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By Ibrahim Moiz for Muslim Matters

Previous Parts: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

After the tumultuous 2023-24 school year, where American students protesting against the Israeli genocide at Gaza were vilified and repressed across the country, MuslimMatters interviewed chaplains Omer Bajwa of Yale University and Abdul-Muhaymin Priester of Grinnell College for their thoughts on these momentous events. In this third part of a five-part interview, the imams discuss the relationship of these events on interfaith relations, the impact that an institutionally approved genocide has left on non-Muslim communities, and the apocalyptic motivations behind much American support for Israel.

 

Ibrahim Moiz: You both lived through the whole post-September 2001 atmosphere. My impression was that the pressure on Muslims had been receding since the late 2010s [compared to] the sort of pressure there was in the late 2000s or even early 2010s. As chaplains, how have you seen official responses since October 2023, both with the Palestinian attack that was initially portrayed as a sort of antisemitic pogrom, and then the Israeli attack as well? Would you say that there has been any progress from the 2000s in terms of how institutional and official avenues have responded to Muslim grievances?

No Mention of Palestinian Suffering

Omer Bajwa: I’ll give you two or three quick data points, and I’ll work backward from what you were just talking about. Yale has been good, I want to say, generally across the board. Though that’s relative, right?  Now I’m going to make a general point about campuses across the country, they have been horrendous. The responses from college and university presidents or senior administrations, the messaging after 10-7, across the board has been one of – there’s a party line – “this was a horrific, tragic attack on Israeli existence” – you know the line, it’s all there.

The point that I want to make is, it’s almost like they have the same talking points. Every president is saying some version of the same thing.

No mention of Palestinian suffering, of Palestinian life…My point is, it is remarkable, or astonishing perhaps, how the blind spot was, no mention of Palestinian suffering or anything like that, or even worse, the blame, the victim was always Israel, and the blame was always on the Palestinians – collective punishment, collective suffering…I mean I saw statements from, you name it, Columbia, Harvard, [the University of] Chicago, UCLA…I don’t need to belabor the point. That is so disappointing, right?

Bush’s Message After 9-11

(Omer Bajwa continues): And so contrast that to after 9-11, because 9-11 is a physical and psychological attack on the American body and psyche, and there’s [just] collective trauma, well all Americans.

Look, I am anti-anti-anti-Bush, the Bush family – and they’re Yalians, right, literally they came from this place – but my point is this, credit where credit is due. Bush goes on, he has decent enough speechwriters, in the two days after 9-11, he’s in front of Congress, he’s in front of the cameras, he’s like, “We should not attack Muslims. We should not fall prey to Islamophobia. This was an attack by deranged extremists”…Even the Bush people had the aql, they had the intelligence and the good sense to be like, “We are not totalizing and making this broad collective statement against Muslims.”

Yes, there was horrific [violence] – my brother got attacked after 9-11, he got jumped in New York City, and in Boston – there was all sorts of things. Hindus are getting beat up, Mexicans are getting beat up. That’s like the American ignorance of any brown person, “You don’t belong here, go home”, etc. My point is that there was an attempt made, one could argue, after 9-11 to say, “Oh these are bad actors, extremists, that did this. Let’s not condemn all of Islam and Muslims, and the Muslim world.”

Everyone Is Drinking The Kool-Aid

(Omer Bajwa continues): What’s happened now, you’d think in twenty-plus years they would’ve kind of done better, but there was this total ignorance and blind spot – and by default, accusation – towards Palestinians and Arabs. And so there’s deep Arabphobia and anti-Palestinian sentiment in media and politics.

“They are all drinking the Kool Aid.”

The last thing I’ll say is that in some ways – you know, we knew the state went into these horrible things, surveillance, Guantanamo, extra[judicial] rendition, that’s the whole inauguration of the Global War on Terror, etc., I mean, literally entire volumes have been written on this.

What happens now in some ways is even creepier, and I’ll tell you why – because then, you had some people, like, “Okay, America’s fighting this shadow enemy war, we need to stand up for civil liberties”, etc.

Now what’s happening – it’s not just the government, it’s not just the state. Donors, megadonors, people on Wall Street, tech-bros, all these finance people, celebrities, the cultural elite, the political elite, the economic elite, the media elite – they’re all drinking the Kool-Aid. They’re the ones throwing Palestinians under the bus and Muslims under the bus. Which is actually more insidious. It shows you how deep this Zionist sympathy and Israeli narrative has seeped into the American consciousness.

