Each comedian profiled has their own angle on both the entertainment business and the experiences of Muslims in the United States. Maysoon Zayid talks about being a Palestinian-American Muslim woman who doesn’t cover her hair, a virgin, and a disabled person aspiring to become an actress.

Dean Obeidallah shares the story of how he initially stopped using his Arab last name when performing in the aftermath of 9/11, then had a change of heart and a change of direction.

Azhar Usman, who is shown praying in his dressing room at one point, discusses going through a conservative phase before realizing that his path in life ultimately lay elsewhere.

Many viewers will relate to Ahmed Ahmed’s anxiety in regards to air travel, except that in Ahmed Ahmed’s case there is the added “bonus” of traveling while Muslim and enduring extreme suspicion. And Tissa Hami’s account of enduring prejudice both from non-Muslims and Muslims (some of whom have told her that she is “going to hell”) is not exactly a laughing matter.

Yet, staying true to its subject matter, the special manages to be light-hearted as well. The featured jokes could probably make even David Horowitz laugh, or so I’d like to believe.

Prior to the premiere, I was given an opportunity to interview several of the comedians, and here is what we talked about:

Natalia: Can you tell me more about the PBS special?

Dean Obeidallah: The one-hour special is the brainchild of producer Glenn Baker who first approached us almost four years ago with the idea of shooting a documentary about Muslim and Arab-American comedians. The documentary begins with us performing before any of us had appeared on any major US TV networks. However, by the end of the documentary many of us had appeared on Comedy Central, ABC, CNN, NBC and on numerous other TV networks, so viewers get a chance to watch us move up the entertainment ladder.

Maysoon Zayid: I am so blessed to be involved in this project with such extraordinary talent, including my brother from another mother, Dean Obeidallah. Glen and Omar [Naim - the co-director] were invisible. They made it so easy for us. I’m amazed with the end product. Omar is truly genius. It’s funny. And no one gets shot. AND you get to see my Dad. That alone is worth TiVo-ing.

Natalia: What’s it like to be a Muslim American working in the entertainment industry in the year 2008?

Dean Obeidallah: The entertainment industry is very competitive and is a struggle for everyone, regardless of race or religion. [Being] an Arab-American comedian who talks about my heritage in my act, has set me apart from many other typical comedians because I have a point of view that has not been heard from too often in the past. In the last few years, the entertainment industry has increasingly been supportive of our comedy.

Maysoon Zayid: I don’t know. No, just kidding, I do. I find it very difficult not only being a Muslim but a disabled female Muslim who doesn’t fit the stereotype shown by mainstream media of what a Muslim woman should look and sound like. Nearly all of my experience comes from the entertainment side and I found that, once someone takes a chance on casting me, its been a great opportunity for people who know very little about my culture to learn. In those instances I’ve had a wonderful reception from the majority of my colleagues as well as the Muslim community itself. Oh and the Italian Christians love me too.

Natalia: What are your audiences like nowadays, do lots of Muslims come to see your shows? Are there Jews in the audience?

Dean Obeidallah: When I’m not traveling for shows, I’m in NYC performing nightly at the major comedy clubs so the audiences are a cross section of every race and religion. When we do the Middle Eastern themed shows then the audience is probably 60% Middle Eastern. I am fortunate to have supporters of all different backgrounds

Maysoon Zayid: I don’t make it a policy to check what religion my audience members are, so I cant answer that. Because its not really something I think about nor do I care. Religion is personal. It doesn’t matter to me what religion anyone in my audience is.

I do know for a fact however that I’ve had a Mormon in the audience because she happened to be my best friend.

Natalia: This is just a stab in the dark, but, as an American, I get the impression that there is this sense of discomfort between Muslim Americans and Jewish Americans, and I see comedy as something that has the long-term potential to repair this situation. Am I naive to think this way?

Maysoon Zayid: Please don’t use the word “stab” in the same sentence as “Muslim Americans” and “Jewish Americans.”

Dean Obeidallah: I truly believe that comedy can be used to foster understating between Jews, Muslims, Arabs, and [people of] all different backgrounds. In fact, I have toured colleges for four years in a show I co-created called “Stand up for Peace” with Jewish comedian Scott Blakeman. Our shows are generally co-sponsored by Arab, Jewish, and Muslim student groups.

The goal is to bring together people of different backgrounds and religions (especially Arabs/Muslims and Jewish-Americans), to foster understanding through laughter as well as to attract support for a peaceful, negotiated resolution to the Middle East conflict. I can promise you that our show is much more fun than the events featuring speakers on the extreme right who appear on college campuses with the goal of dividing people through their hate-filled rhetoric.

Natalia: “Axis of Evil” was a success in the Middle East . Would you say that this success is indicative of the way that Muslim American comedians are perceived in Muslim majority nations overall?

Dean Obeidallah: I actually didn’t go with the Axis guys for that tour. However, I have performed in the Middle East before on my own and am returning for shows in late May/early June with Ahmed Ahmed and Maz Jobrani.

Comedy does not have geographic barriers. The Internet, TV shows and films have brought the world closer together. I can also tell you that I learned that we have one big thing in common: Jokes about President Bush get big laughs both in the US and in the Middle East!

