The ThinkND Podcast
The ThinkND Podcast
Literatures of Annihilation, Exile, and Resistance, Part 1: Moustafa Bayoumi
Episode Topic: Moustafa Bayoumi
Listen to author Moustafa Bayoumi as he reads from his landmark work How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being Young and Arab in America and then joins Prof. Ebrahim Moosa for a wide-ranging conversation on identity, belonging, and the moral challenges of post-9/11 America.
Featured Speakers:
- Ebrahim Moosa, University of Notre Dame
- Atalia Omer, University of Notre Dame
- Azareen Van Der Vliet Oloomi, University of Notre Dame
- Moustafa Bayoumi, author
Read this episode's recap over on the University of Notre Dame's open online learning community platform, ThinkND: https://go.nd.edu/1c8f4e.
This podcast is a part of the ThinkND Series titled Literatures of Annihilation, Exile, and Resistance.
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Good evening, everybody. Welcome. we're just gonna get started. I know people are gonna be walking in. feel free to come in and settle in. I just wanted to quickly, just acknowledge, uh, Suzanne Shanahan for inviting us into this space and into the ISC. So the program tonight is run by literatures of Annihilation Exile and Resistance, which my dear colleague will introduce briefly. but I just wanted to say to you, Suzanne, that we're so happy to be partnering with you and to be in a space that's devoted to questions of justice from an interdisciplinary perspective and your own history of working with refugee communities is really something we feel allied with. And the entire board of Literatures of Exile is grateful to you for this opportunity, and we're looking forward to being in this space with you over the course of the academic year. And to inaugurate. We have, you know, our very esteemed guest, um, Mustafa Bai here, and my dear colleague, Ebrahim Muza, I'm really looking forward to tonight. So I'll welcome Talia who introduce and we'll take it from there.
Speaker 2:Okay. Uh, hi everyone. Uh, my name is Talia Omer. I'm a professor of Religion Conflict and Peace Studies at the Croc Institute for International Peace Studies, uh, which is a part of the Kio School of Global Affairs here at Notre Dame. and it's been intellectually and ethically nourishing and exhilarating, for me to be an active member on the board of literatures of Annihilation, exile and Resistance. So this initiative, literature of Annihilation, exile and Resistance was launched by Azar, professor Azarin Vander Lummi, who you just heard from. It was launched in 2020 in, uh, as it's a research in, uh, collective. Lecture series and digital archive, that has focused on contemporary writers and scholars whose work has been shaped by exile, transnational migrations, territorial and linguistic politics, and gross human rights violations. for me, um, having been a part of this exciting work has meant indeed a form of resistance to gaslighting and intellectual dishonesty, uh, that define much of the conversation about, SOA in American academia. Today's event is a part of a series that spotlights, uh, Southwest and Southeast Asian and North African writers and American writers and scholars of color, with the aim to theorize new modes of contemporary literary production across national borders and, cultivate intersectional coalition building. The series is co-sponsored, um, by the College of Arts and Letters, the Franco Family Institute for Liberal Arts and the Public Good, the Croc Institute for International Peace Studies. The Institute for Social Concerns, as with thus heard, uh, the Lu Institute for Asian Asian Studies. And additionally, tonight's event is co-sponsored by ThinkND Dan SBE Institute, the English Department and the MFA program in Creative Writing and gender studies. Uh, before I turn to introduce, uh, my Esteem Colleague, uh, professor I mua, I just want to, to, unders to, to, to let you all know that there is going to be a, a, a light reception, after the event and also a book sale and signing, with our author, our guest, at the cafe upstairs. So, uh, we hope that you'll be, uh, staying for that. Okay, so, Professor Musa is the Mesa family, professor of Islamic Thought and Muslim Societies at the Kios School of Global Affairs here at Notre Dame. He, co-directs with, uh, professor Scott Appleby and myself containing Modernities, which is a global research and education initiative, examining the interaction among Catholic, Muslim, and other religious and secular forces in the world. He, faculty fellow at the Kio School's New Institute of Asia and Asian Studies, uh, professor SSA's interest span both classical and modern Islamic thought, with a special focus on Islamic law, history, ethics, and theology. His book, what Is Mad, uh, madrasa was published in 2015 by the University of North Carolina Press, and Musa also is the author of really like a watershed, uh, work, called Rosa and The Poetics of Imagination, which was the winner of the American Academy of Religions Best first book in the History of Religions in 2006. He's the editor of, uh, the last manuscript of the late, uh, professor of FA Mann Revival and Reform in Islam, a study of Islamic fundamentalism. Other publications also include the co-edited book, the African Renaissance and the Afro Arab Spring that came out with Georgetown University Press in 2015. Islam in the modern world. that came out in, with Ratledge in 2014. And, uh, Muslim Family Law in Sub-Saharan Africa. Colonial legacies of post-colonial challenges, uh, that came out in 2010. beyond all these like really amazing, uh, cvs, just the most amazing scholar, teacher, friend. and, um, yeah, co-partner in, um, with, for me to, uh, getting into good trouble. So with that Professor Musa stage is yours.
Speaker 3:Good evening. Thank you, uh, everyone for coming this evening, braving the cold, and thank you Azarin and Leticia exile for inviting me to, to participate in this. There are moments rare and difficult moments when a writer does more than record events. He widens the moral aperture of a nation's struggling to see itself. He invites us to stand at the threshold where clarity and compassion meet Tonight. We welcome such a writer. Mustafa Bai is an author, journalist, and educator whose work has become a kind of model compass in a time when our compasses are spinning. As a guardian columnist, the London Guardian, and a scholar of English and comparative literature at Brooklyn College at the City University of New York. He does not write from the safety of distance. He writes from the edges, those borderlands where race empire and New York colonialism and the roughness of daily life press up against each other. And in writing from those edges, he helps recenter the heart of our public imagination by Yumi book. How does it feel to be a problem begins with a question older than the American century? It begins with WEB, the Bois, the pioneering African American scholar, sociologist, historian, and civil rights activist whose work transformed the study of race and shaped modern political thought. The title of Mustafa's book. Is that searing line from the souls of black folk? A question born out of the black experience forged in the furnace of American racial history. In choosing that title, Bayoumi performs a deliberate act of intellectual kinship, a gesture of solidarity that refuses to isolate Arab and Muslim immigrants from the long black struggle for belonging and dignity. Dubois asked, how does it feel to be a problem by Yumi answers by turning us towards seven young Arab Americans in Brooklyn and saying, here, listen, this is what feels to be young and Arab and mise, and yet insists on the fullness of your humanity. He gives us Russia, Samami, Lena a. Yasmine Omar and Rami, not as symbols of sociological abstractions, but as protagonists of their own unfolding stories. They fall in love, search for meaning, argue with parents, familiar and counter surveillance, defend their rights and survive the storms of geopolitics that cross their doorsteps. They are in Bai's hands. Neither problems nor props. They are people, and this is the first note of his voice. A refusal to simplify the human being. Even when the culture is begging for simplification, what the world wants. Where the world wants a caricature, he gives contour where narrative, where narratives narrow. He widens them where fear demands flattening. He restores depth. Bayoumi. His moral clarity is always paired with moral consistency. He condemns violence unequivocally, whether in Washington, Gaza, Boulder, or Janine. He condemns antisemitism and Islamophobia alike, refusing the sentimental comfort of opposing one without opposing the other. In his moral universe, clarity never becomes cruelty. Solidarity is never selective, but Bayoumi is more than a writer of complexity. He's a chronicler of the American Muslim story and the Arab story, and of a political generation rising from the long shadow of nine 11. He traces how Muslim communities in New York once subjected to mass arrest dealing with FBI, informants, infiltrating mosque, immigration sweeps, and government suspicions slowly, but their pain states taking the built institutions of power. He reminds us that those early years after the towers fell, became a crucible. One part fear, one part visibility, but also one part possibility. But despite the story of struggle, New York is also a a resilient city, full of surprises. On the 4th of November, 2025, the people of new law, New York elected the first Muslim Zoran, Kwame Ani as the mayor of the largest American city with a budget of$116 billion. Baum is writing emerges from that threshold period immediately after nine 11 in his book published in 2008. But he has also pursued those themes in his columns for the London Guardian newspaper that takes us right to 2025. He captures in his book that long threshold period from the hum of community meetings in basements and back rooms, cafes and restaurants. The legal clinics, the organizing workshops, the painful