Omar Suleiman – The War on Terror Securitization and Muslim Psychology – Dr. Tarek Younis
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the impact of "fortals" on political views and the securitization of mental health settings. They also touch on the global threat of securitization and the importance of localizing Islam for managing people within institutions. The speakers emphasize the need for political support for the black community and the importance of acknowledging political views and not being harassed. They also discuss the need for transparency and sympathies towards former leaders and the importance of privacy and inclusion for Muslims.
AI: Summary ©
As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh, everyone.
Welcome back to After Hours.
Bismillahir rahmanir rahim.
I've taken over hosting duties from Sheikh Ammar
al-Shukri.
I decided to open up today.
But Alhamdulillah, it's an exciting episode for us.
InshaAllah ta'ala, we have a dear friend
of mine, who I'm sure many of you
have not been exposed to, right?
When we talk about Imam Siraj, Sheikh Abdullah
Hakeem Quick, these are names that have come
to us through the many lectures that we've
heard, through the multiple engagements that we may
have had with the da'wah.
Our guest today is someone who is a
little bit different, but very insightful and can
really help us understand, especially, I think, inshaAllah
ta'ala, a lot of what has happened
over the last two decades and a lot
of ways in which we could probably be
better, ways that we may have been impacted
and ways we could be better in regards
to our da'wah in sort of a
surveillance, a climate of surveillance, a climate of
securitization.
So, our guest today is Dr. Tariq Younis.
Dr. Tariq, Alhamdulillah, is a senior fellow at
Yaqeen Institute.
He is a senior lecturer in psychology at
Middlesex University.
He researches and writes on Islamophobia, racism and
mental health, the securitization of clinical settings and
the politics of psychology.
And I'm going to go ahead and just
get to the last line of your bio,
Akhi Tariq, you have a book called The
Muslim State and Mind, Psychology and Times of
Islamophobia, which is why we really wanted you
to be here.
I think you're an Egyptian-Canadian who lives
in the UK.
Are you Canadian or American, Egyptian-American, lives
in Windsor, Canada, lives in the UK?
I'm Canadian.
It's blasphemy to call Canadians Americans.
Astaghfirullah, I apologize.
You're Canadian, Egyptian-Canadian, who lives in the
UK, who writes about American Muslims.
So, I mean, it is what it is.
Maybe there is some bugh there, some hatred
that you have towards you.
No, but in all seriousness, first of all,
tell us a little bit about how you
got into this, the psychology of extremism or
rather how a climate of extremism and securitization
affects the Muslim mind.
Can you talk to us about how you
kind of got into this in the first
place?
Yeah, of course.
So, alhamdulillah, first of all, let me officially
just thank you for providing the space for
me, inshallah, to share my thoughts.
Alhamdulillah, I should mention that I'm really standing
on the shoulders of many giants who've written
on this subject for many years.
So, I won't spend too much time, you
know, writing and mentioning their names, but, you
know, I think they know who they are.
So, the way I've gotten to this, actually,
so I have a, my background in psychology
was really in sort of an interest in
thinking how people around the world suffer and
experience distress differently.
So, I had an interest in cultural psychology
from very early on.
But I had sort of noticed that there
was a lack of emphasis on politics and
trying to understand how our political environment both
shapes the therapeutic settings, but also our understanding
of, you know, psychological theories, psychological techniques.
So, at the same time, I had done
my PhD on Islamophobia and Muslim identity.
And, you know, there was, you know, I've
been working for, you know, I mean, my,
almost my entire life on issues of Islamophobia
and within the Muslim community.
And lo and behold, there was a place
here in the UK, there was, in the
UK, there was something called the prevent policy.
And the prevent policy is a duty here
in the UK for health professionals or just
generally anyone working in a public body to
have due regard to identify and report individuals
they suspect might be susceptible to radicalization, might
become terrorists in the future, something what we
call pre-criminal space.
Now, that really struck me when I was
in Canada, that really struck me as something
very significant because now, suddenly, you know, there
was a way of really sort of investigating
how the politics of mental health and the
politics of psychology and securitization and all these
different things, and, of course, how Muslims are
racialized, sort of all, they all merged together.
