In an op-ed piece that he wrote for the Los Angeles
Times (July 14, 2002), academic and Islamic scholar Dr
Khaled Abou El Fadl, an important and influential voice, argued that
Muslim organisations in the US had failed to establish their credibility
and to convince the American public of the outrage felt by most Muslims
over the tragedy of September 11. "American Muslims must demand that
either this leadership reform itself or be changed," he concluded.
Though El Fadl did not name any organisation in his piece,
the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil
liberties group in the US, felt compelled to respond, claiming the
academic’s claims were not founded on facts. CAIR said that within two
hours of the 9/11 attacks it had issued a joint statement along with other
Muslim organisations sharply condemning the terror attacks, issued a
nationwide call the same day asking Muslim medical professionals to rush
to the rescue of victims, published a full page advertisement in The
Washington Post the Sunday after the attack condemning the attacks and
sending condolences to victims’ families, and participated in innumerable
protest meetings to express the outrage of America’s Muslims.
In response, El Fadl wrote a long letter to CAIR. Though
the above exchange is now over five years old, some of the points raised
by the writer remain relevant even today. We reproduce excerpts from El
Fadl’s letter to CAIR:
"I have been extremely concerned with the massive influx
of Islam-bashing books and the high sales these books are achieving. We
(Muslims) must publish our thought in mainstream presses in order to
effectively disseminate our ideas. However, in order to be published in
mainstream presses there is a mode of discourse and a style of analysis
that very few American Muslims have mastered. Many of the books published
in, what one might call, ghetto-like Muslim presses are embarrassing if
examined from the perspective of standards set by mainstream publishers.
"The influx of hate-tracts written against Islam, and
published and disseminated by influential mainstream publishers, feed the
type of governmental policies that persecute many Muslims. We seem to fail
to understand that a hundred works published by a relatively small Muslim
press is not as effective in shaping public opinion and influencing public
policy as a single book published by Harper Collins, for instance.
"The literature and governmental policies of the Islam
haters are finding a receptive audience because of the popular conception
that we Muslims have not done enough. What is missing is what might be
called a proportional public relations campaign. Certainly, a Muslim
American campaign existed but, in my view, it was not proportional to the
gravity of events and accusations levelled against us. When someone
threatens you with a tank, you cannot respond with a handgun. We needed to
respond with a concerted, systematic, unified and unrelenting effort
considering the stakes and dangers to our religion.
"Keep in mind that academics are the ones who write
history and, as such, they are also the ones who construct reality for
future generations. Your voice, as activists, must break through the
barriers of isolation, if such barriers do in fact exist, and breach the
proverbial tower. For the sake of our religion you must convince the
writers of history and not just other activists.
"There is anti-Islam animus in the media and a Muslim
organisation needs to scream much louder than anyone else to get the
media’s attention. This is simply a reality of Muslim life in the USA; we
must work ten times as hard as our Jewish or Christian counterparts to
achieve the same results.
"Considering the stakes, considering the animus and
hostility to us, considering the plots and conspiracies against us, our
voice, as Muslims, must be loud, resounding and even deafening. We must be
so loud to the point that we are able to drown out the voices of the
(Islam bashers) Emersons and Pipes of our world.
"(Muslims) must do things that are so visible, so
compelling and so unequivocal that they could not be denied by anyone. For
instance, I want to be able to document, as an academic, for history’s
sake, that Muslims on such and such date marched in the thousands to tell
bin Laden to "get lost". I want to be able to cite such a public Muslim
stance in my interviews, write it in my books and throw it in Emerson’s
and Pipe’s faces next time I meet them at a conference or at a
counter-terrorism intelligence briefing in the State Department or White
House.
"Main (Muslim) organisations, despite the façade of
democracy, are still trapped within the mainly despotic paradigms that
they imported from back home. Put simply, we have our god-sent and
god-inspired gurus and these gurus, regardless of official title and
position, remain the effective and real source of leadership in our
organisations." n