The Pope should issue a global fatwa banning newspapers and policymakers around the world from engaging in this infantile, overused discussion of “but what about the terrorists.”

Perhaps then the American citizenry can read about Jimmy Carter man-hugging Hamas official Nasser Shaer with enough neutrality to form an informed opinion.

Carter paid tribute to Arafat by laying a wreath on his grave, before meeting Hamas officials in Egypt after Israel denied him access to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. Undeterred, Carter said he would meet with exiled Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaal in Syria on Friday.

More annoying than the media’s portrayal of Carter as backstabbing terrorist (how could you not appreciate Sen. John McCain’s opinion on the matter?) is its dangerous disregard of far-reaching context. Anyone who understands history knows Carter owes Palestinians a little more than just a hug.

Carter, unlike any other U.S. President, tried to negotiate an evenhanded solution to the Arab/Israeli conflict, acting as the chief negotiator in the Camp David accords which called on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories, halt all settlements, and grant full autonomy to the Palestinians in exchange for peace with its Arab neighbors. However, Israel never disguised its intention to continue its settlements and obstruct a Palestinian state. Carter was wrong to convince the Arabs to accept an agreement that he could only hope Israel would meet.

Until this day, Arabs are bleeding from the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty Carter tempted them with. When Sadat fell for the trap, Israel’s main opposing force was eliminated and any aspiration for Arab unity was crushed, alongside Arab morale and hope for Palestine.

Carter helped solidify America’s role as Israel’s partner in crime and inexhaustible sugar daddy, so that Israel could continue systematic oppression without the threat of retaliation. Carter’s negotiation meant Israel would resume its role as a glorified bounty hunter: fencing-in the enemy, cutting-off electricity, water, and medical supplies, jailing, and settling on land are considered tactics of defense, even if they violate international law.

One would think Israel would provide the man with a warmer greeting. So why the cold shoulder? Israeli officials are afraid that in meeting with Hamas, Carter will subvert the myth that Hamas is out to destroy Israel, so in typical fashion, they refused to speak with him. They also dismiss Carter’s visit by using the issue of terrorism to divert attention away from the crimes they are committing in Gaza and the West Bank.

Despite America’s unsubtle attempts to cripple Hamas (shame on the European community for going along with it), Hamas remains a major player in Palestinian politics, not only because it’s the legislative majority in the Palestinian Council or because it controls Gaza, but because it is invested in the Palestinian cause. Any peace agreement that does not include Hamas is superficial. Unfortunately, Carter is the only U.S. politician bold enough to come out and say that.

Carter’s willingness to meet with Hamas should be seen as an act of honest diplomacy, a willingness to provide some retribution for a population that is continually made to suffer collective punishment. The former president’s courage and humanity should be emulated and applauded, instead it is being criticized and undermined simply because it turns the tables on the aggressor:

Israel is being asked to recognize Hamas, not the other way around.

Yusra Tekbali is a Journalism and Near Eastern studies major, impatiently awaiting her graduation from the University of Arizona this year. She is also an Arab nationalist.

It’s an assessment that goes to the root of modern critiques of capitalism: the idea that money is power and if you don’t have it, you don’t matter. However, I need to point out that ranking political capital in the Arab world is not particularly inspiring or exciting, if the news are to be believed.

When I was studying in the United States, I noticed that many people who criticized capitalism did not have a concrete alternative to offer, unless “let’s live in a commune, grow our own potatoes, and go to the bathroom in a hole in the ground” counts as an alternative. In the Arab world, by contrast, critics of capitalism are too ready to jump in bed with religious fundamentalists.

Suddenly, an outhouse sounds more and more appealing.

I’m not stupid enough to think that a healthy economy will wipe the tears of suffering children and fill the sky with rainbows. I do, nevertheless, observe silly human differences put aside for the sake of a good business relationship.

It’s heartening, for example, to see more and more women climbing the ladder of success in a region where a woman working outside the home still causes heart palpitations. These women are a privileged minority, but they stand for something important and real. Family allegiances help many succeed, but if we take someone like Hillary Clinton seriously, why not an Arab woman of a similar background?

Lubna Olayan is a Saudi Arabian business leader, considered to be one of the most powerful women in the world. The implications of her persona alone are huge, and yet they are ignored by intellectuals who devote their time solely to discussing the victimhood of the Arab woman. Whataboutery erases Olyan’s success: “sure, some Saudi woman somewhere may be big, but what about…”

This is defeatism, and defeatism is dangerous. When good people throw up their hands, they cede the floor to radicals and extremists.

I don’t believe that a thinking Arab’s choices are limited to drooling complacency or making bombs. Instead, we need to develop a constructive attitude for the sake of the future of this region, financial and otherwise. There is something to learn from the trajectories of today’s influential Arabs from a political perspective, if you remember the role diplomacy plays in business.