education of how democracy actually works. He shows how loss become lessen. He shows how loss became lessen and lessen, became strategy, how one failed campaign became the scaffolding for the next, and how all those years of organizing eventually made it possible for a son of immigrants. Zoran Ani to rise, not as an anomaly, but as the culmination of decades of Muslim civic labor. By Yumi Re, these moments, not merely as political victories, but as chapters in a larger American story, a story of communities refusing erasure, refusing resignation, re refusing to be cast as the perpetual problem. His more recent writings, more recent writing carries an even deeper urgency. On Gaza, he writes with the stillness of someone standing before a precipice. He describes how the so-called rules-based order bends like a read around Israel, how humanitarian language becomes choreography, how the world manages suffering instead of confronting the structures that create how the world manages suffering. Instead of confronting the structures that created, he writes of universities that discipline students for spreading picnic baskets on the wrong patch of lawn, of administrators rewriting rules as quickly as students learn to name injustice. And yet, despite the severity, Bai's voice never gives way to despair. There remains an ember of hope glowing in his work in students who refuse intimidation in officials who stand by their convictions in communities that refuse to silence. His writing shows us that despair is an impulse, but hope is a discipline. Some weeks ago, while preparing a lecture on religion, mass atrocity and humanitarianism, I found myself watching a simple video from Gaza taken in the past two years, a grandfather Haded nhan, a cradle, the body of his three-year-old granddaughter, Reem, after a brutal Israeli airstrike, he whispered to her soul of my soul. It was not a performance, it was a testament, a declaration that every child is a world and every world destroyed tear, tears, asim in our shared humanity. That's also the story of Sudan as we speak. That moment, which I later spoke about at the American Academy, thanks to professor at invited me, illuminates the stakes of Bai's work. Because what does he do again and again, whether writing about Brooklyn youth or Gaza families or voters in Queens, he insists on the singularity of each life he refuses. He refuses the flattening forces of fear, bureaucracy, spectacle, and war. He holds open a space where the human face must still be seen, where the human voice must still be heard. And this to me is why his work resonates with the prophetic traditions of all our heritages because he insists, or what I have called a D, called a different horizon of our obligation, not consolation, but justice, not management, but repair. T tikun in Judaism, the common good karita in Christianity, and integral human development, and safeguarding the dignity of all the motto of the KY School and Islam in Islam. Bai reads us that reads, uh, reminds us that the struggle for Palestinian dignity, the struggle against Islamophobia, the struggle against anti-Semitism, the struggle for Bel American belonging. These are not separate battles. They are interwoven threads in the fabric of a just society. And they demand a moral vision capacious enough to hold complexity without collapsing it into contradiction. And so we arrive here at the crossing point between witness and dialogue between the world as it is and the world still struggling to be born. We gather in the presence of a writer who does not merely observe history, but he helps us interpret his tremors, his debris. Its stubborn hopes. And because his work is best encountered, not secondhand by directly through the cadence of his own words. I want us to begin there. Mustapha, would you grace us by reading a passage from your writing? One that speaks to the heart of the moment we inhabit tonight? Once we have heard your voice, I look forward to entering this conversation alongside you. Please welcome.
Speaker 4:Wow. Thank you. Can you hear me everybody? Okay. Thank you so much. You just switch
Speaker 3:it on?
Speaker 4:I did, yes. do you want a job as a publicist? By the way, that was a, that was a really very generous introduction. Thank you so very much. and thank you, to azarin, to the literatures of Annihilation, exile and Resistance, to Italia. To Notre Dame for inviting me here. It's, uh, it's a great honor and, uh, a pleasure for me here to stand in front of you and address you. And I really, I did wanna, address you with something that's a little bit in the news ish today as well, so that it feels like we're talking about, you know, what's happening in our world though our world is so tumultuous right now, if you haven't noticed. and so, and it's also, it's a little bit language based, what I'm gonna talk about, because I think that the idea of this, series also has a kind of, a question around the, issues of language at, at its heart. So with, perhaps with apologies to George Orwell. Okay. Linguistic misadventures in the war on terror. Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit. That the Arabic language in the United States is in a bad way, which is to say those same people seem to believe the Arabic language is some sort of linguistic time bomb pay close attention, and you can hear it ticking second by second toward the in imminent explosion of our society goes. The argument underneath this notion lies the conscious belief that Arabic must forever be understood as a language alien to the United States. Any genuine knowledge of its grammar or vocabulary ought to be Reed. They seem to believe paving the way for their collective fear and ignorance to forge the language into an instrument shaped for their own purposes. If you think I'm being hyperbolic, can you name any other language that excites such extraordinary levels of fear and acrimony in the nation today? Surely it must be acknowledged that the hostility, the American establishment and people have shown to the Arabic language and to Arabic speakers is not something that occurs naturally, but is rather a fact that ultimately has political and economic causes. Such linguistic loathing, in other words, is not due simply to the ways that Americans are notoriously bad at learning languages or the almost uniquely American belief that the world of languages must bend to them, but is instead clearly related to the elaboration of the war on terror. This forever war against a noxious political tactic has led to monster making of anything associated with America's new, but now eternal enemy Islam. The examples are as unfortunate as they are Legion. Just two weeks ago, the betting company, poly Market. Which dubs itself, the world's largest prediction market, posted on X. Breaking Hanani to require all New York Elementary school students to learn Arabic numerals. The post has been viewed over 32 million times, including by Trump loyalist and far right influencer, Laura Loomer, who responded to the post with, you know, things are bad when you can't tell if this is real or a joke. Dear God, it's real, isn't it? Derek Evans, a former member of the West Virginia House of Delegates, and incidentally, a man who was also criminally convicted for joining the January 6th attack on the capital also posted the same thing on X with his post receiving close to half a million views. In fact, dozens of accounts with large followings were posting the claim leading Newsweek to publish a story titled Is Memani Introducing Arabic numerals to New York schools? All is not lost, though some saw the ridiculous nature of the assertion with one person responding, it gets worse. He's saying they have to start with the non-binary numbers to their journalist Credit. Newsweek explained that quote. This is a quote. Arabic numerals are simply the digits zero through nine and have been used in American schools for centuries. Crisis averted for now. The magazine reassured its readers that the claim was false but hasten to add that it had quote, contacted representatives of Menani for comment. Such seemingly deliberate misunderstandings and political malapropisms are not limited to counting either. Consider the phrase globalize the ada. A slogan commonly heard at rallies in defense of the Palestinian people, especially over the last two years during the campaign for mayor in New York City, Meda was repeatedly accused of antisemitism for his failure to denounce a phrase, which he in fact does not and has not used facing extremely amounts of pressure. Memani ultimately responded that he would discourage the use of the phrase, but what exactly does globalize the unda mean? The political classes in this country seem as certain of its definition as they are uncertain of its pronunciation In congressional hearings with colo, former Columbia University President Minu Shaik. Michigan representative Lisa McLean asked Shafiq twice if she believed the sister phrase, long Live. The Antifa was antisemitic, but in McLean's version, it was long live the infant. She said it twice in a row. Okay. Representative Virginia Fox, who chairs the US House Committee on Education and Workforce told the right wing news nation that when you call for destroying a whole country and for Inata, infa, ugh, for, for genocide on campuses, you're calling for action. I can show you the clips if you want. Likewise, New York City Mayor Eric Adams was asked if he thought Mam was anti-Semitic and quote, when you're willing to talk about global inata, inata, infra, and banana. Lost in his own vocabulary soup. Adams two laughed off the fact that he can't even pronounce the term whose malevolence he is so certain of facing all this confusion, all I can say is long live the frittata, the word Ada, sorry, the word Ada. The word Ada. The word Ada. The only Arabic words to enter the vocabulary of 20th century world politics as Edward Saeed once pointed out, means shaking off, but nevermind that. Let's shake some eggs instead and let's do it everywhere. Let us