If there is a field in which Think Tanks show all their limitations, but also their common sensical and political power, it is when they are in one way or another involved with the Muslim world. In a majority of such cases, the engagement is aimed at sensationalism, where fear mongering  reigns  sovereign. While Think Tanks in the US and the UK (see the famous and controversial, tax-funded but recently in crisis, anti-terrorism Think Tank, Quilliam Foundation) have strongly  influenced the political system, their Australia counterparts are far behind them.

On 13 December 2012, one of these Think Tanks, Future Directions International,  has release a report called  Hizb-ut-Tahrir in Australia: Urgent Need for International Engagement and Counter-Narrative , authored by Mr Mirza Sadaqat. The six-page report concluded that:

The radical Islamist organisation Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HUT) could pose a socio-cultural threat to Australia in the short term. It may instigate an increased level of small-scale sectarian violence in the medium term and may indirectly instigate terror attacks by affiliated groups or individuals and create a deeply divided community in the long term.

It also emphasised how HUT is organized and active in 40 other countries and consequently Australia should coordinate with those countries to reinforce the preventive action against the short term HUT threat to the social-cultural life of the country. As part of the solution, the author pontificates that “moderate Islam, societal and cultural values and national identity may be some of the key notions underpinning a counter-narrative.”  Of course, the alarmist report attracted the attention of the mass media and HUT (yet still less than it would have in countries such as the US or the UK)

Here I do not want to discuss HUT Australia or in other countries (although I have research contacts in the UK, Indonesia, Malaysia, and even Singapore, where officially HUT does not exist), but rather the quality of the present report and ask some specific and relevant questions.

The first step in the evaluation of a report is often to question the methodology. The question is: what kind of methodology has Mr Sadaqat employed. Normally, the methodology is clearly stated in a report or analysis paper. Yet in this report, as in many others, this is not the case. Not one word. Hence, the second step is to check the sources (i.e. references) used in the paper. This can provide us with two elements: the methodology which we can perhaps derive deductively and the quality of the sources. Let’s observe the references of this analysis paper, as they are mentioned in the notes:

1. Bergin, A. and Townsend, J., ‘Responding to the Radical Islamist Ideology: The Case of Hizb-ut-Tahrir in Australia’, Policy Analysis, Australian Strategic Policy Institute: Canberra, 14 March 2007.
2. Neighbour, S., ‘Islamists With Caliphates on their Minds, Not Bombs on their Belts’, The Australian, 2 July 2007.
3.  O’ Brien, N., ‘Demand for Muslims to Speak Out’, The Australian, 30 July 2007.
4.  Kugelman, M., ‘Another Threat in Pakistan, in Sheep’s Clothing’, New York Times, 3 August 2012.
5. Phillips, M., ‘Jihadist Group a Threat to Us All’, The Australian, 6 July 2010.
6. Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, ‘The Security Environment 2011-12 and Outlook’. <www.asio.gov.au>

The first reference is to the work of another Think Tank and the others are to newspapers and a website. It is clear that the methodology is based on secondary sources, and the secondary sources are extremely weak.

So, what we are reading is not an analysis paper or a report, but rather an opinion piece that is no different to that which you may read on blogs, in forums or in the editorial section of newspapers and so forth. In the case of opinion pieces, what is relevant is not the methodology or the sources, but the reputation and expertise of writer. This invites us to check Mr Mirza Sadaqat’s credentials, from relevant qualifications to academic expertise.

Mr Mirza Sadaqat is, accordingly to Future Directions International, “a Senior Research Associate at the Bangladesh Enterprise Institute. He has a Masters in Security Studies from Macquarie University, Sydney and a Bachelor Degree from the University of Canberra.” Mr Mirza Sadaqat has some interest in  ”multilateral co-operation on non-traditional security issues in South and South-East Asia” and as we can read on another institutional webpage, he “has authored several articles on security issues in international and national publications.”  Mr Mirza Sadaqat has no PhD, but since he declares that he has published several articles in international publications, our next step is to check the quality and academic credentials of such publications. Today this task is very easy: one can start from the database Google Scholar by searching the author “Mirza Sadaqat”.

The result is surprising: there is not one single publication under such a name! Moreover, you can try other databases and the result is the same, zero. In this case, one can search beyond the international academic database and check the infinity of Google. Here you can find another piece from Mr Mirza Sadaqat, on the The Daily Star, published on 14 January 2012, titled Cyber-terrorism: Truth or hyperbole? Again the article is just an opinion, based on very weak, this time not even referenced, views. Then there are lots of traces left by Mr Mirza Sadaqat but none academic, international or even national.

The conclusion of our analysis is that Mr Sadaqat is not an expert in the field and has little knowledge, beyond a couple of newspaper articles and an old 2007 report published by another Think Tank, about the subject his writing about. The analysis and paper must be rejected since it would be substandard even for a level one course essay at any university.

Now the question is why a Think Tank like Future Directions International should trash its own reputation by publishing and disseminating, including to the press, such a weak “associated paper”. This is a very relevant question since the Think Tank deals with other very serious issues. Also why did they publish such a weak paper when they have no particular focus on Islamist threats (check the paper archives)?  Who is supervising the release of the papers? What quality assurance does this Think Tank have to avoid exactly this kind of damaging short report? Why not ask an expert to write the report or, even better, commission or sponsor  a proper research project on the topic?

These questions are not easy to brush aside. Future Directions International has universities such as Murdoch University, University of Western Australia, CURTIN University of Technology, and University of Notre Dame Australia among its sponsors.  Moreover the Board of Future Directions International has very reputable people sitting on it (among which many professors working in Australian universities) who are well acquainted with proper research conduct. Hence, I hope that they decide to review their internal policy for the quality assurance of their “associate papers”.

As an academic with more than a decade of research experience in fundamentalism, Muslim political groups  and movements,  I would strongly advise Future Directions International to withdraw the discussed “Associate Paper” they have published  so to avoid compromising  the quality of their information, publications and work.

In conclusion, as of today, there is no substantive and extended academic research on HUT Australia and consequently any ‘advice’ about the level of real threat or danger posed by such organization remains concealed in the files of Australian secret service and police reports. Yet we know that between the work of the intelligence services and the work of serious academic research there is a substantial difference and one cannot replace the other.  Academic research has (in the majority of cases) the benefit that it is public, clear in its scope and aims, and normally based on ethical, methodologically sound research.

Stealth jihadis use political, cultural, societal, religious, intellectual tools as a way to “replace Western civilization with a radical imposition of Sharia

The list of American anti-Muslim politicians, commentators and pundits is long and often all linked to the Christian Republican right. The most quoted are  Ann Coulter, whom invited a Muslim student to take a camel instead of a plane, Fox News personality Sean Hannity, whom drew a parallel between Islam and Nazism, Glenn Beck,  Daniel Pipes , as well as showbiz personalities such as the well known “Jihad watcher” and the “femme fatal” of  fear mongering, author of “Stop the Islamization of America“.

