Guess who's coming for Iftar?

Hamid Dabashi Follow @https://twitter.com/HamidDabashi Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. RSS Columbia University Books

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'White House Muslims' looking for a photo-op with Obama are a band of 'useless fools', writes Dabashi [Reuters]

Digesting the morality of Muslims breaking their fast at the White House during Israel's bombardment of Gaza. On July 14, US President Barack Obama hosted an Iftar dinner at the White House. According to the official White House page, "Among attendees were members of the diplomatic corps, White House administration officials, US government staff, elected officials, and Muslim Americans who have been doing great work to strengthen the fabric and prosperity of our nation." In his official remarks on this occasion, and a week into the vicious Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, Obama felt obligated to say something about the matter, which of course was cast under his habitual and official mantra of "we've been very clear that Israel has the right to defend itself against what I consider to be inexcusable attacks from Hamas". Enjoying the Muslim Iftar at the White House was also the Israeli Ambassador to the US who was elated by the US president's remarks and could not resist tweeting his delight: "@White House for iftar dinner. Appreciate strong statement there by President Obama about Israel's right to defend itself." Many Muslims around the world, and not just in the US, were deeply troubled by this utterly inane sentence and sentiment as Palestinians, Muslims or otherwise, were being killed in Gaza. Even some who had attended this Iftar felt obligated to explain and excuse themselves publicly. In an opinion piece for Al Jazeera, Professor Sahar Aziz has already pointed out how it is that a certain number of US Muslims get invited to the White House: "A group of Muslim individuals are hand-picked by government bureaucrats who reward them for good behaviour. Such good behaviour can range from withholding public criticism of flawed government policy, diffusing community anger over abusive practices, or persuading the community that the adverse impacts of national security law enforcement are not based on bad intentions and thus should be tolerated." Historical context In another equally important piece for Jadaliyya, Abdullah al-Arian and Hafsa Kanjwal provide an extended historical context for such official encounters between a selected number of Muslims and the US president.  Both these critical pieces and many others point to a fundamental crisis in the so-called "American Muslim community", which has in turn resulted in the prominent Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan recently cancelling a scheduled talk here in the US in protest. If you thought these sorry excuses looking for a photo-op with Obama were a band of useless fools, then you want to hear about yet another gang of delusional "Muslim leaders" who have actually been recruited by a Zionist outfit to go all the way to Israel to learn what "Zionism means to Jews". These Muslim Zionists are in fact in the business of what one critic has aptly called "Faithwashing Apartheid and Occupation" - or asanother critique has diagnosed it, Muslim leaders' "strictly accommodationist engagement with Zionist organisations in America".   This entire fiasco of a number of handpicked Muslims going to the White House to share an Iftar with the Israeli ambassador as fighting in Gaza raged points to a much larger issue. Who are these "Muslim leaders"? What these "White House Muslims", to paraphrase and expand a famous binary Malcolm X once made on a similar occasion, should know - even before they are degenerated to the point of no recognition into Muslim Zionists - is that there are also millions upon millions of "Field Muslims" who are watching them and telling them they can go to hell for their next Iftar.   The White House Muslims are a band of spineless cowards who just sit there munching on their cold and tasteless Iftar as Obama delivers to them the Israeli hasbara line at the very time when 1.8 million Palestinians are being bombed. 'Field Muslims' There is a fundamental rift between these White House Muslims and the rest of humanity, among them we the Field Muslims. The Field Muslims are a terra incognita - they are no longer Sunni or Shia, Hanafi or Hanbali, etc. The Field Muslims are out in the field of massive global labour migrations, roaming around the planet in search of a dignified life. They are out on the streets and squares of their homelands revolting against US-supported tyrants, or else brutalised by the Jewish State (IDF) and the Islamic State (IS) alike.  The Field Muslims are a terra incognita - they are no longer Sunni or Shia, Hanafi or Hanbali, etc. The Field Muslims are out in the field of massive global labour migrations, roaming around the planet in search of a dignified life, they are out in the streets and squares of their homelands revolting against US-supported tyrants... These White House Muslims have emerged from yet another false category that congratulates itself to be "practicing Muslims" by virtue of their legalistic interpretation of a worldly religion that is irreducible to a handful of fetishised legal scholars of yore. The Field Muslims have a rendezvous with history - they are not the law-abiding followers of one school of Sunni or Shia law or another. They are out on the field, the real world, free, vulnerable, bruised, brutalised, liberated. We the Field Muslims are the present absentees among the Practicing Muslims and their White House Muslim leaders, cast away from both the White House and from Muslim organisations.   Throughout the world, and not just in the United States, there is a vast and growing body of Muslims who are no longer defined by what school of law lays a claim on them, or if they are Sunni or Shia, or whether they pray five times a day, and fast during the month of Ramadan. Neither the White House Muslims nor indeed those who congratulate themselves to be "practicing Muslims" - from whose rank and file these self-appointed "leaders" have emerged - has any authority whatsoever over us, the Field Muslims. It is foolhardy to try to encapsulate and represent a vastly multifaceted and worldly faith by a band of careerist opportunist "leaders". The whole category of "practicing Muslim", which has given birth to these White House Muslims, is flawed. We are all practicing Muslims in more than one way, and no school of law has any ecclesiastical claim on how we might chose to practice our faith. During the month of July, which corresponded with Ramadan 1435, if you were not actively on the side of Palestinians defying the brutish, murderous, Israeli Hellfire you were not a Field Muslim. You were a White House Muslim who kept silent or asked for unity and patience, so that next year they might be invited to that wretched Iftar at the White House. We Field Muslims have absolutely nothing in common with these White House Muslims. Our theology is not written in the legal handbooks of one jurist or another. We are illegal Muslims in your jurisprudence. We much prefer the company of our Jewish comrades, Christian comrades, atheists, agnostics, pagans, you name it - if they are standing on the ruins of Gaza mourning and resisting. Inferno of Israel Hellfire We will not go to the heart of paradise with these White House Muslims, and will happily go to the depth of hell with our comrades of any faith. We will go to the inferno of the Israeli Hellfire upon Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere, than to go to meet the Prophet in Paradise. That's the alphabet of a new liberation theology that the "practicing" Sunni and Shia jurists should put on their pipe and smoke on their next Iftar with the Israeli ambassador. Today there are beasts and cannibals calling themselves an "Islamic State" and roaming through Iraq and Syria murdering people en masse under the black flag of La Ilaha illa Allah, Muhammadun Rasul Allah. They are not real Muslims, you say. Then who is the real Muslim? You? The spineless White House Muslims? The useless Practicing Muslims? Don't you think it is long overdue that Islam and Muslims got out of the White House, like the court jesters of yore, took a leave of absence from their mosques and holy shrines and reconfigured themselves in the real world, upon the ruins of Gaza? Your legal scholars and professors of Islamic studies and community leaders have not figured us out yet - we practice our liberation theology, we don't write it. We the Field Muslims - sisters and brothers of the real American Muslim - Malcolm X. Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York.