Maysoon Zayid: Whether you’re part of the Muslim community or not, if you appreciate good comedy, you’re gonna love our shows. I’ve done shows in Beirut, and I’ve done shows in Tennessee, and I can honestly say the audiences I’ve encountered have been equally enthusiastic on both sides of the globe. Masha’allah.

Natalia: I recently interviewed a Muslim American author, Dilara Hafiz, and one of the most interesting things we talked about was her idea that Islam has a great future in the United States, because it can thrive more alongside democracy. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Maysoon Zayid: First of all, I want to give respect to Dilara Hafiz. I think what she did is such a cool idea and I love the fact that she collaborated on it with her own children. That being said, I heartily disagree.

Being Muslim in America, I feel put in jeopardy. Growing up in Cliffside Park, New Jersey I never felt as if I was an “other,” and I definitely was never attacked for my religious beliefs. But, during the George W. Bush Presidency, I, as well as my nieces and nephews, started to feel overwhelmed by the pushing of his distortion of Christianity on our daily lives. I started feeling a lot less comfortable in my own country, because of this.

If, by the grace of God and the Diebold machines, we get a Democrat in office, Islam may have a slim chance of thriving, but if we end up with that dude McCain, I got two words for my fellow Muslims: “Move to Canada”. OK, sorry, that’s three words.

Natalia: Would you like to share more thoughts on this year’s election?

Maysoon Zayid: I am super-proud to say that I am actually going to be ATTENDING the Democratic National Convention, as both a delegate from the great state of New Jersey and a performer with my arab-boy-comic-harem, aka “Axis of Evil” and Dean Obeidallah.

I am so excited for this election because it means no more Dick and Bush (forgive me for not being halal, but those are their names), and I’m thrilled at the prospect of having either Hilary or Barack Obama for president (as long as Hilary shuts it about obliterating Iran).

Ideally I’d like to see them on the same ticket. But more than anything else, I want Bill back! I know he’s itchin’ to get back in the Middle East peace process/ circus. The one other thing I will say, is Michele Obama is frickin’ awesome.

Dean Obeidallah: This election has both inspired and distressed me. I have been inspired by that fact both a woman and an African-American have a realistic chance of being the next President. I am personally supporting Senator Obama, but I am confident that Senator Clinton would still be a far better president that John McCain.

I have been distressed by some people’s use of Barack Obama’s middle name “Hussein” and the word Muslim as a slur in this campaign. I believe strongly that most Americans will reject these attacks – which I view as not anti-Muslim, but as anti-American, since our country was founded on the principles of religious tolerance. Let’s hope that these haters’ voices will be drowned out by the voices of mainstream America.

Natalia: I have to ask, what’s the most ridiculous thing that’s anybody ever said to you in regards to your brand of comedy?

Tissa Hami: “Are you only doing this to get a husband?”

Dean Obeidallah: I have been asked several times: “Are you really Arab?” As if I’m going to make up an ethnic background.

Maysoon Zayid: People call me anti-Semitic all the time which is completely ludicrous, because first and foremost I am a Semite and definitely not self-hating. Also, of you look at my catalog of work I defy anyone to find an anti-Jewish comment. They don’t exist.

A funnier misconception that always shocks me is when people accuse me of pretending to be disabled. All I can think is wow. I must be the best actor ever, because I have never broken character, EVER. I always get a kick out of that one.

Natalia: And what’s the best thing?

Maysoon Zayid: The best comment I’ve ever gotten was when a really well known actress came up to me at the end of my show, and said “I never knew Palestinians had children!”… In that moment, I had introduced humanity to a people who often see Palestinians as being very far from human. So that moment really validated me.

I also absolutely love it when [people with cerebral palsy] come up to me and are like, this is dope. I can totally do whatever it is they were dreaming of, that they didn’t think they could do. That gives me the warm fuzzies except for when I remember that 98% of them wont make it.

Dean Obeidallah: By far the best comment I have heard is from people – and it’s usually from Middle Eastern-Americans and Muslim-Americans – who after a show, or in an email, say: “Thank you for doing the type of comedy that you do.” I like this so much because it means they appreciate that my comedy is not just intended to make people laugh, but also intended to challenge the way we are often defined in mainstream media and present us in a positive, likable, and accurate light. The support of our community has inspired all of us to continue talking about these issues.

Tissa Hami: When a young boy came up to me after a show and said, “You were the best comedian on the show, by far.” He didn’t tell me that I was the best female comedian on the show, or the best ethnic comedian, or the best female ethnic comedian, if you see what I mean. He just saw me as a comedian.

On a related note, check out my interview with “The Axis of Evil” comedians in Dubai. For more, please read the interview with Maysoon Zayid and Tissa Hami at Muslimah Media Watch.

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.

I’m not one of those people who believes that Israel out to be destroyed, “pushed out into the sea,” or whatever. But I do believe that Israel needs to take steps toward change. This has to do with the fact that I see a real problem with the way that this nation’s leaders have conducted themselves in the region. I see a further problem with most American politicians’ blind support for practically anything Israeli politicians say or do. Of course, anything other than blind support may quickly earn you the title of anti-Semite and/or terrorist supporter (now, now, I don’t think that anti-Semitism is not a serious issue, but the way in which it gets invoked in regards to the present conflict does make it seem as though some folk have decided to hijack the cause against it). Don’t like what’s happening in Gaza today, for example? Keep your trap shut, you just might get smeared.