Like Sidi [Abdul-Muhaymin] said, it’s because the average American, if they’re Christian evangelicals, they’re like, “Well, it’s promised in the Bible, it’s their [the Israelis’] land anyway, these people [the Palestinians] are cockroaches, they don’t even belong there.”

Falling In Line With The Narrative

Abdul-Muhaymin Priester: I’m coming from that generation that I come from, my family’s background…I was very interested in politics when I was young, [like] you can give me a scenario and I can pretty much sit down and tell you word for word what a newscast was going to say that evening. Terms and things of that nature, but just the context of what was going to be said, it’s the same across the board, generation to generation. And from what I saw in the responses was a lot of people…was everybody was just falling in line with the narrative.

And it goes back to this unfortunate statement that you even hear from Muslims, “Oh it’s a political situation.” It was never a political situation. It was never a political situation. When their line of reasoning [was that], “God gave us this land and it belongs to us”, it stopped being a political situation, despite the fact that the majority of the people who say that, they don’t believe in God anyway.

That’s the greater irony of the whole situation. “This is our land, God gave it to us, but I don’t believe in God.” That’s probably the most asinine statement a person can ever encounter in human history.

Responding Without Understanding

(Abdul-Muhaymin Priester continues):  Even most of the people who are responding… You don’t even really understand the history of what it is that you’re responding to. You’re just putting, again, you’re giving that stereotypical response that people expect you to say, “Oh, this is a tragedy, Israel has to never be afraid of defending themselves, you shouldn’t have done this.”

Despite the fact that just yesterday you blew a child’s brains out in the middle of the street in broad daylight in front of his mother. You went into this house with this family that’s been here for the last twelve hundred years, their family’s owned this land, and you kick them out, and you say, “This is my land.” How the hell is this your land? A grandmother[‘s family] has been staying here for the last twelve hundred years. How is this your land?

A Political Situation? No, It’s Haqq and Batil

(Abdul-Muhaymin Priester continues):  I don’t like to have that negative type of impression that I give people about the situation, but for me, like I said with some of the students when we were talking about this, and even a young Palestinian student that I had, that said that it’s a political situation. No. This is Haqq and Batil, end of discussion.

Yes, in the general sense, there’s some elements of it, you can see it as a political discussion that some groups of people are having, but this is a situation of Haqq and Batil. Because even as Muslims we can’t separate the reality of our din from the reality of the land. That bifurcation of secular and religious, again, that’s a tangent that I don’t want to draw into right there.

For me, I really have not expected any more than what I’ve seen, and I won’t say I’m surprised, but it’s interesting that they haven’t been as aggressive as they have been [in the past]. Because people think that they’ve been aggressive, with a lot of what we’ve seen, and they have been.

But in terms of the levels of aggression that could be carried against the young people that we’re seeing now…they’ve restrained themselves in a lot of ways in terms of how they dealt with it. Partially because they knew that oppression was coming and wanted to minimize the effects of it. But then again, I mean, I’ve seen them do much worse in the public square, seen much worse.

 

[Next in Part V: A Situation of Haqq and Batil]

Related:

6 Quranic Reflections On The Current Situation In Palestine

Centering The Children Of The Ummah – Artist Petrit Halilaj’s Work On Kosovo Resonates In The Moment Of Palestine

The post University Chaplains’ Perspective On Campus Protests [Part IV] – The Insidious Israeli Narrative appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Exclusive: Documents obtained by Guardian Australia reveal ‘all communications’ will be solely attributed to special envoy

The Australian government is seeking to create some distance from its new special envoys on antisemitism and Islamophobia, suggesting they do not characterise their comments as official government policy.

Documents obtained by Guardian Australia reveal the instructions the government has given its new special envoy to combat antisemitism, Jillian Segal, including the need to highlight “diverse Jewish Australian identities”.

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My dream was, and still is, to be a senior programmer at Google. I wondered how hard this would be if I never recovered the use of my hand.

Muhammad Abu al-Ouf was killed while trying to help another family.

Murray Watt ‘concerned’ at reaction from Iranian government to an Instagram photo of embassy staff in Tehran celebrating Wear it Purple day

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Iran has summoned the Australian ambassador in Tehran over a “disrespectful” photo celebrating an annual LGBTQ+ awareness day posted to the embassy Instagram page, a state-run news agency reported.

