A Quiet Revolution (36 page)

Is a Threat to America and the West.” The pamphlet stated, among other things, that “Islam is, quite simply, a religion of war. While there are lax Islamics [
sic
] there is no such thing as peaceful or tolerant Islam.”
48

The seemingly greater tolerance for the airing of open hostility to- ward Arabs and Muslims doubtless affected the experience of living in America for many Muslims. For some, however, the growing common- ness of such negative stereotypes would not merely inflect and alter the ordinary and passing moments but would directly impact their lives.

Two women in particular were affected in this way—women whose cases would become well known. One of these women is Debbie Al- montaser, and the other is Nadia Abu El-Haj. Their stories would be re- counted by, respectively, the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Andrea Elliott in the
New York Times,
and the prominent journalist Jane Kramer in the
New Yorker
.

Almontaser, a Yemeni who came to the United States with her par- ents when she was three, had been approached to help create a new pub- lic school that would teach Arabic. The New York City Department of Education approved the school and announced that it would teach half its courses in Arabic. Soon after, Daniel Pipes (founder, as mentioned earlier, of the Middle East Forum and of Campus Watch) published an op-ed piece in the
New York Sun
disapproving of the project and de- scribing the school as a “madrassa.”
49
(“Madrassa” is the Arabic word for

school. However, since
9
/
11
the term has often figured pejoratively in

popular culture in the United States as implying institutions that incul- cate the teachings of radical Islam.) A group calling itself the Stop the Madrassa Coalition was formed, and Pipes was on its advisory board. Almontaser, who had had a “longstanding reputation as a Muslim mod- erate,” would find herself branded, in a number of “newspaper articles and Internet postings, [and] on television and talk radio,” as “a ‘radical,’ a ‘jihadist,’ and a ‘
9
/
11
denier.’” She was forced to resign.

This outcome, observed Elliott, was not the “result of a sponta- neous outcry by concerned parents and neighborhood activists.” Rather, she continued, “it was the work of a growing and organized movement to stop Muslim citizens who are seeking an expanded role in American public life.” To those behind this movement, Elliott wrote, the fight against this school . . . was only an early skirmish in a broader national

struggle.” According to Pipes, who “helped lead the charge against Ms. Almontaser and the school,” this was “a battle that’s really just begun.”
50
The Abu El-Haj case related to Abu El-Haj’s tenure review at Barnard College. Abu El-Haj (the American-born daughter of a Muslim Palestinian immigrant and his American “Long Island Episcopalian” wife) had published a book,
Facts on the Ground: Archeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society,
in
2001
. The book, which examines the political role that archeology served in validating Jewish claims to the land of Israel, was very well received by academics in the field. Abu El-Haj’s subsequent studies and teaching were positively eval- uated by her colleagues at Barnard, and in early
2007
her tenure case was proceeding smoothly. At that point a petition entitled “Deny Nadia Abu El-Haj Tenure” was posted online. The petition described Abu El-Haj as a scholar of “inferior caliber” who denied “Israel’s historical claims to

the Holy Land.” The petition quickly gathered signatures.
51

Daniel Pipes was involved in this case, too, alongside those who wished to put a halt to Abu El-Haj’s tenure effort, as Kramer describes in her account of the case, “The Petition: Israel, Palestine, and a Tenure Battle at Barnard.” Also among those attempting to halt the case was Charles Jacobs, president of the David Project, and David Horowitz, who, Kramer wrote, regards the Left as an “enabler and abettor of the terrorist jihad.” All three, along with their organizations, are described by Pipes (writes Kramer) as part of the “‘general effort’ to fight bias in the academy.” Pipes’s organization, the Middle East Forum, “does the re- search; Jacobs’s David Project does the interventions; and Horowitz’s Freedom Center does the ‘left-right’ issues. Their politics vary, but when it comes to defending Israel they agree.”
52

Judith Shapiro, an anthropologist who was president of Barnard at the time, issued a statement making clear that the tenure process entailed consultation with experts in the relevant field and that while she appre- ciated feedback she was wary of “letter writing campaigns” orchestrated by people “who may not be in the best position to judge the matter at

hand.”
53
Abu El-Haj was granted tenure in November
2007
.