So, alhamdulillah, I had, I did a, you
know, I proposed a project that was accepted,
and so I did research here in the
UK on the securitization of mental health settings.
And so that sort of brought me into
looking at, I guess, some of the configurations
of the war on terror and securitization we
don't normally think about.
So I've always had, as I was mentioning,
I've always had longstanding interest in Islamophobia and
the war on terror.
But I think there was less of an
understanding and investment, for example, on, you know,
on psychology and how psychology plays a very
important role in this.
So that's sort of my interest and my
weigh-in on this.
So, yeah, Sheikh Hamad, you want to ask
the question first?
Well, yeah, I mean, the first question that
pops up into my mind is, you know,
we've been looking at the Daoist scene over
the past 20 years, and how has the
war on terror, you mentioned Muslim identity, how
has it affected our identity as far as
if there are any particular broad strokes that
you've seen our community change between or before
9-11 and post-9-11?
If there are any particular, like, major themes
that you've seen, what would those be?
I think that's a very good question.
I mean, I would say that wasn't, this
isn't necessarily my particular expertise, especially, you know,
just sort of making that comparison before pre
and after, you know, I'm sorry, pre and
post.
I think one of the things that the
war on terror has done, I think quite
significantly, is sort of how it securitized the
longstanding question of Muslims in the global north,
right?
So what used to be...
Securitized means, I'm not aware of what that
word means.
What does that mean?
Sure, so it's rendered, I mean, at a
very basic level, we can say it's rendered
a question, it's rendered the subject, whatever it
might be, let's say Muslims, a question of
national security, right?
Potential risk or sort of threat, you know,
it's brought it, I think risk is actually
perhaps the best way to frame it.
It's put it into a risk framework, right?
So how do we understand the perceived sort
of potential of risk that this thing has?
And of course, not to say that that
didn't exist before, but I think it's brought
it very much in the limelight through different
policies.
So a lot of public policies, you know,
it's not just, we're not talking in the
abstract here.
The way Muslims became securitized through the war
on terror, you know, post 9-11 was
through the institutionalization and legitimization of different strategies
and policies, which in many cases explicitly targeted
Muslims.
Nowadays are much broader, but still very much
target Muslims.
And to sort of answer then that question
a little bit more directly, I think the
one thing that I think struck out to
me, so because I actually grew up in
Germany and I have ties to Denmark.
So, you know, I had traveled and I'm
familiar with the Muslim communities, you know, in
Canada, here in the UK, in Germany, in
Denmark.
And I think one thing that struck me
was how, you know, the question of Muslims,
like Muslim presence in sort of secular liberal
societies have always existed.
But what used to be sort of encapsulated
within integration.
Sorry, is it cutting off for you too,
Omar?
No.
Oh, sorry.
I started cutting off on my end.
I'm so sorry.
Go ahead.
Sorry.
Yeah.
So no, I was just going to say
what used to be sort of what used
to be sort of ingested within integration debates,
like, you know, before 9-11 used to
be like either you're like us, either you
integrate into our values or, you know, get
out of our country.
Right.
That was sort of the discourse that was
targeting Muslims.
And, you know, that was sort of the
question.
I feel personally post 9-11 with security,
what the war on terror has done is
that sort of securitized that integration discourse.
Right.
So now it's no longer integrate into our
values or get out of the country.
It's really integrate our values or your potential
threat to national security.
And we see very much how that, you
know, sort of became embedded, you know, across
across the global north.
We see here in the UK, Germany, Denmark.
In Canada.
So it's something whereby it's it's laced are
the entire, you know, what we would say
sort of Muslim thinking or Muslim behaviors, Muslimness
within a framework of risk.
So it's really interesting.
You're talking about the global north.
But what I'd be curious to ask you
is, you know, so you wrote your article
for Yakin, in fact, on counter radicalization.
And I don't remember the exact title, but
something on counter radicalization, the industry of counter
radicalization a few years ago.
And I remember the first time that I
went to the United Kingdom after prevent.
And that's when it was, I guess, in
its initial phases.
