.
So I’ve just received an email from a reader, asking whether I might have
something to say about
The Innocence of Muslims. “Is
tolerance for satire really a concept that is not compatible with Islam?” he
asks. “Is there something about all this indignation that ‘we,’ the West, don’t
understand?”
When asked to explain Muslim rage, I have an answer, but I already know the
response to my answer. A defender of “Western civilization” will tell me, “Yeah,
but we aren’t violent. They’re the ones who kill people over
religion.” If numbers matter, however, the mythology of
“America” kills many, many more people today than any myth of “Islam.”
To sustain a pseudo-secular military cult, we have produced a nation of
cheerleaders for blood and murder. We speak of the cult’s heroic work as
“sacrifice” and say that it’s all for a divine cause of “freedom.”
That’s what we send out there, at them. This is not simply
a world in which one side has a sense of humor and the other does not, or one
side is “modern” and “enlightened” while the other side needs to catch up. The
modern, enlightened side is burning people alive. Innocence is simply
the playground bully calling your mother a slut after already breaking your jaw,
and then wondering why you can’t take a joke.
I am not trying to excuse violence. As an artist, I support everyone’s right
to make shitty, cheap-looking art, and I do not believe that bloodshed is ever
an acceptable way of responding to art. But in the big picture, this isn’t
really about violent religion vs. nonviolent art; it’s violence vs. violence.
Last week, the day on which my column runs happened to fall on September 11.
My column was not about September 11; I offered no recollections of the day, no
meditation on where we’ve gone as a nation since then, no diagnosis, no hope for
a better future, and no apology on behalf of “moderate” Muslims. Instead, I
wrote about drugs[http://www.vice.com/read/confession-of-a-muslim-psychedelic-tea-drinker].
It seems that every year, the anniversary produces a number of Muslim bloggers
and commentators publicly performing our love of peace, assuring everyone that
we, too, shared in the suffering of that day. I am thankful for them and respect
their efforts, because this is work that needs to be done. But I did not try.
The reason for my silence on 9/11 is that I am not only Muslim. I am also
American. I am also white. I am male and heterosexual. However, I am not asked,
as an American, to reflect on the yearly anniversary of our atomic bombs falling
upon Japan, or our countless military interventions throughout the world. There
is no date on the calendar for me, as a white person, to demonstrate that I have
properly reflected on slavery and the generations of inequality and naked white
sadism between the slave era and our own unjust present; we could potentially
have such a day, but often turn it into shallow self-congratulation. As a white
person, I am not asked to consider the wanton murders of young black men by
white cops or white civilians, or the white terrorism of shootings in gurudwaras,
as directly relevant to my identity. Nor do I have a designated anniversary for
reflection, as a straight man, on the horrifying statistics of rape or the ways
in which heterosexism makes this country unsafe for so many.
As a Muslim, however, people do expect me to show evidence of my
soul-searching over a single event, and I am regularly instructed by popular
media to imagine 9/11 as a cancer within my own self. Journalists ask me about
Islam’s “crisis” as though it’s a private demon with whom I must personally
wrestle every day; meanwhile, my whiteness remains untouched and unchallenged by
the decade of hate crimes that have followed 9/11. Journalists don’t often ask
whether “white tradition” can be reconciled to modern ideals of equality and
pluralism, or whether the “straight male community” is capable of living
peacefully in America. When it comes to my participation in America, my
whiteness and maleness are
far more likely than my Islam to wound others, and thus perhaps
more urgently in need of “reform” or “enlightenment” or whatever you say that
Islam needs. Again, this is only
if numbers matter.
Yes, there’s something that we, the self-identified “West,” don’t understand:
ourselves. We see the violence that we want to see. We ignore our
legacy of hatred and destruction, always wondering how they can even
look themselves in the mirror.
Michael Muhammad Knight is the author of eight books, including
Journey to the End of Islam,
an account of his pilgrimage to Mecca.