Forums, discussion boards, popular trash  literature (check Amazon.com) and scary statistics  show the fear that many Americans have of Muslims — so much so that 22 percent of Americans don’t want a Muslim as their neighbour.  This reveals to us the effectiveness of the above efforts to depict Muslims as the dark, silent, insidious threat ready to take over the US.

Yet much of the rhetoric, innuendoes and scare tactics collapse if a rational person makes himself or herself familiar with the simple facts. This statistical data depicts, as we shall see, a very different picture, one which may suggest that Muslims are a severely discriminated against and singled out minority in a fashion not dissimilar to that which the Jews suffered in 1920s-30s Germany (and much of Europe).

The Islamization of the US is apparently carried out by:

• a religious group whose population is  just 0.6% of all denominations
• a religious population that in one year has grown just 0.1%  compared to 0.2% grow of Mormons (that have even attempted to take over the White House!) and 0.6% of others
• a religious group who are divided (55% of Muslim men and 42% of Muslim women say that are not represented by any Muslim organization)
• a religious group of whom 14% never attend a religious function, 20% do so seldomly (so overall 34% are ‘secular’ in attitude), only 44% attend every week (1% only more than Catholics and Protestants and far from the 66% of Mormon attendance!) and that compared to other religions have the higher rate of non attendance (see Gallup report p.45)
• a religious group that is so trusting in the “American lifestyle” that it has the most positive views about the US economic future when compared to any other  (Gallup report pp.  13, 16,  18)
• a religious group that places the most trust in US democracy and its electoral system (For instance 57% of Muslims trust the honesty of elections compared to 40% of non-religious people, 44% of Protestants and 46% of Catholics surveyed, Gallup report p. 23)
• a religious group of whom 89% totally reject violent individual attacks (e.g. terrorism)  on civilians, so that only 11% justified them (all other surveyed religious had from 28% (Protestant) to 21% (Mormon) of members justify violent attacks on individual civilians (Gallup report p. 31)
• a religious group of whom 89% of members define themselves as loyal to the US (compared to 56% of Protestants, 59% of Catholics,  80% of Jews, 56% of Mormons, and 69% of non-religious people, Gallup report p. 35)

Although I always encourage a critical investigation of any statistics surveying “religion” as a group, the Gallup methodology is rather robust and the category wide enough to provide such a general picture. Surely this 0.6% of American Muslims appear to be part of the “American dream”, very  trusting of their country and, for instance, better integrated than many European or even Australian Muslims.

In 2012, the US suffered zero “Islamic” terrorist attacks and three terrorist plots have been detected. Yet the same country in 2012 suffered sixteen mass shootings, with at least 88 dead, of which 20 were children. Of course, the decision to not label these horrible masacres as terrorism is a matter of Machiavellian politics.  Indeed, the reactions of the US parents after the Newtown shooting was very much “terrorized” at a national level.

In the US the fear of Muslims is higher than ever, the agression stronger, and Muslims suffer increasingly common physical assaults as well as damage to their religious buildings.  The reasons for this is that, with a mere 0.6% of population, Muslims are rather rare in the US. People often do not personally know any ‘Muslims”, and so their impressions of Muslims are formulated  through the stereotypes offered by the mass media.

So, how come this 0.6% of seemingly integrated Muslims are mythologised as being so dangerous? One of the most commonly used arguments (and the one used against the Gallup survey) is that Muslims are a ‘mafia‘ working underground and through the great art of Taqiyya, or ‘dissimulation’. In other words, Muslims, all of them, lie about their real intentions.

In reality, Taqiyya is linked to Shi’a theology and it was used by the Shi’a minority to hide their Shi’a beliefs when among the Sunni majority. Now, some, such as Robert Spencer among others, use Taqiyya in a very different way. He suggests that all Muslims use it in all contexts to hide the real supremacist and dangerous aspects of Islam. Hence the idea of the secret mafia, the secret organization, the 0.6% of agents ready to infiltrate everything and take over the US… actually, even better, the entire world!

Of course, the misused and re-invented tool of Taqiyya is very useful since it assumes that whomever disagrees with the views of the anti-Muslim advocate is in reality a dangerous Muslim in Taqiyya disguise.  The list of such Taqiyya obscured Muslims (less lethal than terrorism but more dangerous than it)  is long and includes scholars, activists, politicians, and, yes, even the President of the US himself, Obama.

I said that today there is an increasing similarity between anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim attitudes. ‘The Muslim’ in the mind of many Americans is not the actual Muslim person walking the streets of America. Klug has argued that anti-Semitism means hostility towards Jews as ‘Jews’. In other words, the inverted commas tell us that the anti-Semites’ Jews exist only in the anti-Semites’ minds and not on our streets. Similarly, we can say that Muslim hate is hostility towards Muslims as ‘Muslims’. This is the first step towards a pernicious and dangerous way of thinking, an example of which we have just seen in the American anti-Muslim movement’s interpreation of the concept of Taqiyya.

We can refer to such dangerous distortions as “Muslim chimerias’, a term which is an adaptation from the work of a great scholar of anti-Semitism, Gavin Langmuir.  He argued that Anti-Semitism was progressive in its pernicious effects and that it manifested itself in three different stages, the first one being based on  ”realistic assertions”, where statements tends to focus on realistic aspects. In this case, it could be that Muslims are singled out for not being Christians, that Islam was not part of the US before Muslim immigration or before the use of slaves, or theological aspects, such as the fact that Muslims do not dink alcohol so they may participate less in common recreational activities, such as the after-work beer.

Then there is the second stage, the xenophobic one. In this case, if we wish to use Muslims as an example, the xenophobic stage is marked by stereotypes of which some have a “kernel of truth’. For instance, some Muslims reject western values, yet not all Muslims do so; some Muslims have been involved in terrorist plots, but not all Muslims are involved in terrorist plots and so on.

Finally, Langmuir suggests that there is a third and last stage, the one that can lead to extermination (and it did in 1933. Interestingly, the Jews were just  0.75% of the German population). This third stage involves what Langmuir (1990b: 334) calls  chimerias, which are something more dangerous than mere stereotypes since they are based on fables. Fables go beyond stereotypes since they represent the collective fear of ‘others’ rather than a simplification of characteristics that have a kernel of truth.

A careful analysis of the rhetoric of Internet websites, pundits, politicians and literature (see above) aimed to create fear of Muslims as ‘Muslims’ since 2001 can easily show a fast and steady progress towards the development of Muslim chimerias.   This is a potentially deadly situation –more deadly than it has already been, that is — and we must act to prevent further bloodshed.  There are  too many guns and impressionable people in the US to dismiss such possibility as hyperbole.

