Tunku Varadarajan<\/a>. In search of answers for why and how this widening space of acceptability is being produced, let\u2019s turn to the rhetorical form and content of his article for Forbes.<\/p>\nVaradarajan begins by locating his argument in the context of the horrific Fort Hood killings undertaken by Nidal Hassan on November 5th. In attempting to understand how Hassan becomes \u2018representative\u2019 of American Muslims \u2013 indeed, to the extent that it necessitates the production of his theory, \u201cgoing Muslim\u201d \u2013 we have to assume that his narrative, although provoked by recent events at Fort Hood, is affected by an admixture of discourse around 9\/11, the War on Terror and widespread American Punditry on what is referred to more generally as \u2018the Muslim Problem.\u2019 <\/p>\n
Embedded in his analysis is a warning to the American people of the presence of an enemy within: the seemingly integrated American Muslim who can, at any moment, drop the American and emerge simply and dangerously as a Muslim. The fundamental equivocation in this argument: lose the American and the threat of the Muslim emerges. <\/p>\n
While he attempts to add a characteristically American flavor to the notion of \u201cgoing Muslim\u201d by placing it in conversation with a \u2018phenomena\u2019 more familiar \u2013 \u201cgoing postal\u201d \u2013 he quickly delineates their differences. If going postal describes a person who experiences a psychological snap, then going Muslim refers to a person who, in discarding \u201cthe camouflage of integration,\u201d goes Muslim. <\/p>\n
Whereas, the actions of the \u2018postal\u2019 individual are devoid of calculation, the acts of the \u2018Muslim\u2019 are overdetermined by it. Instead of presenting the possibility that one who \u2018goes postal\u2019 might have desired enacting the events leading up to that final fatal snap or that Nidal Hassan may have been a psychologically unstable individual, Varadarajan leads us to believe is that the most important lesson to be learned from the Fort Hood incident is that Nidal Hassan is not a singular individual but rather a type of Muslim \u2013 one who reveals a tendency that ought to be understood as an emerging threat from Muslims in America. The coherence of Varadarajan\u2019s narrative depends upon a suspension of logic.<\/p>\n
If this doesn\u2019t compel a critical reading of his theory, then the set of assumptions that emerge in his analysis, particularly concerning what he has decided it means to be Muslim, ought to. The conflation between Islam and violence, of integration into American culture as an unreliable solution to the problem of Islam, and the equivocation between being Muslim and \u2018being calculating\u2019 are the epistemic basis of his argument. Yet, the absurdity of these assumptions does not restrict the possibility of Varadarajan\u2019s audience. Why? My own feeling is that this reveals something of the condition of the world we live in, a world in which these disturbing and homogenizing assumptions no longer strike us assumptions, and that this is particularly true when they are assumptions about Muslims. <\/p>\n
In an attempt to get at the heart of the problem, Varadarajan then beseeches the U.S. government to relinquish political correctness and get down to the business of protecting Americans on the basis of this singular and totalizing fact: that \u201cGoing Muslim\u201d is \u2013 to invoke the language of the 1994 Hollywood blockbuster hit \u2013 a \u201cclear and present danger\u201d in the United States. The fundamental flaw in this argument is that it requires we accept that the United States is concerned with political correctness, and more particularly, that is concerned about this correctness when it comes to Muslims. <\/p>\n
It requires that we accept this even as the U.S. government continues indiscriminate and unconstitutional practices and policies like indefinite detention targeted at Muslims and carried out in the absence of due process and established evidentiary standards. It requires that we accept this even as the last decade of American history provides evidence for two detrimental wars that have undoubtedly changed the face and future of the Arab and Muslim world. <\/p>\n
It requires also that we ignore the evidence produced on a \u2018smaller\u2019 scale \u2013 that we shut our eyes at border control offices filled by an overwhelming presence of Muslims. Similarly, we must forget that, in the not so distant past, we listened as candidate Obama reaffirmed that he was a \u201cchurch going Christian\u201d in order to evade the possibility of losing the election because of an \u2018allegation\u2019 tantamount to slander: that he might be Muslim.<\/p>\n
