By Pnina Werbner
In my earlier essay posted on the SSRC website,
I spoke of the “tragic predicament of a diaspora caught between deeply
felt loyalties, at an historical moment not of its own making. Most
British Muslims in the diaspora,” I commented, “witnessed the collapse
of the World Trade Center’s twin towers on television, sitting in their
living rooms, with the same helpless sense of horror as Western
spectators. As it emerged that an obscure Islamist, Osama Bin Laden, and
his Al-Qaeda clandestine global network, were probably responsible for
the devastation, it seemed that the clash of civilizations predicted by
Huntington between Islam and the West had finally materialized. At that
moment diaspora Muslims in the West became symbolic victims of a global
mythology, caught in a spiral of alienation and ambivalent
identifications that no local protestations of innocence could counter.”
The events of September 11 were particularly tragic for the Pakistani
diaspora of Britain because in the decade since the Rushdie affair and
the Gulf War, the majority had begun to move on, away from religious
radicalism to more positive activism for multicultural rights. Young
British Pakistanis were increasingly taking their full place in society.
With the first generation of immigrants at the point of retirement, the
days of strangerhood seemed to be over for many. But the radical
estrangement that September 11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
inaugurated challenged this path of integration for the next decade, at
least in the perception of the majority society.
The Vulnerability of Diaspora
The events following September 11 highlighted the vulnerability of
the Pakistani diaspora in Britain, and Muslim diaspora communities
worldwide, to the impact of critical historical events. This
vulnerability underlines the futility of any attempt to define diasporas
simply in terms of their origins (slavery, genocide, indentured labor,
and so forth) or by type (“victim,” “trade,” “cultural,” “labor,”
“imperial”). Paradoxical as this may sound given the stress on specific origins, such typologizing lacks a theory of history.
Viewed historically, it is evident that, whatever their origins, the
experiences of different diasporas frequently converge. In particular,
labor and trade diasporas often become targets of majority violence,
especially if they achieve economic success, as Armenians and Jews did
in some historical periods. Such middleman minorities are particularly
vulnerable, as shown by the cases of Indian and Chinese
labor-cum-trading diasporas in places as far apart as Sri Lanka, Fiji,
Uganda, and Indonesia. Diasporas, whatever their origin, appear to be
susceptible to being constructed as dangerous outsiders with loyalties
beyond the nation-state.
In trying to impose order on an apparently out-of-control diasporic
proliferation, typologies shift attention from a critical characteristic
of diasporas, namely, their past or future political vulnerability. The
Jewish and Armenian diasporas have known periods of immense prosperity
and creativity, but by the same token, they have suffered long periods
of intense misery, deprivation, and exclusion, of pogroms and genocides.
The majority of Pakistanis who migrated to Britain, like other Muslim
migrants to Europe and the United States, came as economic labor
migrants. The decade since 9/11 has seen these migrants repeatedly
become targets of xenophobic fears and often sheer hatred, expressed by
fellow countrymen and even political elites, because of their religion.
Born and bred in the diaspora, they have nevertheless often felt like
rejected outsiders and second-class citizens.
Diaspora in History: From the Arab Spring to a Birmingham Peace Rally
But there is also a flip side to this historical fate of diasporas.
If September 11 highlighted an apparent moral chasm between Muslims and
so-called Westerners, the Arab Spring has underlined their commonalities
and shared humanity. The aspirations of Egyptians, Tunisians, Libyans,
Yemenis, Syrians, Bahrainis, and other communities throughout the Middle
East for democracy and social justice and an end to authoritarian
regimes and corruption has stunned the world, overturning prior
Islamophobic canards. Most remarkable have been the nonviolent and
egalitarian nature of the protest movements and their
inclusiveness—intellectuals and peasants, students and workers, men and
women, secular and religious—as well as the fact that they have been
dominated by young people, with a popular, grassroots leadership,
communicating via social media.
The impact of Tahrir Square’s courageous stance in demand of
cosmopolitan social justice has been global, reaching from Spain to
Botswana and Israel, where I personally witnessed its echoes. It was
sad, therefore, to arrive back in Britain to violent and destructive
urban riots in August 2011. Some years previously, there had been riots
in British northern cities, in Oldham and Bradford, in which Pakistanis
defending themselves against the perceived threat of the British
National Party clashed with police, with many injuries and serious
damage to property. Rioters were handed down extremely harsh prison
sentences and the diaspora was accused of deliberate “self-segregation.”
