I remember my own Ramadans in the United States. When we lived there, it was in the summers. Time to break our fast was sometimes at 9 p.m. Isha was at 11 p.m. Taraweeh prayers at the mosque ended at 1! I worked from 8 to 4.30 and I had no concessions: I had to try to be both efficient and productive. At the beginning of Ramadan, I always had terrible caffeine withdrawals. I often wore dark glasses the whole day to protect them from the glare of the computer. My colleagues would say, "I bet you are fasting!" And though I had concentration lapses at the beginning and sometimes made errors, my boss stressed that she did not expect fasting to affect my work since it was my own decision to fast! I had to be extra careful in Ramadan and I was. I didn’t want anyone to think that Islam enforced anything that was detrimental to efficiency.

The one concession that my boss allowed me was to combine my lunch break and break time so that I had an hour and 15 minutes of free time. Two friends always knocked on the door when my break was over to ensure I did not oversleep! The toughest thing was to come home and do all the house chores plus cooking!

My husband had a tougher time. He had to deal with lots of customers and he suffered from migraines but he always had to be pleasant and smiling. The toughest Ramadan customer that my husband had was a middle-aged guy who was angry and rude. He calmed down a bit when he discovered my husband was fasting and also a Muslim. He had thought my husband was Mexican and was very upset since his wife had recently run away with a Mexican man!

In contrast to those in America, my Ramadans were very different in Jeddah. They were more spiritual and rewarding due to the proximity of Makkah but I was appalled to see how frivolously the majority seemed to take Ramadan. In a time when Muslims are supposed to be the most tolerant, the most helpful, the most kind, they were instead the most thoughtless, the most inconsiderate, the most lethargic and the worst tempered. Also, in Ramadan, nights are supposed to be spent in worship or in sleep; in Jeddah everybody was playing soccer, shopping and visiting friends and family. I was rudely awakened once at 3 a.m. Groggy with sleep, I opened the door to see my Saudi landlord’s daughter standing there, asking if she could borrow some kitchen item. As it turned out, I didn’t have it. I was shocked that she was awake at such an hour and she was shocked that I had gone to bed so early!

And here I am in Alkhobar now — never thought I’d miss Jeddah so much. Here it is very quiet. The only noise I hear is at our mosque. During prayers, children ran and made noise just as they did in Jeddah. Here, however, a strict-looking old woman told the mother of some children. "Don’t bring your children to the mosque if they don’t know how to be quiet!"

I wonder how my children will find Ramadan in their own countries when they ultimately return. Whatever, I am sure everybody will remember Ramadan here, especially those of us who sleep through so much and leave chores to maids and houseboys.

As a society Muslims have a sense of collective responsibility to each other but we seldom follow it up. The precedents set by Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, help propel people down the path of collective responsibility but is this aspect of Islam reflected in the everyday lives of those who are born into, or adhere to, the faith? Do we give in Ramadan because we understand what the significance of sharing is? Or do we give because charity relieves our guilt at living the hectic meaningless lives so many of us live in the pursuit of material comfort?

Ramadan is a time for reflection. Most people will talk about the "spirit of Ramadan" but their behavior makes it difficult for me to take them seriously. There are those who think differently but I did not meet them while writing this article. Of the 12 people I wanted to talk to about Ramadan, I expected some to say silly things such as "I fast so that I won’t burn in hell" and the remainder to provide the pearls that I would string into the argument about the relevance of Ramadan today. Instead what I dealt with was deciding who was more hollow: The woman who fasted without conviction but participated actively in the Muslim Student Association at her university, or the woman who spewed verbal garbage about the significance of fasting which "These people just don’t understand" but balked at the idea of helping a family member acquire an education abroad.

How will "these people" understand anything when we ourselves seem to have a fundamentally flawed perspective on something as basic to us and Islam as the month of Ramadan? When one Muslim youth said to me, "I fast so I won’t burn in hell," a sense of resignation settled upon me. Why was this university-going youth not devoting more time to wondering why he deprived his system of food from sunrise to sunset? Why didn’t he wonder whether it could guide him to a more spiritual understanding of his surroundings? Why is it that we go through the motions of fasting — and only the motions?

