Crossing the Crescent

As the tensions and contradictions of Iranian society have been laid bare over the past week, some Western observers have adopted a predictably self-centered view of events, eschewing sober analysis of the protests for ungrounded assertions that do little more than telegraph their own wishes and biases.

Topping the list as always are the neoconservatives, who, apparently not yet hoarse from bellowing for the destruction and invasion of Iran, are now squealing and squawking with feigned concern for the Iranian people as they scold President Obama for not intervening on the protesters’ behalf.

Even much of the mainstream coverage imparts to viewers the impression that Iran’s internal conflict is a Manichean matter of the secular versus the religious; those eagerly aspiring to Western liberal democracy squaring up against dour-faced and ancient Islamists.

A more dispassionate view reveals a much different picture. The protest movement, swelling in the streets of Tehran and other major cities with hundreds of thousands of adherents, has adopted as its banner the signature color of Islam: green. Its defiant nighttime chant is not culled from Die Hard or de Tocqueville, but the iconic cry of the Islamic Revolution: God is Great. The leader of the opposition, Mir Hussein Moussavi, is himself a veteran of the 1979 revolution.

This reality is entirely alien to “experts” who have divided Iran (and the Muslim world at large) into two imaginary camps: radical Islamists who denounce the Great Satan and aspiring secularists who swill wine while swooning over Sex and the City.

Iran has been an Islamic society for 1,300 years, but it has not always been an Islamic Republic. The critical point missed in much of mainstream analysis is that Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution of 1979 was not a wholesale restoration of some glorious Islamic past, but partly an innovation with no precedent in Muslim history—and it is this particular innovation that is the focal point of the current crisis.

Khomeini introduced the principle of Valet-e Faqih into Iranian political discourse—the idea that the wisest and most authoritative Muslim jurist should serve as the representative of the Twelfth Imam, who, in Shi’ite belief, did not die in the 10th century but was hidden by the hand of God and will return alongside Jesus to restore peace and justice on earth.

Khomeini’s theological innovation marked the first time in Muslim history that a cleric claimed not only spiritual but supreme political power—and, quite conveniently, placed him as the head of Iran . Khomeini’s shrewd combination of charisma and ruthlessness ensured that the station of Supreme Leader remained untouchable and irreproachable—but only so long as he was alive.

His successor, the current leading Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is but a shadow of the revolution’s founder; he lacked the religious legitimacy to occupy Khomenei’s post and was therefore forced to consolidate his power by pandering heavily to Iran’s military.

Some commentators on both the left and the right believe that it is precisely Khamenei’s over-reliance on the military that has forced him to throw his weight behind Mahmoud Ahmedenijad (a Revolutionary Guard veteran) and preemptively declare him the winner of the likely-rigged elections.

This theory goes a long way toward explaining the composition and attitudes of the opposition.

In a comprehensive poll conducted by an outside non-profit group three weeks before the election, four-fifths of Iranians said they wanted to make Khamenei’s post elected rather than appointed, vitiating the entire theological basis behind the Valet-e Faqih. This same poll also showed Ahmedinijad holding a commanding 2 to 1 lead, but as it was conducted before the opposition’s impressive push on the eve of elections, it’s not outlandish to assume that an even greater majority support making Khamenei accountable to the people.

Furthermore, what separates this round of protests in scale, scope and substance from the largely student-led eruptions of the past is the support of sections of the clergy, which includes not only relative moderates like Moussavi but firmly established figures like former president Hashemi Rafsanjani. This unlikely alliance between progressives and pragmatic clerics may have come about because the latter feel that their power is being eclipsed by the military.

A fitting illustration of the situation’s complexity is today’s Washington Times article that says the protests “are led largely by young nonreligious Iranians” but then goes on to note that clerics and ayatollahs are among the opposition’s main leaders.

Whatever the particulars, the situation in Iran is complex, fluid, and contradictory, and cannot be oversimplified into a “secular versus religious” schema superimposed by Western onlookers.

I do not think it is an exaggeration to call the speech groundbreaking.

It is true that the president did not announce any new concrete plans for achieving greater peace. But it is equally true that the language of respect, dignity, and tolerance is an essential precondition to any such peace.

The president’s willingness to recognize that Islam was not born on Sept. 10th, 2001; that extremism neither defines Islam nor is exclusive to Islam; that the Palestinians have suffered disproportionately under humiliating occupation -  these are all vital prerequisites, vital concepts, without which intercivilizational healing would be impossible.

In short, it is a good beginning. What remains to be seen is whether these words will be followed by corresponding actions and policies.

(Near-identical version appeared as my monthly column in WireTap Magazine).

To watch my country of birth unravel has been a curious thing.

As the Taliban continues to sweep across vast swaths of northern Pakistan, American pundits and officials ask incredulously, “How can their government let this happen? How can their people let this happen?” The United States looks on anxiously like a jolted passerby watching a train suddenly jump the tracks.

I was also initially shocked, but I found myself more surprised by my response than the calamitous events themselves. As the Taliban threat metastasized, my minimal sense of attachment to Pakistan began to intensify. While I had mostly kept my memories of Pakistan well out of my mind’s eye, I now began meticulously scanning these recollections, like fingers running across Braille in search of clues as to what went wrong.

After some searching, I realized that Pakistan’s existential crisis should not be seen as a shock but rather as an expected disappointment. The train of the Pakistani state did not jump the tracks; it merely arrived at the destination announced long ago by a series of indifferent conductors.

I was born in the congested southern port city of Karachi, which my parents soon left for Canada and then the United States. Every few years, we would visit our many relatives in Karachi and in the verdant capitol of Islamabad for a month or two. In sixth grade, I spent a full year in Pakistan. I have not gone back in many years; the last time I visited was only weeks before the September 11th terrorist attacks.

My happier memories of Pakistan stand in stark contrast to the grim images of dour, menacing militants that are now beamed into our retinas and burned into our consciousness.

I remember my mother’s frequent trips to teeming shopping centers, where, flanked by a phalanx of my various aunts adorned in loose, colorful headscarves, she haggled with an endless cavalcade of tailors and merchants who respectfully addressed her as baaji, or, sister.

I remember standing on the grass in the evenings, waiting for the warm air to be leavened by a cool breeze that carried the sound of overlapping and lyrical azaans sung by muezzins at local mosques.

I remember the kindness and hospitality of my aunts and uncles, who indulged my American proclivities for pizza and the like by preparing special meals and taking me to ambitiously-named imitators such as “King Burger.”

I remember nearly everyone trying to teach me the local language, Urdu, which synthesizes the sharpness of Arabic with the softness of Farsi (Persian). Even today, my father scarcely fails to remind me of Urdu’s linguistic richness or its venerated poets like Iqbal, Ghalib and Faiz Ahmed Faiz, whose works I can understand only in translation.

Of course, these are not my only memories.

What most struck me was the astonishing and omnipresent poverty in Karachi. Beggars and amputees lined the busiest streets; masses of tents flanked the roads, surrounded by garbage picked at by youngsters and vultures; little children spat into filthy rags and wiped windshields, hoping for a handout.