The head of the Regional Affairs Office of the Foreign Ministry condemned the Australian embassy’s “offensive” post as disrespectful and contrary to Iranian and Islamic culture and international norms, Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

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Israel kills seven children as military assault in the West Bank enters seventh day.

As a young man, Partha Banerjee was on course to become a senior member of the RSS, the organisation that has pushed Indian politics towards extreme religious nationalism. Then, after decades within its ranks, he quit. Why? By Rahul Bhatia

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Question: Recently a lot of my friends have started vaping saying that it’s not as harmful to one’s health as smoking cigarettes because it doesn’t contain tobacco and it isn’t addictive. If that’s the case, is it permissible to vape?

 

The Short Answer

It is impermissible to vape or inhale smoke from electronic cigarettes for the following five reasons: 

1) It can be extremely harmful to one’s health because of the harmful substances often found in e-cigarette flavoring

2) It is classified as something that is unwholesome1

3) It is a gateway to smoking cigarettes

4) It increases the risk of future addiction to other drugs, and 

5) It is a waste of one’s wealth on something that is harmful and has no benefit. 

Cigarettes, cigars, and shisha would also be impermissible for the same reasons.

The Background Of The Issue

Cigarette usage is at an all-time low among children and adults across the United States. Fifty years ago 42.4 percent of adults smoked. That number declined by more than half to 17.4 percent in 2014 and continues to drop.2 This decline in smoking can be attributed to several different reasons, including prevention efforts aimed at young people, more scientific proof of the short and long-term health effects, increased cigarette prices, and anti-smoking laws.3 There is also a social aspect to the decrease in cigarette usage. 

Vaping and e-cigarettes [PC: Richard R Schunemann (unsplash)]

However, there are fears that all of the progress that has been made against smoking will be reversed by the increasing popularity of electronic cigarettes. An electronic cigarette is a device that heats an often nicotine-laced fluid, which then becomes a vapor that users inhale. A national survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that e-cigarettes are more popular amongst teenage students than traditional cigarettes and other forms of tobacco. The use of e-cigarettes tripled among teenagers and middle school students from 2013-2014. In that same time period, the use of hookah almost doubled amongst the same demographic.4 During 2017 and 2018 e-cigarette use skyrocketed among youth, leading the U.S. Surgeon General to declare the use of these products among youth an epidemic in the United States.5

There’s a common misunderstanding that e-cigarettes and hookah are less harmful than cigarettes because of the absence of tobacco and a reduced amount of carcinogens. 

The Detailed Answer

It is impermissible to use e-cigarettes because of their highly harmful nature. Allah ﷻ tells us in the Qurʾān [Surah Al-Baqarah: 2;195],

“And spend in the way of Allah and do not throw [yourselves] with your [own] hands into destruction [by refraining]. And do good; indeed, Allah loves the doers of good.”, and

“O you who have believed, do not consume one another’s wealth unjustly but only [in lawful] business by mutual consent. And do not kill yourselves [or one another]. Indeed, Allah is to you ever Merciful.” [Surah An-Nisa: 4;29]

Based on these verses, the vast majority of scholars consider anything that causes tangible harm to the body to be impermissible. Similarly, the Prophet ﷺ told us, “Let there be no harm or any reciprocation of harm.” Although e-cigarettes may not contain tobacco they usually contain nicotine. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have even found nicotine in e-cigarettes marketed as containing zero percent nicotine. Nicotine, whether inhaled from an e-cigarette or a regular cigarette, is a highly addictive substance that has many harmful effects on one’s body. It can cause damage to the heart, arteries, and lungs, increasing the risk of heart attack, stroke, and chronic lung disease. Studies show that it also negatively affects cells, which can eventually lead to cancer.6 In addition, nicotine exposure at a young age may cause lasting harm to brain development, promote addiction, and lead to sustained tobacco use. A recent study found that trying e-cigarettes increased the odds that a teenager would also try tobacco cigarettes and become a regular smoker.7 E-cigarette vapor also contains several other harmful and carcinogenic substances such as formaldehyde. Some flavorings, such as diacetyl, have even been linked to lung disease.8

Since the vapor from e-cigarettes is demonstrably harmful it is classified as a substance that is evil, unwholesome, and unhealthy. Allah ﷻ has made permissible those things that are healthy and pure and has prohibited those that are unhealthy and impure. Allah ﷻ  says regarding the Prophet ﷺ, “Who makes good things lawful to them and bad things unlawful.” [Surah Al-A’raf: 7;157]