I also see a problem with any sort of blind support of the activities of the Palestinian leadership. Palestinian leadership has not been great. At all. The violence of various factions have not gotten Palestine anywhere. And Hamas in particular doesn’t know PR (among other things they clearly don’t know). I’ve often wondered if Hamas cares about the terrible present conditions and the people affected by them as much as they care about ideas. Now, it’s easy for me to talk smack about a group of folks that have been living under severe restrictions for many years. It’s easy for me to lecture Palestinians from the relative safety of my present home. Yet, a serious conflict requires serious solutions nonetheless.

Speaking of solutions, there is a variety of them on the table. Both Jews and Muslims have been busy trying to work things out. And yet, we rarely hear about progress and the possibility of progress. As Gaza shivers in winter, all we hear about is the seeming inevitability of conflict, suffering, and destruction. Many of us resign ourselves to it. We shift the paper aside, and shrug, and pour a cup of coffee, and listen to the latest round of grotesque Britney gossip, and go on with our day.

So here is my question: where the hell is Bono? Where is that multitude of glamorously somber celebrities to draw our glitter-hungry gaze to what’s happening, right now, right in this very moment, to the Gazans? To remind us to stop being so heartless, to speak out? Where is that topical MTV music video with passionately flailing guitars? That magazine cover? Don’t tell me they’ve got no clue as to what is going on over there.

Sure, people have their pet causes. They can’t be in ten different places at the same time. Private jet fuel doesn’t come cheap. And lots and lots of people besides Gazans are also suffering as I type this piece. I get that part. And yet it strikes me as particularly telling that Gaza, and the latest crisis that has the entire world’s attention, is being virtually ignored by people who make their living from getting attention.

Are the issues just too tough? The possibility of being labeled an anti-Semite, or, better yet, “a self-loathing Jew” (can’t speak for everyone, but many of my Jewish friends who have criticized Israel’s policies have gotten that label, and pretty forcefully too) just too daunting? Or is it the more radical subset of the Left that celebrities simply don’t want to get involved with (sometimes, I can’t say I blame them)? Is there such a thing as a “trendy” cause, and does Palestine in general, and Gaza in particular, not conform to whatever requirements needed to be awarded such status?

So what’s going on here? Am I being silly in even asking such questions? Surely not. Bloggers for Palestine (and various non-profit organizations) clearly are paying attention to how media coverage and rhetoric play into the ongoing conflict.

And in today’s world, the cover of Vanity Fair can play as crucial a role as a statement from a top-level politician. So where is it?

Do most big celebrities and their handlers only really “care” about others for as long as it’s convenient to do so? Do these people just squeeze their publicist-approved activism in between the latest awards ceremony and waxing appointment, making sure it isn’t too complicated or difficult to talk about? Nothing personal against Bono and people like Bono (for the record: Bono does strike me as someone who, in fact, cares about the miserable state of our sorry little world), but you do have to wonder.

Is this the way it’s always going to go, for Gaza, for Palestine?

Rudyard Kipling, who was born and raised in India amongst Muslims who were the last Mogul kings, describes a boorka in his short story Beyond the Pale as an ‘evil-smelling’ garment ‘which cloaks a man as well as a woman.’ The main character, Trejago, dresses in a burqa to meet his Indian lover and symbolically throws it away at the end of the story.

No matter how I personally feel about the burqa, I think it is not anyone’s right to ridicule the garment and its wearers.

Two articles against the burqa have left me speechless not because they are insensitive in tone but because of their writers’ innate lack of knowledge about the religion they seem to target with their vile words. One is by the Bangladeshi ex-Muslim Taslima Nasrin titled “Let’s Burn the Burqa” and the other is “Death Before Burkas” by Kyle-Anne Shiver.

There are two popular opinions on hijab by Muslims; one is that it is required in the Quran and the other opinion is that it is not required and only modesty is emphasized. Ms. Nasrin claims that Quran requires niqab because of “an individual’s personal reasons” and “since then millions of Muslim women all over the world have had to suffer it.” Nasrin suggests that women

“should protest against this discrimination. They should proclaim a war against the wrongs and ill-treatment meted out to them for hundreds of years. They should snatch from the men their freedom and their rights. They should throw away this apparel of discrimination and burn their burqas.”

It was amusing to read Nasrin’s words because her knowledge about Islam, a religion she consciously abandoned, is extremely weak. A few examples:

She calls Hadith, “Quran Hadith.”Then she quotes from Surah Al- Ahzab and calls it “Surah Al – Hijab”! There is no Surah in the Quran called Al-Hijab.Nasrin uses a South Asian translation of the Quran and even that version never once mentions that a woman must cover her face. The emphasis is always on hiding and covering the female parts like chest. I wonder how she bases her argument on the ayahs that never say that a woman must cover her face? In her argument she says, “Frankly, covering just the hair is not Islamic purdah in the strict sense.” That is exactly it. Face veil is “strict” and therefore a vast number of Muslim women do not cover their faces. What’s the premise then?Muslims are supposed to know how hijab was prescribed for the Prophet’s wives but Nasrin does not. She writes, “Prophet Mohammed’s wife Ayesha was very beautiful. His friends were often found staring at her with fascination.” The reason behind asking Prophet’s wives to speak to strange men from behind a curtain, as we know, was the rumour that had spread about Ayesha (pbuh) and not because men used to stare at her.