 The majority of those who died today were children, beautiful little kids between the ages of five and ten years old..They had their entire lives ahead of them, birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own.

The Newtown shooting has been a terrible tragedy, so shocking that it has reopened the debate about gun crime in a country with  300 million of them among a population of 311 million.  Could the massacre have been avoided? In the current situation, probably not. That school could have been anywhere, and the killer apparently acted out of his mind rather than out of a plan.Obama has children of his own and his sadness over the event is very real. He can, as he said more than once, empathise with the parents. He reminded his audience that parents can do everything, but there is no way to provide one hundred percent security for one’s own children. Things happen.

Yet not all ‘beautiful little kids’ are the same: some are ‘collateral damage’.

Mr Barack Obama, a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, has made a very similar decision to that of Mr Adam Lanza: to take joy, beauty, hope and life away from innocent children. The only differences are that Mr Lanza killed twenty children while Mr Obama’s Hellfire Missiles have killed 178 beautiful kids in Pakistan and Yemen (and still counting); Mr Lanza took his own life after his crimes and Mr Obama decided to run for President again, presenting his anti-terror strategy as a success.

To understand anthropologically the differences in reaction, we need to observe first the language used in describing drone victims. These victims would all be innocent for any western court since they are all, ‘collateral damage’ or not, extra-juridical executions and there is no possible appeal to the death-sentence. In this, indeed, drone operations are very similar to terrorist actions as they are based upon a decision to sentence people to death that is rooted in political, ideological and strategic justifications.

Let us observe the terminology: children have been purposely misidentified as ‘dogs‘ in order to help the operator of the drone to feel less guilty.  Then there is the famous ‘bug splats‘, and even, as adviser Bruce Riedel explained, a comparison of assassinations to gardening: ‘you’ve got to mow the lawn all the time. The minute you stop mowing, the grass is going to grow back‘.

Then the victims  are not counted, they are non-humans by definition; they do not exist, their lives and deaths dissolve in the flash of the Hellfire as does the stress  and trauma of living a life of fear, in particular for children. The fact is that we are not dealing with de-humanization, we are dealing with human obliteration in all meanings.

Compare the unknown names and faces of children killed by Obama’s drones with the well reported names and faces, life histories and videos of the victims in Newtown;  compare the stories of stress and pain among the Newtown parents with what we know of the parents who have lost children to drone strikes. Can you mention one single name? One single place? Can you close your eyes and see one single face of a child killed by drones? I suspect the answer is no. Yet Obama has approved all lists of extra-juridical killings. He knows that among the dead will be beautiful kids, yet something makes them different from those in Newtown, something makes them unworthy of public tears. How can such a sensitive man sleep at night knowing that he indirectly killed beautiful Fatima?

We do not know very much about empathy, but neuroscience has provided some important insights in such respect. Research shows that an essential aspect of it  is to perceive the other person as like the self. Also, research shows that contextual appraisal, group membership, in-group/out-group dynamics, personal beliefs may modulate empathic neuronal activation.

Furthermore, empathy often involves co-activations in networks associated with social cognition, depending on the specific situation and information available in the environment. In other words, what we call empathy is the product of a sophisticated neuro-mechanism based on an individual’s capacity to make sense, imagine and perceive the mental states of other people. There are strong evidences that we use the same neural circuits for making sense of ourselves and  others.  We literally feel others.

Yet Obama peacefully sleeps while drones  ’mow the grass’.  The reason is that Obama is sheltered from the pain, photos, names, ages, life histories of those children killed by the President’s drones. For Obama, this ‘collateral damage’ is comprised of faceless numbers, which are ‘dogs’ or ‘bugs’ for drone operators and, for certain advisors, the 178 children are ‘grass’.  The process is called de-humanization.

The similarity between Mr Lanza’s action and Obama’s drone policy is stronger than one might imagine. Both Mr Lanza and Obama have the capacity for empathising with other people, but like in a videogame, there are no people or ‘beautiful kids’ in the Newtown school or in Pakistani and Yemenite neighbourhoods: there are only targets.

Now the article, after presenting a photo gallery of notoriously controversial, and in some cases criminal, people identified as Muslims, goes on to introduce some recent scientific research published by Oxford University, which advances a new hypotesis in neurotrauma arguing that repeated traumatic brain injury may result in cumulative damage to cells of the brain. The article, through selective quotations, informs us that this produces memory loss and alters cognitive function so that the affected individual is prone to violence and fanaticism.

Finally, we know why Muslims are terrorists, why they protest violently, why they mistreat women, why they commit honor crimes and are dangerous people in general. It is Islam. Of course, we have heard similar accusations before from people like Robert Spencer. However, this article has moved the argument one step further by creating the missing link that was needed to finally demonstrate the deeply dangerous effects of Islam.

In this case, the argument is supported by science, by neurotrauma theories. Science, today, is the holy grail of populist truth. When simplified and made accessible to a general audience, science can become a very powerful weapon since a majority of readers are likely to buy the argument without too much pause.    Many would not have the time, patience (much of scientific literature  can be rather long-winded or difficult for a non-specialist to follow), or will to read the linked literature and reflect on its application in any given article. Moreover, from our days at school, we have been taught to trust science and not to question it.

So, are millions of Muslims really brain damaged by Islam?  Of course not. The article misuses neurological research and provides misinformation about Muslim practices and Islam. Indeed, it is very simple to deconstruct this piece.

We start from the claim that millions and millions of Muslims have zebibah.  It is interesting to notice that academic literature about zebibah is practically inexistent. Yet for sure Muslim haters have paid more attention to the ‘prayer bump’ than academics (eg. here and here). Although the ‘pious mark’ can be seen among some Muslims in Egypt, it is rather unusual in other parts of the Muslim world, and very rare in Southeast Asia (the most Muslim region of the world).  Personally, I have never seen a woman with a zebibah and after asking some informants, they confirmed that women tend not to have it. An article in the New York Times shows that zebibah is fashionable in Egypt as a marker of piousness, that in certain contexts may be useful (to find a good wife, or a job or be respected as an imam and so on).

The Times article also mentions something very relevant. It sugests that some Muslims in Egypt may ‘facilitate’ zebibah by forcefully pressing their foreheads on the carpet during the prayer. Yet it is also alleged that some may ‘sandpaper’ the spot on their foreheads. I was not aware of sandpaper, but instead I remember being told more than once of other practices to ‘darken’ the skin on that spot.  Indeed, as part of a correct prayer, Muslims should not, and do not, ‘smash’ their heads against the floor during sujud.

Even if a person were to perform five prayers a day as well as non- obligatory prayers, the time needed to develop the zebibah would be substantial. Indeed, it is something rarely seen even in old men and in the case of Shi’a, who perform sujud with their foreheads against a piece of clay, I have almost never seen a zebibah.  So, can zebibah be used to detect, as some seem to believe, overly pious, or even fanatic, Muslims? Well, just check Khomeini or bin-Laden’s forehead and you may conclude that: 1) they were not pious, or 2) the zebibah has more than one explanation, including the possibility of make-up (some even told me about applying shoe polish to ‘darken the spot’!)