In my early teens, when I had yet to bother trimming my beard, the sight of such desperation once prompted me into a fit of frustration. I recall entering a nearby bank office filled with clerks and a guard armed with an assault rifle to reflect and cool down. It was, apparently, a poor choice: the staff, fearing I was a jihadi, became nervous, and my parents had to swoop in and defuse the situation.

Worse than the poverty was the elite’s refusal to address it. A sea of garbage and huts surrounded the most opulent and magnificent houses, separated by concrete walls topped with shards of glass. In the districts of the military and business elite, homeowners hired armed guards who kept watch over their masters’ playgrounds. I imagine the scene must have been much worse in the northern rural areas that are now Taliban sanctuaries, where the government never even pretended to address the poverty created by feudal elites.

The country also suffers from a near-absence of binding nationalism. During my year there in sixth-grade private school (no respectable middle-class family sent their kids to the pitiful government schools) we performed the martial ritual of standing at attention and singing the national anthem every morning. But the whole system was handed down from the British: the uniforms, the shoes, the canteens, the headmasters — even the English, which is, absurdly, Pakistan’s official language and the only one students were allowed to speak outside of Urdu class. Pakistani education was a slavish imitation, a kind of ventriloquist nationalism in which students opened their mouths but only the echo of the ex-colonizer was heard.

I often wondered what would happen to those whose misery I impotently observed; those left for decades without the housing, food or education I was afforded. History has now caught up to the present and supplied us the answer in the form of the Taliban.

The militants, of course, assert that they are simply bringing “true Islam” to Pakistan. Even a cursory glance at Islamic precepts and the Prophet Muhammad’s own example reveal an ethos sharply at odds with the Taliban’s harsh practices which, more than anything else, reflect a history of Pashtun tribalism that precedes Islam’s arrival by centuries and constitutes the militants’ base.

The Taliban’s ascent is not a failure of Islam, but rather the failure of the Pakistani national project to fulfill the basic functions of a sovereign state; to heed the call of its great poets, who denounced inequality and called for a revival and modernization of Islamic thought.

Most Americans are, understandably, more interested in results than reasons: As the Taliban limns the outlines of Pakistan’s demise with the unforgiving scalpel of extremism, will Pakistan confront this force, or succumb to it?

It is difficult to say. Ironically, it is America’s own mode of involvement that harms its interests: Our only visible contributions there today are drones, missiles and destruction. This has produced a polarizing effect whereby any force that opposes America — regardless of its real aims — elicits sympathy from sectors of the military and the rural masses.

Pakistan may be willing to plunge a sword through its heart just to pierce the skin of American interventionism, a case of spite through national suicide.

It is also impossible to know when a people will say enough is enough. While it’s incomprehensible to most of us that any government could comport with the Taliban and its horrors, it is worth remembering that America was willing to permit the horror of slavery for almost 100 years until the slave states declared secession and initiated war.

If the people of Pakistan do choose the path of resistance to preserve their country’s future, they may find inspiration from verses that belong to their history:

This is the way that autumn came to the trees:

it stripped them down to the skin,

left their ebony bodies naked.

It shook out their hearts, the yellow leaves,

scattered them over the ground.

Anyone could trample them out of shape

undisturbed by a single moan of protest.

The birds that herald dreams

were exiled from their song,

each voice torn out of its throat.

They dropped into the dust

even before the hunter strung his bow.

Oh, God of May have mercy.

Bless these withered bodies

with the passion of your resurrection;

make their dead veins flow with blood again.

Give some tree the gift of green again.

Let one bird sing.

- Faiz Ahmed Faiz

(Published in WireTap)

As he engages the Islamic world, President Obama has gone to considerable lengths to distinguish himself from his predecessor in tone and language. He has made express rhetorical overtures several times during his first months in office: in his first interview with an Arab news outlet, the president repeatedly called for “mutual respect” with the Muslim world; in his address to Iran during its spring celebrations, he openly addressed it as the “Islamic Republic”; and in his visit to Turkey, he unequivocally stated that America “is not, and will never be, at war with Islam.”

Obama’s efforts to indicate a clean break with the past, however, only thrust into sharper relief one unchanged feature of American foreign policy that has for decades shaped the contours of Muslim resentment: unconditional support for Israel.

Prominent Americans alighting on this third rail of American politics have learned that it carries a stinging current. For daring to dissent, former CIA chief Michael Scheuer found himself booted from a university foundation, PBS journalist Bill Moyers was smeared by the head of the Anti-Defamation League, and Charles Freeman was bullied into declining an offer to chair the National Intelligence Council.

New York Times columnist Roger Cohen also found himself pilloried by hysterical neoconservatives, fresh off the conveyor belt from the “clash of civilizations” factory, after writing that Israel has “conveniently conflated” its local conflicts with American interests.

What prompted this flurry of attacks against dissenters is the presence of dissent itself—a rarity in either conservative or liberal America, where those questioning Israel frequently find the Damocles’ sword of the anti-Semitism label held above their heads.

These dissenters have not taken up their stance because they suddenly discovered that Israel was created through ethnic cleansing, or that it has killed thousands of civilians in absurdly lopsided “battles,” or that it uses civilians as human shields: none of this is new.

Rather, what prompts their concern is that America today views 1.5 billion people through the crosshairs of a tiny belligerent state, and that a quarter of humanity is staring back at us through the same jaundiced lens. The dissenters wisely asked themselves, “How does this benefit the United States?,” and came to the obvious conclusion: it doesn’t.

If Obama truly intends a realignment of America’s relationship with the Islamic world, the process will have to begin by decoupling the chariot of American policy from the warhorse of Israeli aggression.

Israel’s decision to mount its attack on Gaza as Obama took office is a vivid illustration of just how easily the president’s hopes for rapprochement can be suffocated in the rubble of Arab anger. Even the prime minister of Turkey, whose country houses Israeli warplanes, was so repulsed by the massacre that he stormed out of an international conference after arguing with Israeli President Shimon Peres, vowing never to return.

It was also revealing to see Shimon Peres make his own heckling and threatening “appeal” to Iran—which Israel is hankering to bomb—on the same day Obama issued his measured message, a blatant attempt to undercut the president that went largely unremarked upon here.

Worse still was the recent election of Israel’s right-wing government, which, as a New York Times Op-Ed contributor acidly observed, is more hostile to a peace agreement than Hamas. The new foreign minister, a grotesque figure who would not escape classification as a fascist in any other country, has proposed a “transfer” of Israel’s Arab population to the Palestinian ghettoes, demanded a loyalty oath from the state’s Arab citizens, and suggested dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza.

To propose rapprochement with Muslims while backing such a violently anti-Muslim regime is like extending an open hand with a scorpion in one’s palm.

In his appeals to Muslims abroad, Obama has accurately observed that Islamic extremists can only destroy, not create. Imagine how vividly he might illuminate that point for his intended audience if, as the president of the United States, he shields Muslims from Israeli violence while “Islamic” terrorists continue inflicting violence on their overwhelmingly Muslim targets.

