Torture, Abuse, and the Judicial Abyss: The Treatment of Terrorist Suspects in the U.S.

     A post on the blog TruthDig, written by Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and war correspondent Christ Hedges, expresses outrage over the reality whereby Muslim terrorist suspects "caught up in Article III Courts are denied the opportunity to confront their accusers and to have their religious and political associations protected, and they rarely find a judge courageous enough to protect their rights." Per Hedges, "These violations of fundamental civil liberties will not, in the end, be reserved exclusively for Muslims once the corporate state feels under siege. What is happening to them will happen to the rest of us."
     Hedges goes on to criticize the abhorrent treatment of Muslims in U.S. Federal prisons, which he likens to torture. He quotes Jeanne Theoharis, a professor of political science at Brooklyn College, who asserts, quite unambiguously, "torture is legal in the United States in the form of years of solitary confinement and the use of special administrative measures."
     Hedges also quotes Craig Haney, a psychologist at the University of California at Santa Cruz who has studied the effects of solitary confinement, who asserts that prolonged isolation eventually includes  "appetite and sleep disturbances, anxiety, panic, rage, loss of control, paranoia, hallucinations and self-mutilations" as well as "cognitive dysfunction ... hopelessness, a sense of emotional breakdown ... and suicidal ideation and behavior." Haney found that "many of the negative effects of solitary confinement are analogous to the acute reactions suffered by torture and trauma victims."     
     As per the title of his post, Hedges takes care to highlight the slippery slope that will soon blur the lines between the treatment of terrorism suspects and suspects more generally, but also points out the depressingly well-known fact (to those who pay attention) that the 25,000 prisoners in Federal prisons "are disproportionately Muslims and people of color."
         The more things change, as the saying goes, the more they stay the same.

Autonomy and the Hijab

     If I keep making posts of this nature - defending the idea that the wearing of the hijab or burqa can be a function of choice and independence - it's only because I continue to encounter arguments to the contrary, most commonly from within the feminist community.
     Lending credence to my stance, Judith Sunderland, writing for Women's E-News, both defends the right to the veil, and points out how attempts to force Muslim women to "uncover" are in effect the same as the legal mandates in some Muslim countries that the hijab or burqa be worn at all times.   
     My favorite quote:

     "Pro-ban arguments relating to women's rights have the greatest resonance. Yet denying women the right to cover themselves is as wrong as forcing them to do so. Muslim women, like all women, should have the right to dress as they choose and to make decisions about their lives and how to express their faith, identity and moral values. And they should not be forced to choose between their beliefs and their chosen profession.
     "Generalizations about women's oppression do a disservice to one of the basic tenets of gender equality: the right to self-determination and autonomy, the right a woman has to make decisions about her life and her body without interference from the state or others."

Some useful perspectives on the current unrest

     Amidst the chaos of misunderstanding surrounding the riots in the Middle East, I feel compelled to sieze on every refreshing kernel I come across.
     Fareed Zakaria, an author for CNN's Global Public Squares blog, urges readers not to allow the inevitably exacting imagery of the riots to distort their sense of scale. ". . . .keep in mind that these crowds number in the hundreds - perhaps thousands - in countries with tens of millions of people," he says. "They make for vivid images, but they do not tell the whole story."
     He goes on to make an interesting argument on a related point: "In many of these countries - particularly those that have toppled dictatorships - the most important reality is not of bad government but of weak government. In Libya, Yemen and even Egypt, the state has lost its ability to control its public. In a sense this might be progress. Egypt didn't see protests like this before because Hosni Mubarak's regime would arrest or even shoot protesters. Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy is an elected politician, and he is trying to pander, appease, direct and guide people. I wish he were bolder and fought the extremist elements in his society head-on. But let's face it, he's behaving like an elected politician."
     Elsewhere, in an Op-Ed for the New York Times, author Doug Saunders addresses Islamophobia in the U.S., and in particular the assertion that Muslims can't be trusted and pose a threat to national security. He compares this prejudice with a belief popularly held against Catholics in the early half of the 20th Century, one so ingrained that "as late as 1950, 240,000 Americans bought copies of 'American Freedom and Catholic Power,' a New York Times best seller. Its author, Paul Blanshard, a former diplomat and editor at The Nation, made the case that Catholicism was an ideology of conquest, and that its traditions constituted a form of 'medieval authoritarianism that has no rightful place in the democratic American environment.'"
      Seeking to contextualize this prejudice:
   
