment? I do not think so. Let’s face one fact, the Israeli government, as discussed in my previous post, would have lost the elections if they had not acted against Hamas’ rockets. We have also to recognize that a state has the right of self-defense (as any other country or people for what matter). The problem is where self-defense ends and mass murder begins. Surely Israel has misused its self-defense option in this case. To call, today, Israel’s actions self-defense is ridiculous. Like in the case of the last war in Lebanon, Israel has failed to acheive its targets, as Olmert has admitted, but this time it cannot give up: there are the elections.

They can only bomb and bomb, killing without a real solution, for any ceasefire which then results in Hamas launching new rockets will mean the political death of Kadima and allies. The Israeli government can today only espouse an ethos of death to cover its own failures. Unfortunately, many  Israelis like many Palestinians, adhere to this ethos and believe it can deliver the peace they need. For this reason the Israeli government, and groups like Hamas, are so ready to adopt it, foster it and praise it.

The politics of the ‘ethos of death’ is based on the principal that death is necessary to convince that serious actions have been taken to protect, or achieve, the political aim. The ‘ethos of death’ works not only for Israel, which has to convince its own population that the government can guarantee security,  but Hamas too, since death reinforces the group’s  position and transforms, inevitably, Israel into a twenty-first century Herod: slaughtering so many children has never helped the image of a nation!

Israelis and Palestinians seem trapped in the cycle of the ‘ethos of death’ and the problem is that mediators seem unable to recognize it. Mediators are again focusing on technical aspects: stopping Israel’s carnage and Hamas’ rockets. This is not the issue. Both Israel and Hamas know that they have to reach, one day or another, a ceasefire, even though Israel will not be able to stop Hamas from possessing and using rockets, nor will Hamas stop the Israeli blockage of  Gaza. The issue is that, when needed, the ‘ethos of death’ will be used again at the first political strategic opportunity.

Blood covers not only the bodyies of the dying but also the frustration of the Palestinian and Israeli people, often transformed by the ‘ethos of death’ into twenty-first century vampires seeking more and more blood from the ‘enemy’ in the name of survival. If both the people of Israel and Palestine do not reject the politics of the ‘ethos of death’, this new ceasefire will remain a mere parentheses of calm so that Palestinians in Gaza may bury families and mourn hundreds of relatives and friends dead, and the Israelis of the South may repair windows, ready to be soon broken again.

Just a child

Palestinians in Gaza are again living another nightmare. The world, however, appears less interested than usual.  Dead Palestinians are common products on the international political markets at least last since 1967. As many may have observed, I have rarely commented or written about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. I am not a political scientist and I think that too much has been said and too little done. This post is intended to be just a reflection provoked by the sight of innocent people suffering and trapped in an endless conflict. I wish to tackle the current situation with a practical, and perhaps Machiavellian, question: who gains from this massacre? Certainly it will be neither the people of Palestine nor those of Israel, who will face, inevitably, the return of suicide operations that leave still more innocent people dead or mutilated. People gain from peace, not war. Yet war is a very profitable business. 

Let me be clear about some points regarding Hamas and the Israeli government.  First we must look at Hamas for what it really is, and not for the Robin-hood many would rather it were. Hamas has great and grave responsibilities for what is happening and for the suffering that people in Gaza are facing. The decision to increase  (indeed they never stopped) the number of rockets fired into Israel was a clear provocation aimed to achieve a violent response by the Israeli government (which also never respected the ceasefire).  Hamas has demonstrated its disunity and level of oppression towards the Palestinians in Gaza.

Hamas is not a party; it is a movement with much in the way of internal conflict. Many Palestinians in Gaza or from Gaza, when speaking freely, are extremely critical of Hamas, and the violence and oppression used to subdue whomever disagrees with their politics and methodology, which is often  brutal.

Hamas has more interest in its own gain than the destiny of Palestinians, and for this reason it is ready to sacrifice them to the altar of money and power. Indeed, this is the ultimate motivation behind an organization which has changed deeply and become controlled more by mafia interests  than by any real political agenda for a prosperous Palestine.