globalize the frittata. It is about time after all that Italian food was exposed to the rest of the world. Incidentally, Marjorie Taylor Greene or Marjorie Trader Greene, depending right. once expressed her displeasure with then house speaker Nancy Pelosi. She once said this a couple years ago, whom Greene claimed was sending in law enforcement to spy on members of Congress. Quote, not only do we have the DC jail, which is the DC gulag, but now we have Nancy Pelosi's gazpacho police spying on members of Congress. She said, now GPAC can be difficult to make as well, but having its own separate police force that's going a cucumber too far, if you ask me, does go well with the frittata. Though the idea of shaking off, which is at the root of the word ada, is associated with shaking off one's oppression in the modern era. The first commonly accepted usage of the term was during uprisings in Iraq in 1952 to overthrow the British installed monarchy for our republic. In 1987, an uprising by Palestinians in the Occupy territories was widely dubbed an Antifa. That Antifa was known as the first Antifa later on, and it involved mass protests, civil disobedience, and rock throwing. Local political organizing grew substantially during those years, and Palestinian Civil Society deepened and the first invado was largely nonviolent or involved mostly low levels of violence. Though Israeli responses were increasingly brutal. Analyst Anita Huri wrote back in 1992 that then Defense Minister Yin Ordered Group, this is a quote ordered group expulsions, initiated the infamous break their bones policy against demonstrators, closed all Palestinian schools for much of his tenure, and permitted the military to operate under broad open fire negotiations. Nearly 200 Israelis and more than 1000 Palestinians were killed during the first ada. The second Antifa, which began in 2000, was significantly more violent with over 1000 Israelis and over 4,000 Palestinians killed. The context then of different Antifa can and have been violent. But to say that the Arabic word ADA calls for the genocide of Jews as representative Elis Stefanik and others have said is to caricature a word beyond recognition quote, to equate the call for an end to the Israeli occupation with a call for the genocide of Jews is a bizarre reversal that turns victims into aggressors, writes renowned Palestinian journalists, taud, QAB, or as political scientists, Seth Canty explains calls to globalize. The Antifa are not calls for genocide. They're calls for resistance, including armed resistance to decades old Israeli military occupation widely considered illegal under international law. Whether those calls are legitimate is a valid question. Whether they amount to calls for genocide is not. And the vilification of Arabic in the present allows for the forgetting of our own American past. Where the protest tradition often contained much more explicit calls for violence than globalized The Antifa does all without the need for symbolic house resolutions. Con condemning acts of political speech. There was a house resolution to condemn that, to phrase some Vietnam era protest. Chance include. Here comes the sun. The people of the world are picking up the gun. For example, highway one, highway one takes Saigon and Washington. We can talk about what Highway one was if you want. Then there's this, this gem as the Columbia Spectator reported at the time that was quote, chanted by a contingent of 200 Barnard women as they marched on campus on April 18th, 1972. Put down the bassinet, pick up the bayonet, give up detergent, become an insurgent. My point is that the political classes who come with a clear anti Palestinian political agenda and who don't speak Arabic should not get to define the meaning of the Arabic language for the rest of us beyond being politically insincere. It's a form of cultural domination. It reminds me, in fact, of a scene in to Tony Morrison's, beloved. You will recall that when the enslaved man Sixo is accused by school teacher of stealing a pig. You stole that show, didn't you? No, sir. Said Sixo, but he had the decency to keep his eyes on the meat. You're telling me you didn't steal it and I'm looking right at you. No, sir. I didn't steal it. School teacher smiled. Did you kill it? Yes, sir. I killed it. Did you butcher it? Yes, sir. Did you cook it? Yes, sir. Well, then did you eat it? Yes, sir. I sure did. And you're telling me that's not stealing? No, sir. It ain't. What is it then? Improving your property, sir. What? Six. Oh. Plant ride. To give the high piece a better chance. Six. Oh, take and feed the soil. Give you more. Crop six. Oh, take and feed six. Oh. Give you more work. Clever Morrison writes, but school teacher beat him anyway. To show him the definitions belonged to the definers, not the defined during the war on terror. The degree to which the Arabic language has become vilified and suspicious is deeply disturbing In Dearborn Heights, Michigan, which has a Middle Eastern, north African population, Swana population of 39%. A proposed, optional police patch, which included the word shta for police and spelled out Dearborn Heights, phonetically in Arabic was met with outrage. When you get conquered, you get a new language. Charlie Kirk wrote in September, Facebook parents company meta censors Arabic on its site more than any other language. As one study put it, meta has stated that its current approach for moderating the Arabic word Shahid, meaning martyr and its derivatives, has been responsible for more content removals than any single word or phrase on Meta's platform. In the case of Israel Palestine, they met a commissioned external evaluation two years ago, found disparities between enforcements in Hebrew and Arabic, automatic Arabic flagging systems indiscriminately removed non violating con content. In contrast, there was almost no flagging of Hebrew content despite the well-documented rise of anti Palestinian and racist content. In that language end quote, nor is any of this new at the height of the US occupation of Iraq. The Coalition provisional authority had a staff of about 1600 people. 16 of which were Arabic speakers, only one spoke Iraqi Arabic. Incidentally, likewise, in 2003, the State Department listed 279 Arabic speakers on its staff. But when a bipartisan advisory planner investigated this figure, it discovered that only 54 of them could be considered fluent. And of the 54, only six were fluent enough to appear on Arabic television. Unlike Russians, by the way, who speak Arabic flawlessly all over the Arabic media. In 2007, the New York City Department of Education announced the creation of the Jil Giran International Academy, uh, grade six to 12 school. That will be the first dual language English, uh, Arabic school in the city. There were already dual language schools that in the city that taught Spanish, Mandarin, Chinese, Russian, and Haitian Creole. The pushback though, was ferocious with the well-known, but highly influential Islamophobe Daniel pipes writing that quote, Arabic language instruction. Is inevitably laden with pan arabist and Islamist baggage and opponents of the school. Attempting to Sophia. Among Brooklyn's, uh, liberal parents, began labeling the school a, you guessed it, madrea a word they associated with teaching terrorists, but a word which in Arabic simply means school. 2006. Rah Gerard was refused boarding his jet blue flight because he was wearing a T-shirt, which read We will not be silent in Arabic and English script. A TSA official demanded Gerard cover the text with another item of clothing telling him that quote, it is impermissible to wear an Arabic t-shirt to an airport and equated it to a person wearing a t-shirt at a bank stating I am a robber. According to the A-C-L-U-A decade later didn't get much better. In 2016, a 26-year-old Berkeley graduate Zumi was removed from his Southwest flight. Los Angeles International. After another passenger overheard him speaking Arabic on his mobile phone, Zumi called his uncle, had been calling his uncle in Barda once on the plane to tell him how excited he was. After asking the UN Secretary General Bunky Moon a question during a formal dinner the night before, before hanging up, he said, in Shaah, God willing. Two minutes later, an agent and police officers came barreling down the aisle. They escorted him off the plane asking him why he was speaking in Arabic. Considering today's political climate, you need to be very honest with us what you said about the martyrs. Tell us everything you know about the martyrs. The agent said to him, mistaking Shahid with in Shaah. In 20 15, 2 Palestinian men were asked to step aside. When bordering a flight for Chicago to Pennsylvania, it's to Philadelphia. After passengers overheard them speaking Arabic, the men were eventually allowed to board. One of them was carrying a small white box. The other passengers started demanding what to know what was in the box. So the Palestinian man opened the white box and shared the rest of his b laa with the rest of the plane. It's a, it's a cute story, but I do long for the day when I don't have to share my sweets with the bigots to buy off their fear. Then there's the story of la uh, Sadi in from Algeria. In 2003, he was living in Tanzania, working for a conservative Muslim organization at Harima Islamic Foundation. Tanzania authorities didn't like the foundation. They forced it to close and arrested Sadi. He spent three days in prison in Sala, was then taken to Malawi and then render to three different prisons under American control in Afghanistan. He spent the next 16 months in American custody. His interrogators focused on a telephone conversation they said he had had with his wife's family in Kenya about airplanes. This is all according to the New York Times, and Sadi said that he had no idea what they were talking about. He was left chained for five days without food or clothing. They beat me and threw cold water on me, spat at me, and sometimes gave me dirty water to drink. He said, the American