Tearing something down is easier than building upon it, but that doesn’t always make the former right.

to cleanse that impure pedigree
And with Oprah at your side
You’re sure to glide
Tell America about your papa
the one in heaven
In one afternoon a campaign boon

A reverent scene
Beside the media Queen
Spreading the American dream
We are all one in the body of Christ
So don’t you go traveling
among the disbelievers
the Allah deceivers
they may not like your version
of the great conversion
and go after your ass
till you do the reversion
Stay safe man
You’re in America now Obama
The religious freedom nation
of personal salvation

Your name is Obama
Barack allah feek

Baruch ha shem Ya Hussein
you’re related to the Queen!!*

* – See Juancole.com for Arabo/Islamic lineage of British royalty

In her bio, Ms. Mahdi lists her mother as her source of support in pursuing her goals. She also lists her background in graphic design and advertising. She has done freelance work for a variety of Egyptian publications, so, if you’re in Egypt, she might already be familiar.

Mahdi looks like she is no friend of the George W. Bush administration, though she takes on other subjects just as freely (Osama Bin Laden, Brad Pitt, and Tony Blair among them – personally, I’m a big fan of the Brad Pitt caricature; considering the fact that this man’s perfectly chiseled face has been staring at me from every newsstand).

Mahdi is working in a male-dominated field, in a country where bloggers and other outspoken individuals can wind up in jail. For this alone, she ought to be admired, methinks.

Her commentary on the Shia-Sunni rift and the political exploitation thereof caught my eye, and will stay with me for a long time. By contrast, the depictions of George W. Bush as Satan/monster lack bite (notwithstanding such depictions’ popularity in Egypt, and beyond).

I think if Mahdi were to focus more on specific aspects of current U.S. foreign policy, her work would become more pointed – and accessible not only to the Arab world, but to those beyond it.

I think as Mahdi continues to hone her craft, more good stuff will happen.

The answer is yes.

Furthermore, there is no time to waste when it comes to exercising this essential right.

In “Women’s roles take divergent paths in First and Third Worlds”, Rosa Brooks quotes Francis Fukuyama’s article titled “Women and the Evolution of World Politics,” which debates that “a truly matriarchal world would be less prone to conflict and more cooperative than the one we now inhabit” although “masculine policies will still be essential even in a feminized world.”

Brooks takes Fukuyama’s point a step further to state that because of the increasing female infanticide in Asia, Asian men are in “surplus” and “unless we take the changing demographics of gender as seriously as we take other emerging global trends such as weapons proliferation and climate change the future could be as dangerous as a cage full of Fukuyama’s furious male chimpanzees.”

Interestingly, Islam in the 21st Century has been reduced to a dangerous cage full of furious men not because of demographics of gender but because of the patriarchs of our society and community, people such as Abubakar Ahmad Gada, the author of Political Irrelevance of Women in Islam.

Gada’s basic premise is the hadith in which the Prophet Muhammed (pbuh) had said, “A nation which placed its affairs in the hands of a woman shall never prosper.” Sanusi wrote an informative article, “Women and Political Leadership in Muslim Thought,” which sheds light on the relevance of the hadith to preceding events and circumstances under which the Prophet (pbuh) had said that.

However, many Muslims read the hadith in isolation and insist that a nation led by a woman will not have Allah’s blessings.

History suggests otherwise. The sun never set on the British Empire under the rule of Queen Victoria; Russia flourished under Catherine the Great; and Spain was ‘Christened’ under Queen Isabella and her Spanish Inquisition. India prospered under the premiership of Indira Ghandi, and Golda Meir defeated Egypt, Syria, and Jordan.

Where women leaders have prospered, they have failed greatly too. It is particularly the failures of Muslim female leaders that have involved men protecting patriarchal interests. A’ishah Bint Abi Bakr was the first Muslim woman to be defeated. She played an important role in the civil war, was defeated and captured in 656 and only released on the promise that she would abandon political life. It is paradoxical that when A’ishah lost the Battle of the Camel against Ali, her companion Abu Bakra opportunistically narrated the hadith spoken 25 years that “A nation which placed its affairs in the hands of a woman shall never prosper” Definitely, A’ishah’s resignation from politics served the interests of the menfolk who had started to reclaim the rights of Muslim women in Arabia. 1400 years later, women in several Muslim societies are denied their rights by men, rights which are promised by Islam. Such societies are, of course, very patriarchal.

Muslim women have appeared in history either as political leaders or as political decision-making consorts to their husbands. Some prominent Muslim consorts and leaders are: Khayzuran of Baghdad, a slave turned caliph-consort who made important political decisions for her husband; Empress Shulü Hatun of Qidan, who ruled Qidan until her son was elected as a successor; Asma Bint Shibab al-Sulayhiyya of Yemen whose husband Sultan Ali al-Sulahi delegated much of the administration of the kingdom to her; Radiyya Altamish; Kassi of Mali; Oghul Qamish; and Dudu of Janupur. Almost all of these Muslim consorts and leaders are famous for sermonising at the Friday Khutbas, waging wars, setting up health and education programmes, improving state economy, and have proved to be capable leaders.

