Ebrahim Moosa – Radio Islam – Opinion | 09 November 2016

A few months back, a curious picture of Donald Trump set the internet abuzz. The photograph, presumably from one of the Republican presidential candidate’s campaign rallies, depicted him in full cry, rousing his supporters towards his cause. What particularly stood out for many were his hand gestures, with each hand raised on either side of his face, in line with his ears. Its resemblance to the gestures of a Muezzin led many Muslims to quip that Donald Trump had been delivering the Athaan.

The irony, of course, was that the Athaan – this pristine call to Tauheed and Risalah, considered one of the greatest forms of Daw’ah – was seemingly being delivered by a man whose disdain of Muslims, as referenced from his public outbursts, was no secret.

Trump had said he would consider requiring Muslim-Americans to register with a government database. He would not rule out the idea of Muslims carrying special cards for identification. He explained that he was open to the wholesale surveillance of Muslim-Americans and even toyed with the idea of shutting down mosques. Infamously, he further proposed a total ban on Muslim entry into the United States.

Goaded by these sentiments, one enduring theme of the current US election campaign has inadvertently been Islam and the Muslims.

Trump’s utterances prompted his counterpart, Hillary Clinton, to offer her worldview of Muslims.

“Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism,” Clinton said.

America, she suggested, needed to build trust in its local Muslim communities to counter radicalization. Trump’s words, Clinton added, were having the effect of a recruiting tool for ISIS.

A symbolic swipe at Trump in July, also saw a Muslim presence taking centre stage at the Democratic National Convention, when Pakistan born Khizr Khan spoke of his deceased son’s sacrifices for the US Army, and lambasted Trump for his consistent slurs on the character of Muslims.

New York magazine’s Andrew Sullivan declared Khan’s speech “the fulcrum of this election,” and one minute after it had ended, a spike in searches for “register to vote” were reportedly seen on Google.

It was arguably Trump’s outrageous sentiments and brazen Islamophobia that sparked this entire wildfire of publicity around Islam and Muslims.

Understandably, this toxic climate has got many perturbed, with Muslim-Americans fearing more vindictive action against them, and at least one family ‘fleeing’ the country after an apparent bigotry-related attack on their child.

Seen from another perspective though, the situation could have a silver lining.

“All publicity is good publicity,” goes the common adage. Obviously, any publicity would be of questionable value when it translates into lives being endangered by rhetoric, or Muslims, by their actions, besmirching the tenets of the faith.

Still, there is something innate to the human nature that breeds a certain inquisitiveness when confronted by consistent and wanton vilification and ostracization of ideas or persons. This curiousity – in this case of Islam and Muslims – is magnified when the obsession with this group reaches the kind of levels fostered by Trump and his ilk.

There is anecdotal evidence available to support this contention.

In the aftermath of the 9/11 atrocity when the slurs against Muslims had reached a peak, VOA reported that the Quran had become “one of the bestselling books” and that the demand for Arabic language lessons was “unprecedented”.

USA Today, covering the same story, reported on a bookseller in Cleveland which was down to its last copy of the Qur’an.

“It isn’t just the Koran that’s in demand. People are eager for any books that explain the Muslim world to a nation hungry for information,” the report stated.

John L. Esposito of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University said the trend represented a scurry for knowledge of Islam from a huge percentage of Americans who had “no idea what this religion is all about”.

Profiles on Islamic tenets also featured prominently on mainstream American TV and talk shows.

“I’m ashamed to admit it, but before September 11, I didn’t pay much attention to Islam,” economist Jeremy Rifkin confessed.

It took the events of that surreal day – blamed on Muslims – to force him to pay attention.

“I’m not alone,” Rifkin continued. “Seven of the 15 lead books on the New York Times paperback bestseller list are devoted to Islam…The whole world, it seems, has been converted into a classroom as we try to make sense out of the tragic events of September 11 and its aftermath”.

A similar trend played itself out in France in another highly testing climate for Muslims after the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attacks. Here, not only did sales of books on Islam skyrocket, but some universities even added courses on Islam to their curricula due to the widespread demand.

