San Bernardino and Orlando

Side-effect

The writer is a poet and author based in Islamabad.

One has the right to form an opinion, reach a decision, profess an idea and act accordingly to her or his will in a given time and space on the basis of the best possible personal judgement. However, to make a sound assessment of a matter or a situation, one must refrain from drawing general inferences from purely personal experiences.

One must also not claim to be prophetic on the basis of one’s own understanding of politics and history – which will always remain limited as humanity continues to explore and experiment, research and acquire, in all fields of human knowledge.

In the face of contradictory opinion prevailing over one’s own opinion on a matter at a certain point in time, one must not fall into the trap that one’s opinion will be proven right with time. That may not happen either.

Knowing and believing in all that is said above, I still could not help being categorical, definitive and conclusive when professing a generalised opinion on a large number of Muslims – more particularly Pakistani and other South Asian Muslims – living in the US. This is when I returned to Pakistan from the US last winter after spending the fall semester at the University of Iowa. However, I was able to travel across the length and breadth of the country during my three-month stint.

When someone comes back home after a long trip, the first question people ask after exchanging pleasantries is about how the trip went. It is a general question and usually seeks a general answer. When I had just stepped into the house and my wife posed that same general question to me, I told her instantly that it was thoroughly educative and completely fascinating. But I vividly remember that in the same breath, without being questioned or provoked, I said that what I saw in a significant number of Pakistani families, and Afghans and Bangladeshis, is something that is really disturbing. Many, if not most, of our people in the US are troubled.

My experiences are personal and that is the reason I initially decided not to write about these upon my return from the US six months ago. Also because they involve my extended family, aunts, cousins, close personal friends, families of friends, a few former colleagues and the new acquaintances I made during the trip. But these experiences and observations about our diaspora were so similar and frequent that I couldn’t help but begin to draw conclusions and establish that our people are increasingly facing inner turmoil without realising it.

I write about these now because what happened in San Bernardino some months back and what has happened in Orlando the other day are not just excruciatingly painful for the families and friends of victims and the American society at large, but because these events will also lead to hardship and pain for the South Asian Muslim diaspora in the coming days. For an ordinary American, there is little difference between Pakistani, Afghan, Indian and Bangladeshi. Also, these may not be the last two such events.

What was most striking for me was that even after living in the US for decades, most having completed their higher education there too, Pakistanis in their advanced youth or middle age had very limited social interaction with White Caucasians, East Asians or African Americans, leave along being friends with them as individuals or as families.

Since large families have moved to North America from Pakistan or other parts of South Asia it has made these people ghettoise even further. They meet their own aunts and uncles, cousins and in-laws, nephews and nieces – and that’s it. No socialisation with other kinds of people around them is possible. Occasionally, an Afghan, Indian Muslim or a Bangladeshi family will visit them on Eid or some other holiday.

Our people do not even have many Arab Muslim friends even after they are fast Arabising their language and parlance, lifestyle and apparel (let me come to that later). In this case, the reasons for limited social interaction with Arabs may be different though. Arabs mostly think of South Asian Muslims as inferior and also create their own ghettos. Exceptions are always there.

When it comes to religion, there is a serious identity crisis unfolding among Muslims, South Asian Muslims in particular. For long, it has been easier for a proselytiser to get visit visas for Western countries in the name of freedom of expression and multi-culturalism and difficult for a struggling artist or a secular scholar from our countries to qualify for a visa. Likewise, religious centres and seminaries, associations and groups, were supported by governments in Western countries in order to show their respect for diversity and to promote a multi-faith and multi-cultural society.

At the same time, rational and progressive voices emerging from these peoples of Asia and Africa were neither given importance nor space. Instead, they were seen to pose a threat to Western capitalism compared to benign practitioners of various faiths. So the chicken has come home to roost. People have become confused – without realising they are confused – due to decades of unbridled proselytising, preaching and Islamic evangelism based on orthodox tenets of faith. This has systematically led majority Sunni Muslims of South and Central Asia into a certain ideological direction. The people are also confused because of the American firepower unleashed on the lands of their ancestors and the perpetual conflict in the Middle East where the US lopsidedly supports Israel.

The way our diaspora is unknowingly radicalising its children is something that is most disturbing. Some of them are forced to observe rituals from a young age in the name of faith, culture and identity. They are continuously exposed to the company of local clerics in their mosques and centres who still fight on the sighting of the moon to be able follow their lunar calendar – while living in a country that had landed on the moon almost five decades ago.

Even worse is that our children of the diaspora, both boys and girls, are made to listen to preachers from South Asia who brandish grossly limited intellect and painful ignorance. There is no distinction here between sects and sub-sects when it comes to who is confusing our children more.

It is common in shopping malls where Pakistani or other South Asian Muslim families go to find a 40-year-old woman dressed in a regular shalwar kamiz, with no head covering, accompanied by her eighteen-year old daughter who is wearing a tight Middle-Eastern hijab. But there is no dearth of those 40 or 50 year olds who have imposed upon themselves and their daughters and granddaughters such strict religious codes which were never practised before in their families. Nor are they practised by some of their cousins back home.

Referring to a speech made by a popular professional proselytiser from southern Punjab, an old friend’s wife told me in the US that not only was I wrong in my understanding of faith, but our forefathers and mothers (including hers) did not have the correct knowledge of religion either. Her father, by the way, was a pious man who went for the Haj pilgrimage twice in his life. The example she gave me was even more interesting. She said that like me, all our parents and grandparents always said ‘Khuda Hafiz’ rather than the correct Islamic greeting of ‘Allah Hafiz.’

We are past that debate in Pakistan now and use both. But the emotions involved when the lady was speaking about how her generation has understood the real meaning of Islam by observing what Arabs do and what the new Pakistani proselytisers say kept me from challenging her. She is otherwise a wonderful person and a humanist. But it will be hard to guarantee that her children will not be radicalised. Because it all begins with being self-righteous and telling our children that we are on the right path and that there is only one right path.

Both American policymakers and American Muslims have to introspect and change the course.

Email: harris.khalique@gmail.com