      "Then, as now, there seemed to be evidence supporting the charge. Majority-Catholic countries like Spain, Italy, Portugal and Austria, had fallen into fascism or extremism. Crime and educational failure were rife among the children of Catholic immigrants. In the years after World War I, Catholic radicals carried out a deadly wave of terrorist attacks in the United States.

       These days, the same dark accusations are being leveled at American Muslims, many of whom are recent immigrants. And many otherwise reasonable Americans have greeted Muslims with fear and suspicion — in part because they came at a bad time. Their emigration to the United States, like that of many Catholics before them, has coincided with turmoil in their native countries and violence from a few extremists in their midst."     

      While Catholics can hardly be argued to be safe from prejudice in all corners of America, a nationally distributed hatred and mistrust of the community seems utterly bizarre, and the fact that it strikes us as such bodes well, I believe, for the future. It implies that future generations might respond with equal surprise to sweeping indictments against the Muslim community, at home and abroad.       

In solidarity with the Muslims of the world

     I'm emerging from my blogging sabbatical to express my unwavering solidarity with Muslims across the world - an overwhelming preponderance of Muslims - who have condemned the violent protests unfolding in the Middle East.
     Nothing really fancy to add.

Retiring my fandom of Mona Eltahawy

    Parting ways with your heroes is never an easy task, but after the publication of Mona Eltahawy's article "Why Do They Hate Us?" in the May/June 2012 issue of Foreign Policy, such a parting feels regrettably in order.

    Anyone who's read my blog history is well aware of my former fanboy-like admiration for the renowned journalist and speaker, and I will continue to harbor the utmost respect for her ability to carry forward in spite of atrocities perpetrated on her in Egypt last year. However, both my feminism and my staunch opposition to Islamophobia are now at odds with several assertions that her article places on the record. 

    First, the article claims, immediately following its title, that, "The real war on women is in the Middle East." While Mona later acknowledges (grudgingly) that women in Western countries also suffer from oppression, the use of "real" in connection with Middle Eastern misogyny by its very nature deprives of legitimacy the struggles of women everywhere else in the world. Given the massive legislative assault, in the U.S. alone, on birth control, abortion access, and the legal recourse available to sexual assault survivors, the statement is grossly insensitive. 

    Second, while the article appears to attack not Islam but the Middle East's political, cultural, and socioeconomic structures, the distinction is not nearly clear enough for the article to avoid reinforcing Islamophobic beliefs. 

     In the second paragraph, for instance, she refers to "a trifecta of sex, death, and religion, a bulldozer that crushes denial and defensiveness to get at the pulsating heart of misogyny in the Middle East. [Emphasis added.]" Later, when speaking of child marriage, she discusses the disputed claim that the Prophet Muhammed married his second wife, Aisha, when she was a child. Neither statement is countered in any capacity in the balance of the article, which creates the impression that Islam itself partly to blame for the situation. Considering that Mona identified emphatically as a Muslim at the 2011 presentation that introduced me to her, and considering that Islam, as a first order of business at the time of its inception, banned female infanticide, granted women the right to divorce, and made measures to protect women and girls from sexual harassment and assault, this is both lamentable and ironic.        

    Third, her emphatic reinforcement of the Muslim world as the misogyny-capital of the planet are all too reminiscent of the cries to liberate Muslim women that were used to legitimize the invasions of of Afghanistan and Iraq. While it was likely not her intention to do so, Mona appears to leave just such a door open when, at the conclusion of the article, she calls for her readers to, "amplify the voices of the region and poke the hatred in its eye."