It would be a clarifying moment in history—if the president has the courage to pursue it.

(A near-identical version was published in WireTap Magazine as my latest monthly column there, and that version includes some great pictures)

Tyranny, domination, oppression, control: such words are employed with great frequency in describing the open, explosive conflicts that leave homes in rubble and cities in ruin.

There is another kind of violence that leaves walls untouched and buildings unharmed, but merits the use of these same words: Domestic violence.

While it may not be debated at the United Nations as often, and does not prompt countries to dispatch diplomatic envoys with great pomp and circumstance, it afflicts communities across the world.

Globally, one in three women will be subject to physical or sexual violence from an intimate partner in her lifetime. According to a 2000 National Violence Against Women study, one in every six U.S. women has been a victim of sexuall assault or rape. In 2005, according to the FBI, 789 white and 337 black women were killed by intimate partners; 44 women falling into neither racial category met the same fate.

The striking photos of a bruised and beaten celebrity, 21-year-old Rihanna, recently thrust this complex and delicate issue into the limelight for many younger Americans. Some decided to blame the victim, particularly when it appeared that the young star had reunited with her alleged abuser.

A survey of 200 teens in Boston showed that almost half blamed Rihanna for the violence inflicted on her. A reporter’s foray into the halls of New York City high schools revealed much the same. “She probably made him mad for him to react like that,” one ninth-grade girl told the New York Times. “You know, like, bring it on?”

Within the American Muslim context, tackling domestic violence can be doubly difficult. Activists intent on raising awareness about problems within the community must be cognizant of those outside the community who seek to exaggerate or distort these problems for their own ends — such as citing domestic violence by Muslims as yet another reason to intensify military violence against Muslims.

Navigating these competing currents is a daily task for Robina Niaz, founder and executive director of Turning Point for Women and Families, a Muslim anti-domestic violence agency based in New York City.

Niaz explains that Turning Point, founded in 2004, is dedicated to addressing domestic violence in the New York Muslim community and creating a safe supportive space to mentor Muslim girls.

The initial reception to the agency was mixed. “The general response from Muslim women, girls, a few imams and Muslim men was quite positive,” Niaz says. “But it was difficult making inroads in the larger community as there was a lot of denial about domestic violence.” Over the past four years, however, Turning Point has seen a positive change in the community and acknowledgement and support for its work — including financial support.

Niaz says the hardest part of her work is fending off common Western stereotypes about women in Islam. The anti-Muslim rhetoric that metastasized in the aftermath of September 11, she adds, underscored the need for the organization’s existence.

“We try and address the stereotyping and negative media attention by constantly raising awareness about women’s rights within Islam, by separating religion from cultural practices and by encouraging Muslim women to… challenge the stereotypes among their peers,” she notes. Each year during Ramadan, the organization invites a female Muslim advocate or scholar to “challenge the notion that somehow abuse of women is okay within our faith.”

That notion surfaced just last month, when Aasiya Hassan, a Muslim woman, was murdered and beheaded, allegedly by her husband, in Orchard Park, New York. The scene of the crime was the very television station that the couple had created to offer Americans an alternative view of Islam. (Turning Point issued a joint press release with another Muslim anti-domestic violence group condemning the murder and asking that the perpetrator receive maximum punishment.)

Although the attack bore markers common to many domestic violence cases — a prior history of abuse, protective orders and divorce proceedings — some leapt to exoticize the act as an “honor killing” specific to Muslims. When the New York State President of the National Organization for Women (NOW), Marcia Pappas, described the act as “a terroristic version of honor killing,” Turning Point strongly registered its objection in a letter signed by eight other domestic violence agencies.

“Would you call a Christian woman in this same scenario murdered by gun violence a victim of an honor killing?” the letter pointedly asked in a reference to the hundreds of other domestic violence-related murders that occur each year in the United States. “Femicide is femicide and this tragedy is one more disturbing face of domestic violence.”

Addressing the oft-heard assertion that Islam endorses domestic violence, Niaz makes several points: It is easy, she says, to misinterpret religious passages, restrict the meaning of key phrases and take them out of context to justify one’s own immoral behavior. She points out that, according to contemporary accounts, the Prophet Muhammad never struck a woman and in his final sermon “reminded Muslims that the best among them were those who were best to their wives.”

She also cites the following Quranic verse: “And among His signs is this, that He created for you spouses from among yourselves, that you may live in tranquility with them, and He has put love and mercy between your (hearts) — verily in that are signs for those who reflect.” (30:21)

It is not history or hermeneutics alone that vitiates the idea of an inherent connection between domestic violence and Islam.

Turning Point’s youth leader, Moumita Zaman, has been actively involved in the fight against domestic violence by working with other young Muslim women to organize against abuse. She said that during high school, it was apparent that South Asian students didn’t go for help when faced with issues of abuse, violence and trauma aimed at either themselves or their mothers because of limited support services.

Determined to help address that gap, Zaman joined Turning Point as a volunteer and now creates programs and workshops for young Muslim women. For Women’s History Month in March, she helped five Muslim girls create their own written tribute to Aasiya, the Orchard Park victim, which they then presented. She described the process as “a breakthrough experience… as [the participants] gained confidence and had an opportunity to speak directly to their community members.”

Zaman, who also participates in a Muslim women writers’ workshop, says she has found strength in her identity by playing an active part in defining it. “As a Muslim woman, I’ve sought out or created spaces that help to empower me and other females… I’ve managed to surround myself with women who are changing the paradigm on how Muslim females are represented, and who represents us.”

Through their advocacy and tireless groundwork, Niaz and Zaman have achieved a measure of success that shows progress is possible in addressing this issue within the American Muslim community.

While domestic violence can neither collapse walls nor shake buildings, it is fair to say that between the walls and within the buildings of New York City, the level of awareness and dialogue around this problem has improved thanks to Turning Point’s efforts.

“I think I have tried really hard in the media to portray this as not…Irshad Manji, not Hirsi Ali, not any of those, not an attempt to provoke, but an attempt to understand a difficult discussion…”

Parvez Sharma is a gay Muslim filmmaker whose award-winning documentary, “A Jihad for Love,” was screened across the U.S. and is still being shown underground in a number of Muslim countries.

The film, which took six years to complete, chronicles the struggles of gay and lesbian Muslims across several Muslim countries, focusing on subjects’ insistence on upholding their identity as Muslims despite hostility from local communities and governments.

Below is the full transcript of our interview, in which Sharma touched upon a variety of topics, including the hurdles of getting the film made as a man of color and new immigrant to the U.S., the challenge of defending Islam from external vilification while insisting on internal reform, the trauma involved for some of the film’s participants, and the film’s overall impact.

[Regular readers may recall that some months ago, I mentioned that the progressive magazine on race, Colorlines, agreed to publish a 1,200-word condensed version of some of the interview. However, this never materialized. The editors have inexplicably declined to tell me why--even though they already paid me for the piece. Such are the frustrations of a minor writer. At any rate, I have permission to use the full transcript, so here it is.]