E-cigarettes may also be a gateway drug for some users, as their use is associated with the use of opiates.9

Purchasing e-cigarettes is also a huge waste of money on something that is impermissible. Being wasteful is prohibited. Allah ﷻ  tells us,

“O children of Adam, take your adornment at every masjid, and eat and drink, but be not excessive. Indeed, He likes not those who commit excess.” [Surah Al-A’raf: 7;31] Recent studies show that individuals who vape are more likely to try cigarettes, which would lead to even more waste of money.

 

Related:

– From The Chaplain’s Desk: Smoking Weed

– From The Chaplain’s Desk: Sayyid Al-Istighfar – The Greatest Dua For Seeking Forgiveness

 

1    The arabic word being referred to here is khabith, which is used to describe something that is dirty, impure, unhealthy, and unwholesome. 2     http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2014/p1126-adult-smoking.html3    http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6414a3.htm?s_cid=mm6414a3_w4    http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6414a3.htm?s_cid=mm6414a3_w5    https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/basic_information/e-cigarettes/pdfs/OSH-E-Cigarettes-and-Youth-What-Parents-Need-to-Know-20190327-508.pdf6    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4363846/7    http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=18407728    http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc14130699     https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30699215

The post From The Chaplain’s Desk: The Long And Short Of Vaping appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Candidates will be assessed on eight-point criteria that includes their stance on the war in Gaza

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A political advocacy group seeking to mobilise Muslim Australians before the next election says it will elevate the community’s voice on non-faith issues including gambling and domestic violence, alongside Israel’s war in Gaza.

On Sunday afternoon Muslim Votes Matter, a new grassroots group, launched its national campaign in the lead-up to next year’s federal election at the Broadmeadows town hall, in the federal seat of Calwell, where it plans to back candidates.

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This summer I’ve made two attempts to learn how to ride a motorcycle. Both failed. On the first occasion, in early July, I was just getting the hang of riding the bike around the yard and changing the gears up and down when the instructor set a new task, the day was warming up and I was getting hot in the protective clothing you have to wear and started stalling and flubbing everything I was trying to do, and I ended up leaving the session early. The second time was last Monday; I thought trying a scooter would make things a little easier as I had already learned how to use gears the previous time, but in the event could not even bring myself to ride the thing at all. I don’t know if I will try a third time; there are some training companies that offer one- or two-hour lessons, while others offer nothing other than the standard CBT (Compulsory Basic Training), in some cases with an offer of a second try at a reduced rate.

I previously looked into learning to ride a motorcycle twice, once in the mid-90s when I was in my early 20s and still at university, the second in the late 2000s when I was in my early 30s. The first time, bike shop attendants told me that I shouldn’t really consider travelling from London to Aberystwyth and back on a 125cc motorcycle (perhaps this was advice I should have ignored; after all, it’s around 200 miles, a distance that regular commuting will run up in a couple of weeks); buying one would have meant taking out a student loan, which I had hitherto managed to avoid doing with parental help, but the old car I had acquired from my uncle had become undriveable as part of the body had rusted so bad that the rear shocks had gone straight through. In the end, I decided against it. The second time was after a job agency boss had told me I should “get a little scooter” when public transport was often failing to get me to work on time. I looked around some of the same places I’d looked at ten or so years earlier, but in the event, a family tragedy led me to knock the idea on the head once again. This time, the reasons were more practical: being able to commute without getting stuck in London’s interminable traffic jams, and perhaps a more pleasant way to get to some of the country parks and stately homes where I like to take pictures, as well as (for small bikes at least) being able to do twice or three times as many miles on a gallon of petrol as I do in my car. Initially I was considering a three-wheeler, as there are tricycles with two wheels at the front rather than the back which are a little wider than a motorcycle and can be ridden on a car licence, but the road tax and insurance costs meant this would be a costly option, far more in the long term than actually learning to ride a motorcycle.

