An Interview with Anti-Racist Feminist Sunera Thobani
Mapping the Questions, Politics and Location of Resistance
Sunera Thobani teaches at the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at the University of British Columbia. She is also past president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC), Canada's largest feminist organization. The first woman of color to serve in this position, she made anti-imperialism and anti-racism central to the women's movement. Her book ‘Exalted Subjects’ places new emphasis on the question of indigenism, race and citizenship within the context of Canada, and makes it clear that modern nation-states are fundamentally based on violence and relations of power. Her article ‘White Wars’ in the journal Feminist Theory is a critique of Western modes of feminism that work within the structure of white supremacy. Dr. Thobani is very clear that wars inflicted on Muslims and Islam cannot be and should not be justified in the name of liberation and democracy (for women).
Dr. Thobani traveled to West Bank and Gaza a few months ago. She came to University of California at Berkeley to speak against the Zionist occupation of Palestine, and to participate in the conference “Decolonizing the University” that took place in February 26-27. It was an absolute honor to meet with Sunera Thobani during this time and to discuss more about her work as an activist-scholar. We thank her for supporting the work of Chintaa.
Tanzeen Doha: I was just reading your book. I will start with that. But I think it’s because it’s related to probably your speech, because you just went to Gaza…in September?
Sunera Thobani: I was in the West Bank in July, and then Gaza in September.
TD: I will start with a quote that I found in pg. 56 of your book. "Violence in this context was more than the individual caprice of unscrupulous settlers, it was the necessary condition for the preservation of the colonial order." So, I want to ask you because this is the Canadian context… Is there a similar relationship when it comes to Gaza? Your observations on Gaza and the violence that Palestinians are subjected to in order to maintain the Zionist state of Israel.
ST: You know one way in which the violence in Gaza gets constructed in the West is that it’s a humanitarian crisis, that the Israeli blockade has led to a humanitarian crisis, and therefore they need more aid. That’s how the violence in Gaza, the suffering in Gaza gets constructed in that kind of way. You know all of the Palestinian activists I met in Gaza all said to me that it’s not a humanitarian crisis. This is the political, the logical outcome of the occupation. It is not a humanitarian crisis. To construct it as a humanitarian crisis is to depoliticize it. And when I look at Canada today you have a similar construction about aboriginal reservations, about how aboriginals are treated. That they don’t have enough services. They need help, they need aid. And you know it gets constructed in the same kind of way. And of course the Canadian nation state even today continues to be reproduced through the ongoing dispossession of aboriginal peoples, and violence is at the heart of it. Violence has been made into law. And where I see the similarities between Canada and Gaza, the situation in Palestine, is that both are settler colonies, both are settler societies. You know, Canada is a settler society that remains deeply colonial and yet it’s trying to transform itself into a liberal democracy, which it is for a certain portion of its population, for Canadians, right, but not for aboriginals. And so, you know there are so many similarities between the Canadian situation and what’s happening in Gaza because you know basically they are both settler societies… both based on the dispossession and occupation of indigenous people’s lives. So, you know I see both orders really as ultimately resting on violence.
TD: What is the role of the intellectual within the context of global imperialism? What kinds of risks do you have to take in order to do that? And, what are the consequences of doing that?
ST: Well, the risks have increased tremendously now with the “war on terror”. There is a battle going on. You know, certainly in the media and the public sphere… and university campuses it is very intense, and especially around pro-Palestinian politics. So, you know the risks have increased tremendously, but I feel the necessity to speak out and to break through this kind of ideological construct that is the frontline of the “war on terror”. There is also the kind of ideological battlefield on which these ideas have to be contested and they have to really be confronted. So I think it’s become even more urgent for intellectuals to speak out. But not just speak out, you know, we have the cases where intellectuals are kind of horrified with what the Bush administration did, and so in principle they are opposed to the war, but they don’t actually want to engage with the ideas of the society… They don’t want to engage with the movements that have emerged to defend those societies. So I think that intellectuals certainly need to speak out in opposition to US imperialism, to Canada’s role in the “war on terror”. Canada’s been a staunch partner of the U.S right from the launch of the “war on terror”. Canada is one of the major partners in Afghanistan. So certainly there is a need to confront and contest the imperialist ideology. But I think there is also responsibility on intellectuals to engage with those who are opposing U.S imperialism through out the Middle East and Central Asia. And you know there’s been such a demonization of Muslims, of Islam that has made any kind of intelligent discussion impossible. You get attacked, you get called an apologist for terrorism.
