The connection
Yemen. Somalia. We hear about them a lot in the news – Yemen as a failing state falling to violent Islamism, Somalia as an anarchic pirate haven - but rarely in the same sentence; and yet the connections between the two are very strong. If and when the Yemeni government crumbles, what would happen if radical Islamism and large-scale piracy were to mix in the Gulf of Aden? I was wrong about Iran (see my first post – I overestimated opposition to the government outside of Tehran), but I’m going to stick my head above the parapet again and argue that, unless the international community does something drastic, the next great global security threat will come from Yemen and Somalia.
Despite having no land border, Yemen and Somalia are in many ways each other’s closest neighbours, both physically and sociologically. Physically, they straddle the Gulf of Aden, the body of water in which the vast majority of the world’s pirate attacks take place; for Yemenis, this water is no more of an obstacle than the desert which separates them from the cities of Saudi Arabia (despite this, few Yemenis travel to Somalia because most Yemeni migration is to wealthy countries, earning money to send home). The route is very open to the smuggling of weapons, people and just about anything else; and there are currently over 100,000 Somali refugees living in camps in Yemen.
A quick look at the demographics of both countries suggests that they have more in common with each other than with any of their other neighbours. Somalia is a failed state, and Yemen is well on its way; both are members of the Arab League (unlike most of Somalia’s neighbours); both have an average birth rate of around 7 (far more than any other Gulf Arab country); and both have a 99% Muslim population and an Islamic constitution. Furthermore, both have huge diaspora populations, whose members support their families back home with remittances – indeed both economies are reliant upon this.
Yemen
Yemen is showing all the signs of a failing state. The capital city is running out of water. The oil, which accounts for 90% of its exports, is fast running out: the World Bank predicts a sharp decline in production in the coming year, with the oil being exhausted in 2017; when this happens, the wealth of the south will no longer exceed that of the more populous north – which is where the Islamic rebels are. Furthermore, the pseudo-democratic president of 31 years, Ali Abdullah Saleh, is sustained by the bribing of tribal confederations, which will not be possible when the money runs out.
The government is already fighting a civil war against Shi’ite rebels in the north of the country (who are a large minority: the Sunni/Shi’a split is 55%/45%), whose stated aim is to return Yemen to an Imamate, as it was until 1962. The government claims that Iran is sending money and weapons to the rebels – which wouldn’t be the first time it has tried to export its Shi’ite Islamic Revolution – and the rebel forces often chant the slogan: “Death to America! Death to Israel! Curse upon the Jews! Victory to Islam!” Yemen is a country of high piety and low education, and if the rebels manage to defeat the government, Yemen could end up being run by a tribal coalition not unlike the Taliban.
In recent years, Yemen has seen a surge in Islamic terrorism. Since the first suicide attack on the USS Cole in the port of Aden in 2000, many attacks have been directed against the US Embassy (the most recent, killing ten, took place just over a week before I went to Yemen myself last year). Furthermore, the kidnapping of tourists and aid workers has taken on a new character. Yemen has always been famous for its tourist kidnappings, but these used to be in order to obtain a ransom from the government – indeed, the ‘victims’ were often treated as honoured guests, and many on the hippie trail went to Yemen with the very purpose of getting kidnapped. By contrast, the most recent kidnappings, claimed by Islamic groups, have resulted in the death of the victims.
The current war will no doubt lead to an increase of radical Islamism. Extreme religion is often caused by extreme hardship, such as that found in the newly-created refugee camps (populated by mostly Shi’ite Yemenis displaced by the war); and groups such as al-Qaeda have often tried to recruit from areas of widespread disaffection. Diplomats and security consultants are unanimous in their affirmation that Islamic extremism is on the rise because of this most recent war. Perhaps this is not surprising, when a national army undertakes a mission called ‘Operation Scorched Earth’ within its own borders.
Somalia
In order to see what a failed Yemen might look like, Somalia is not a bad place to start. Like all failed states, it is practically devoid of central governmental control (with the exception of the self-declared, but as yet unrecognised, independent northern state of Somaliland, whose stable currency and democracy make it one of the most legitimate states in the region and the Islamic world. Why on earth haven’t we recognised it yet?). As with many failed states, Somalia has produced hundreds of thousands of refugees; and remittances from the diaspora (totalling over $1 billion p.a.) vastly exceed aid payments. However, whereas most failed states are completely or nearly landlocked, Somalia has a long stretch of coastline on the world’s most important shipping lane – something it has in common with Yemen.
Somali piracy is already one of the greatest dangers facing the world at the moment. In 2008 alone, there were 49 successful hijackings, and the numbers for 2009 look to be heading towards a similar total. The average ransom cost to a shipping company is around $7 million. However, this is a tiny fraction of the value of the ships they capture, even before we take into account the lives of the crew: the Sirius Star, for example, is valued at $150 million with a $100 million cargo. Most worryingly of all, the pirates strike so rapidly and recklessly (they have little to lose) that the combined efforts of the world’s fleets have been unable to stop their attacks.
Fortunately, despite the existence of militant Islamic groups in Somalia, the piracy has so far been entirely directed towards making a profit. But what if the pirates of Somalia and the Islamists of a failed Yemen were to learn from each other? What if, instead of taking a relatively small ransom for a tanker, Somali or Yemeni pirates were to sink it and kill the crew? In the absolute worst case, a tanker sunk in the Suez Canal could cripple global trade for weeks. So that begs the question: why isn’t the world doing more to fix Yemen and Somalia?
Web links:
Al-Qaeda exploiting Yemeni chaos: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6868800.ece
People smuggling, Somalia to Yemen: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=24049&Cr=somalis&Cr1=refugees
Al-Qaeda in Yemen and Somalia: http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2009/10/01/86618.html
Yemen as a failing state: http://www.economist.com/world/middleeast-africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14413282
Piracy in the Somali context: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8103585.stm
Piracy in the International context: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gB7YMEDuCwwY9ncDOtPAkEI4-H2wD9BARB4G0
Somalia as a failed state: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/somalia/3479010/Somalia-Analysis-of-a-failed-state.html
P.S. Suggestions please people – should I use this or the Palestinian refugee question for my dissertation topic? Facebook me or post comments on here – thanks :)
Wednesday, 14 October 2009
Tuesday, 29 September 2009
A rejection of the three-fold Quranic ‘proofs’
All of my posts so far have been working on the assumption that Islam (like all religion) is false. It is a necessary standpoint for me to take, because without it many of my accusations lose their footing: religious brainwashing simply becomes scientific education (in Middle Eastern universities, Islam is considered one of the sciences; the Arabic word for religious leaders, ‘Ulama, literally means ‘knowers’ and is the same word as is used for ‘scientists’). I feel it is time to defend my corner. The bad news is that I can’t disprove Islam: nobody can. However, by the same token, Muslims can’t disprove the Hindu belief system, or indeed the notion of an omnipotent celestial teapot, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or any of the other satirical religions. Clearly, the onus is on the religious to prove that their particular brand of belief is correct. Muslims often do this with reference to the Qur’an, which they regard as a miracle and which is the main difference between Islam and Christianity. The ‘proofs’ can be neatly divided into three categories: linguistic, historical and scientific; I shall look at each in turn.
Linguistic
The Islamic argument states that by its very nature and existence, the Qur’an proves itself true. That such a complex and, they say, beautiful text could arise from the widespread illiteracy of its milieu is surely proof of divine intervention. Some even claim that Muhammad was himself illiterate (although this would not prevent him from dictating his work to someone else, which many scholars believe to have happened).
There is one theory that Muhammad never existed at all, that the early Arab conquests were motivated by something else or by a Judeo-Christian movement, and that the Qur’an as we know it was compiled by Abbasid caliphs in order to legitimise and strengthen their reign: the authoritarianism of the Qur’an shows a clear motive for this. It is of note that no Qur’an from the time of Muhammad or the Umayyad Caliphs can be found; there are apparently some manuscripts in Yemen which disprove this (the Sana’a Manuscripts), but the Yemeni government has mysteriously not allowed any non-Islamic scholars to see them.
Even if the Qur’an was written by Muhammad, there is no linguistic evidence to suggest that he was divinely influenced. There was a strong tradition of poetry in pre-Islamic Arabia, and it would not be wholly remarkable for a man of Muhammad’s standing to be able to write a work such as the Qur’an. There is an open challenge within the Qur’an to produce a single sura of the like found in the Qur’an (10:37-8), the idea being that no mortal could do so. This falls down for a couple of reasons. Firstly, just one sura later (11:13) the challenge changes: now the challenger must produce ten comparable suras (the rest of the wording of the challenge is virtually identical): a clear internal contradiction.
Secondly, the judging of the challenge is unfair. Given that large parts of the Qur’an are dedicated to asserting its own veracity, any literate Arab could have written a similarly introspective text, clouded with vague language and dramatised with hellfire and grandeur; but any Arab who did so would have been branded a heretic, with all the earthly punishments that ensued. Furthermore, as the challenge is issued by the Islamic holy text, any ‘entry’ would be judged by the Muslim hierarchy, which has an a priori belief and would therefore certainly not accept it. Anyone else who judged it would not be accepted by the Muslim community, and the action would therefore be futile, at least from the standpoint of disproving the Qur’an (although inventing religions is an effective way of generating massive personal wealth). However, over the course of history, and all over the world, ‘false’ prophets have appeared, and the great majority of them have been brutally eliminated by religious institutions.
Historical
The word ‘historical’ contains an ambiguity – are we looking from Muhammad’s perspective, or our own? Muslims will claim both as miracles: that the Qur’an both shows knowledge about the history of distant lands, and could predict the future. In the first category, the example of the Pharaohs is often used. This really needs no explanation, as pre-Islamic Arabia was a nomadic society and trade routes could easily account for Arab knowledge of the Pharaohs; that this was not previously written does not discount it, as nomadic Arabia’s literary tradition, like that of Ancient Greece and many other cultures, was primarily oral. Besides which, the accuracy of the history is questionable (see the debate about Pharaoh and Haman).