Indeed, Hamas, as it is today, can only offer to the Palestinians of Gaza two words: war and hate; war against the Israeli and hate for its political rival, Fatah. People cannot live in an eternal struggle, yet Hamas can only exist in such a context because it was born out of that very context. 

Unfortunately,  to remain in  business, Hamas needs to maintain control and fight both dangerous internal challenges and external pressure. Peace is an enemy for Hamas even more than the Israeli army; peace and stability will bring scrutiny from the inside, from the Palestinian people, and with that, political decadence.

War, destruction and desperation help, though at high cost, to maintain control and popularity, at least outside Gaza. Hamas is more popular among Palestinians, and in general Muslims, whom have not lived in Gaza and are shielded from the most brutal aspects of  this movement which has lots much of its original identity and leadership. 

Unfortunately, many Muslims live with a myth of Hamas as the ‘freedom fighter’ but are simultaneously ignorant of Hamas as capable of being power-money hungry, abusing human rights, exerting excessive control over private life, and even oppressing innocent Palestinians. Many Muslims see  Hamas as a unitary, monolithic paladin of Palestinian rights. It is not. Some Palestinians have even suggested that their condition was better under Israeli occupation. Do Palestinians in Gaza have a choice? They can only choose between the brutality of Hamas and the brutality of Israel. As usual, between two brutalities, normally people prefer their own. 

Now, it is important, when we speak of Israel, like when we speak of any other country, to remember that decisions are taken by governments which, after elections, respond more to political parties than the people (some may notice that even in the UK, the current PM was elected by a party, not by a real democratic vote!).

The Israeli government, controlled by the  triumvirate  Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, has decided to embark on a total war against Hamas not only because of the rockets fired by the latter, but also because of a political opportunism linked to the forthcoming elections  in February.

Few have noticed that  polls were indicating that Kadima  has fallen far behind Likud. Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of Likud, represents very well the stagnation of Israeli politics – linked to the past and unable to provide a real future to many young Israelis. However, Netanyahu had better support than Tzipi Livni because of his campaign promised to deal, once and for all, with the rockets and threats from Gaza.

It is not difficult to see  why the  the  triumvirate have decided to sacrifice Palestinians’ lives. They are going to remove the winning card from Netanyahu’s hands, moreover, with operations which will go on for weeks, they will destabilize the region, increase the possibility of suicide attacks, and the Kadima trio can hope that the well worn adage about not changing government during war will hold true and give them an electoral victory, despite the corruption endemic within the party.

The lives of Palestinians, for the Israeli governments, have never been relevant.  It is as if Palestinians, leader after leader, are an annoyance that, despite all efforts to get rid of them, are rather like ants, endlessly reappearing despite the destruction. Of course, although the ethnic cleansing temptation runs through some of the leaders of Israel, today that option cannot be proposed even in the most secret of ominous bunkers. Yet the attitude towards the lives of Palestinian has not changed: they are seen as less than human, however this is not dissimilar from how Hamas, and some Palestinian resistance movements, likewise see the Israeli people. 

And here lies the main issue: both parties, the Israeli and Palestinian leaders, share at least something in common: an immoral and unethical view for which political gain are more important than innocent lives, including those of women and children.

Hamas has no problem to sacrifice Palestinian lives in the name of an impossible mission (to remove Israel from the Middle East), and the Israeli government has no issue with endangering the lives of innocent Israelis with the inevitable retaliation of suicide bombing and killings. 

Although history is important and certainly injustices are difficult to accept, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict cannot be resolved without pragmatism. To look back to the past, in this case, means to deny the future and perpetuate the circle of killing. Yet this is not only an issue that Palestinians and Israelis have.

The conflict has become globalized and has been transformed into a kind of  ‘religious’ confrontation, when of course, it is not. For as long as the past continues to interfere with the future, and so long as people go on killing each other in order to establish whom is right and wrong, there will not be peace. Palestinians and Muslims have to accept one simple fact: Israel is here to stay. Israel and its supporters have likewise to accept that sophisticated forms of ethnic cleansing will not be sustainable nor sucessful. Palestinians are, generation after generation, there to stay, and if a solution not found, to fight. 