So I think it’s the role of the intellectuals urgently needed now. It’s not only to speak out against this imperialist war, but also to engage with… Where is the resistance coming from to U.S Empire? And, on what basis are they articulating that resistance? There is a lot to be learned from them. And it’s just easy to just demonize it. I guess my concern is that, intellectuals speak out but what are they speaking out for, and who are they engaging with in doing that. Because with the fiasco of the Bush administration, with the sheer incompetence, it is in a way also become fashionable for intellectuals to distance themselves- Oh that was the Bush craziness, so of course that was stupid. Iraq was the unjust war. But they continue to defend Afghanistan [war]. They still see it as a necessary, just war. And in Canada it’s very, very strong, this idea. Canadians are so invested in this idea that they are saving Afghan women, that they are sending little afghan girls to school. There is the only justification, that they have in Canada, is sending little Afghan girls to school- we are saving Afghan women. So, in a way, you know intellectuals need to speak out, need to confront their own states in the western world, but also they need to engage with- what are these forms of resistance? There is no dialogue, there is no understanding. It’s just a one way kind of monologue that we see in the media. There is no engagement with people who are actually resisting. They have been demonized so thoroughly. I think it’s the role of the intellectuals living in the West today to engage them, to break through this demonization. So I think it’s a more complicated process than just speaking out.
TD: The very act of speaking out is basically a State sanctioned form of resistance even if you call “speaking” a form of resistance. Whether Western trained intellectuals are even capable of having any kind of discourse that is beyond the liberal discourse [is debatable], because the structures of that discourse has inherent, implicit hierarchy. So every time someone who is resisting, or coming from an indigenous perspective, will that even be within the discourse? And a lot of feminists have participated in that particular discourse, which automatically by participation you become sort of the second class voice within that discourse. How can intellectuals break free? Is it just speaking? What kind of engagement can happen to bring up this notion of indigenism? And, so what can we do other than having an engagement? And the whole notion of dialogue, which has actually been one of the main things the Obama administration, post-Bush, is talking about. He gave a speech in Cairo. Dialogue itself… As soon as you sit down you make a concession. How can the intellectuals deal with that paradox, that contradiction?
ST: I think you are absolutely right. Because once you engage… I mean that’s why Hamas is rejecting to recognize Israel. Once they do that they are already in an inferior position. Once they recognize they lose half the battle. And this is where I think it is really important not to equalize. Dialogue is between equal partners. And that’s where the biggest mistake happens. Israeli and Palestinians are not equal partners- one is the oppressor and one is the oppressed. Same thing, you know Obama going to Cairo. I mean what are you talking about; dialogue is impossible between unequal partners. So you know, first of all is to recognize power which has to be central. And you know, any kind of exchange that takes place has to be with a complete recognition of this unequal relation of power. I’ll take it back to the question of intellectuals. Before they can have this dialogue, or engage in any kind of discussion, they have to deconstruct their own position, they have to look at themselves first, they have to look at their power that comes inherently with their categories, with their language, their whole construction of these conflicts. That needs to be the job of Western intellectuals. The way they do it is kind of equalize the two sides. There are no two sides. It’s much more complicated. So, first thing is to recognize the centrality of power and violence, to see their discourses completely invested in reproducing that violence, and in a way kind of cleanse themselves of that. I’ll give you a real concrete example. When I went to Gaza, I was in a delegation, and people were extremely critical of Hamas, and they came back, there were all kinds of discussion. And ‘how do we humanize Hamas’ was the discussion. And there is a part of me that just says: If you want to sit here and want to humanize Hamas, I have nothing in common with you. What I want to talk about is why you have dehumanized Muslims. That’s the conversation I want to have. It is what Fanon said. That the black man in a sense is the artifact of the white man. What has led you to your position, in your society, in your values, that you can dehumanize an entire group of people? That’s the conversation I want to have. Not how to humanize, Muslims or Islamists. It preserves the unequal relationship (binary).