LEVESQUE-ALAM: I wanted to start out by asking you by about the length of the filming process. It was about six years during which you filmed your subjects, gay and lesbian Muslims, across several Muslim countries. What were the hurdles involved in that kind of time span? Was it logistical or financial?

SHARMA: I think it’s really everything. At the end of the day, I mean, if you commit six years of your life to just one project where you do not necessarily see an end in sight, you have to maintain a kind of focus and kind of determination that is pretty extraordinary in my opinion.

Because of course there is a tremendous hurdle for funding. The biggest one in my opinion was me being an immigrant in this country, being a proud Muslim filmmaker. I have spoken often, even in the press, of the gatekeepers in the industry being mostly Caucasian men with a particular set of principles, or a worldview, that [that identity] often comes with.

Certainly post-September 11^th, while there has been a tremendous interest in funders wanting to fund films about Islam, at the same time you’re negotiating minefields because the films that they’re usually interested are films that fall into the popular narrative of dissing Islam.

LEVESQUE-ALAM: Right. There seems to be a similar case with films and popular media representation, which brings me to another point. As you noted, there are very few non-white filmmakers in the U.S. and it’s very difficult to get funded from this vantage point.

Were you worried that in the course of trying to find funding from your film that the people who were backing you ultimately were hoping for an exoticized product or some kind of anti-Islamic manifesto?

SHARMA: Absolutely, absolutely. Now listen, even when you talk about the demographic of the film industry, you have to understand that it’s the product of the country itself. I’m writing about this right now, that’s why I’m speaking about this. In this election year you very starkly realize that up to 74% of people in the last US census identify themselves as white, whatever that concept means now, and that includes about 14% Hispanics, maybe 24%, who would see themselves as white as well.

Now, is there a white worldview, and is there an understanding of white privilege, and is there as a result of that, a limited understanding of Islam? It’s not an easy general statement to make. In my case in particular, I took a lot of Jewish funding for this film. So I was acutely conscious of different political agendas that might operate within that.

The biggest ideological challenges as a filmmaker was to retain, for one, my complete creative control over the film, and many, many long contracts were signed in order to do that, and then to build a team of people around me who would not interfere in what I was setting out to do, which was to make a film about Islam with as much honesty as I thought was possible, because clearly I saw myself and see myself as a defender of faith, but at the same time I did not want to not be able to criticize what I saw as wrong.

LEVESQUE-ALAM: Were you concerned – you had mentioned that some of funders were themselves Jewish – were you concerned in light of the aggravated tensions and the pall that’s been cast over Jewish-Muslim relations because of the Israel-Palestine conflict and Iran-Israel conflict, that there was a political agenda? Were there specific points where you had to say, “look, my film is not ‘Fitna.’ My film is a different kind of film, my film is not meant to be taken as a cheap shot against the religion.”

SHARMA: I was concerned about those kinds of agendas, I remain concerned about those kinds of agendas. I see sometimes, you know, the debate of the film being used in other discourses where I do not necessary feel the film occupies a place. And yes, I had to put my foot down, I mean, it was a tremendous ideological battle, as I said, where I really was fighting for something that had not quite yet been defined.

A lot of people who have made films about Islam post-Sept. 11 have been non-Muslim. There is a new genre of documentary film-making, such as the Iraq films that have emerged, which I find deeply problematic and troubling, because you know, you go in and invade and occupy a country, and you end up filming the spoils of war with very little knowledge of what really going on in that particular ancient culture. The same with Afghanistan.

And then Muslims who have made films have often acted as apologists for the faith and kind of fallen into the trap of just trying to fit into the mainstream discourse about Islam right now.

So yes, I felt that there were different forces operating, I still feel that way. I still try as much as is possible to keep Muslim ownership of the film. I try as much as possible to allow spaces for Muslims to stand in front of the film and mediate it for audiences. And that’s not just myself, but other people, and many many, Muslims have stepped forward to do this in the last year.

And I feel that’s really important, it’s really this political climate, this climate where Islam has been demonized, where we are perhaps unfairly characterized as people of violence in very narrow terms, that we are required to kind of stand up and somehow take charge of that discussion on Islam so that we are the ones who are setting the agenda, we are the ones who are setting the talking points, because I think that’s critically important.

LEVESQUE-ALAM: During the period of filming, certainly you must have faced some of your own struggles as a man of color, a relatively new immigrant to the U.S., in post Sept.-11^th America, and at the same time, as a gay Muslim at a time of increasing Islamic extremism. How did your personal experience inform your vision for the film and your relationship with the people who you interviewed for it?

SHARMA: It informed it deeply. I think I’ve been quoted as saying this before, that if, let’s say, if I’d not been a Muslim filmmaker, I do not think I would have had the amount of access and the depth of interpersonal relationship that I was able to develop really with everyone in the film. I think they trusted me the most primarily because I was Muslim, and primarily because I was gay and Muslim, and in many cases spoke the language and in many cases understood a lot of the circumstances that people are coming from and a lot of the challenges that they were facing. So being Muslim in the West post Sept.11^th – which is not necessary the best thing that can happen to you at the airport – is also a blessing in other ways when you try to go into “Islamic territory” and make a film as a Muslim.

I’ve said before that the very same Islam that makes me so miserable sometimes here in America in how I look or what I speak to, gave me a degree of protection and the ability in some of the countries I went to, because I kind of did look like everybody else, and was able to kind of just melt into the crowd many times.

LEVESQUE-ALAM: In the process of making the film, were there particularly poignant or memorable moments that stuck out for you?

SHARMA: There were way too many, very hard to be able to [pinpoint].

LEVESQUE-ALAM: Were you able to develop strong bonds with people given the timespan -

SHARMA: I talk about the Mazen, the Egyptian refugee during the film. Now, here’s a man who in his early 20s was arrested by Hosni Mubarak’s government in Egypt. Hosni Mubarak for all purposes being “secular” and “anti-Islamic,” whipped up this entire frenzy about being a defender of public morality, and this is something that this government and other Muslim governments have done in the past, to win brownie points with the extremist political parties, like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, for example.

So Mazen and 52 other men were arrested in 2001 in Egypt. They were locked up in prison, some were locked up for more than 2 years. Mazen was imprisoned for over a year. The newspaper headlines at that time had said that a cult of satanists that was developing a new religion had been arrested, and were amongst other vices indulging in sodomy.

So this was the kind of climate that this man came from, and he was tortured in prison, he was even raped, as he mentions in the film, and while he was out on bail, he fled Egypt and got asylum in France. And I became almost an elder brother to him; I became his closest confidante for the first two years, affirming with him.

I even shared the same bed with him as he cried all night and I held him because I realized that this was also a victim of some pretty intense trauma who I was asking to relive that trauma for the camera. So I had to be there to hold him and take care of him, make him feel that his reliving of this trauma was worthwhile. So you know, that was poignant and that actually led to a transformation in the film itself where after about two years of filming he was able o turn around and say to the camera “enough is enough and I really need to show my face to tell this story.”

