With construction work going on underground to connect the U-Bahn U5 line with the U55 line, between Alexanderplatz and Brandenburger Tor, some work also seemed to have traveled above ground onto the streets of Berlin. Banners of advertisements of Projekt U5 skirted the fences blocking out the unsightly view of roadwork or yet-to-be-opened station entrances.
The advertisements depict the profile of the recognizable yellow Berliner U-Bahn cars that worm their way through bored tunnels moving masses of people from one end of the city to the other. In the windows people from varying walks of life - men, women, old, young, gay, straight, Muslim, a bear? - are featured to celebrate the diversity of Berlin's population and to create a visual narrative of inclusion and acceptance.
Not sure why there is a bear in the car... Or for that matter why it is wearing a crown.
Image: https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2838/32316134433_e3c84c1b5e.jpg
Smiling Germans! Only to be found on advertisements.*
Image: https://farm1.static.flickr.com/768/31849569583_fa23e73cfc_b.jpg
* Pardon my facetiousness.
On my last day in Berlin as I was making my way to the DDR museum I walked past the ad that had become familiar to me. Yet I stopped in my tracks as this one was markedly different. A face had been torn off. Instantly I could tell it was of the woman wearing a hijab.
Granted I had seen vandalism of other types on other posters of the kind - penned mustaches and spray paint tags - this one didn't seem to have the innocuous intent as the rest. I wasn't particularly alarmed or surprised by seeing this but a sorrow settled in me. There was someone, and probably others as well, roaming the streets of Berlin harboring resentment against Muslims and saw the advertisement as an opportunity to make a statement by vandalizing it.
I wondered: had anyone else noticed it?
Each terrorist attack strengthens the rhetoric of fear and anger against Muslims. Each attack also increases the fear in Muslims living in the US and Europe of reprisals from the public. The subsequent increase in security, intelligence and military action is fodder for jihadist recruiters, formulating a narrative of otherness and estrangement to compel Muslims to join their cause. And unfortunately there are some who fall prey to that ideology and way of thinking. Perpetuating the cycle anew.
How do we break away from this vicious cycle? The militaristic response is clearly not the answer; the War on Terror being the perfect example of the failure of such an approach. The ideology has no centralized barracks, it has no one outpost. It is imprinted in literature propagated by extremist organizations and outlets and embedded in the hearts of minds of people who have strayed to the extreme fringes of society. This can be said not just of ISIS or Al Qaeda but also of the KKK, Eta, IRA and any other extremist group that promotes violence as a means to an end.
An idea can only be challenged by another equal or more potent idea.
As one woman I met during my travels put it to me: "Islam has a bad PR problem". I believe that to be partially true. When devastating and tragic events - the likes of the Manchester concert bombing or the London Bridge attack - occur the media and authorities label it a terrorist attack. Obviously these are terrorist attacks but another more implicit labeling happens under the surface in our collective minds. We immediately conclude the perpetrators are Muslim. As most terrorist attacks in the recent past have been carried out by Muslims an association between the terms [terrorism, terrorist attack] and [Muslim, Islam] has formed in the global mindset. Thus for people who have limited to no exposure to Islam or Muslims the words have become synonymous and interchangeable.
The problem with this effect is it inadvertently paints the entire Muslim population with a broad brushstroke, stripping away the nuances and differences between them - based on sect and cultural backgrounds - as well as the individual identities that each person harbors. It also plays to the collective amnesia of the world populous suggesting terrorism being a recent and "Islamic" phenomenon even though such actions - and the use of the term - has existed for several decades, and carried out by groups from varying religious and political affiliations as well.
This article on Eta, the Basque-separatist terrorist organization that spawned back in 1959 in Spain, is a good example of the contextualization of terrorism and the conversations we ought to have about it . It delves into the perpetuation of violence by both Eta and the government (and its associated factions), the change in tide of the organization's support, and the importance of a "history of histories" which is inclusive of narratives from both sides and not solely defined by the victors.