In feminism it happens a lot as well. Feminists in the West approach Muslim women, especially, Muslim women who wear the hijab, the veiled Muslim woman—- I am free, I am liberated, you are oppressed, let me help you. That’s not a basis for dialogue. No exchange is possible. No meaningful exchange is possible. All that is possible is to continue to reproduce colonial relations. Colonialism was based very strongly on the dehumanization of the black man. Today we talk about racism, and people feel that racism is about rights and entitlement, civil rights, but in the modern world racism is about who is human and who is not. Black people in this country were considered 3/5th human. This is the basis on which racism, processes of racialization emerge- who is the human. This is the foundation of Western society’s self-construction and its relation with the other. And today it’s Muslims who have been so thoroughly dehumanized. The discussion have to start with: What is this society that feels the need to continue to dehumanize huge groups of people? That is the problem.
TD: I just go on to the next question which is about this article that you wrote- ‘White wars’- where you actually critique Western feminism and the “war on terror”. What inspired you to discuss Western feminism in relation to the “war on terror”? Why was that necessary?
ST: Because I live in a settler society, and I know historically that white women’s participation in the colonial project was central to making it successful. It was when white women started to come to Canada, their migration was organized by the State, it was supported, they were brought there to reproduce British and French societies in the colony. So, you know, and that then became the basis on which white feminism emerged in Canada. And the early feminists in Canada saw themselves as the founders of a great nation and a great race. That was their project. So feminism and you know even in the case of South Asia lots of work has been done to show how complicit western feminism has been with colonialism, with imperialism. That’s the history of feminism in the Western world. You can’t negate that. And what I was interested in, ok that was the case. But then there was a whole emergence of anti-racist feminism. Many of us struggled very hard to break through into mainstream feminist organizations, into Women’s Studies departments. And to bring a kind of anti-racist, anti-imperialist critique, and framing of feminist politics, and so I became interested because as soon as the 9/11 attacks happened, two things, one was the demonization of Muslims, and the second thing is the construction of Muslim women as hyper victims. And that became a way to, I think, mobilize feminists… So, I wanted to look at, ok so this is what’s clearly happening.
Feminist groups scrambling to save Afghan women all over the world, crying, putting money together. We were all subject to kind of the crass, patronizing response from Western women to what happened. So I really wanted to look at- ok, what has been the impact of this anti-racist critique, anti-imperialist critique that women like myself, many, many of us, I come very late in the picture… there are many women before me… indigenous feminists, black feminists, South Asian feminists- what has been the impact of that? How could it have been wiped out in one second, all of our work? So, I thought I want to look at what feminists are… actually, how are they theorizing what the war is about? What its courses are? What is their relationship to it? I wanted to identify what are the strategies they are using that makes it possible for them in this moment to completely erase the anti-racist third world feminist critique? I think that has been one of the victims of the war on terror as well, is that that kind of thinking has now been completely [shunned] with the kind of crass assertions of Western supremacy, Western civilization that has moved center stage.
I wanted to understand how Western feminists responding to it, and from different theoretical traditions… how are they responding to it? What are their foundational assumptions? How are they actually thinking about themselves in relation..? I was surprised when I started to study and write the paper, at the many shared assumptions between Western feminists who supported the war and those who opposed it. Their basic assumptions, their foundational construct of the self all came from the same place, structured by the same discourse, the same values. And the politics led them to different places, but I think there has been a fall with anti-imperialist and anti-racist feminists. That you know, we have made allies with white women. I myself, I was the president of a primarily white women’s organization. Women of color were minorities. I worked with white women. And yeah they were able to ally themselves with me, and the other women of color on some issues, on others we struggled. And of course, we know what the history is. As soon as women of color emerge as leaders, organizations collapse, white women leave. It’s a very similar politics in the UK, in Canada, in the U.S. So what I wanted to do was really look at where our anti-racist feminism had been wreaked… that had allowed this moment to happen. Not to make the same mistakes again. That was really to expose how much common ground these different feminist theoretical traditions actually [have] and that common ground is white supremacy. Its white supremacy, whether they are liberal feminists, postmodern, the white supremacy, the white entitlement remains unquestioned. And ultimately, for an anti-racist feminism we cannot make alliance with white women on that basis. And I wanted to look at the strategies, identify them. So that way, learn to recognize what is happening.
TD: You talked about your space within the feminist movement, and other women of color and their space within the feminist movement. And their responsibilities to question white supremacy. For example, your occupation in the Gender Studies and Women’s Studies program. Now, people are questioning, someone like Zizek for example, questioning multicultural utopias. Where even your inclusion in that is complicit with the liberal notion of multicultural utopia. So within that structure you have to function. How can that be challenged in a really meaningful way when in fact your participation in that department, in this movement actually in a way propagates this hierarchical, white supremacist system? So, how do you think about that? How do you engage with that? What do you do with that?