LEVESQUE-ALAM: You mention the incidence of rape, and it also seems similar acts have taken place under the auspices of the Sadrist militias in Iraq where gay men, or men who have just been accused of being gay, are rounded up, and then raped by these militants who themselves claim to be so anti-gay, I mean, is there something you see in that? What is this blatant contradiction here where they’re condemning these men and then rape them themselves?

SHARMA: This is – I get your question – pretty tricky territory. Look at Abu Ghraib for example: a lot of the images that were supplied had to do with the sexual subjugation and humiliation of supposedly heterosexual Iraqi Muslim men, in which you know, the sexual act, the forbidden sexual act if you will - forbidden equally in Christianity, if this war is indeed fought in the name of Christianity, and also in Islam - [takes place]. And so, you know, this is as old as history itself. I mean, you have to be clear about that: this kind of dichotomy has existed in wartime in pretty much every society where the sexual act of penetrative anal intercourse has been used to humiliate and to subjugate and to establish dominant position.

There is a dichotomy, definitely, but I want to say is that it’s existed forever, and yes, there are some reports of militia that roam the streets in Iraq using similar tactics, and I’m not surprised at all. Also, I mean, look at the [U.S.] prison system, where anal rape occurs very frequently, so that’s pretty interesting, and a lot of people have commented and written about this who are scholars in these matters.

LEVESQUE-ALAM: Another question I wanted to ask you, and you can correct me if I’m wrong of course, but my understand is that throughout Islamic history there has been a gay subculture that is not out in the open but was “tolerated” throughout a great portion of Muslim history, as long as it wasn’t out in the open. Do you think that there is a specific reason that this has taken a turn for the worse, or do these subcultures still exist with some tolerance by some regimes, or that in the case of Egypt they staged these crackdowns for a dog and pony show, for political benefit?

SHARMA: That’s true, all of the above. That’s a great question. I mean first of all, I would use the word “gay” with some trepidation, because one of the arguments made successfully in the film is that this crazy business of labeling that goes on in the U.S. and the West around sexuality and GLBTQI, or whatever, does not necessarily apply in the “east”.

LEVESQUE-ALAM: Can you elaborate on that?

SHARMA: Well it just doesn’t work, you know, this process of labeling everything in America in order to be able to recognize it, mark it, and identify it, is sometimes not necessary in other places. The gay rights movement here happened in a particular way due to a particular set of circumstances, and definitely after the 60s when the boundaries between the public and the private had been increasingly blurred. Now when you go into the “East” or Islam, or whatever you want to call it, you find that those traditional cultural boundaries between what’s acceptable privately and what’s acceptably publicly are very clearly defined for the most part. And you know, gay pride in Tehran, for example, is not- [that']s not the language, and in many instances, in Urdu or Punjabi or Hindi, you will not find words of affirmation [interruption].

What I was saying was that…the language is also absent in many of these languages, I mean there isn’t a word for “gay” in Urdu as we understand gay to be. So that said, now, if you look at Islamic history, you’re absolutely right, I think we’re now entering, or finishing, 1428 [the Islamic lunar calendar], so that’s 1428 years of history, and if you look at the Ottomans, if you look at the Persian empire, if you look at the Mughal empire in India, there has been a strong tradition of homosexual or homoerotic desire expressed and celebrated and definitely tolerated; sometimes celebrated in the courts, in the arts; there’s been a lot written about the idolized form of the young man and how older men would idolize and look up to that. There are even passages in the Quran that talk about the beauty of the young man.

So you know, that’s been going on, relationships between older men and younger men have sometimes even been seen as a rite of passage and acceptable, and continue to be even in parts of Pakistan, for example, in a lot of Pathan tribes in the NWFP [North West Frontier Province] to this day, and parts of Afghanistan.

So that said, all of that has been going and has been tacitly approved. I think the problem happens after colonialism, after the Middle East was pretty much carved out into all these different countries [after World War II], and similarly the British were departing India/Pakistan/Bangladesh, leaving in many countries penal codes that came out of Victorian morality and spoke very strongly against the act of sodomy. This was in some ways their way of restricting the kind of sodomy that had gone on in many of these places. And many of these laws remain to this day; not all Muslims are living under Sharia law.

But after colonialism ended, there was also a rise in freedom movements that is increasingly connected to religion, and in some ways religion and politics get mixed up tremendously in many Muslim countries during these freedom movements, and some led to events many years after colonialism, of course, like the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. And certainly there has been greater stridency, if you will, in embracing puritanical extreme orthodox interpretations of the Quran once again. A lot of moral policing has gone on. Vice squads have been set up in many countries and morality is policed. So all of these things are definitely interconnected in history.

LEVESQUE-ALAM: This brings me to another question here that I think is related. With wars raging in two, perhaps now three, Muslim countries, and a ceaseless barrage of anti-Muslim invective that one finds in some sector of the U.S. Media, many Muslims take the view that, you know, any criticism of Muslims or Muslim society – from within or without – is part of this design to malign Islam. Do you think that genuine social progress is going to be possible in the Muslim world as long as bombs are being dropped on the Muslim world in the name of that same social progress?

SHARMA: I think times of catastrophic events like wars are certainly challenging to try and create social change. When the general Islamic sentiment, speaking very broadly, is one of having been victimized by [an idea] that characterizes every Muslim as a terrorist, then…the discussion about social change definitely becomes more difficult because, first and foremost, you become a Muslim – as I have become and many others become – and you come out as Muslim, if you will. Especially if you’re living in the West, you feel a need to defend your faith, first and foremost, and to try and correct many of the misperceptions that float around.

And I question this, I mean, I question the legitimacy myself, of whether a debate around homosexuality is necessary in 2008, when, as you point out, there are possibly three wars raging, Islam is contested, the soul of Islam is contested, and when this kind of climate prevails, and then I – even I – wonder about the necessity of that debate. But I feel that the debate needs to continue. This idea of ijtihad of Islam – many will say the doors were closed in the 7^th century, I believe, but that needs to continue, it’s very important. How much is that actually going to impact people’s lives in these difficult times is hard to say.

But let me just say that entering the 21^st century now, there is a profound churning in Islam, and it’s going to impact several generations to come, and we do not know the outcome of that churning yet.

LEVESQUE-ALAM: Yeah, the closing of the gates you mentioned, if I’m thinking correctly, might have been in the 13^th century after the Mongol invasion swept through and devastated large swaths of the Muslim community, the Sunni community, which decided to, much as it has in the current context of war, close its doors and rally together or try to maintain a monolithic bloc.

But moving along from that question, one of the common threads threads of your film is that far from rejecting Islam, the people you’re interviewing proudly consider themselves Muslim or try to defend their identity as Muslim despite the hostility they face from other Muslims. Some have just said, you know, throwing their hands up in exasperation, “Well why don’t you just get out of the religion. Why don’t you just switch religions?” What is your response to that sentiment – how do you maintain your faith, and how do you think some of your interviewees maintained their faith against these kinds of pressures?

SHARMA: It’s really hard, and I don’t have any real answer to this question. Even I now, after a year [Oct. 2008] of the film being out, wonder about the necessity of faith sometimes in a world where extremisms are increasingly controlling all faiths, be it Christianity or Judaism or Islam. I also wonder about the legitimacy of clinging to faith. But I realize that faith is something that is way more profound, and deeply, if you will, personal.