The other contention which we often hear is that the Qur’an accurately predicts the future (once again, if the Qur’an was written by the Abbasids, we can discount some earlier examples of this, but for the sake of completeness I will assume that it was indeed written in Muhammad’s time). The predictions are numerous – quite a lengthy list can be found on the Harun Yayha website – but so vague and flawed as to be useless to secular eyes. Perhaps the most convincing prediction is the victory of Byzantium, but even this is flawed: the victory arguably occurred 14 years after their defeat, rather than the (already vague) 3-9 years predicted in the Qur’an. Other predictions (such as the Exploration of Space on the Harun Yayha page) are written in such vague language as to be laughable, even with a sympathetic English translation. The only way these might be seen as accurate historical predictions, is by someone who has set himself the specific goal of vindicating the Qur’an, rather than examining it fairly.
The lack of a timeframe given for all these predictions, and the presence of those which have not ‘yet’ come true, completes the deconstruction of this theory: as well as hinting vaguely at things which have happened, the Qur’an also makes assertions which have not, and will not, be realised. For example, it states that on Judgement Day, the sun will rise in the West – something which we know, by the laws of physics, to be impossible. And yet we cannot disprove it completely; for how can any prediction be proven false, if not given an ultimatum? On its own terms, the Qur’an can predict absolutely anything and be vindicated: if it happens, the Qur’an is true; if it doesn’t, then it will happen in the future and the Qur’an is still true. The fact remains that there is not a single complete, concrete assertion in the Qur’an which has demonstrably been vindicated.
Scientific
The final type of ‘proof’ is the scientific: elaborations in the Qur’an of scientific phenomena which could not possibly have been known in Muhammad’s time, and were only discovered or proven later. A good example is the seemingly intimate knowledge of embryology (a reason given to me by one convert for her new-found faith), in which the Qur’an describes the stages of a baby’s development in the womb. But a look at the details shows such a vagueness of language that, as with the historical ‘proofs’, only one wishing to find a proof will actually do so (look at the Islamic Medicine website: the picture of the carefully crafted piece of chewing gum is particularly amusing).
So what does the Qur’an actually assert? Firstly, that humans are made from semen. Well, that much is obvious: pre-Islamic Arabs would have known the mechanics of sexual intercourse and understood the causality it has to pregnancy. Given that semen is the result of ejaculation, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that semen creates babies. No mention of the eggs, though, which is hardly surprising as they weren’t visible. This ignorance of the woman’s part in reproduction, other than by providing a womb, also explains away the ‘miraculous knowledge’ that the gender of the baby is determined by the sperm.
After this, there follows a description of the states of gestation, all written in suitably vague Arabic, generously translated into English, and liberally applied to the discoveries of modern science. The same pattern – a confusingly worded ‘assertion’ sculpted to fit whatever modern science can turn up – can be applied to all the scientific ‘proofs’. I will not list and refute them all – it would take too long – but the basic pattern remains the same, and Qur’anic ‘proof’ remains a distant fantasy.
Web links:
The theory that Muhammad was a myth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wansbrough and related links
The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster: http://www.venganza.org/
Qur’anic passages: http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Miracle/ijaz.html
Pharaoh and Haman debate: http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Contrad/External/haman.html
Harun Yahya - Qur’anic ‘predictions’: http://www.harunyahya.com/miracles_of_the_quran_p2_01.php
Embryology in Islam: http://www.islamicmedicine.org/embryoengtext.htm
A timely gem from Jesus and Mo: http://www.jesusandmo.net/2009/09/29/bloke/#comments
Linguistic
The Islamic argument states that by its very nature and existence, the Qur’an proves itself true. That such a complex and, they say, beautiful text could arise from the widespread illiteracy of its milieu is surely proof of divine intervention. Some even claim that Muhammad was himself illiterate (although this would not prevent him from dictating his work to someone else, which many scholars believe to have happened).
There is one theory that Muhammad never existed at all, that the early Arab conquests were motivated by something else or by a Judeo-Christian movement, and that the Qur’an as we know it was compiled by Abbasid caliphs in order to legitimise and strengthen their reign: the authoritarianism of the Qur’an shows a clear motive for this. It is of note that no Qur’an from the time of Muhammad or the Umayyad Caliphs can be found; there are apparently some manuscripts in Yemen which disprove this (the Sana’a Manuscripts), but the Yemeni government has mysteriously not allowed any non-Islamic scholars to see them.
Even if the Qur’an was written by Muhammad, there is no linguistic evidence to suggest that he was divinely influenced. There was a strong tradition of poetry in pre-Islamic Arabia, and it would not be wholly remarkable for a man of Muhammad’s standing to be able to write a work such as the Qur’an. There is an open challenge within the Qur’an to produce a single sura of the like found in the Qur’an (10:37-8), the idea being that no mortal could do so. This falls down for a couple of reasons. Firstly, just one sura later (11:13) the challenge changes: now the challenger must produce ten comparable suras (the rest of the wording of the challenge is virtually identical): a clear internal contradiction.
Secondly, the judging of the challenge is unfair. Given that large parts of the Qur’an are dedicated to asserting its own veracity, any literate Arab could have written a similarly introspective text, clouded with vague language and dramatised with hellfire and grandeur; but any Arab who did so would have been branded a heretic, with all the earthly punishments that ensued. Furthermore, as the challenge is issued by the Islamic holy text, any ‘entry’ would be judged by the Muslim hierarchy, which has an a priori belief and would therefore certainly not accept it. Anyone else who judged it would not be accepted by the Muslim community, and the action would therefore be futile, at least from the standpoint of disproving the Qur’an (although inventing religions is an effective way of generating massive personal wealth). However, over the course of history, and all over the world, ‘false’ prophets have appeared, and the great majority of them have been brutally eliminated by religious institutions.
Historical
The word ‘historical’ contains an ambiguity – are we looking from Muhammad’s perspective, or our own? Muslims will claim both as miracles: that the Qur’an both shows knowledge about the history of distant lands, and could predict the future. In the first category, the example of the Pharaohs is often used. This really needs no explanation, as pre-Islamic Arabia was a nomadic society and trade routes could easily account for Arab knowledge of the Pharaohs; that this was not previously written does not discount it, as nomadic Arabia’s literary tradition, like that of Ancient Greece and many other cultures, was primarily oral. Besides which, the accuracy of the history is questionable (see the debate about Pharaoh and Haman).
The other contention which we often hear is that the Qur’an accurately predicts the future (once again, if the Qur’an was written by the Abbasids, we can discount some earlier examples of this, but for the sake of completeness I will assume that it was indeed written in Muhammad’s time). The predictions are numerous – quite a lengthy list can be found on the Harun Yayha website – but so vague and flawed as to be useless to secular eyes. Perhaps the most convincing prediction is the victory of Byzantium, but even this is flawed: the victory arguably occurred 14 years after their defeat, rather than the (already vague) 3-9 years predicted in the Qur’an. Other predictions (such as the Exploration of Space on the Harun Yayha page) are written in such vague language as to be laughable, even with a sympathetic English translation. The only way these might be seen as accurate historical predictions, is by someone who has set himself the specific goal of vindicating the Qur’an, rather than examining it fairly.
The lack of a timeframe given for all these predictions, and the presence of those which have not ‘yet’ come true, completes the deconstruction of this theory: as well as hinting vaguely at things which have happened, the Qur’an also makes assertions which have not, and will not, be realised. For example, it states that on Judgement Day, the sun will rise in the West – something which we know, by the laws of physics, to be impossible. And yet we cannot disprove it completely; for how can any prediction be proven false, if not given an ultimatum? On its own terms, the Qur’an can predict absolutely anything and be vindicated: if it happens, the Qur’an is true; if it doesn’t, then it will happen in the future and the Qur’an is still true. The fact remains that there is not a single complete, concrete assertion in the Qur’an which has demonstrably been vindicated.
Scientific
The final type of ‘proof’ is the scientific: elaborations in the Qur’an of scientific phenomena which could not possibly have been known in Muhammad’s time, and were only discovered or proven later. A good example is the seemingly intimate knowledge of embryology (a reason given to me by one convert for her new-found faith), in which the Qur’an describes the stages of a baby’s development in the womb. But a look at the details shows such a vagueness of language that, as with the historical ‘proofs’, only one wishing to find a proof will actually do so (look at the Islamic Medicine website: the picture of the carefully crafted piece of chewing gum is particularly amusing).
So what does the Qur’an actually assert? Firstly, that humans are made from semen. Well, that much is obvious: pre-Islamic Arabs would have known the mechanics of sexual intercourse and understood the causality it has to pregnancy. Given that semen is the result of ejaculation, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that semen creates babies. No mention of the eggs, though, which is hardly surprising as they weren’t visible. This ignorance of the woman’s part in reproduction, other than by providing a womb, also explains away the ‘miraculous knowledge’ that the gender of the baby is determined by the sperm.
After this, there follows a description of the states of gestation, all written in suitably vague Arabic, generously translated into English, and liberally applied to the discoveries of modern science. The same pattern – a confusingly worded ‘assertion’ sculpted to fit whatever modern science can turn up – can be applied to all the scientific ‘proofs’. I will not list and refute them all – it would take too long – but the basic pattern remains the same, and Qur’anic ‘proof’ remains a distant fantasy.
Web links:
The theory that Muhammad was a myth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wansbrough and related links
The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster: http://www.venganza.org/
Qur’anic passages: http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Miracle/ijaz.html
Pharaoh and Haman debate: http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Contrad/External/haman.html
Harun Yahya - Qur’anic ‘predictions’: http://www.harunyahya.com/miracles_of_the_quran_p2_01.php
Embryology in Islam: http://www.islamicmedicine.org/embryoengtext.htm
A timely gem from Jesus and Mo: http://www.jesusandmo.net/2009/09/29/bloke/#comments
Saturday, 12 September 2009
The English Defence League – bastions of free speech or racist thugs?
Firstly, an apology for diverting from my mission statement: this post concerns itself with events not in the Middle East, but in my native Britain. However, it ties in to the Middle East by means of Islam; and many of my previous points (freedom of speech, the race/religion distinction) also find relevance here.
Recent clashes between English Defence League supporters and British Muslims, backed up by various socialist groups, have generated a lot of media interest and even more confusion. The media universally trips over its words, calling the EDL ‘anti-Islamic’ and then alluding to ‘racial tensions’ in the same sentence. Is the tension religious, racial, or both? Are the EDL ‘peacefully protesting against militant Islam’, as their website claims, or does their problem lie with Asians living in Britain? It’s a crucial distinction, clouded by our refusal to acknowledge the chasmic divide between race and religion.