ST: I think you have to think about these things historically and concretely. Yeah, you can talk about multiculturalism, but I think it goes even further. What I’m really struggling with in my book is citizenship. For me the institution of citizenship has made people of color complicit in the genocide of aboriginal people, and in the on-going dispossession of aboriginal people. Citizenship policies in Canada, in the U.S as well were utterly racialized until the 1950s. In Canada we were defined as non-preferred races. So Canadians do not encourage our migration. They have specific laws to keep out Chinese, South Asians, black people, we know all of that. And people of color when they manage to come to Canada had to fight for their rights, and they did it through the paradigm of citizenship. They wanted equal rights with the settlers and colonizers. But in fighting for those equal rights they did not look at their relationship to aboriginal people. I know citizenship rights are extremely important and vital. But having access to these rights, we then reproduce the same relations of power with the aboriginal people. So, how do we conceive of these political projects which make citizenship not an end in itself? Because you know aboriginal people in Canada define citizenship as the final solution for them. It’s the extinction of aboriginal rights- Canadian citizenship. And yet people of color have been completely seduced into that relationship, which I understand completely being a migrant myself three times in my life I understand the importance of citizenship. We have to rethink it in a way. We are not fighting for inclusion; we are actually fighting for transformation of the very institution of citizenship. And, it’s a really deep political challenge. And I don’t think anybody’s done it yet.
And I will tell you something about multiculturalism in Canada. Multiculturalism in Canada is official State policy. At that time when multiculturalism became adopted the State was facing really strong organized anti-racist movements in Canada. And multiculturalism became a way to really de-radicalize those demands. Anti-racist politics is about politics. It is not about culture. Its not about- can I have samosas? Can my kid eat samosas in school? And the State would transform it into—can my kid eat samosa? Yes of course you can. Right? So, multiculturalism itself was a response from the State to anti-racist politics, and anti-racist organizing which was about transforming the political sphere, transforming the political economy, looking at the basis of race and racialization within the economic structure. That’s what anti-racist politics is about. And the State very effectively re-constituted that in the Canadian context. De-radicalized it, de-politicized it. Then it became essentially a way of freezing people of color in these Orientalist colonial constructs of culture. Their cultures are like that. They will always remain like that. In this moment, even a defense of multiculturalism, in the “war on terror”, seems a radical thing. But it was actually a complete cooptation. And I think if we look at it historically then we have the answers. What were those anti-racist politics about? That is what we need to continue to make stronger.
So, in a way we have to think about it concretely and historically in the context of this society. The history of multiculturalism is different in the States. But I think for me the grounding has to be a kind of anti-racist politics, and a critical race analysis of the global world. Because the modern global order was founded on racialization, and that was founded on the dehumanization of certain kinds of people and that has remained a constant. And it is a mistake for people of color, to think that just because for a short time they have inclusion to citizenship, that somehow our humanity has been accepted. And the ease with which Muslims have been so thoroughly demonized not just by the State but by the entire society, shows that they have never become convinced of their humanity, of other peoples. That’s why they can justify torture, justify targeted assassinations, justify these drone attacks, killing suspected terrorists. They don’t even know who is getting killed. But it’s because you can dehumanize these people. And that’s what we are facing in this “war on terror”. So, multiculturalism is a very small part of what we need to be thinking about.
TD: In your speech, the speech that created so much debate you talked about the use of language. And you said how the language by the West and how it represents others as anti-democratic and irrational, so on and so forth. Frantz Fanon also discussed the question of language in a big way, particularly in the book- Black Skin, White Masks. I wanted to see if you wanted to talk more about the question of language in terms of resistance, in terms of questioning authoritarian systems. And how can a different way of speaking about things begin in academia and in activism?
ST: I think historically claiming words and giving them a different meaning has been central to resistance struggles. I mean the classic example is Black is Beautiful, and that whole movement. I think that my meaning in this speech was that, the language that was being used was actually demonizing Muslims. Not just as irrational. But as not human. Not human. You know the way Muslims continue to be described as- evil, forces of evil, they hide in caves. The kind of language that gets used actually produces us in these sheer terms, that we are not fully human. For me it was really important to pull to what was happening, because by talking about Muslims as not being human, Muslims can then be treated as if they are not human. They can be cured without any freedom and democracy-loving citizen saying, what is going on, why are these people being killed? So you know in my point, and of course Fanon has a very large critique, there is a whole kind of school of philosophy that looks at language and its use, but for me in that moment, what was really important was to look at how all of these colonial constructs, how the language of coloniality itself became mainstream.
