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LOS ANGELES: Interfaith group hopes to combat 'Islamophobia'
Muslim and Christian speakers view torture as a moral issue
Beasley joined about 100 participants at St. John's ProCathedral on October 25 for "The Intersection of Islamophobia and Torture," an event sponsored by the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles and Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace (ICUJP).
"The hatred comes from ignorance," said Beasely. "Without knowledge of another person it's much easier to hate. I came here to see how together we can stop it in Los Angeles."
"Islamophobia" was coined to describe misunderstandings about Islam, and also the fear, mistrust and anger directed at members of the Muslim community in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, according to the Rev. Dr. Gwynne Guibord, program officer for ecumenical and interreligious concerns for the Los Angeles diocese, who helped organize the event.
That fear and mistrust rendered torture as acceptable at such places as the Abu Ghraib prison camp in Iraq where incidents of physical, psychological and sexual torture were widely publicized in 2004, according to Dr. Malek Moazzam-Doulat, who teaches at Occidental College in Los Angeles.
Moazzam-Doulat cited similar incidents at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, where prisoners were subjected to waterboarding and other methods of torture by the Central Intelligence Agency.
He recalled photographs of Abu Ghraib prisoners wearing dog leashes. He explained such incidents as "systematic violence combined with sexual humiliation, forced simulated sexual acts and rape, both homosexual and heterosexual … aimed at Muslims as the intersection of Islamophobia and torture."
Such a climate existed because of depictions of Muslims as both a superhuman enemy and sub-human, he added.
Both government and media officials depicted Muslims, he said, as "people who will kill you; you can't negotiate with them through normal means, they know how to exploit our rights and freedoms … they are ready to die to kill us, their desire to die is aimed at virgins in paradise, they're irrational."
The net effect of such tactics, he continued, meant that "international law, international human rights didn't apply" and individuals were detained without due process or being charged with a crime. Moazzam-Doulat compared it to the treatment of Japanese Americans who were imprisoned in concentration camps during World War II and of African American slaves, who were also stereotyped as "biologically inferior, sexually irrational."
Consequently, while Muslims were characterized as representing "a new horror," depicting others in this way "is really quite old," said Moazzam-Doulat. "The tactics were justified by the nature of the enemy itself."
Former President George W. Bush fueled anti-Muslim sentiment by terming the war in Afghanistan a "war on terror," he said, while administration officials like Donald Rumsfeld reprised ages-old Christian-Islamic conflict by attaching biblical quotes to his updates of the war.
Dr. Maher Hathout, senior advisor to the Muslim Public Affairs Council, also told the gathering that there is a danger of complacency since the election of President Barack Obama.
"There is a sneaky feeling that the job is almost done, the cruel guys are gone, the nice guys are in and things will improve. But, I'm sorry to say it has not. The unfinished business of the issue of torture is still here."
Hathout told the gathering that Americans face a choice: "Either you want democracy or … you want something that is incompatible with democracy."
He challenged the presumption that experts—legal or otherwise—can determine degrees of "aggressive interrogation," versus torture or that torture is an effective means of gathering information.
He described how Muslims were further subjected to victimization when challenged by government officials or media representatives to "prove that you are against terrorism … that you do not condone violence. No matter what you do, it is not enough."
Torture is "a major crime, committed by the government of a democracy, which means it is committed by all of us, and a process of accountability and a process of punishment has not been instituted," added Hathout.
"The issue is justice is not served and it is our duty to cry the cries of the victims and to shed the tears of the victims, to be for them in a compassionate and religious way because compassion in religion means you feel the other."
Susan Stouffer, director of ICUJP's peace center, said torture seems "so obviously morally wrong that it makes me wonder why we need to even have an event like today. But wthen you read survey results that over half of the people in Christian pews think torture is acceptable, you know you need to be doing something more obviously about it.
The Rev. Dr. Gwynne Guibord of the Los Angeles diocese said that's what Sunday's event was all about. She introduced the Standing Together curriculum, written by the Christian-Muslim Consultative Group, to promote learning, dialogue and advocacy among congregations of both Christians and Muslims.
Both faiths, "speak to – in different ways – caring about neighbor," Guibord said. "So how can any of us with any religious integrity say that we that we would even be comfortable with having harm come another's way?"
Guibord added that Sunday's event was about putting a human face on the experience of those who had been detained. "We must bear witness to the fact that people have been arrested with little or no evidence of their wrongdoing and held for lengthy periods of time without due process.
"It has not been us at our best really, the United States at our best. It continues to be of grave concern that people who are concerned aren't out in the streets decrying this violence," she said. "If we can name it, and see what we can do as a collective community toward stopping it, we would be the better for it."
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