An open letter to the Ummah
Op-ed: Facebook is riddled with unintelligent remarks, and Google only reveals contradictory behavior in the Arab community, but millions of well-meaning Muslims are still out there.
Thanks to Mark Zuckerberg, opinion exchanges take place with unrivalled speed and unrestricted candor. For all the criticism aimed at the privacy policies of social networks, people cherish the opportunity to share and debate online. The choice of news and comments people choose to share and like or to ignore on Facebook is thus an accurate reflection of personal worldviews.
I thus wish to take advantage of this platform to voice my discomfort and irritation with the posts that have surfaced on my timeline ever since the conflict in Gaza erupted: Imran, after pocketing consultancy fees from an NGO funded by a Jewish philanthropist, was it really necessary for you to belabor American senators for being in the pockets of the Zionist lobby?
Hadeel, I would have expected that after years of involvement in peace and human-rights programs sponsored by German foundations you would refrain from scorning Abu Mazen for neglecting to “fight the enemy by every possible means”. And Rana, did you really need to mock Israelis’ reluctance to embrace martyrdom as evidence that Jews are cowardly? I do not think European donors expected such rhetoric from graduates of the interfaith coexistence conference in Jordan you enjoyed so much.
I am fully aware that to judge an entire community by the behavior of three Facebook contacts is morally wrong and statistically flawed. And yet, before we summarily dismiss the previous insights, let us take advantage of search engines to see whether Muslim communal and religious leaders have taken a stand against evil in all its forms. After extensive use of Google, I am disheartened by a reality where dozens of Islamic organizations sponsor anti-Israel rallies in Paris, yet where none of them apologized for demonstrators’ attempts to assail Jewish houses of worship.
I read that a few days after an Israeli couple was almost lynched by a pro-Gaza mob in Berlin, an imam of the same city vowed to destroy all Zionists. In the United Kingdom, I see that interfaith initiatives to denounce Israeli barbarism abound, but that no communal or religious leader calls for contrition or soul-searching for the fact that hundreds of British jihadis are cleansing Syria and Iraq of its Christian and Yazidi communities. I realize that communal and religious leaders have failed, yet hope that intellectuals will take a stand – and I am once again disappointed.
Rashid Khalidi, the renowned Columbia professor and Tariq Ramadan, the Swiss intellectual who delights in quoting Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, both sign an international petition calling for an arms embargo on Israel, yet keep silent on Hamas’ use of human shields in Gaza. This is all the more depressing given that in the past Ramadan had rebuked Jewish intellectuals who supported the overthrow of Saddam Hussein as having betrayed universal moral values.
In the light of these realities, I am tempted to agree with detractors of the West’s military presence in Afghanistan. Indeed, why should we spend billions of dollars chasing illiterate peasants in Central Asia, while we acquiesce to the peril posed by sophisticated people who fan anti-Semitism and condone violence in our midst?
I find solace in the thought that there are millions of well-meaning religious Muslims in the West and in the East whom I do not know and will never hear about. They are too ethical to rise in the ranks of their religious and communal organizations and too intimidated to openly defend their iconoclastic views. I know that they exist, just like the thousands of brave Bedouin and Circassian soldiers in the IDF who are both devout Muslims and loyal citizens of Israel.