Whereas from the period after the 1960s until 9/11 there was racism, even though there was Islamophobia, the strength of movements in North America put a limit on how freely and how overtly that language could be used. Multiculturalism had come into place. It was a struggle in many places. In other places like Canada, it was policy. Nevertheless, it had put some limits on the gross assertion of white supremacy which relies on dehumanization of everybody else. For the white to become truly and fully human, is when others are turned into non-humans. There is a larger critique, and I think of course, language is very, very important. I am backing all the assumptions that are embedded in it, how it constructs reality, what people come to believe about themselves, how they come to have their relationship to their own selves is extremely important and Fanon wrote about it brilliantly. But in my speech what I was really trying to do… was about mobilizing the women’s movement in Canada, to oppose the war, and to stop the Canadian participation in the “war on terror”. It was a very modest aim. And, so it was a political motive if you will, in drawing a tension to how Muslims were being dehumanized in that moment. Of course the situation has gotten much, much worse than that in the 9 years since 9/11 happened. On the one hand the demonization of Muslims, and the complete dehumanization of Muslims. It is now commonplace. Language has shifted in a really dangerous way. Things that can be said today, 10 years ago were not possible. The things that can be said today, the completely overt defense of racial profiling for example, its not that people weren’t racially profiled. In Canada black men were really racially profiled. Many black men were killed by police. Racial profiling was going on. But within mainstream politics it was impossible to stand up and defend it. There was always this containment that it had to be apologized for. It had to be denied. It had to be [considered] an aberration. Since 9/11 that kind language is everywhere. And racial profiling now is defended by Prime Ministers, Ministers, Police Chiefs. So, there has been a significant shift in the use of language since 9/11, and that has to be part of the politics of resistance…
TD: We saw with the Bush administration the intensification on the representation of Muslims as negative constructs. With the new president we saw a certain change in the way he is communicating. I want to know from you- what are the dangers and concerns… This relates to the Cairo speech, where he talked about how Islam has been hijacked by bunch of crazy lunatics but most of Islam is peaceful, so on and so forth. Therefore, that needs to be promoted, and there needs to be dialogue with those people. But there is also quite a bit of work done within American Islamic discourse where certain people who are not necessarily outspoken or who were outspoken before have become more interested in the question of the ethical than the question of the political. And of course, political repression is extremely high, for example, the imprisonment of Imam Jamil Alamin (formerly H.Rap Brown) who was a very outspoken former Panther member, and the marginalized voice, the voice of resistance has become apathetic. So, the question now is, there is a whole notion of trying to create a role model which is moderate, and which is Western, and which will speak to the mainstream system. In that case, this representation has been a change. What kind of strategies should we employ to deal with that in order to talk about Islam not in this “unprincipled peaceful” manner?
ST: You raise some very, very important points, and there is a lot in that, that needs to be unpacked. But first as somebody who gets labeled as a political activist, I refuse to see the territory of the ethical. I don’t make a separation between the political and the ethical. So, for me the political always has to be grounded in the ethical, and vice-versa. And one of the strategies to isolate and marginalize activists, or there I say even extremists, is to separate them from the ethical and say – Oh that’s just political, in the most trivial and trite and pejorative use of the term political. So, to begin with I wouldn’t separate the ethical and the political. They go absolutely hand in hand. I think Obama’s strategy is smart, smarter than the Bush Administration… I think clearly Obama’s foreign policy rests on making a deep cleavage between moderate Muslims and extremists. And that division is actually very political. That’s what this strategy is. If we listen to Obama or if we look at any of the self-styled moderate Muslims, the difference between moderate Muslims and extremist Muslims is that moderates will not oppose U.S foreign policy, moderates will not oppose Westernization. Moderates will argue for- whatever their version of Islam is to be their private concern. It’s a completely- what you do in your home, that whole separation between the public and the private, and the public has to be secular. And of course the public is not secular. It’s deeply shaped by Christian values. The whole split within Christianity between Protestantism and Catholicism, I mean historically that’s how secularism emerges. So secularism is completely implicated genealogically within Christianity. So the notion that the secular is somehow non-religious cannot historically be justified. You cannot sustain that argument.