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict needs an innovative approach which, in my opinion, has to start from below; from the people themselves. The real issue, and the reasons for which Palestinians find themselves with movements such as Hamas and Fatah, and the Israelis with one of the most incompetent and corrupt governments that a democratic country can have, is that the people of Palestine and Israel have given up much of their  hope of living in peace.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, of course, has some clear historical reasons. Yet the fact that it is still one of the most deadly conflicts affecting civilians is due to extremely bad politics, and bad politics, akin to a kind of cancer,  requires innocent blood in order to perpetuate itself.  

Recently we have witnessed another carnage, this time in Mumbai, perpetrated by people who are ready to kill for their ideological, political and religious beliefs. Among those murdered, coming from all walks of life and are of different ethnic, national and religious origin, there are also two Jewish parents who leave 2-year-old Moshe orphaned. He was lucky enough to remain alive. This absurd gratuitous violence against unarmed and defenseless people is not the first occurrence and will not be the last.

Certainly, the reasons for taking innocent, often very young, lives would change as the ideologies or the beliefs under which the murderous actions will be justified by the killer. Surely I do not need to mention the genocides and the retaliations as well as the ‘punitive’ attacks which have costs the lives of so many people and the different ways, from ‘bringing democracy’ to ‘doing God’s will’ in which such actions have been justified and supported.

Some, as usual, will blame ‘ideology’, politics, or even religion, in this case Islam, as the ultimate reason for the Mumbai hecatomb and other atrocities. This idea that human actions, included killings, are controlled by ‘culture’ and systems of symbols is a powerful one both in social science, particularly cultural anthropology, as well as in public discourse.

In the social sciences the influence of Clifford Geertz cannot be overestimated. Geertz has defined culture as a ‘control mechanism – plans, recipes, rules, instructions (what computer engineers calls “programs”) – for governing behavior’ (1973: 44). In a previous version of the same article, he also emphasized that such a ‘control mechanism’ is achieved by ‘the imposition of an arbitrary framework of symbolic meaning upon reality’ (1964: 39).

In other words, humans without culture could not control their behaviour and would act as ungovernable, chaotic, shapeless, a-meaningful beings (Geertz 1964: 46). Non-humans (animals), though lacking symbols and culture, avoid such chaos because they have natural ‘control mechanisms’ (i.e. instincts) that substitute culture.

However, I agree with Ingold when he has observed that Geertz’s conceptualization of culture tends to represent humans as ‘suspended in webs of significance [and] puts humans in a kind of free-floating world in which we are ascribing significance to things “out there”’ (Ingold 1996: 130). Geertz has presented humans as something different from the rest of nature, as beings resembling mythological fallen angels now trapped between the two dimensions of nature and nurture.

Recently, some anthropologists, among them myself, have tried to completely overcome the nature–nurture dyad and have suggested that we can interpret cultural phenomena as one of the many realities of nature. We need to pay more attention to the universal (biological, neurological, genetic) aspects of our being humans; something that many anthropologists seem to have forgotten in a culturalist debauch.

If we pay attention to those universal elements of being human, and then we take into consideration what history and pre-history reveals to us, we can discover that down to the bone, very little has changed since, for instance, 4,600 years ago, which means in the Chalcolithic period, as far as human behavior is concerned, particularly where emotions are involved.

Let me going back to the heartbreaking story of 2-year-old Moshe, or for example the horrible (much forgotten and unreported) story from Palestine. It would be easy for some to use arguments to show that these two kids were killed because of Islam or Judaism (embodied in this case by Israel). Yet a 4,600-year-old burial in Germany tells us a very similar story of violence and the horrible murder of innocent, unarmed civilians and at the same time of a very emotional act of pity and respect by the person(s) whom humanely buried them in such an emotionally significant position (the sons and daughter buried in the arms of their parents).

So powerful was the image of that mass grave and the horrible killings which happened one day 4,600-year-ago that the archeologist could not avoid but weep and feel sorrow.

Indeed, emotions have been with us since our appearance on planet earth. This group of children and women were massacred as the people in Mumbai, and as 2-year-old Moshe’s parents. However, 4,600 years ago there was no Islam, no Christianity, no Hinduism and no Buddhism.

The only thing which makes the killers in Mumbai similar to those who destroyed the german families 4,600-year-ago is their being (in)-human. Maybe it is time that instead of looking at the finger which points to the moon, we start starting at the moon itself.

