Aziz Poonawalla: July 2009 Archives

This is a guest post by Dilshad A. Ali.

Returning home from any conference, there is a time of decompression and processing, as I am doing at my home in Virginia. I just wrapped up three intense days at the WISE (Women's Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equity) 2009 conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, couched between four days of exhaustive travel. Jet lag? Don't get me started.

The reach of this conference was certainly ambitious, and if I can sum it up in one sentence (which is probably doing injustice to the goals of WISE), it was to bring together powerful Muslim women from all over the world to share best practices, network, develop partnerships and learn effective ways to further the causes and improve the situation of Muslim women (through a new scholarly interpretation of sacred text, philanthropic work, leadership, communication and through action).

WISE is the brainchild of ASMA (American Society for Muslim Advancement), run by Daisy Khan, a force of nature and global-thinking leader. I've been tracking her career at ASMA for a number of years and watched the WISE initiative grow from an idea to its current formation as an agent of change. But with that wide-reaching, ambitious goals comes inherent challenges and difficulties-especially when you have nearly 200 powerful Muslim women from about 50 countries butting heads (and sharing ideas and thoughts) in the same room.

Some highlights:

• The introduction of the WISE portal, a fabulous website (in beta version, but will be live in the next two months I'm told) that will feature WISE projects, information about the developing Muslim Women's Fund and the WISE Shura council, projects Muslim women are engaging in, training models, and how to reach the "WISE women."
• Case studies from the "Change through Interpretation" session that reflected some of the amazing work Muslim women are doing to better the live of women through proper scriptural interpretation (about marriage, family life, gender equality).
• Some truly useful skill-building sessions (how to run for political office, how to get your story/organization heard by the media, how to balance work with the rest of life).

And then were the areas needing improvement, which is indicative of these sorts of conference where you are trying to create a global initiative for change. When you're trying to rally women from around the world around grand ideas and grand goals, it's a difficult process that begets lots of expectations and ideas on how things should be done. Post-conference feedback was expected by the WISE organizers. But what they additionally got was a signed statement by a number of WISE participants on the last day citing a many concerns and suggestions for change, such as:

• Greater transparency in all WISE projects, including what the new Shura council would be doing, how they would be doing it, and who would be involved, and how the Muslim Women's Fund would function (and how money would be generated and disseminated).
• A more diverse representation amongst the makeup of the Shura council and the case studies and panelists at the conference.
• A more thorough vetting of who would be funding the WISE initiative (with some objecting to partial funding provided by the Rockefeller Brothers).
• A more sophisticated, well-planned and organized strategy for agents of change that better incorporated the ideas and criticism of all invited participants.

I also came away from the conference with thoughts of what was great, what was useful, what needed further explanation, what should change, and what could be different. And perhaps if the WISE organizers had built in more time just to explore feedback and criticisms (as well as what worked), some of the participants wouldn't have felt compelled to put forth a signed statement of concerns.

Looking at the hard work of Daisy Khan and her staff (as well as an incredible group of volunteers), I knew it was hard to hear this list of concerns. The women behind the statement were very respectful and appreciative of all the hard work the WISE organizers had put into the conference, but nevertheless there were some strong concerns.

It's a delicate balance when you go forth with something of this magnitude involving such powerful women who are dealing with tough issues and are sometimes wary to put their name on something without knowing everything they are getting themselves into. Do you just, at some point, go ahead and do it, or do you seek more and more information and advice and work on perfecting the initiative before launching forth?

I came away learning lots, seeing how Muslim women are improving the situation for themselves in various countries and finding models that may be replicated in other areas. I also came away with a lot of questions and the need for clarification on what I could exactly do to help, and how everything would work. But that's how it is when you launch an initiative of this magnitude with such huge (but necessary) goals.

WISE wants to help Muslim women help themselves. May Allah (SWT) help this initiative to work in the best way and reach women around the world. As Daisy said to me on the last day, "God does not compete against Himself. If we all want the same goal but have different ideas on how to achieve that goal, we are not competing against each other."

Dilshad D. Ali is a writer and former editor for Beliefnet, where she wrote a previous article on last year's WISE conference in New York City. See the official WISE 2009 website for more details.

I'll be out of town this week, but hopefully will have a guest post or two to fill in the time. Until then, don't forget to check out Talk Islam for ongoing discussion and links - it's the best place on the web to talk about, er, Islam. And pretty much everything else :)

The following was a comment left by reader Gerald of Atlanta on my previous post. I am reproducing it in its entirety.

UPDATE: I misidentified the reader as an Uyghur, actually he is descended from Chinese Hui muslims. I apologise for the mistake. I think his commentary is very valuable regardless of his background, which is why I shared it here.