I feel that for a lot of the people in the film Islamic religiosity is not something that comes in isolation. Our religion is a religion of community, and leaving the religion is not really the easiest thing to do when you have extended families, when you have all your culture, your art, your way of looking at the culture, determined in some ways by your religiosity, it’s not easy to leave that.

LEVESQUE-ALAM: You said at one point during the SAJA [South Asian Journalists Association] conference, and correct me if I’m wrong, that at one time you had either converted or you had embraced Islam after your mother died. Is that at all connected to this issue or was some specific circumstance around that – what was it that appealed to you in Islam that made you embrace it?

SHARMA: I grew up with a mixed family. I grew up half-Muslim, but my mother was the most dominant force in my life if you, will. In a formal way, when she passed away, I felt the need to be more Muslim. This was 13 years ago now. But again, it was a very personal decision. And I certainly would not have necessarily taken on the discussion of Islam to the extent I have if I had not felt deeply and profoundly troubled after Sept. 11^th.

It was something, my Muslim identity, that I always took for granted, right? Then it suddenly became the defining piece of me in other people’s lives, and therefore I had to kind of stand up and speak for it, and take ownership.

LEVESQUE-ALAM: Do you think that when you do take ownership and when you point out to for instance, in the middle of the rhetoric and the hyperbole, “Why aren’t all these wars and occupations themselves considered terrorism?” and you have these conversations, do you think your Western peers actually take you more seriously than they would a non-gay Muslim because you have that identity that lends you a certain credibility to your argument on say, terrorism?

SHARMA: Not really, no.

LEVESQUE-ALAM: Your film now has been screened in many major cities across the country, most recently, I believe, in Washington, D.C. What is your assessment of its reception and its impact?

SHARMA: It’s doing very well. I think the impact has been tremendous. I mean, it even screened in Houston, where - you know, everyone in this election cycle talks about the “American people,” right…whatever that might constitute. But we use it as singular. So one of the characteristics of the “American people” seem to be white, middle-class, Republican families. So exactly such a family came to see the film in Houston, with their two sons, who did not seem to be gay. And I asked them, “What are you doing here?”

And they said they are trying to educate themselves about Islam. They saw it in the papers and they see it as a sense of their own responsibility. And everyone is constantly surrounded by this debate about Islam, to try and see what trickles down in poor little Houston, which is not much, by way of films about Islam. After they saw the film, they said, “the film’s amazing, we’re going to be talking about this at our breakfast table for months to come and you have made a seismic shift of our perception of what the religion is and we don’t quite know what it is yet.”

So that’s amazing, you know, in this climate. And I think American audiences for the most part - I mean of course there’s an assumption that this is a deeply anti-intellectual society, and Americans for the most part are stupid and do not understand what is really going on in the outside world, and I think it can be a fair generalization in some circumstances - but as I’ve traveled I’ve realized that people who are engaging with the film are questioning a lot and learning a lot, it’s like an Islam 101 for them, and that’s very exciting to me. I mean, I set out to create a debate about Islam, and I think that’s exactly what this film has done.

LEVESQUE-ALAM: What has the reception been like in the Muslim community? I know that you personally have received some angry notes and even some death threats, but how would you characterize the general, broad response from at least the American Muslim community?

SHARMA: Even outside the American Muslim community, the response has been overwhelmingly positive in the Muslim community. People, especially straight Muslims, have embraced this film, even in Turkey, even in India, and certainly in all the underground screenings that are going on in Tehran, Karachi, Lahore, Palestine, elsewhere. People are really engaging with this film. Some of my biggest allies in America have been straight Muslims, straight Muslim couples, friends of mine in Chicago, going to mosque after Jummah [Friday] prayers, distributing fliers, talking to the imam directly, asking him to engage in this discussion.

So it’s been really positive. I think I have tried really hard in the media to portray this as not – not Irshad Manji, not Hirsi Ali, not any of those, not an attempt to provoke, but an attempt to understand a difficult discussion, and an attempt that works within the Hudood [Islamic context of restrictions].

So the Hudood we Muslims set for ourselves - one of the principles as Muslims is to remain good Muslims, and to not attack our faith, and I think the film [adheres to] this. I think that, for the most part, is the widespread perception out there about the film. Therefore, there has not been violence around this film.

LEVESQUE-ALAM: One of my questions was actually going to be whether you thought this film would make its way to Muslim countries in bootlegged form, but you’ve said there have already been film underground screenings. So how is that -

SHARMA: There will be more, Inshallah [God willing].

LEVESQUE-ALAM: So this is something that’s taking place in that covert way, or that clandestine way, within the subculture?

SHARMA: Yeah.

LEVESQUE-ALAM: My final question is really that, after seeing the ongoing impact of this film, what is your next project or next endeavor, if there is one, in the way of films?

SHARMA: I’m not going to make a gay film again. So I’m definitely post-gay at this point.

LEVESQUE-ALAM: [Laughs]

SHARMA: Now, I remain deeply interested in Islam, so I want to make a subversive Bollywood musical, if I really can, with a Muslim theme. So that’s one of the options I’m looking at. And at this point, I need to also somehow move out from the last six, seven years of my life, and getting to creating something else, and that’s very daunting.

I’d like to let readers know that a new online publication has been launched that seeks to address and engage a critically important and underserved segment—Muslim women.

The sister site to the existing AltMuslim.com, AltMuslimah.com launched last week. You may find two of my own pieces there, but more importantly, you can find American Muslim women discussing and debating issues of great import within a progressive and Islamic framework.

As a sidenote, I should perhaps mention that I am in the process of interview two staff members of New York’s first-ever domestic violence group, Turning Point, based in Queens. God willing, I will have the full transcript published here after the related column runs in WireTap next month.

Yesterday, I exited the train and descended the stairs with dozens of other commuters, eager to head home after a grinding day of work. On the elongated sidewalk a man, perhaps homeless, sat slouched on a wooden bench and apparently asleep—a not entirely unusual sight on the streets of Queens.

However, three or four pedestrians who appeared to be visitors from the South looked aghast and alarmed by this sight, taken for granted by the rest of us. They spoke amongst themselves quietly while also calling to the man loudly in an attempt to wake him up. They were not successful.

As I approached this scene, I scarcely looked in their direction and thought I might simply walk by, as had many others.

In a city where the homeless and mentally disturbed are often left to fend for themselves on street corners and by storefronts, people generally mind their own business. Two days ago, a clearly disturbed young white man in his 20s spoke to himself aloud in the train without interruption or more than a glance from anyone else, repeatedly invoking technical terms reserved for website design. Perhaps, I thought to myself, he was a recently laid-off IT worker.

An authoritative voiceover on the trains frequently urges commuters “not to give” to beggars so as to “maintain an orderly subway.” I have seen signs exhorting people not to give elsewhere—to pigeons in parks. Or animals in zoos.