Although they can be as dishonest or brutal as men, women usually take longer to decide whether or not to engage in wars because “violence and the coalition-building is primarily the work of males… most murderous violence is the province of males, and the nature of female alliances is different” (Fukuyama). Women are better at multitasking by nature and are “trained to be more empathetic”. These are two important leadership qualities.

Muslims believe that the Prophet (pbuh) married A’ishah so she could carry forward his traditions and she did become a prominent authority on Muslim tradition. Lately, contemporary Muslim leaders are marrying young and intelligent women that boost their political careers. Queen Rania of Jordan is one example of a bright Muslim woman leader. In 2004, the Ruler of Dubai, Mohammed Bin Rashed married Princess Haya of Jordan, who is a very prominent and popular community figure. There is also Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser Al-Missned, the Consort of the Emir of Qatar.

There have been other winds of change lately. Last year the Kuwaiti parliament voted to give women full political rights but this amendment to the electoral law came 1400 years after Islam had declared that women had the right to vote. It is unfortunate that contemporary Muslim men have been denying women the rights that their religion had promised them so long ago.

As Amina Wadud points out, there has been a “historical absence of female voices in the interpretive process for most of our intellectual legacy. Some have erroneously taken this absence to mean irrelevance of female voices or experiences in determining meaning and application.” Wadud suggests that to “bring about a more complete human articulation of textual meaning” of the Quran it is urgent to “include women’s voices and perspectives within the interpretive process and to sustain those perspective as integral to our intellectual legacy.”

A Muslim woman’s moral excellence has been a Muslim man’s greatest excogitation and it is time that we see beyond the pale to include women in Muslim governance and the development of government. We have waited too long while Muslim men attempted to sort out our political problems and taught us how to practice our religion, sometimes failing miserably by nurturing a male chauvinistic society for years at the expense of house arrested women. If women are not given a chance, the world will soon witness more and more furious men rattling the bars of the Muslim political cage.

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto is tragic. There can be no doubt about that. But what shocks me today, as I am shocked on a daily basis with the stream of murders and suicides in Pakistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey, and so many other countries is this nagging question: Where on earth do they find them?? Where on earth do the plotters and schemers find so many willing men and women of young age to mould into their insane vision of the world? How did those who planned this latest act of violence stumble upon this latest specimen of misguided fervour and convince him (at least it seems to be a him at the time of writing) to go and end his life by assassinating a mother of three children. How did they get through to this guy? And more importantly, why is it so goddamn easy to find self-terminating assassins in our region?

(To read this article in full, please visit GlobalComment)

With the advent of the MySpace, Orkut, Facebook and other social networking websites onlinethe Muslim population of the world has increasingly come in contact with the outside world and vice versa. Though Western culture has been ever present in most Islamic countries in the form of movies, media and other cultural-communicative mediums, there has been a lack of actual interaction between Muslims and Non-Muslims en masse. This has changed recently. But will this change the way people actually relate to each other?

Through 3rd party mediums like Al-Jazeera, state run propagandist TV channels like Pakistan’s PTV, ultra-conservative news agencies like FoxNews and even ideologically “progressive” newspapers like the Washington Post, stereotypes as to the other side were established in the minds of the viewers. The images this sort of media creates exemplifies their differences to the degree of making the “other side” look almost alien in their basic values and beliefs. While these perceptions may hold varying degrees of authenticity, the overall impression both sides have of each other – to put it mildly – can not be called accurate.

For example, most Muslims living in Islamic countries who have not visited the West feel that the West objectifies and disrespects women – and the image in their mind is that of a bikini clad “hot” blonde strolling down a beach… courtesy of BayWatch (or something like Baywatch)!

Most Western people who also have not had the opportunity to visit a Muslim country, have the concept in mind that Muslim women are oppressed – the stereotypical image they have in mind is of a shambling mound of walking curtain, trudging through an arid and rocky terrain on a blazingly hot summer-day.

Both these images are poor generalizations. Though there probably are millions of “walking curtains” in the Islamic world, there are at least an equal number of non-walking curtains. These “Muslims” hang on window sills. But there is also a significantly large number of non-curtain clad women in the Islamic world. Just as there are (unfortunately, har har) clothed women in the West.

But what causes such misperceptions? Several different hypotheses exist. The following, by Robert Jervis are the well respected by social scholars;

1. Belief-Fact Gap:

The issue here is that most people tend “to fit incoming information into their existing theories and images”. Robert Jervis further explains this concept: “A theory will have greater impact on a [person's] interpretation of data – the greater the ambiguity of the data & the higher the degree of confidence with which the actor holds the theory.” (p. 466)

For example, our “friendly” neighborhood trigger happy Texan would interpret news about Muslims sacrificing goats and other animals to Allah, as a ritual for venting their terrorist emotions until they’re able to get their hands on other Daniel Pearls. In her mind Muslims are the “enemy” and such an act of violence would only confirm her belief that Islam preaches violence. (Just to note: We Towelians are against animal cruelty in all its forms. Especially when it has a religious bent). In the same way our “Love thy neighbor or I will shoot you in the face” Muslim would interpret the Danish cartoons as part of a greater conspiracy against Islam. Or at least the “Diet Muslim” (aka “moderate Muslim”) would view it as part of the larger “Clash of civilizations”.