“The French are asking more and more questions, and they feel less satisfied than ever by the answers they’re getting from the media,” a French publisher said.

In some cases, the curiosity prompted by this kind of demonization of Muslims was even the catalyst for outright conversion.

Angela Collins Telles of California recalls the urge to push back that was stirred up within her when anti-Muslim rhetoric flared after 9/11.

“I saw my country demonizing these people as terrorists and oppressors of women, and I couldn’t think of anything further from the truth. I felt a need to stand up and defend them. But then I realised that I couldn’t argue without knowledge”.

Hardly a few months into a deeper inquiry of the faith, Collins Telles was Muslim.

The Good News and the Bad News

When weighed against these kinds of outcomes, the incendiary rhetoric of Trump may actually begin to look like a boon.

The progression goes something like this: The haters spew out vile representations of all that Islam isn’t to an under-informed public, and the discerning amongst are stimulated to pick-up on their mistruths to soon discover what Islam actually is.

It is for this prowess in sparking another mass wave of curiosity in Islam, that the eccentric Trump can arguably be touted as some kind of ‘Da’ee’.

But this euphoria sparked by a reinvigorated interest in Islam should not numb us from the altogether more cautionary tale implicit in the above assessment.

Sheikh Ahmed Deedat RA skilfully tackles this concern in his talk ‘A Dire Warning’.

The master of comparative religion argues that Muslims have been endowed by Allah with the status of the ‘Best of Ummahs’. However, a failure to live up to the responsibilities of this great honour almost inevitably leads to dishonour and replacement, as is captured in the Quranic verse: “And if you turn away, He will exchange you for some other people, and they will not be like you” (47:38)

Our abandonment of the duty to call others to Allah qualifies us for dereliction of service, and means that Allah SWT will generate a new crop of callers to the truth, sometimes arising from the very segment of humanity we were wont to disdain or consider unworthy of the same message. In other cases, Allah SWT will even use His enemies as the conduits for His Message. Nothing is beyond Allah, who operates according to His own Sunan.

His Promises and those of His Messenger SAW that Islam “will prevail over all other religions” and that its message will enter every “baked and unbaked home on the surface of the earth” stand impeccable. All that remains for us to determine is whether, on attainment of these promises, we will find ourselves on its side of honour or disgrace.

It is natural for us to express a preference for one candidate over the other in the election arena by virtue of their perceived stance on matters affecting our community. Likewise, feeling pain and anger upon the demonization of members of our faith, and feeling obliged to take a stance is most expected.

Yet, we are to realise that these are all but sideshows to the greater calling of our lives.

We need to have such an intensity of conviction in our mission of calling to Allah, that rejection of this call causes us deep pain.

As Ustaadh Khurram Murad asks:

“Do you love humanity so well that disappointment, anger and hate do not replace the feelings of love sympathy and concern? Do you feel the same pangs of grief when you see people going astray, as you would feel seeing some dear one burn in fire? …Does the concern to deliver the message of Allah to the people, the desire to save them from the fire and lead them to salvation keep us impatient and agitated? Do we try to hold them back and save them from disaster instead of branding them transgressors when we see people going astray?”

He challenges:

“Are you in a position to gather the people of your family and your neighbourhood, leaving aside general humanity… and ask them to stand witness in Allah’s Presence that you have delivered the message, discharged your duty, and fulfilled the obligation of guiding them? And do you hope they will answer in the affirmative?

“You are responsible for delivering Allah’s message to the members of your household, your extended family, your neighbourhood, your school and college, office or factory and your friends and acquaintances – all you come in contact with and eventually, whoever you can reach…Any one of them can question you why he was in the dark and you had the light, he was wandering in the wilderness and you had knowledge of the path. If he faces the chastisement in the hereafter, how will you defend your negligence?

“Learn to feel intensely of the responsibility of Da’wah and accountability before Allah. Devote all your time and energy towards this goal. Work with love and dedication. Love Allah and love His message. Be kind and considerate to your companions and everyone around you. If you behave that way, there is no reason that the message you hold dear should remain confined or fail to reach every nook and corner of the world”.