2007: RACISM IN THE ARAB WORLD—CAN IT BE WORSE THAN IN THE WEST?

2007: RACISM IN THE ARAB WORLD—CAN IT BE WORSE THAN IN THE WEST?

By Kevin Stoda
I recall years ago reading the Autobiography of Malcolm X—as told to Alex Haley in my college days as a student of economics doing my practicum at the South Shore Bank (just south of the University of Chicago) undertaken through the Urban Life Center there.

It was January 1983 and was a fairly appropriate time to read the book as Chicago was mostly in recession and voters were very dissatisfied with the staturs quo in that city—considered the most racist in America at that time. Activists in Chicago were busy that month trying to get future Mayor Harold Washington elected in a major upset in Chicago machine political history. Harold Washington had broken from the Democratic Party and would eventually become the first (and only) black mayor in that city’s history.

1983 was a time of yuppies and trickle-down-economics.

Prior to the 1970s, Chicago had often been called the most racially segregated city in America, partially due to redlining permitted there for decades. Martin Luther King, Jr. who had been attacked and threatened in the Cicero area of Chicago one afternoon that led a march in that township (west of downtown loop) shared later his thoughts, “In the South, I never saw such hatred.”

I actually enjoyed my short-term stay in Chicago in January 1983 because it is such a multicultural city, and as an outsider, it was pleasant to enjoy the different characteristics of each neighborhood. There were Polish neighborhoods, Mexican, Central American neighborhoods there where food was great.

Moreover, blues was still king. Several of us went out with hour professor to catch blues and jazz in corners throughout the city on weekends.

It was a freezing winter and the infamous Lake Michigan winds were about to crack our bones as we walked home from the bus and El-stops late on snow covered nights. Back in our ancient apartment block it was still so cold, that we wore gloves and jackets in our abode to keep warm. Since we were spending only just less than 40 days in Chi-Town, we put up with the cold with good humor writing home, “We are doing urban camping.”

During my stay in the City of Big Shoulders, I lived in Woodlawn—not far from where the El-Train scenes from the classic film, THE BLUES BROTHERS, were filmed.

I recall being told that the local Woodlawners, a mostly pleasant but poor urban black neighborhood at that time, had howled in laughter at the “Blues Brother’s” movie scene set in their neighborhood whereby an El-Train passed in the dead of night every 25 to 30 seconds in front of the window of the main characters abode. Recall that Elwood lived in an apartment just under the El-Train.

Those Woodlawners were laughing so hard at that scene because they knew that typically one had to wait many many 10s of minutes minutes for a train or bus to pass through their neighborhood at that time of night.

It was on one of my own El-Train rides where I began to take time to read the book, Malcolm X, which my professor of urban economics, Arvis Averath, had assigned.

It was the same El-Train line that later took me out further south in the city to hand out get-out-the-vote leaflets and voter registration information in an equally depressed neighborhood of that city. Black male urban unemployment ran about 33% or more at that time in the areas south of the city with the tallest skyscrapers.

It was while reading this biography of Malcolm X that I learned for the first time that Malcolm Little had grown up on the Midwestern plains just north of Kansas where I went to high school and college. That was in Omaha in the neighboring state of Nebraska.

While reading the Haley book, I also came to appreciate for the first times some aspects of Islam and why so many Americans might be interested in the faith—but I especially comprehended why historically marginalized peoples, like America’s black community, would turn to Islam and the strong positive renewing identity it supported.


MALCOLM X AND HIS MECCA EXPERIENCE

I’ll never forget the change in Malcolm X’s world view which occurred when Malcom X traveled to Mecca in the early 1960s. In a word, in the last year of his life Malcolm X, the one-time gangster, former con-man, and the most famous Islamic leader in American history was transformed once again and began to no longer see a world that needed to be divided by race but one that could reach across both race and across religion.

Some powerful personages, who were discreetly pointed out to me, had on the same thing I had on. Once thus dressed, we all had begun intermittently calling out "Labbayka! (Allahumma) Labbayka!" (Here I come, O Lord!) Packed in the plane were white, black, brown, red, and yellow people, blue eyes and blond hair, and my kinky red hair -- all together, brothers! All honoring the same God, all in turn giving equal honor to each other. . . .

That is when I first began to reappraise the "white man." It was when I first began to perceive that "white man," as commonly used, means complexion only secondarily; primarily it described attitudes and actions. In America,"white man" meant specific attitudes and actions toward the black man, and toward all other non-white men. But in the Muslim world, I had seen that men with white complexions were more genuinely brotherly than anyone else had ever been. That morning was the start of a radical alteration in my whole outlook about "white" men.