2. Belief-New Idea Gap:

Robert Jervis writes: “[people are] apt to err by being too wedded to the established view and too closed to new information, as opposed to being too willing to alter their theories” (p. 468)

This issue is especially true for Muslims because unlike bikini clad Texans armed with M16 rifles, they have an extremely ill-advised confidence in their interpretation of the world – an interpretation that is almost exclusively shaped by their religion. Therefore if it is insisted to them that their worldview is erroneous, instead of re-assessing their image of the West, they will get offended. This is mostly because the mainstream Muslim worldview has been thoroughly molded by religious belief; the Quran extensively talks about various people including Jews, Christians and other “kafirs” (non-believers) in highly political terms. It even describes the mentality and machinations of non-Muslims, ranging from how they might interpret and respond to the content of the Quran, to the kind of intentions they will have towards Muslims (eg: Sura 8:30 YUSUFALI: “Remember how the Unbelievers plotted against thee, to keep thee in bonds, or slay thee, or get thee out (of thy home). They plot and plan, and Allah too plans; but the best of planners is Allah”). Therefore trying to convince them, for example, that the Afghanistan invasion was not part of a “plot against Islam” will be taken as an indirect attack on their religious beliefs. This sort of thinking insulates Muslims from external criticism of their beliefs. And by “insulate” I mean… (add expletive of choice here).

Here are examples of Muslim interpretation of data:

Muslim Image of Israelis: Muslims believe that Israeli people or Zionists (the terms appear to be interchangeable) are waging a pseudo covert war against Muslims and Islam in general. Specifically that the Israelis are enemies of Islam.

Data: Israel sentences Jewish Terrorist

Muslim Interpretation of Data: This maneuver by the Israeli government will be interpreted as a publicity stunt rather than an act inspired by justice, since the enemy could not possibly have any good qualities.

The heart of the matter is that whenever Israelis do something wrong like commit human rights abuses in the West Bank, it confirms Muslim beliefs about Israel, but when Israelis do something right like apprehending and sentencing a Jewish terrorist, Muslims will not acknowledge this as a good thing. Therefore such news is “fit” into their world view by arbitrarily believing that their intentions behind even a just act are malicious. Clearly this is twisted thinking but what is truly worrisome is that this phenomenon is extremely pervasive throughout the strata of Muslim society, with social and economic barriers having little impact.

These are serious issues facing the Muslim world, especially if Muslims wish to live in harmony with the rest of the planet – and the situation is equally grave when it comes to the growing Islamophobia in the Western world. What people don’t understand is that for there to be harmony, they will need to give up some of their ideas about the world and compromise on their political objectives. But they are unwilling to – not because they are maliciously stubborn, but because they lack adequate concepts of self-critiquing, which blinds them to the errors of their own unreasonable world view.

Salahudin is a Pakistani writer. He is a libertarian-liberal apostate of Islam. He has lived in Pakistan and the US.

There’s an indelible link between our ideas of religion and our ideas of justice. More than loving your neighbor, more than forgiveness, more than culture and nationalism, the idea of justice is central to any persistent view of religious thought.

So OJ’s alleged partner in crime wasn’t actually stealing anything. In his mind he was righting a wrong, helping OJ get back his memorabilia that was stolen from him. That is justice, and that’s a religious concept, thus the Bible and his righteous proclamation.

Despite what the Christian Bible actually says, what people view it means is that wrongs will be righted, that the unjust will be punished even violently, and that the just will be rewarded.

You see this contradiction everywhere. The “Bible Belt” is huge on both capital punishment and the Ten Commandments. I suppose “You shall not kill” can be reinterpreted to mean “You shall not murder.” However, “murder” is a political word. One man’s murder is another man’s liberation. Besides all that, the New Testament is full of requirements by Jesus that we forgive our enemies and not retaliate.

What we ultimately strive for in terms of religious spirituality is for justice to prevail. Not to say that things like compassion and forgiveness aren’t extremely important, but these things tend to have relevance in a more personal setting. Individuals forgive for personal reasons. It would be a perversion of justice for societies to forgive criminals regularly without cause.

One of the most common, but strange, questions in religious philosophy concerns the injustice of God. Why do bad things happen to good people and why do good things happen to bad people? I say strange because the question is absurd. God is not unjust. Bad and good things happen for two reasons. First they happen randomly. Second they happen because we make them happen. God has nothing to do with it.

We know from the story of Job in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) that God on Earth acts in random ways, essentially like nature without any unseen motivation. We also know from the first chapter of the Quran that we must reach out to God in order to be shown the straight path.

This puts the cause of justice squarely in human hands. It’s up to us, not God to remedy injustice. This is a primary pursuit of human activity. We are motivated to create a just world and eliminate injustice.

The interesting suggestion that I would make is that injustice is much more than an element of behavior that humans remedy through criminal punishment. Injustice is innate to nature, and it’s up to us to get rid of it.

