Taken together, the two articles highlight the predicament of a living in a diverse world in which moderate religious and cultural views are so important, but that is also a world that values extremism for its political and commercial value.

Hirsi Ali, whom I have following for a few years, has a real talent for making political statements. She is good at getting to what is at stake in an event, at the larger implications of events that might otherwise seem random or unconnected. In recent years, however, I cannot help but feel that Ali has lost sight of her feminist/activist goals and has simply become one self-interested talking head among many.

Several respondents to Ali’s article were quick to post links to the very kinds of moderate responses Ali seems to be calling for, particularly from national organizations. Why has she not reached out to these groups? Where do they fit in her article? Or where, for instance, do the lawyer marches in Pakistan (a story she could not have missed) fit into all of this?

One could even be quite conservative, an interventionist even, and still see how Ali’s rhetoric falls short of any actual sense of being connected to any real-world struggles, and that disconnection makes me uncomfortable. Tauheed Ahmed, who also appears in one of the readers’ comment on the NYT Op-Ed, puts it this way:

I am a muslim who would I assume qualify for the term “moderate” (a term that I resent, incidentally, since I am quite comfortable with my faith and do not consider being a muslim to be a disease that one catches in moderation or in extreme). I consider terrorists to be criminals - and for criminals the most direct defense is the police. I consider absolute rulers in countries like Saudi Arabia or Sudan to be exploiting Islam as a means to preserve their power - and the most direct defense against such countries is seeking to replace kings and dictators with democracies. As the brave Pakistanis fighting for democracy today have shown the world, the alternative to dictatorship is not terrorists. Rather it is a democratic society where law-respecting middle class people are the natural leaders, not men in uniform or in men in beards posing as saviors.

Once Ms. Hirsi understands the above - she will perhaps realize that the solution is not in “moderate muslims” taking to the streets to demonstrate every time some crime or some absurd action is done somewhere in the world in the name of Islam. The solution rather is with supporting the middle class in countries like Pakistan in their struggle for freedom and the rule of law from dictators and kings.

In her embracing of the rhetorical strategies that have unfortunately come to characterize our notion of political leadership, Hirsi is potentially turning her back on the women whose rights she claims to defend. Or as Samer Salhab puts it:

I submit to the author that he [sic] is not looking hard enough for us moderates. People like me do exist in droves. However, rarely do we get the media attention that we deserve. I figure that showing extremists burning flags and “chanting death to America” will sell more papers and get more people to watch the news. Others of us do not have the luxury of writing Op-Ed pieces in the NY Times.

Which brings me to Debbie Almontaser (pictured right). I can’t quite say as much as I would like on her case because I just haven’t had time to do the research. The broad outline of her story, however, is that she was recruited to start an Arabic language school in Brooklyn, that the school’s opening became a beacon for anti-(”radical”) Islamist response, and that she was recently fired from her post as principal of the school, after an incident in which she refused to condemn a student’s T-shirt that read “Intifada NYC.” There is all kinds of stuff in the case about her claiming that the Board of Ed forced her to make a statement, and then, unhappy with her response, fired her. But, again, that’s the part I need to catch up on.

After a morning of googling, however, I cannot help but think that Almontaser is exactly the kind of Islamist “moderate” whom Ali would like to see emerge into public view. I see moderation in her approach to the T-shirt question; I see moderation in the kinds of educational opportunities she has sought for herself. And, oh yeah, I see moderation in her choice to lead a public school.

Funnily enough, I have the feeling that Almontaser– in her invocation of her pride in her hijab, and in the way her appearance evokes extremist notions of Islam as “difference” itself– is exactly the kind of woman whose work Hirsi Ali would castigate.

In her attempts to bring attention to the plight of women in specific places, under specific regimes, Ali has herself turned to strategies that are the mark of extremism: the willful misrecognition of ideology’s presence, the reduction of complex social relations to rhetoric, and the refusal to acknowledge information that runs counter to her agenda. I am disappointed in Hirsi Ali because she has so much material and symbolic potential– potential as exactly the kind of moderate voice whose absence she so stridently decries. Who, really, is silent here?

It is all just too slippery to be ethically appealing, this troubling deployment of her status as a woman who “knows” Islam from the “inside,” and also as a non-Muslim, as a person who has “escaped.” As yet another reader, Asma, put it, Ms. Ali

… is not a Muslim, which does not trouble me in the slightest. If she chooses to leave Islam, that is her right and privilege. However, I am angered by her manipulation of her image as both a Muslim and a non-Muslim. Get off the fence! You cannot both claim to be a voice for Muslims and at the same time applaud yourself for leaving this religion that is “archaic and extreme.”

