Sharmin Sadequee" />
  • ABOUT
  • PRINT
  • PRAISE
  • SUBSCRIBE
  • OPENINGS
  • SUBMISSIONS
  • CONTACT
The Missing Slate - For the discerning reader
  • HOME
  • Magazine
  • In This Issue
  • Literature
    • Billy Luck
      Billy Luck
    • To the Depths
      To the Depths
    • Dearly Departed
      Dearly Departed
    • Fiction
    • Poetry
  • Arts AND Culture
    • Tramontane
      Tramontane
    • Blade Runner 2049
      Blade Runner 2049
    • Loving Vincent
      Loving Vincent
    • The Critics
      • FILM
      • BOOKS
      • TELEVISION
    • SPOTLIGHT
    • SPECIAL FEATURES
  • ESSAYS
    • A SHEvolution is Coming in Saudi Arabia
      A SHEvolution is Coming in Saudi Arabia
    • Paxi: A New Business Empowering Women in Pakistan
      Paxi: A New Business Empowering Women in Pakistan
    • Nature and Self
      Nature and Self
    • ARTICLES
    • COMMENTARY
    • Narrative Nonfiction
  • CONTESTS
    • Pushcart Prize 2017 Nominations
      Pushcart Prize 2017 Nominations
    • Pushcart Prize 2016 Nominations
      Pushcart Prize 2016 Nominations
    • Pushcart Prize 2015 Nominations
      Pushcart Prize 2015 Nominations
    • PUSHCART 2013
    • PUSHCART 2014
Articles, Commentary, EssaysSeptember 12, 2016

When State Replaces God

  • DC Guantanamo Anniversary Jan 11 2013 035
  • DSC_0318
  • 913681_276742555796749_561338574_o
  • albany n alvy august 2012 014
  • ????????????????????????????????????
    ????????????????????????????????????

A scholar criticizes Western society’s pressure on all Muslims to take collective responsibility for terror

By Sharmin Sadequee

Following every international or domestic terrorism act committed by a Muslim, the American-Muslim community divides under pressure on the issue of whether or not Muslims should take collective responsibility to communally condemn and apologize for the acts of a few individuals. On one hand is a group of Muslim activists and organizations who accept collective responsibility by condemning such acts. They are therefore viewed by the dominant Euro-American society as patriotic, “good” Muslims.  On the other hand is a group of activists and organizations who reject collective responsibility and may be viewed as unpatriotic, “bad” terrorist sympathizers.

Critics of collective responsibility claim that it aligns one with the oppressors of Muslims, thus the supporters are viewed as “bad” Muslims. From their perspective, “good” Muslims don’t take collective responsibility but stand up against the state and its violence against Muslims in general.

As an American Muslim who has been working with and advocating for families of Muslims imprisoned preemptively in the United States, I have observed and experienced the impact of the divisions and debates around collective responsibility and collective condemnation for the last fifteen years and I want to disrupt it.
The schism over this debate reverses the “good” and “bad” binary within the community in relationship to Muslims’ experiences of state violence and structural oppression. This construct is a consequence of the historical encounter between European colonizers and the colonized people, perpetuated by the state’s rationalization of the “war on terror.”  George W. Bush deployed this binary rationality to advance foreign and domestic policies using Islam and Muslims for the expansion of US imperialism. European colonizers used this logic to divide and conquer through violence; where “good” Muslims collaborated with colonial masters and accepted the values of the dominant power.  “Bad” Muslims resisted colonial power and domination and were systematically dismissed as “dangerous.” The faction that has emerged around Muslims engagement with collective responsibility and collective condemnation since 9/11 reproduces these colonial politics and practices between Muslim Americans and their relationship with the state in the “war on terror.”

As an American Muslim who has been working with and advocating for families of Muslims imprisoned preemptively in the United States, I have observed and experienced the impact of the divisions and debates around collective responsibility and collective condemnation for the last fifteen years and I want to disrupt it.  This binary is imposed on Muslims by the state, but Muslim’s engagement with it is a result of internalized orientalist stereotypes, which paint Islam and Muslims as inherently violent and further perpetuate dehumanization and state violence.

To understand this process, one must ask: does criticizing responsibility and condemnation erase and hurt some community members and perpetuate state violence?  Does rejection of collective responsibility absolve Muslims from condemning certain harmful individuals?  Does standing up against oppression itself become a form of oppression in the face of multiple oppressions? Is that too, a form of violence?

Lets examine collective responsibility. Collective responsibility is the idea that a group is liable for the wrongful acts of a few.  It communicates the idea of a collective mind; all are connected to perpetrators without ever having contact with them.  Historically, marginalized groups in the United States have been forced to be accountable for the actions of one person. This action is a part and process of racialization of marginalized communities of color and central to racism and Euro-American dominance in this country.  Muslims subjected to such racializing politics have been forced to self-contaminate themselves with “guilt by association” with individuals who cause harm and share the same faith. But the limits of that responsibility must be interrogated.