man told me I would die there. His legs and feet became painfully swollen as he was forced to stand with his wrists chained to the ceiling for long periods of time. Eventually, he was returned to the dark prison, which is probably the black site known as the salt Pit, where a doctor gave him an injection for his legs. He was interrogated relentlessly for weeks. Then one day his interrogators produced an audio tape of a conversation in which he had allegedly spoken about planes. But Saddi said in this recording, he was talking about tires, not planes. His brother was planning to sell tires from Kenya in Tanzania. Mixing English and Arabic. Sad. Used the word to make the English word an Arabic plural by adding ot. The word OT also happens to be the Arabic word for planes. The linguistic confusion led to 16 months of imprisonment to torture and abuse. The disrespect of the Arabic language is given in the US does not feel random or slight. On the contrary, it feels more substantially like a way of disciplining a population out of the right, of making their own claims and instead ventriloquism for them. But the puppeteer here is the very state and its people that are dead set and keeping you quiet. But that's a much taller order I think, than they think. Language may be regulated, but it really cannot be controlled. Not anymore than you can control the thoughts of people anyway. And Arabic is in fact growing in this language. I mean, in this country, which may illustrate at least part of the panic that seems to accompany discussions about the language. More people in the USA now speak Arabic at home than German or Italian. A reversal since 1980. And Arabic, in fact, is the fifth most common spoken language other than English in the country. According to the US Census Bureau. The others in order are Spanish. We could, I could play a game and we could do a, but um, I won't do that. Spanish, Chinese, Tagalog, and Vietnamese, then Arabic. It's almost like a little travel log through American adventurism and imperialism. If Tifa entered the English lexicon in the 20th century, I think Halal carts has entered it in the 21st. Several weeks ago, I was out with some Unity friend, university friends and colleagues to celebrate the 60th birthday of one of our own. We were in a mostly empty beer hall in Queens watching an Overly in Enthusiastic duo play covers of early 2000 croner hits in the quiet spaces between sets. We could actually speak to each other, and that's when one of the members of our group, originally from South America, told us this story. A friend of hers had recently been picked up by ice. It was about a week earlier during Trump's ongoing immigration dragnet. The friend had since been shuttled between a number of different facilities. She and a group of her friends had been working assiduously to get this person and others released. It had become a kind of small movement. She was telling us about how they'd all become adept at filing habeas corpus petitions for ICE detainees and had succeeded in getting the courts to order the release of several people. She described how it worked. None of them was a lawyer, but they had a legal template and they were adapting the template to each individual case. They us. This usually required finding a way to get the person detained on the phone as well, and one member of their team, the one who has had emerged in in the leadership role, and the one with the most jailhouse law experience because he had also been previously detained by ice, was a man from the Dominican Republic who was in the Dominican Republic. And while he was in, um, ice detention, he had educated himself in US immigration law. So they were doing this three-way conversation. They would often be three-way conversa, three-way phone calls with the man in the DR dictating the petition and translating between English legalese and Spanish. We all listened carefully, wrapped in attention in awe at the cross border organizing. Finally, one of us spoke. Now that's what I call globalizing the Antifa. She said she was right. Suddenly, we all knew it. The organizing may have been in Spanish, but somehow impossibly remarkably, it still came out in Arabic.
Speaker 5:Thank you very much, uh, Mustafa for that wonderful presentation and bringing us right into the present. I wasn't wrong in my prediction, but you will take us into this moment. Ah, that return on my mic.
Speaker 3:Okay. Yeah. Thank you for that. you know, I really enjoyed reading this book and as I was saying to you, what I found, remarkable about this book, uh, are many aspects. but, one aspect was. Particularly the way you looked at your seven characters. I would almost call them characters, but they are real life. This is a work of, of nonfiction, obviously, and, but it's so remarkably done with the details by when you walk into a restaurant, you give us the colors of the, of the staircase or the shadows on the wall or, you know, uh, just whole. So I was kind of envious. You wrote a book like this? I, I wish I could have written about the madrasa in, in this way. I was a little bit too academic. but before we, we, we move into the gist of this book. Tell us a little bit about your family background. I know you, uh, and it also appears in the book where one of the interlocutors say your family had PhDs and you said Yes. Both my parents had PhDs. So I know you were born in Switzerland of Egyptian parentage. You, you moved, I dunno, at what age? To Canada and then to the us. So tell us a little bit about that journey of your parents and then, and you.
Speaker 4:Sure. yeah. In fact, what, when I explained that to, you know, the guys that I was sitting in the shisha cafe with, and I had to spend a lot of time in shisha cafes writing this book, such a shame, the, their reaction immediately was, you're a strange kind of Arab. That was the actual
Speaker 6:Yeah. You a strange kind of out this,
Speaker 4:because it was a very, this is a very working class community right. That, was hanging out with there. So that's part of that. and I knew that I had some, a lot of ethnic affinity and similarities to the people that I was, engaging with and writing about and writing for, but also some distance as well. so my story is that, yes, I was born in Switzerland. when my, both of my parents actually met in Switzerland. they were studying at the Eha. Which is sort of the MIT of, Switzerland. They were both in the, um, in the sciences field. my mother, was studying chemistry and my father engineering and, in, in the late 1960s, like similarly to the United States, but a little bit, just a little bit later, the Canadian University system really expanded. And so there were lots of opportunities for academic work in Canada. And so my father, landed a position as a professor in Canada. And so, we moved as a family to Canada when I was about three years old. three and a half. and then, when I was about 11, we went back on sabbatical, my dad's sabbatical, not mine. And, uh. Then, um, back to Switzerland and uh, and then I went back there to Germany several times after that. So I still feel some connection. In fact, when this book came out, the Swiss newspaper, one of the main Swiss German newspapers, no. Oh. Featured me for this book too, because I think they wanted to claim my swissness interestingly, you know, I don't know what that means, but, and then, so I, but I've spent, you know, the bulk of my early years growing up was in Canada. And and then I was always, interested in the work of Edwards Aid when I became, high school student and after. And so I decided that I would be interested in going to pursue further studies in, um, and so I applied to Columbia University and I went to Columbia and I was fortunate to study under Edwards. I. and, I've never left New York City since then. I mean, I, of course I have. I'm here now, but,
Speaker 3:but mean speaking,
Speaker 4:yes.
Speaker 3:That's, that's great. Yeah. Well, so I, not, not for the FBI, but, so you have Egyptian, Swiss, Canadian, and American citizenship. Are you selling any one of those?
Speaker 4:Exactly. Everybody should have as many as they can. I definitely think that's true. Interestingly though, I'm, I do not have Swiss.
Speaker 3:Oh, really?
Speaker 4:Yes. Oh, it's, uh, it's, uh, they're, they're a, uh, citizenship by, by blood, not soil.
Speaker 3:Oh, really?
Speaker 4:Yeah. So, uh, being born in Switzerland does not, automatically confers with citizenship.
Speaker 3:Okay. Mm-hmm. Wow. Interesting. Mm-hmm. They've also banned the ate, so it's, it's just, so tell me a little bit about, uh, you know, your, your life as a writer and, and especially, not necessarily because, but also tell us something. You mentioned Edward Saeed. You know, I mean, I met Edward when I was a a, when he came to do the, the TB Davy Memorial lecture. Mm. At the University of Cape Town. Mm-hmm. Just as we were going to the, uh, transition from apartheid to negotiation. Mm-hmm. And before 1994. And, um, I met him the year in 1990 when I was a visiting fellow trying to write my PhD at University of Chicago. And I was introduced to him by Abraham Abud. They, he wanted to know, do you think it's okay for me to come and go to South Africa now?
Speaker 7:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:You know, Peter Bihar might have taken some lesson about that. When's the right time to go? Uh, but, uh, uh, you know, so, so Edward wanted to know, is this a good time to go? I said, look, the academic boycott is now effectively over. We are on a path to, you know, democracy. equality for All, which is a, a vision I, I held for Israelis and Palestinians. And I remember, I, I, uh, and I'll just say this a little bit. I was the only one in 1994, a week after April 27th to do a broadcast of Mandela's inauguration in Arabic.
Speaker 7:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:In those days with Ms, with nbc.
Speaker 7:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Middle East, broadcasting, there was no Jazeera, there was nothing else.