After exposing this point, I can also show that assuming that the Muslim prayer produces brain damage is a rather difficult allegation to make and also that to do so scientifically we would need much more data. The link provided to sustain the theory of the Muslim prayer causing the zebibah and ensuing mild traumatic brain injury (rMTBI), that would in turn cause Muslims to be stupid and violent, provides example such as:

In contact sports such as boxing and some martial arts [...] In collision sports, like soccer, ice hockey, rugby and American football [...].

Now, this is the level of impact spoken of. Other than in the case of a gravely mentally ill person, we cannot seriously imagine any Muslim in prayer knocking his or her head against the floor hard enough to create injuries like those sustained during boxing, martial arts or rugby!

The other reason for which the scientific paper was misused in a less than innocent way is that science, of course, should be based only on mesurable, experimental facts. One of the main problems of the popularization of neuroscience is the Pindaric flights that it allows to non-experts. In this case, not only does the paper present a hypothesis (so it may be incorrect or at least there is not enough evidence at present to consider it a fait accompli) but also the application of it to the case of zebibah implies a need for some testing.

As usual when commentators speak of Muslims, they seem to suggest that the entire Muslim population of this planet pray five times a day, fast for Ramadan, and follow a strict personal Shar’ia to the point of obsession.  Let me destroy the myth: few Muslims go to mosque and even fewer pray all five prayers. To assume that millions  of Muslims pray so intensely and with such ardor that they risk causing themselves rMTBI is rather ridiculous.

In contrast to previous blatant anti-Muslim arguments and campaigns, where Muslims have been presented as violent, stupid, barbaric, dangerous, and in particular irrational cultural objects (cf. some good examples here), in recent years, as in this case, I have observed change in sophistication and argument. Indeed, in the case of traditional anti-Muslim arguments, culture had the most relevant role.  The below diagram summarises this relationship.

Muslims are seen mainly as expression of culture, and in this case one controlled by the symbols of Islam, as expressed within the Qur’an. Such a cultural essentialist position suggests that all Muslims interpret the Qur’an in the same way, or at least that Islam has the symbolic power to induce a certain collective behavior which reduces the individual to his or her religion (i.e. cultural expression). Of course, as I suggested in one of my books,  not only does this approach reduce humans to cultural objects, but it is also constructed upon a serious mistake of logical typing.

Yet certainly, as we have seen in the discussed article, a new pernicious line of argument, which attempts to provide a scientific link to the culturalist stereotyping process, has appeared. A careful analysis will show, however, that even pseudo-scientific arguments have in reality the same culturalist reductionism at heart. Indeed, the new ‘scientific’ argument suggests:

In this case, as the figure shows, culture remains essential in the definition of what is human. Indeed it is Islam, through its cultural practice, that shapes even the most ‘human’ part of the Muslim: his or her brain. The central element here is in any case “abnormality”, which is finally explained scientifically instead of humanistically.

Of course even this time, as in the previous model, we have two problems: one is the fact that Muslims are not cultural objects so, for instance, they pray in different ways, with different styles, with different degrees of passion and in many cases, they do not even pray at all. Muslims are not defined by Islam, and again the above idea of ‘Muslim’ as being the essence of a person is nothing other than a severe mistake of logical typing; one unfortunately that is also spread by the misleading presentation of scientific research.

The desperation of a Palestinian mother

Today many Palestinians and people believing in justice and the right to self-determination are celebrating the overwhelming vote to recognise Palestine as a non-member state. This was a clear message that the world (or at least the UN represented world) sent to the US, Israel and allies that enough is enough. Indeed, had the UN been a real democratic organization without historically dictated (hence old) rights of veto, Palestine would today be a recognised nation. Surely, morally, humanly, and in the name of justice, this is news to celebrate. It also shows the extent to which the US, with few acolytes left, and Israel, with probably even fewer, are geopolitically isolated.

Israel and the US opposed the bid to the UN, albeit for different reasons.  The US knew the future plans of the Zionist government and knew that a victory of the Palestinians would in this case make the peace process very difficult – and a difficult peace process would mean a longer entanglement in the Middle East mess for the US. Israel in reality hoped that the Palestinian bid would succeed since, as we will see below, this buys time for the Zionist government’s ultimate aim: a fully, socially, politically, religiously and in particular demographically Jewish state that nobody can question in its ethnic essentialism.

Now, to understand the process that allows the Zionist government to achieve such essentialism we need to look where few people, even scholars, would look. It means to look at demography, lies about it, and in particular that which I call dirty demographic strategies of war and oppression.

Let me start from an apparently (and we will see why apparently) disconnected  anecdote.

Freiburg, Germany: 26th of September, 2007, at the XXX. Deutsche Orientalistentag,  I met an Israeli scholar who focussed on terrorism between one panel and another. He told me that he had worked for the IDF in past years and now he was in one of the Israeli universities. The conversation was more of a monologue than dialogue and he appeared to feel as if he needed to explain the reasons for “Zionist Israel,” as he called it. Yet to my surprise, the reasons were not about counter-terrorism mesures, or why Israel needs to imprison children without trial, why it needs target killing, or human shields or routinely suffocates the everyday lives of ordinary Palestinians.

Rather, he entertained me with demographic statistics: births and deaths of the Jewish population in Israel and in the settlements as well as births and deaths of the Palestinians (and Arabs in general). Surely he was a very well informed guy. To be honest, at that time, the statistical showoff and argument bored me not little. However, the Israeli scholar uttered something that soon caught my attention:

Periodically Israel will have to trim the Palestinian tree in one way or another – such as with military operations, which may not make sense at the level of strategy but make sense in the demographic war. To win such a war, we need to make the life of Palestinians so difficult so that they leave our [i.e. their] land; cutting them off from water and so on. Yet the military actions are the most effective. If you have “imprecise” targets and this is done by bombing, for instance, so called “symbolic targets”,  you will kill probably women and children, and that has not only a psychological effect causing more people to migrate but also it has a direct demographic impact  because they have a high number of potentially fertile women.

I felt disgusted by what he said.  His words were made even more appalling by their nonchalant and calm, clinical delivery. As offensive and incendiary as his words were, however, it was clear that entering into an argument would prove futile.  He believed himself to be perfectly “moral” in his claim over what he considered Biblically gifted land.

Years passed and I forgot his revolting words until the recent Israeli operation against Gaza proved to be a tragic reminder. The reason for this was that the IDF operation (mainly air strikes, mortars and battle ship missiles pounding the Gaza enclave to stop the rather ineffective rockets launched from Gaza) made no military sense.

