{"id":1618,"date":"2014-10-03T21:05:24","date_gmt":"2014-10-03T11:05:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.khanfactor.com\/blog\/?p=1618"},"modified":"2014-10-03T21:05:24","modified_gmt":"2014-10-03T11:05:24","slug":"instant-islamists-instant-threats-and-instant-experts-were-caught-in-a-sudden-terror-panic-antony-loewenstein","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.khanfactor.com\/blog\/?p=1618","title":{"rendered":"Instant Islamists, instant threats, and instant experts. We’re caught in a sudden terror panic – Antony Loewenstein"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nav K. Samir converted to Islam two years ago. He\u2019s a young Sydney-based writer from an Indian background who recently featured in the successful new\u00a0Facebook<\/a>\u00a0campaign, Australian Muslim Faces. Born into a Hindu family, Samir was attracted to the spiritual and intellectual life of Islam. At the age of 23, after six years of considering the switch, he became Muslim.<\/p>\n

I met him earlier this year at the Lebanese Muslim association in Sydney and spoke with him recently about why he thinks a small number of young Muslims are attracted by the Isis message.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lack of context, lack of spirituality and understanding, combined with impatience. Many Isis fighters are newly converted, newly pious … these men have grown a beard in three months and they don\u2019t give Islam time to be understood.\u201d<\/p>\n

He is tired of having to defend his religion against bigots who take these instant Islamists to be the authentic representation of Islam.<\/p>\n

\u201cKeyboard warriors often ask: \u201cWhere is the universal Muslim condemnation of terror acts?\u201d We\u2019re distancing ourselves, so why do you keep asking? People just aren\u2019t listening.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been the same narrative of apology for decades and we\u2019re sick of it. It\u2019s like the probation the media is trying to grant me. I want to stand back, it\u2019s got nothing to do with me and it\u2019s nothing to do with Islam. I don\u2019t need to come out and prove my innocence.\u201d<\/p>\n

The teenage converts \u2013 both male and female \u2013 who form much of Isis\u2019 recruiting base in the West, are young and inexperienced. As a former Taliban \u201crecruiter\u201d\u00a0remarked<\/a>\u00a0in early September, they targeted:<\/p>\n

People who didn\u2019t know the religion as much. People who were converts, because converts would probably have problems with their parents at home, so they were more likely to stay in our company.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Instant Islamists. And now we are suddenly deluged with instant experts on terrorism, too. Politicians and journalists compete for the snappiest sound bite on Islam, Isis and fundamentalism, mostly with little understanding of the issues.<\/p>\n

We get fiery sermons from terrorism alarmists, lurid descriptions ofapocalyptic death cults<\/a>, pontificating\u00a0war advocates<\/a>\u00a0who tell us that this new conflict against Isis will not be Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya, and bigotry dressed up as insight.<\/p>\n

This instant expertise about Islam is mirrored by reporters who learned little from every past\u00a0terrorism hysteria<\/a>, and simply repeat the same, old tired tropes to the same, skeptical audience.<\/p>\n

Then there are the \u201cinstant Muslims\u201d \u2013 like the young, white reporter from The Daily Telegraph who\u00a0dressed up<\/a>\u00a0in a niqab \u201cin two different parts of Sydney to see how people would react\u201d. Unsurprisingly, she felt alien and uncomfortable.<\/p>\n

Mimicking Muslims is fair game. Portraying them as odd, un-Australian and weird is standard operating procedure for vast swathes of the mainstream media.<\/p>\n

When actual Muslims do appear and question Western policy in the Middle East, like they did on last week\u2019s Q&A, The Australian\u00a0calls it<\/a>\u201ccrass anti-Western propaganda\u201d.<\/p>\n

The current anti-terror campaign has to be one of the most\u00a0hysterical<\/a>demonisation<\/a>\u00a0campaigns of modern times, against a threat that virtually nobody had heard of a few months ago.<\/p>\n

Now a new \u201cthreat\u201d has appeared out of\u00a0thin air<\/a>: The Khorasan Group, a hardened cell of Syrian terrorists \u201ctoo radical for al-Qaida\u201d that appears to be completely fictional.<\/p>\n

Everything has happened so quickly, as if by command. But there are some things about our newest war at home and abroad that aren\u2019t instant: the constant downplaying of the role played by US allies\u00a0Saudi Arabia<\/a>\u00a0and Qatar in fuelling and funding Isis; the amnesia surrounding the radicalisation in US detention of Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi \u2013 once, reportedly, a calm individual; and the emergence of Isis from the ashes of the disastrous Iraq war, a point\u00a0well made<\/a>\u00a0by independent Australian MP Andrew Wilkie.<\/p>\n

The ignorance of Australia\u2019s elites is also deeply entrenched. A friend who works at one of Australia\u2019s leading Muslim groups tells me that he\u2019s contacted daily by journalists who demand to know what his organisation is doing to reduce the threat of terrorism \u2013 as if a Sydney-based Muslim is somehow responsible for Isis beheadings or mass rape.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not difficult to show the diversity of the Muslim faith; take a look at Conor Ashleigh\u2019s wonderful\u00a0photography<\/a>\u00a0of a community in Newcastle. And it\u2019s possible to treat radicalisation with the seriousness and context it demands, as The Saturday Paper\u2019s Martin McKenzie-Murray did last week, in a\u00a0forensic analysis<\/a>\u00a0of the killing of Abdul Numan Haider.<\/p>\n

The pressure on the Australian Muslim community is immense, a feeling of being outsiders, exacerbated by a message that they\u2019re different and under suspicion. Many Muslim women in particular feel\u00a0disempowered<\/a>and not trusted by the wider, white majority.\u00a0Islamophobia<\/a>\u00a0is now unofficial government policy and some media\u2019s central worldview.<\/p>\n

Muslims have ample reason to be sceptical towards government and intelligence services; real journalists would investigate why. Sadly, most in the media are failing in their basic duty to question.<\/p>\n

\u201cIslam isn\u2019t a sprint, it\u2019s a marathon,\u201d Samir says. His religion, just like Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and others, is complex, contradictory and open to various interpretations \u2013 but figuring that out can\u2019t be done in an instant.<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nav K. Samir converted to Islam two years ago. He\u2019s a young Sydney-based writer from an Indian background who recently featured in the successful new\u00a0Facebook\u00a0campaign, Australian Muslim Faces. Born into a Hindu family, Samir was attracted to the spiritual and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_s2mail":"yes","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[31,34],"tags":[394,368],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"views":2445,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2ttSq-q6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.khanfactor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1618"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.khanfactor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.khanfactor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.khanfactor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.khanfactor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1618"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.khanfactor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1619,"href":"https:\/\/www.khanfactor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1618\/revisions\/1619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.khanfactor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.khanfactor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.khanfactor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}