In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. asserted that the White moderate is the “great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom.” The White moderate is one who “paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a ‘more convenient season.’” While racism against Black Americans and the plight of Muslim Americans post-9/11 are not the same, the response of White moderates is strikingly similar.
On September 28, an opinion piece – titled “This is Not Islamophobia” – appeared in the Stanford Daily. In it, the author, Mr. Ian Knight, decided he would be the arbiter of what constitutes Islamophobia. His verdict on the case of 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed: Not Islamophobia, and to think of it otherwise is “unwise and ignorant of the situation as a whole.” He bases his argument on understanding the context of the zero-tolerance policy upheld by most schools.
I do not want to be ignorant and unwise of the context, either, so let us re-examine what happened. Once Ahmed was arrested for allegedly bringing a bomb to school, they did not evacuate the school. They did not call a bomb squad. They did not get as far away from him as possible. Instead, they put him and his bomb in an office, where one of the four waiting police officers said, “Yup, that’s who I thought it was.” After interrogating him and denying him a call to his parents, they put him and his bomb in the same car as the police. Then they took pictures of the bomb, and realized what they already knew and acted upon all day: It was a clock and he was Muslim. Even for the absurd policy that is zero-tolerance, which targets students of color and fuels the school-to-prison pipeline, Ahmed’s case seems more like a tolerate-until-he’s-humiliated policy.
Mr. Knight contends that any student who brought a clock like Ahmed’s would have fared the same. This is not true: Several cases have been documented where students brought homemade clocks to school without incident. Ahmed was arrested on suspicion of a hoax-bomb, which means the teacher’s initial gut-reaction legally justified Ahmed’s arrest regardless of his intentions. It is nice that the Texas penal code was written to validate the feelings of someone threatened by a clock; however, Ahmed, who felt he was targeted because he was a Muslim, is not entitled to that claim. Mr.Knight holds him to a higher standard of evidence.
More evidence can be found in the context: The mayor of Irving, Beth Van Duyne, has been inciting anti-Muslim sentiment among her supporters for several months prior to the arrest of Ahmed. From an interview with Glenn Beck, to speaking at a Tea Party gathering, Van Duyne has fanned the flames of Islamophobia through her xenophobic rhetoric. She is the mayor after all, and she knows how to play into the fearful hands of her constituents to get votes. The Center for American Progress has written an extensive 80-page report on the multi-million dollar Islamophobia network of America. Van Duyne and politicians of her like play a key role in advancing a fringe narrative that Islam is incompatible with western society.
Mr. Knight’s desire for evidence will never be met because the issue at its core is not a lack of evidence, but a lack of acknowledgement of evidence. He argues that Ahmed’s actions provoked the teacher’s response, but that same line of logic resulted in the acquittal of the police officers who mauled Rodney King on video, inciting the LA riots. Disenfranchised minorities are unfairly subjected to a double-standard of evidence. From the conviction of the Scottsboro boys to the suite of non-indictments handed out by grand juries last year, America has a strong tradition of refusing to accept objective evidence that points to its muddied moral history. So before requesting “a direct link between the teacher’s suspicions and a mistrust of Muslims,” perhaps Mr. Knight can indulge the Muslim community with a link between evidence and justice.
Mr. Knight tells us to not trivialize legitimate cases wherein Muslims face unfair discrimination. Yet he commits that very mistake in further downplaying the caustic Islamophobic atmosphere leading up to Ahmed’s arrest. Instead, he fixates on the irrelevant: Ahmed’s seemingly undeserved invitations to Facebook, Google and the White House. In the same breath, he could have highlighted injustices which he deems “legitimate,” but Mr. Knight is more keen on using his platform to delegitimize the experience of a 14-year-old boy.
After the police released Ahmed, no apologies were issued. The school defended its actions, and the mayor has continued her offensive suggesting that Ahmed’s family is at fault. Prejudice and arrogance go hand-in-hand.
The White paternalistic perspective is widely regarded as the objective standard by which society judges social injustices, but this perspective does not reflect the personal experiences of Muslims in America and only serves to shut out our personal histories in favor of theoretical liberal ideals. Attempts by White moderates to determine what Islamophobia looks like is itself a symptom of Islamophobic logic. That Mr. Knight assumes he can establish what Islamophobia is and is not, despite never having been a victim of it, is not uncommon in White liberal circles.
Members of this demographic either espouse anti-Muslim bigotry under the guise of upholding liberal values, or, more subtly, they advise Muslims to patiently wait for an undeniably racist tragedy in order to sway the conscience of White moderates. As Muslims, we cannot simply wait for the “right” tragedy to validate the nature of our reality, and arousing the dormant conscience of White moderates is not our end goal.
Ultimately, Martin Luther King Jr.’s statement was not an indictment on White moderate intentions, just their arrogant and condescending sense of apparent omniscience. MLK’s message to well-meaning White moderates is analogous to mine now: Learn about Islamophobia, seek to understand the experiences of Muslims, Sikhs and others perceived as Muslims and join us in condemning the arrest of a 14-year-old boy for making a clock. At the very least, learn to discern when your opinion helps “the situation” and when it obstructs our pursuit of justice.
Contact Osama El-Gabalawy at osamae ‘at’ stanford.edu.