The EDL’s respectable side
On the face of it, the EDL looks to be a very respectable organisation. It was, ostensibly, formed in the defence of British soldiers, who were verbally abused by Muslims as they came back from a tour of Iraq. A group of people got together, decided to make a show of solidarity with the soldiers, protested against Muslim extremism in Britain, and the EDL was born. Their website contains a link to Help for Heroes, and also takes pains to distance the EDL from the British National Party (see the ‘Past Demos’ tab).
The group’s mission statement, ‘peacefully protesting against militant Islam’, is also honourable. It is a group of citizens living in a democracy and exercising their right to protest against a belief system which they see as dangerous. This is their right, because Islam is a religion not a race; a choice rather than an inherited trait. Of course, unprovoked violence against Muslims is despicable, as would be violence against adherents of any other belief system. The simplest analogy is this: replace ‘Islam’ with any other belief system, say ‘Conservativism’. If you can do it to Conservatives, you can do it to Muslims (or Christians, Jews etc.). So you can’t assault or discriminate, but you can criticise and protest. An anti-Islamic rally is no more racist than an anti-fascist rally. If it were, what does that make the largely Asian-origin membership of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain? This is something which the media and indeed the legal system desperately need to get a grip on.
Although it is not necessary for their legitimacy, the EDL’s stance against Islamic extremism is a coherent one. The subjugation of women and apostates within a supposedly free country; the isolationism fostered in faith schools; the sometimes extreme politics preached in mosques to children, under the banner of divine legitimacy; the violent reactions to criticism and provocation; and of course the 7th July terror attacks in London, which were carried out by British citizens. These phenomena often go unchecked and even unnoticed, because non-Muslims are denied access to classes in many faith schools and to the Friday sermon in many mosques; besides which, any criticism of Islamic extremism is seen as taboo and, among politicians, career suicide. However, the evidence is there for those who wish to see it: just look at the video by Anjem Choudary and ‘Londonistan Productions’, posted on the front page of the EDL site.
The EDL’s darker side
However, despite this veneer of respectability, the EDL has a darker side. Some of their protests have turned violent, and the young protesters are often seen shouting racist slogans or throwing Nazi salutes. Even the name ‘English Defence League’ suggests defending our homeland from ‘foreigners’, rather than a threat from a section of our society.
Secondly, many at the EDL do not seem to comprehend the difference between radical Islam, and Muslims. Those Muslims who wish to impose Sharia law in Britain (the stated focus of the protests) remain a minority, albeit quite a vocal one. To some extent, it is the responsibility of the Muslim community to deal with its extremist elements; but at the same time EDL supporters shouting slogans such as ‘Muslim bombers off our streets’ is only likely to put moderate Muslims on the defensive and unite them around their religion.
Finally, there is strong evidence to suggest that many members of the EDL leadership have links to the BNP, and that the BNP is active throughout the EDL. Needless to say, this white-only organisation is an inherently racist entity whose policies have ranged from stripping ethnic minorities of their British citizenship, to banning inter-racial marriages. A quick look at their website is enough to determine that they are a dangerous force in our society – so their association with the EDL reflects very badly on the latter.
The effects of the race/religion problem
How is it that a group of racists has so quickly infiltrated the country’s fastest growing anti-Islamic movement? How is it that a group with coherent anti-extremist views has been tainted with violent racism, an extremism of its own? How is it that important questions about institutionalised religion have been hijacked by those intent on painting Britain white?
The answer is, once again, the blurred distinction between race and religion (and, by extension, racism and anti-theism). Both are equally taboo in Britain, despite the fact that morally, religion can (indeed, must) be criticised and race cannot. By labelling those who question religion as ‘extremists’ and ‘racists’, we push them out of mainstream thought and make them vulnerable to the propaganda machines of the BNP.
Furthermore, the vast majority of the EDL is of white working class background, which is the main target of the BNP. Professionals and the intelligentsia are simply unwilling to become a part of this or to be seen at protests because of the taboo which accompanies it. The thought is there (look at Ayaan Hirsi Ali or Salman Rushdie), but for as long as criticism of religion is tainted with the spectre of racism, it will never become part of mainstream discourse.
I predict that the BNP will become even more popular as it remains embedded in this growing anti-Islamic movement. To prevent this, we as a society need simply to bring criticism of religion in from the cold.
Web links
English Defence League: http://www.englishdefenceleague.org/
Unite Against Fascism: http://www.uaf.org.uk/
Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain: http://www.ex-muslim.org.uk/
British National Party: http://bnp.org.uk/
Intellectual rejection of Islamism: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4764730.stm (note that this was published in a French newspaper, not a British one).
Recent clashes between English Defence League supporters and British Muslims, backed up by various socialist groups, have generated a lot of media interest and even more confusion. The media universally trips over its words, calling the EDL ‘anti-Islamic’ and then alluding to ‘racial tensions’ in the same sentence. Is the tension religious, racial, or both? Are the EDL ‘peacefully protesting against militant Islam’, as their website claims, or does their problem lie with Asians living in Britain? It’s a crucial distinction, clouded by our refusal to acknowledge the chasmic divide between race and religion.
The EDL’s respectable side
On the face of it, the EDL looks to be a very respectable organisation. It was, ostensibly, formed in the defence of British soldiers, who were verbally abused by Muslims as they came back from a tour of Iraq. A group of people got together, decided to make a show of solidarity with the soldiers, protested against Muslim extremism in Britain, and the EDL was born. Their website contains a link to Help for Heroes, and also takes pains to distance the EDL from the British National Party (see the ‘Past Demos’ tab).
The group’s mission statement, ‘peacefully protesting against militant Islam’, is also honourable. It is a group of citizens living in a democracy and exercising their right to protest against a belief system which they see as dangerous. This is their right, because Islam is a religion not a race; a choice rather than an inherited trait. Of course, unprovoked violence against Muslims is despicable, as would be violence against adherents of any other belief system. The simplest analogy is this: replace ‘Islam’ with any other belief system, say ‘Conservativism’. If you can do it to Conservatives, you can do it to Muslims (or Christians, Jews etc.). So you can’t assault or discriminate, but you can criticise and protest. An anti-Islamic rally is no more racist than an anti-fascist rally. If it were, what does that make the largely Asian-origin membership of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain? This is something which the media and indeed the legal system desperately need to get a grip on.
Although it is not necessary for their legitimacy, the EDL’s stance against Islamic extremism is a coherent one. The subjugation of women and apostates within a supposedly free country; the isolationism fostered in faith schools; the sometimes extreme politics preached in mosques to children, under the banner of divine legitimacy; the violent reactions to criticism and provocation; and of course the 7th July terror attacks in London, which were carried out by British citizens. These phenomena often go unchecked and even unnoticed, because non-Muslims are denied access to classes in many faith schools and to the Friday sermon in many mosques; besides which, any criticism of Islamic extremism is seen as taboo and, among politicians, career suicide. However, the evidence is there for those who wish to see it: just look at the video by Anjem Choudary and ‘Londonistan Productions’, posted on the front page of the EDL site.
The EDL’s darker side
However, despite this veneer of respectability, the EDL has a darker side. Some of their protests have turned violent, and the young protesters are often seen shouting racist slogans or throwing Nazi salutes. Even the name ‘English Defence League’ suggests defending our homeland from ‘foreigners’, rather than a threat from a section of our society.
Secondly, many at the EDL do not seem to comprehend the difference between radical Islam, and Muslims. Those Muslims who wish to impose Sharia law in Britain (the stated focus of the protests) remain a minority, albeit quite a vocal one. To some extent, it is the responsibility of the Muslim community to deal with its extremist elements; but at the same time EDL supporters shouting slogans such as ‘Muslim bombers off our streets’ is only likely to put moderate Muslims on the defensive and unite them around their religion.
Finally, there is strong evidence to suggest that many members of the EDL leadership have links to the BNP, and that the BNP is active throughout the EDL. Needless to say, this white-only organisation is an inherently racist entity whose policies have ranged from stripping ethnic minorities of their British citizenship, to banning inter-racial marriages. A quick look at their website is enough to determine that they are a dangerous force in our society – so their association with the EDL reflects very badly on the latter.
The effects of the race/religion problem
How is it that a group of racists has so quickly infiltrated the country’s fastest growing anti-Islamic movement? How is it that a group with coherent anti-extremist views has been tainted with violent racism, an extremism of its own? How is it that important questions about institutionalised religion have been hijacked by those intent on painting Britain white?
The answer is, once again, the blurred distinction between race and religion (and, by extension, racism and anti-theism). Both are equally taboo in Britain, despite the fact that morally, religion can (indeed, must) be criticised and race cannot. By labelling those who question religion as ‘extremists’ and ‘racists’, we push them out of mainstream thought and make them vulnerable to the propaganda machines of the BNP.
Furthermore, the vast majority of the EDL is of white working class background, which is the main target of the BNP. Professionals and the intelligentsia are simply unwilling to become a part of this or to be seen at protests because of the taboo which accompanies it. The thought is there (look at Ayaan Hirsi Ali or Salman Rushdie), but for as long as criticism of religion is tainted with the spectre of racism, it will never become part of mainstream discourse.
I predict that the BNP will become even more popular as it remains embedded in this growing anti-Islamic movement. To prevent this, we as a society need simply to bring criticism of religion in from the cold.
Web links
English Defence League: http://www.englishdefenceleague.org/
Unite Against Fascism: http://www.uaf.org.uk/
Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain: http://www.ex-muslim.org.uk/
British National Party: http://bnp.org.uk/
Intellectual rejection of Islamism: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4764730.stm (note that this was published in a French newspaper, not a British one).
Saturday, 29 August 2009
Why I won't be fasting this Ramadan
Why should I?
Ramadan: the 30-day Islamic (lunar) month in which Muslims are compelled to fast during the daylight hours, refraining from letting anything, even water, pass their lips. They are also prevented from having sex, which seems unrelated, until one remembers organised religion’s obsession with interfering with the sex lives of its followers.
This is all fair enough: despite a higher incidence of road accidents and shorter, less efficient business hours, Muslims seem to cope adequately with these restrictions, making up for the daily abstinence with a nightly feast, plus a 3-day public holiday and feast at the end of the month. However, in the Middle East, there seems to be an expectation that foreigners such as myself should participate in Ramadan, at least for a day or two. Most of my Palestinian friends have urged me to fast; one individual called me ‘haram’ for not doing so; and as I braved the sweltering heat of the Egyptian September last Ramadan, the author of my guide book (suffering from Guide Book Syndrome – the need to turn everything into a positive) suggested that I might wish to ‘adapt to Ramadan’s naturally purifying rhythms.’ So there we go: not drinking anything for 15 hours in 40 degree heat is ‘purifying’.