Connected to holding Muslims collectively responsible for the wrongful act of a criminal individual is the state demand for collective condemnation. The Muslim community is under tremendous pressure from government officials, media platforms and the dominant Euro-American society to loudly declare and visibly perform its position against terrorism. The implication is that if Muslims don’t condemn, they secretly support terrorism and are therefore a potential threat, warranting suspicion, surveillance and retribution.  In the absence of outward condemnation, all Muslims are guilty until proven innocent and the entire community should be punished and held responsible for any atrocity committed by the culprit.  Although condemnation can operate independently, Muslims have been compelled to engage in collective condemnation of “terrorism” as a form of collective responsibility. A similar demand and response from Euro-American Christian populations in retrospect is missing when a white Christian engages in violence.

When officials in a liberal, secular, modern nation-state demand collective responsibility from Muslims, religion is mixed with the state in a ritualized way. The fusion of religion and state

formation was established in ancient times, when religion was the law that guided the conducts of people’s lives, and punished those who sinned against God or gods.  Evolving from ancient state systems, modern nation-states such as the United States although claim to be secular, yet were bounded by religious symbols and ritual practices from their very inception. Politics and the legal and penal systems have always blended with Christianity. Among dominant groups, “sinners” have been replaced by criminals who are individually held responsible and punished in modern state systems.

Demands for collective responsibility and punishment are also not based on modern liberal principles.  In a modern normative morality, only individuals are responsible for wrongful actions. When the dominant Euro-American society calls for collective responsibility, the Muslim community is compelled to engage in anti-American ethical conduct and forced to go against modern Western values.  This position undermines the very concept and practice treasured in modern notions of accountability and justice.  This stance also serves to legitimize the dominant discourse that Islam and Muslims are violent.  Further, acknowledging association with wrongdoers also permits the US government to continue sending informants to mosques and Muslim communities. Supporting this position perpetuates unintended state surveillance, violations of civil liberties and human rights and increased civilian hate attacks on Muslims. Consequently, Muslims solicit more expansive counter-terror measures and affirm the use of governmental authority to cause harm to groups and individuals. In turn, they allow states to achieve certain implicit or explicit goals to maintain state power and control over the population—in other words, state violence.

The expectation of collective responsibility is a state mechanism for continuously scapegoating innocent Muslims and Islam as “threats.” Scapegoats emerge during times of crisis and moral panic when individuals or groups resembling perpetrators get classified as a threat to societal values and wellbeing. An increased level of hostility towards the group collectively designated as the enemy is exhibited. Through these processes of scapegoating and panic, Muslims or people perceived to be Muslims are socially constructed as “terrorists.”  Scapegoating promotes social and political exclusion and othering of unwanted individuals or groups, empowering dominant groups to exercise power and discipline over both the scapegoated population and society in general.  Muslims have been collectively scapegoated in the aftermath of 9/11;  innocent people have been detained, deported, arrested and tortured both domestically and globally in notorious camps such as Communications Management Units and Guantanamo Bay.  Muslim Americans have been subject to a separate system of justice where human rights violations through the judicial and penal system are accepted as legal and legitimate. When Muslims accept collective responsibility, they acknowledge the acceptance of abuse of Muslims as scapegoats for atrocities. Muslim Americans in particular, must rethink whether this position is helpful in the political struggle to secure collective dignity and self-determination.

Muslims critics of collective responsibility are usually also the ones denouncing collective condemnation in this debate.  Public performances of rejecting collective responsibility and collective condemnation might be viewed by some as revolutionary, standing against oppressors and state violence.  However, the outward dismissal of one’s responsibility and collective condemnation does not liberate Muslims from the implicit condemnation of individuals. Muslims’ abstention from condemnation vicariously affirms their support for condemnation by the state. Whether or not some Muslims reject responsibility and condemnation the perpetrator is subjected  to the law and the state punishes the criminal. Rejecters of this position in effect support retributive justice, the idea that violence deserves to be repaid with violence. This is not a novel position for Americans, but retribution is a morally acceptable American value and daily law enforcement practice which garners strong public support for harsh criminal penalties.

Retributive violence is also connected to the way the state uses military force in global conflicts. Vicariously endorsing this norm tacitly supports the use of torture for terrorism suspects and the use of military force abroad. This stance supports the violent prison-military-industrial complex, which include the practices of government surveillance, use of informants and the predatory prosecution of Muslims.  Critics of collective responsibility and collective condemnation inadvertently uphold the principles and practices of oppressive systems.

Furthermore, critics are much aligned with American and Western values and support modern, liberal, democratic normative principles of individual accountability when they indirectly condemn the culprit.  The modern liberal morality assumes that there is individual autonomy in committing a crime and affirms the validity of criminal law. Therefore, this position does not absolve critics from condemning the wrongdoer; instead, it raises questions about whether or not and how this public performance leads to ending US imperial violence both domestically and globally.  Not only do critics condemn few wrongdoers in this way, they actually also denounce another group of Muslims who have committed no act of violence— individuals the state selects as scapegoats for predatory prosecution.

