London elects its first Muslim mayor to a sense of hope

Florida Times Union, May 16, 2016

Sadiq Khan, a Muslim, being elected Mayor of London, topples a pervading narrative and in its wake leaves behind unparalleled opportunities. The son of Pakistani immigrants rising to run one of the leading cities in the globe is almost as remarkable as the more celebrated story across the pond, that of a Black man rising to lead the world’s most powerful country. The parallels are uncanny. Both Barack Obama and Sadiq Khan were lawyers who met their wives while working as colleagues at a law firm. Both have two young daughters. Both were wrongly accused of palling around with terrorists and against heavy odds succeeded in beating back a dog-whistle campaign laced with racism and Islamophobia.

One may contend that the genesis of ISIS (or ISIL) dates back to U.S. invasion of Iraq.Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who broke away from al-Qaeda and on whom the U.S. government once had a $25 million reward for any tip leading to his arrest, can be considered the ideological godfather of ISIS. However, the group entered into the consciousness of most Americans only after gruesome beheading videos made media waves. This has tipped a slight majority of Americans (53 percent) to now support yet another war in the Middle East.

It bears reminding that in 2003, 72 percent of Americans supported going to war with Iraq, titillated by spurious claims of mushroom clouds and weapons of mass destruction. Yet a decade later, most Americans wanted U.S. troops out of Iraq. The fickle public is once again the victim of fear mongering. The unsuspecting public cheers on as bombs and missiles generate shock and awe. As the media echo chambers glorify the sounds and fury of war, the public is assured that only the “bad guys” are dead. If anyone dares to question the death of civilians, they are branded as propagandists for terror. Very little time is spent questioning the efficacy of the war, and there is virtually no discussion about what happens the day after, assuming that the war on terror can actually be won anytime soon.

The Global Terrorism Database (GDT), a service provided by National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, records approximately 125,000 cases of terrorist incidents committed by 2,437 groups between 1970 and 2013. Over the past four decades, nearly half of the incidents of death from terrorism have occurred in the 12 years since the declaration of the so-called “war on terror” in 2002. Data also show that terrorism is not only being committed in the name of Islam, by well-known groups such as al-Qaeda; just as ominously, it is also being perpetrated in the name of Christianity by lesser-known groups such as the Lord’s Resistance Army, and by non-religious actors such as the Communist Party of India (Maoist). Between 2002 and 2011, the Lord’s Resistance Army ranked fourth in the number of fatalities linked to it, while the Communist Party of India (Maoist) ranked fifth. Ranking at the very top of the list are the Taliban, with whom the U.S. launched “peace talks” in 2013.

Undoubtedly, ISIS gained currency in the cauldrons of Syria’s bloody civil war, which has killed nearly 200,000 people, with of half of them being civilians. The conflict has displaced 6.5 million people, and over half of Syria’s pre-war population of 23 million is in need of urgent humanitarian assistance. President Obama called for Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, to step down, but he has never enacted any strategy to make this possible or — more importantly — offered any plan regarding what happens the day after. ISIS swept into Iraq partly because the Obama administration showed no will to confront the sectarian nature of Iraq’s democratic government, despite that government’s survival depending upon U.S. largesse. The parochial worldview of the Iraqi government alienated and radicalized Iraq’s Sunni minority. Only after ISIS captured vast Iraqi territories did Obama put pressure on Iraq’s Nuri al-Maliki to step down. Too little, too late.

ISIS is a terrorist group. But is it America’s responsibility to defeat them, particularly given the fact that no case has been made regarding the extent to which they pose a threat to the homeland? Saudi Arabia and Iran both claim that ISIS represents an existential threat to them. Why are they not cooperating with each other to defeat ISIS? A Shia-Sunni rapprochement led by Saudi Arabia and Iran would be far more effective and less costly than the over $10 million per day that the U.S. is currently spending on bombing ISIS. Who will ultimately pay for this war effort?

“ISIS is a response to state monopolization of violence,” noted Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, a professor of religion at Reed College in Portland. If indeed so, then this threat cannot be defeated via more state violence (i.e., military might) only. U.S. efforts to combat al-Qaeda have not diminished the threat from terrorism, as evidenced from the GTD data. Osama bin Laden’s absence has not defeated terrorism. It has created a power vacuum that has been filled by groups more radicalized and more ruthless than al-Qaeda. Once again the absence of a day-after strategy remains the Achilles heel. America keeps playing the terrorist Whac-a-Mole. There is no grand strategy, only arbitrary lurches from crisis to crisis.

That Saudi Arabia, along with Egypt, is opposing ISIS is an irony and hypocrisy. Governments in both states have enabled ISIS, Saudi Arabia through bankrolling its puritanical version of Islam (pejoratively labeled “Wahhabism”), and Egypt by brutally suppressing the aspirations of the Arab Spring. Moreover, can Saudi Arabia really claim any moral high ground given the fact that in Saudi Arabia beheadings are a public spectacle?