Gilad Sharon, son of the famous Ariel, noticed in an op-ed contribution, for totally different reasons to mine, the futility of such “incomplete” operations, and, in true rightwing Zionist style, suggested,

This must not be allowed to end as did Operation Cast Lead: We bomb them, they fire missiles at us, and then a cease-fire, followed by “showers” – namely sporadic missile fire and isolated incidents along the fence… There is no middle path here – either the Gazans and their infrastructure are made to pay the price, or we reoccupy the entire Gaza Strip. Otherwise there will be no decisive victory. And we’re running out of time – we must achieve victory quickly.

Hugely nasty, surely immoral, against the Geneva convention, definitely involving war crimes; yet none of the above has ever stopped Israel from committing a seemingly endless list of potential  human rights violations and war crimes, all justified under the label of “self-defence”–a label that, in our contemporary world, has become an excuse for many indefensible actions. Nonetheless,  Gilad Sharon said what a military strategist would have suggested in order to end once and forever the rocket fire: invasion or making the enemy pay too high of a price to continue.

Israel, a country that can do just about whatever it pleases in the region with limited international consequences, could have taken drastic actions to close the match with Hamas. Yet the careful observer will notice that Israel always stops short of the Armageddon. Theoretically, also considering the help of the US, it would not be so difficult to get rid of Hamas, replace it with a more ‘domesticated’  Palestinian  Authority, and finally achieve the two state solution that many suggest would bring peace to the region. By contrast, Israel seems to facilitate potential conflicts, retaliations from Hamas and, at the same time, delay and compromise any possibility of a real long lasting peace with the Palestinians.  Why?

The answer appears to come from demography, real and imagined, as well as its real and imagined consequences. Unfortunately, we do not have very good demographic statistics for Palestine but what we have can help to understand the endless conflict, one that I doubt at the present will have any real solution soon.  I will not discuss in detail the demographic situation and the above link provides a good source of information. Also I do not think I need to provide further evidence (but here is another one  if you need) of the centrality that this demographic discourse has in the conflict.

Yet let me mention a very good analysis provided by Aslak Berg in 2009. In particular, after discussing birth rates (he avoided discussing death rates that are also a very relevant factor, particularly considering the military actions), he concluded that a Zionist government, in order to achieve a secure and ethnically “clean” Jewish state, should :

• Withdraw from Gaza as much as possible since without the Gaza strip, the Jewish majority in Israel and the West Bank seems secure (again if emigration and fertility decline continues)
• Continue supporting the settlements to secure as much land as possible and help encourage Palestinians to emigrate.
• Delay a solution as much as possible in order to see if the demographic winds continue to turn in Israel’s favour.
• Encourage Palestinian division and the gap between Gaza and the West Bank
• If demographic trends do not continue, and there is an uptick in Palestinian births, only then give up most of the West Bank to secure a Jewish majority

And indeed this is what the Zionist government of Israel has been and is doing (including, however, working on the “acidental” trimming of defensive IDF operations). Yet Aslak Berg is also very right when he noticed in the same post that,

“most Israelis aren’t religious Zionists, but in the end, these are the only ones in Israel who know exactly what they want and how to get it so they end up setting the agenda for all of Israel.

At the end of the day, the plan is clear: continue the slow but persistant building of settlements in Gaza and the West Bank and normalize such process to the level of absorbing most of it. On the other hand, if during the Mubarak era in Egypt the idea was to leave Gaza as the only real Palestinian State, with the Brotherhood in Egypt, Israel dreams of transforming Gaza into an Egyptian problem and Egyptian controlled territory.

Now we can come back to today’s vote, celebrations and what I would define (for different reasons than the US) a terrible political mistake, which will likely be one of the many that have marked the history of this conflict and land. Israel today has won an important excuse: it can argue that the Palestinians wish to impose a peace that ought to be local, i.e made between Israel and Palestine, through international pressure.

This provides an excuse to stop peace talks with the only entity the international community wanted Israel to have: the Palestinian authority. Finally months will pass, if not years, and the West Bank will be slowly but steadily consumed. The demographic fear will still be used and Gaza will remain the open-air prison that it is, until even the Gazan people will see Egypt as the best solution or at least the lesser evil, particularly if the Brotherhood maintains power and the Islamification of Egyptian politics continues.

The trimming (read destruction) of Palestinian trees, livestock, infrastructure and future generations–through the killing of children (known as colateral dammage), the destruction of  children’s psychological well being and through  migration– will continue with ease thanks to today’s resolution.

In this resolution, there are only two real winners: Israel, for the reasons explained above, and Abbas,  whom with this success  has saved his political leadership at the expenses of those dancing today in the streets of Palestine.

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Hence what I discuss here only concerns Sydney and what happened here (although I do not say that some points of my argument below cannot be extended to other protests, including those of a different nature).

Before I discuss anthropologically last week’s event, let me point to something extremely relevant. Recent statistics suggest that Muslims in New South Wales number 140,097, out of a total state population of 7.2 million.

Of the Muslims living in New South Wales, most of whom live in Sydney City and surrounding suburbs, only about 200 Muslims decided to take part in the protest, and of these the violent protesters numbered less than 30 men. In all, then, only 0.01% of the Muslim community of New South Wales and 0.007% of the entire Australian Muslim population (which is composed of 281,578 individuals) took part in the protest.

Now if we statistically look at the percentage of the violent protesters, we find that they were 15% of the Muslims present at the improvised march, 0.002% of Muslims living in New South Wales and 0.001% of the Muslims in Australia — a real micro presence, comparable to a sub-atomic particle.

Now let’s notice another statistically relevant fact before I start to discuss my understanding of the event in detail: as you can read here

The Muslim population in Australia is a relatively young group with 58.6 per cent aged 29 years and under (compared to 39.9 per cent of the total Australian population aged 29 years and under).This is largely due to the Australian-born Muslims, mostly second generation Australians, where 81.8 per cent are under 25 years.Overseas-born Muslims tend to be in the 25–44 year age group (45.6 per cent) which is consistent with their recent arrival in Australia.

I have written extensively elsewhere about how those communities with a high number of young people under the age of 30 have a statistically higher percent presence in criminal statistics (with assault and other similar crimes being the most represented). The Muslim communities in Australia have one of the highest percentages of youth under 30 years old that we can find in the West. Unsurprisingly, the majority of those whom have been arrested at the protest were minors (aged between 14-17 years old) and young adults (18-23).

Now that we have a clear statistical picture of those involved in the improvised protest and in its violence, I can start discussing my title and what I consider to be the real causes of such riots. As many of my readers know, I am not fond of ‘culture’ as an entity detached from a more complex environmental and biological reality.