    Finally, the series of photographs depicting a plainly naked woman in a veil scattered throughout the article seem an odd aesthetic choice given the subject matter. Their purpose is (I'm guessing) to create an atmosphere of feminine vulnerability and exploitation, and yet they themselves are exploitive, as is any attempt by the media to capitalize on the female form for purposes of grabbing attention. How much creative control did Mona actually have over this? I can't be certain, but it's a testament to my shaken trust that I don't feel comfortable giving her the benefit of the doubt. 

    The statistics presented in the article are indeed compelling, and Mona is right to attest that any feminist should be horrified by the status of women in the Middle East. Statements such as these very much need to be made. However, the article's Islamophobic nature, its ironic objectification of women, and its trivialization of the victims of the (Unreal?) war on women deprive its author of at least one fan.

    There were far, far better ways to approach this. 

Working with an editor!

     Big news! I've taken the plunge and submitted my book to a professional editor, who as we speak is engaged in the long-overdue task of tearing the text into a hundred pieces, such that something Phoenix-like might emerge from the ashes.
     For as long as authors have put pen to paper, the human ego has made a fine dance of the feedback process. I, for one, have always prided myself on my receptivity to constructive criticism, but when it comes to entire scenes and chapters being slashed, I start having difficulty keeping my pulse down.
     Tough.
     Anyone who writes without readers in mind, but still expects his or her work to be read, is engaging in one of the world's most meaningless exercises, and chances are, the passages that authors find most emotionally resonant in their own work are those with which they have a personal relationship - a relationship in which the reader plays no part. As such, the slashing pen of an editor is a crucial investment, and well though I might mourn that which ends up on the cutting room floor, what remains, and what I write thereafter, will have have total devotion and fidelity to the reader. A trade-up, to be sure.
     On a closely-related note, I have, of my own volition, thrown out the first chapter of the book and written something new. It poses a much more plausible context for the protagonists to meet, one that doesn't require Abida, the female lead, to place herself in any perilous situations, and that allows for some of the novel's central themes to arise through situation, rather than forced dialogue. Chapters 1-6, clickable to the right, now reflect this change.
     Faulkner, a major inspiration for my writing of the novel, famously remarked, "In writing, you must kill your darlings."
     Or, as a fellow blogger said, adopting an approach that is less murderer, more drill-sergeant, "Perhaps ‘just mess your darlings up a bit until they fall into line and serve the story properly."
     I'll keep everyone posted as my darlings either bite the dust or learn to behave!

Excerpt from Companions of the Garden, Chapter 24

      Near the conclusion of the novel:


        He wrestled, at the last, for a moment of quiet.
Remembering the Windsor Ruins.  The pillars in the woods, standing tall, rain-soaked.  The droplets pattering on the leaves and the needles and the limbs.  The wet grass soaking with unapologetic deliberation through the knees of his blue jeans.
  He knew she’d never ask him what he prayed for.  It was his prayer, his prostration, his private communion with whatever God had taken shape for him.  To intrude on such matters was not in her nature, nor was it his nature to volunteer details without first being asked.
That left him alone with it all, unable to share with anyone the worldless, shapeless character of his supplication. 
       How he’d prayed for peace without knowing what it meant for him.  How in the end he asked only for the quiet of the ruins to penetrate some later state of chaos, and exist for a moment in perfect supremacy, numbing out the noise and the endless anarchy of everything he felt and loved and loathed.
If she’d asked him, he’d have fumbled without success for a means of description, both of the subject of his prayer and the way in which it seemed a lost cause even as it unfolded, and maybe, just maybe, she’d have been able to shed light on the affair – what it was about his mindset that made even the intervention of God seem insufficient to prevent his death. 
       But Abida wouldn’t ask, so Dig couldn’t fumble, and he remained alone with the certainty of doubt.  
       The memory of something sacrosanct and futile.  
       The mud on his knees as proof of his appeal.