For instance cancer is an injustice. It’s unjust for a good person to suffer and die from cancer. Helping cure cancer is part of the fight for justice. A lot of people want to find cures for cancer, and it’s much more than making money or putting your name down in the history books. It is a part of our fundamental drive to make things right.

This idea begs the question of the degree of legitimacy of the US pursuit of justice in foreign lands. Consider that cancer kills over one half a million Americans each year, and now the US deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan greatly out number deaths from 9/11 and all acts of global terrorism. I would say that if we prioritized our pursuit of justice, we would have different policies with respect to Iraq and Afghanistan.

We live in a violent world, and America is a violent society. I would suggest that this violence comes from not understanding the concept of justice, and being unjust in our application of government policy.

For instance, many American children join gangs. My claim is that they do this because the framework of justice that they grow up in, both at home and society at large is inconsistent and corrupt. They seek out gangs because within them, justice is swift and consistent in the self contained world of a young gang member. Paradoxically the drive to join a gang in a young person comes from that person’s desire for justice.

And on the global stage, meanwhile, the US hegemonic system of justice is absurd. It’s kind of like the Wild West out there were people are motivated to take justice into their own hands because just power structures are either non-existent or the power structures are unjust themselves. We won’t see any ebbing of challenges to the global power structures until they become just.

Two years later, a West African Muslim immigrant by the name of Amadou Diallo had his turn to experience Giuliani Time. The encounter would be brief, and it would cost him his life. The unarmed man was walking home in his Bronx neighborhood and was approached by the NYPD. When he made a gesture to reach for his wallet the officers fired 41 shots, killing an unarmed, hard-working man with no criminal record in cold blood. This was Giuliani Time in New York, a time when the rules and regulations on the police had been loosened and residents of many African-American, Latino and immigrant neighborhoods lived in fear of mostly white elite units in the department who, under the direction of Giuliani, often cracked down brutally on any perceived threats.

The police tactics of the Giuliani administration were not in vain; they coincided with the massive uprooting of the poor and working-classes of New York City in order to make way for the more affluent crowd that sought to turn NYC into their own playground. Rudy led the fight to turn NYC from a place made up largely traditional, working-class families in ethnic neighborhoods to a mecca of hedonism and mindless consumerism. Many of those who worked with Rudy all came away with the same impression: he is hard on the little guy, and an authoritarian. In other words, “he does not play well with others”.

The style of conservatism that Rudy championed is not that of Evangelical Christians or that of grassroots white populism. The conservatism of Rudy in New York was based on a tough law-and-order stance, a pro Wall Street view of economics, hostility towards minorities, and “small government”. While Republicans around the country were railing against gays, Rudy left his second-wife in order to go and live with a gay couple while publicly committing adultery. While the grassroots was railing against abortion, Rudy was funding it.

Far from being an enemy of Hollywood and the “cultural elite,” Rudy was a friend to that particular crowd. This occurred at the same time that the coalition of the traditional America left waned, and many who thought of themselves as liberal no longer had much concern for issues of racial and economic justice, being more interested in lifestyle issues. And on those issues, Rudy was in agreement with them.

Giuliani’s role as the mayor of New York city gives you a pretty good idea of what Rudy will be like as a President on domestic issues; he will do little in the way of making health-care accessible to all, he will favor immigration that benefits the business class, he will not push on social issues, and he will do very little to fight for racial and economic justice. In addition to this, Rudy has a history in NYC of putting his own cronies (such as former Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, who is now under indictment and has alleged ties to the Sicilian Mafia of New York) in high positions. We could expect a Rudy cabinet to be stacked with yes-men and women, much like in the Bush White House.

What does Giuliani’s past tell us about what kind of a world leader he would be? New York’s elected officials, more so than any other American politicians, have to take an undiplomatic stance on issues regarding Israel and her Arab neighbors. This is done for political necessity. Rudy was a mayor who had strong support from the pro-Israel lobby, and throughout political career has remained an uncompromising supporter of the right-wing line of thought wherein Israel is concerned. Rudy, for example, personally ejected Yasser Arafat from a concert for world leaders in New York. He’s even gone as far as compare Ariel Sharon to all-American hero Babe Ruth.

Prior to 9-11 Rudy simply known for being pro-Israel; but post 9-11 the man with no military experience or a previous foreign policy post, has sought to define himself as the ultimate warrior against “Islamic fascism,” and is seeking to dance on the blood of the 9-11 victims all the way to the White House. He crassly exploits the tragedy at every possible opportunity. In an average speech, he mentions 9-11 in practically every other sentence.

In America, Rudy was seen as a great “take-charge” leader following 9-11and he wants to keep reminding people of this. I, however, fail to see how founding his campaign on a tragedy that he did nothing to cause or prevent is at all justifiable. In the grand scheme of things, Rudy was a bystander to 9-11 (a bystander who has gone as far as to claim that he was “one” of the clean-up workers at the rubble of WTC) , so why exactly is he still allowed to use 9-11 to such an extent?

The answer is simple: average Americans are still too preoccupied with following professional sports and the lives of celebrities while paying lip service to the political process, so a guy like Rudy can easily continue to piggyback on the deaths of thousands when he is not being asked the tough questions.

