Asra Nomani at Georgetown University interviewed by Center for Jewish Civilization Director Jacques Berlnerblau on March 1, 2017
The Georgetown Review and Bipartisan Coalition’s event featuring Asra Nomani on March 1, 2017 was the opposite of engaging with the Muslim community. Hosting her represented one group of privileged students turning their backs on their fellow students who are Muslim.
If the student groups that invited Nomani to campus wanted to connect and have a substantive conversation they would have invited someone who more closely represents the views of American Muslims, not someone who accuses mainstream American Muslims of being “to the right of the Westboro Baptist Church”; someone who understands and cares about how Muslims feel at this time of increasingly frequent Islamophobic attacks, not someone who herself attacks Muslims and their faith; someone who cares about Muslims who are victimized by Islamophobia every single day, not someone who plays the victim every time someone criticizes her positions, and aligns herself with victimizers and Frank Gaffney Jr., who advances the notion that all Muslims are part of a conspiracy to undermine Western civilization. Gaffney attended her program and was given the first question. The Hoya noted that Nomani “appeared familiar with Gaffney” and grouped herself with him as another person who’s been “the target of the ‘honor brigade’”. Nomani has a penchant for responding to just about anyone who says or writes anything about her. If the comment is critical, she’ll accuse the person or entity of “character assassination.” “Honor brigade” is Nomani’s term for anyone who criticizes the anti-Muslim positions she publicly promotes such as calling for surveillance of all Muslims, and claiming that women who wear the headscarf are part of a regressive misogynistic form of Islamism, or that Muslims who use the common Arabic phrase “in sha’ Allah” (‘God willing’) are becoming “hardcore”, in the process of becoming radicals.
When Nomani speaks about “Muslim extremists”, she’s not talking about ISIS or Al-Qaeda. She’s often talking about Muslims who simply disagree with her self-described “reform movement” that compares ordinary Muslims to members of the KKK. This isn’t simply a matter of free speech. When ordinary Muslims are repeatedly associated with extremism, radicalization, and terrorism, innocent people get killed because of their faith, or perceived faith. Nomani, like Gaffney, makes people afraid of Muslims. As we’ve seen time and again, fear turns to hate, and hate can turn to violence, discriminatory laws, and policies that incite further attacks on innocents.
Nomani’s association with Gaffney should be very concerning to everyone on our campus. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which identifies and monitors hate groups and individuals in the United States, identifies Gaffney as “one of America’s most notorious Islamophobes.” It provides a long description of his unfounded claims, including his most notorious: that all Muslims are part of an anti-Western conspiracy called “the civilization Jihad”. Gaffney’s profession is running the DC-based think tank, the Center for Security Policy (CSP), a think tank, founded in 1988 with a donation from weapons-manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, that is listed by the SPLC as an anti-Muslim hate group. CSP continues to receive annual funding from far-right groups as well as the 25% of its donations that come from aviation and weapons manufacturing companies who, like Gaffney, Nomani, and other Islamophobes, exploit and profit off the Global War on Terror and the corresponding Islamophobia that it has helped to perpetuate.
I'd like to believe we're better than this
How do we rebuild the basic trust that we need to move forward together on this campus? How do we better communicate so that the harm that was done can be healed and avoided in the future?
Cura personalis, right? "...individualized attention to the needs of the other, distinct respect for his or her unique circumstances and concerns, and an appropriate appreciation for his or her particular gifts and insights." Do our Jesuit institutional values apply here? Or are we Muslims not humans deserving of respect for our unique circumstances and concerns?
If the word "Islamophobia" rings hollow to the organizers of the Nomani event, if the word seems to be a myth and not a genuine problem afflicting a religious minority, but just the ploy of coddled liberal “snowflakes” ever evading faux microaggressions, then I'll use another word: “cynicism.” Cynicism might be the right word to describe what has poisoned the waters of our community.
We need to replace cynicism with trust. To do that, we need to listen to one another and communicate.
Trust may well be that precious thing that Muslims at Georgetown feel was violated by the Islamophobic speaker who was invited to our campus.
And trust might be the only thing that can vanquish cynicism and redeem the sense of community, safety, respect, and cura personalis, that the anti-Muslim speaker trampled.
So, where do we go from here?