The thing about making that separation between moderate Muslims and extremists who has supposedly hijacked Islam- the distinction between them is who will collaborate and accept Westernization and will accept this kind of blind faith in the Western project if that’s what we will call it, and then the extremists become the ones who refuse to collaborate, who will not accept American hegemony. You know whatever the other motives are, but politically this is the point at which moderate Islam speaks on extremist Islam in the way that U.S foreign policy today is operated on. So, we have to realize given our own historical experiences that this is nothing new. Divide and conquer was central to the whole colonial project. And of course, there were classes; there were elites who were co-opted into reproducing the colonial system. If they hadn’t, colonialism would not have survived. We have to know that this is nothing new. This is a historical pattern and this is how power reproduces itself within the colonial context. Which is again, we are back in that moment of coloniality. This is how power operates. In standing up and challenging this kind of moderate Islam that is working with the Obama administration’s foreign policy and international agenda. We have to recognize it. It is nothing new. We have to analyze it within that context and not get sidetracked by this discussion about what is real Islam, who has hijacked it or who has not. That’s a red herring. And to engage in that discussion actually limits us being able to move beyond that. We have to see that whatever moderate Islam is, and the way its been constructed by Obama in the U.S but also by other leaders in other countries and leaders of organizations in Muslim communities even, particularly in the West, this is a completely collaborationist agenda and it furthers imperialism. And historically that’s how colonialism and imperialism have worked. So that has to be I think the place from which we analyze this, instead of getting caught in debates about what is real Islam.
TD: I have to ask you a more direct question. You made a presentation, a slide presentation with pictures and photographs from Gaza, and you compared some of the photographs in West Bank. You did a whole presentation on the occupation in Palestine. We are talking about representation and language. What’s interesting were the children, the drawings that they have in Gaza. The merging of a politics of, possibly a politics of solidarity. Because they had pictures of Yasser Arafat and they had pictures of the spiritual leader of Hamas. What did you see? Your observations on Palestinian self-representation in terms of the spirit of resistance and in terms of their political support for a specific type of resistance there? How do you look at that as probably an alternative strategy from the perspective of Muslims to resist imperialism? How do you look at the Palestinian movement from your observations?
ST: Well, from my observations, and I want to limit this to Gaza only. Because you know there is a tendency to romanticize communities. And Palestinians are divided by class, by all kinds of divisions that come in any group. But in terms of self-representation, of course Hamas’s self-representation is very clear. It opposes Israel and defining itself as an oppositional force so far. At least this far, this is how they have represented themselves. That self-representation is very evident within Gaza. I showed some of the images of the big billboards, Hamas fighters with their guns, pictures of Hamas leaders, Fattah leaders even, Yasser Arafat is featured very prominently. Then, very important is the representations of Jerusalem all over the place. So Hamas is claimed to not be marginalized and contained within Gaza, but actually its vision is a national vision. Its vision is a united Palestinian community and a nation. The vision is clearly there. It’s nationalistic. The way in which Hamas gets represented out here, as one faction, and people in Gaza are held hostage by Hamas, that’s a very popular kind of construct. I did not see that at all when I was there.
TD: You saw it as a movement of the people…
ST: You know, for the people of Gaza, what is clear is that, the support for Hamas has increased as a result of the economic blockade and as a result of the Israeli attack on Gaza, support really strengthened for Hamas because of that. People do see Hamas as representing the Palestinian occupation. Where else is it coming from? It’s not. Certainly there are individuals, there are groups, I’m not trying to trivialize that, but in terms of political movement this is what people see. And we must remember that Hamas did not think it was going to win the election itself. When it won the election, in some way, it was the will of the people. It was the expression of the people who live in Gaza. And as I said when I started my talk, Hamas was surprised that it won the election. So, it was an expression of what people wanted and what they were choosing in that moment. Outside of course, Hamas is just been branded as a terrorist organization. Primarily Israel kind of constructs that definition, which has been embraced completely by the U.S, by Canada, UK, so their populations mainly also see Hamas as this terrorist organization. Palestinians do not see it like that. and in Gaza, my experience, for a limited time, I agree, I was there for a short time, support has consolidated around Hamas, because Palestinians see what is being done in Gaza is not being done only to Hamas, but its been done to all Palestinians. And secular human rights activists in Gaza who do not necessarily support Hamas, of course they support them in this struggle, but their political vision would be different, even they said very clearly, what was happening in Gaza is the outcome of the occupation. It was not just targeting Hamas. Any form of self-determination that was being expressed by Palestinians will be attacked in the same way. And that’s how Palestinians in Gaza were responding to us. That’s where I think their support for Hamas came from. They did not separate themselves from what was happening to Hamas. This idea that somehow the population can be punished into withdrawing their support from Hamas, it has had the exact opposite effect.