And I know it's still aggressive, but it
seemed even more aggressive at the time.
I don't remember what year that was.
But is there a difference between prevent in
the UK, CVE in the US?
It seemed like there were different levels, different
layers of how involved that securitizing was going
to be.
And like things like even like what Muslims
are allowed to teach in schools.
And like, does the beard become a threat?
Like basically it seemed like almost prevent was
the worst culmination of what's already a monstrous
industry of CVE here.
Like prevent was the worst form of what
CVE could become in the US.
Is that accurate?
Yeah.
I mean, I think that that's a really
good question.
And to be honest, I would say it's
different.
I think the issue here is obviously comparing
it between countries.
Is that, you know, they have different forms
of governance.
You know, here in the UK, it was
much more feasible to sort of create a
national structure of prevent than it would be
in the United States.
Whereas where there, you know, a lot of
the different forms of CVE were sort of,
you know, they were state organized or, you
know, even locally within different cities.
So I think it's certainly different.
Now, I think even by saying that, I
should also emphasize one more difference.
I think Islamophobia, you know, despite the global
dimension of Islamophobia, which is very important to
emphasize that, you know, I think we can
localize Islamophobia into different contexts.
The way, for example, in France, it's very
much a question of the presence of Islam
and Muslims in sort of, you know, secular
French society.
Whereas here in the UK, the emphasis might
be less overtly on, like the place of
Muslims in British society, right here, that discourse
is less salient towards just a wider sort
of securitization of Muslims in terms of managing
who is an ideal British Muslim, right.
And sort of integrating those within the institutions.
And I think Islamophobia operates differently, but I
wouldn't necessarily say one.
First, it's very difficult to say if one
is more or less severe than another.
Certainly, I think, obviously, in other contexts across
the world, if we think about in China,
you know, and other places where Muslims are
very explicitly managed through security apparatuses, but I
think.
You don't see France as being more severe
than the UK, for example?
I think so.
I mean, I think severities, see, I think
severity is something where, like, I don't, let
me say this.
I don't see a point in comparing here,
the severity.
I think the reason why I really wanted
to, you know, to mention that is just
because I think there are, there are international
sort of collaborations and structures when it comes
to CVE in the first place.
So it is more or less a global
industry.
Now, because it translates, obviously, in a very
particular way in France where Muslims are obviously
shut down, but we got to remember, you
know, here in the UK, you know, Muslim
organizations are also, especially those that work towards
Muslim civil rights are highly vilified here as
well.
And I think there are different ways.
There are different disciplinary structures here.
You know, there are Muslim segregated prisons in
the UK, which many people don't know about,
which might not exist in other countries where,
you know, we might expect Muslims to have
it potentially worse.
So I think what we're seeing, first of
all, there's a closer convergence of how security
takes place because of its industry, because things
like ideas of like, like for example, one
thing we had just found out, Oh, I
didn't find it out, but it was found
out through a freedom of information request that
the surveillance apparatus secure, sorry, the camera surveillance
apparatuses that was, were developed in China and
used on our Uyghur brothers and sisters are
actually employed, were purchased and employed here in
London boroughs in several, in several areas around
London.
So the, from the, you know, the technology,
the company and everything is sort of, you
know, was sort of brought in and integrated
here.
And so what we're seeing, I think there's
a lot of convergence and I think we
have, there's a lot of what we have
to focus on the convergence, but also the
differences, but I don't think we need to
necessarily be hung up on the differences.
I think more or less, there's a lot
of convergence.
Do you think the, you know, so it's
interesting, you bring up convergence, you know, when
you talk about structures of oppression, India and
Israel, for example, I think it's very clear,
right?
You see the Modi and Netanyahu type of
Alliance and what that's led to the different
types of softwares that are even being used
to hack phones and crack down on global
dissidents worldwide.
But I think as far as, you know,
Sheikh Ammar and I, what we're really most
interested in getting to is our own psychology
and the, the way we've spoke about, we've
been speaking about our own religion, right?
So it seems like there is a tendency
to really sort the good Muslims out from
the bad Muslims.