Then there is Shiver who begins her hate-filled rant with the following:

‘Anyone who thinks I’ve spent the last 40 years of my life learning how to properly apply makeup and avoid bad-hair days, only to end up donning that hideous black thing at the command of some foreign guy with a severe case of Male-Chauvinist-Pig syndrome, is in for a fight. Give me death before burkas!’

Fair enough! No non-Muslim woman who has spent 40 years of her life learning how to apply makeup should be asked to hide that face, but Shiver does not stop there:

‘And in my opinion, the ultimate oppression of our age, no matter how one cares to cut it, slice it, dice it, whatever, is hands-down the subjugation of females – from birth to the grave – in places ruled by this cockamamie Sharia law. Liberals may be scared to call a spade a spade, but I’m not. So, I’ll say it again, Give me death before burkas!’

Again some people may find her words tolerable. The infamous Saudi rape case has stirred Shiver so one can understand where she’s coming from until she writes:

‘In my book, a gang-rape victim deserves a whole heck of lot more peace and blessings than the Prophet, who continues to inspire such barbarism in the name of his religion.

In 2002, again in Saudi Arabia, a mob of very “religious” followers of the Prophet surrounded a girls’ school that was engulfed in raging flames, and refused to permit firefighters to save the young girls, or even to permit the ones that could to flee the building.’

Many Muslims have already spoken out against the punishment awarded to the Saudi rape victim. The 2002 incidence disturbed not only me but many other Muslims. However, how does Muhammed (pbuh) fit in here? I never read one hadith awarding punishment to a rape victim. I cannot recall the Prophet asking any firefighter to let an uncovered woman burn to death.

Later Shiver goes on to talk about the Taliban, the Turkish Muslim immigrants in Germany, the mutawa (religious police) of Saudi Arabia, and cases of barbaric female genital mutilation. I have never liked or supported the Taliban or anyone else who abuses Muslim women in the name of Islam so I could be seen nodding, although Shivers information on the topic is flawed, once again:

‘The type of FGM specifically practiced and taught by the Prophet is the milder form, and limits mutilation to the removal of the clitoris. On the other hand, other forms practiced by Mohammed’s followers today are so grotesque and cause so much permanent damage, that only a truly monstrous God could possibly condone them.’

First, the hadith on female circumcision is a weak one and second even in that weak hadith the Prophet (pbuh) is said to have supported trimming of the clitoris and not its removal. Majority of Muslims do not accept the hadith as genuine which is why female circumcision (which has its roots in Pharaonic times) remains today a culture-specific practice.

Also, just for record, there is no Muslim God. The God of the Jews is the God of the Christians who is the God of the Muslims. And no “the God” is not monstrous, thank you very much. I am a Muslim woman and I am not “mutilated.”

Somehow somewhere down the line Shiver loses it again and begins lashing out at Islam:

‘Whenever I see a woman wearing one of those hideous symbols of oppression — the burka — I just wonder how many beating scars or bruises or disfigurements she is covering. I don’t blame her for being brainwashed into submission, or even for identifying with her oppressors. She is, in my view, to be pitied, not scorned.’

Let’s be honest, I am no fan of the burqa, and I am a Muslim living in a Muslim country so I know exactly what all can happen to a woman (unlike Shiver who reports gossip) but I would never be stupid enough to claim that Muslim women who choose to wear the burka do so to hide a black eye. Save yourself further disgrace, Shiver, majority of Muslim women who wear the burka are not “brainwashed into submission.”

After another crazy story of domestic abuse in a Muslim family (as if domestic abuse only takes place in Muslim households!) Shiver issues some truly classic statements:

If a Jewish or Christian man beats his wife, or otherwise abuses her, he does so against his religion, and his worship community. When a Muslim man does likewise, he does so in full obedience to the Prophet himself. It’s in the Koran. (There is enough woman-bashing fodder in the Koran for many future columns, but one of the specific admonitions to men to beat their wives is 4:34) … As an American woman, blessed by God and the Constitution, that is all I need to know about Islam. [Emphasis mine]

This just tells any reader that Shiver is just as poor at Christian and Judaist theology as she is at Islamic theology. For the interpretation of the Quranic verse 4:34, read this. As for the Bible – one may be interested in reading Deuteronomy 25:11 or Numbers: 511-21.

To conclude, I’m not arguing here whether or not hijab or niqaab is required by the Quran. This is not my place to argue that. My argument and criticism is that if a person decides to write on a topic and worse argue on a topic on a public forum then s/he should do their homework.

I am also not trying to prove Islam’s superiority over the other two Abrahamic religions. I have deep respect for all religions and special love for Abrahamic religions. All I am trying to say is that in essence many religions are not different from each other. Several years of interpretations and filtering has given rise to modern Christianity and Judaism. While Muslims cannot dare to re-write the Quran, we are trying to reinterpret it, do ijtihad, and fit traditional theological concepts in the modern world.

Give Muslims a chance. One can wish death before the burka for all I care, but please leave Islamic theology out of your rants because you clearly do not know what you are talking about.