TD: I want to concentrate on South Asia. We saw the demise of the Project for a New American Century, as an institution, basically was closed down. Brzezinski who is part of the Trilateral Commission has an entirely different neoliberal agenda, has a huge focus on South Asia and Far East Asia. There are big similarities between Obama’s foreign policy and what Brzezinski has outlined earlier. Obama himself have called Brzezinski one the most important American scholars. In his book The Grand Chessboard there is clear indication of what the possibilities are with regards to a more dialogue based foreign policy in the Middle East, and much more militarily serious policy in South Asia. We are seeing its central in South Asia with the bombings that are going on in Pakistan. Which is not a Bush war at all. The bombings in Pakistan are clearly something that Obama has started. They are refocusing, increasing troops in Afghanistan. What is your take on that? How should we look at that? There has been this whole notion that Obama was elected as an anti-war president, so on and so forth. That was some kind of expectation for some although some quarters were cynical from the beginning.
ST: My observation is that, clearly Obama has expanded the “war on terror”. He is expanding it into Pakistan. He is expanding it into Yemen. So there is no doubt about that Obama is expanding the “war on terror”. In terms of the expectation from Obama that he was a antiwar candidate- this shows you… one doesn’t want to get into a discussion on what Obama really wants, it’s just the limits to an individual, how much change an individual can bring. And Obama clearly was an establishment candidate. He would not have won the democratic nomination if he wasn’t. He would not have won the election if he wasn’t. Clearly, after the fiasco of the Bush years, really they needed Obama. In a way they would have to invent him if he didn’t exist. Obviously, it’s terrible what Obama is doing with the “war on terror”. I still keep thinking, lets hope it will change may be. Who knows what he is thinking. But it’s clear that he’s embraced the “war on terror”, expanded it. But I also worry the impact this will have on people. During Obama’s election young people in the U.S who were voting for the first time, voted for Obama in huge numbers. The impact of this kind of disillusionment and what it will mean in terms of cynicism about politics is something I think we have to think about very seriously when Obama is done with, whatever his own agenda is. But the impact it will have on politics and young peoples, kind of empowerment through their own political mobilization, I think we will see a serious negative impact on that as well. But the one thing that Obama did say was to social movements--- push me, push me. Where are the social movements in this country? Where is the antiwar movement in the U.S? You know, they thought Obama was in, and they could just fold up their bags and go home. What are the social movements in this country? So its fine to say, Obama sold out. Whatever one might say of him, which a lot of activists are now saying- what a disappointment, why did I support him? But where are the social movements? Because ultimately, which social activist worth their souls would put their faith in Obama as opposed to building their own movements? Who would have done that? That would have been the sloppiest kind of politics imaginable. So, where are the social movements in the U.S? That’s the question I would ask.
TD: I will bring it back to the context of Bangladesh. There is a movement in Bangladesh to adjust Islam to indigenous ideas to go beyond the binary of Arabization and Americanism. So, what do you think about this urgency to make Islam compatible with indigenous ideas?
ST: I have to say that is very, very important. But this is a really important moment. I am not talking about Bangladesh because I have not studied the situation there. I’m talking about my experience living here. That there are divisions which are increasing amongst Muslims- oh these are the extremists, oh this is Arab culture. Self-orientalizing is a huge thing that is happening within Muslim communities all over the world. I think that is something that really needs to be guarded against. Its kind of Muslims doing the same thing- I am the good one, the Arabs are the bad ones. That is front and central. The temptation now for Muslims to engage in self-orientalizing and construct other Muslim communities is incredibly seductive; there are great rewards to be had for doing that. I think that has to be a critical, political perspective that has to be central to our politics.
TD: It has to be anti-Orientalist.
ST: It has to be completely. But also within Muslims. We think about Orientalism, we think Western societies doing it to Muslims, which is true.
TD: Self-Orientalism is a big deal right now.
ST: Self-orientalizing. I hear it in my own community- you know it’s the Arabs, they are the ones that hate women, we are not like that. Its those who are violent, we are not. Even inside Muslim communities- good Muslim vs. bad Muslim- is really emerging strongly.
TD: Thank you.