As I have explained in many other posts and most of my anthropological work, for the purpose of analysis, I consider Islam (as any another religion) to be a label and not a ‘thing’ that can act or has a ‘mind’ of its own. Hence, according to my stance, any attempt to explain what happened through ‘texts’ (i.e. Qur’an, hadiths) or stereotypical representations of culture is wasted time at best, ideology at worst, and mistakes of logical typing for sure.

What Sydney saw (beyond the rhetoric) on its streets is something more common than many would assume: think about alcohol related violence (including absurd homicides), but in particular the phenomenon of sport hooliganism (for more recent events, see here and here): young people, rage and violence. Among hundreds whom may protest peacefully there are always those whom will use violence or act violently.

The micro-minority whom did so last Sunday can be defined as ‘hooligans of Islam’ since, as I discuss below, the in-depth (so in-depth to involve neurons, hormones and genes)   explanations for their acts are the same that recent studies of sport hooliganism have found.

Research has strongly linked impulsive behavior (including violent outbursts) to the brain chemical serotonin and its sister substance 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid, or 5-HIAA. Serotonin and 5-HIAA act as a kind of brake to impulsiveness, so the lower the levels of these chemicals, the more prone a person would be to act without thinking. Researchers have discovered that a specific gene, called Pet-1, plays a critical role in the development and proper functioning of the brain’s serotonin system (see Hendricks TJ, Fyodorov, DV 2003)

Although serotonin is a major neuro-transmitter involved in aggression, it’s not the only element that can explain why some people react violently, in particular under certain circumstances and in some environments (e.g. protests). Hormones may also play a role, although Coccaro, for instance, has not be able to find a positive correlation between levels of the steroid hormone testosterone and aggression (contradicting much of popular science).

Yet bio-chemistry and genes are only part of the story and by themselves do not determine whether an individual is impulsive or aggressive. We need to look at the environmental factors, which means the quality of parenting, possible brain damage, diet and even, as we will see below, exposure to chemical and metal pollution. Very recent studies show that parenting has an impact on the development of the serotonin system, which develops during childhood. This is the reason for which kids who are severely punished or who witness aggression or parental dysfunction are more likely to exhibit aggressive behavior later in life.

Yet not all children with a difficult childhood, or with violent parents, become impulsive or violent. Indeed, the interaction between environment and genes is far more complicated. So, in a recent study, Caspi and colleagues studied a large sample of children from birth to adulthood to find out why some children who were mistreated did not develop anti-social behaviors or violent attitudes. They found that children with a genotype conferring high levels of MAOA (monoamine oxidase A, an enzyme which breaks down dopamine and norepinephrine which may provoke aggression) where less likely to act violently than those with a genetic profile that facilitate lower levels of MAOA.

It is not only the social environment (i.e. family problems, bad parenting, and so on) but also our natural environment and how we are destroying it through pollution that clearly has an impact. Studies have demonstrated that elevated bodily burdens of lead interferes with synapse formation, lowers serotonin levels, and increases dopamine sensitivity. Hence they have been able to show a strong link between the effects of lead and violent and anti-social behavior.

I was intrigued by the research, and as we know in Australia the level of violence in the street (for whatever reason) has increased in the last decade, so I decided to check the level of lead in the blood of younger generations of Australians. Interestingly enough, the correlation is again positive (and if you are Australian and you wish to know how much lead you have in your blood, read here).

Therefore, in the same way that hooliganism is not caused by football or soccer per-se, so too were last Sunday’s riots not caused by Islam or even Muslims as  a category, but rather by some individuals whom ‘feel to be Muslim’ and perhaps had genotypes conferring high levels of MAOA, together with the consequent low levels of serotonin and 5-HIAA, and perhaps also with a prefrontal cortex that is smaller or less active due to several social-environmental reasons, including the polluted air and land we have created ourselves in this otherwise peaceful, beautiful and multicultural country called Australia.

It is rather interesting to notice, however, that this incident is incredibly similar in dynamics to the Anti-Muslim riots in 1997. Indeed, even in 1997, the Buddhist-Muslim rioting broke out in Mandalay over allegations that a Muslim man raped a Buddhist girl. In retaliation, Buddhist monks set fire to Muslim neighborhoods and the riots started.

Another important similarity is the political environment in which this riot took place: the perceived risk by Buddhist monks that their power could have been threatened. Similarly, today, Aung San Suu Kyi’s international visibility after her European trip and her official debut in parliament may be perceived by the Burmese Buddhist sangha as a real, and one of the most serious, threat to their undisputed authority in Burma.

There are several newspaper articles and reports that explain the current situation. I will not discuss the riot per-se here, but rather the deeper causes and dangers. Indeed, despite the many analyses we can find in the mass media about what is happening in Burma, I have noticed a lack of reference to a deeper and more problematic reality of the Burmese society which goes far beyond the horrible treatment of Rohingya. Very few readers, for instance, may know that all ethnic minorities and non-Buddhists are discriminated against and persecuted in Burma, often through an amalgam of ethno-racism  (skin color matters a lot in Burma, see for instance the use of the term “kalar” to refer to ‘black’ or even ‘slave’) and religious persecution.

To provide another case of discrimination and persecution of minorities and non-Buddhists, probably even less known than the Rohingya, I can mention the Christians amongst the Karen, Karenni, Chin and Kachin ethnic groups. As for the Muslims, they have been force-converted, their places of worship, as in the case of mosques, transformed into Buddhist temples, and they have been attacked during their religious festivities.

Like in the case of the Rohingya, many people in Burma reject acknowledging them as part of the nation. The impression is that today Burma is embracing western democracy more for economic convenience than as an indication of any real acceptance of what democracy is and I am unsurprised that a relevant part of Aung San Suu Kyi’s democratic party fully support the deportation and discrimination of Muslims and Christians.

Many commentators in the west have argued for the alleged lack of division between Church and State in Islam and the consequent impossibility of real ‘secular’ (notice the difference between ‘secular’ and ‘secularism’) institutions. Buddhists in Burma (but see also Thailand) are surely less vocal in their opposition to the secular but are more effective in maintaining an anti-secular institutional structure.

Buddhism, or better the Burmese sangha, retains the real hegemonic power, even though indirectly (compared to Iran where the clergy is directly involved in politics). Whomever wishes to understand this phenomenon in Buddhism, should read Stanley Tambiah’s work ‘Buddhism Betrayed? Religion, Politics, and Violence in Sri Lanka carefully.

Monks are revered and without their support political life is impossible in Burma. Indeed, people who wish to engage in politics or simply wish to improve the chances of a better rebirth have to engage in an exchange with monks, who receive material benefits and enlarge spiritual returns for the current (read social status) and future life.

Through this process some monks and monasteries become increasingly influential and powerful. Hence Tambiah refers to such an exchange as a totalizing cultural system, including power, history and economy. Buddhism in Burma is a cultural space in which the tension between hegemonic power struggles take place, yet the space in itself is not challenged so that Buddhism is not just a religion or one of the religions but rather represents an ideology: the only one in which people can define themselves as Burmese.

