The Rand report: Cultivating field and house negroes?

Divide and conquer?

“My honest opinion is that Arabs are male chauvinists.”

This was a quote by Yusof Halim, a prominent Muslim lawyer in Brunei, in a December 10, 2006 New York Times op-ed piece by Nicholas Kristof. The article, entitled, “The Muslim Stereotype” started out promisingly: “I find the common American stereotypes of Islam profoundly warped,” Kristof wrote.

But then he explains that the stereotypes of Islam “are largely derived from the less than 20 percent of Muslims who are Arabs.” Kristof continues: “There is a historic dichotomy between desert Islam – the austere fundamentalism of countries like Saudi Arabia – and riverine or coastal Islam, more outward-looking, flexible and tolerant. Desert Muslims grab the headlines, but my bet is that in the struggle for the soul of Islam, maritime Muslims have the edge.”

On a superficial level, this is simply a case of anti-Arab prejudice. Not only is this idiocy printed in America’s paper of record, but it is corroborated using a quote from one other individual who holds similar racist views. It’s like someone saying, “Yes, Jews are greedy and blacks are thieves and here is a lawyer who feels the same way to prove it.” But on a broader level, the article is a subtle way of encouraging a process that has already begun: fomenting disdain among non-Arab Muslims for Arabs.

Conflict and prejudice between Arabs and non-Arabs are nothing new in the Muslim world. There are legitimate criticisms of Arab behavior towards non-Arab Muslims, whether it’s the treatment of guest workers in the Gulf countries or the snobbery expressed by some Arabs from the Haram during Hajj to the halls of the local mosque. However, version 2007 of this problem is part of a larger scheme to further the goals of the “war on terror” by purportedly ending terrorism against Western targets and bringing “democracy” (read: American hegemony) to the Muslim world.

Consider this phase one of the plan that has been articulated in the RAND Corporation’s latest report issued last week entitled “Building Moderate Muslim Networks“: “Instead of focusing on the Middle East, where most of the radical Islamic thought originates and is firmly entrenched, the report recommends reaching out to activists, leaders and intellectuals in Turkey, Southeast Asia, Europe and other open societies. The goal of this outreach would be to reverse the flow of ideas and have more democratic ideas flow back to the less fertile ground for moderate network-building of the Middle East.”

The implied message is that Arabs are “extremists” and non-Arabs “moderates.” Perhaps it would be more apt to say that the former are today’s “field Negroes” and non-Arabs are being cultivated into the next “house Negroes.” This was an example used by Malcolm X in a 1963 speech, reflecting on the state of African-Americans:

“There were two kinds of slaves, the house Negro and the field Negro. The house Negroes – they lived in the house with master, they dressed pretty good, they ate good because they ate his food – what he left. They lived in the attic or the basement, but still they lived near the master; and they loved the master more than the master loved himself… Whenever the master said ‘we,’ he said ‘we.’ That’s how you can tell a house Negro… The field Negro was beaten from morning to night; he lived in a shack, in a hut; he wore old, castoff clothes. He hated his master. I say he hated his master. He was intelligent. That house Negro loved his master, but that field Negro – remember, they were in the majority, and they hated the master.”

In other words, since the wonders of “freedom and democracy” seem to be lost on the “field Negroes” (Arabs) as evidenced by murder, mayhem and torture in Iraq, let’s try cultivating some “house Negroes” (non-Arabs) elsewhere for the time being.

Muslims would be the primary beneficiaries of a world free of extremism and terrorism because they, more than any other group, are on its receiving end. According to the National Counterterrorism Center’s Report on Incidents of Terrorism 2005, Muslims were the world’s biggest victims of terrorism that year. However, any solution, especially one imposed from outside, that aims to “divide and conquer” is nothing less than colonialism rehashed in countries where citizens have had hundreds of years of experience being separated into “field Negroes” and “house Negroes.”

America’s battle for “hearts and minds”, in the interest of ending terrorism and the Muslim world’s enmity for it, will continue to fail as long as such strategies are used. Cultivating “house Negroes” in Indonesia and Turkey to keep down the “field Negroes” in the Arab world will only lead to further anger at the United States for its continued meddling in the domestic politics of, in this case, non-Arab countries.

Finally, Muslims in America and abroad must never succumb to the growing acceptance for anti-Arab prejudice and discrimination that remains politically correct in the US and the West in general, whether it’s in stupid jokes or “intellectual” commentary like Kristof’s. As our beloved Arab Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, said:

“All mankind is from Adam and Eve, an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a white has no superiority over black nor a black has any superiority over white except by piety and good action. Learn that every Muslim is a brother to every Muslim and that the Muslims constitute one brotherhood.”

Samana Siddiqui is a Chicago-based freelance writer.