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MR. FAIZ REHMAN
Communictions Director, American Muslim Council
PLENARY SESSION III
“An Eye on Consequences: The Cultural and
Religious Challenge”
Thank you very much. In the name of God the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful, good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I also greet you with the Islamic greeting, Salaam-u-alaikum, which means “peace be upon you.”
Sometimes I wonder whether the peace activists may have gotten their habit of saying “peace” whenever they greet each other from this Islamic tradition. So that is the significance of peace in Islam.
Yes, it was a surprise when Mr. Michael Marshall came to me this afternoon and requested that I replace one of the panelists. Initially, I was not very excited, but I thought, maybe it’s just a good opportunity to give my two cents’ worth to you on this topic. As my friend said, I am not representing Islam here today. I am only here as a humble Muslim. So please, whatever I say, don’t hold the whole of Islam responsible for my opinions. I may make mistakes or misstatements.
On 9/11 at 6:30 a.m. in California, I got a phone call from my brother. I got up and received the news that something terrible had just happened to America, our country. We all rushed to the TV set and sat there and we all saw the Twin Towers collapsing on live TV. The first reaction was of shock, and then feelings of grief and sadness set in. My kids felt the same way when they came back from school. My 9-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter both had the same reaction. Ladies and gentlemen, with full responsibility and conviction, I assure you that that was the reaction of every Muslim household, not only in this country but around the world.
I don’t know yet even one Muslim household, one Muslim man or woman, elderly or child, who has not condemned the events of 9/11 strongly, staunchly, and in every harshest possible term.
I also think this is a very good panel. Maybe by accident, three great Abrahamic religions are represented here on one stage. It’s a beautiful moment, of course. I appreciate Dr. Pipes’ crash course on Islam and at least his thoughts on early Islam, the development of civilization, the beauty, the Islamic world being a center of civilization not just for a few Arab countries but for the rest of the world. Then what transpired, what happened?
I fully agree with his first part. Yes, Muslim civilization was great, but we have to make the distinction and understand that a civilization never travels into a tunnel. It’s not like you are traveling and all of a sudden you put on brakes or you meet some obstacle and there is just a dead end, and then the rot sets in. It’s a lateral movement. Every expansion in a civilization is lateral, in many directions. When Islam was brought to Arabia by Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, it didn’t just stay there, it went to Spain, India, and other parts of the world. At one point during the reign of the second Caliph, Omar Bin Al Khatab, the Muslim civilization or Muslim world was almost half of the discovered world. So we have to make the distinction. I am very appreciative of the comments of Dr. Gill. He comes from the same country as I did as a very young man, a long time ago. I went to school here.
We have to have a clear perspective, and my job here is to offer you some alternatives. Like I said, since 9/11, as the communications director of AMC, when I go for an interview every time, either on television or radio, the first or third question is, have you condemned 9/11? Have Muslims condemned enough the events of 9/11? On one occasion I said, jokingly of course, that one of these days I will have it tattooed on my forehead, “My name is Rehman. I am the communications director of AMC, and we condemn 9/11.”
I think Muslims, especially in this country, are being held to some unrealistic higher standards when it comes to 9/11. We have to realize that everybody who lives in this country, regardless of their religion, background, language, culture, are all in this situation together. When 9/11 happened (per our estimates, and it may be challenged; it may not be 100 percent accurate), hundreds of people of the Islamic faith died! An entire Bangladesh delegation of probably 50 to 55 people perished. There was one young man, an American Muslim of Pakistani descent who came here when he was two years old, a lab technician and a first aid worker. He rushed to the tower from four blocks away to save the lives of his fellow Americans. He thought it was his duty to protect his fellow citizens. How many times do we hear his name mentioned in our media? His name was mentioned in the Patriot Act and he was awarded something from the White House, his mother was invited to the White House, but we don’t hear this fact mentioned in the media very often. The media gives the impression that somehow Muslims are one little tribe living somehow in this country, totally detached, enjoying 100 percent security, 100 percent immunity from any natural disaster or terrorism, and they don’t belong here or they don’t share our grief.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is wrong. Muslims are part of this society. Whatever each and every mainstream American goes through on a daily basis, each and every Muslim goes through the same ordeal. I just want to put the whole thing in a human perspective, and again no complaints, it’s just that we pray for the security and safety of this nation. It can be questioned by my fellow panelists, but probably at this moment Muslims are one group who are praying the most for the safety and security of this country. They are the people who fear the backlash most. They know that if something happens again, they will be the ones who will be targeted, by the zealots in the streets, by the people who would kill someone, a Sikh from India, because he had a turban and he had a beard that resembled bin Laden’s, as happened in Arizona. He was a fellow American citizen who happened to be a member of a sect and happened to have a turban and got killed because of a slight resemblance to the terrorist. This has to be understood by our fellow American citizens. We can go on and on and offer scholarly accounts of militant Islam or modern Islam, but like Dr. Gill said, it’s not up to us to offer this advice without looking at some of the root causes.