Speaker 7:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:And, and, um, that night I called Edward.
Speaker 7:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:And, and, uh, I said, you know, we finally did it. When are you guys gonna do it? You guys should follow our path.
Speaker 7:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:Why don't you do negotiations?
Speaker 7:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:And he was really angry with me.
Speaker 7:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:Because he said, Ibrahim, the, the playing fields are not the same.
Speaker 7:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:This is a very, very different thing. And every time we used to talk subsequently, he always remind me, remember you, you said that, et cetera. So, so say a little bit about Edward and, and, and how, you know, your work with him. What did you work on, for your doctoral dissertation?
Speaker 4:it was such a long time ago now. but yeah, my dissertation was on Islam and migration. Ah, interesting. Um, so about half of it was on African-American Islam. Mm-hmm. So from the days of slavery up through Malcolm X
Speaker 7:mm-hmm.
Speaker 4:I also did a, a, I wrote a chapter on the construction of the first mosque in Paris, which, uh, LA Que mm-hmm. Which is a, a very interesting place that has a lot of interesting colonial history. I, on, and then I also wrote about, um, Richard Burton, the colonial traveler of
Speaker 3:course.
Speaker 4:And, and the rusty debates as well. Uh, so like all of that sort systemic
Speaker 3:versus,
Speaker 4:yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Interesting. Okay.
Speaker 4:And, um. But I remember very clearly, that visit, because he was very, uh, Edward was very energized by going to South Africa. Yes. Yeah. And he, he was, I remember very clearly the lead up to it. He was very interested in, in what the trip was going to be like. And he came back really also very energized, I think. and, at the same time, this is around the same time that the Oslo Accords are also being signed. And, you know, the one thing that I think that really made a big difference for, SAS interpretation of the Oslo Accords was the fact that he was a literary scholar, which meant that he did something that a lot of people did not do. He read them
Speaker 3:the text. He read the text.
Speaker 4:It's true. He actually sat down and he read what the, uh, Accords said. And realized that this was, as in his words, a Palestinian Versailles.
Speaker 3:Hmm. Surrender.
Speaker 4:Yeah. And, and he was vilified and ostracized. They tried to get him to come to the White House lawn for the handshake. He refused, you know, and everybody was calling him, uh, a naysayer and all of that stuff. Even within the, the movement, uh, uh, within the United States, the Palestinian movement, there was a lot of pressure against him. He, he really was standing alone and he was right. We all know he was right. Everybody knows he was right. and I, I think that he would, he wouldn't take any joy in knowing that he was right. You know?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:it was a painful thing for him to see. What happened to the movement?
Speaker 4:Incredibly painful. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And, and it was the beginning, well, actually it was not the beginning of the souring of his relationship with the PA that began after, with the, even with the, uh, with fat. But that began earlier. but it certainly consolidated it. And, you know, to the point where at some, at some point his, um, his work was even banned from the West Bank, under the pa and Yeah. and you know, so, so I, but what I, I, I took many things, I think from, studying with Edward and, uh, but one of the main things for me was his really his ability to write in different registers. And so he was able to write, academically, he was able to write poetically. I think probably my favorite work of all sides. Is after the last sky, the photo essay that he did with Jean Law, which is a completely different register of writing than, you know, beginnings, which is almost impenetrable, really. and, um, or he could write pieces, you know, he could write about the one state solution in the New York Times magazine. He could write, you know, you didn't not want to be on the receiving side of the Angry Pen of Edwards, you know? and he, he, and I mean, pen, literally, actually, because he wrote everything in longhand, on a blue, a four paper. You know, his father ran a stationary store, and that was the business. It was a stationary business. And, so he was very attached to a specific kind of, European sized paper and a fountain pen. That, that's how he did. That's how he wrote almost all of his work. And then, his assistant Bu, who was a wonderful woman, typed it, would type it all out. And then at the very near, the very. you know, when he learned that he had leukemia, he started to, slow down and also the world was changing. So he did eventually learn how to use a computer, but, he wasn't very good at it. but, but, so that's one of the few things that he wasn't good at. But what was, what what I, I think was, I was really, uh, taken by, was his ability to write in different registers.
Speaker 3:Yeah,
Speaker 4:yeah.
Speaker 3:Different voices and in different audiences. Yeah. Yeah. So you, so you as, how did this book come about and your life as a writer, what drove I, I can now see, once you told me what your PhD was about, you talk, you thought of, you talked about, you know, the, the mosque, immigration Yeah. Those kinds of issues. How did this book come to you?
Speaker 4:So, you know, this book came to me, mostly because I was looking. For what I was seeing around me, it, I was looking for it to be represented in, in the mainstream, world out there. I was living in New York City, you know, prior to nine 11. At nine 11 and after I knew exactly what, what it meant for, Arabs and Muslims within the city, uh, uh, you know, we would often gather and talk about who, what, who's been visited by the FBI, at what point. And at one point I realized that everybody, every Arab or Muslim I knew had either been directly visited or knew somebody who had been visited by the FBI. You know, we, people were talking about the kind of vigilante violence that they were encountering and that sort of it was, it was a very, intense period of time and it just was not represented at all. Like, I would read the newspapers every day and you'd have these long, Very personal, very, very powerful stories of people who had died in the towers, rightfully so. But there was nothing about what the fallout was, on our communities. And so, uh, there came a point where I just felt like, if I'm not seeing it, I think maybe I should just try to do it myself. And so I, I, uh, I thought I wanted to make it very local instead, instead of it being a national story, I thought it would be better the more local I could get. So I stuck it to, it was stuck with Brooklyn itself rather than even New York City. And then I also thought that, you know, because this was a moment when it was a transformational moment, and that would be really something interesting to observe among a younger generation. Younger generations are always looking for ways how to define themselves always right, and often, and how to define themselves in opposition to the earlier, previous generations or our parents' generation. What, what, how do you do that if you have suddenly, uh, enormous amounts of hostility that have just landed on your shoulders, that you had no, expect, no idea that where they were coming? And so that just seemed to me like a really interesting perspective that I wanted to explore. So I started asking around and, um, I also knew that I wanted it to be a very story driven book. And so when I was asking around, I was asking my friends to, and asking their, to ask their friends, et cetera, to find what are the best stories that best represent this moment. and, uh, so that's how essentially I was able to compile this, the book. Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know, the first story is about Russia and, uh, parents are from Syria and she was also born in, in Syria. And then at some point the home is invaded, except for the two small children. Everybody's cuttered off.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:To jail. Together at first, then separated and so on. Yeah. Now, were these interlocutors at any stage reluctant to talk to you?
Speaker 4:some, some were less willing than others. and certainly the ones who end up in the book were the most willing because they're there. for example, there actually was an eighth, person that I had begun, uh, just, you know, interviewing and we were talking and he was, uh, a member of the New York City Police Department.'cause I thought that would be an interesting story to tell as well. Yemeni guy. And he had his reasons for talking to me too, because he has, he was very, educated. He had done a master's in criminology. He was bilingual, he was, you know, he had a lot of history also with the department and he felt that he wasn't getting promoted. And so he, he felt that there was a kind of a lot of employment discrimination within the department. And so. You know, that was one of the reasons I think that he was interested in the project too. And then at a certain point, he just completely stopped, responding to, to my calls and, and treaties. And, you know, at one point I even, I got, I was, I ride my bicycle to school and at one point I ride my bike to school and just from going from my home to the sidewalk, uh, from my home to the road, I was like on the sidewalk. And so I got stopped by a cop and they gave me a summons. so I thought, damn, like that's stupid that I got the summons. But then I thought, oh, but maybe it's an opportunity, right? So I was like, hi, I got this summons. You think you, I thought maybe that would help. You know, like that's, nah, he was still quiet. Yeah. He, he was still
Speaker 6:quiet.
Speaker 4:I, I think maybe, actually, I think it's quite possible that he actually did get promoted at a certain point. Mm-hmm. And then the protocol was then you shouldn't talk to anybody. Right.
Speaker 3:Tell us a little bit about Samami, who is of a Christian background, who serves in the, in the, in the American Army. What, what drew you to him?