Although the 2011 riots were not race riots, the murder of three young
Pakistanis in Birmingham, run over by local looters while defending
their businesses, threatened to erupt into a clash between ethnic groups
in the city.
To avert any violent retaliation and further deaths, Tariq Jahan, the
father of one of the young victims, a Pakistani born in Britain, the
son of immigrants, and now a man in his fifties, appealed in the midst
of his grief for calm, as crowds of young Asians gathered outside his
house. Speaking in a dignified, sometimes faltering voice, he pleaded
with them not to avenge his son’s death. His inspiration led to a peace
rally, organized the following day, “One City, One Voice for Peace,”
which gathered together all the different communities of Birmingham:
Asians, black and white, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, and Christians.
Addressing the large crowd, Mr. Jahan articulated a vision of living
together in peace in the diaspora. He spoke humbly: “What I can ask for
is, forget about me, I am nobody, but try to remember the three men who
sacrificed their lives for the community.” He stressed both his faith
and the inclusivity of his city: “It’s the month of Ramadan. As a
Muslim, I believe this is a very auspicious month for Muslims. We
believe that the gates of heaven are open and the gates of hell are shut
this month. So that gives me the strength to believe that the three
boys didn’t die in vain. They died for this community.” He told the
crowd he was overwhelmed by the response to his call for peace: “From
the local community, and nationally, throughout the country, across the
world, I’ve had letters, phone calls, and I don’t know how to respond. I
. . . I’m one of you, the people, nobody special, nobody important.” He
thanked young people for staying calm and the police and media for
their consideration.
This was a far cry from Tahrir Square, but the stress on values of
peace, and the capacity to mobilize the citizens of the city
irrespective of race and religion, had made Mr. Jahan a local, national,
and even international hero. His vision of a cosmopolitan “community”
living together in peace proves that the story of diaspora is never
finished. Diasporas are continually negotiating the parameters of their
citizenship and continuously producing new, talented voices. Recent
outstanding examples in the UK Pakistani diaspora are the postcolonial
novelists Kamila Shamsie and Nadeem Aslam, who write with the
sensitivity, depth, and grace of acute yet humane observers of their own
torn society, while making a valuable contribution to English world
literature. They are not alone. September 11, it seems, has not been
able to crush people’s will to seek ways of living in amity across
religious and ethnic divisions.
Conclusion
After September 11, 2001, despite protestations from Muslim and
Islamic scholars, the vision of a clash of civilizations between a
liberal, tolerant, “open” West and a violent, illiberal, intolerant
Islamic world was increasingly adopted by politicians and much of the
Western and Islamic media. Their view was of a Manichean world order,
sometimes phrased in religious terms as a battle between good and evil.
The image of unmitigated intolerance and violence they projected
refracted onto Muslim diasporas of immigrant-settlers in Europe and
America. It seemed to be proven by young Western-born Muslims’ suicide
bombings in Madrid and London and by other seditious plots uncovered
during the following decade.
The resulting xenophobic and racialized stigmatizing of Muslim
diasporas in Europe and America highlighted, I have argued here, the
vulnerability of diasporas to historical events beyond their control.
Against simplistic typologizing of diasporas by genesis and origin, it
seems more accurate to argue that diasporas are made and remade
historically: they must continuously negotiate their citizenship rights
and full membership in their adopted nations.
The Arab Spring, epitomized symbolically by Cairo’s Liberation
Square, was an unanticipated, visionary development that overturned all
prior stereotypes of the Muslim world. “They” became one of “us.” The
West and the rest were no longer, it seemed, locked in cosmic battle,
but were members of a single cosmopolitan world. The events are still
recent and their implications yet to be fully played out for Muslim
diasporas worldwide. Old racist stereotypes die hard. Many on both sides
have a stake in perpetuating entrenched hatreds and fears. But whether
religious or secular, Tahrir Square proved that ordinary Muslims both at
home and in the diaspora share the same values of social justice,
transparency, humanity, and peace that animate the rest of us ordinary
folk; these can no longer be said to be the prerogative of a superior
West.
Source:http://essays.ssrc.org/10yearsafter911/diaspora-in-history-reflections-on-911-in-the-aftermath-of-the-arab-spring-and-uk-riots-2011/
Comments