I am a third generation American citizen and I have visited Xinjiang 5 times in the past decade, spending about 1 year there total. My grandfather - may God have mercy on him - was a Hui who left China more than sixty years ago. I speak mandarin and understand Islamic faith, history, culture and practices. I have studied political philosophy and comparative government.

This article is spot on in its description of the PRC government's active religious persecution of Uighurs. Because Islam is also central to the Uighur culture, the persecution is also cultural. Forcing kids at school to eat oranges during Ramadan, banning the youth from entering masjids, locking up middle schoolers in jail for trying to learn how to read Quran, prohibiting Uighurs from international travel and domestic movement by confiscating passports and refusing hu kou changes, blatant ethnic discrimination by police and government intimidation of those who wear scarf and those who grow beards are all actions that I have heard - if not seen - first hand. The PRC fears separatism and dissent; like many other governments it prefers a stability imposed by brutal force over the perception that an indigenous people can somehow have legitimate grievances.

To its credit, the PRC does have affirmative action programs for higher education as well as more lax childbirth policies for minorities, including Uighurs. The PRC wants to help Uighurs become literate in han language so that they may be enfranchised, empowered and integrated into greater han society. The PRC correctly boasts that since it has taken the reins on controlling economic development in Xinjiang for the past thirty years, residents of all ethnicities have benefited greatly in terms of standard of life, even if Hans have enjoyed greater economic prosperity than Uighurs. There are new roads being paved, highrises being built and infrastructure being developed where Uighurs once saw dirt roads and mud houses. But then again, this type of improvement in the standard of living is by no measure extraordinary when compared with other countries around the world.

One has to view PRC's 'well-intentioned' efforts in the proper context. The PRC is an authoritarian government with an atheist - if no longer Marxist - view of religion. A predominantly materialist / economic approach to the development of a society, as we are seeing in the PRC today, necessitates that preservation of heterogenous culture or religion take a backseat to maintaining the stability that the PRC believes economic development requires. Needless to say many Uighurs find preserving their religion and culture to be more important than the pursuit of money and economic development. It is with this clash of philosophy and modus operandi that the PRC has approached and governed the indigenous Uighurs in Xinjiang. In laymen's terms, the PRC has taken on what we westerners call the "white man's burden."

Civilizing a 'backwards' people who are naturally resistant to being pacified is no easy task. In the case of the Uighurs, they have a dogmatic attachment to Islam; they want to pray, fast, read a holy book in a foreign language and spend their life savings on performing a pilgramage. This contrasts sharply with the culture and aspirations of your average Han today: the pursuit of money and material wealth. The PRC has found that most - if not all - of the Uighur resistance to PRC pacification comes from those who espouse a deep faith in Islam. These are people who do not fear imprisonment nor death and therefore will speak out and even fight against what they rightly view as injustice. As a result, the PRC feels threatened by all religious Uighurs and redouble their efforts to suppress them by all means. It is unfortunate because while it is true that most resisters are religious, most religious people are not resisters. Currently, the PRC is rounding up young Uighurs all across Xinjiang. Those shown in a court of law to have been involved in the riots and deaths in Urumqi will be sentenced and put to death. Thousands more will be summarily and indefinitely detained. If the PRC does like it did in 1997, hundreds if not thousands of young Uighur males will just be disappeared.

There is much doublespeak in PRC. There is talk of protecting and supporting minorities by subsidizing mosques and putting imams on the PRC payroll. But the Uighurs see this as the government interfering and controlling Muslim institutions. Go to a mosque in Xinjiang and try to get him to teach you about Islam between prayers. The imam will refuse to engage you. His role by PRC mandate is only to lead the five prayers in the mosque and preside over the friday prayer. The PRC ensures that most friday prayer sermons at large masjids are substantially void of substance. Ask a PRC official why praying or fasting is prohibited in school and the most intelligent reply you will hear is that students and their studies must be protected from the interruptions of prayer and the weakness that comes from fasting. Actually, on second thought, DON'T ask a PRC official. Snoop around a little in Xinjiang and you will quickly become persona non grata, because in case you have yet concluded, there is no freedom of speech there. PRC involvement in the institutions of Islam are not for the purpose of protecting nor propagating Islam but to rather gradually smother out the elements it finds disagreeable - essentially gutting it.