I always wondered whether there was a deliberate Western conspiracy for the “uglification” of Islam, or whether it was the Muslims themselves who did not need outside help in this regard. I accidentally coined the term “uglification” a little more than a year ago on these pages, and by that, I was referring to the stubborn campaign to reduce Islam into a peculiar sect of sorcery and senseless mythology.

This campaign is underway to represent Islam as devoid of beauty and good taste, despite the overwhelming historical evidence to the contrary, and the slanderous attempts to turn its prophet into a prolific babbler of jumbled fairytales, instead of the magnanimous humanitarian and genius – and even revolutionary women’s rights advocate – that evidence shows he truly had been. While I’m not usually prone to believing conspiracy theories, I did encounter personal evidence proving that the elaborate plot of “uglification” was a result of a mixture between the two: our own devastating ignorance and adherence to forged texts, but also the West’s active participation in promoting and perpetuating the outright lies.

One case in point which I shall never be able to forget took place exactly twenty years ago, during my first weeks at Charterhouse, the boarding school and bastion of the British establishment in which I landed at the tender age of 16. In that pillar of the English public school system, they used to invite certain speakers to address the students on various occasions, to educate the offspring of the British elite, so to speak, about other cultures and to promote tolerance and understanding.

At one such event, we were gathered to listen to a presentation about the different world religions and their contrasting beliefs and practices, given by a person introduced to us as an expert on this subject. After giving us a tour of the basic tenets of what everyone else believed, the lecturer then turned to Islam. I vividly recall the excitement I felt at that moment as a homesick student, proudly waiting for my schoolmates to find out what this misunderstood religion was all about.

Our guest speaker stood there with his aristocratic posture and impeccable upper class accent, and confined his description of Islam to the following short sentence: “Islam is a religion from the Arabian desert that set many teachings for its followers to abide by, for example, the requirement to eat food with their right hands, the rationale being that the left hand is designated for cleaning oneself after going to the toilet”. That was it. The time he allotted for Islam was over.

I swear by the God of all the religions which I learnt about that day that this was the only example that came out of his mouth. Coming from a supposedly learned authority, this incident confirmed to me that this guy came to the auditorium with a premeditatedly devious purpose, and could not have uttered what he said to this knowledge-thirsty audience out of sheer ignorance or lack of information. So, while Jesus died on the Cross for our sins and Buddhism preached peace and tranquility, Islam was apparently all about wiping your behind using the correct hand. So much for my pride amongst my peers that day.

Needless to say, I survived the racist atmosphere and bigotry purposely instilled in the minds of young Brits by such “educational” talks and, with the exception of a few fist-oriented episodes of defiance on my part, I continued on to law school at Southampton University quite peacefully. There, I came across an example of our own role in the same “uglification” project.

Philip, an older postgraduate friend of mine from Syria, wanted to marry his childhood sweetheart, Yusra, and was willing to convert to Islam to satisfy her father’s only condition. So he asked my advice on how to go about conversion, and I assured him that, if he must, no formalities were needed since it should all be in his heart. Still, he said there was paperwork that Yusra’s father in Syria demanded to see and that such proof of conversion could be obtained from the local – and only – mosque in Southampton. He asked me to drive him there to assist in getting one of these off-the-counter deeds of faith.

At first, I tried very hard to convince him out of it because I heard of no such proof of conversion to Islam before, and I didn’t particularly want to discuss the subject of his foreskin either (I also knew that this pathetic excuse for a mosque was right in the middle of Southampton’s unglamorous red-light district, and that it wasn’t exactly supposed to be the first monument on which Philip should feast his eyes upon entering his new faith). But Philip, who was an accomplished violinist, was also a hopeless romantic and wouldn’t take no for an answer. Not being one to stand in the face of a love story determined to challenge traditions, I hopped with Philip in my car and headed down to St. Mary’s sleazy alleyways and drug-infested streets (the name given to that part of town was not very fitting from a Christian standpoint either). On the way there, I joked with Philip that in Islam he would already gain points (hasanat) with God by visiting the mosque, because the trip in itself involves a great deal of resisting temptations. He soon appreciated what I was talking about.

After getting past the hooker or two standing near the door (and convincing them that our visit to their seedy neighbourhood was to accomplish a somewhat different type of union), we entered the main room of this so-called mosque where a typical Taliban style madrasa for little kids was in full blown session. I noticed Philip was taken aback by the horrible stench of the place, but was being too polite to point it out. We walked over the shoulders of the young boys crammed on the floor – who were making noises like a swarm of bees while swaying their heads up and down in a trance, reciting what were supposed to be verses from the Quran, without understanding a word because none of them spoke any Arabic. The Imam then took us into a private multi-purpose bedroom where we could hear ourselves speak. In there, he sat on his bed and started fiddling with typed paper forms to choose one for Philip to sign in order to officially join the tribe. All of a sudden, Philip’s face twitched and froze in astonishment as the Imam took grab of the bed sheets underneath him and used them to blow his nose for what seemed to be a deafening eternity.