Abu El-Haj was one among a number of professors who had been tar- geted by a trend which, by
2001
, had prompted the American Association

of University Professors (AAUP) to appoint a committee to report on threats to academic freedom. Joan Wallach Scott, a professor at Prince- ton University’s Institute for Advanced Study, had served on the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure since
1993
and she now chaired the committee.

Their report was issued in
2003
. It noted that “new threats to aca- demic freedom” were both a product of the
9
/
11
attacks and “of efforts by various groups on the right (many of them off campus) to impose controls on teachers and campus activities.” It also noted in particular that “we have also been concerned about the impact of pro-Israeli lob- byists on pending federal legislation and on foundations. Conflating crit- icism of current Israeli policy with anti-Semitism, these groups have tried

... to prevent speakers critical of Israel (among them left-wing Israelis) from coming to campuses.” What was “worrisome” about such activities, the report noted, was “its inevitably chilling effect on classroom and cam- pus expression.”
54

In subsequent articles, interviews, and statements, Scott also noted that the “assault on Middle East Studies scholars and programs,” which had already been “well underway at the end of the
1990
s,” had made use of the
9
/
11
attack to identify Muslims with terrorism. The war in Iraq, she noted, had also undoubtedly contributed to the troubling situation in relation to Middle East studies programs. In the early period of the war in particular, wrote Scott, “any protests were considered not only

unpatriotic, but threats to national security. Those who would offer crit- ical perspectives were, if not silenced, intimidated.” Scott mentioned Pipes’s website Campus Watch (launched in
2002
) and the various ac- tivities of David Horowitz, a neoconservative associated with Campus

Watch and with Students for Academic Freedom, as significantly con- tributing to the new and “extraordinary pressures” being brought to bear on academic freedom, and that were creating a “climate of fear” leading to “caution, self-policing and a careful avoidance of controversy” on uni- versity campuses.
55
The costs of such silencing were dangerous for many, said Scott. Such groups were “equating criticism of Israel’s policies with anti-Semitism and with opposition to the existence of the state of Israel.” Such claims were both “irresponsible” and “dishonest,” she said, and yet they seemed to “command a great deal of uncritical media attention.”

Among the consequences of such actions was the erasure of the opposi- tion to the Sharon government that existed among both Israelis and American Jews, “myself included.”
56

Horowitz would also launch the David Horowitz Freedom Center and FrontPage Magazine, as well as sponsor Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week, an event organized at many U.S. college campuses. Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week consisted of talks and teach-ins on Islamo-fascism, and it prominently featured the subject of the “oppression of women in Islam.” As Horowitz explained, “Our theme will be the Oppression of Women in Islam and the threat posed by the Islamic crusade against the

West.”
57
Across “more than
100
college campuses,” Horowitz and his

supporters organized talks on “the oppression of women in Islam,” as well as sit-ins targeting in particular Women’s Studies departments “to protest the lack of concern for this oppression on the part of feminists.”
58
Speakers at such events included Ann Coulter, Rick Santorum, Sean Hannity, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali (the Dutch Somali “ex-Muslim” author of
Caged Virgin
and
Infidel
, who was now a fellow at the conservative Amer- ican Enterprise Institute).

Feminists such as Barbara Ehrenreich and Katha Pollitt would be surprised enough by this alignment of noted anti-feminists concerned purportedly about the oppression of women in Islam to cast a skeptical eye on the event. Ehrenreich, for example, noting that she had last seen Coulter on television “pining for the repeal of women’s suffrage,” com- mented that Coulter was far from the only speaker with a “credibility problem”; Senator Rick Santorum had blamed “radical feminism” for “destroying the American family.”
59
Pollitt, listing the speakers, re- marked that “these are people who have made careers out of attacking the mildest updates on American women’s roles, whether it’s working mothers, birth control or even, in the case of Coulter, the right to vote! In the zillions of words for which Horowitz is responsible ... there is virtually no evidence of concern for the rights, liberties, opportunities or well-being of any women on earth, except for Muslims.”
60

Pollitt turned to Lila Abu Lughod of Columbia University for an explanation of this seemingly bizarre combination of anti-feminists dis- playing concern for the oppression of women in Islam. Abu Lughod re- sponded that “the Islamofascist awareness people aren’t at all interested

in what’s actually going on in the Muslim world.” Rather, she continued, “they just use the woman question as an easy way to target Muslims.”