One of the major hurdles and obstacles that we have experienced as Muslim activists is that every time you try to offer some kind of explanation—I mean no explanation is a justification. When a murder is committed, we go through psychoanalysis of the murderer, we go through the MMO [motive, means, and opportunity] analysis, as Dr. Allison explained this morning. How come when such a big thing happens to our country nobody is allowed to talk about the root causes of that event? Why is it considered so insane to even pinpoint some of the political causes of that problem? Why do we have to always associate Islam with the horrible crime against humanity? It wasn’t just against Christians, Jews, and Buddhists, but against Muslims as well. Because of 9/11, not only Muslims in this country suffered but in other countries as well: Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia; look at the other Middle Eastern countries.
I was on a radio show in Los Angeles, speaking live from here, the John and Ken Show, a very prominent show in LA on prime time. I offered some comments and a lady called in and said Faiz, stop whining; you are complaining too much. I remember her name and I said, Jamie, please, I am speaking as an American, and I consider myself to be on the forefront of defending the civil liberties of the nation, not just the Muslims. I think 50 years, 75 years down the road, Muslim activists in this country will be remembered as people who under these circumstances held up the flag of civil liberties.
They refused to compromise constitutional values; they refused to compromise with people who were trying to undermine our basic structure of values, the core tenets of our Constitution. Mark my words. Most of us will not be alive 100 years from now, but that is going to be the case. So anyway, John, the lead anchor on the show, and I were talking about profiling, and I said, John, we cannot profile people based on their color and appearance because, first of all, if you are really trying to profile Muslims, Muslims come in all shades and colors, all sizes. You have Caucasian Muslims, Eastern Europeans, African Americans; they don’t fit a profile. What about Mr. Richard Reed? Who almost got away because we put so much focus on those 1,500 people, most of them from Pakistan, my motherland. Many were detained right after 9/11, I understand why they were detained, but not one of them was linked with the 9/11 events. Most were charged with minor immigration violations and subsequently deported. So we put so much energy and focus on people who are going on with their normal lives, based on their color, and because they had a funny accent. Especially, in the case of the Pakistani community. Look what happens to new arrivals. Somehow they started working at 7-11s or gas stations, the most public places. So they were reported every time a suspicion was aroused, just because there is some guy with an accent.
Basically, to cut it short, I think the focus should be very clear, Islam or the West? I don’t think there is any clash. I don’t believe that Islamic civilization or, for that matter, Western civilization, are monolithic civilizations. There is a lot of mingling, mixing. When you go to Islamic countries, most of the people of India and Pakistan—Muslim people—wear Western clothes, adhere to Western values, and watch Western TV. They make long lines to go to these Western countries, including the U.S. and England. My appeal to you tonight is: please, don’t emphasize this clash of civilization. I’m being blunt, but maybe you are helping our own enemies by emphasizing these concepts, these perceptions or, in my opinion, misperceptions. It may become, God forbid, a self-fulfilling prophecy. So we have to know that Islam is not against the core Western values of democracy.
The first elected government, the first elected ruler was Abubaker Siddiq, the first caliph of Islam right after the death of the Prophet. It was over 1,400 years ago that the basic democratic concepts were put in practice by inviting advice from lay people, common people, not just the elites. People were allowed to ask questions. Once when the second caliph, the second ruler of Islam, Omar bin Al-khatab, was giving a sermon, he was questioned: why do you have an extra sheet on your body because everyone in this city should only have one sheet? So how come you have two sheets? It was just one common person; and the caliph replied: “My son gave it to me.” I don’t mean to say it was the height of democracy, but most basic democracy principles were in place about 1,400 years ago. And I don’t really believe there is a conflict or clash between Western values and democracy and Islamic civilization.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much.