In other words, Khun Sulak , in When Loyalty Demands Dissent, has correctly noticed

The difference is between Buddhism with a capital “B” and buddhism with a small “b”… When it becomes an institution, however, the church and state develop into something strong. You identify yourself with that religion. You identify with your nation. It becomes chauvinistic and exploitative. Sometimes it becomes capitalistic  (p. 257).

While the Burmese president told the UN that refugee camps or deportation was the “solution” for nearly a million Rohingya Muslims, Aung San Suu Kyi defined Rohingya ‘permanent residents’.  I have previously expressed my skepticism that Aung San Suu Kyi would change anything about the condition of the Rohingya (or the Christian minorities). The reason is that she, as a politician, has decided to work within the same anti-secular context as the military junta. In other words, Aung San Suu Kyi has to negotiate, as any other political figure, her real power with the same Burmese Buddhist sangha which in many respects fear her.

We have to notice that the link between Buddhism and nationalism in Burma is incredibly similar to the 1930s relationship that Fascism and Nazism had with Christianity in Europe, or Islam (or even Judaism) in Egypt and Palestine: only in this case the Buddhist sangha has the last word at least about the rules of the political game.

Hence, secularism, or better the lack of it in hegemonic or even counter-hegemonic positions in Burma, is the fundamental reason for that ethno-Buddhist racism which is expressed as religious persecution. Without a deep change in the habitus of the majority of Burmese Buddhist people, the president’s dream of a total deportation of the Rohingya may become reality.

Yet we know very well how other ‘final solutions’ based on the deportation of an entire population (also defined as alien) ended. Maybe during her visit to Europe, Aung San Suu Kyi should have stopped for a moment of deep reflection at Auschwitz.

The main discussion tends to be integration. Muslims are tested and re-tested about the state of their integration, even when they have been an integral part of a country for three or more generations. A recent example of this kind of exercise has been conducted by Dr Nandi from ISER and Lucinda Platt, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Millennium Cohort Study at the Institute of Education, University of London, whom have used new information collected as part of a major household survey called Understanding Society. The research, which examines how British people feel about their nationality, has revealed that people from ethnic minority backgrounds identify more closely with Britishness than their white counterparts. Among these, high is the sense of Britishness among Muslims in the UK as other surveys and statistical data show.

However, other surveys have suggested a radically different picture: a 2009 poll  showed that 32 percent of Muslim students in 30 universities across the UK believe killing in the name of religion is justified; 40 percent want Muslims in the country to be under the Sharia law; 40 percent feel it is unacceptable for Muslim men and women to mix freely; and 24 percent do not think men and women are equal in the eyes of Allah, the conclusion being that Muslims are not integrated. Another survey suggests that Muslims in the UK are less tolerant than others in Europe, at least as far as homosexuality is concerned.

Now, I do not dispute the methodology of these studies. I am sure that in the majority of the cases they tend to be statistically correct. My concern is deeper: I wonder what these tools are measuring and whether academics should engage in the ‘are Muslims one of us?’ diatribe. Before I introduce some of my theoretical observations, let me share with you what I have learnt about ‘integration’ as an anthropologist.

We need to reanalyze the word ‘integration’. The word derives from the Latin integrate, “to make whole”. If so, today the UK, as many other western countries, are certainly not ‘integrated’ countries. Yet the reality is rather different and we can suggest a better definition: integration is a political ideology aimed at the absorption, through non-violent means and through a slow process, of the minorities within the majority’s hegemonic model of lifestyle and worldview.

Nonetheless even this definition is unsatisfactory for one reason: integration is a process and not a thing, and as such it cannot be measured with one single variable. Furthermore, ‘integration’, far from being static, is affected by temporal dynamic aspects and, even more so, by space.

Hence ‘integration’ has three dimensions: social connectivity, temporal dynamics and space. In other words, integration, whatever it may mean in its multi-dimensional variables, has a minimum denominator defined by how people interact, where and when. People integrate in the place where they live and not within an idea; people integrate as part of being there in the community, people are affected by the local reality. In other words, you never integrate into a nation (which is a label and idea) but rather into communities.

This bring us to a conclusion: all people are integrated as a process and a lack of integration can only be achieved though a voluntary act of resistance. It is not a surprise that the majority of Muslims are integrated, and sometimes so well that they are affected by the same health, mental health and social issues as the majority of the British, American and Australian (just to mention countries I know) majority population.

This brings me to the first important observation about using surveys and polls to ‘measure’ the Muslim population and their ‘integration’ or lack of it, within a nation. The majority of these surveys do not measure integration as defined above, but rather opinions, often related to personal beliefs, creeds and cultural traditions. We can take for example the question about Shari’a. The question is often presented in these terms: “Do you support the introduction of the Shari’a in ….” . It is not difficult to understand that the answer will derive from the interviewees’ personal belief and from what they have to answer as “good Muslims”.

A good Muslim (or one whom wants to be perceived as such by the majority of his peers)  should believe that the Shari’a is the best of laws and should express confidence in that belief. Yet this does not mean that the same person rejects–in his or her everyday life–the British law. Questions like the one above about Shari’a  are no different to asking attendees at a Conservative Party convention if the death penalty should be reintroduced . You would not be surprised if more than 50% answer in the affirmative. Death penalty is against British (or Australian) law and values and is rejected as inhumane by the majority of the population. Should we challenge the ‘integration’ of such conservatives?

My point is that these surveys do not determine integration but rather opinions, emotions, feelings and perceptions of what people think is the correct answer to avoid cognitive dissonance. The measure of integration, if really we plan to do it, can only be understood through observation (observing people’s interactions with others, in their working places, and so on). It is actions and not words that provide an answer to the question.

Therefore, going back to Dr Nandi and Prof Platt’s study, we have to acknowledge that it only suggests  that Muslims (in reality Indians, Black Africans, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Middle Easterners)  have answered on a national survey, often administered by a white person, that they identify with Britishness. This shows, according to the study as well as the newspaper reporting it, that Muslims are integrated. Let me clarify some points:

1. The survey was based on ethnicity and religion
2. It says that Muslims (from Indians, Black Africans, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Middle Easterners) identify more closely with Britishness than their white non-Muslim counterparts
3. It concludes that the expression of patriotism means that these Muslims are integrated

Again, to an attentive eye, problems appear:

1. What kind of Muslims?
2. Should we assume from the study that white Muslim converts identify less closely with Britishness and if so, should we, as it seems, adduce this to the fact that they are white?
3. What is the relationship between patriotism and integration? For instance, Nazi supporters in the UK are extremely patriotic yet they are surely not integrated citizens.

At the end of the day, the survey and polls approach to the discussion of Muslim integration suffers from what Gregory Bateson has defined as a mistake of logical types:

A) No class can be a member of itself. In our case the class that is comprised of all the real Muslims in the world is, itself, an immaterial logical concept that must not be confused with the Muslims themselves that live in our streets.

