Sorry, no moderates here

The South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) is on some kind of a crusade against the Freedom of Expression Institute, where I work. They have, thus far, sent three letters to the FXI with various complaints, and have been rewarded by three letters in response, from the FXI's chairperson Mabalane Mfundisi. (See the series of six letters on the FXI's website.) I will write a blog posting at some point about these letters. However, I want to focus in the current posting on one issue raised in the first SAJBD letter.

SAJBD's Associate Director David Saks tries (he doesn't do it very well, though) to make the case that the FXI is engaged in a campaign against Israel and against “Jewish communal institutions” which have been the target of an FXI “special attack”. “By contrast,” Saks accuses, “the FXI's silence on cases where Muslim organisations and activists have suppressed freedom of expression has been truly deafening.” (The accusations are a load of hogwash, but that is not the point of this post.) In attempting to illustrate the latter point, Saks says:

Mention should also be made of another FXI statement released in 2002, when the organisation decided to condemn the reputed death threats that Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry, Ronnie Kasrils had received because of his anti-Zionist views… However, one finds no comparable statements of condemnation of the far more pervasive intimidation of Muslim moderates that has taken place in South Africa, something that has since led to the emigration of such eminent clerics and academics as Ebrahim Moosa, Faried Esack and Dullah Omar.

(As an aside, we must note that the SAJBD has, as yet, not condemned the death threats against Kasrils.) The point of this post is the last part of the above quote, that the FXI has not condemned the “far more pervasive intimidation of Muslim moderates”. (Of course, SAJBD builds what it thinks is a significant argument based on fallacious research: Dullah Omar, former Minister of Transport and, before that, Minister of Justice in South Africa, did not emigrate; he died of cancer in South Africa.)

Professor Farid Esack, when he read the SAJBD letter, seemed to be less than pleased about the use of his name in this manner. He sent the following email to Saks:

Dear David Sacks

It has recently come to my attention that you alleged that I am a “moderate Muslim” and stated that I have emigrated from South Africa.

a. I view the term moderate Muslim with disdain. It is a term used to denote Muslims who acquiesce to injustice and occupation and who view the world through the lenses of Pax Americana. There is no particular virtue in moderation towards anti-semitism, sexism, racism, occupations and all forms of apartheid (including Israeli apartheid) or the machinations of the empire, led today by the United States. Basically, it is a loaded term used for Muslims who have nothing to say to injustice and are desperate to fit in with the games of the powerful.

b. I am very much a South African, enjoying my teaching here in the United States, but I am a migrant labourer. I live in South Africa, and incidentally, take a rather dim view of those who emigrate.

I am not unaware of an insidious streak of anti-Jewishness among Muslims; it is something that I find despicable and have consistently spoken about and condemned. My commitment to oppose all forms of oppression, though, lead me very much into the camp of the Kasrils and the FXIs of this world. I would thus appreciate it if you kindly refrain from invoking my name in your battles against them. They are my comrades from the days when it was not nearly as sexy as it is now to claim to be against racism and discrimination.

I must second Esack's comments about the term “moderate Muslim”. Having been (and still being) a fellow ideological traveller with Esack and Moosa, I, like them, hate the term and refuse to have it linked to me. To me, like to many others, it is disdainful and insulting. Whenever I hear the term, I recall the repeated assertion in the 1980s by the Apartheid bittereinder, former president PW Botha, that the South African Muslim community comprised of law-abiding and “moderate” people and that it was just a handful of “radicals” that were the troublemakers. The troublemakers, of course, were us Muslims who were involved in the anti-apartheid struggle, who argued that the Qur'an demanded from us a jihad against the apartheid state and who vigorously engaged in that jihad in various ways.

To PW, in the 1980s, “moderate Muslims” were those who wanted to live peacefully with apartheid. To George Bush and his ilk and the SAJBD today, “moderate Muslims” are those who want to live peacefully with imperialism, Zionist racism and apartheid in Israel. I refused to be a “moderate Muslim” in the 1980s, I refuse to be one today. I will not be sold on this understanding of “moderate Muslim” which seeks to strip away any notion of struggling for justice. There can be no co-existence with injustice and oppression; I will not be moderated into believing so.