Abu Lughod, a prominent scholar in the fields of anthropology and women’s studies in relation to the Muslim world, is well acquainted with the history of British and French imperialism and its use of the issue of women to justify the occupation and political subjugation of Muslim countries. Similarly, she is well aware of the example of Lord Cromer, a fierce opponent (as we saw) of women’s rights in England who claimed to be concerned about women’s oppression in Islam, while simultane- ously pursuing policies that held back Muslim women’s education. For those of us familiar with the repeated use that anti-feminist imperialists have made of the issue of the “oppression” of women by men of Other societies, to justify imperial war and domination, there is nothing at all surprising about anti-feminists assuming a pose of concern for the op- pression of Muslim women in the service of such ends. The replay of this ploy throughout history is all too familiar. In the preceding couple of decades feminist scholars had thoroughly examined and exposed the fraudulence of these ploys. Gayatri Spivak in particular had perfectly en- capsulated the problematics of this history, coining the now famous phrase “white men saving brown women from brown men.”

Yet in this post-
9
/
11
era, as the United States launched wars on

Afghanistan and Iraq, the reemergence of this theme and the extent to which these old, familiar imperial strategies were suddenly now resusci- tated and replayed was startling. And even more shocking, given how in the feminist academic world these ploys had long ago been thoroughly exposed, was how persuasive they still were apparently among the wider public.

As the burka of Afghanistan became a pervasive image in the media, so also did the subject of women in Islam, and in particular the “oppression of women in Islam,” emerge as a salient theme in relation to issues of war and the moral rightness of war and even in explanations of why America had been attacked. “They,” as Chris Matthews said, “hated us” because “our culture teaches us to respect women.”
61
Expressions of such views were widespread in the media and were voiced, as I noted earlier, even at the highest levels of the administration.

Soon after
9
/
11
, as the United States prepared for war, the women of Afghanistan began to figure prominently in the administration’s rhetoric. “The Bush Administration,” as Yvonne Haddad wrote, now “launched an all out propaganda campaign to win the hearts and minds of the American public in support of its military campaign in Afghan- istan. . . . The war propaganda cast American efforts to bring about regime change in Arab and Muslim nations as guided by noble and al- truistic motives, aimed at bringing civilization to uncivilized Muslims and democracy to those living under autocratic regimes.” This campaign now emphasized, continued Haddad, “the need to mobilize American armed forces to liberate the Muslim women of Afghanistan in particu- lar from their degraded condition.” Laura Bush, as Haddad also noted, gave a radio address describing the war against terrorism as a war also “for the rights and dignity of women.” The American press, Haddad continues, “initially fell in lock step with the government propaganda effort.”
62

The media in general enthusiastically adopted and began to pro- mote and disseminate the administration’s rhetoric of the war on terror as being also a war to liberate Muslim women. For a while CNN for ex- ample repeatedly aired fictional films such as
Kandahar,
portraying the appalling brutalities to which Afghan women were subject under the Tal- iban, in the intervals between its newscasts on the progress of the war in Afghanistan.
63
Moreover, the idea that the war was being waged to lib- erate women from their oppression and their burkas often became part and parcel of the visual symbolism even of newscasts. As journalists re- ported that another town or village had been captured by American forces, the news would be accompanied by shots of women throwing off their burkas. Or, if they failed to do so, reporters would ask them why they had not. As the British reporter Polly Toynbee noted, for the West the burka had become the “battle flag” of the war. It was “shorthand moral justification,” she wrote, for the war in Afghanistan.
64
In the United Kingdom, Cherie Blair made a speech about the oppression of the women of Afghanistan two days after Laura Bush delivered her speech.