There were tens of thousands of pilgrims, from all over the world. They were of all colors, from blue-eyed blonds to black-skinned Africans. But we were all participating in the same ritual displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that my experiences in America had led me to believe never could exist between the white an d the non-white...America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem. Throughout my travels in the Muslim world, I have met, talked to, and even eaten with people who in America would have been considered white -- but the "white" attitude was removed from their minds by the religion of Islam. I have never before seen sincere and true brotherhood practiced by all colors together, irrespective of their color.


This section of the Haley autobiography was repeated in the Spike Lee movie, Malcolm X. In it, Denzel Washington, who played Malcolm in the film, shares with gushing joy and energy what it was like to go to Mecca and really comprehend on his Haj that Islam was not a race-centered faith as he had come to believe in the early years of his conversion to Islam in the USA.

Each hour here in the Holy Land enables me to have greater spiritual insights into what is happening in America between black and white. The American Negro never can be blamed for his racial animosities -- he is only reacting to four hundred years of the conscious racism of the American whites. But as racism leads America up the suicide path I do believe, from the experiences that I have had with them, that the whites of the younger generation, in the colleges and universities, will see the handwriting on the wall and many of them will turn to the spiritual path of truth -- the only way left to America to ward off the disaster that racism inevitably must lead to. . . .

I believe that God now is giving the world's so-called 'Christian' white society its last opportunity to repent and atone for the crimes of exploiting and enslaving the world's non-white peoples. It is exactly as when God gave Pharaoh a chance to repent. But Pharaoh persisted in his refusal to give justice to those who he oppressed. And, we know, God finally destroyed Pharaoh.

I will never forget the dinner at the Azzam home with Dr. Azzam. The more we talked, the more his vast reservoir of knowledge and its variety seemed unlimited. He spoke of the racial lineage of the descendants of Muhammad (PBUH) the Prophet, and he showed how they were both black and white. He also pointed out how color, and the problems of color which exist in the Muslim world, exist only where, and to the extent that, that area of the Muslim world has been influenced by the West. He said that if on encountered any differences based on attitude toward color, this directly reflected the degree of Western influence.

Starting from a childhood in Nebraska, Malcom Little went through a saddening series of abuses in White America.

Nevertheless, his life opened up or linked the world of Islam to greater American identity and experience (and consciousness) than had any other American before him. Only the contradictory Louis Farrakhan has had greater positive influence on the development of Islam in America than has the late Malcolm X .

In short, from my personal perspective, Malcolm X’s journey to Mecca in the 1960s--and his personal transformations during the quarter-year he traveled there--helped open Islam (especially, the African connection to Islam) to me and my classmates as we traveled the El-Trains of Chicago.

The abuse I read about in Malcolm X’s autobiography (and the personally observed incidents of discrimination there) made me understand clearly that the American experience was an uneven one--due to unfairness and racism that has plagued the American experience for centuries.


TOLERANCE AND THE ISLAM TODAY IN THE GULF?

Suffice it to say: At times, the joyfulness of Islam as openly embraced by all races (as portrayed in the Malcolm X journey to Mecca and Medina in 1963) does still come to my mind as a fleeting reality while I have been living here in the Middle East on-and-off over the past decade.

Particularly during Ramadan, many people who are normally not particularly spiritual appear that way as they fast and then break the fast at night.

Moreover, as a witness to me—and other Christians--there is a lot of sharing of food with the poor almost every evening during Ramadan as well.

Kuwait and the other Gulf states consist of extremely large population of Muslims from as far away as Morocco, Syria, the UK, Somalia, Nigeria, Afghanistan, the Philippines, and Indonesia. During Ramadan, which ends with Eid al-Fitr, all these peoples of different backgrounds and experiences partake in the same rituals.

Many Kuwaiti and non-Kuwaiti Muslims invite other nationalities into their homes each evening during the Ramadan period.

Although I am not Muslim, I recall being in a small household with Muslims born in 6 or 7 different nations on several evenings over the past few years, as they enjoyed breaking their fast with others on Ramadan evening.

At a surface level in Kuwait, it appears that the only strong and threatening divisions in Islam do not exist.

On the other hand, normally there are obvious surface levels distinctions here, i.e. concerning the proper form to worship. For example, a Shia Muslims almost never goes to a Sunni mosque and vice-a-versa.

The Shias believe one way!

The Sunnis follow slightly different procedures!

This is very obvious in Kuwait where over 1/3 of the citizens of the land are Shia—and have ancestors or living relatives who speak or read Farsi.

At another level—with tones demonstrating great fear and intolerance--the differences between Shia and Sunni are claimed by some Kuwaitis and Gulf Arabs to be life and death issues.