It is not hard to figure out what Rudy will do on a global level if elected; he will continue the disastrous and costly traditions of George W. Bush. He will most likely bomb Iran, he will keep American troops planted firmly in Iraq, he will expand the so-called “war on terror” (possibly to Saudi Arabia and Syria), and he will let Israel go unchecked wherein Palestinians are concerned. He is likely to severely curtail minority rights, immigration, and student visas to America, visas from Muslim countries whose younger generations cannot afford to be isolated from the West. He will be in prime position to infringe upon the rights of Muslims living in America, all in the name of his war against “Islamic fascism” – a war whose real purpose is mere political capital.

Umar Lee can be contacted here: umarlee [at] gmail [dot] com

This time, though, the unrest comes from within La Métropole : the immigrant who has been languishing to find the stable strikes back with a vengeance. Although it remains doubtful, his late revolt may force Maman Fouance to take a hard look at herself in the mirror and face up to its anti-Semitic, xenophobic, and racist past and present. Beleaguered and sandwiched between Germany to the East, Great Britain and the US to the West, the country that used to be the envy of the world can hardly breathe today.

As a matter of fact, it is choking. For even Danon , the most French of all French firms, would have been bought by Coca-Cola had the government not stepped in to save the day. Otherwise, how can one explain the official reaction to the first outbreak of anger in La Banlieue of the Interior Minister, Nicholas Sarkozy, himself the son of an immigrant from Hungary, but wanting to appear plus royal que la roi , who promised to “karcherize” the “scum” who were burning cars and torching buildings. Karcher is the brand name for a kind of sand-blaster, the sort of machine one might use to scour bird droppings from a wall. According to former Libération columnist Doug Ireland, to speak of karcherizing the Arab and/or African on the streets was “as close as one can get to hollering ethnic cleansing without actually saying so.” The motives of the man they call Sarko are not hard to divine: he wants to run for president in 2007 and has clearly decided that his constituency is the white right nurtured by that other bigot, Jean-Marie Le Pen. His tough guy language is a nakedly Powellite bid for Le Front National vote.

There is another sense in which the country with the impressionistic allure that inspired Cézanne, Van Gogh, and Giono to paint and write about what Michel Butor aptly called “La vive clarté du soleil, du ciel et de la parole” is home to a large Maghrebian community who amble along, speaking a mixture of Arabic, Berber, and French–what the French call charabia.

The men lead, their backs hunched like Egyptian vultures and the backs of their loafers squashed flat, the easier to slip them off; women follow in white head scarves and voluminous ankle-to-neck raincoats, pushing baby carriages. Their harsh Semitic gutturals provoke irritated stares from French couples nearby, but for me they call to mind Algiers. Different though they may be, Algiers and Marseilles, or, rather, France and The Maghreb are becoming increasingly linked. Since the 1950s “North Africans” have been moving to France in great numbers, legally and illegally, and now make up roughly 12% of the country’s population.

It is estimated that every year at least 100,000 illegal immigrants (of whom possibly half are from The Maghreb) enter France, where legally registered foreigners already number 6 million out of a population of 65 million; the total number of foreigners in the country may be as high as 7 or 8 million. Pan-European statistics reflect a similarly large-scale migratory trend (some 500,000 illegal immigrants slip into the EU each year) which accelerated in the 1990s with wars breaking out or intensifying in Algeria, Rwanda, Sudan, and with the opening of borders in countries of the former Soviet bloc. More and more France and the rest of Europe are finding themselves confronted with an issue that regions of the US (in particular the Southwest and the cities of the Northeast) have been wrestling with for a long time: How to handle an upsurge in unwanted, mainly economic migrants while preserving constitutionally enshrined individual liberties and human rights?

And if London is referred to as the “World’s Metropolis, London, Londostan,” Paris is called “Le Paris Arabe.” The sense one has of Paris as an Arab city (i.e. swart, dirty, disorderly, smelly) is further distorted by the qualitative “Arab” which evokes both the fascination with and fear of Islam, the colonial discourse and the ambiguous curiosity, and, last but not least, the image of the Colonial Other , which remains unchanged because the qualifier forces us to think about the fantasy that is either enthusiasm or rejection, exoticism or disfiguration, paradox or oddity, ignoring the richness and diversity of the aforementioned community and binding it to the colonial context.

The term “Arab” also evokes the dialects of image, gaze, and History. A simplistic formula, without question, but a “concept” that corresponds to an imaginary world that has meaning only for itself; or, to put it more simply, from stooges on display in human zoos to skirmishers who have come to rescue the mother country from danger, from native subjects of the Empire to rebels rising up against French supervision, from colonized to immigrant, from desperate refugees to little savages, from “boucs” to Beurs –to make a long story short, from the three colors of the colonial Empire, “black, yellow, brown” to the “black, white, beur” generation of 1998–the World Cup of Soccer–how have the French thought of the hundreds of thousands of migrants from the former colonies, who also have made France? What image do they hold of us (ex-colonials)?

