Haroon Siddiqui Speech

islamoyankee

Just read this. Interesting.

Three things come to mind:

  1. I find it interesting that Mr. Siddiqui has to qualify his statements with the idea that he is not the follow of the Aga Khan, even though he is in front of a “progressive” audience, where being an Ismaili, or Ithna’ashari, or Sunni shouldn’t matter.
  2. He critiques the term “extermist” but speaks to a group called “progressive,” which continues to reassert the binary, although from a different direction.
  3. He begins talking about how aware Muslims around the world are of prison abuses. I don’t dispute this, but I wonder how the information gets disseminated. If the majority of the Arab Muslim world, for example, is illiterate, then they count on the TV, radio, and word of mouth. If the violation of basic human rights had not been committed under the orders of George Bush, could a rumor, like the one of the Sepoy Uprising, continue to filter through the general population? Would it serve as a useful recruiting tool?

Technorati Tags: , ,

Related Posts

From Afghanistan

A friend is travelling through Afghanistan as part of a circus (yes, a circus). One of his more recent emails: Salaam from Karte Seh, Kabul, I hope this finds you safe and in good spirits. I have a new telephone number and mailing address in the U.S., noted at the bottom of this email. Nearly one month ago, what little I knew of Afghanistan I knew by pictures and words, maybe a couple good books, like “Kite Runner” or “An Unexpected Light,” and sound bites from the Boston Globe or Washington Post. Even if I knew better, I still had…

Gaza Crisis [1/29]

This will most likely be my last major link round-up on the topic. There are individual threads of the cost of the crisis that I may develop, but with the current incursion over, the need for relatively quick, major round-ups has dissipated. One of the things I tried to communicate through my sourcing was that the conflict is not a religious issue. I consciously choose to limit the number of Muslim sources to indicate that there was opposition to Israel’s actions that was not based in a conception of a Cosmic War. I also wanted to highlight the number of…

‘Stealth Jihad’ Conveys Paranoia – Newsweek

‘Stealth Jihad’ Conveys Paranoia – Newsweek. Also, simply put, foreign words freak people out. “Jihad” and “Sharia” reinforce the sense among Americans that Muslims in general have an unfathomable world view. During World War II, formerly obscure words like “hara-kiri” and “kamikaze,” which suggested the “warlike ferocity” of the Japanese, became common parlance, Nunberg says. “There was this sense of being confronted with this hostile, alien culture.” The Japanese were “literally demonized,” he says.

One thought on “Haroon Siddiqui Speech”

  1. If sect didn’t matter so much, then why would he feel the need to qualify that he is or isn’t something in particular? Is it in fact a way to say “I’m not one of them?”

Comments are closed.