I have been told many reasons why I, as a non-Muslim, should give fasting a go. The most common ones I hear are ‘to sympathise with the poor people’ and ‘because it’s healthy’, both of which I investigate below. The most coherent reason I could find (although only on the internet – nobody has said it to me) is that Ramadan ‘teaches the Muslim self-control’. This is true, but rather patronising to Muslims: do they really need a religious institution to teach them self-control? But then again extremist Islamic society considers all men potential rapists and all women incapable of independent thought, so perhaps this is not so surprising.
Think of the poor people
Most Muslims who try to sell me Ramadan ensure me that its true purpose is to sympathise with the poor, who don’t have enough money for food or water (or sex, apparently). This falls apart for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the Ramadan lifestyle is nothing like poverty. In Ramadan, most Muslims abstain completely during the daylight hours and then gorge at night, largely on sweets and expensive foods; surely a more realistic simulation of poverty would involve eating smaller quantities of blander food, but at normal times. I also saw a programme on BBC Arabic at the start of Ramadan investigating how Muslims would be coping with Ramadan in the recession: as well as seeing an overall decrease in productivity, Ramadan is the most expensive month of the Islamic year.
The other problem with the poverty theory is that Ramadan actually affects the poorer members of society much more than it does the richer. Someone with a manual job – often 12 hours under a hot sun in the Middle East - has a much greater need of calories and water during the day, than someone sitting at a desk in an air-conditioned office. Ramadan, then, is not the great societal equaliser that many people would like to see it as.
The questionable health effects
The other thing I hear a lot is that Ramadan is good for one’s health. Young women are convinced that it will help them lose weight, and many people also cite some detoxification effects. Ultimately, however, scientific studies into the health effects of Ramadan are both rare and inconclusive. Some studies do show weight loss (which is not necessarily healthy, particularly for somebody of my build), but they all take the final measurement on the last day of fasting, when the body is still in starvation mode. No study that I can find has taken a measurement after the subsequent three days of gluttony, nor indeed after the return to a normal diet.
I’m no nutritionist, but I have good reasons to suspect that fasting might be detrimental to my health. Firstly, ill people are let off, because it is apparently very dangerous for them. If swine flu is anything to go by, what is very dangerous for ill people is slightly dangerous for healthy people. Secondly, it is acknowledged that skipping breakfast is bad for you; therefore skipping breakfast, lunch, and dinner is probably worse. Thirdly, the effects of dehydration have been well studied and are not something I think I would enjoy; the consequent lack of concentration is one of the reasons for the increase in road accidents in Ramadan (along with people rushing to get home in time to break the fast). Finally, I go running every day along the picturesque trails of Mount Ebal, one of the hills surrounding Nablus; were I to fast, I would have to stop this practice, which would be detrimental to my health. Given the rarity of people who exercise in the Middle East, this would not show up on any studies.
Of course, this is all conjecture, and what is really needed is a proper scientific study into the effects of fasting on healthy (i.e. not ill) people. There have been countless studies telling us things which we already know (e.g. that hamburgers make us fat), so why has there been no proper investigation into a highly questionable practice undertaken by hundreds of millions of people? Could it be that scientists, and their financial backers, are too scared to put a religious practice so firmly under the microscope? If the study found Ramadan to be unhealthy, Muslims would essentially be knowingly facing a choice between their religion and their health; given the violent reaction faced by many people who call Islam into question, the scientists’ fear would be quite understandable.
Even the BBC is not immune to this: at the start of Ramadan, its Arabic coverage did not even call the matter of health into question, although it did give disproportionate airtime (compared to its English-language service) to the story that too much pork can cause cancer – something it shares with red meat and lots of other things permitted in Islam, although the news report failed to mention this. Given that nobody here eats pork, it wasn’t the most relevant news; apparently the BBC has instead got into the business of telling people what they want to hear.
The true purpose of Ramadan
Of course, even if the above reasons were true, they would still only be secondary to Ramadan’s primary purpose as a religious festival. It is not just about fasting: Muslims are expected to increase their mosque attendance, perform more prayers, and read the entire Qur’an in the month. Around Palestine, Qur’an FM is listened to almost exclusively in taxis, and the mosques are so full during evening prayers that worshippers are forced to take their prayer mats onto the street: it’s like Friday every day.
In practical terms, it is a potent opportunity for the religious institution to consolidate its control over the lives of the populace. Every 24 hours, Muslims swing from desperation to elation and back again; and the transitions are controlled not by the rising and setting of the sun, but by the call to prayer. The sunset is a reliable clue, but it is only once the imam has announced that ‘God is Great’ that Muslims are allowed to wet their parched throats; and it is he who with divine mandate re-imposes their misery the next morning. For me, that is more than enough reason to give it a miss.
Further information on health effects: http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/v57/n2s/full/1601899a.html
Ramadan: the 30-day Islamic (lunar) month in which Muslims are compelled to fast during the daylight hours, refraining from letting anything, even water, pass their lips. They are also prevented from having sex, which seems unrelated, until one remembers organised religion’s obsession with interfering with the sex lives of its followers.
This is all fair enough: despite a higher incidence of road accidents and shorter, less efficient business hours, Muslims seem to cope adequately with these restrictions, making up for the daily abstinence with a nightly feast, plus a 3-day public holiday and feast at the end of the month. However, in the Middle East, there seems to be an expectation that foreigners such as myself should participate in Ramadan, at least for a day or two. Most of my Palestinian friends have urged me to fast; one individual called me ‘haram’ for not doing so; and as I braved the sweltering heat of the Egyptian September last Ramadan, the author of my guide book (suffering from Guide Book Syndrome – the need to turn everything into a positive) suggested that I might wish to ‘adapt to Ramadan’s naturally purifying rhythms.’ So there we go: not drinking anything for 15 hours in 40 degree heat is ‘purifying’.
I have been told many reasons why I, as a non-Muslim, should give fasting a go. The most common ones I hear are ‘to sympathise with the poor people’ and ‘because it’s healthy’, both of which I investigate below. The most coherent reason I could find (although only on the internet – nobody has said it to me) is that Ramadan ‘teaches the Muslim self-control’. This is true, but rather patronising to Muslims: do they really need a religious institution to teach them self-control? But then again extremist Islamic society considers all men potential rapists and all women incapable of independent thought, so perhaps this is not so surprising.
Think of the poor people
Most Muslims who try to sell me Ramadan ensure me that its true purpose is to sympathise with the poor, who don’t have enough money for food or water (or sex, apparently). This falls apart for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the Ramadan lifestyle is nothing like poverty. In Ramadan, most Muslims abstain completely during the daylight hours and then gorge at night, largely on sweets and expensive foods; surely a more realistic simulation of poverty would involve eating smaller quantities of blander food, but at normal times. I also saw a programme on BBC Arabic at the start of Ramadan investigating how Muslims would be coping with Ramadan in the recession: as well as seeing an overall decrease in productivity, Ramadan is the most expensive month of the Islamic year.
The other problem with the poverty theory is that Ramadan actually affects the poorer members of society much more than it does the richer. Someone with a manual job – often 12 hours under a hot sun in the Middle East - has a much greater need of calories and water during the day, than someone sitting at a desk in an air-conditioned office. Ramadan, then, is not the great societal equaliser that many people would like to see it as.
The questionable health effects
The other thing I hear a lot is that Ramadan is good for one’s health. Young women are convinced that it will help them lose weight, and many people also cite some detoxification effects. Ultimately, however, scientific studies into the health effects of Ramadan are both rare and inconclusive. Some studies do show weight loss (which is not necessarily healthy, particularly for somebody of my build), but they all take the final measurement on the last day of fasting, when the body is still in starvation mode. No study that I can find has taken a measurement after the subsequent three days of gluttony, nor indeed after the return to a normal diet.
I’m no nutritionist, but I have good reasons to suspect that fasting might be detrimental to my health. Firstly, ill people are let off, because it is apparently very dangerous for them. If swine flu is anything to go by, what is very dangerous for ill people is slightly dangerous for healthy people. Secondly, it is acknowledged that skipping breakfast is bad for you; therefore skipping breakfast, lunch, and dinner is probably worse. Thirdly, the effects of dehydration have been well studied and are not something I think I would enjoy; the consequent lack of concentration is one of the reasons for the increase in road accidents in Ramadan (along with people rushing to get home in time to break the fast). Finally, I go running every day along the picturesque trails of Mount Ebal, one of the hills surrounding Nablus; were I to fast, I would have to stop this practice, which would be detrimental to my health. Given the rarity of people who exercise in the Middle East, this would not show up on any studies.
Of course, this is all conjecture, and what is really needed is a proper scientific study into the effects of fasting on healthy (i.e. not ill) people. There have been countless studies telling us things which we already know (e.g. that hamburgers make us fat), so why has there been no proper investigation into a highly questionable practice undertaken by hundreds of millions of people? Could it be that scientists, and their financial backers, are too scared to put a religious practice so firmly under the microscope? If the study found Ramadan to be unhealthy, Muslims would essentially be knowingly facing a choice between their religion and their health; given the violent reaction faced by many people who call Islam into question, the scientists’ fear would be quite understandable.
Even the BBC is not immune to this: at the start of Ramadan, its Arabic coverage did not even call the matter of health into question, although it did give disproportionate airtime (compared to its English-language service) to the story that too much pork can cause cancer – something it shares with red meat and lots of other things permitted in Islam, although the news report failed to mention this. Given that nobody here eats pork, it wasn’t the most relevant news; apparently the BBC has instead got into the business of telling people what they want to hear.
The true purpose of Ramadan
Of course, even if the above reasons were true, they would still only be secondary to Ramadan’s primary purpose as a religious festival. It is not just about fasting: Muslims are expected to increase their mosque attendance, perform more prayers, and read the entire Qur’an in the month. Around Palestine, Qur’an FM is listened to almost exclusively in taxis, and the mosques are so full during evening prayers that worshippers are forced to take their prayer mats onto the street: it’s like Friday every day.