And then we wonder why the West doesn’t understand Islam! Why blame non-Muslims for ignorance when we ourselves exhibit such blatant ignorance? Why is it that we do not wonder why our religion has set aside a month for fasting and reflection? A 30-day period during which we can take our bearings and look hard at the road ahead. Focus. Examine why we live as we do. Determine what the alternatives are. Solidify our thoughts into a coherent argument and present them in an appropriate forum. Intellectuals must make themselves heard. The Islamic scholars must have moderates among them who will drown out the voices of the hardliners — whom the West refers to as fundamentalists. Each individual must commit to the idea of collective responsibility by making an individual commitment. And then perhaps hope will return to our hearts and we can rediscover the meaning of Ramadan which we seem to have lost.

No doubt, many US voters will have been influenced by the news of the slaying of a leading Al-Qaeda suspect in Yemen, apparently by a missile fired from an unmanned drone operated by the CIA. Their government is acting tough, no US lives were lost in the operation against a man widely believed to have been behind the attack on the USS Cole in October 2000, in which 17 sailors were slain. They no doubt took the view that international terrorists were getting some of their own back, and good riddance to them.

Unfortunately in a civilized society, extra-judicial murders are not acceptable. Ali Qaed Senyan Al-Harthi may indeed have been a terrorist with blood on his hands, but it was not for the American CIA to act as judge, jury and executioner. Though it would undoubtedly have been far more difficult and might have caused the loss of further lives, the right thing to have done would have been to have apprehended Al-Harthi and brought him to trial. Butchering him and his body guards with a remotely fired missile was wrong.

Hitler’s propaganda supremo, Josef Goebbels used to boast that the bigger the lie, the greater its chances of being believed. Twenty four hours after the attack, the US administration came up with what many in the Middle East will see as a lie worthy of the biggest Goebbels ever told. The United States declared that it continued to oppose the policy of assassination used by the Israelis against what they took to be Palestinian extremists. How, when Washington’s secret army, the CIA has just done the self-same thing, can anyone believe this American claim?

In fact, what the Al-Harthi assassination lays bare is the fact that the United States believes that, while it cannot be seen to be endorsing Zionist extra judicial murders, privately it finds this uncivilized savagery by the Israelis perfectly acceptable.

It is one more double standard that can only add to the despair of those in the Arab world, who still hope that the Americans can push through a just and honorable settlement to the 50- year plight of the Palestinians. But how can Washington act as an honest broker when it is guilty of exactly the same deadly crimes as Zionists?

If Americans feel that the system of freedom and justice, which they appear to hold so highly as the centerpiece of their constitution, is insufficient to deal with the threat of Al-Qaeda, they are on dangerous grounds. If illegal violence is seen as a solution in Washington’s war against terror, how can the US possibly condemn Palestinians for fighting back against the terror imposed upon them by Zionists? The Land of the Brave and Free sent an unmanned drone to do its murderous dirty work. At least Palestinian fighters, however misguided, are prepared to die along with their unfortunate victims. Is it Washington’s case that it is all right to assassinate innocent civilians including children and women provided the murderer or murderers don’t get killed or hurt?

In behaving criminally, the United States is putting itself on a level with the terrorists who are its enemies. Indeed, because so much better should be expected of a civilized state built upon justice, it is actually placing itself below the criminals it now seems prepared to assassinate. There can be no exceptions to murder. They are all crimes, in the Yemen, in the West Bank and Gaza, on the streets of Israel or in the center of New York or at the Pentagon in Washington. The United States must not persist with this dangerous dishonoring of the rules of justice upon which all civilized societies are built. If it does, it will be making itself no better than the international terrorists it hunts.

It might seem strange to have to say that to somebody you have just met at a social gathering. But these are strange times we live in, and when an American Arab meets an American Jew, they dance around each other a while before civility kicks in.