The good Muslims are the Muslims that will
pledge undivided loyalty to the state that will
not criticize the security apparatus perhaps.
And sometimes, especially here in the United States,
that's deeply embedded with Zionism and support for
Israel that will relinquish any type of voice
for our political prisoners.
It's one of the most frustrating and heartbreaking
things in the world to see mainstream Muslims,
unwilling to name Dr. Afia Siddiqui or Imam
Jamil Al-Amin or the HLF-5 or
so many other prisoners, even some who maybe
are in prison for thought crimes.
Maybe they did say something really stupid on,
you know, AOL instant messenger, you know, but
you don't see people going to prison for
80 years because they said something outside of
the scope of Islamic or weighing in on
Muslim issues, even if they were dangerous ideas,
right?
For that many years.
So it's the relinquishing of our brothers and
sisters that are either entirely innocent or it
seemed to be disproportionately punished, you know, for
thought crimes.
So I think what we're trying to get
to is how do we really take a
step back now?
I mean, and say, how do we have
our authentic Muslim identity?
If we're operating under this cloud, right?
Of counter-radicalization and this fear of being
put in the bad Muslim category, right?
That means for dirat and for, I mean,
institutions being shut down in certain countries, being
targeted by security agencies, being turned away at
airports, right?
Having bot armies.
I think I've spoken to you about this.
Like there are bot armies that attack us
that are clearly from foreign countries, right?
Like it's a weird industry as a whole
and indeed global because those bot farms are
not being operated out of the United States
from what I can tell, right?
How do we still maintain sort of our
strength or dignity psychologically, not use the terminology
that even relegates us to that, to accept
that framework.
You know, someone even challenged the term Islamophobia
that we've spoken about Islamophobia so much that
we forgot the Islam part.
You know, that's a challenge that some people
put forward.
We've been so, you know, insistent upon fighting
Islamophobia that we've reinforced it in the process.
It's actually like eight questions.
So, you know, you can use Germany to
answer one, Denmark to answer one, Muslims to
answer one.
I think I can hardly leave this room
to answer that.
Certainly, you know, just being Muslim, even if
it's a Muslim psychologist, Muslim psychiatrist, therapist, whatever
we live in, we live in times where
that's not necessarily immediately designated as a safe
person to go speak with.
Right.
So I think there's a lack of political
consciousness, especially among Muslim therapists.
My book in fact really speaks to that
point that we sort of have to politicize
much of our work.
So people, I even get non-Muslims come
to me, you know, because they're like, okay,
this person has some sort of political consciousness,
political sensitivity towards, you know, various issues.
And so I can talk to him about
it.
So I only do, I do it by
design just simply because there's no one else
who they would speak with.
And to take from them, I think very
much, you know, I think one thing that,
that always strikes me, and this is very
anecdotal, but obviously one thing that strikes me
as a common cord among all our brothers
and sisters who've been, who've experienced, you know,
the, the sharp edge of security is that
the community let them down in some shape
or form.
And, you know, and I think we have
to come to recognize how that's happening and
why that's happening.
And it's not very difficult to really understand,
right.
You know, we, we understand that these by,
by nature, you know, the war on terror,
the good Muslim, bad Muslim, it's highly moralizing,
you know, the way George Bush said it,
you know, you're either with us or against
us.
And now everyone who comes close to these
figures, you know, are, you know, there's that,
just that proximity, that closeness to people that
securitize is seen as something that puts you.
And I would say legitimately.
So it's actually within the security gaze within
the security logic, the closer you are to
such individuals, the more you you're higher on
that, you know, that risk evaluation, which I'm
talking about, which I was talking about previously.
So I think there's something whereby we as
a community have to look at the most
vulnerable among us and really establish ourselves in
a way that protects those even, even, even,
you know, had they said or even done
things that we obviously disagree with, you know,
they're still worthy of rights.
And I, I mean that very sincerely because
what we see in fact is that they're
almost entirely stripped of their humanity and abused
in ways that that are indescribable.
So I think we, and it's not only,
it's not only for security.
I think we can think about that, that
logic in many different ways.
I mean, think about how many undocumented migrants
who arrived to Europe are Muslims, right.