In practical terms, it is a potent opportunity for the religious institution to consolidate its control over the lives of the populace. Every 24 hours, Muslims swing from desperation to elation and back again; and the transitions are controlled not by the rising and setting of the sun, but by the call to prayer. The sunset is a reliable clue, but it is only once the imam has announced that ‘God is Great’ that Muslims are allowed to wet their parched throats; and it is he who with divine mandate re-imposes their misery the next morning. For me, that is more than enough reason to give it a miss.
Further information on health effects: http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/v57/n2s/full/1601899a.html
Friday, 21 August 2009
Volunteers in Palestine: doing more harm than good
The enforced victimhood of refugees
Palestine is an apartheid state. Despite Palestinians’ complaints about Israeli apartheid, and the ‘apartheid wall’, the fact remains that those Palestinians with refugee status have far fewer rights than full Palestinian citizens. And for the vast majority of them, the only reason for this is that their grandparents once lived in what is now Israel.
The refugees are not really refugees, and their camps not really camps. These are not people fleeing some recent conflict, they are descendents of the refugees of 1948. They have never seen their ‘home’, and they never will; their ‘Right to Return’ is almost as obscene as the Israeli Law of Return. Their ‘camps’ are permanent neighbourhoods, decades old, joined seamlessly to Palestinian cities, with telephone lines, water, satellite TV, mobile phone networks, plenty of food and sweets, and generally far better conditions than many slums all over the world. They are certainly a world apart from the tents, rations and emergency medicine of any other refugee camp. The only thing maintaining their separation from Palestinian society is their lack of citizenship, which the Palestinian Authority (and other Arab governments, except Jordan) refuses to give them. Israel created 700,000 refugees in 1948; the remaining 4 million have been created by Arabs.
Many refugees say they don’t want or need citizenship, that it is they who willingly hold on to their refugee status, but it is hard to give this any real credibility. Firstly, if that were the case, then the Palestinian Authority would have nothing to lose by offering everyone citizenship on reaching adulthood, and letting each individual make a choice; this does not happen. Secondly, even if they do genuinely believe this, their views are the product of a lifetime of state-backed brainwashing. Religion; the romanticisation of life pre-1948; the belief that they will one day return (with the added condition of removing all the Jews); the mythical horror stories about Jews invading the camps every night: all of this contributes to a very distorted worldview, created and exploited by political parties and fundamentalist religious movements for their own ends.
This is a society built on fiction; rumours spread like wildfire. When I first arrived in Nablus several months ago, I was told not to stay out after 11, and not to stand out on my balcony at night, because the Israelis invaded the city every night with no purpose other than thuggery, shooting first and asking questions later. So entrenched is this view that it was even repeated to me by certain other international volunteers, who claimed to hear the percussion grenades going off in the camps every night. These were the same people who mistook firecrackers for machine gun fire – perhaps the ‘percussion grenades’ were cars backfiring. But the fact that these people unquestioningly accepted this narrative as soon as they arrived in Palestine, and slotted subsequent events (such as backfiring cars) into their a priori belief, shows how easily children growing up in the camps can be coerced into adopting a certain viewpoint. Incidentally, it takes very little research to discover that the Israelis invade about once a month, under cover of darkness, always with the purpose of arresting a specific individual.
It is of note that very few of the 700,000 original refugees took part in armed struggle, and not one of them undertook a suicide mission. Even after all that they had lost, they still had hope. Perhaps one day they would return to their land, but failing that, they would make their home elsewhere, as all refugees do. But they and their descendents have been denied that right; they are guests in the country in which they are born, live and die, and they are thus forced to chase the impossible dream of a return to their ancestral homes, minus the innocent Israelis who have since been born there. Only out of such desperation are suicide bombers made; and the statistics for the second intifada show that suicide bombers coming from the refugee camps surrounding Nablus, then under 100% Palestinian control, far outnumbered those coming from areas occupied by Israel.
The volunteer culture
International volunteers play a vital role in all of this. Uniquely numerous, uniquely politicised and completely taken for granted, volunteers in Palestine are quite unlike those anywhere else in the world. I recently volunteered for two months as an English teacher, at the most apolitical organisation I could find, and I was fairly shocked at the volunteer culture here.
Firstly, the numbers. Palestine is everyone’s favourite humanitarian bandwagon, and this shows in the number of volunteers who come here. As there is no shortage of applicants, organisations can be very choosy about which volunteers they accept, and which they reject, and for this reason volunteers in Palestine are not as diverse as one might expect. Most notably, the volunteers here are overwhelmingly politicised. This is most visible in the explicitly activist organisations like the International Solidarity Movement, but the phenomenon also exists at supposedly apolitical organisations. At the organisation where I worked, there was an assumption that because of my presence here, I must be a pro-Palestinian activist. Once here, we are fed fictions and one-sided histories, which is how several of my colleagues ended up earnestly telling me blatant untruths about Israeli ‘invasions’ of the city, among other things.
Moreover, the politicisation is inescapable. All the charities organise lectures and tours, and even the most seemingly unrelated subject will reveal a mention of the ‘Zionist oppressor’ and the ‘massacres of Palestinians’ (incidentally, I managed to get on a Jewish settler tour of Hebron one weekend; the content was equal and opposite). The spectre of Israel dominates Palestinian thought, and so students and local volunteers will always bring up their extreme politics – the ‘everything is a Zionist conspiracy’ theory is quite popular – and seek affirmation of it among the international volunteers. Such is the situation here that we often have no choice but to agree, perhaps trying adopt a slightly milder stance. If we are silent, we are seen to be in agreement, and open the door for more extreme postulations. But if we disagree, we are shouted down (“how can you know, you don’t live under occupation”), and ultimately got rid of. Such is the surplus of volunteers here that anyone who presents the tiniest challenge to the accepted viewpoint is simply removed. I know a girl who was banned from teaching at a refugee camp because she showed the children, on their request, how she prayed as a Christian (she was accused of trying to convert them). I also have a friend who was removed from a ‘cultural exchange programme’ for enjoying a beer in private.
The result is that the only international volunteers who survive are those who either agree with, or meekly accept, the pre-determined viewpoint; and it often seems like we are there only for that purpose: to show Palestinian refugee children that the world supposedly supports them, and to persuade them to keep up the impossible struggle. Ostensibly, I was sent to the camps every morning to teach English, but I was given only a 20 minute slot and an uncontrollable class (their teachers beat them savagely, but my organisation still managed to blame this on ‘the stress of the occupation’). I achieved nothing in terms of teaching the English language, but because I was ordered not to say anything that might offend anyone, I probably gave the children the idea that I supported the extreme religious and political views which had been forced upon them.
How we help, and how we hinder
Outside the refugee camps, international volunteers achieve quite a lot. There, we can do what we signed up to do, in my case teaching English, without being exploited for another purpose. I taught a group of journalists, and taught them not only the English language, but also the difference between a nightclub and a brothel (they did ask). I managed, by personal example, to disabuse them of the view that everyone who drinks alcohol is a permanently drunk alcoholic; similarly, that not all atheists are human manifestations of pure evil. The average Palestinian knows as little about British culture as the average Brit knows about Palestine, so this sort of cultural exchange is invaluable.
But most charities focus heavily on the refugee camps, where teaching is next to impossible, and the slightest hint of almost any aspect of British culture sets off a Pavlovian Islamic response, and as such cannot be discussed; if you try to, or even if you are drawn into such a discussion by mistake, you will be instantly removed and replaced by the next altruistic Western sucker. Many charities advertise themselves as ‘cultural exchange’, but they are nothing of the sort: they are a one-way cultural download, and any attempt to give something back is stifled. Similarly, any criticism of Palestinian society is deflected onto the occupation, as if Israelis themselves were dropping the mounds of litter on every green space, or ordering men in refugee camps to beat their wives and children.
Quite simply, we are brought there to be seen, and to be seen to be supporting the refugees’ cause. Even the most neutral, teaching-focussed volunteers are passively legitimising everything which happens in the camps: the brainwashing, the glorification of suicidal attacks on civilians, the beating of children by their teachers, the domestic abuse of women; the list goes on. The more partisan volunteers, by constantly reinforcing the victim mentality of the refugees and reminding them of their ‘Right to Return’, are simply strengthening the apartheid which is stopping Palestinian society from moving forward towards independent statehood. If you’re thinking of volunteering in Palestine, be warned that your efforts will probably be counterproductive. Unless you’re a Zionist, of course, in which case you’ll achieve far more towards your maniacal goal than you ever would with the IDF.
Palestine is an apartheid state. Despite Palestinians’ complaints about Israeli apartheid, and the ‘apartheid wall’, the fact remains that those Palestinians with refugee status have far fewer rights than full Palestinian citizens. And for the vast majority of them, the only reason for this is that their grandparents once lived in what is now Israel.
The refugees are not really refugees, and their camps not really camps. These are not people fleeing some recent conflict, they are descendents of the refugees of 1948. They have never seen their ‘home’, and they never will; their ‘Right to Return’ is almost as obscene as the Israeli Law of Return. Their ‘camps’ are permanent neighbourhoods, decades old, joined seamlessly to Palestinian cities, with telephone lines, water, satellite TV, mobile phone networks, plenty of food and sweets, and generally far better conditions than many slums all over the world. They are certainly a world apart from the tents, rations and emergency medicine of any other refugee camp. The only thing maintaining their separation from Palestinian society is their lack of citizenship, which the Palestinian Authority (and other Arab governments, except Jordan) refuses to give them. Israel created 700,000 refugees in 1948; the remaining 4 million have been created by Arabs.
Many refugees say they don’t want or need citizenship, that it is they who willingly hold on to their refugee status, but it is hard to give this any real credibility. Firstly, if that were the case, then the Palestinian Authority would have nothing to lose by offering everyone citizenship on reaching adulthood, and letting each individual make a choice; this does not happen. Secondly, even if they do genuinely believe this, their views are the product of a lifetime of state-backed brainwashing. Religion; the romanticisation of life pre-1948; the belief that they will one day return (with the added condition of removing all the Jews); the mythical horror stories about Jews invading the camps every night: all of this contributes to a very distorted worldview, created and exploited by political parties and fundamentalist religious movements for their own ends.