The fissure between critics and supporters in the mainstream debates around collective responsibility and collective condemnation is based on the experiences of these two sides which homogenizes Muslim American experiences within this binary. Each position does not distinguish between criminal and non-criminal acts, that is, acts of atrocity and the criminalization of Muslims  which involve no actions.  When this position flourishes in public spaces, when an act of terrorism violence does occur, it encourages the Muslim mass to internalize the public debate and reject collective responsibility whenever one is accused of “terrorism,” even when there is no violence or intent of violence.

More than 500 innocent American Muslims have been targeted, imprisoned and condemned by the state in government-manufactured, “terrorism”-related cases through entrapment or violation of constitutional and human rights in the domestic “war on terror.”   These Muslims are victims of predatory prosecution by the federal criminal justice system. These Muslims and their families have also been expunged and silenced by government institutions, dominant American society and the larger Muslim community.

Continue Reading

1 2 View All →

Tags

articlescommentaryessays

Share on

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • Google +
  • LinkedIn
  • Email
Previous articleLove — Perfect
Next articleMemories of Reading: Part I

You may also like

A SHEvolution is Coming in Saudi Arabia

Paxi: A New Business Empowering Women in Pakistan

Nature and Self

Ad

In the Magazine

A Word from the Editor

Don’t cry like a girl. Be a (wo)man.

Why holding up the women in our lives can help build a nation, in place of tearing it down.

Literature

This House is an African House

"This house is an African house./ This your body is an African woman’s body..." By Kadija Sesay.

Literature

Shoots

"Sapling legs bend smoothly, power foot in place,/ her back, parallel to solid ground,/ makes her torso a table of support..." By Kadija Sesay.

Literature

A Dry Season Doctor in West Africa

"She presses her toes together. I will never marry, she says. Jamais dans cette vie! Where can I find a man like you?" By...

In the Issue

Property of a Sorceress

"She died under mango trees, under kola nut/ and avocado trees, her nose pressed to their roots,/ her hands buried in dead leaves, her...

Literature

What Took Us to War

"What took us to war has again begun,/ and what took us to war/ has opened its wide mouth/ again to confuse us." By...

Literature

Sometimes, I Close My Eyes

"sometimes, this is the way of the world,/ the simple, ordinary world, where things are/ sometimes too ordinary to matter. Sometimes,/ I close my...

Literature

Quarter to War

"The footfalls fading from the streets/ The trees departing from the avenues/ The sweat evaporating from the skin..." By Jumoke Verissimo.

Literature

Transgendered

"Lagos is a chronicle of liquid geographies/ Swimming on every tongue..." By Jumoke Verissimo.

Fiction

Sketches of my Mother

"The mother of my memories was elegant. She would not step out of the house without her trademark red lipstick and perfect hair. She...

Fiction

The Way of Meat

"Every day—any day—any one of us could be picked out for any reason, and we would be... We’d part like hair, pushing into the...

Fiction

Between Two Worlds

"Ursula spotted the three black students immediately. Everyone did. They could not be missed because they kept to themselves and apart from the rest...."...

Essays

Talking Gender

"In fact it is often through the uninformed use of such words that language becomes a tool in perpetuating sexism and violence against women...

Essays

Unmasking Female Circumcision

"Though the origins of the practice are unknown, many medical historians believe that FGM dates back to at least 2,000 years." Gimel Samera looks...

Essays

Not Just A Phase

"...in the workplace, a person can practically be forced out of their job by discrimination, taking numerous days off for fear of their physical...

Essays

The Birth of Bigotry

"The psychology of prejudice demands that we are each our own moral police". Maria Amir on the roots of bigotry and intolerance.

Fiction

The Score

"The person on the floor was unmistakeably dead. It looked like a woman; she couldn’t be sure yet..." By Hawa Jande Golakai.

More Stories

Remembering A Woman I Didn’t Know, Fighting A War I Don’t Believe In

In memory of Sabeen Mahmud.

Back to top
One last love letter...

April 24, 2021

It has taken us some time and patience to come to this decision. TMS would not have seen the success that it did without our readers and the tireless team that ran the magazine for the better part of eight years.

But… all good things must come to an end, especially when we look at the ever-expanding art and literary landscape in Pakistan, the country of the magazine’s birth.

We are amazed and proud of what the next generation of creators are working with, the themes they are featuring, and their inclusivity in the diversity of voices they are publishing. When TMS began, this was the world we envisioned…

Though the magazine has closed and our submissions shuttered, this website will remain open for the foreseeable future as an archive of the great work we published and the astounding collection of diverse voices we were privileged to feature.

If, however, someone is interested in picking up the baton, please email Maryam Piracha, the editor, at maryamp@themissingslate.com.

Farewell, fam! It’s been quite a ride.

Read previous post:
As heavy as the bottom of the sea

"They woke to find an angel on the beach/ as heavy as the bottom of the sea,/ as dark as...

Close