It is often hinted or directly charged that, despite an apparent Shia-Sunni truce in Kuwait and in the other Gulf Arab states, many still worry about what would happen if there were no strong central authoritarian government or regime in the GCC states.

The Kuwaitis and neighboring Gulf citizens simply have to look across the border at Iraq since 2003 to observe a model that is causing a sense of foreboding in the Islamic world. In Iraq, religious strife verging on a xenophobia has bee occurring there in the years since the USA and its coalition created a political vacuum in central authority there.


RACISM AND ARAB INTOLERANCE TODAY IN THE GULF?

At another level, the Arabs and African Muslims who make up Kuwait and other Gulf state’s large ex-patriot working population demonstrates harmony among Muslims (and Arabs) exists in a fairly superficial way at times

This is symbolized for Westerners living here by the perspective and emphasis on skin tone color as observed in a land that less than 3 centuries ago was dominated by fairly dark skinned settlers—probably of African-origin. Even if a dark skinned leader comes forward in Kuwaiti politics, racial slurs are present here.

Further, in all the stores—including both the cheapest and the most expensive shops—skin lightening products are on sale in obvious display cases, revealing the fact that there exists a preference in the country of Kuwait to look as white as possible.

In a way, it is like the world that Malcolm X faced in Boston in the 1930s whereby he and other blacks went through painful treatments to get their frizzy hair straightened—so they could look white.


LOCAL MIDDLE EAST POLITICS AND RACIST LANGUAGE

Naturally, there are both dark skinned and light skinned Kuwaitis and other Arabs here. Luckily, at a formal level there appears to be no legal or overt discrimination based on skin in many public displays of harmony (like royal family postings & portfolios) and in much of the parliamentary representation in government.

This contrasts somewhat to other Gulf Arab states, such as Dubai, where dark-skinned leaders are virtually absence from the public image.

As a matter of fact, despite tribalism, in Kuwait there are Arabs to be found of whatever shade and eye color—blue-eyed, green-eyed or brown eyed.

This appears to be true at every level of wealth and power in the Gulf region and among various family and tribal groupings here.

Nonetheless, one hears even among Kuwaiti citizens racist comments and bad humor about the “African Kuwaitis” or the “Kuwaiti from Africa”. However, this demonstrates or manifests a less overt sort of racism that is heard by dark skinned Muslims in other many Arab and Islamic states.

For example, one African-born Muslim in Kuwait recently e-mailed a blog that is promoting an all out attack on what the author sees as Islamic roots of racism.

That blog calls Islam a racist faith. (Check out the blog if you’d like at: http://thingsoffensivetoislam.blogspot.com/2007/09/things-offensive-to-muslims-black-race.html ) This blog is from a Sudanese man, whose people are being persecuted in his homeland. So, naturally, he sounds angry and vindictive.

The author who writes the blog has some interesting links, but his tone and language choice is so anti-Islamic, I am certain that he will offend many readers—even if you agree to his views.

I bring up this blog, entitled “Things Offensive to Islam”, only because:

(1) I wanted to emphasize that the author of the blog is talking about racism cloaked in Islam. As a social scientist and educator, I feel there should be a distinction made between one’s religion and one’s racism to some degree. Equating the two—religion and racism--gets concerned peoples nowhere.

(2) I wanted readers to note, after perusing the blog and link, the comments about Arab media’s racism outside of the Gulf states, i.e. in 2007 Arab media permits much more overt racism than do most western press or media sources.

If one can move away from the issue of religion and focus more on the racism as used in a particular culture, we can likely discuss how to reduce or eradicate the racism.

Racism is related to the concept that one’s race or nation is superior and should have more rights and privileges than another.

Whereas, basing one’s claims to superior status (a) may or (b) may not be based on religion.


RACISM REVEALED IN HOW ONE TREATS OTHERS

Instead of focusing on language, let’s instead focus on how people treat one another based on race, tribe or nationality.

In this case, both Kuwait and the Gulf region are rife with racism. It is evident here by the way different races or nationalities are allocated certain jobs or how certain races or nationalities are given different pay for similar work.

For examples, it is well-known and easily observable that as a race or nationality, South Asians are at the bottom of the job and pay scales here in the Gulf. A typical Bangladeshi (usually Muslim) or Sri Lankan (usually Muslim) will likely be hired as a cleaner or as a maid. Naturally, there are also Filipina maids, too. All these laborers work 48 to 75 hours per week & will expect to earn in the second richest country in the world (Kuwait) about 110 to 200 dollars a week.