B) Similarly, a class of classes cannot itself be one of the classes which are its members.That is, the class of, say, Bangadeshi, Pakistanis, Middle Easterners, or even white British (which will be comprised of the classes of Muslims, Christians, Atheists and so on) must not be confused with the class of Muslims—even though the class of Muslims is one of the classes that it contains.

C) Possibly the most relevant and important of all in our context: a name is not the thing named. Bateson says that this is the mistake of eating the menu card instead of the meal. He means that we must not confuse the name we give to an entity (“Muslims,” “Arab,” “Pakistani,” “citizen,” “integration and so on) with the real existent thing or the concept itself

C) The term “logical type” represents orders of abstraction: the class of Muslims is of the same logical type (order of abstraction or generality) as the class of non-Muslims. The class of all citizens would be of a higher (more general) type than the class of Muslims or the class of non-Muslims.

Any contradiction of these logical categories is a mistake of logical types. Unfortunately such mistakes are not mere mistakes in logic, but rather they have an impact upon on our life and policies. Next time try to read these kinds of surveys purporting to test the integration, or lack of it, of Muslims in terms of logical types and more often than not you will see they are affected by quite serious errors.

However, as an anthropologist studying  Muslims I have some questions about this video. Most notably,  in the video he performed a prayer which, for some very simple reasons would have been considered invalid traditionally. Hence, theologically speaking, this  performance might be just that: a performance.

As an anthropologist I prefer not to go into theology in detail, but I will note that one of the aspects that characterizes the Islamic prayer is an emphasis on ‘purity’, which is not only applied to the person praying (clean clothes, performance of the required ablutions, no contamination in the mouth or other  parts of the body, no contact with food and so on) but also to the place where the prayer is performed.

In other words, Muslims should not pray where there is even the slightest suspicion that the environment  is unclean or polluted,  even by substances that we cannot perceive. The purity aspect goes so far that it becomes metaphysical: Muslims cannot pray in the direction of a toilet even if this might be the correct location pointing towards Mecca. This is the reason for which Muslims take their shoes off when entering the mosque and lay a prayer mat, even in their own homes, before performing their prayer.

Also Muslims should not pray, even symbolically, to anything other than Allah (God). It is not rare to see Muslims laying a paper tissue infront of them or moving a chair to create a neutral space, if there is the risk of performing the prayer facing other people. The space in the direction of prayer should be ‘pure’ both biologically and theologically. There are also other rules, at least for Sunni Muslims, like gender segregation (or at least division or structured position, i,e, women behind men, children in-between the two genders) that need to be respected for a prayer to be considered valid.

Yet the student was praying on a stadium pitch.  I am sure that whoever has played  a sport in a stadium would agree that a pitch is anything but clean. So, according to the tradition that most Muslims follow, it can be argued that the student has performed an invalid prayer. Furthermore,  some scholars would suggest that praying in such a context (a public, secular, or at least a mixed non-Muslim and Muslim environment) may have been less than acceptable or could have been avoided and the prayer postponed (or the graduation ceremony avoided if the prayer was more important than the secular performance).

Yet more and more we can encounter Muslims praying  in the most strange places and sometimes in places where they should not pray at all according to established traditions (see the example of the toilet or towards the toilet). This phenomenon is even more interesting when we discover that, more often than not, those performing such practices are Muslims whom define themselves as “Salafis” (followers of the Salaf (predecessors), i.e. those close to the authentic practice) when many of these pious practices might be considered to be, at least historically speaking, innovations.

Muslim women who fast while pregnant during Ramadan; diabetic Muslims who put their health at risk doing the same; Muslims who fast longer than required; the exclusive trust of only  commercialized halal products (such as halal soap, halal mineral water, halal vegetables, halal fish) which however are in reality  halal by definition; the  refusal to eat  bread that contains a natural microscopic quantity of derived fermentation (i.e. natural alcohol), which by the way Muslims have indirectly consumed  for centuries since its detection is only due to recent technological advancement; these among other practices are difficult to trace  in the history and ‘genealogy’ of Islam.

Should we be surprised? My never-ending  indirect research on theological knowledge among Muslims (at the present conducted in some parts of Europe, North Africa, Southeast Asia and most recently in Australia and that virtual place called the Internet) shows a considerable number of Muslims  lacking  even general theological knowledge and, if we add Islamic historical knowledge to it  (and in Islam theology is never detachable from history and philosophy), the reality is rather  depressing.  Muslims do not know their traditions and have no idea of the philosophical or historical development of Islamic scholarly opinions.  In other words, they have lost the ‘genealogy’ of Islam. Of course this is not just a problem with Muslims as many Catholics also (despite the Sunday schools) have little knowledge of the Pope’s edicts or Patrology. Nonetheless, there is  a relevant difference: Catholicism, as many other religions, has a centralized institution  or at least a centre to refer to. There is a “doctrine” which is linked to theology, and some would need only to know that:  some parts of the doctrine.

Muslims have lost their history: Nevzat Soguk is very correct when he notices,

The historical amnesia, forced violently on Arab Muslims and other Islamic people as well as internalized by the masses via the fanciful and heroic story lines of Islamic greatness, is devastating in several ways. First where are Ibn Khaldun-like figures in modern Islamic societies now? Why can’t we ask such questions [i.e. the same he asked] in the first place? What happens to those who dare raise questions that go to the heart of the system of half-truths and fabrications […] What most importantly, happened to the sort of Asabiyyah, that dynamic Arab or Islamic outlook on the world that enabled Ibn Khaldun […] to develop the critical faculties and knowledge to be able to write such a masterpiece? Why the fear of history? (pp. 200-201)

In the case of Islam, there is no doctrine  per-se but a complexity that needs a genealogy of ideas, practices and philosophy. Today Muslims are less and less capable of relating to, interacting with and expressing  such genealogy. Rather  it is the emotional (see Marranci 2009) and the unmediated exegetical insight that dictates the complex identity-religion relationship. Today many Muslims relate to Islam (a label per-se, a container rather content, since indeed Islam, to exist, needs a mind—at least the mind of God; but that remains beyond scrutiny) through what Fuller (2006, 2007) calls ‘wonder’, which facilitates ‘cognitive openings’ and new way sof making sense of a person’s Islam as part of his or her act of identity.

Hence, we can read many of the contemporary, and sometimes puzzling–and at other times even questionable–acts of piety among some Muslims (but we may also apply this to other religions) as acts of identity. Identities  which are challenged by an environment  that today is uber-polysemic and marked by overwhelming  inputs. However, if the genealogy (the history, the philosophy, the discourse beyond rhetoric, the intellectual debate, the intellectual challenge and so on) is forgotten we can only have one kind of Islam: emotional Islam.