Speaker 4:So there were a couple of stories. I thought there were three types of stories that I knew that I would search for specifically before beginning the project. because I knew that those stories would have inherent narrative and social value. So the first one was a detention story because the detentions that swept through the community were completely traumatic for not just the people who are being detained and deported, but really they reverberated throughout the whole community. And so that's Russia's story. and then, I also thought that it would be really interesting. This is at, I'm writing this book. It's at the, you know, the war in Iraq is ongoing and it's getting worse after 2006. You know, supposedly the surge was supposed to have solved that, the surge, and it didn't. And there was still all of that. Uh, so I wanted, I thought it would be interesting if I could find, someone who had served in the military as well. Then I thought from the other side, what about an Iraqi American as well? So those were the three. And it was a, you know, especially the Iraqi American was challenging because, the Brooklyn, I'd already established Brooklyn was going to be the, the, you know, the, the setting for the, for the book. And there's not a huge Iraqi population in Brooklyn. There's a large, in a Palestinian population. There's a large, Lebanese population, but not, not, uh, Iraqi. But I was able eventually to, to get Lena and she talked to me. And, but of the other four, I didn't know exactly what kind of stories I wanted to write. I just knew that I wanted to get the, the best stories that I could hang a narrative of about 11,000 words on that. I knew that, you know, the, the, my thinking around the sort of structure of the book. Was was as follows, and I'm caricaturing it to a degree, but your sort of typical feature, uh, magazine feature story, this is a bit of a caricature, but the magazine feature story, it kind of starts with a lot of detail about a person and a narrative about a person's life. And then pivots from that to so now I'm gonna tell you what this, what, what this issue that I'm talking about. And then you get all the issue, issue, issue, issue, issue, issue. And then at the very end you're like, you're back with, you know, the person and what happened, right? That's sort of like this, the often structure of a feature, I thought what I exploded that from within. And so it's like the, the, the, the story is around, you know, but it's the person who's at the center of it instead of the the issue. And so what I did when I was writing the book. Was I, I, uh, talked to a whole bunch of different people to ask them what their interests were. I, I talked to a lot of different, or community organizations and mo mosques and, and, and religious organizations to let them know I was writing the book and people started to contact me about the, about the book as well. And then as I knew who was available and what their story was, I, I would, would sit down. I sat down one night actually and just sort of made a list of all the people and what the issues were. And I, I didn't want the issues to overlap. I wanted each issue, each chapter to sort of hit on a different issue. but, but I wanted the story to be primary. And so, so yeah, that's, that's essentially how that, that came up. So, with Sammy, you know, it's interesting. He was the, he was, he was in, the Marines and, he is, Egyptian c. And, I also did not want the book to necessarily be bogged down with a kind of representational politics. Like if, you know, Brooklyn is like 60% Palestinian, like should all of the, you know, like, I didn't wanna do that. Right. But I think it also illustrates a shift in the discourse that we've seen around the War on terror from the early days of the War on Terror to the later days of the War on Terror. In the early days. You can see it in the rhetoric. A lot of the rhetoric was about Arabs and Muslims as if it was one word. And then there was a lot of rhetoric just around, Arabness as well as, and the later on, about 10 years after the shift begins and it becomes more Muslims and Islam and the Arab, uh, side of that starts to diminish. A bit. Diminish. Yeah. So I think there's something interesting about that, that rhetorical shift. And you can see it actually chart that in the, in the next book that I did after this one, which is called this Muslim American Life. and, I have my own thoughts and theories as to, you know, how to explain that shift itself, but, so part of the reason with Sammy is I thought that I would also concentrate on Arab instead of Muslim in the early days, partly because that was the rhetorical device that was commonly used also, because it seemed to me that Arab was a more coherent, identity to work with because Muslim is at least 77 different countries of origin who are in the United States. They, it's, it's, you know, everything from very recent arrivals to people who have been here since, you know, before the the United States was the United States. it's a very complicated, you know, group. It's, it's one of the most complicated religious formations in the United States. So Arab seemed more doable to me as well. And so there was a also just a very practical reason. And so Sammy ends up then, I guess he has some sort of, of, role in that as the Christian Arab in the book, that it makes it a very arabness, the arabness comes out that way.
Speaker 3:Want to give the audience a, a, you know, a chance to, to ask some questions. And so, but just two issues I wanted to talk about the question about religion.
Speaker 7:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:and, and you just raised it now, how that arc changed from Arabness to, to Muslimness, and you know, this region where we are, the Midwest, and in your book, you refer to Canada, for instance.
Speaker 7:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:Where some of the earliest Arab communities came.
Speaker 7:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Lebanese in particular, as agri agricultural workers, in Michigan City, you have very early mosque. Mm-hmm. Uh, and in, uh, Alberta. Mm-hmm.
Uh,
Speaker 3:you have the first mosque, on, on the kind of continent. How do you, how do you explain, so religion year features is both a faith commitment, especially your, your last character.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:um, Rami.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Uh, Rami is very, very devout. He reminds me when I was a 20-year-old something.
Speaker 4:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:You know, wants to have the real Islam and, you know, the, the textual Islam and he's bending in that direction, et cetera. And, and then you also see Islam is both a culture, a civilization.
Speaker 7:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know, even Samami who's Christian
Speaker 7:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Is very much moved by his ness and his arabness. He's still, you know, teased and harassed by, by his colleagues because he is the Arab. Yeah. Um, yet he also enjoys some place with his general, you know, when he becomes a driver is very interesting way. How do you, how does you, how do you, how do you get around the question of religion or how do you think about the question of religion or what does this book tell us about the story of religion in America?
Speaker 4:I think, it tells us a, uh, a bunch of different things about the story of religion in America, and particularly about the Muslim communities in the United States. I think for young people, the, especially as that shift was in process, you know, the Muslim to Arab, and I don't wanna make too much of it because I think there's also this way in which Muslim and Arab are just often confus and conflated in the American discourse too. So, but if, if there's a sense that they're being, oppressed because they're being defined rather than being able to define themselves, there's a, a real need that I felt from the young, young people that I was talking to, that they wanted to be able to make sure that they can define themselves. And part of that def definition of themselves was being able to define Islam for themselves. And so there was often these conversations about, well, what do you say when somebody says X about is Islam? You know? So they were like, they would learn. These rhetorical strategies about how to survive in an environment where there's, this kind of, you know, uh, hostility to the, even the idea of Islam. so that was one part of it. the other part of it, there was a couple of other parts of it too. one part is there was definitely a shift to, a kind of growing MSA culture on campuses, for example. So MSAs grew a lot during that. And Muslim student organizations. Yeah, Muslim student associations. But, but then what I also found was that a lot of students felt, alienated by the conservativeness of the MSAs that they had then just founded. And so there, there was also these alternative spaces that the mainstream culture could never understand. And so they would always just go right to the MSAs, even though there's a lot of more energy often in the other places where they were organizing. And Palestine organizing became part of that too, incidentally. and then I think, Yeah, the, the, so I think the, the, the, the other part of it is that, and this tracks with, for example, pew did some studies on Muslim American attitudes back in like 2015. And what I found during my, you know, doing my research, which was very qualitative, you could say if you're a social scientist, right? God forbid. And, um, and, uh, you know, I'm talking to a small number of people. It's a kind of like snowball sample and all that sort of stuff, right? But so Pew will do like the big, the big study and they have all the resources to do. What they found was that the, especially younger generation Muslim Americans really tend to very, tend to be very progressive on the, on the political spectrum. They're very progressive, you know, even more accepting, for example, of L-G-B-T-Q rights than mainline, most other mainline c Christian and, and Jewish, communities too, right? If I remember correctly. So, and that tracks with what I was seeing as well. And not only for in including, I would say for Sammy too, who's not, who's c comes, uh, to the Christian tradition, but had the same thing. He comes out of the military and then, you know, late after he's, when I'm talking to him, he's a, he's a student still. And then, but years later, you know, in the different kinds of jobs that he gets, he starts working for a nonprofit that's like a, a poverty, alleviation, small nonprofit. Almost everybody who was, who I featured in the book, really everybody who I featured in the book, took on a kind of profession that is working in the public interest. And so I, I don't, I think that there's this, this stereotype of the Muslim community that you hear all the time, oh, they're really conservative. Like secret conservatives, you know, they're always, they're their, their, their homophobia will triumph over any word that they say good about anybody else. You know, they're, they're, which is all just the same thing as they're all secret terrorists too. Right? Right. but actually the more you hang out with them, the more you understand. I don't like saying them, you know, but the more you hang out with the communities, then you'll see, the, that the, the, the progressive side of, their politics is really definitional to them. And I think that's super important. Underscore, I think that's also part of the larger story of one of the roles of religion that religion has played in American society. So it becomes part of that narrative too. It's not saying that that's the only narrative of religion in American society. There are plenty of negative stories about religion being non-progressive force, but there's definitely. A longstanding tradition of religion being used as a force for progressive values in the United States. And I think Muslims are playing, in, playing part of that narrative today.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you. I I I have one more question, but before I I, you want to Yeah, you, you're the mic person. I, we want to throw it open and like to invite the audience to ask a question to our speaker or comments. Yes, yes please.
