Twin Tasks
By Mowahid Hussain Shah
The other day, the Pakistani American Congress held its annual moot in the Gold Room of the Rayburn House Office Building on Washington’s Capitol Hill. I was tasked to give remarks in the presence of the US State Department official heading the Pakistan desk.
These centered on two overarching themes. First is what I characterized as the terror of the tongue. It dealt with increasing use of vitriolic speech directed against Muslims – not on the fringes but increasingly embedded in the mainstream.
I mentioned the “welcome” given to two newly elected Muslim congresswomen who have been constantly hammered – even by Chelsea Clinton and ex-US envoy to UN, Nikki Haley. All of this amidst lofty claims of diversity and inclusivity. Juxtapose that with the picture across the pond, where top leadership is vested in the hands of Britons of Pakistani descent.
Incivility is being endorsed here at the highest level. Hate speech has the propensity to lead to hateful actions.
Does it matter in US-Pakistan relations? It does because of its transcendental implications. The genesis of Pakistan is rooted in Muslim nationhood. Pakistan is also pivotal to Western-Muslim relations. It being a Pan-Islamic bridge to the wider Muslim world, what happens in Pakistan and to Pakistan doesn’t stay in Pakistan. Anti-Muslim rhetoric is noticed, with its message that perhaps there is an underlying animus. Its recurrence seems systematic.
In the Islamic Horizons issue of November 2019, Georgetown University researcher Farid Hafez wrote on “the role of a more covert industry that has mainstreamed anti-Muslim views both here and abroad … formerly peripheral voices had become part of the mainstream. The primary strategy goal was to exacerbate a climate of fear of Muslims and exclude them from society.”
The unstated object, in effect, is to marginalize and delegitimize Muslim presence on Main Street. Hate cannot be neatly compartmentalized. It feeds from the same toxic pond. Example: the upsurge of anti-Semitism. As recent as early this month, in November, a plot was aborted to bomb a synagogue in Pueblo, Colorado by a man espousing white supremacist ideology. The accused suspect wanted to wage “a racial holy war.”
The second specter I pointed out is gun terror, which stalks the land. The usual proclivity is to hector Pakistan to do more to curtail its domestic terrorism. The pattern is to harp on what has not been done, instead of what has been done. But, paradoxically, within the US, there is scant evidence of either capability or intent to crack down on gun-inflicted terror, mostly enabled and facilitated by easy availability and accessibility to weapons of lethal destruction.
Who then is instrumental for much of the aforementioned? Christopher Wray, FBI director, told the US Congress on October 30: “The majority of the racially-motivated violent extremist domestic terrorism, the majority of that, is at the hands of what I would call white supremacists.”
Yet, routine mass shootings by these perpetrators remain normalized, accompanied often by usual lamentations of candlelight vigils, hymn singings, prayers, and flower displays. In effect, state and society have given sickos the means to execute their depraved designs. Schools – supposedly temples of learning – have become places where teachers are encouraged to be armed, and fearful students are tutored on how to avoid getting shot.
Gun violence is fully preventable and has public support. Registered voters in Virginia were asked: “How important is gun control?” 91 percent said it was “more important.” (Washington Post poll, CBS News, November 5, 2019).
What then is the takeaway message? Physician, heal thyself.