Meanwhile, people from more historically educated cultures, such as Lebanon, will be invited to become business partners with Kuwaitis.

Indians tend to be in-between. Some get well-paid or equally well-paid to westerners—most do not.

Europeans, Australians and Americans are top of the job and payment scales and have more opportunity to work in the country promoting their own businesses without having to answer all hours of the day to a Kuwaiti, who may or may not be qualified to be in the position he has been placed in.

This is the quasi-legal reality in Kuwait and other Gulf states today, even if the books (Kuwaiti legal labor codes) do offer protection from arbitrary and racist acts.

The fact is the enforcement of the legal codes in Kuwait that do, in fact, exist are seen as fairly non-existent in much of the private labor market in Kuwait. It is where Filipino engineers earning a mere 500KD per month for a 50 hour work week might find their wages cut—even as the oil prices rise around them.

Generally, in 2007, only Kuwaitis or people who can afford good Kuwaiti lawyers can find redress in the court. (This disproportionate access to good lawyers is not exclusive to Kuwait by any means. Even Japan has such a problem—as does the United States of America.)

Moreover, the wheels of justice roll slowly here in Kuwait and it may take many years to get the courts to fully be able to take on, prosecute and process cases. Naturally, by that time, many peoples who are victims of racism or other injustices have lost their employment or have been forced for other reasons to return to their homelands.


NON-“GULF ARAB” VICTIMS OF RACISM

I am an avid reader of the Kuwaiti Muna Al-Fuzai’s columns in the local English language papers. Al-Fuzai often takes up issues that appear to go quite unnoticed by most of her compatriots.

In a recent article, “Kaifi, Ana Kuwaiti”, Al-Fuzai takes on both the issues of racism and the lack of good parenting needed to fight racism in Kuwait.

Al-Fuzai explains, ““Kaifi, Ana Kuwaiti” means, “It means - it's up to me to do anything I want simply because I m a Kuwaiti!”

She adds with disdain, “I just can't bring, any country in the world, to mind, where the citizens attribute their abuses to being nationals.”

She asks, “ Now, why do parents want to have children?”

Al-Fuzai then gives her compatriots both barrels, “Why do they [Kuwaiti parents and adults] have them [children], take no responsibility in their upbringing, and then depend on others to care for them? This is a question that every man and woman need to ask themselves before procreating. This is a serious issue, especially for us Kuwaitis to ponder over, before just producing more and more children and leaving them at the mercy of the 'school of nature,' and not bringing them up in a real home with the proper education and morals.”

This is fairly tough language for Kuwaitis to raise with one another in the press. However, as a public school teacher in the USA, I have at times had to raise the same question—and with real concern.

Likewise, I would like to encourage Kuwaiti newspaper editorialists of all shapes, colors, and sizes to ask such questions not only of their brethren in Kuwait but of the Arabs in Sudan who have so provoked the author who created the aforementioned website: “Things Offensive to Islam”.

In any case, Al-Fuzai provides a concrete example of the hooliganism that young Kuwaitis who either end up going to jail on drug charges, get out f jail with parents help and/or whom become politicians later in life.

Al Fuzai narrates:“A couple of days ago I ventured out to a local supermarket at night time. . . . There was this group of Kuwaiti children who probably wanting to amuse themselves resorted to playing pranks on unsuspecting passersby. Their catch of the day at that late hour were some poor Bangladeshi workers who probably after toiling endlessly the entire day were dog-tired and waiting to board the last bus at the bus stop. They went on a warpath cursing, screaming, shouting, and pelting stones and empty bottles on those poor workers.”

She adds, “As if that was not enough when the bus finally arrived and as soon as the laborers boarded, they went on a rampage again and targeted the workers by throwing stones and bottles at the bus' windows smashing them to smithereens. And why not? Are these poor laborers human? For such hooligans they're nobodies. Probably this may not hold good if their parents were around, but then again I've seen many children resort to atrocities while their parents just tend to turn a blind eye. These poor miserable laborers bore the brunt of their attacks and took all the humiliation and insults without a word.”
When these hooligans ran out of arms, they then started verbally abusing and cursing them, their families and their country and finally spat toward their direction just before the bus moved on.”

On the one hand, I need to comment that I have been a passenger of a bus that has been under attack by Kuwaiti (sometimes claimed to be only “Bedouin”) teenagers—bored with life and abusive of the poor foreign labor, throwing rocks at bus on departure etc. I have had my own car hit by young and old Kuwaitis drives, too.

On the other hand, what Al-Fuzai does next has not been typical in this Arab society of people, some of whom hold tribes, bizarre concepts of honor, and national sovereignty to be far more important than God and religion.