With regards to Chinese patriotism and nationalism:

Most Chinese nationals today will quickly come to the defense of the PRC government whenever it is criticized. There are many issues and currents at play here. Among them: the natural tendency to view international criticism of a domestic policy as a deconstructive attack, the complete lack of understanding of the situation in Xinjiang (because society and government in Xinjiang and Tibet are so different from other provinces), an ethnocentric approach to problem, the complete lack of dissent culture in China and just plain ignorance. By ethnocentric approach I mean that to the majority of Chinese citizens, little is more important than making money and helping their children get into the best college possible. By this rubric, han citizens feel the Uighurs are unappreciative of the extra points they get for college entrance exams and the substantial economic and industrial development in Xinjiang at the hands of the PRC. By plain ignorance, I mean that there is a whole generation of twenty to thirty somethings in China that never studied and know nothing about the history of the arbitrary, brutal and authoritarian nature of their government. For example, they do not know that fifty years ago, Mao had no idea what he was doing and that millions of people starved for it. They do not understand that while the PRC is gradually reforming itself, it can at a moment's notice unleash a very brutal authoritarian action upon its own citizens (as has happened many times in Xinjiang and Tibet over the decades).

While there have been forced abortions and sterilizations, I have not seen a level of violence against the Uighurs in the past decade that warrant using the word genocide. The word - except when used figuratively (e.g. cultural genocide) - should be respectfully reserved for the Armenians and the Jews; its use here by those defending the PRC's actions is a red herring and or some type of polemic digression from the reality that Uighurs are being repressed and oppressed in their own land.

According to several Uighurs and Huis I have spoken to recently, there has been substantial improvement in the past decade in Xinjiang (but the recent riots will set back progress for months if not years). For the sake of all Chinese citizens, I hope the PRC finds more just ways to govern its people and its land.

One of the frustrating things about Afghanistan is that it's such a mess that our expectations for the democratic process were quite low. It seemed a given that Karzai would cruise to re-election unopposed, and while that may not be a bad thing, it's not clear how the guarantee of power would serve to induce Karzai to attempt innovative solutions to Afghanistan's problems. Karzai has been pursuing alliances with former Northern Alliance warlords in a bid to keep the Taliban at bay, a process that is certainly not going to lead to a liberalization of human rights in the country, nor provide any kind of stable peace.

However, the human spirit always surprises the cynics - and it seems that suddenly there is a viable alternative to Karzai, one who actually has ideas for change. Meet Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, who is singing a familiar, but nevertheless fresh, tune:

"I have no doubt that people want change," Dr. Abdullah said in an interview after a tumultuous day campaigning in Herat, in western Afghanistan, adding that his momentum was just building. "Today they are hopeful that change can come."

Mr. Karzai is still widely considered the front-runner in the campaign for the Aug. 20 presidential election. But Dr. Abdullah, who has the backing of the largest opposition group, the National Front, is the one candidate among the field of 41 who has a chance of forcing Mr. Karzai into a runoff, a contest between the top two vote-getters if no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the votes in the first balloting.

Already well known among most Afghans, Dr. Abdullah, 48, an ophthalmologist, has a background that includes years of resistance to Soviet and Taliban rule as well as a crucial role in the formation of the new democratic government after the American intervention.

[...] After serving as foreign minister in Mr. Karzai's government for five years, he left in 2006 and has since become a strong critic of the president's leadership. He refused an offer to become Mr. Karzai's running mate, and he contends that the president practices a policy of divide and rule that has polarized the country.

Today, Dr. Abdullah, with a diplomat and a surgeon as his running mates, is seen as part of a younger generation of Afghans keen to move away from the nation's reliance on warlords and older mujahedeen leaders and to clean up and recast the practice of governing.

To do that, he advocates the devolution of power from the strong presidency built up under Mr. Karzai to a parliamentary system that he says will be more representative. He is also calling for a system of electing officials for Afghanistan's 34 provinces and nearly 400 districts as a way to build support for the government.

Those provincial governors are now appointed from Kabul, and many have been criticized for cronyism and corruption. Influential Shiite clerics here in Herat, who supported Mr. Karzai in the last election in 2004, are now so fed up with corrupt appointees that they have said they will back Dr. Abdullah this time.

Re-engaging the people is essential to reverse the lawlessness and insecurity that have reached a critical point in much of the country, Dr. Abdullah said. "They have managed to lose the people," he said of the current government. "In fighting an insurgency, you lose the people and you lose the war."

Before several thousand people in Herat's sports stadium, he raised the biggest cheer with his promise to build up Afghan institutions so that foreign troops could go home soon.

He also promised to curb the rampant corruption and review foreign assistance programs to ensure that they focused on grass-roots development and addressed poverty and unemployment. In his public meetings, he emphasized support for the rights of women, the unemployed, the disabled and the victims of war.

