Book Review: The Crescent Directive

January 12, 2012 By nicole

The Crescent Directive was, for me, a fun but perplexing read.  The concept is simple and noble: it gives guidelines for American Muslims on how to lay a groundwork for action in our communities in order to improve our image in America.

Cover of The Crescent Directive. Image via Tensile Consulting

Written by Khurram Dara, the book starts out with looking at how Islam and Muslims have evolved in American discourse since 9/11. He then explains the current situation of the American Muslim community and talks about why certain efforts at understanding have failed up to now or will fail long term. He proceeds to establish some base assumptions and outline a strategy for Muslim Americans to improve their image in a post- 9/11 world. Finally, he outlines a series of recommendations as part of a strategy American Muslims can use to raise our profile and humanize us in our daily lives, and discusses how these recommendations could work.  He suggests building relationships with non-Muslims (we don’t?), taking part in secular holidays (more on that below), and denouncing our “common enemy,” terrorism.

The strategy and recommendations parts of the book are what give me cause for concern.  One point Mr. Dara makes repeatedly is that we don’t do enough to engage discourse as a community.  I’m not sure this is the case. What about the old refrain on how Muslims don’t denounce terrorism (which Mr. Dara even addresses on page 46)? We DO denounce terrorism, but nobody listens. I can think of a lot of Muslims (just look in the blogosphere; Organica comes to mind) who engage our communities.  The problem is that mainstream media discourse is usually only interested in House Muslims and shoe bombers.  How much integration do we have to do for people to realize that the vast majority of American Muslims are normal people? The Crescent Directive attempts to answer this question, but some of its recommendations can take away from the real problem, which is that Muslims are often essentially dammed if they do and dammed if they don’t.

A perfect example of how some of the action items in the book may not be applicable to “established” (e.g. people who have been in the US long term) Muslims involves the celebration of non-Muslim secular holidays.  In one chapter of the book, it is suggested that we celebrate American holidays like Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July.  I feel pretty certain in assuming that most American Muslims have already figured out their Holiday Policy and that other factors come into play besides “Am I Integrated?” when choosing these holidays. Some Muslims have Christmas because they have small children; most converts do Thanksgiving with their families, and so on.  I, for example, refuse to have Christmas trees in my house.  Do I care if my Muslim best friend has one? No. But we both thought about our decisions within the context of our personal landscapes. We need to spend more time saying that Islam is NOT a monolith instead of saying that “Muslims do X” or Muslims should do Y.” Furthermore, . I can’t see anyone but a brand new immigrant not having thought of how s/he was going to deal with these  secular holidays.  And the choices of American Muslims run the spectrum, as well they should; I don’t think it is our call to make whether or not someone is integrated vis-à-vis the choice they made on attending their company’s 4th of July cookout. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Books/Magazines, Culture/Society Tagged With: ,

An Update of Sorts on the Sura al-Shawk Case

December 13, 2011 By nicole

Almost a year ago, for my very first MMW post, I wrote about Sura al-Shawk, a professional Swiss basketball player from Luzern who was forced to choose between wearing her headscarf and playing professional basketball due to the supposed “uniform” regulations of the local and national basketball associations, both affiliated with FIBA, the International Basketball Federation.

Sura al-Shawk. Photo via 24 Heures.

Last March, after my original article was published, the regional courts in Luzern ruled that al-Shawk must go through all possible appeals processes with the regional and national associations. The initial media firestorm has died down to nothing ever since, while the associations and the parties “bounce the ball” back and forth over appeals an conciliations.  In the meantime, Ms. Al-Shawk is coaching a series of junior teams in her hometown. 

She took Daniel Vischer, a MP from Zurich and head of the National Council’s Judicial Committee as her lawyer.  They argued in the Lausanne daily 24 Heures and also in the Tages-Anzeiger that her case is not clear from the point of view of jurisprudence; namely, under what circumstances and grounds are headscarves not allowed? Is it a religious symbols thing, or a uniform regulations thing (both have been used as justification)? In the comments for the various Sura-related posts, a common refrain in Europe is that Muslims want to exclude themselves from sports, with the oft-citied “swimming classes” (whereby Muslim parents removed their children due to “nudity concerns”), apparently showing that Muslims want “special treatment” in athletics.  But in this case, she doesn’t want to exclude herself; she wants to play, but ostensibly because of her religion, she isn’t allowed.  And of course, what better “integration” (in quotes due to sarcasm) than to play on a team?

In “post-minaret” Switzerland, the question of religious freedom for Muslims seems only to be important in terms of sexy headlines for groups anxious to win in the court of public opinion.  And once the firestorm dies down, headscarf questions are pushed aside until the next round of elections, as was the case here.  But yet again another woman is caught up in headscarf politics, with the end result being that her career choices, talent and potential are compromised.

The question I asked in my original article still stands: is Ms. al-Shawk’s case about FIBA uniform rules or Muslims?  While some may argue that this is again about Muslims excluding themselves with unnecessary demands on non-Muslim society, I argue that the exclusion of Ms. al-Shawk from her team is all about stigmatizing Muslims for political gain in a climate of Islamophobia.

While Sura al-Shawk has sadly lost more than a year of what could be a promising career, hopefully the jurisprudence of her case will help create a context where girls and women in headscarves are allowed to play professional sports.

Filed Under: News, Sports Tagged With: , ,

“Me, the Muslim Next Door” – What Muslim Reality Shows Should Be

November 22, 2011 By nicole

One of the main criticisms of TLC’s All American Muslim was that the show’s characters were representative of only a small part of the American Muslim community.  If you felt that way, then a great antidote is “Me, the Muslim Next Door,” a web documentary produced for Radio Canada International.  Filmed in Montreal and Toronto in both English and French, “Me the Muslim Next Door” is over two hours of audio, video, and still photography, broken up into 4-6 minute segments, with each of the show’s participants having several segments.  These segments took place in the participants’ personal landscapes – at home, on the street, with their families.

Dania and her father. Image via "Me, the Muslim Next Door."

“Me, the Muslim Next Door” is cast like a cross between the United Nations and a Benetton ad. I love it.  We have:

  • Eduardo, a Brazilian convert who, by his own admission, used to hate Muslims;
  • Dania, whose father is Eritrean and whose mother is a convert from  Quebec;
  • Mehdi, a Moroccan married to Laila from Afghanistan; they met on Facebook;
  • Suad, whose mother is Syrian and whose father is part Palestinian, part Bosnian and, to add some fun to the mix, her husband Karim is part Finnish, part Egyptian;
  • Rizwan, of South Asian background, who lives in Toronto and takes us to his neighbourhood masjid.

One of my recurring problems with Muslims in the media is that we are often portrayed answering the same questions in the same ways. Every show has something about polygamy or hijab or “fitting in.” We either go on tape with platitudes (“oh but you can only be polygamous if you afford it, isn’t it great that widows can be taken care of”), with statements designed to shock the middle classes (“jihad is ok for the kuffar!”), or with instant fatwas about how our religion says things in black and white (“Islam says music is BAD”).

These topics show up in the “Me the Muslim Next Door”, but the  “personal landscape” format of the videos allows a fresh, personal light without bringing down the level of the discourse. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Web Tagged With: ,
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