In the face of this contrasting understanding of the presence and function of political correctness in the United States, particularly in matters concerning Islam and Muslims, I am left to believe that although the Professor and I reside in the same country, we experience very different worlds. Yet, in the aftermath of \u201cGoing Muslim\u201d, I shudder to think that in expressing these sentiments, I too might be categorized as an un-integrated American Muslim.<\/p>\n
Of, course Varadarajan\u2019s argument would be incomplete without policy recommendations for the State. To this end, he proposes \u201cpractical changes.\u201d But if one takes a closer look at the language in these recommendations, there is a clear shift: he steps away from the heavy Muslim-centered approach of the preceding sections, now taking on more opaque language and logic. <\/p>\n
Why this inconsistency? If his policy changes emerge in response to the growing threat of Muslims in America, then why shy away from spelling it out in the policy, particularly after he ostracizes the American state for its alleged political correctness? In the third of his four-part list of policy recommendations, he reveals this more ambiguous approach par excellence. In reference to instances in which military personnel suspect remarks or behavior of fellow members that might indicate unfitness for duty, he suggests: \u201cthere should be a single high-level Pentagon or army department that follows all such cases in real time, whether the potential ground for alarm is sympathy with white supremacism, radical Islamism, endorsement of suicide bombing or simple mental unfitness.\u201d<\/p>\n
Is he now saying that white supremacists might be \u2018going Muslim\u2019 as well? After expounding upon the inherent tendencies, and thus dangers, of Islam, are we being told that the \u2018Muslim\u2019 part of the phrase \u2018going Muslim\u2019 is less of a noun and more of a verb? That he is using this phrase to describe the calculating nature of individuals \u2018like\u2019 Nidal Hassan, who might technically be found amongst white supremacists as much as amongst what he, in this instance, for the first time, refers to as \u2018radical\u2019 Islamists? <\/p>\n
How are we to interpret this shift in language from \u201cgoing Muslim\u201d to \u2018radical\u2019 Islamists? As an attempt to conflate Muslims and radical Islamists, or an attempt to distinguish between them in the final instance? Is this Varadarajan\u2019s way of telling us it\u2019s nothing personal? Of presenting his rhetoric as nothing, at least ultimately, injurious? And, are we supposed to interpret this shift as ingenious or insidious?<\/p>\n
If that\u2019s not the point either, or at least not the entire point, then in combining the theory \u2013 \u201cgoing Muslim\u201d \u2013 with his more general policy recommendations, he seems to be asking the government to continue doing what is has been for a while: produce seemingly indiscriminate policies on paper only to then exercise them in discriminating ways. Varadarajan\u2019s argument requires moving between all sorts of points \u2013 at times totalizing, at times discriminating \u2013 in order to avoid being reduced to hate mongering.<\/p>\n
If that\u2019s the case, then no worries, Prof. Varadarajan, the state has got your back, but thank you for presenting them with a case for using this age-old technique in yet another context. It\u2019s a potent reminder that Aldous Huxley<\/a> was right when he noted the following about our experience of history: \u201cfrom age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different\u201d. <\/p>\nIn closing, here\u2019s another one from Huxley, dedicated especially to the Professor, \u201cA fanatic is a man who consciously over compensates a secret doubt.\u201d Calling upon and speaking for the nation in order to assuage your own fears is not a new idea \u2013 the previous administration provides evidence for this \u2013 but let us see if it works. In the meantime, I\u2019m developing a few of my own fears, particularly concerning the possibility of being under the tutelage of a professor who\u2019s not only frightened by my Muslim presence, but who expresses this fear through hate speech that is neither recognized nor condemned as such.<\/p>\n
Aisha Ghani is a third year PhD Student in the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University in California. <\/i><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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