Are the fanciful and imaginative ideas they first formed of the Colonial Other still valid today and how has that perception evolved over time? The good-natured African who has “rhythm in his blood;” the secretive, invisible, hard-working Asian who is gifted with numbers (the abacus); the thieving, fanatical, underground Arab who goes on the rampage in the suburbs, can never rest. In fact, he is always impelled to further action, misrepresentation, and disfiguration. It is the history of these stereotypes, entrenched fabrications since the 19th century, that must be examined, and which are important because instead of thinking about the systems that are preventing immigrant children from benefiting fully from equal rights and opportunities, the élite tell them to “integrate.” As if the young people of the urban ghettos were practicing the discrimination that they are being subjected to. And so the media-exploited success of Franco-Maghrebians, whether intellectual, financial, in sports or in art, is juxtaposed to the frightening figures of “hooligans,” “terrorists,” and “barbarians.”

The historical experience of good foreigners and bad illegalsis nowhere more pronounced than in the case of the Arab figure in a country where La République is portrayed as a caring mother of all those who live within her belly. Whether it is Zinedine Zidane, Chabb Khaled, Jemal Debbouze, Azzouz Beggag, Isabelle Adjani or Khaled Kelkal, he is branded, disfigured, and at times, simply killed because he poses a constant threat to those who view him as the disturbing post-colonial character sans pareil . He is young, unemployed, banlieusard , fanatic, delinquent, terrorist, Muslim tending toward Islamism, and of Maghrebian origin. Kelkal, who was shot four times by the police on September 29, 1995 because he was involved in the terrorist attacks that brought the Paris subway system to a halt in 1995, is the prototype of this intimate enemy. He perfectly fits the bill for what the French like to call “goat fuckers” and “half-made” Arabs. The only difference between Kelkal and, say, Debbouze, is that the latter is an “immigrant, but successful.” The usage of the conjunction “but” embodies worlds of its own. This “but” that we find regularly in major French media deserves our full attention insofar as its history is one of ambivalence between the private fantasy and the immense compensatory undertaking to “integrate” the Colonial Other , who is either a “ sans-papiers ” or “ l’Arabe du coin .” His reflecting face and his blind face are both spaces of disgust: here the chit-chat, there the redundant signs of representation or lack of it.

In such a state of siege, the rejection of the Arab figure can be traced back to the colonial era. It is, of course, convenient (for the French at least) to have him negatively portrayed even if he succeeds in fashioning a career for himself the way Zidane has, for example. The link between immigration and xenophobia is clearly more than a matter of scholarly flexibility. For it has, in fact, contributed to the rapid growth of right-wing extremist parties in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, and Italy, but it was in France in 1972 that the first anti-immigrant political party appeared– Le Front National , founded and led by Jean-Marie Le Pen and most popular around Marseilles, if not in it. After 1962, the year Algeria became independent, Marseilles became the home of about a million pied-noirs, who left Algeria against their will. The rancor of that forced parting from the country of their birth still lives on in the hearts of the many French who argue that if the Arabs expelled us from our homes in Algeria, say, why should we accommodate them today on this side of the Mediterranean? The question may be legitimate in that it is almost impossible to think of France without thinking of Algeria–what Edward Said shrewdly termed “enter-twined histories, overlapping territories”–by which he meant these two narratives are locked together and cannot be viewed separately. Decrying the “silent invasion” of Muslims from across the sea, Le Pen has blamed immigrants for unemployment, crime, drug trafficking, and abuse of the welfare state, among other things. He has also accused them of threatening the “Christian identity” of France.

The ambition of the French to keep France Gallic is bound to fail. This is nowhere more obvious than in the city where the presence Maghrebian population is most pronounced. Take Marseilles and the case will be clear enough. From La Canebière , the city’s largest commercial avenue where Arabs and Africans clean windows or remove garbage, the city grew north, adding what came to be known as Les Quatiers Nords, or northern districts where the likes of Jemal Debbouze, Zinedine Zidane, Khaled Kelkal, and other sauvageaons were born and grew up–immigrant ghettos, really–that spread all the way to the limestone hills visible from Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde. Beset with crime, street gangs, drug trading, and unemployment as high as 45 percent, Les Quartiers Nords now make up about a third of Marseilles. Most immigrants are housed in high rises called HLMs, an acronym standing for “moderate-income housing” that has become synonymous with tenements and immigrants. They are not for casual touring. During a visit to one HLM situated on La Rue Félix Pyatt, I could not fail to notice how the windows of abandoned apartments have been cemented over, but in places the concrete has been knocked out and smoke is poring through the holes. Squatters live in some of the filthy units. The ground floors of a couple of the high-rises are paneled in glass painted unevenly in blue or green; tiny Arabic signs announce the ramshackle premises behind them as mosques. Here there are groups of Arab and African youths in baggy jeans and baseball caps standing in the lots between HLMs , looking tough and watching the traffic. Cars are smashed and upturned; they are also stripped of every exterior part, even the wheels. The youths loot and burn them “just for fun,” the children of Les Quartiers told me, because “there is nothing else to do here, there is no work.” Most of them are second and third generation who quit school early, cannot find work, and turn to crime as much as to make a living as to kill time, knocking over stores in the city center, mugging pedestrians, or dealing shit (hashish) that they buy off traffickers riding the ferries from The Maghreb. Shit serves both as a source of income and as entertainment. The climate is one of mistrust between the French and Africans, or, between whites and blacks. Hostility, rejection, and racism are the hallmarks of a life lived on the edge; a life geared not for the soft hearted, but for a lost generation who are already hardened by the age of 15.