Yesterday the Malaysian National Fatwa Council has issued another of its many fatwas, which have seen an increase in numbers during this time of political turmoil. “Yoga is forbidden for Muslims. The practice will erode their faith in the religion,” said Abdul Shukor Husin, the council’s chairman.This time the target was one of the most (also among Muslims) anti-stress activities: Yoga. As mental and physical discipline, Yoga has been appreciated by many Muslim scholars, who have even suggested that the practice could be ‘Islamicized’.

Certainly, no scholar had thought of forbidding it, since Muslims, particularly in India other South Asian areas, have practiced various forms of Yoga for a long time. Indeed, there are many points of contact between the movement of the Muslim prayer and some of Yoga. Whomever is familiar with the philosophy behind yoga is very aware that it is not a religion, and it can be easily adapted to one’s beliefs, whatever they may be.

Yoga is a ‘tool’, a ‘technique’, or better a ‘mechanism’.  However, in times where even ‘water’ may be claimed by a company to be halal, and in a Muslim world in which ‘haram’ is becoming the most popular word to empower oneself or one’s group, I am not surprised that currently, restrictive fatwas are becoming the main political tools in trying to attract a certain electorate. 

Of course, the Malaysian National Fatwa Council’s radical decision has been promptly reported by mass media and blogs of many types. The reaction seems to be often the same: ‘here we are, Muslims have done it again’. Yet what has been unreported is that the National Fatwa Council, inspired by prof. Zakaria Stapa of the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, is not a first. Christian families in the US have requested the banning of Yoga from schools on the basis that it is a Hindu religious practice, hence it violates the separation of state and church. Some evangelic preachers may actually have indirectly inspired the fatwa (see here for an interesting parallel with the present fatwa), 

The interesting point is that Abdul Shukor Husin has tried to justify the quite unjustifiable fatwa mentioning other countries that allegedly would have invited Muslims not to take the Lotus position. Among the countries which Dr Abdul Shukor Husin mentioned there was also Singapore. The reality is different, and Singaporean Muslim clerics have affirmed again that practising yoga is acceptable for Muslims. Should we suggest perhaps to the Malaysian Muslims to cross the border and enjoy their hour of relaxing yoga before crossing the Malaysia-Singapore Second Link and going back to a politically changing Malaysia which seems increasingly looking for a national and ethnic identity through a dangerous fatwa-ization of their society.

Fatwas are ‘suggestions’ or ‘advice’, and recently we have read many which deserve no more than a laugh (do you remember the office breast-feeding fatwa?) – so much so that Al-Azhar University has had to express concern over all the ‘fatwa’ business. 

I expect that with the increase of political struggle and inevitable changes in the previously very stable Malaysian political landscape, marked by four-decade-old policies that accord to ethnic Malays privileges, fatwas would become a tool to affirm a shift from a mainly ethnically based political discourse to a more (in my opinion dangerous) religious essentialism.  Surely, Singapore is the best place, for an anthropologist, to observe such a fascinating process. 

Muslims in the UK, as in another countries both in the geographical west or east, have to reflect carefully on the issue of child abuse within their heterogeneous communities as well as religious organisations, instead of wrapping themselves in a cloak of embarrassment, silence, and unacceptable complicity reinforced by the shared idea that, as in an interview one person told me, ‘these things do not happen in our community and do not happen among Muslims’. In reality they happen as often as in other communities, regardless of ethnic and religious background.  

Recently a young woman told, in a media report, of a nightmare of abuse perpetuated by her father and the lack of assistance she received from both the imam (who actually asked her to passively accept the paternal abuse) and also, and more worryingly, the local authorities. There are some cultural,  emotional and social constraints within religious communities that sometimes may cause sexual and violent abuse against children and women to remain hidden or not be reported even by the victims themselves.

Muslims are not the only ones affected, of course, and we know very well of the cases that have involved the Catholic church as well as other religious (and non-religious) denominations. Of course, the culprits have justified their behaviour in various ways, including even ‘religious’ practice and obligations. Indeed, any serious discussion of this sensitive topic needs to clear the misleading conception that it is the religion which induces, or even requires, the abusive behaviour. This is essential for two reasons: if the religion is wrongly blamed, the believers, in this case the Muslims, would feel the need to protect the religion through denying what in reality sometimes happens in religious places, which were supposed to be a ‘sancta sanctorum’ for victims of any form of abuse. 