And what sort of institutions, policy, not policies,
but what sort of institutions and community efforts
we've been able to develop and engage all
these, all these migrants who've come, who need
support.
Again, you know, there's, I think those who
are most vulnerable among us are often falling
through the net.
And I think that's something that we definitely
have to work towards.
And I think, yeah, I mean, obviously we
need stronger solidarity, solidarity on that, on that
basis alone.
I obviously, I, I feel like I can
talk to that question for a long time.
Maybe I can hone it in for you
inshallah in this regard.
Like, look, I, I want to speak in
the language of an objection that I heard
from that.
And I'm sure Sheikh Hamad has probably heard
this as well from, from multiple Imams.
You take, let's take the most like who
I think in the United States, the person
that like people are least likely to touch
would be Afia Siddiqui, right?
HLF-5, you'll have some noise with the
Holy Land Foundation, especially here, like in Dallas,
they were very well integrated into the community.
Imam Jamil, I mean, led a community.
So, and, and plus he has a rich
legacy of being well embedded into African American
history in the United States, right?
I mean, led the Black Panther Party prior
to that student nonviolent coordinating committee.
I mean, he was a legend.
He is a legend.
H.Rab Brown prior to being Imam Jamil.
So you have that contingent that sort of
comes out.
Dr. Afia Siddiqui was not an Imam, doesn't
lead a community.
You have the accusation that she supports Al
Qaeda.
Her nickname is literally Lady Al Qaeda, right?
And I've never met a single supporter of
Dr. Afia Siddiqui that supports Al Qaeda, but
Hey, her nickname is Lady Al Qaeda.
If you're anywhere in proximity of Lady Al
Qaeda, you must have sympathies towards Al Qaeda.
We had the synagogue hostage situation, horrible situation
here where, you know, six innocent people are
taken hostage by a guy claiming to be
doing so to free Afia Siddiqui.
Now you can use the quote from Ramsey
Clark that says that she, this was the
former, I believe, attorney general who said something
along the lines of that.
This was the worst case of injustice he'd
ever seen in his, in his career.
But when, what I'm getting to in terms
of a question, right.
As you ask people to come out and
just demand like some basic transparency with her
case, she's, the woman's been abandoned.
And the Imams and multiple folks, I don't
want to put everyone in a category.
A lot of people genuinely can't make it
out there.
Right.
But they'll say that, look, her case is
a done deal.
Imran Khan is not the prime minister of
Pakistan.
He was the one hope that was kind
of there to invoke a prisoner exchange.
He's not even an American citizen.
Why even soil ourselves and get ourselves in
trouble here by taking on the plight of
the single prisoner that is going to get
us tarnished with Al-Qaeda.
Like why even do it?
And I mean, it is deeply inconvenient to
get four S's on your boarding pass and
be held for six, seven hours and be
interrogated for a case that you don't even
believe is reasonably, you know, within reach anymore
of a solution.
Obviously there's the trust part, but I think
that's what I want you to maybe speak
to for us is when someone says it's
not worth it for us, because we need
to still do Da'wah.
We need to still be able to operate
freely and, you know, as Imams and as
people of Da'wah to take on the
baggage of these political prisoners, especially the ones
who are just so much misinformation surrounding them
and toxicity surrounding them that we will inevitably
be tainted.
Like, what would you say to those Imams,
to those Da'wah that, you know, psychologically,
well, empathizing, maybe like, like, okay, I understand
you maybe think that it's better for me
to be able to give Khutbahs and give
lectures and not be harassed and not be
turned away from countries and go through the
screening of this counter radicalization.
You know, monster in different parts of the
world.
But what do you say to, to us
all collectively from a psychological perspective?
That's, I would say that's probably the golden
question.
I mean, obviously both of you come and
I think we can, we can all have
different positions on this.
And I think it's, it's definitely important that
we actually really, I think we really should
be phrasing that question exactly as directly as,
as you're doing right now.
I, I think, let me, let me just
begin with the fact that it's, it's, it
would be incredibly depoliticized.
I'm using that word sort of to be
politically correct.