I don’t know how Hirsi Ali defines her faith, but, on the level of its media representation, I can’t help but here No Snow Here’s claim from earlier this year, that “There is a huge difference between questioning your faith and ignoring your faith when it is convenient for you (which I consider to be the American style of practicing religion).”

Melvin Dixon,

A Visitation of Spirits

Well, this morning I was greeted by a story on crimes against the LGBT community in Newark, NJ, “In a Progressive State, a City Where Gay Life Hangs by a Thread.” The story is by Andrew Jacobs, who’s on the Newark beat at the NYT. It’s not a terrible story, and it does a nice job of outlining a broad picture of options for the lgbt community in lower and working class communities of color in Newark.

The story got me thinking, though, about how difficult it is to talk about sex and race– especially when we barely have language for sussing out race and class. So what happens when, as in most cases, we need to talk about all three at once? Often, it seems, we latch onto the one that best serves our own needs, a need fed by our perceptions “what counts” and “what matters.” But, again, what does this mean for the possibility of

understanding and transforming our social world? And how do we thus honor the lives of those whose death’s motivate such transformations?

As the title suggests, the narrative of the aforementioned NYT story emerges out of a contrast between gays’ lives in Newark and in other parts of the state. The article gets a little murky at times, as it conflates anti-gay bias as a class issue–as a result of a lack of resources for the community in a famously poor city, and as a race issue–as a result of the anti-gay bias endemic to black and Latino communities.

Don’t get me wrong, it is striking that over the past few years our attention has been repeatedly drawn to Newark, and there is something particularly compelling that these crimes against gay POC have taken place in the shadow of the most gay-friendly bastions. But does the fact of proximity mean that there is a larger story here about resources for the poor, and how there is more at stake than we imagine, or is it a story about intolerance in communities of color? Is it a story about insides or outsides? Or, if the answer is both, where do we locate responsibility for change?

I do think that in coverage that comes in the wake of such events, I’m thinking specifically of Sakia Gunn’s murder or of the Newark lesbians case, we often see media and legal establishments unable to deal with the chimera of race, class, and sex, unable to address one bias without enlisting the aid of another. Were the men who killed Sakia Gunn homophobic because they were black, or because they were “street”? Were the lesbians who fought an attack on the streets of Greenwich Village “just” thug chicks from Newark, who shouldn’t have been there anyway, or were they gay women, fighting back against street violence?

Or, if we are to believe reports that the Newark schoolyard killings were also anti-gay crimes, as well as (?) the murders of Shani Baraka and Rayshon Holmes, then there is a sense of hiding the hate crime (hat tip to Kenyon Farrow, who has links to more good posts on this; also a story in The Washington Blade.) It’s like there is a sense that if this were to emerge as an anti-gay crime, then the event would lose meaning as a watershed urban crime– thus also losing its status as a catalyst for both grassroot and governmental action in Newark.

Blue Jersey (”all the news that slips from print”) has put it best,

There are well-meaning and deeply caring people who don’t want any of this public. And they are right to be concerned that talking about this publicly may put the families through additional pain. This is a delicate situation involving young students, and it makes the decision to write this a very difficult one. In the end, because of the possible implications, remaining silent isn’t an option. We need to talk about this.

While it’s important to respect the wishes of the families in their time of grief, it’s also important to determine with certainty whether this was a crime based on sexual-orientation. The challenge we all face is to get to the bottom of things and to ensure these tragic events aren’t repeated. To do otherwise is unthinkable.

We still have vulnerable young people whose freedom we are honor-bound to safeguard. They live in the city of Newark and in every town, city and suburb in this state. How can we ensure they have every chance for a long, free life if we do not do everything we can do now to understand all that happened to Terrance, to Dashon, to Iofemi and to the fragile Natasha. And why.

Indeed. Pursuing the circumstances of their deaths in ultimately about honoring their lives in all their possible meanings. Theyy are listening for their names.

As Judy Shepard, mother of Matthew Shepard, stated soon after Sakia Gunn’s murder in 2003:

It is as if we are living in two Americas — one that tunes in to Queer Eye for the Straight Guy but turns a blind eye to the injustices gay and lesbian people still face.

“It is evident that with progress comes inevitable attack by those who are threatened by our work. In 2003, more than 30 cities and towns reported crimes against gays. Most of them do not garner national headlines like my son’s murder did. Sakia Gunn, a 15-year-old lesbian, was fatally stabbed in Newark, N.J., on May 11 this year. F.C. Martinez, a Navajo, transgender 16-year-old, was murdered in a hate-motivated attack in 2001. The list goes on and on…

(Curtsy for the quote above to Professor Kim, who also has a post on the differences in media coverage of the Shepard and Gunn stories, and a chart thereon.)