Literary and Non-Literary Responses Toward 9/11: South Asian and Beyond

I had the honor of responding to a book recently published by Routledge and edited by Forman professor, Nukhbah Taj Langah. Many of the contributors were Forman faculty members. The purpose of this volume was to present a multi-layered analysis of responses to 9/11 through a range of disciplinary lenses. This approach and this volume is helpful in reminding us that history did not start with the event, as much as emotions and/or political commentaries would lead us to believe.  And that the impacts of the event are not just felt in the United States. There was much that came before that led up to the event and much that has come after. The book also reminds us that vast generalizations are not helpful in the context of the scale that we live our lives, and thus is attempts to illustrate and uncover the ways in which the event has led to the further simplification of our understanding of society, underlain by a framework of bifurcation between the West and Muslim worlds. An overview and my response to this books follows:

Kamal ud Din argues that this includes the ethnocentric creation of an image of Islam that is antithetical to Western concepts of modernity, tolerance, and rationality. Among the simplifications is the assumption that culture and state are synonymous and that the divides are thus along the same lines.  All these assumptions and generalizations keep us from being able to set aside simple characterizations of cultures and states, and replace them with relationships that help us develop more complex views of each other. One author, Charles Ramsey, roots this bifurcation of the world in an essentialist depiction of religion that ignores socio-religious traditions and thus simplifies religious phenomenon.   

If this is true, then both sides of this bifurcated world end up simplified by the narrative.  And Mobeena Shatqat discusses in her chapter, how the “otherness” categorization reinforces itself on both sides of the divide.  For example, Dr. a Kar describes how both the fatwa propagated by Bin Laden assumes a unity across nations by faith, and assumes that Muslim identity is homogeneous, and thus creates a coherent “other” category for the West, while the West does the same thing of itself in its own documents and policies.  And I would argue that in the United States there are similar instances where religion is used as tool to express political discontent, and that these are not clearly understood by the liberal press or policy-makers as well.  Our understanding of ourselves is not nuanced, in the West, let alone of others.

Nukhbah Langah explores how local Islamization and international Islamaphobia thus reinforces one another.  Both equate nationality with religion.  This level of generalization stigmatizes and stereotypes rather than challenging us all to be honest and explore all the nuances of our own heritage and history—to learn deeply.  And she asks us—what genres can lead to deeper cultural dialogues?  Waqar Azeem and Halimah Ali explore expressions of the experience of the divide in more popular culture through the connection between truck art and the depiction of drones—drones to be an exception that have become the rule—and in Bollywood.

Madeline Clements asks us to think more deeply on the question of how 9/11 has perhaps impeded the original vision of Pakistan as a multi-religious nation and made it difficult for Pakistani Christians to claim their national identify.  I would argue that this bifurcation of the world has also led Americans to be blind to the multiple religious’ identities within other countries, creating further difficulty for such minority groups.  For example, to be blind and unaware of the long history and existence of Palestinian, Syrian, and Iraqi Christians. 

While 9/11 has led to an increased strength of a bifurcated view of the world, Julie Flowerday, reminds us that the impacts are always expressed at the local level, and vary based on local circumstances.  She describes how 9/11 shifted the geographic direction of influence in the Hunza region from the West to China.  In the midst of the larger global conflict, opportunities arise for other players at the local level and greatly influence the lives of people groups.  I would argue that these groups tend to be at the cultural or geographic margins of nation-states and are often groups that are already vulnerable and marginalized to begin with.

The question that I am left with, after reading this volume, is:  How do we build a social imagination that bridges this bifurcation and creates a multi-faceted view of ourselves and of others?

I believe that we each need deep, historical, and honest integration of our own traditions into our present understanding of ourselves.  This needs to be done with a recognition of our groundedness in our various communities while knowing that traditions are living things and are not static.  Communities have agency and need agency in negotiating their lives and traditions over time.  The challenge, from my perspective as an American Christian, is that the individualistic worldview of segments of western society see identity formation coming from individual self-actualization and not from belonging to a community.  Within very individualistic segments of my society, communities of belief or commitment are seen as barriers to identify formation rather than sources of our understanding of ourselves.  This is a fundamental discussion that needs to take place in the west-- to bring this assumption to the forefront.

Renowned sociologist of religion Peter Berger, at the end of his long career, offered a new social paradigm for the west, based on pluralism rather than the inevitability of secularization.  Pluralism, according to Berger, is a social situation wherein people with different ethnicities, worldviews and moralities live together and interact amicably with one another, recognizing the existence of different religions and the co-existence of religious and secular discourses.  This paradigm is not built on avoidance, or separation, or attacking personal motives, but on negotiation.  He asks us to hold on to each other, staying locked in dialogue as we negotiate our relationships.  This approach requires us to focus on how we work together rather than on the imposition of an agreed upon set of beliefs, always with the common goal of a peaceful co-existence that serves the common good.

This peaceful co-existence requires that West and East both become honest about the differing communities of commitment within their midst.  They are a fact of reality and are not going to disappear as Berger argues. 

So perhaps the question is not, as the author of one chapter stated, “can Islam be made secular, democratic, and pluralistic?”  But, can our societies allow for the existence of different communities within our boundaries that can all hold a common national identity while belonging to different religious traditions?  This is the question for both Western and Muslim-dominated societies.

 And honesty and humility are called for in these discussions.  Mashal Saif challenged me to think of my own views of traditional Islamic education.  So often it is viewed in the West as being responsible for terrorism yet, just as I personally see Christian education as a component of the solution to terrorism, I also need to think about this in relation to Islamic education. 

 At the time of 9/11, many of us in the US hoped that the question, “Why do they hate us so much?” would lead to more self-reflection and deeper understanding on the part of Americans.  I can’t make a generalization about whether this has happened or not.  Certainly on the surface, it would appear to not be the case.  But as this volume says again and again, it is at the personal level that dialogue takes place.  I do know someone in San Diego that meets with an interfaith group at the local YMCA with no agenda other than to get to know and understand each other.  I know of someone else, a Christian, who is part of a coalition that addresses issues of Islamophobia at the state level in South Dakota.  My own Christian church in Grand Rapids, Michigan has been bringing its members together with those from a local mosque for meals.  These are the places where I look for hope. And I know that our lives are intertwined and who we become is tied to how we are going to negotiate our understanding of ourselves and others together.

At the end of this volume, the World Trade Tower site is described as being experienced as an absence—it is a black hole.   I resonate with that image of all of us standing around the hole, waiting to see what and who it is going to fill it in.  We wait to see who steps forward to fill the gaping hole.  We can’t let others fill it in—we need to begin to fill it in with an honest and nuanced narrative, just as this book has started to do.