And I, cause I don't want to, I
don't want to use any other stronger word,
but I think it would be a very,
let's say, politically naive position to think that,
okay, if I close my eyes to our
sister, that everything is going to be all
right then for myself and for my family.
I think, you know, in the wisdom of
the way Allah created, you know, our societies
and just the nature of the world, you
know, one experience of one person is immediately
revealing of the experiences for us all.
And I think if we don't learn anything
from her experience and how, what it reveals
to us about our community and how Muslims
are securitized and how Muslims are obviously racialized
through conflicts of the war and terror, but
also through paradigms like nationalism, et cetera.
If we don't, if we can't make sense
of that, then, you know, the worst is
yet to come.
And I discuss a case, you know, for
an individual like this who comes to me
and would make that point.
If they think they can just distance themselves
or even worse, I might say play the
good Muslim, right.
You know, they say, well, no, you know,
I'm going to just keep condemning terrorism.
You know, I'm going to play the good
Muslim to that.
First of all, I really do believe personally
that anytime anyone plays a good Muslim consciously,
they are at the very, at the very
same time with the very same brushstroke, they're
throwing someone else underneath the bus, right?
Like if I'm passing a security agent and
I say, oh no, look at me.
I'm a psychologist.
I'm a senior lecturer at Middlesex university.
You know, why are you going to take
me aside?
Now, all of a sudden, the next Muslim
who comes by who's not a psychologist, you
know, who hasn't been blessed with all the
privileges that I've been blessed with might even
have a certain history.
You know, I immediately in that brushstroke, I've
thrown them under the bus by putting myself
as, as someone who's on the sort of
morally correct side.
So it's really important for me to emphasize
that point because I think we tend to,
we tend to forget that.
Now, I think one of the cases that
I bring up in the security chapter of
my book is that, and this speaks to
the whole question of Dawah, that I think
sort of the subject here is that there's,
it was about a brother.
It was sort of a risk assessment.
So from a probation officer in the UK,
they did a risk assessment of a brother
here.
And in the risk assessment, they're highlighting things
like, Oh, this Muslim's, you know, sort of
deep empathy for issues concerning the Ummah, right.
Their concerns for the people of Syria, right.
They're, you know, that they're, they're really sort
of emotionally invested in others.
And what we're going to see my response
to someone who thinks that they can just
distance themselves is in fact, that what we're
seeing is that Muslim-ness itself is securitized,
right.
Like, and I think that's, that's the issue.
You can't escape it.
Now, you know, you may distance yourself sort
of as a performance, but that won't protect
your children if they ever go out and
say, well, you know, I'm really concerned for
Palestine.
I'm really concerned for our brothers and sisters,
you know, in Syria or just brothers and
sisters around the world, the very concept of
the Ummah, you know, belonging to something maybe
a little bit with a little bit more
importance than the nation state or literally anything
else, just, just being racialized as a Muslim
through, through whatever behavior, whatever, you know, whatever
garment they're wearing, that that's the main issue
here.
You know, Sadiq is just one very obvious
example that technically we should all be able
to rally upon.
But there's, there's no saving yourself, you know,
by just by just putting yourself away.
And that's, I think often the thing, that's
often also the most traumatizing.
I use that word perhaps a little bit
loosely here.
But, you know, among so many brothers and
sisters I've been seeing who, who, you know,
or, and their families, you know, who one
of their family members got, you know, you
know, got in some sort of, you know,
were taken by border police or whatever it
might be, is that it's, there's this earth
shattering element to it.
Like, oh, you know, they, they would, they
can, they can convincingly try to tell us
that they didn't try to come close to
sisters, obviously, but it happened anyway.
Right.
It happened just by nature of how, how
racist the security apparatus really is.
And so, you know, it's either we mobilize
on it or it, it, it, it just
keeps harming us and the harm looks like
it's, it's getting worse and worse.
So just when you mentioned like it, it
seems like it's getting worse and worse.
That leads me to the question of is
the CVE apparatus, is it generational?
So growing up when we came of age,
we came of age post nine 11, and
it felt like we were just by being
a young Muslim, you were under intense pressure.