After Eta: Spain’s history of violence
Obviously there are Muslims who espouse a peaceful and harmonious narrative but do we really see or recognize them? Take Abdul Sattar Edhi for example, the philanthropist and humanitarian from Pakistan who established the Edhi Foundation in the 1950s which runs a private ambulance network for the country along with homeless shelters, orphanages and rehab centers; H.R.H. Aga Khan IV, a modernist spiritual leader and business magnate from the Ismaili sect of Islam under whom philanthropic and humanitarian efforts are promoted around the world; Malala Yousufzai, the fearless girl from Swat who stood up against the Taliban, champion of human rights and female education; Hasan Minhaj, the American comedian and actor, Maajid Nawaz, co-founder of Quilliam and a vocal opponent of jihadism; Reza Aslan, author of Zealot; Ayaan Hirsi Ali, even though she left Islam her input is important precisely because she can critically analyze it with the knowledge of an insider; Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish author who won the Nobel Prize for Literature; Elif Shafak, another Turkish author; Mohsin Hamid; Naguib Mahfouz; Zayn Malik, singer and former band member of One Direction; Fatima Mernissi, the feminist with an Islamic flair from Morocco; and the list does go on and on. Some of them don the more stereotypical concept of being Muslim but others are not as obvious, but it does not make them any less Muslim. By bringing these faces and voices to the fore of mainstream media, by creating more Muslim-centric stories in the arts and literature I feel we can start to shift global perspectives by breaking down the myth of a monolithic identity of Muslim-ness and reveal the beauty and diversity of its art, culture, thought and people. In turn by making these views more accessible I feel Muslim perspectives about themselves and their place in the world would also begin to change.
But along with bad PR I feel Islam also has an "intellectual problem". Much of Muslim intellectual thought, at least when it comes to the Sunni sect, has seized to exist since probably the sacking of Baghdad. Sure we could blame the Mongols for being bloodthirsty pricks, and I am being somewhat hyperbolic when I claim there is no intellectual thought today but it is to a much lesser extent and is drowned out by mainstream Islamic orthodoxy.
Dissecting this can be an entire essay on its own but to put it as concisely as possible for now traditionalist and fundamentalist versions of Islam found a safe haven in colonized Muslim lands as they provided a unifying counter-narrative to oppose the foreign occupying force.
Note that this behavior is similar to the falling back to traditionalism/fundamentalism by Muslim communities abroad due to feeling threatened or ostracized by society. This is true not just for Muslim communities but for any minority group that feels its way of life is being threatened and challenged.
Subsequently, after decolonization education in most of the Muslim world never truly became a public policy priority. The status quo maintained by orthodox Islamic intellectual thought remained and any dissenting voices or viewpoints would end up being shutdown by invoking the blasphemy card. What we end up with is a traditionalist view of Islam pervading the public Muslim sphere and a resistance to changing views and ideologies.
For Islam to become more relevant in the 21st century, and become more appealing and vivid for the current generation and the generations to come, it needs to have a reformation. Although initially Christianity found itself moving towards literalism with the Protestant movement it was the advent of making scripture more accessible to every person (by opening up the book to translations into other languages) which inadvertently allowed for the eventual evolution of secularized ideas. Yes fundamentalist Christians and Jews still exist to this day but the power they exert over society is not significant and their voices exist only on the fringes.
I do agree there is a need for stronger measures to root out harbors of jihadism in society, through rehabilitative and security programs, but true effective change will only come through better representation of Islam's moderate views. What Muslims need is a better voice. And an intellectual reform that brings its concepts and teachings out of medieval, nomadic Arabia and into the contemporary globalized and connected world. Only then will there be a potent alternate narrative to counter the fundamentalist, jihadist one. This obviously is a slow and gradual process that will take several generations for any kind of result to begin showing. That is our most constructive way forward.
Note: In the previous version of the article I suggested the reformation in Christianity moved the religion away from literalism. One of my friends pointed out that in fact Protestantism, the immediate by-product of the reformation, was in fact a literalist interpretation of the Bible. I have therefore corrected that above but still conclude that because the Bible became available in other languages it was freed from remaining an esoteric ideology, which required intercessors to interpret and help people understand their faith, into an accessible ideology where anyone could attempt to understand scripture.
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The featurelessness of the Ka'abah is symbolic of this non-representation, and an affirmation of the monotheistic creed. And particular to Islam, its veiled-ness symbolizes the unknowability, the ineffability, and hence the inability to represent or depict Allah.