“Fill up these papers and take them down to the mosque in London for authentication”, the Imam with a flu said to my gobsmacked friend. Authentication in London? There is useless bureaucracy in God’s name as well? We took the papers and, again, stumbled over the bodies of the lost generation of future Bin Ladens on the way out. “Are you sure you still wanna do this”, I ironically asked Philip as we headed towards the car, waving goodbye to the same mini skirts stationed outside. “See you later, luv”, one of them winked back at me. Sounds like a dirty good idea, I said to myself. But seriously, there was Philip to worry about here. I could not be vindictive and give him the ‘I told you so’ routine. What could I say to him, I wondered? “We’re not all like this, you know”, I apologetically mumbled to my poor friend, who was now, whether he liked it or not, one of us: “the best nation bestowed upon mankind”.

Indeed, there was really nothing that I could say to make sense of why a nation with such a glorious history accepts today to be dictated in its matters of faith by the most ignorant of its sons. The tragedy was very complicated, and I could not do justice to it while leaving the vicinity of St. Mary’s brothels. Nor is it possible to do so in this short article, but I’ll try to summarize.

The clandestine relationship between that venomous British ‘expert’ on religions back at Charterhouse and the Imam who could not be bothered to reach for a tissue to clean his nose was not self-explanatory to me at the time, nor, in the least, to the love-struck passenger next to me. However, the sinister connection between the two became clearer later on when I researched the origins of the Wahabist ideology and discovered the role of the British colonialists in digging up and empowering this fundamentalist cult of absolute madness.

Apparently, through the laborious efforts of such evil men of empire as the one who visited us in Charterhouse that morning, this obtuse sect of Islam was rescued from oblivion and pumped up from an insignificant speck to become eventually capable of drowning the entire mainstream Islamic literature with oceans of austere edicts and perverted prohibitions. Using the infinitely generous petro-dollar funding to lay down the foundations of the religious education curricula for every Muslim child and adult from Qandahar to Southampton, our religion has been robbed from us and was being totally and irreparably deformed.

Today, I remain absolutely convinced that the same forces who have for decades persevered to keep Islam permanently associated with ugliness and bad taste are still at work, in Nahr El-Bared, Gaza, and other wretched places. They may be spearheaded by the same misinformation factories in the West, but they are also financed and embraced by the willing participants in our midst. In this grand scheme of “uglification” of Islam, the only innocent party is Islam itself. The rest of us are all guilty, either of complicity in action, or worse, complicity in silence.

Take care, and if you ride, do it safely.

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.

Words like always, never, all, terrible, excellent, good, bad, are staples of our everyday language when life mostly falls in that middle ground where outlooks, moral and otherwise, reflect the limitations of personal perspectives, at least in my opinion. A corollary of all of this is a culture of dissent characterized by the same tendency which ebbs and flows depending on the political environment. In the face of turmoil, stances are usually hardened, sentiments are heightened and the bounds of acceptable political discourse are automatically narrowed.

To mine the complexity and depth of this phenomenon in a short opinion piece is no easy task considering the intricate web of factors that go into play to foster this pathology whether in our history, our interpretation of religion, and our culture, among others. I will however select three factors I believe feed this inclination to extremism.

First, there is the classical Arab style of public administration characterized by a monopoly of resources and control of legislative, judicial and executive organs and civil society alike. To build legitimacy, the uni-vocal advocating regimes tame their subjects to a dualistic worldview that imbues the mind with a positive self-stereotype and a corresponding derogatory one of others. This cognitive geocentricism is not peculiar to Arabs. It is factored in the manufacturing of any nation. But it has become especially acute amongst alienated intra-state factions within Arab countries that have adopted it from their masters who in turn have failed to create secular national identities transcending the myriad of ethnic, religious and sectarian affiliations we see around.

These various sub-national groups have recently however been gravitating towards a single narrative where the US and Israel are pitted against the rest of the Arab world. Some might argue that this is nothing new but it is. The convergence of these groups along this one axis pulling along many centrists to their ranks is alarming especially to weaker stakeholders such as the traditionally feeble moderate liberal camp.

The strength of this camp has been dwindling fast as individuals and groups are either lost to the first extremist camp or increasingly find nothing to hold on to, to justify their seemingly treacherous stands in light of recent US policies in the region. With fragile gains in the reform arena, and a discourse couched in conciliatory rather than the more popular absolutist terms, this dying creed is being discredited, and its members cast as traitors, collaborators and agents.
The surfacing narrative is gaining ground even amongst the educated classes as it meshes well with a background of conspiratorial thinking we have traditionally been accustomed to.

On the other side of the spectrum one finds the almost comical side of all of this. An interesting book has just been published in Cairo confirming that Saddam was not executed, and that his execution watched by millions around the globe was part of an American hoax! Yes the book has been published unfortunately. And this brings us to the second factor which is education.

The negative effects of rote learning and the benefits of teaching critical thinking skills are well documented. Education affects the way one processes information. One of the findings of cognitive science is that people think in terms of conceptual structures or frames actually present in the synapses of our brains. When new facts don’t fit these existing frames, the frames, present in the form of neural circuitry, are kept intact and the new information is discarded. Some refer to this phenomenon as “cognitive dissonance,” a very acute form of which the Arab street suffers from. No where is this more apparent today than amongst Saddam’s sympathizers. In a recent conversation with an Iraqi Sunni residing in the UAE, my assertions about documented atrocities that Saddam committed against Iraqi citizens were dismissed as she insisted that these acts, if they really did happen, were all perpetrated by Iran. That’s as far as our efforts at historical revisionism go unless we take into account President Ahmadinejad’s negation of the Holocaust!

