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On being irresponsible
Al-Qalam Many people will say I’m naïve. Nevertheless, I confess that I was shocked at the sensationalist and paranoiac way in which much of the South African media covered the arrests by Pakistani security forces of South Africans Dr Feroz Ganchi and Zubair Ismail. Shocked because I honestly did not expect such reporting from our media. It’s the kind of thing we have come to expect from certain foreign media outlets, but journalism in South Africa was a little better or, at least, a little more responsible, I thought. Maybe I was wrong. And after irresponsible headlines like ‘Target Joburg’ and ‘Holy War in South Africa’, when South African government officials said there was no terrorist threat to South Africa, when Pakistani officials said the ‘confessions’ attributed to Ganchi and Ismail were false, rather than apologising for their irresponsible reporting, some media went on to try to cover up their earlier recklessness. The allegations emanated from an unnamed Pakistani intelligence source, were reported by a single news agency but were presented here as though they were fact. No questioning about where the information came from, no questioning about Pakistani ‘interrogation’ methods, no questioning about how ridiculous it sounded that terrorists would bomb Ellis Park Stadium or Carlton Centre, no questioning about why South Africa might even be considered an Al-Qaida target. We know nothing about how the two South Africans have been treated, our government has been denied access to them – as is required in terms of the Geneva Conventions – but the talk on the street was that the two men are Al-Qaida terrorists waiting to strike in South Africa. In this country, unlike in some others, we still believe people are innocent until proven guilty. Of course, the issue is more than just about Ganchi and Ismail. There have been rumours of Al-Qaida cells in South Africa, of South Africans fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia, etc. None have been proven. And the latest story is worse: it suggests not only that South Africans have been recruited by Al-Qaida but that they plan to attack South Africa itself. The notion that South Africa could be a target of Al-Qaida attacks is strange. What reason could there be for such attacks? South Africa does not have troops in Iraq (and, in fact, opposed US unilateralism in its war on Iraq); the South African government has good relationships with the Palestinian Authority and has made clear its opposition to the Sharon government’s policies particularly with respect to Israel’s Apartheid Wall. And South Africans generally are sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and oppose US imperialism and the war in Iraq. This is not to suggest, of course, that South Africa’s role is perfect. South Africa did supply weapons components to the UK and US militaries; South Africa did allow American and British warships to dock in Durban on their way to Iraq. But this is besides the (current) point.) Our interrogation of this issue, as a Muslim community, needs also to go beyond justifiable criticism of how it was handled in the media. This incident – like many others recently – is an opportunity for some introspection. It is very tempting when a community is under attack for it to become defensive and neglect to look at its own problems. I was interviewed recently by a Muslim journalist and in the middle of the interview – off the record – we had a huge argument about the Taliban; she supporting them and I arguing that they did Muslims a disservice and distorted and misinterpreted Islam to serve certain political, cultural and misogynistic objectives. For her, the Taliban was the best thing to happen to Afghanistan and to Muslim women. I doubt that she would be willing to live under Taliban rule or would want to bring up her daughters in a Taliban-led country. (She certainly wouldn’t be allowed to practise as a journalist.) Our introspection must consider the practices within our community – in this country and globally – and their causes. Too many of us are ready to call any Muslim we don’t agree with a kafir (rejecter of Allah) or a munafiq (hypocrite). This could be Sufis, Brelvis, Deobandis, those who believe women should go to the masjid, those who visit graves, those with good relationships with non-Muslims… Too many of us are keen to believe our understanding of Islam is the only legitimate one, that all others are wrong, unIslamic and deserving of derision. Too many of us cannot see anything good in any human being that’s not Muslim (especially if s/he is a Jew). And
too much of this kind of fundamentalism – for that’s what it is – comes
from the education many young Muslims are given about Islam. And too many
of those in our community imparting that education have trained in the
same places and using the same methodologies as the Taliban. Today, when one cannot find a single Muslim that had supported apartheid (everyone now claims to have been part of the liberation struggle), let us remember that those that did stand firmly against injustice were often attacked in the Muslim community for engaging in ‘kufr politics’ and for ‘running around with the kariahs’. Is that attitude history? Do Muslims in South Africa truly identify as Black South Africans – those that are Black? Do we truly regard South Africa as our country that we will defend against the excesses of terrorism and fundamentalism – even from other Muslims? For many of us, these might seem silly questions (perhaps asked by someone with a ‘spiteful agenda’ as suggested by a letter in the last issue of Al-Qalam). Check around you as to how many Muslims believe attacking New York was a good thing, who think that Usama Bin Laden is a great Muslim leader that needs to be followed, who are willing to say – even publicly – that ‘Hitler didn’t finish the job’. We cannot accept the kind of sensationalism that we have seen over the past few weeks with regard to the arrests in Pakistan. But we can equally not allow ourselves to blame everyone else for problems with roots within our community. After all, ‘Allah does not change the condition of a people until they change what is within themselves.’
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