In a period of conflict between East and West such as the one we are experiencing today following the invasion of Iraq, when millions of households are in the grip of insecurity and unemployment, curiosity tends to give way to fear, distrust to hostility. This reality is best reflected in the daily portrayal of Arabs and/or Muslims in France, but also in the rest of Europe. They are represented in the liberal and not so liberal Western media as a vortex of ethnic passion–a multi-cultural dream turned nightmare. We are dealing with an imaginary cartography, which projects onto the real landscape its own shadowy ideological antagonisms, in the same way that the conversion-symptoms of the hysterical subject in Freud project onto the physical body the map of another, imaginary anatomy. Much of this position is racist. First, there is the old-fashioned, unabashed rejection of the Other (despotic, barbarian, Muslim, corrupt, Oriental) in favor of true values (Western, civilized, democratic, Christian). But there is also a “reflexive,” politically correct racism: the liberal, heterogeneous perception of the Other as a site of ethnic horrors and intolerance, of primitive, tribal, irrational passions, as opposed to the rationality of post-nation-state conflict resolution by negotiation and compromise. Racism is a disease of the Muslim Other , while “we” in the West are merely hosts, observers, neutral, benevolent and righteously dismayed. Finally, there is reverse racism, which celebrates the exotic authenticity of the Muslim Other, as in the notion of Arabs, for instance, who, by contrast with inhibited, anaemic Western Europeans, still exhibit a prodigious lust for life. For example, if a stereotype declares the Arab to be “terrorist” or “sexually rapacious,” then even as it marks him as inferior to the self-controlled white, it announces his power to violate, and thus requires the imposition of restraint if such power is to be curtailed: so the stereotype cannot rest, it is always impelled to further action. He can be spoken of in racist clichés which nobody would dare to apply to the Jew, for example. Think of the status of the “ sans-papiers ” who are seen as a threat or a target for resentment. There is the atavistic distrust that sedentary rural societies have of nomads, and then the hostility of the middles classes toward impoverished vagabonds, people without hearth or home, rogues and beggars, street entertainers, day laborers, gypsies, Arabs, itinerants from elsewhere or strangers from inside, whose modern counterparts are society’s outcasts and of no fixed abode. In general, these people have been stigmatized by being required to carry special “papers,” from the 19th century passbooks for laborers and traveling performers to today’s residence permits, and subjected to endless administrative and police checks.

There are, as ever with displacement, disturbing and uncanny twists in the tale of leaving home. One of them is still alive in Europe where most migrants have settled. “We are homesick everywhere.” This is how those who left The Maghreb for France describe their rootlessness. Their children, born in the West, grow up torn between an allegiance to their parents and through them to a Maghreb, many have never laid eyes on, and another to their adoptive home that is determined to keep them on the margins where it thinks they belong. Many of them do not even speak the language of the country (Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco) from which their parents emigrated; most are criticized when they visit The Maghreb because they do not know how to speak or act properly there. Once their parents would have expected to return to live in the houses they had built, but now most remain in Europe because corruption at “home” has diminished the assets they sent back and their Maghreb offers no special security benefits. As the Muslim population of Europe grows beyond 15 million, as relations are strained by conflict and backlash, it is important to appreciate that the next generation of children, even when discriminated against in Europe and teased unmercifully “at home,” are not simply in search of a lost community or adrift in a European form of existential alienation. The media refer to the arsonists who set France on fire and the bombers who died attacking the London transport system as “home-grown,” but the three British-born children of Pakistani immigrants were not at home; indeed it is their sense of being without a place of their own that is striking. To dismiss them as alienated youth or their ideas as perversions of religion is too simple, however. Their culture says that all knowledge should benefit the Believers, but they see no sign of this in their second “home.” On the contrary, the older generation seems ineffectual and the whole world unnaturally inverted. In such circumstances, it is their own culture–not some generalized version of human psychology–that makes the world appear as intensely meaningful to those who take action as it seems horrifically meaningless to those they hurt. The actions of the London bombers, of the hundreds of Muslims who have blown themselves up in suicide attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past two years, and the millions who have stood mute and allowed others to act are facts that no one can ignore. But they should prompt Westerners to attempt to transcend stereotypes rather than to try to do away with difference. If we concentrate only on the global, the local will almost certainly stab us in the back; if we see only alienation or loss we may never notice resilience and creativity. We may think we know what it means to be at home or to feel homesick, but we need to understand what it means to Muslims–not just in Europe, but everywhere. That at bottom is an idea worth fighting for.