Earlier in the day, a conductor had provided his own unique addendum to the standard scripted message, speaking in an urgent voice rarely reserved for minor matters like service breakdowns. A beggar posing as a staffer for a non-existent homeless organization, the conducted intoned, was making rounds in a bid to coax open people’s wallets.

Despite the official daily-administered doses of indifference, I could not bring myself to ignore the sight of an unconscious man surrounded by worried outsiders. But having almost walked by, I only felt comfortable enough to turn around at some distance from the scene. Several others also began to take up positions nearby as spectators. Like me, they were apparently unwilling to act or unsure of what to do.

I finally approached the man on the bench. He was old, perhaps in his 70s, wearing a coat and track pants, a hat obscuring the features of his worn face—though not his closed eyes. After several more shouts of “Sir!, Sir!,” went unanswered, a man in his early 30s also approached and jostled the older man by the arm to see if he would finally respond. He did not. The young man then took the pulse and said, “He has a pulse, but he is clearly unconscious.”

In a testament to what extreme levels of desperation constitute a crisis here, a local woman called out in all sincerity, “Is this an emergency situation?” The young man firmly replied “yes” and just as she began to dial 911, two other men sitting in a parked van—until now, mere observers—pointed out that a police officer was standing inside a bank right behind us.

The woman fetched the police officer from the bank. Meanwhile, the young man tried to turn over the unconscious elder, who bore no apparent marks of distress or injury, and was not obviously homeless. But he was still. And silent.

The policeman, young and portly, slowly walked his way toward what was by now a small gathering of 20 onlookers and called for backup through his radio. He seemed not only calm but generally unconcerned. Wearing a mixed look of weariness and displeasure on his face, he did not bother to inspect the unconscious man up close.

Seeing the mass outside, a few bank workers huddled near the stately glass wall separating them from the street to have a look as well. I wondered how they, or the policeman, had failed to notice the old man or the smaller number of people surrounding him earlier through the clear pane.

Someone pointed out that an ambulance was parked across the street—EMT workers regularly stop on this busy road to grab a bite from a favorite eatery—and so I headed toward it in hopes of finding help. I knocked on the van’s window, and the two workers, who were staring at a screen of some sort, looked at me with slight annoyance and surprise before one rolled down his window.

“Hi,” I began nervously and unnecessarily. “There’s a man over there who’s unconscious but he has a pulse. I don’t know if you got the call about him or not.”

The driver turned on the signature flashing lights and re-parked the van on the other side of the street where the by-now sizeable crowd had gathered. A few people called or texted friends or family on their cell phones, speculating while spectating.

The EMTs, meanwhile, seemed no more speedy or purposeful than the policeman, who was sauntering up and down the sidewalk to no real effect. They ploddingly made their way to the man, turned him over, and laid him out on the cobblestone as they began to examine him. I did not understand why he was not immediately placed into a gurney and whisked to a hospital. I also did not have the courage to ask aloud.

I walked away from the scene and took my place in line at the bus stop. There seemed to me little purpose—and more than a little bit of unseemliness—in standing around and observing an old man’s possible death like a visitor at an amusement park.

My thoughts soon shifted from the center of commotion to my own fears: if I suddenly fell ill while seated alone somewhere, what would happen to me? Would I be gawked at—and, if someone was seized by a generous mood—prodded, before help grudgingly arrived too late and too unwilling to make a difference?

Flashing red lights, refracting on the cracks and crevices of nearby brick walls, began to bounce off the glass windows of the bus as its hulking frame rolled into view. I climbed aboard, leaving the crowd and the old man, but not my questions, behind me.

(Slightly different version published in WireTap)

A month after the September 11th attacks, I stood in a public square in Boston as the breath of approaching winter chilled the air. Motorists honked their horns but the glares and grimaces suggested something other than appreciation. A handful made their sentiments more plainly obvious with choice epithets and explicit hand gestures. A few pedestrians glowered at our signs and warned us in threatening tones not to persist. One man even tossed empty beer cans at us; it wasn’t hard to guess who had consumed the contents.

Calls for peace and reflection were not popularly received in the aftermath of 9/11. Even tepid and silent protests like the peace vigils I participated in shortly after American air strikes on Afghanistan drew scorn and ire in the prevailing atmosphere of anger and vengeance.

With my bronze skin, black hair and Asian features, I felt like something of a target holding peace signs and handing out literature — part of an inauspicious start to college that began only weeks after the terrorist attacks.

That was more than seven years ago. In the interim, America has seen a cavalcade of evidence suggesting deep flaws in the response to 9/11: Failure to catch Bin Laden or defeat the Taliban; lies leading to the Iraq war; the chaos that followed its occupation; the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo fiascoes; Iran’s empowerment; and, the continued spread of Islamist radicalism.

Barack Obama’s election was largely a repudiation of Bush Administration policies and a recognition of its failures. The new president has proposed troop withdrawal from Iraq, crafted plans to close Guantanamo and has spoken of a rapprochement with the Muslim world based on “mutual respect.”

But for all this, the viability and wisdom of the long war in Afghanistan has gone mostly unchallenged. The mainstream anti-war movement, having fluctuated over the course of the last seven years, has focused primarily on the war on Iraq, scarcely expressing outrage over the Afghan conflict.

It long ago became a liberal talking point that Iraq is a “diversion” from the “real” war on terrorism being waged in the Afghan hinterlands — a point most recently reinforced by Obama’s pledge to send up to 30,000 more troops to that country just as he brings down troop levels in Iraq.

If the protests I participated in seven years ago were to take place again now, they would likely draw little anger — but equally little enthusiasm. This war is, as many see it, our “good war.”

It’s not hard to understand why. Bin Laden and his protectors have yet to be brought to justice for their crimes. The Taliban are still a repressive and terrible force with increasingly brazen designs on controlling nuclear-armed Pakistan.

Yet these realities cannot serve as an endorsement of any and all tactics. That there is greater justification for this war than the Iraq conflict is hardly a stirring defense, and scarcely sufficient grounds to judge it wise or fruitful.

The record of the past seven years is already damning: The Taliban have survived and spread across Afghanistan; Karzai’s ministerial corruption has become obvious; and worse, the war effort is destabilizing Afghanistan’s neighbor, Pakistan, where people feel they are being pressed by foreigners into a war with no domestic benefit.

Those who believe the war will go more smoothly after sending 30,000 more U.S. troops should recall the Soviet Union’s failed campaign in Afghanistan, a disastrous ten-year effort involving some 115,000 soldiers.

Worse still, it seems no one has a clear picture of what we are really fighting for in Afghanistan, and increasingly, in Pakistan.

Perhaps we never knew. A senior U.S. military commander, referring to the Bush years, recently told the Washington Post, “We have no strategic plan. We never had one.”

The planned troop increase is not even expected to achieve results, only “help buy enough time for the new administration to reappraise the entire Afghanistan war effort.” This is a bit like throwing a man off a cliff and later convening a meeting about what to do with him.

While pundits across the political spectrum obligatorily invoke the need to defeat the Taliban, al-Qaeda and Islamic extremism as reasons for bolstering troop numbers, the reality is that the insurgency is rooted in Pashtun nationalism with an Islamist veneer.

