On Arabs, Pakistanis and Islam: an open letter to a Pakistani-Christian

Yesterday, a Pakistani Christian e-mailed me her concerns after reading my article in elan about the disloyalty she has perceived amongst Pakistani-heritage Muslims living in the United States today. Below is my response to her:

Dear Sue:

First of all I want to apologize on behalf of all real Muslims for the discrimination and bigotry followers of your faith face in Pakistan. It puzzles me that a country whose flag and charter claim to be tolerant is indeed one of the world’s worst violators of the right to free conscience and association. As a college student, I heard first hand from Baha’is, Christians, Parsis, Hindus and Jews the misfortunes that their families endured under Munafiq rule in Iran and Pakistan.Munafiq being the Islamic term for hypocrites.

First of all Pakistan is not an ethnic term, or a racial one, it is a political construct created by intellectuals who focused on communal nationalism in the early 20th century. A

Pakistani is technically only someone who is a citizen of Pakistan. I am a Pathan, or as is today popular to say, an ethnic Pashtun from the wrong side of the border. Islam and Muslims represent and come from pretty much every race in the world, and many are born here to families who have been here for generations. I know of at least 2 dozen Muslim servicemen and women, and about half a dozen Muslim shaheeds who were American. Shaheed in this case being a martyr who died defending this country, which many Muslim Americans agree is the only Islamic country on earth.

I point out Pakistan’s phrasal role in this because l know of no Pakistani who is loyal to this country. When Muslims of my generation and I converse, we refer to ourselves as Muslims who are Americans. Our ethnic backgrounds are usually “Desi, Arab, Persian, African, Black”–never Pakistani.

This isn’t to say we have some revulsion for Pakistan, but it is to say that the problems we see creeping up in the Pakistani diaspora in America amongst those whose community it enfranchised (read: “Muslims”) have nothing to do with being Muslim.

They have everything to do with Pakistanis and Arabs realizing that (in the Pakistani case) the lies and myths of being better than India, that Hindus would oppress and kill all Muslims if they could and would have done so had partition not occured, and that Bengalis being darked skinned were never true Muslims anyway–all of that is defeated when they come to live in the United States of America, where Bengali women are actually all the rage on college campuses; where Indian Student Associations hold iftars for Indian Muslims; where Indian Americans are governors and completely accepted into society, even though one of them is a Sikh; where their children have Hindu and Parsi friends, and neither one of them has bullied them at school even in the post 9/11 world. Pakistani “Muslims” cannot comprehend that their national myth is more or less a political farce, and those who do not adapt openly end up like Faisal Shezad.

In the Arab case, it’s much simpler. The Arabs no longer rule the world, have lost (for a third time) the city of Jerusalem to Europeans (who take care of it much better than the Arabs did), and are desperate to reclaim some of their old magic. When you go to a mosque in America, be sure that if the congregation mainly identifies as Pakistani (not Muslim American), there is a lot of talk of Muslims being better inherently than non-Muslims, and that if the congregation identifies as Arab (not Muslim American), there are  many sermons on reclaiming the Islamic World (code for: the Arabs must rise again!).

But my generation, the ones who were born here, who grew up with a Muslim identity first, not a Pakistani or Arab or any other communal-nationalist tradition as their source of pride and identity, this is our country. We have our own mosques, our own ‘national myth’ (“America is the best”), and our own (closer to what’s in the Quran and commentary) take on what Islam’s tenets are about. If you need to look some of us up, we started a wiki to talk about the rising Muslim leaders in our community a few weeks ago: http://genchange.wikia.com

So let’s not get carried away here: yes, there are people claiming to be Muslims who don’t love this country or really consider it home. But those of us born and raised here, who were raised primarily Muslims, not Pakistanis or any other identity: this is our home. And we’re ready to die to keep it that way, and to keep it beautiful and free.

If you, or any other Christian/non-Muslim Pakistanis or Americans have questions about what I have just wrote, please feel free to contact me. I love talking to non-Muslims from “Muslim” majority countries because they have an integral role in God forgiving the people of my faith for the sins done against others across the world.

Best,

Hamza Khan

Thankless to the End: BBC News – Pakistani flood victims’ anger at US

BBC News – Pakistani flood victims’ anger at US.

Pakistani opposition politicians and flood survivors alike are criticizing American aid to Pakistan following the most destructive monsoon in nearly a century.

The United States has adopted a policy of “providing as asked”. This means the American government will only provide as much aid as asked for through official Pakistani channels. This frustrates Pakistanis who aren’t fully aware of the geo-political context of American involvement in Pakistan.

Pakistan’s powerful military has now twice been humiliated in the face of floods. In 1971, 2/3 of Pakistanis broke away to form Bangladesh after light-skinned West Pakistani military officials allowed half a million darker-skinned East Pakistanis to die before intervening following the Bohla Cyclone. The current crisis is the second flood-related disaster where the Pakistani army’s has proved wholly impotent.

The current floods are largely affecting the provinces of Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and southern Punjab (Siraikistan/Multan).  The largely Punjabi-military has been at a loss: it doesn’t have enough boats or equipment (Pakistan has never developed a strong navy) to cope with any natural disaster. In fact, while Pakistan has benefited from billions in American aid since 2001, most of it has been spent on making sure the country can fight a conventional war against India, in order to ‘liberate’ Kashmir from ‘Hindu occupation’.

Pakistan’s military originally involved the United States in South Asian affairs to provide a counter-balanced to rising Indian hegemony in the region. Today however, Pakistani generals fear that an increased American presence-even if it is friendly-will set alight the smoldering flames of extremism across Pakistan.

Pakistanis, or rather urbanites in Punjab and Karachi, are nationalists whose poorer classes have extremist tendencies, and whose upper classes have in many cases manipulated the poor for one or another political cause. But since the mid 2000′s, religious extremists have largely replaced Pakistan’s materialist upper classes as patrons of the poor. That’s why many in Pakistan have fears about standing too close to the Americans.

On top of that, no one is really sure where the tipping point of American involvement in Pakistan is, and nobody wants to find out when it’s too late. America’s legacy on the subcontinent is schizophrenic, Pakistanis claim. We’re never there when they need us, and we rarely stay after a desperate one night stand. Why on earth would Pakistanis thank us now?

Furthermore, American drone attacks have deeply affected Pakistani morale and prestige, leaving elite and commoner alike embittered and vengeful towards America. While the rest of the Muslim world–including the Arab Street–now has a positive opinion of America,  Pakistanis in overwhelming majorities have a staunchly negative view of the United States. In light of this, Pakistan’s leaders have privately asked American leaders to please give aid…but only as requested by Islamabad.

Pakistanis are cynical about their governing institutions and their leaders, and many pray for America’s utter destruction during nightly prayers. Many believe the United States as directly responsible for “stirring the cauldron” of extremists groups in their country, and view any aid we provide them through the lense of “they owe us that much”, and nothing more. That seriously frustrates and complicates attempts by Washington and the Pentagon to relieve some of the pressure put on Pakistan’s beleaguered governing civilians–only the seventh democratically elected in the country’s 60 year history.

Right now, the best thing for decision-makers in Washington to do is to pressure Islamabad to let them do more, if they want to avoid outright insurrection in every province in the country.

Can we stop Arab Terror? Sure, with a comic book.