While Muslim religious leaders have indeed unequivocally condemned ISIS, they have not yet taken stock of the fact that the extreme conservatism fanned by many clerics and Islamist groups continues to enable ISIS to recruit globally. The penchant that hardline clerics and Islamist groups have for denying religious pluralism and their constant projection of victimhood have, in perverse ways, conspired to create the cesspool from which ISIS is successfully recruiting. Simply condemning ISIS is not enough. Muslim clerics and organizations must reexamine their message and methods. Factors ranging from the disempowerment of women to a lack of tolerance for unorthodox views are helping radicalize individuals and society. It is from this cesspool that ISIS and other militants are drawing sustenance.

Bombs and missiles cannot defeat terrorism, because they play into the narrative of the terrorists that the only effective response to state monopolization of violence is more violence. And so the cycle repeats. In the words of Admiral Mullen, the U.S. must prepare for a multi-decade military entanglement in the Middle East. And yet there is hardly much will to debate this generational commitment to an open-ended war. Tragically, there’s only the fervor to cheerlead.

Huffington Post, Nov 5. 2010

Also in Florida Times Union, Nov 12, 2010

On the heels of a bruising election, President Barack Obama is undertaking his longest foreign trip that will take him to several Asian countries including India. Some media accounts of this trip, primarily Fox News and its affiliates, has focused on an un-sourced report that erroneously suggested the President’s trip to cost $200 million per day. The fact is that the true costs of Presidential foreign trips are kept a secret for security reasons. The General Accounting Office, about a decade ago, had released one report on President Clinton’s foreign trips. It showed that the cost of such trips total in the tens of millions nowhere near the exaggerated figure of $200 million per day. The hullabaloo over such triviality is once again robbing Americans of an opportunity to engage in a civic dialogue about India and its strategic importance to America.

India is not just an exotic country thousands of miles away. The Indian diaspora in the U.S. is 2.7 million strong. Over a dozen Indian Americans are part of the Obama administration and two Indian Americans have been elected Governors. India is neither the caricature on NBC’s Outsourced nor the heartless gloom portrayed in Slumdog Millionaire. In his book The Argumentative Indian, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen presents a succinct description, “India is an immensely diverse country with many distinct pursuits, vastly disparate convictions, widely divergent customs and veritable feast of viewpoints.”

India is the world’s largest democracy. It is thus not coincidental that America, the world’s oldest democracy, shares a bond with India, which transcends economics. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton alluded to this by assuring the people of India that they “should know they have no better friend and partner than the people of the United States.” The Obama administration has stated that it wants to deepen its relationship with India on four strategic areas — energy and climate change; economics, trade, and agriculture; education and development; and science, technology and innovation. And yet progress has been anemic.

Progress is complicated by a sluggish U.S. economy, particularly in the area of job creation. Politically it helps the President to rail against U.S. companies that outsource jobs to India but strategically such outbursts are not helpful. Outsourcing is not the reason why U.S. businesses, despite posting healthy profits, are not hiring. The fault lines remain in the banking and financial sector. Obsessing on the ills of outsourcing belies a pertinent fact that America is now the preferred destination for outsourcing. India is third. In 2007, 20% of InformationWeek 500 companies reported that they’ve taken back outsourced work. The recent rise of prosperity in India has dampened the lure cheap labor.

Beating up on outsourcing will only make Indians reluctant to open up their markets to American exports. President Obama has correctly identified exports as one of the major sources of new jobs in the U.S. The rising upper and middle class in India offers new opportunities to sell American products. This explains why the President has a large contingent of business leaders in tow. Companies such as Boeing, GE, Caterpillar and Harley-Davidson are all looking forward to seal large deals with their Indian counterparts. Hopefully, the President will be able to impress upon these businesses that such deals should ultimately generate employment in the U.S. The President’s legacy and reelection depends on such successes.

During this trip to India, President Obama is expected to visit the tomb of Mughal emperor Humayun, which was commissioned by his wife Hamida Banu in 1562. The tomb is a UNESCO World Heritage site and is precursor to the architecture and vision that inspired the Taj Mahal. By visiting this site, President Obama is giving a nod to India’s pluralistic history, a history shaped by a rich inter-religious and cultural interaction between Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Christianity. This is not to suggest that the interactions between the faith communities have always been egalitarian. But the somewhat natural tensions between the faithful did not prevent them from cooperating to create great art, music, literature and philosophy. Prior to the British colonial rule, India was the world’s economic superpower. Interestingly, Humayun’s tomb also connects India to Pakistan. For it is here that many Muslims took refugee during their arduous migration to Pakistan. The symbolism is powerful as America’s Af-Pak policy will partly hinge on the role India plays or does not play.

Disappointingly, President Obama will skip visiting the Golden Temple, the holiest site for Sikhs. To enter the temple, all male visitors are required to cover their heads. He fears that his head covering will be mistakenly linked to the persistent rumors that Obama is a Muslim. Caving into fear-mongers only emboldens them. Sikhs have paid an unfair price for their mistaken identity. They have been targets of anti-Muslim discrimination. And a few days after 9-11, a Sikh was killed in Arizona by a man who mistook him for a Muslim.

There is a lot riding on Mr. Obama’s visit to India. Americans can and should hope that President Obama’s visit opens up new opportunities for badly needed exports. Indians are hoping that President Obama will support India’s bid to become a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, a step that will help solidify India’s ascendency on the world stage.

Professor Parvez Ahmed is a Fulbright Scholar and Associate Professor of Finance at the University of North Florida. He is also a frequent commentator on Islam and the Muslim American experience.