Speaker 8:Hi. Uh, my name is Deanne. I've introduced myself, I'm a second year PhD student here in the Peace Studies and History Program. Program. And Mahala, like I resonated with so many things you said about growing up young in Arab and post nine 11 America. If I listed all the things that I resonated with, I'd probably re-give your lecture all over again. But, I did wanna ask about, What you mentioned about like the detention stories specifically in these stories of like state violence against Muslims. Because what I've found in my research is that young Muslims who are, you know, have, are part of the first generation to not remember this immediate post nine 11 era, are aware of individual level violence against Muslims being like some of the harassment. You mentioned the vigilante violence, but they're not as aware of the state inflicted violence, these sort of detention. And we're talking about like Muslims at this point, like people whose parents have experienced this stuff. So they're not quite as aware of like the state level perpetuation of this violence, the detention stores, the torture, these things that you mentioned. So I'm wondering if you can speak to that, if you've noticed this pattern as well and maybe like why this might be why like it's the individual level violence that somehow sticks with our generation of Muslims and not the state level violence.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think that's a great question. I, on one level, I would say that it's, if we take that question away from the Muslim side of it and just talk about how United States deals with questions of violence as the United States wants to always forget state violence, even though it inflicts so much state violence internally and externally all over, and repeatedly. But I don't think that that's, I, I, I think it's important to recognize the fact that we live in a culture that is so highly individualized as well, that it doesn't want to accept, sort of collective, often accept collective responsibilities in that regard. Uh, certainly not for states, you know? and, so I, I, I think that the premise of the question is a really good one, but I think we should also make sure that it's like put in the, in the American context for one thing, right. Secondly, I would say that maybe there may be, and you know, I don't know this as for a fact, but I wonder if there will be a little bit of a difference in a place like New York compared to other places. because there was, New York had such deep levels of, infiltration and, um, by the police department that lasted for many, many, many years. You know, to the point where, on my campus, there have been several incidents of undercover, police, infiltrating student groups. And then when that gets found out, then the university administration claims ignorance as well. But, and our university administration on my campus has even changed because, you know, presidents will change after a while and, But the students will still remember that example, even though there's a new president on my campus and they're still asking for her, the president to say that this was like, to categorically say this was wrong. And, and we will, we apologize and we won't let this happen again. So, you know, I think maybe there's a difference in degree as well, that maybe a place like New York City might, might be a little bit different. The, the sort of collective memory, would travel in a different sort of way. um, but I don't know that for sure, and certainly I, you know, I taught a class on Guantanamo, about three years ago and I began, and it, it was not, you know, there was, I don't know if there was, uh, I think there was one Muslim in the class, like it was not, uh, for, it was for everybody. and I began the class asking them if you know about Guantanamo, what they knew about Guantanamo. And 85% of the class had no idea what I was talking about. they didn't, they just, it was a convenient time for a class, I guess they signed up for, I don't, I don't know.
Speaker 3:that never happened in Notre Dame.
Speaker 4:Yeah. So the, I think the, our collective amnesia is also a, a, a, a troubling American phenomenon.
Speaker 7:Thank you.
Speaker 2:May I ask a question? since you were, uh, talking about, language and globalized Ada who gets to define, and I wonder if you can reflect, on the deployment of Palestinian as a slur, um, by, you know, the president of the United States and also his use of the phrase Shalom Mahmud, when MAH was. Abducted by, uh, so, so kind of like how, how it connects to your analysis. I'll be curious to hear.
Speaker 4:Yeah. A hundred percent. I mean, I think it's the way in which power is trying to manifest itself through the almost colonization of the Arabic language, right? Or, and that becomes a way of saying, you know, I'm going to, call Chuck Schumer a Palestinian, you know, but, but I think that actually it's a very, you know, especially in, you know, I mean, I'm not a fan of Donald Trump, but that seems to be a very ineffective, one of his slurs compared to like some of the other ones. uh, so I, and I think people, there's enough pushback that it, it makes it seem ludicrous in a way. but yeah, I think that's definitely true. It's, it's the way in which a language has become a partisan issue, so to say. Shalom Mahmud is also too. You know, it's a way to, to try to colonize the Arabic language by replacing it with a Hebrew word, uh, there as well. Right. So definitely.
Speaker 3:And trying to frame him in a kind of a colon, colon colonizing discourse.
Speaker 4:Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Because in other words, you need to be under the, the shalom regime.
Speaker 4:Right,
Speaker 3:right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yes.
Speaker 6:Well, first I just wanna say thank you so much for this conversation. Thank you to both of you. Thank you, everyone who's been involved in, in putting this, this together. And so I was just really, um, intrigued by your final comments, about the progressive nature of young Muslims. And that was something that I hadn't expected to hear. It was really, really refreshing to hear. Wonderful. And I was just thinking about kind of till, at least in my experience, some of the. limitations or, or points at which folks like, non-Muslim Americans on the left seem to have limitations or hit a wall in terms of trying to engage politically with Muslim communities. And to my experience, much of it ha is, is around, uh, gender politics, the politics of gender. And would you give us a sense of, of how that can better be addressed without folks like me, you know, knee jerk in invoking terms like patriarchy and male domination, et cetera, which tend to close down conversations rather than, than opening them?
Speaker 4:yeah, I think, if you look at. the history of, I'll talk about New York City because that's what I'm most familiar with. And if you look at the sort of post nine 11 history of New York City organizing on campus or, at the community level, it is overwhelmingly dominated by Muslim women, not, not Muslim men. Overwhelmingly. and if you look at all of the different organizations, including, the Muslim Democratic Club of New York, there's, there's several men who are involved there too, but there's a lot of women who are involved. And some of those women might wear hijab, some of them may not. it just doesn't really become part of the, you know, it's not part of the discourse. It's not part of the conversation. Yeah. It's just, some of them may have, conservative fathers and mothers, some of them may not. like I, I don't think it's, I don't think it's any different honestly, than any other faith community. A lot of faith communities have deal also with the same levels of, questions around what are the roles of the, of men and women and how, you know, what are we dealing with patriarchy? Are we not dealing with patriarchy in some, there's a great variety. What's different, what might be different is that young Muslim women feel very, feel very much, uh, like they want to, my impression or my, my experience tells me that they, they want to be able to take charge of their definition and are trying to change the, the, the circumstances, not just for them, but really for the community at large. and so, you know, I think that the, the real question of how to, how to approach Muslim communities. Is, just approach them like it doesn't have to have without, without second guessing the questions around gender. and, I think that the, the, the payoffs are, are, are, are there to be had. Yeah. Please.
Speaker 9:Hello. I've enjoyed every aspect of this conversation, uh, from the humorous to the serious, uh, from the introduction to the conversation in general. Thank you so much. Um, a couple of moments in the introduction, uh, touched me greatly. Uh, and one of them was this juxtaposition of the ideas of the inability to condemn Islamophobia without also condemning antisemitism. And I just love to hear you speak a bit more to the complexities and the subtleties of that understanding.