He said he would work seriously toward reconciliation with the Taliban, calling the current process a "joke." Yet in an interview he retained his longtime opposition to the Taliban leadership and said he doubted that the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, was ready to negotiate for peace.

The NYT article goes into more detail about Abdullah's chances, which are very difficult to predict. I'm not accusing Karzai of anything, but it should be noted that he does enjoy certain institutionalized advantages, not least of which is the difficulty in ensuring that the vote isn't tampered with, should an incumbent be so inclined (again, not implying Karzai is such). And that doesn't even take into account the fact that much of the country is ruled by the Taliban - it's not exactly feasible to campaign in a war zone.

It is true that Karzai has seen his popularity and support drop, due to the perception that his long tenure (eight years) have seen no improvements in the status of common folk. There definitely is an opening, but a lot has to go right for Abdullah to pull it off. Perhaps even a credible challenge is enough, however, to force change. There isn't much time.

Related: ongoing coverage of all things Afghanistan at Talk Islam. Also, I have been particularly struck by this article in the London Review of Books, and will be blogging more about that in a few days.

The following is a press release issued by a group of muslim Americans regarding the oppression of the Uyghur in China. I am a signatory to the release and the forthcoming petition.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 23, 2009
Media contact: Wajahat Ali, 510-909-7506, wajahatmali@hotmail.com

American Muslims Call on Chinese Govt' to Protect Religious Freedom

In response to the outbreak of violence in Xinjiang, China, in early July, 2009, American Muslims across the country will speak out for religious freedom in China during their July 31, 2009 Friday sermon

SAN FRANCISCO - A collection of American Muslim professionals, journalists and community and religious leaders, are calling for American Muslim leaders and religious figures to speak up during their Friday, July 31, sermon for religious freedom in light of the brutal crackdown by the Chinese on Uyghur Muslims in July and a history of repression of religious groups including Christians and the Falun Gong.

In response to the collective concern of the American Muslim community, imams and religious leaders across America have been asked to speak out for religious freedom in China and promote awareness of the plight of Uyghur Muslims to their congregations. Members of this collection of the American Muslim community are currently contacting imams and religious leaders at major religious centers and mosques, and are encouraging sermons addressing the importance of bringing attention and support to this embattled community. They are encouraging sermons that bring attention and support to this embattled community while also addressing the importance of religious freedom for all people, including Uyghur Muslims, and the right of all Chinese religious communities to enjoy self-determination and the preservation of cultural identity.

Resources to promote awareness about the struggle for religious freedom in China, the repressive situation of Uyghur Muslims, and the difficult situation in Xinjiang are available at the facebook group "American Muslims Support the Uyghurs on July 31." These resources include an Uyghur Primer, an Open Letter on the Uyghurs and a sample khutba for July 31.

This call is being broadcast through various channels, including blogs, facebook groups, personal contacts, and traditional media. "Americans of all faiths have come together many times in the past to recognize the rights of religious minorities in China," said Shahed Amanullah, editor-in-chief of the online newsmagazine altmuslim.com. "It is time that the plight of China's Uyghur minority takes its rightful place alongside those just struggles."

Specific calls to action for imams and religious leaders include:

1. Religious Freedom is a sacred right for all: American Muslims thrive because of the Constitution's protection of religious freedom. The ability to freely practice one's faith and belief system is a fundamental human right that should not be addressed lightly.
2. As Muslims we are obligated to support the oppressed and uphold the right of all to stay true to their spiritual conscience.
3. We support the Uyghurs in their struggle to maintain their cultural and religious identity. As Muslims we fully support their community's effort to preserve their heritage and traditions while maintaining their place in Chinese society.
4. More broadly, every person has the right to the preserve his or her cultural identity.

Individuals and organizations helping to organize this call (partial list, titles for identification purposes only):

Wajahat Ali, Playwright, Attorney and Journalist, DomesticCrusaders.com
Aziz Poonawalla, Blogger at City of Brass (Beliefnet.com)
Shahed Amanullah, Editor-in-Chief of altmuslim.com
Zeba Iqbal, Council for the Advancement of Muslim Professionals
Hussein Rashid, Visiting Professor, Hofstra University, HusseinRashid.com

Mosques, imams, and organizations confirmed to have joined this effort (please join the growing list):

Muslim Public Affairs Council (Los Angeles; Washington, DC; New York, NY)
The Islamic Center at New York University - Imam Khalid Latif and Haroon Moghul

Resources for the media regarding Muslim efforts to promote awareness of Uyghur Muslims and their situation in China:

Facebook Call to Action
Uyghur Primer