The third factor has been the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, or more accurately referred to as the Middle East conflict. Everything at this side of the world carries a political tinge and every political tinge relates back to the Palestinian question. The single policy issue that drove opinion in the Arab world, uncontested for years has been this conflict. Kept alive for decades by various parties and for many reasons, the conflict was molded across the years into a zero-sum conflict, polarizing sides into an either with or against camps.

I like to believe that all Arabs are somewhat cognizant of how this conflict was and continues to be partly utilized to deflect the focus from other deeper national issues within our various societies. The media has been a main culprit in this effort with its focus on regional news to the detriment of more pressing and certainly more relevant issues for the national audiences with the result that a Sudanese knows more about what’s going on in the West Bank than what is going on in his own backyard (and believe me, there is a lot going on there!). Arab media’s woes are well known, but its role in fostering this extremist narrative is less so. With the flow of information interrupted and transparency compromised the entire reform project is jeopardized. Starved of critical information, a tool important to generate strategies and benchmarks and to empower the public to partake in the debate, societies remain unengaged and governments unresponsive.

Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) have had to operate under the same restrictions and have often opted to adopt the same level of self-censorship, engaging “safe” issues that don’t ruffle feathers. In 2004, The National Organization for Human Rights (NOHR), Saudi Arabia’s first non-government human rights organization was created. In his column in Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Tariq Al-Hameed commented on the Secretary-General’s statement that the issue of Guantanamo Bay detainees will top the new Organization’s priorities. I wondered back then, as the writer did, how an organization set up to focus on human rights would intentionally ignore the flagrant domestic problems of interest to the Saudi citizen to focus on an issue that should be taken up by the government.

These factors are certainly not meant to exhaust this discussion but to shed light on one side of the story; a side we can have control over. In such an environment, the need for reform must be everyone’s new conviction until we learn to accept variety and permit criticism, and more importantly establish those stable institutions through which opposition can be channeled. And while reform is a process that will take time, this is a challenge that can be taken up today to try to marshal every effort to dislodge these practices and broaden the bounds of debate beyond the liberal echelon of Arab society.

What makes this necessity all the more imperative is the current alarming condition in this region, corners of which are swirling in the orbit of violence, while other parts await their turn.

I’m going to be very frank. Self-delusion and fear of the truth had eventually cost us too many beautiful lives on that grim Wednesday night. But unless we face the distressing facts, we should expect more terrible surprises. My patient editor always advises me that readers of Living Well magazine generally don’t expect to read about religion or politics – and to her dismay, I have since found it almost impossible to write anything not related to either facets of our lives. I think this escapist Jordanian phenomenon is symptomatic of our dangerous head-in-the-sand attitude. Very few people are actually willing to acknowledge that religion and politics are, whether we like it or not, deeply intermingled in dominating every single breath we take in every second of our existence in this plagued part of the world. Even fewer are those ready to confront the lethal outcome of mixing the two by illiterate dropouts who believe they hold, and can bestow upon others, the keys to paradise. Until our 11/9, that is.

The sleeping tragedy had been ticking all along like a time-bomb. For too long we have tolerated elements in our society whose poisonous ideology had been tirelessly feeding a destructive culture of hate and death to schoolchildren and adults alike. For too long we have refused to admit that the seeds of hatred have been sewn in the classrooms and in the mosques by disturbed clergymen who have been let loose on our society to drown it in oceans of twisted interpretations of an otherwise great, compassionate religion. This is why the chickens have come home to roost. For more than two years the Iraqi people have been subjected to a daily routine of arbitrary murder with their morning coffee in a continuous horror story that has no parallel in human history (the closest precedent I can recall in terms of the absolute randomness of civilians massacred by members of their own people masquerading as friends of God is the campaign of slaughter by the Algerian Islamists in the 1990’s). Meanwhile, here in Jordan, very loud voices applauded these crimes as some perverted form of resistance irritating the American occupation by severely punishing any kind of unavoidable co-existence with it by the destitute, war-ridden Iraqi people. One writer sitting comfortably in peaceful Amman went as far as openly glorifying the frequency of the suicide operations in Iraq which he said would deter the would-be Iraqi collaborators and “draw in blood clear red lines to prevent political softness”. Tucked safely away from the bloodshed, he eagerly compared the regularity of these suicide attacks to the number of daily prayers, calling for the “heat of Iraq” to catch fire elsewhere – completely ignoring the fact that almost all the victims of these attacks have been non-combatant Iraqi civilians going about their insufferable daily lives in search of bread to put on their tables (the same writer even titled one of his obscene articles commenting on the London bombings and the execution of the Egyptian ambassador to Baghdad with the offensive headline: “Let them go to Hell!”). Numerous other Islamist and secular figures continued their brazen endorsement of the indiscriminate carnage of Zarqawi’s Al-Qaida in Iraq and elsewhere until, of course, it spilled over to our dear capital city.