Hence, statements such as ‘Muslims commit rape and abuse that are inspired by Islam’ or ‘Jews abuse children because this is authorised by the Talmud’ are not only seriously misleading allegations, but they also prevent the religious community from openly discussing the issues they face. Surely, we can find in the Talmud, Hadiths or any other religious texts semiotic elements that individuals may use to demonstrate their viewpoint (or justify their actions). 

Take for example the claim often put forward by anti-Semitic advocates that ‘Judaism supports child abuse’. This horrible allegation is often supported by reporting that for the Talmud, the hymen of a child is not considered to be the same as the hymen of an adult woman and so penetration of a little girl is no more significant than ‘putting a finger in a eye’. Of course, similiar to much discourse and rhetoric against Islam and Muslims, this is based on the decontextualization and falsification of theological debates for anti-Semitic or anti-Muslim reasons.

Hence, if you wish to understand the complexity of such a Talmudic sentence, you need to look at the academic discourse, instead of being deceived by populist arguments. With just a little investigation, it can be discovered that the Talmud, and in particular Judaism, on all levels, today does not allow abuse against any human being and the Talmud intended the above assertion as part of a legal code of measurement and punishment, which is very complex and cannot be trivialised.  

Similarly to the case of Judaism, we can find many ridiculous statements about Islam (or Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism or any other creed) and how it allegedly supports immoral practices and hence should be ‘stopped’. As I have often argued, a religion does not exist without a mind interpreting it. It is the person that ‘makes’ Islam, Judaism, Christianity, and so on, as per his or her own character: there is thus nothing that cannot be justified through any form of holy or un-holy scripture. 

Yet today Muslims in Europe, and particularly in the UK (with few exceptions) tend to be very silent and distant from a debate that is very much needed, since the cases revealed to date (see here and here) are statistically too few when compared with the average existing in any community. Interestingly enough, in some Muslim countries, such as Egypt, the debate, though not without obstacles, appears to have begun.

The main element should be a reconsideration of what is tradition and an evaluation of the good it contains, and what  is a ‘tradition’ which has actually lost, in globalised society, social control functions it may have once served, leaving in its wake many holes that can be exploited. This is the case, for example, among South Asian families and communities, with ‘respect’, shame, and honour. The shift in dynamics from the village to the city have changed the rules of the game and how they operate, often transforming these concepts into monsters of oppression instead of social control mechanisms. In certain cases, the family do not even realise that the ‘traditional’ way of understanding ‘shame’ and ‘honour’ can be exploited, helping the victimisation of one’s own children. 

The imams today cannot be merely spiritual advisors or, even worse, only able to recite the required prayers.  Rather they need support and the necessary education to fulfill the roles they are needed to. It is important that the community becomes more in charge of the dynamics existing within mosques. At the same time, the Muslim community needs to reinforce the links with the wider society and local authorities. When needed, the authorities cannot dismiss issues as only ‘community related’ or avoid intervention – rather, prevention through education is the best way to proceed. Also more social anthropological research is needed as far as the Muslim communities and societies and the perception and awareness concerning child abuse. 

There is a need for closing the increasingly wide generational gap which we can witness between the first generation of Muslim migrants living in the west and their children and grand-children. For a long time, education, aimed towards a misguided assimilation, aimed only at the younger generations. The mistakes of this policy are more than evident today. 

A strict collaboration is needed. However, it should be one coming not from the leadership or the usual assortment of Muslim intellectuals, but rather from the bottom up. For this reason, education is the only way to change attitudes and redirect tradition toward a more contemporary approach to life.

Muslim communities should learn to lead the discussion on controversial topics, instead of acting defensively. Religion, as I have said, does not exist in itself, and as many other cultural-social elements, it can be positive or negative. Yet people can make the difference if silence is broken. It is time that the Muslim communities discuss and manage their problems, recognise when and where they exist, and address them instead of hiding behind useless defensive attitudes of silence and fear.