This is a society built on fiction; rumours spread like wildfire. When I first arrived in Nablus several months ago, I was told not to stay out after 11, and not to stand out on my balcony at night, because the Israelis invaded the city every night with no purpose other than thuggery, shooting first and asking questions later. So entrenched is this view that it was even repeated to me by certain other international volunteers, who claimed to hear the percussion grenades going off in the camps every night. These were the same people who mistook firecrackers for machine gun fire – perhaps the ‘percussion grenades’ were cars backfiring. But the fact that these people unquestioningly accepted this narrative as soon as they arrived in Palestine, and slotted subsequent events (such as backfiring cars) into their a priori belief, shows how easily children growing up in the camps can be coerced into adopting a certain viewpoint. Incidentally, it takes very little research to discover that the Israelis invade about once a month, under cover of darkness, always with the purpose of arresting a specific individual.
It is of note that very few of the 700,000 original refugees took part in armed struggle, and not one of them undertook a suicide mission. Even after all that they had lost, they still had hope. Perhaps one day they would return to their land, but failing that, they would make their home elsewhere, as all refugees do. But they and their descendents have been denied that right; they are guests in the country in which they are born, live and die, and they are thus forced to chase the impossible dream of a return to their ancestral homes, minus the innocent Israelis who have since been born there. Only out of such desperation are suicide bombers made; and the statistics for the second intifada show that suicide bombers coming from the refugee camps surrounding Nablus, then under 100% Palestinian control, far outnumbered those coming from areas occupied by Israel.
The volunteer culture
International volunteers play a vital role in all of this. Uniquely numerous, uniquely politicised and completely taken for granted, volunteers in Palestine are quite unlike those anywhere else in the world. I recently volunteered for two months as an English teacher, at the most apolitical organisation I could find, and I was fairly shocked at the volunteer culture here.
Firstly, the numbers. Palestine is everyone’s favourite humanitarian bandwagon, and this shows in the number of volunteers who come here. As there is no shortage of applicants, organisations can be very choosy about which volunteers they accept, and which they reject, and for this reason volunteers in Palestine are not as diverse as one might expect. Most notably, the volunteers here are overwhelmingly politicised. This is most visible in the explicitly activist organisations like the International Solidarity Movement, but the phenomenon also exists at supposedly apolitical organisations. At the organisation where I worked, there was an assumption that because of my presence here, I must be a pro-Palestinian activist. Once here, we are fed fictions and one-sided histories, which is how several of my colleagues ended up earnestly telling me blatant untruths about Israeli ‘invasions’ of the city, among other things.
Moreover, the politicisation is inescapable. All the charities organise lectures and tours, and even the most seemingly unrelated subject will reveal a mention of the ‘Zionist oppressor’ and the ‘massacres of Palestinians’ (incidentally, I managed to get on a Jewish settler tour of Hebron one weekend; the content was equal and opposite). The spectre of Israel dominates Palestinian thought, and so students and local volunteers will always bring up their extreme politics – the ‘everything is a Zionist conspiracy’ theory is quite popular – and seek affirmation of it among the international volunteers. Such is the situation here that we often have no choice but to agree, perhaps trying adopt a slightly milder stance. If we are silent, we are seen to be in agreement, and open the door for more extreme postulations. But if we disagree, we are shouted down (“how can you know, you don’t live under occupation”), and ultimately got rid of. Such is the surplus of volunteers here that anyone who presents the tiniest challenge to the accepted viewpoint is simply removed. I know a girl who was banned from teaching at a refugee camp because she showed the children, on their request, how she prayed as a Christian (she was accused of trying to convert them). I also have a friend who was removed from a ‘cultural exchange programme’ for enjoying a beer in private.
The result is that the only international volunteers who survive are those who either agree with, or meekly accept, the pre-determined viewpoint; and it often seems like we are there only for that purpose: to show Palestinian refugee children that the world supposedly supports them, and to persuade them to keep up the impossible struggle. Ostensibly, I was sent to the camps every morning to teach English, but I was given only a 20 minute slot and an uncontrollable class (their teachers beat them savagely, but my organisation still managed to blame this on ‘the stress of the occupation’). I achieved nothing in terms of teaching the English language, but because I was ordered not to say anything that might offend anyone, I probably gave the children the idea that I supported the extreme religious and political views which had been forced upon them.
How we help, and how we hinder
Outside the refugee camps, international volunteers achieve quite a lot. There, we can do what we signed up to do, in my case teaching English, without being exploited for another purpose. I taught a group of journalists, and taught them not only the English language, but also the difference between a nightclub and a brothel (they did ask). I managed, by personal example, to disabuse them of the view that everyone who drinks alcohol is a permanently drunk alcoholic; similarly, that not all atheists are human manifestations of pure evil. The average Palestinian knows as little about British culture as the average Brit knows about Palestine, so this sort of cultural exchange is invaluable.
But most charities focus heavily on the refugee camps, where teaching is next to impossible, and the slightest hint of almost any aspect of British culture sets off a Pavlovian Islamic response, and as such cannot be discussed; if you try to, or even if you are drawn into such a discussion by mistake, you will be instantly removed and replaced by the next altruistic Western sucker. Many charities advertise themselves as ‘cultural exchange’, but they are nothing of the sort: they are a one-way cultural download, and any attempt to give something back is stifled. Similarly, any criticism of Palestinian society is deflected onto the occupation, as if Israelis themselves were dropping the mounds of litter on every green space, or ordering men in refugee camps to beat their wives and children.
Quite simply, we are brought there to be seen, and to be seen to be supporting the refugees’ cause. Even the most neutral, teaching-focussed volunteers are passively legitimising everything which happens in the camps: the brainwashing, the glorification of suicidal attacks on civilians, the beating of children by their teachers, the domestic abuse of women; the list goes on. The more partisan volunteers, by constantly reinforcing the victim mentality of the refugees and reminding them of their ‘Right to Return’, are simply strengthening the apartheid which is stopping Palestinian society from moving forward towards independent statehood. If you’re thinking of volunteering in Palestine, be warned that your efforts will probably be counterproductive. Unless you’re a Zionist, of course, in which case you’ll achieve far more towards your maniacal goal than you ever would with the IDF.
Monday, 10 August 2009
The blurred distinction between race, religion and ethnicity
What is the issue?
People have a right to define themselves as they wish. This is why ‘ethnicity’, the word used on all population statistics, can have responses including race, religion, tribe or even nationality. Go and look up Israeli population statistics. 75.9% Jewish, 19.8% Arab. 75.9% religious, 19.8% racial. In fact, if one were to give Jewish Arabs their full identity, Israel’s ethnic population might exceed 100% (no wonder they’re so desperate to grab more land).
In the Middle East in particular, religion rather than race is often used as the primary identifier of one’s ethnicity and identity, and throughout the world religion is often treated as an inheritable trait rather than a viewpoint: one can be called racist for criticising a religion; religion is passed down from parents to children. The problem is that religion and race and completely separate things. Race is something we are born with, but makes no real difference to us beyond the physical (if we ignore societal discrimination and racism); religion is something that no child is born with, but which shapes our whole world view. Put very simply, if a black child is adopted at one day old by a white family, that child will grow up black. If a ‘Muslim child’ (i.e. an agnostic child born to Muslim parents) is adopted at one day old by a Christian family, that child will probably be brought up Christian.
In light of these differences, I believe that one cannot criticise race, but one can criticise religion. The issue is complicated somewhat in the Middle East, because a lot of people are subjected to religious brainwashing from birth and have very little access to or knowledge of secularism, and they often see religion as a crucial part of their identity; I have nonetheless met plenty of closeted atheists and even more people who are ‘religious’ in only the loosest sense, in order to avoid discrimination. In the West, where we have almost complete freedom of information and expression, everyone must be accountable for the views which they hold. That is not to say that it’s ok to discriminate against religious people – everyone has the right to an opinion – but all opinions are open to discussion and criticism, and religion is no exception. I do not expect to be labelled a racist for criticising someone’s belief, no matter how deeply they hold it.
The abuse of language
One of the most significant reasons that this situation has come about is that we have allowed certain language to enter our vernacular which encourages this obfuscation. The most obvious example is the idea of ‘religious’ children, which Richard Dawkins criticised in his book The God Delusion, and has since come under significant attack throughout the secular world – although in the Middle East the idea of a newborn adhering to a faith is still largely accepted and unquestioned. The criticism revolves around the fact that a newborn child doesn’t believe anything. Two parents who staunchly vote Conservative, or Republican, would never dream of labelling their newborn ‘a Conservative child’, or ‘a Republican child’. Why should religion be treated differently? In the case of more literal followers of the Qur’an, a child unfortunate enough to be born to one or two such parents might find himself sentenced to death should he decide that he doesn’t believe in a very specific version of the vanishingly improbable guy in the sky.
An example more unique to the Middle East, at least in modern times, is the notion of the martyr (Arabic: shaheed). In English the word means someone who willingly gives up his life for his beliefs; in Arabic it can also mean someone who dies for what they believe. But I have seen the word used in Palestinian newspapers to refer to young children killed by Israeli airstrikes. However terrible these deaths were, the children were not killed for their beliefs, they were killed because they were tragically in the wrong place at the wrong time; indirectly, perhaps, they were killed because of their race. To assume that a 3 year old has considered all of the possible spiritual worldviews and decided that Islam is the best, or even that he or she has looked in depth at the history of the Middle East and decided that Israel is illegitimate, is rather presumptuous to say the least. Arabic is a massive, eloquent language, and there are plenty of words which would suitably convey the tragedy, unfairness and crime of the death, without stamping views on a child who is clearly incapable of holding them.
By far the greatest culprit, however, in terms of words we misuse, is ‘anti-Semitism’ – the irrational hatred of Jews. It actually came into common usage through an anti-Semite, the German journalist Wilhelm Marr, who founded the ‘League for anti-Semitism’ in 1879. He was a true racist: he hated the Jews not for their religious beliefs but for their perceived racial heritage and ‘foreignness’; had Arabs or blacks been so successful and prevalent in his society, I imagine he would have hated them too. The same is true of the perpetrators of the pogroms, the Holocaust, and all the other tragedies the Jews have suffered throughout their history; so the use of the word anti-Semite is understandable and, in historical cases, justified.
