{"id":4083,"date":"2010-12-15T06:30:49","date_gmt":"2010-12-15T11:30:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/altmuslim\/?p=4083"},"modified":"2010-12-15T06:30:49","modified_gmt":"2010-12-15T11:30:49","slug":"for_god_or_for_fame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/altmuslim\/2010\/12\/for_god_or_for_fame\/","title":{"rendered":"Mohamed Mohamud: For God or for fame?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>\n\n\n
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Speaking from the heart?<\/div>\n

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On November 26, Mohamed Mohamud was arrested for allegedly attempting to trigger a bomb at a crowded Christmas tree lighting ceremony in downtown Portland, Oregon. Ironically, while Mohamud lamented how unrepresented he was by American Muslims and Somalis, his arrest has become fodder for speculations about what it tells us about the nature of these communities. <\/p>\n

We live in a media world in which news coverage of the individual Muslim\u2019s actions represents Islam the world over. Pundits, Islamophobes, and Muslim apologists alike look to the Qur\u2019an and the Islamic tradition as the source that could explain or condemn Mohamud\u2019s actions, but his motives seem to make most sense in the context of this new media landscape in which, as Marshall McLuhan argued, \u201cthe medium is the message.\u201d Media are \u201cextensions of man.\u201d What McLuhen meant is that media do not simply serve as means for communication within society; they shape society by forming social interactions.<\/p>\n

The truth of his aphorisms for the contemporary world was most poignantly felt by the Portland Somali and Muslim communities for whom the coverage of Mohamud\u2019s arrest was experienced as a personal betrayal even though they had never even met Mohamud. \u201cHe ruined it for everybody,\u201d a 24-year-old Somali told The Oregonian. Another said, \u201cAs a Somali, it\u2019s, \u2018Oh, my God, one more thing we\u2019ll be remembered for\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Media images of Muslims do not only shape the experiences of Muslims in this country; they also shape non-Muslims\u2019 experiences of Muslims. This is a simple assertion with profound implications, which the FBI\u2019s actions in Mohamud\u2019s case force us to face. A close look at Mohamud\u2019s 36-page arrest warrant<\/a> shows that the FBI placed him in one of the five options associated with the stereotypical Muslim found in media-influenced homeland security discourse. When the FBI, pretending to represent a militant Muslim group, met with Mohamud to discuss his aspirations for \u201cthe cause.\u201d The FBI gave Mohamud five options: \u201c(1) pray five times a day and spread Islam to others; (2) continue studying and get an engineering or medical degree so he could help the brothers overseas; (3) raise funds for the brothers overseas; (4) become \u2018operational;\u2019 and (5) become a \u2018shaheed\u2019 (martyr).\u201d<\/p>\n

These five options divide Muslims into three types. The first type is the \u201cgood Muslim\u201d for whom Islam is a set of private rituals encapsulated in the proverbial Five Pillars.<\/p>\n

The second type is the equivalent of the \u201csleeper cell.\u201d He is political and concerned about the plight of Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Palestinian territories. He may wish to lend moral and financial support to Muslims in these regions but is not \u201coperational.\u201d <\/p>\n

The third type is the militant Muslim willing to fight and die for \u201cMuslim causes\u201d.<\/p>\n

Missing entirely from this discourse is the option to organize and become active in non-violent civic or political organizations that support his causes. In reality, however, this is the option chosen by the overwhelming majority of American Muslims who are concerned about American Muslim civil rights and the plight of Muslims in such places as Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Palestinian territories.<\/p>\n

Given his five options, the teenager Mohamud chose, not surprisingly, to become \u201coperational.\u201d But all he knew about what it meant to become operational was based on what he had seen on the news, particularly the news coverage of car bombs in the Middle East and the November 26, 2008 attacks in Mumbai. Most tellingly in this regard, he, himself told the undercover FBI agent that he did not know how he could become \u201coperational\u201d and \u201cwould need training.\u201d<\/p>\n

The FBI\u2019s operationalizing of Mohamud has raised many legitimate questions about entrapment<\/a>. The arrest warrant, however, shows the FBI deliberately limiting their role to the provision of materials for Mohamud to carry out his intended act. The undercover FBI agent repeatedly asked Mohamud whether or not this was what his heart told him to do: \u201cThis is your choice, it\u2019s what in [sic] your heart, we can\u2019t tell you what\u2019s in your heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