And it was something that everybody was aware
of constantly.
Like we used to ask the question when
anybody would come back from any trip, any
trip, any of my friends, anybody that I
knew of my entire generation, we would always
ask each other, how was customs?
You know, did you get two hours?
Did you get five hours?
Did you get one hour?
Did you get no.
And now it seems like Muslims who are
coming of age now, they don't seem to
have these concerns.
They don't really feel the prevalence of the
state in the same way or in the
security apparatus that, that we might have.
And so is it really getting worse or
is it getting better?
I mean, that's probably a very good research
question.
I think it depends on what we mean
by that, right?
Like I think if we mean sort of
these explicit sort of maybe border experiences, we
wanted to find out just by that.
I think that would be a very, maybe
a little too hyper-specific encounter, right?
If we think about the issues of self
-censorship, right.
Of like, Hey, do you share your political
views in your classroom?
You know, there was an adolescent Muslim girl
who I think she was 17 years old.
And, you know, she shared with me that
she's been self-censoring herself for years.
She's 17, but for years, she's been self
-censoring her, her thoughts, her views on things
for fear of, you know, of the impact
that might have.
And of course she's normalized that.
But, you know, I think certainly, you know,
and this, by the way, that, that's been
also sort of affirmed in research in universities
here, at least in the UK, but I
can imagine across, you know, I feel like
the self-censorship the Muslim community has been
doing for 20 years.
I mean, there are certain topics that we
just all understand that we're not going to
approach and we're not going to present on,
and we're not going to teach classes on
and things of that nature.
And so that's just become embedded.
So that's a great point.
Yeah.
And I think, I mean, I, yeah, I
mean, to be honest, I think the thing
that we've yet to really capture, if we
just stick with the adolescent girls that I
think we, as a community, we haven't really
fully captured.
I mean, we can, we can just say
like, if we try, we might quantify that
and be like, okay, she's just one among
many girls or among, I mean, among many
Muslims who've been self-censoring themselves.
Okay.
So we can do some kind of statistical
survey, but have we really appreciated sort of
the qualitative impact that has on an individual
to self-censor themselves for so many years,
right.
During adolescence.
I think we, as a community, I know
certainly in research that hasn't been appreciated whatsoever,
but we as a community have really done
very little to capture and support such individuals.
And so I think I need to mention
that.
I don't think the war on terror is
the, you know, be all and all issue
that concerns Muslims.
I think the issue of Islam and Muslims
in the global North has long preceded, obviously
the war on terror, you know, liberalism itself
in many ways has fashioned itself vis-a
-vis Islam, you know, through Orientalism and other
things.
So, you know, I think there's, I think
the war on terror is just an instance
of, you know, of what we're experiencing, which,
you know, we really have a lot of
precedents to be able to mobilize on.
But, you know, we're not, Oh, actually, well,
I will say those who are MashaAllah may
Allah bless them and, and, you know, and,
and make, you know, make their work easy
for them and reward them for everything that
they do.
But, you know, it's, there's also an evolution
in the war on terror, which we haven't
spoken about.
I don't know how much time we have
to be able to enter into that discussion
because I think the war on terror has
also evolved over the last 20 years.
I think that's also made it very difficult
for us as Muslims to capture, but how
has it evolved?
How has it transformed?
Well, I mean, it's evolved certainly as an
industry it's become far more integrated, not only
within, you know, within policies and governments, but
also if you think about surveillance capitalists industries
like, you know, Facebook, Twitter, you know, so
it's, it's become far more integrated as, as
literally a population wide solution.
I thought those were social media apps, surveillance
capitalists.
I call them, I call like, they literally
bank on us.
Right.
So we're the, we're the products.
And that's, that's, that's how they make so
much money.
You know, they're selling us essentially.
It's not my term.
I'm taking it from Shoshana Zuboff's really excellent
book called the age.
It's fine.
But when we're talking to an academic, I
just like to poke a little bit sometimes
on there.
I mean, I think everyone listening should definitely
know that if you're on social media, you're
the product, right?
So everything that you do click on, whatever,
it's all being sold on words.
And I think it's important.