Al-Fuzai confronted the Kuwaiti teenage bullies and demands to know why they are getting ready to throw rocks at the bus.

The young men asserted, “Kaifi, Ana Kuwaiti”—meaning I am a blue blooded Kuwaiti and I can do what I want.

Al-Fuzai responded, “You talk about blue blood as if it is royal blood but behave like scoundrels.”

Referring again to the phrase, “Kaifi, Ana Kuwaiti”, Al-Fuzai challenged, “"You don't have ten hands or four legs or a double sized brain to make you any superior. This term is used and abused here a lot and I don't really know from which sick people you got such an idea from. . . .”

Then, once again, Al-Fuzai turns to parents and responsible Kuwaiti adults of all stripes, “‘Kaifi,’ he said. ‘Kaifi, I'm a Kuwaiti!’ Voila! Whoever taught him that and whoever made him believe that events in life are shaped, designed and set to happen the way he deems fit? Is a particular nationality a tool to be used against others? When children and teenagers are involved in crimes, I feel sorry for them. The law punishes them but lets the real criminals go scot-free; the parents. This is my honest opinion and I sometimes wonder what will be the future of the next generation of Kuwaitis.”


COMING CIRCLE TO CHICHAGO

Back in Chicago in January 1983, I heard a story about old Mayor Richard J. Daley, who ran the Chicago political machine from 1955 through his death in 1976. (His son now runs the city.) The story was shared to me by another long-time Chicago resident to illustrate how blue-blood classes in America think.

In the tale that was told to me, during the Old Boss’s tenure as mayor, one of his children got in trouble with the law.

Tht child had obviously deserved to be arrested and sentenced, but old Mayor Richard J. Daley intervened to extract the child from the law and the consequences of his crime.

When challenged by his own Democratic party members on this extravagant manipulation of the legal code and system of justice in the city by the powerful mayor, Richard J. Daley simply replied simply, “I’m his father.”

[Luckily, a black man, Harold Washington defeated the younger Daley in two successive elections in Chicago in the 1980s. This popular black mayor rode the least-segregated coalition of neighborhoods in the city’s history to office each time. It was an era when Jesse Jackson was active PUSH in Chicago town. America’s “business as usual” in machine politics was temporarily halted.]

In short, there are classes of Americans who believe their blood is better than others and raise their children to believe that they are and should always be untouchable. Think: BUSH.

Sometimes this class of blue blooded beings ( we are talking about family and tribe here when we talk about blood) is a sort of racism that Americans need to recognize, just as we ask Kuwaitis, Saudis, Emiratis, Iranians and others in the Middle East to reform their crony systems and ask them to teach their children to do better.

Currently, in America, the Bush Dynasty has had the same approach to the peoples in the very nation in which they are embedded.

Neil Bush, the son of the former U.S. President and brother of the present one, has been let off scot-free in business hijinxes for decades—and the untouchability for BUSH family members remains to this very day. (I still don’t here our paid congressmen and senators calling for IMPEACHMENT.)

What kind of example is America setting in fighting racism and prejudice in the world today if it can do no better than the people of Chicago prior to 1983 in stopping blue-blooded political kings and kingmakers from repeating the follies and racism of their elders?

How can we demand rule of law from others when we ignore it at home? (i.e. Stop letting America be run by an untouchable old-style Chicago machine; elect a uniter like Harold Washington, don’t reelect the old should-be-fodder.)

It is great that the Middle East has Gulf Arabs, like columnist Muna Al-Fuzai, who can call a spade-a-spade when it comes to racism and talk about family’s as a root to the problem (just as the American right and left should do soul-searching about racism and failure to meet standards of behavior that hit the mark that our founding fathers set for us).

Let’s support Al-Fuzai and other concerned with improving our world at every turn.

Perhaps then, when the Arab states speak out on racism in places like the Sudan, they can do so with a clear voice (and clear conscience) and back up reform in all of the regions’ politics with real commitment to do better than their parents did in treating others and in raising their children.



NOTES

Al-Fuzai, Muna, “Kaifi, Ana Kuwaiti”, http://www.kuwaittimes.net/read_news.php?newsid=NTgxOTcwMjQ4

Haley, Alex, The Autobiography of Malcolm X—as told to Alex Haley, New York: Grove Press, 1965.

“Malcolm X—an Islamic Perspective”, http://www.colostate.edu/Orgs/MSA/find_more/m_x.html

“Things Offensive to Islam”, http://thingsoffensivetoislam.blogspot.com/2007/09/things-offensive-to-muslims-black-race.html

Urban Life Center Chicago, http://www.urbanlifecenter.org/