As former Pentagon official Pierre Sprey explained to an incredulous Bill Moyers on PBS, “There’s 40 million of them. That’s a nation, not a tribe. Within it are tribal groupings and so on. But they all speak the common language. And they all have a very similar, rigid, and in lots of ways very admirable code of honor much stronger than their adherence to Islam.”

The Pashtun population straddles the Durand Line, which separates Pakistan from Afghanistan and was drawn up by the British in 1893 when they gave up trying to “tame” the locals. The Pashtuns never really recognized the border’s validity and the weak Pakistani state apparatus has essentially left the region to its own devices since the country’s founding. Widespread poverty in the area makes it ripe for extremism. The Taliban and assorted allies have filled the political vacuum, recruiting illiterate and poor locals to their cause.

The U.S.-led war effort, far from alleviating this root problem, has exacerbated it. Cajoled by America, Pakistan conducted large-scale military operations in Pashtun border areas last year, causing thousands of locals to flee into the arms of Islamist organizations, which provided relief for victims. “Collateral damage” caused by America’s own strikes in Afghanistan have also inflamed Pashtun sentiments.

Unlike Gaza, Sudan, or Iraq, the crisis in Afghanistan and Pakistan doesn’t easily lend itself to snappy slogans that can be used to mobilize sentiment around a specific demand across college campuses.

Nevertheless, tacit support for the status quo is not an option. While differences in the anti-war camp persist, we should come to a consensus based on common sense, if not common politics: No to escalation. Escalating the war in Afghanistan as some kind of stop-gap measure until the administration comes up with a real plan is extremely unwise given the possible consequences.

60,000 U.S. troops are neither sufficient to transform the country nor are they necessary to capture a handful of al-Qaeda bandits. More disturbingly, while Washington fumbles around for answers, an intensified but ill-defined war effort will foment further unrest in Pakistan and could create a new, and far more intractable crisis: A failed nuclear state overrun by Islamists.

The situation recalls a common expression that summed up the insanity of the Vietnam War: “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.” Given the destabilizing impact on Pakistan produced by our faltering efforts in Afghanistan, we may well end up destroying one country while failing to save another.

In the shadow of Sept. 11^th,, an American Muslim man and his wife start a television station to counter the media’s jaundiced portrayal of Muslims as violent fanatics. A few years later when this man’s wife decides to leave him, he kills her in a manner made infamous by violent Muslim fanatics: beheading.

This is not a soap plot crafted by a malicious Islamophobe—although as an American Muslim, I find myself wishing it was. Rather, it is likely an all-too-accurate account of the recent murder of a Muslim woman in Orchard Park, New York.

On Feb. 12^th, Aasiya Hassan was discovered beheaded in the television station office where she and her husband, Muzzammil Hassan, strove to show Muslims in a positive light. Muzzammil visited police hours after the murder and gave them the location of his wife’s body. He had argued earlier in the day with Aasiya, who placed an order of protection against her husband and recently filed for divorce after years of abuse.

It is doubtlessly true that millions already instilled with a prejudicial perspective have derived a smug sense of vindication from this event. “After all,” might have said those with anti-Islamic suspicions, “if one Muslim who claimed to be good could do this, imagine what the rest of them must be like.”

It is equally doubtless that many American Muslims have responded in a defensive fashion. Faced with the usual media interrogators whose tendency to link religion with violence surfaces with selective precision, we have breathlessly quoted the Quran and Hadith to show that there is no religious justification for this heinous act. But in confining our answers within these limits, we have hardly dented the loaded assumption that domestic violence is a uniquely Muslim problem regardless of what we claim our texts say.

As someone who does outreach work in the domestic violence field, I am often asked with genuine curiosity whether domestic violence is more prevalent in one community than another, or whether there exists a specific “cause,” be it religious, chemical, or cultural.

It might be a tremendous relief for many if one group alone could be held culpable: most of us could then pat ourselves on the back, puff up with pride on behalf of our particular tribe, and carry on with the rest of our lives while simply avoiding whatever stigmatized group was deemed responsible.

Unfortunately, the truth rarely makes room for such self-serving pleasant fictions. Domestic violence is a pervasive phenomenon that afflicts communities everywhere.

Here in America, almost a quarter of women have been raped or sexually assaulted by current or past partners or acquaintances, according to a 1996 study conducted by the Department of Justice. In 2005, according to the FBI, 789 white and 337 black women were killed by intimate partners; 44 women falling into neither racial category met the same fate. And a report released this month by a coalition of Minnesota agencies confirmed what domestic violence agencies here have long known: abused women are in greatest danger precisely when they try to leave—as Aasiya did.

Nonetheless, some tendentious media outlets and pundits have pounced on the sensationalistic aspect of Aasiya’s murder to emphasize the old message that the Islamic “Other” cannot be comprehended by, much less compared to, “regular” Americans.

Even those who should know better have succumbed to predictable stereotyping. A day after the crime, NOW’s New York State President Marcia Pappas said the act was “a terroristic version” of what she called an “honor killing” based on nothing but the alleged attacker’s religious identity, despite all the markers associated with a domestic violence case: priory history of abuse, an order of protection, and divorce proceedings. Such misapplied, coded language quarantines and exoticizes abuse along “religious” lines, obscuring clear commonalities.

How might Pappas’ dubious distinction apply with respect to the eight victims of Bruce Pardo—the white, churchgoing Catholic who dressed up as Santa Claus and shot and set aflame his ex-wife’s entire family last Christmas, including an eight-year-old girl? Or the two victims of Joseph Pallipurath, an Indian immigrant who tracked his estranged wife across the country and shot her and a bystander dead in a New Jersey church last November? Are these deaths—or that of other victims—less tragic or less real because they cannot be sealed into the ‘Otherizing’ chamber of “honor killing?” Does a bullet kill less than a blade?

That domestic violence does indeed exist across all communities is still no excuse for Muslims to minimize its occurrence in our own community. And that others may seize upon the issue for the explicit purpose of attacking Muslims is still no reason for Muslims to show a lack of purpose in defending women from cowardly abusers.

The vice president of the Islamic Society of North America, a well-known mainstream organization, took a firm step in the right direction when he issued a powerful statement that read in part:

“This is a wake up call to all of us, that violence against women is real and can not be ignored. It must be addressed collectively by every member of our community…I call upon my fellow imams and community leaders to never second-guess a woman who comes to us indicating that she feels her life to be in danger. We should provide support and help to protect the victims of domestic violence…”

Aasiya was killed in the very space where she tried to promote a broader understanding of Islam. Like many other domestic violence victims who endure years of abuse before deciding to leave their partner, she may have been held back by her abusers’ threats, isolation, and fear of stigma. It is painful—but necessary—to contemplate the possibility that she was also burdened by an additional factor: worry that identifying her husband as an abuser and leaving him would legitimize the narrow, negative view of Islam she was working to overturn.

Perhaps the best way of honoring Aasiya’s efforts to improve Islam’s image in American eyes, then, is to redirect our own gaze inward and improve not only the image, but the reality, of American Islam.