Andre, a lawyer who lives in Washington, is not unlike a great many American Jews these days who feel that Israel is "under assault" and thus any criticism of its policies, however justified, is a betrayal of one’s ethnic roots and the duty it is incumbent upon one to back one’s people, right or wrong, come what may.

As Israel moves more and more to the fascist right, American Jews face a dilemma: What to do in these difficult times when Israel, as they see it, is fighting a "terrorist infrastructure" and its Arab enemies remain hell-bent on its "destruction."

Never mind that the "terrorist infrastructure" is a homegrown phenomenon of Israel’s own creation as an occupying power, or that these enemies, given their limited military prowess, are about as dangerous to Israel’s existence as secondary smoke.

What matters to the overwhelming majority of American Jews is that Israel is in crisis, its actions repudiated by the international community, and now is the time for all hands on deck.

As a dispute over funding for settlements in the occupied territories erupted in the Israeli Cabinet last week, with six Labor ministers quitting the government, Ariel Sharon turned to the usual suspects in the fascist fringe and the Orthodox parties to form a new coalition.

Israel’s former Army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz, who had earned his credentials in overseeing the crackdown on the intifada over the last two years, and in going on record as favoring the expulsion of the entire Palestinian population from the West Bank and Gaza (an ethnic cleansing project known locally as "trucking," as in, trucking Arabs out of their homeland), was offered the job of defense minister. The fanatic Benyamin Netanyahu was being offered the foreign affairs portfolio, formerly held by Labor’s Shimon Peres.

The party that kept Sharon’s government afloat was the ultrantionalist (the polite term in journalistic parlance used to mean fascist) Israel Beituna, whose members were instrumental in giving Sharon his margin of victory in a no-confidence vote early this week.

Beituna’s leader, Avigdor Lieberman, said in an interview with an Israeli magazine last Friday that he favored "blowing up Yasser Arafat’s headquarters in Ramallah — with Arafat inside." Then he went on to say that Palestinians who live in East Jerusalem should be treated as terrorists, which he claimed means Israel should act "to destroy their homes, to confiscate their identity cards and to expel them from the country."

So everybody is in great shape here. And where does that leave American Jews? Well, it leaves them still supportive of Israel, as we say, right or wrong, come what may.

To be sure, not all American Jews think alike. The Jewish community in the United States, like any other community anywhere, is imbued with a great many ideological currents and political sensibilities. But traditionally, when it comes to Israel, or to a time when Israel is perceived to be in crisis, these folk circle the wagons. Take what happened in the wake of the Gulf War in 1991, when President Bush Sr. attempted to force Israel to abandon settlement activity in the West Bank before he would approve house-loan guarantees to the Shamir government.

Beyond AIPAC on the Hill were the angry pundits in the media, with the likes of William Safire, George Will, Charles Krauthammer, A.M. Rosenthall and Marty Peretz in the vanguard, accusing Bush of all manner of malfeasance not only for his inability to appreciate "Israel’s security concerns" but for flirting, in Safire’s words, with "political anti-Semitism (presumably a more sinister expression of it than traditional anti-Semitism).

During the height of the settlement versus loan guarantees controversy, the president of the United States of America had said that he was nothing more than "one lonely little guy" standing up to "something like a thousand pro-Shamir lobbyists on the Hill working the other side of the question."

Then it was leaked that then Secretary of State James Baker had allegedly said, at a Cabinet meeting: "(expletive) the Jews, they didn’t vote for us anyway."

That’s when the pro-Israel punditocracy went into action, a punditocracy whose influence in political culture, according to Eric Alterman, an expert on the issue, far exceeds the voting power of any ethnic minority, Jews included.

"Reports of the comment," wrote Alterman in his book, Sound and Fury, "provided something of a final nail in the administration’s political coffin."

In pursuit of the goal of fighting on behalf of Israel’s interests in the media, these pundits have taken on the responsibility of the ideological policing of the press, leveling criticism, unparalleled in bile and venom, against those who dare take Israel to task.