The problem is that Judaism isn’t really a race; it is a religion (for clarification, see below). Just like Islam and Christianity, it is about belief rather than heritage: name one ‘race’ other than Judaism which is incompatible with Islam or Christianity. And yet if I, or indeed Barack Obama, dare to criticise Israeli settlements on the West Bank, we are called ‘anti-Semites’ – racists. I am not criticising the settlers for their racial origin (which is often overwhelmingly white European); I am criticising them for believing they have the right to steal land from Palestinians because they worship the same deity in a different way. My view is in no way a diluted version of Hitler’s, and so I should not be tarnished by the same word.
Technicalities and the state of Israel
In order for the above to stand up, I need to fully debunk the myth that Judaism is a race (and with it, the notion that Israel’s right to exist stems from a people’s historical connection to the land; I believe that Israel does have the right to exist, but only because of the oppression suffered by the Jews in Europe. More recently, is has the right to exist simply by virtue of existing, as countless innocent people have been born there).
So, who is a Jew? Even among the most Orthodox, the most stringent requirement is that one’s mother be Jewish. This means that each generation of descendents from the Jewish diaspora could lose 50% of their ‘Jewish’ racial heritage: a Jewish woman could have a half-Jewish daughter, who would then marry a non-Jewish man and have quarter-Jewish children, etc. If we take the start date of the diaspora as 70AD (when the Romans started driving the Jews out of Israel), and say that there is a new generation every 20 years (quite old for starting to have children for all but the last few decades), that means 97 generations have passed since the start of the diaspora. If each of them loses the maximum 50% ethnicity, that means a non-convert Jew could have as little as a 0.00000000000000000000000000063% blood claim to the land of Israel. Clearly, those who claim an ancient right to the land of Israel do so for religious rather than racial reasons, and so I should be allowed to criticise them without being accused of racism or anti-Semitism.
In fact, most modern interpretations of what makes a Jew are even more liberal than that. Most branches of Judaism allow converts, as long as they can show a genuine interest in the religion, and these converts are allowed into Israel under the Law of Return (another example of the abuse of language – in order to return somewhere, one needs to have been there before!). Going by this, the Law of Return is based on religion, rather than race. But it also allows non-believing ‘Jews’, who can show evidence of one Jewish grandparent, to gain Israeli citizenship. The state of Israel, then, is trying to claim that Judaism can be either a race, or a religion, or both.
Many Israelis have become so accustomed to this word ‘anti-Semitic’, that they will use it as a blanket insult to Palestinians. The irony is that the vast majority of Palestinians are Semitic, whereas fewer than half of Israeli Jews are considered so (49.4% Sephardic or Mizrahi, of whom most but not all are Semitic; most of the rest are Ashkenazi, of European extraction). Is it any wonder that Palestinians see Israelis as colonialists? Granted, in the early days of Israel, and before its establishment, the widespread oppression of the Jews necessitated a haven for them, but most of those who have immigrated to settlements in recent years have done so from integrated lives in America or Europe, driving Semites into refugee camps. Who, then, are the real anti-Semites?
There is one final irony. A new theory, propagated by an Israeli Jew (Shlomo Sand) suggests that at the time of the Arab conquests, many Jews stayed in what is now Israel rather than fleeing. Some converted to Islam at the time, others later, and they eventually became the modern Palestinian people. So when an Ashkenazi settler moves onto Palestinian land, he might be driving out from the ‘Holy Land’ someone with infinitely more ‘Jewish heritage’ than himself. Such is the danger of confusing race and religion.
EDIT (18/08/2009): A Palestinian just asked me (in all seriousness) whether I was a Protestant Atheist or a Catholic Atheist. Clearly, in his mind, my Protestantism is just as unchangeable as my Britishness or whiteness, and whether or not I believe in a god is quite irrelevant to my religion.
People have a right to define themselves as they wish. This is why ‘ethnicity’, the word used on all population statistics, can have responses including race, religion, tribe or even nationality. Go and look up Israeli population statistics. 75.9% Jewish, 19.8% Arab. 75.9% religious, 19.8% racial. In fact, if one were to give Jewish Arabs their full identity, Israel’s ethnic population might exceed 100% (no wonder they’re so desperate to grab more land).
In the Middle East in particular, religion rather than race is often used as the primary identifier of one’s ethnicity and identity, and throughout the world religion is often treated as an inheritable trait rather than a viewpoint: one can be called racist for criticising a religion; religion is passed down from parents to children. The problem is that religion and race and completely separate things. Race is something we are born with, but makes no real difference to us beyond the physical (if we ignore societal discrimination and racism); religion is something that no child is born with, but which shapes our whole world view. Put very simply, if a black child is adopted at one day old by a white family, that child will grow up black. If a ‘Muslim child’ (i.e. an agnostic child born to Muslim parents) is adopted at one day old by a Christian family, that child will probably be brought up Christian.
In light of these differences, I believe that one cannot criticise race, but one can criticise religion. The issue is complicated somewhat in the Middle East, because a lot of people are subjected to religious brainwashing from birth and have very little access to or knowledge of secularism, and they often see religion as a crucial part of their identity; I have nonetheless met plenty of closeted atheists and even more people who are ‘religious’ in only the loosest sense, in order to avoid discrimination. In the West, where we have almost complete freedom of information and expression, everyone must be accountable for the views which they hold. That is not to say that it’s ok to discriminate against religious people – everyone has the right to an opinion – but all opinions are open to discussion and criticism, and religion is no exception. I do not expect to be labelled a racist for criticising someone’s belief, no matter how deeply they hold it.
The abuse of language
One of the most significant reasons that this situation has come about is that we have allowed certain language to enter our vernacular which encourages this obfuscation. The most obvious example is the idea of ‘religious’ children, which Richard Dawkins criticised in his book The God Delusion, and has since come under significant attack throughout the secular world – although in the Middle East the idea of a newborn adhering to a faith is still largely accepted and unquestioned. The criticism revolves around the fact that a newborn child doesn’t believe anything. Two parents who staunchly vote Conservative, or Republican, would never dream of labelling their newborn ‘a Conservative child’, or ‘a Republican child’. Why should religion be treated differently? In the case of more literal followers of the Qur’an, a child unfortunate enough to be born to one or two such parents might find himself sentenced to death should he decide that he doesn’t believe in a very specific version of the vanishingly improbable guy in the sky.
An example more unique to the Middle East, at least in modern times, is the notion of the martyr (Arabic: shaheed). In English the word means someone who willingly gives up his life for his beliefs; in Arabic it can also mean someone who dies for what they believe. But I have seen the word used in Palestinian newspapers to refer to young children killed by Israeli airstrikes. However terrible these deaths were, the children were not killed for their beliefs, they were killed because they were tragically in the wrong place at the wrong time; indirectly, perhaps, they were killed because of their race. To assume that a 3 year old has considered all of the possible spiritual worldviews and decided that Islam is the best, or even that he or she has looked in depth at the history of the Middle East and decided that Israel is illegitimate, is rather presumptuous to say the least. Arabic is a massive, eloquent language, and there are plenty of words which would suitably convey the tragedy, unfairness and crime of the death, without stamping views on a child who is clearly incapable of holding them.
By far the greatest culprit, however, in terms of words we misuse, is ‘anti-Semitism’ – the irrational hatred of Jews. It actually came into common usage through an anti-Semite, the German journalist Wilhelm Marr, who founded the ‘League for anti-Semitism’ in 1879. He was a true racist: he hated the Jews not for their religious beliefs but for their perceived racial heritage and ‘foreignness’; had Arabs or blacks been so successful and prevalent in his society, I imagine he would have hated them too. The same is true of the perpetrators of the pogroms, the Holocaust, and all the other tragedies the Jews have suffered throughout their history; so the use of the word anti-Semite is understandable and, in historical cases, justified.
The problem is that Judaism isn’t really a race; it is a religion (for clarification, see below). Just like Islam and Christianity, it is about belief rather than heritage: name one ‘race’ other than Judaism which is incompatible with Islam or Christianity. And yet if I, or indeed Barack Obama, dare to criticise Israeli settlements on the West Bank, we are called ‘anti-Semites’ – racists. I am not criticising the settlers for their racial origin (which is often overwhelmingly white European); I am criticising them for believing they have the right to steal land from Palestinians because they worship the same deity in a different way. My view is in no way a diluted version of Hitler’s, and so I should not be tarnished by the same word.
Technicalities and the state of Israel
In order for the above to stand up, I need to fully debunk the myth that Judaism is a race (and with it, the notion that Israel’s right to exist stems from a people’s historical connection to the land; I believe that Israel does have the right to exist, but only because of the oppression suffered by the Jews in Europe. More recently, is has the right to exist simply by virtue of existing, as countless innocent people have been born there).
So, who is a Jew? Even among the most Orthodox, the most stringent requirement is that one’s mother be Jewish. This means that each generation of descendents from the Jewish diaspora could lose 50% of their ‘Jewish’ racial heritage: a Jewish woman could have a half-Jewish daughter, who would then marry a non-Jewish man and have quarter-Jewish children, etc. If we take the start date of the diaspora as 70AD (when the Romans started driving the Jews out of Israel), and say that there is a new generation every 20 years (quite old for starting to have children for all but the last few decades), that means 97 generations have passed since the start of the diaspora. If each of them loses the maximum 50% ethnicity, that means a non-convert Jew could have as little as a 0.00000000000000000000000000063% blood claim to the land of Israel. Clearly, those who claim an ancient right to the land of Israel do so for religious rather than racial reasons, and so I should be allowed to criticise them without being accused of racism or anti-Semitism.
In fact, most modern interpretations of what makes a Jew are even more liberal than that. Most branches of Judaism allow converts, as long as they can show a genuine interest in the religion, and these converts are allowed into Israel under the Law of Return (another example of the abuse of language – in order to return somewhere, one needs to have been there before!). Going by this, the Law of Return is based on religion, rather than race. But it also allows non-believing ‘Jews’, who can show evidence of one Jewish grandparent, to gain Israeli citizenship. The state of Israel, then, is trying to claim that Judaism can be either a race, or a religion, or both.
Many Israelis have become so accustomed to this word ‘anti-Semitic’, that they will use it as a blanket insult to Palestinians. The irony is that the vast majority of Palestinians are Semitic, whereas fewer than half of Israeli Jews are considered so (49.4% Sephardic or Mizrahi, of whom most but not all are Semitic; most of the rest are Ashkenazi, of European extraction). Is it any wonder that Palestinians see Israelis as colonialists? Granted, in the early days of Israel, and before its establishment, the widespread oppression of the Jews necessitated a haven for them, but most of those who have immigrated to settlements in recent years have done so from integrated lives in America or Europe, driving Semites into refugee camps. Who, then, are the real anti-Semites?