Speaker 4:Absolutely. I mean, I think that, it's actually. The easiest thing to do because if you p see that people are at the, at the bottom of all of it, then why would you not condemn both in all of all different forms of hatred? But once you start to try to, uh, leverage one form of hatred against another for to score a political point, well then everything, then that's just hypocrisy at that point. so I think it's always important to remember, the ways in which these, hatreds, manifest, and how much people are victimized by them. And because sometimes they do, even though the end result is, as I'm saying, there's some level of commonality of, experience at the end of it, the ways in which they manifest too, they can be deployed politically differently, right? And so I think it's also important to have to do, have another kind of analysis. On, on it from there too. So, you know, by and large, Islamophobia is still a state-sponsored project in the United States. You know, as evidenced even by the idea that Palestine, and I think that's part of the Islamophobia, can be used as a slur by the president. and that makes, you know, the Muslims, uh, targets, look at Ilhan Omar today, for example, all the talks about Somalis, et cetera, right? Whereas you don't see it as a, as a, you can't also see it as a state sponsored project when it comes to antisemitism. but that gets the much less air in our society. And actually it should be discussed because that's coming directly from also people like. The, Nick Fuentes and the, the people who are still associated with the, with the movement administration.
Speaker 7:Mm.
Speaker 4:Yeah. but they acknowledge one with that why, but disavow the other. So there's a place to, to definitely to have an analysis of it. But at the same time, one must recognize that the, the whoever is victimized by it is, is, uh, is a human being at the end. Yeah.
Speaker 10:Can hold on this?
Speaker 4:Yes. Or
Speaker 10:is it time out? Maybe one,
Speaker 7:just last question. One, one. Yeah.
Speaker 10:You were, since you mentioned Ententes, you know, I've been tracking some of this conversation that's happening on the right. And the split within Marga. Fuentes was just on Tucker Carlson. Carlson went to Pierce Morgan, and they're just going back and forth talking to, to each other. And one of the things that. Was recently said is that this whole anti-Muslim Islamophobia stuff was an op.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Yes. Yeah,
Speaker 10:it was an
Speaker 4:op op. Like an operation, like
Speaker 10:Yeah, it was, it was, it was crafted. It wasn't organic. and the, it was driven by some powerful
Speaker 4:Yeah,
Speaker 10:whatever actors. And at the same time as the, this, this group that's on, that's becoming more critical of, is what they're calling Israel first.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 10:There also seem to be softening their anti-Muslim stance. Do you see a connection between those? How would you comment on this, this, this phenomenon that's emerging?
Speaker 4:Well, to use your own question, I'm, I'm not sure that I see a softening of the anti-Muslim stance if they see it as an op. Yeah. certainly some people are duped into thinking that now they can join a Palestinian movement, or something like that, which I think is foolish. and extremely dangerous. And I would wanna warn against that at every level. you know, on the other hand, I can also say that it, that I've been doing this work for far too long, and I had written How does it feel to be a problem? Hoping that it would be a kind of current affairs book, maybe for six months, and then just on the shelves of history, you know, go to the bookstore and you'll find it in the history shelves. And it's, as you can see, it's still, unfortunately still present, uh, in our, in our political climate. And, but when the book came out, I can tell you, for example, the Wall Street Journal did a little, a little like q and a with me. You know, they, on their Saturday page, they do a q and a with authors. So I remember talking to the, the reporter on a, on a phone call. Like, her first question was, do you think you're exaggerating things? You know? And for many years, I used to have to, the, the first question was always, oh, but is Islamophobia doesn't really exist. So how, how can you write a book such as this? It was till it was around 20 15, 20 14, 20 15. 2015 is when Trump emerges, right? It was really only around then that the national, discourse acknowledges Islamophobia as a real thing. Before that, I had to fight. I had, I had to come with all the kind of statistics and tell everybody, this is why it exists. Lemme show you this person and that person. And lemme tell you, it's not just, I didn't cherry pick a couple of people's stories, you know? So, the idea that it's an up, is that also not new? It's been around for a very long time as part of the right wing discourse. and, and I think it, it is not, I don't think that it's softened. I think if there's a, a way to try to portray it as having been softened. That's just a way of trying that, that's part of a narrative that feeds its own antisemitism, frankly. so I, I think that one has to be very weary of, of siding with, or listening to anything that comes out of the, the, the, right wing or far right wing universe, much as sometimes it, there is a little bit of pleasure to be had watching them destroy each other.
Speaker 3:I, I have, I have re's permission to just go two minutes longer. Remember there's some refreshments and there are books up, books upstairs. So I hope that will keep you, but I, I can't. there's a question I had, that I, I can't, uh, stated in full, but four, four lines. One is the 1942 case that you mentioned. Where Muslim American, uh, Arabs, immigration in 42, that they are not free white persons. Therefore, they cannot, cannot be naturalized. 1944, another judge rules that, America must become more friendly to the rest of the world because we are a nation of equals. And the third point is Dubois du Bois, in your, in your narrative and Cru the character in your book saying something to the effect that he says, after the attacks, however I quote you, they're formally entered American discourse around race and with a bang. But the primary question remains, this is your writing to which racial category do they belong? Exactly. Are they white, brown, or black? All of these actually, are they their own novel category with race being Re-Scripted everywhere after the attacks and with. Walter asserting his Americanness against the Palestinian store owner. That's a store owner where they have Walter, who's something crazy and and taunting them. Where does that leave people like Akram and Kareem, and what relationship does Arab or Muslim in America have to blackness to notions of American belonging and participation in American politics and to social mobility and economic opportunity? In other words, have Arabs and Muslims today become less white and more colored? This is to say, that is to say, have they in some sense become more black than blacks? The race question is something that every Muslim Arab American does feel that what was done to black people is done to them now. And, and I'm wondering whether you think that, uh, Arab Americans, Muslim Americans, are dealing with the race question in, in effective ways. Sure. And greater so, and solidarity.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:For black communities.
Speaker 4:I mean, the, the first footnote in the book also does acknowledge that there's a, there's no comparison between the history of, of, uh, African American history, in this country Sure. And the contemporary reality. which is to say that that has to be said right. At the same time, every, pretty much every liberation struggle in the United States since the Civil Rights Movement bases itself on the Civil Rights movement as well. Right. And sees liberation through the black, uh, liberation lens. and I think that's a great, that's, that's a gift that's, uh, is part of a civil rights, legacy. And I think that, that's often people who are involved in, in, uh, racial justice work are always embracing, because it's a way of bringing a lot of people into the same conversation. Now, does that mean that, you know, Arabs or Muslims who are of every racial category. Always, non-racist. No, doesn't mean that, right? I mean, everybody can be racist. unfortunately, I'm less interested in that question and more interested in what does, what do racial formations look like in an era where we're completely, you know, mixed up with each other in good ways. I mean, I was so just the other day, thinking with such joy, looking at all my friends Thanksgiving photos.'cause I look at all of my friends who, and they have all these families who they forward every family is like, just a complete mix of everything actually. Now that's, it's really quite interesting. But what's less in, what's, what's, what I'm more interested in is the ways in which, Racialization happens. So that's, that's some, some version of a category leads to social exclusion. Right. And that, that seems to me to be an important, question. It's not so much based on color anymore. and even the US Census Bureau recognizes this because they're also trying to rethink how they think about the, uh, Hispanic and, category and the MENA category, and trying to think about eth race and ethnicity sort of being, I implicated with each other. Uh, because what is Arab, let's take Arab for an example. I mean, there are white Arabs, there are black Arabs, there are brown Arabs. There are like, you know, like I, I think what if we, we need to get beyond the question of those other categories and think about what is a category that, that is what, what's a way of thinking about how categories move towards, uh, um, social exclusion and
Speaker 3:political exclusion?
Speaker 4:Yeah. Thank you.
Speaker 3:Thank you so
Speaker 4:much.
Speaker 10:Thank you both, um, for that beautiful conversation and for graciously accepting our invitation to come here. Mustafa Abrahim, Joan, for all the time and effort that you put into this, um, conversation, I forgot to do something really important before we started. I do. Where's Aria? Is she still here? Oh no. Well, aria has been such an important part of our team as literatures of exile has worked tirelessly for us and embraced star vision wholeheartedly. And we'll make sure as the board to thank her when she's present. But I did wanna acknowledge all of the hard work she's done to get us here and yeah, she's just been marvelous and wonderful to our guests as well. So thank you again everybody. And please come upstairs to buy books.