What do they have to say right now? Well, their tactical lip-service condemnation should not fool any of us. The leopards have not shed their skins so easily. They are simply too embarrassed to peek their heads out of their holes. But rest assured that they still incubate the same vicious beliefs that molded the likes of Zarqawi and graduated his army of suicidal maniacs (thank you, by the way, George and Tony, for removing the sewage lid and unleashing on our region the most uncontrollable vermin known to mankind). These usual champions of terror in Jordan were just too disappointed that no Israeli or American targets could be identified so they can brush aside the collateral damage to Jordanians and start to rationalize the attacks by explaining their patriotic causes and by placing in a political context what can only be discussed in the realm of insanity. But they were not given such a chance – although some Arab stations shamefully reported that the hotels attacked were frequented by Israelis, a sinister linkage more disgraceful than the attacks themselves. Now listen to what these otherwise Al-Qaida sympathizers are saying today. The concentration in their discourse is on the fact that almost all those who were wiped out in the attacks were Muslims. Somehow for them, this is the element that makes these acts so repugnant. If the wedding that was literally crashed happened to be a Christian wedding attended by a few infidel westerners, I dare to guess, then the moral outrage would have been much milder, would it not? Do you see with me that the problem is still here with us? There are simply no clear moral lines that are strictly drawn against the taking of the innocent human life. It all depends on whose God the victims worshipped. This is the root of the disguised sickness secretly slipping through our back door and engulfing us these days.

To truly uproot these murderers and shut down the arenas of their indirect collaborators, we have to uproot their uncompromising dogma and hold accountable their spokespeople who are roaming freely in our midst, openly preaching hatred and death. It is not enough to say that the real Islam is innocent of their alien creed. We need to begin ourselves an enormous undertaking to re-interpret Islam and purify it from the tons of literature that cannot be reconciled with our tired cliché that it is in fact a religion of peace. This will not be an easy task against the crushing weight of the mountains of ignorance that has enveloped the minds of Muslims over the centuries. But it is a war that needs to be fought or we will all pay a dear price. So let the first battlegrounds be the blood-stained rubble of the Hyatt, the Radisson and the Days Inn, and let us not relent in this sacred fight. We owe it in loving memory to all those who were abruptly taken away from us on that day by the disciples of the devil. Indeed, let us recall their names and their smiles at every occasion. Let us build a monument to imprint their faces in our collective memory. Let them stare us in the face at every street and ever corner. For it is only us who can make their lives so invaluable and their loss so immeasurable. Our sons and daughters, our mothers and fathers, our sisters and brothers, our husbands and wives were violated by cowards who put no value on human life and whose mentors are still bombarding us with their evil sect of death. Our counter onslaught should be no less vocal and our tools no less sophisticated. We should never forgive and we should never forget.

The great writer, the late Arthur Koestler – to whose work I have been belatedly but gratefully introduced – once wrote that “[t]he continuous disasters in man’s history are mainly due to his excessive capacity and urge to become identified with a tribe, nation, church or cause, and to espouse its credo uncritically and enthusiastically, even if its tenets are contrary to reason, devoid of self-interest and detrimental to the claims of self-preservation. We are thus driven to the unfashionable conclusion that the trouble with our species is not an excess of aggression, but an excess capacity for fanatical devotion”.

Indeed, such purposeless devotion reached new levels of cruelty and pointlessness when it was channeled to senselessly wipe out as many lives as possible in the heart of Amman. Everyone will remember where they were the moment they heard of the attacks. I happened to be driving in Amman when I got a phone call from my mother asking me to stay away from the Radisson because a bomb seems to have gone off there moments ago. It was as if I heard the advice the other way round. A few seconds later I found myself parked between the Radisson and the Hyatt, watching the tragedy unfold before my eyes. Amman felt so foreign to me that night. What we saw on TV in Iraq, Palestine and other unfortunate but seemingly remote locations, came home. The chilling brutality of death paid us a painful visit that evening and left a bitter aftertaste. Later on that night, destiny led me to be present with friends in one of the hospitals to assist the husband of Reema Akkad who had just arrived in Amman from Lebanon only to head straight to the hospital to search for his wife. The period of time between frantically checking the names of patients who survived and finally visiting the morgue on the fourth floor to realize that his two kids will never see their mother again were the longest and most heartbreaking in anyone’s life. Witnessing the apocalyptic situation outside the operation rooms, the multitude of similar moments of reckoning for my fellow Jordanians was overwhelming. I wished that every cold-hearted sympathizer with these murderers could be dragged to all the hospitals to look in the faces of those who lost loved ones. Standing speechless in the middle of that disturbing, turbulent sea of emotions, I realized that each single murdered soul is an unspeakable calamity in itself. It dawned on me that whether it is in Amman, Baghdad, Jenin, Tel Aviv, Riyadh, Gaza, Sharm El Sheikh, London, Casablanca, Madrid, Bali, Istanbul, New York or anywhere else, for every human casualty there is always an inconsolable family who is as human as all of us and whose lives will never be the same again because some demented individual thought that his God is better than theirs.

In the aftermath discussions that gripped a somber Amman, I heard people talking about how the blessed survivors who closely got away were meant to live. I would respectfully add that all the victims were also meant to live. Mus’ab Khorma was meant to live. Mustapha Akkad was meant to live. His daughter too was meant to live. For Almighty God’s sake, we are all meant to live. The only ones who are not meant to breathe our same air are those who take pleasure in these atrocities, justify them, explain them and bring them to our streets and hotels. Indeed, we shall never forgive and we shall never forget.