Back in the 1980s, for example, critics like I. F. Stone, Anthony Lewis, Edward Said and others were savaged within an inch of their professional reputations. (Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary, believes that "the role of Jews who write in both Jewish and general press is to defend Israel.")

Israel right or wrong, come what may. That’s what it all boils down to.

In its move to the extreme right, Israel today makes Menachem Begin’s hard-line government in the late 1970s and early 80s seem like an enlightened rampart of liberalism. Not only Israeli supporters in the US, but Israelis themselves, appear to have blinded themselves to the significance of that fact.

This is dangerous for the entire region. It can be argued, with a great deal of supporting sociological evidence, that once the elaborate machinery of demagoguery in society slips into full gear, that society slips into a kind of automatism: In this case, the idea of war, accompanied or followed by "trucking," becomes normal, ideal and irreversible. (Note how the European conflict of 1915, that had started as limited warfare, turned into unforeseen slaughter.)

When fashions of perceptions shift, as they are decidedly doing in Israel today, with the likes of Netanyahu and those other yahoos holding the reigns of power, then corresponding changes take place across the board in political life. Forces of the rational, explicit world, as we know them, become ungovernable.

It is clear that in Palestine there are dreadful times ahead.

(disinherited@yahoo.com)

7 November 2002

Racial profiling occurs when officials target a certain group of people of color, ethnicity, nationality, name or religion. While racial profiling existed prior to 9/11, the recent attacks have sparked a controversy over its effectiveness in preventing future terrorist attacks.

Jennifer Di Maglia, 20, an American of Syrian and European descent believes that racial profiling still exists and is primarily directed at people of Middle Eastern, North African, Southeast Asian descent — or for that matter, anybody who is Muslim. "However, racial profiling went on for decades before Sept. 11. Persons of color, presumably other than white, were targets of police discrimination, harassment, and other civil liberty violations," she said.

Erica Lopez, 19, an American of Puerto Rican descent and a Christian, added, "It worsened after the attacks. Now they’re focusing on everybody. However, they will never forget the black man."

Joseph Daswani, 19, an American of Indian and Trinidadian ancestry and a Christian, said, "There are a lot of ignorant people out there who categorize you because of where you come from."

May Awkal, 20, a Lebanese-American Muslim, believes that racial profiling is happening more than ever. "All people who ‘look’ Middle Eastern or Muslim are subject to harassment," she said.

Amna Hussein, 20, a Pakistani-American Muslim, found a note on the door of her room in the dorm that said: "Go back to where you belong." She was shocked and couldn’t believe how ignorant some people were.

Erica Lopez recalled walking home soon after 9/11 and being confronted by a man who appeared drunk. "He was saying, ‘I’ll be dammed if you think y’all can come into this country and destroy it.’" Even though Lopez is Puerto Rican-American, the man seemed to think she looked like a Middle Easterner.

Zahra Swaleh, 20, a Muslim student from Tanzania, described an experience at Boston’s Logan Airport as "uncomfortable and extremely degrading." The incident occurred last October.

Swaleh was forced to take her shoes off and her laptop was searched as well. "I stood out from the crowd which was predominately white; I was the only one who was randomly selected from the whole crowd."

There has always been controversy over racial profiling in law enforcement, but in the aftermath of 9/11, the debate whether the US government should constitutionally protect racial profiling has increased.

Guilerma Arce, 20, a Haitian American Christian, said, "With the US government making racial profiling law, it will continue to heighten racial tension which is already at levels that are intolerable."

On the other hand, Arce said, "Racial profiling can occur as long as it is regulated." She believes that it should be conducted in a respectable manner, without yelling, physical violence, or any use of derogatory terms. "Unfortunately, that’s not always the case," she added.

Di Maglia strongly disagreed. "It’s immoral and unreliable," she said. "Terrorists come in all shapes, sizes, colors, nationalities, and religions." Lopez added that even if racial profiling were constitutionally protected, "They will not target white Americans. They’re going to look for minorities. Look at those who run for Congress; it’s obvious who is most likely to be harassed for just about anything."

***

(Fatima Ageel is a Saudi student.)