There is one final irony. A new theory, propagated by an Israeli Jew (Shlomo Sand) suggests that at the time of the Arab conquests, many Jews stayed in what is now Israel rather than fleeing. Some converted to Islam at the time, others later, and they eventually became the modern Palestinian people. So when an Ashkenazi settler moves onto Palestinian land, he might be driving out from the ‘Holy Land’ someone with infinitely more ‘Jewish heritage’ than himself. Such is the danger of confusing race and religion.
EDIT (18/08/2009): A Palestinian just asked me (in all seriousness) whether I was a Protestant Atheist or a Catholic Atheist. Clearly, in his mind, my Protestantism is just as unchangeable as my Britishness or whiteness, and whether or not I believe in a god is quite irrelevant to my religion.
Friday, 31 July 2009
Travelling to Palestine
Apologies to all for the recent quiet on my blog. The reason is that I have recently arrived in Palestine, with all the preparations that entails, in order to pass rapidly through Ben Gurion airport, including changing the title of my blog to gobbledegook for a while, deleting all Palestinians from Facebook, buying and highlighting the most Zionist guidebook I could find (seriously, 'Palestine' is only mentioned twice, both times in the history section), inventing a whole itinerary with a friend resident in Israel, and much more besides). As I still don't have a laptop, and don't feel like making a proper post from an internet cafe with a keyboard that doesn't really work, I will seek to explain why I went to such seemingly ridiculous lengths to get through passport control.
The reason, quite simply, is that I have been to Ben Gurion before. Imagine if you will, you're a young Arabic student, and you decide to go and do some volunteer work in Palestine do improve your language and feel good about yourself. You find a decent-looking organisation in Nablus which deals with teaching English, which you have done before and quite enjoyed. You apply, and get the job. In your interview, the interviewer warns of some occasional problems at the airport, but you're not the activist type and assume there should be no problem. She suggests lying at the airport, but you don't want to lie to one of the best security services in the world, particularly with a Syrian stamp in your passport. Mistake one.
Being a student, you scour the interweb for the cheapest possible flight, and find that El Al is about 20GBP (why isn't there a pound sign on Middle Eastern keyboards?) cheaper than BMI. You reckon this makes it a good deal. Mistake two.
So you rock up at Heathrow, brimming with confidence that you aren't affiliated with any terrorist organisations, you're not a Communist, and you weren't a member of the government of Nazi Germany between 1939-1945. That was enough to get you into America, and America basically owns Israel, you tell yourself. You walk over to the El Al desk and stand in a queue. You smile at the employee who comes over and asks you for the purpose of your stay. You have an Arabic dictionary in your bag and Palestinian phone numbers in your diary, so you stick to the plan and tell the truth.
'Come with me please sir.' This wasn't part of the plan. Oh well, roll with the punches. You sit in a small room and a pretty girl asks you questions. Meanwhile, unknown to you, the senior security man is going through your bag like a pig looking for truffles. He finds all your papers, your diary, and asks a series of questions about the Middle Eastern contacts you have written down there. He then decides that airport security is insufficient and that he needs to strip-search you (thankfully stopping at your underwear). Furthermore, any one of your electronic goods might be a prototype undetectable bomb, so they will need to be sent on a later flight (necessitating a return to Jerusalem a week into your trip).
Finally, after an hour and a half, they seem satisfied, but you might be able to fashion an explosive device from the duty free, so you are assigned a goon to escort you. At normal security, the British security guard makes him take off his shoes and belt before he passes through, and gives you a knowing wink as the goon protests and bends down to his shoes. He knows the score.
You have a while airside, so you go to Caffe Nero and buy some breakfast, still accompanied by the goon. You choose a bacon and sausage sandwich. It's not insensitive, it's what you would have chosen anyway.
It's not often that you can ask an Israeli security guard one question and get two pieces of information out of him. However, with just one question to your goon, you ascertain that he can't get you into the business lounge, and that he doesn't have a sense of humour.
After being escorted onto the plane, you finally relax, hoping that the worst is over (ignorance is bliss). The flight passes uneventfully, and you touch down in Tel Aviv. You go to passport control, they ask you the purpose of your visit, and you tell them the same, assuming that having been cleared by El Al, they must have been in contact and told Tel Aviv that you're ok. Is that too much to ask of such a famous security service?
Yes. The word 'Nablus' has barely passed your lips before the pretty girl behind the counter presses a buzzer and burly man appears and motions you to a waiting room. It's about 9pm. You sit for about two hours, and finally get called in for questioning. You answer all the questions honestly, about your past and your intentions, still believing that you have nothing to hide. Having come this far, this is the best policy - any discrepancies will get you on the next plane home.
Some of the questions make you want to laugh, and it's only the threat of being refused entry that stops you. 'Why do I want you in my country?', asks the man, perhaps mistaking himself for King David. 'What if I don't want you teaching those sorts of children? There are children in Tel Aviv too, you know.' And, possibly the best, 'Why should you be here?' The best you can muster is 'Why should anyone be anywhere?', trying to keep the irony out of your voice.
Halfway through, his girlfriend comes in. He's late finishing; he seems to actually enjoy this farce. After the questions are finished, you go back to the waiting room for another two and a half hours, while all the information is cross-checked (you assume; either that or they're messing you about). Finally, you get your visa stamp and go through, it now being about 2am. You get to Jerusalem and tomorrow you continue uneventfully to Nablus, but your electronic goods will be another week. You make a mental note that, should you ever return, you will take every precaution against going through that again.
And that's why I took all those obscene precautions. They worked. In fact, my bag wasn't searched at all, so the only one that was really necessary was the friend in Israel. But the others gave me the confidence to carry it off, and would probably have helped wrap up any further questioning more quickly. In short, if travelling to Palestine, or even Israel, no preparation is too ridiculous. If you're going there, feel free to leave me an anonymous note or send me a message and I'll do my best to help!
The reason, quite simply, is that I have been to Ben Gurion before. Imagine if you will, you're a young Arabic student, and you decide to go and do some volunteer work in Palestine do improve your language and feel good about yourself. You find a decent-looking organisation in Nablus which deals with teaching English, which you have done before and quite enjoyed. You apply, and get the job. In your interview, the interviewer warns of some occasional problems at the airport, but you're not the activist type and assume there should be no problem. She suggests lying at the airport, but you don't want to lie to one of the best security services in the world, particularly with a Syrian stamp in your passport. Mistake one.
Being a student, you scour the interweb for the cheapest possible flight, and find that El Al is about 20GBP (why isn't there a pound sign on Middle Eastern keyboards?) cheaper than BMI. You reckon this makes it a good deal. Mistake two.
So you rock up at Heathrow, brimming with confidence that you aren't affiliated with any terrorist organisations, you're not a Communist, and you weren't a member of the government of Nazi Germany between 1939-1945. That was enough to get you into America, and America basically owns Israel, you tell yourself. You walk over to the El Al desk and stand in a queue. You smile at the employee who comes over and asks you for the purpose of your stay. You have an Arabic dictionary in your bag and Palestinian phone numbers in your diary, so you stick to the plan and tell the truth.
'Come with me please sir.' This wasn't part of the plan. Oh well, roll with the punches. You sit in a small room and a pretty girl asks you questions. Meanwhile, unknown to you, the senior security man is going through your bag like a pig looking for truffles. He finds all your papers, your diary, and asks a series of questions about the Middle Eastern contacts you have written down there. He then decides that airport security is insufficient and that he needs to strip-search you (thankfully stopping at your underwear). Furthermore, any one of your electronic goods might be a prototype undetectable bomb, so they will need to be sent on a later flight (necessitating a return to Jerusalem a week into your trip).
Finally, after an hour and a half, they seem satisfied, but you might be able to fashion an explosive device from the duty free, so you are assigned a goon to escort you. At normal security, the British security guard makes him take off his shoes and belt before he passes through, and gives you a knowing wink as the goon protests and bends down to his shoes. He knows the score.
You have a while airside, so you go to Caffe Nero and buy some breakfast, still accompanied by the goon. You choose a bacon and sausage sandwich. It's not insensitive, it's what you would have chosen anyway.
It's not often that you can ask an Israeli security guard one question and get two pieces of information out of him. However, with just one question to your goon, you ascertain that he can't get you into the business lounge, and that he doesn't have a sense of humour.
After being escorted onto the plane, you finally relax, hoping that the worst is over (ignorance is bliss). The flight passes uneventfully, and you touch down in Tel Aviv. You go to passport control, they ask you the purpose of your visit, and you tell them the same, assuming that having been cleared by El Al, they must have been in contact and told Tel Aviv that you're ok. Is that too much to ask of such a famous security service?
Yes. The word 'Nablus' has barely passed your lips before the pretty girl behind the counter presses a buzzer and burly man appears and motions you to a waiting room. It's about 9pm. You sit for about two hours, and finally get called in for questioning. You answer all the questions honestly, about your past and your intentions, still believing that you have nothing to hide. Having come this far, this is the best policy - any discrepancies will get you on the next plane home.
Some of the questions make you want to laugh, and it's only the threat of being refused entry that stops you. 'Why do I want you in my country?', asks the man, perhaps mistaking himself for King David. 'What if I don't want you teaching those sorts of children? There are children in Tel Aviv too, you know.' And, possibly the best, 'Why should you be here?' The best you can muster is 'Why should anyone be anywhere?', trying to keep the irony out of your voice.
Halfway through, his girlfriend comes in. He's late finishing; he seems to actually enjoy this farce. After the questions are finished, you go back to the waiting room for another two and a half hours, while all the information is cross-checked (you assume; either that or they're messing you about). Finally, you get your visa stamp and go through, it now being about 2am. You get to Jerusalem and tomorrow you continue uneventfully to Nablus, but your electronic goods will be another week. You make a mental note that, should you ever return, you will take every precaution against going through that again.
And that's why I took all those obscene precautions. They worked. In fact, my bag wasn't searched at all, so the only one that was really necessary was the friend in Israel. But the others gave me the confidence to carry it off, and would probably have helped wrap up any further questioning more quickly. In short, if travelling to Palestine, or even Israel, no preparation is too ridiculous. If you're going there, feel free to leave me an anonymous note or send me a message and I'll do my best to help!
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