However, despite having done a bit of research, look at training videos on YouTube showing how you operate the gears on a bike and so on, nerves still got the better of me, twice. On the first occasion I came in pretty confident that I’d complete it and the following day I’d be going out, getting a bike and riding it home, and that biking would be a new hobby I’d be able to enjoy in the coming months (less so in the winter, but I had no plans to get rid of the car), and suddenly my plans had all evaporated and there was a void; even at times when I was comfortable with the idea of never riding again, I kept thinking to myself “what am I going to do with my life now?”. The practical advantages of riding still exist, though any bike with an engine bigger than 500cc will be no more economical than my car or in fact less, which is puzzling given that my car has a one-litre engine and still has a whole cabin to pull around whereas a motorbike’s comforts consist of a cushion and nothing else: no adjustable seats, no air conditioning, no stereo or any of the other things you see in a car that add weight. If I was downsizing from a three-litre four-by-four then almost any bike would be an improvement, but my car is already one of the most economical petrol cars going. The other reason I am still tempted to try again is that, as with learning to ride a bicycle (or doing so without stabilisers), which I did when I was a child and I now cycle all the time, there is a fear barrier that has to be overcome and that once overcome, riding gets easier.

The way the training system and the training ‘scene’ works does not make it easy for new riders, in my opinion. Unlike with learning to drive a car, there is a one-day compulsory basic training (CBT) course which is a set-piece series of lectures and exercises (a talk on safety and protective equipment, a couple of hours’ tuition on basic riding and manoeuvres, a Highway Code lecture followed by a two-hour road ride) in which one instructor can be split between four trainees (though only two for the road ride). This is typically carried out in a confined space, such as a school playground, car park or some other small yard, so at no point can you just ride. By contrast, when we learn to drive a car, we have a series of one-to-one lessons that last as long as it takes to get up to test standard. There are not many training companies that offer one-to-one CBT or introductory lessons; some in fact warn learners off companies that offer the latter, when a couple of hours to get the hang of riding without worrying about taking the instructor’s time from three other trainees might be what someone needs. The cost of any non-CBT training session ranges from £30 to over £60 per hour; CBT itself in London often costs considerably more than even in nearby towns such as Crawley. I have seen one-to-one CBT advertised as costing £500; by contrast, the two-day HIAB operation course I attended earlier this year cost £725 (i.e. £362.50 a day) for one-to-one tuition, and a HIAB-equipped truck costs a lot more than a 125cc motorcycle.

Gear — protective equipment — is another stumbling block. Helmets are compulsory; gloves, boots and suitable clothing are recommended, and nobody will train you without them. However, getting hold of gear if you’re new to the scene is a chore. The gear shop near me, when I went in to buy a helmet, directed me to get a full-face helmet when I had expressed a preference for an open one, because I feared a full-face helmet would not work well with glasses, and I ended up with one that wasn’t very comfortable. Getting boots was also an ordeal; their boot selection is all laid out on the shelves (rather than in boxes in a store room as in a normal shoe shop), boots are often in sizes nothing like normal shoe sizes (I ended up with a size 13 when I am normally a 10) and there was a security tag through one of the lace holes, preventing me from doing it up properly. After the first CBT disaster, I took the helmet back to the shop unused; the cashier initially refused to give me a cash refund (if you buy online, they have to, but not for store purchases) until I told him that his voucher would be no use to me. After the second, I hung on to the boots as I suspect he’d not have made the same allowance a second time. On both occasions, it occurred to me to cancel the CBT sessions, but it was too late for a refund. I don’t dispute the need for gear when riding on the road (although I see plenty of riders without it, especially the delivery riders) but it can be sweltering on a hot day when you’re stationary and trying to listen to an instructor. That’s not a good way to learn a new skill. Perhaps doing the basic (off-road) training on grass would be better than on concrete, as they could then ease up on the gear (particularly the jacket).

Motorcycling isn’t exactly in my blood. My dad rode when I was a young child, but (as is common with young men who get married and have kids, it seems) sold his bike long enough ago that I can’t remember what make and model it was. He then cycled ten miles to work and back each day until we moved to New Malden, where it was no longer practical and took the train. I know two people who have quit, in one case because he slipped on oil and although he was not badly hurt, the bike (a Harley Sportster) was a wreck. People have lucky escapes and decide that they’ve pushed their luck enough and it’s time to quit while they’re ahead. I’ve been told that riding at 150mph is a feeling like no other, but my ambitions aren’t that extreme; I just want to be able to leave the car behind when I go to work or otherwise out alone, and pay a bit less for petrol.

Image source: Rainmaker47, via Wikimedia. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (BY-SA) 4.0 licence.

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