By repeatedly asking what was in his heart, the FBI seems to have not only sought to establish intent, but assumed that Muslim militancy is directly related to religion and religious sentiments. Moreover, its operative assumption about religion was an implicitly Protestant one which conceived religion as an inward experience (faith) rather than the more Islamic conception of religion as the moral standard by which people ought to be judged.<\/p>\n

While the FBI was trying to ascertain the intent of Mohamud\u2019s heart, Mohamud himself, by FBI\u2019s account of events, appears to have been preoccupied with creating sensational headlines. When he was asked how he feels about women and children being present at the tree lighting ceremony, he retorted, \u201c[I]magine every day we see you know in our, you know, newspapers and news you know our people are killed you know. So for us to see them in the same\u2026.\u201d Mohamud wanted to be an actor of consequence in a media-defined reality, the virtual landscape created by our media in which the only Muslim actors are stereotypically either militants or victims of American neo-imperialism. It is only in this virtual landscape that it becomes sensible for the options given to Mohamud to be either prayer or violence.<\/p>\n

Based on the FBI\u2019s own account of the events, Mohamud\u2019s primary connection with Afghanistan or the northwest frontier of Pakistan was media images of Osama bin Laden. As further evidence of his actions being motivated within a media world was the Osama bin Laden-like video he recorded to take credit for the bombing. He changed his clothes for the video and put on a white robe and a white-and-red headdress. He told his FBI handler that, \u201che wanted to be \u2018Sheik Osama style\u2019.\u201d <\/p>\n

His attachment to Osama bin Laden was based on a dream he had had of the mountains of Yemen, the land of Osama bin Laden\u2019s ancestors. He was around fifteen years old at that time. He also seems to have been impressed by another media image\u2014this time of the November 26, 2008 attacks in Mumbai. He, a product of his media world, did not seem too concerned that the Mumbai attacks were reportedly carried out by Lashkar-e Taiba, which targets India over the dispute in Kashmir, and not al Qaeda. Perhaps in his mind it was all jihad on the news!<\/p>\n

Well, when I was fifteen you know I had a, I was\u2014I made [a special prayer for guidance] about whether I should you know\u2026 should go you know and make jihad in a different country or to make like an operation here you know like, something like Mumbai. You know, it would be simple you know you could get some weapon you know. So I made [a special prayer for guidance] and it was like when I was fifteen so, I had a dream that night, and in my dream you know I saw the mountains of Yemen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mohamud\u2019s decision to blow up a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in which families were presents has generally been taken as emblematic of the cold-hearted brutality and anti-Christian sentiments of Muslim militants; a closer look at his media-inspired motivation, however, suggests that what was significant about the tree lighting ceremony for Mahmud was not so much the presence of families or the Christmas tree but the fact that the event coincided with the anniversary of the 2008 Mumbai attack.<\/p>\n

When the medium is the message, one can\u2019t really control the message. There are other ways as well in which the message he sought to convey through the media was misunderstood. Mohamud was looking for revenge of an equal Q-rating. The dead bodies would have been collateral damage. \u201c[I]t\u2019s gonna be a fireworks show\u2026 a spectacular show,\u201d he told one of the FBI agents helping him acquire a bomb, \u201cNew York Times will give it two thumbs up.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is instructive to remember that in becoming \u201coperational\u201d Mohamud never had any face-to-face contact with terrorists or militants. Nor did he seem to have had any real connection with, or actual experience of the war in Afghanistan. His main connection with militants, according to the FBI, was mainly through a website called \u201cJihad Recollections,\u201d where he pseudonymously published articles in 2009. He sought headline-grabbing revenge through equivalency in bloody news coverage. In his video statement, he said,<\/p>\n

\u201cFor as long as you threaten our security, your people will not remain safe. As your soldiers target our civilians, we will not help to do so. Did you think that you could invade a Muslim land, and we would not invade you, but Allah will have soldiers scattered everywhere across the globe.\u201d<\/p>\n

The discrepancy in Mohamud\u2019s mind between reality in the media<\/i> and reality of actual events<\/i> speaks to McLuhan\u2019s assertion that media are extensions of man. There is, of course, no real equivalency between the actions of a teenager seeking to become operational through the Internet and the actions of the most powerful army the world has ever known, except perhaps in the 24\/7 media defined reality that envelops us.<\/p>\n

Kambiz GhaneaBassiri is Associate Professor of Religion and Humanities at Reed College. He is the author of A History of Islam in America<\/i> (Cambridge University Press, 2010). A version of this article was previously published in Religion Dispatches<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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