One person once told me if it's free,
the product is you.
That's it.
That's all.
But yeah, in its evolution, it's really being
sold as you know, CBE and all the
security policies are being sold as sort of
like the protectors of society.
Right.
Like sort of the Vanguard of society.
In fact, it's being sold towards Muslims as,
as protection from the far right from, from
fascism, from nativism and racism, et cetera.
So we're seeing an evolution whereby, you know,
it's sort of taking a colorblind approach.
Oh, we can, you know, through security through
CBE sort of capture or identify and capture
anyone who can be a potential threat.
Now, again, that's highly racialized because the threshold
of what makes a white person sort of
pop out in the security and security logics
is much different than the thresholds, the many
thresholds, which makes a Muslim pop up.
And the colorblindness then also becomes far more
difficult for us to mobilize on an address
because they can say, oh, we're not going
after Muslims.
We're going after everyone.
Right.
And, you know, Michelle Alexander, she talks about
that really well.
And sort of the mass incarceration of black
youth in the United States, you know, the
colorblindness of police, of police work, you know,
makes it difficult to point out the racism,
even though the, the incarceration rates are incredible.
So I think these evolutions, that's just one
form of the evolution, the colorblindness of it
makes it more difficult for us to mobilize
on these issues.
SubhanAllah.
I'll say that, you know, in closing because
I know we've got to wrap up first
of all, probably have you for a part
two, inshallah, because what you just mentioned with
I think the far right Muslims, seeing the
same tools now as protection for themselves could,
could be deeply problematic.
And I think that this has also been
one of the things that we've been sort
of trying to tackle or we're going to
try to tackle is like sort of the
pendulums, you know, so from, from Muslims being
conservative to being taken you know, to the
liberals as saviors.
And even though those are reductionist comments usually,
but there's something, there's some truth to that.
I think for sure.
Some sort of swing with you know, who
will embrace them uncritically.
And that certainly has some, you know, some,
some very perceived and sometimes unperceived reality with
the surveillance capitalism.
I mean, it's, it's true.
Like we, we, you know, it's like a
lot of times when these tools come out,
it's like, Hey, we're sick of being disproportionately
targeted.
Why can't you target other populations as well?
And we might be actually feeding the industry.
Right.
And personally, and I've benefited a lot from
you.
I know you don't like hearing that, but,
but really I benefited a lot from you
very early on.
Just, just your insights on, you know, how,
how we may have been reinforcing certain concepts
and the way we were speaking about these
things, because certainly, I mean, when you're an
Imam, you're you're in the spotlight, you want
to rush to condemn something, right?
Because our job as Imams is first and
foremost to give people Islam.
And so sometimes it's even just this, this
reaction, like these people are tainting our beautiful
religion.
We want to distance ourselves as much as
possible from these people that are trying to
taint our beautiful religion.
But sometimes it's the words that we use
the way that we weigh in where we
could still distance ourselves from violence without feeding
an industry.
That's been very violent towards us as a
community.
So I appreciate you a lot.
JazakAllah khair, your insights.
I think that we have a lot to
learn as people in da'wah and as
institutions about how we've been impacted and how
we can be more impactful in a good
way.
InshaAllah to honor with the securitization of the
Muslim community.
So we'll have you for a part two
inshaAllah for sure.
And I'm going to ask one question because
I've got an Egyptian and a Sudanese with
me and I can't, I cannot, you know,
lose this opportunity.
In your full honesty, Akhtarik, Sudanese food or
Muslim food?
Just be real.
Which one's better?
I mean, let me say this.
Egyptian food is so bad that is our
only sort of shining glimmer of hope.
We have to give it to Egypt.
I don't think we have it.
You're an honest man.
But I'll say even your food does not
come close.
I know you guys have macaroni bechamel, so
you can keep that.
Bechamel is awesome.
I was going to say bechamel is the
bomb, but I'm like, no, I'm talking to
a guy who talks about not using certain
words.
Bechamel is great.
It's one of my favorite foods in the
world.
We appreciate you and inshaAllah for everyone else.
We'll see you on the next episode of
After Hours inshaAllah.