'Cruelty perpetuated by someone with a "good conscience or a "strong moral compass" can often be the most unrelenting, uncritical and self-righteously determined cruelty imaginable', writes Maajid Nawaz in his 2015, October article - 'Not Muslim Enough? The Malcolm X Zombie Rises Again'. Maajid Usman Nawaz is a British activist, author, columnist, radio host and politician and author of Radical: My Journey out of Islamist Extremism, which makes him an authority on Islam, Muslim culture, its regressiveness and progressive trends, and the dangers of speaking out, against the values of a religiously society with tribal loyalties.
In the context of the Indian subcontinent - a powder keg of religious tensions - speaking out against the regressive practices in one's communities whether Hindu or Muslim, can have life-altering repercussions. Hence the Great Indian Liberal goes out of his/her way to diffuse any attempts at inflammatory speeches or disinformation. But in doing so, as pointed out by Maajid above, their good conscience ends up delivering the vilest, cruelest blow to critics/dissenters and reformers. Their labels for Muslim cultural critics as 'house niggers', 'capo', 'Useful Jews', 'Trojan Horse', 'Uncle Tom', 'shills', 'Islamophobes' and the takfiri reaction - 'Not Muslim Enough' are entering the public discourse in a huge way.
I had earlier outlined the burden of reform and why we do it. It is dangerous and full of risks for our family members too, but we do it because of unspeakable violations, intolerable injustice and the unflinching motive of making the future safe for our children. Of course, there is going to be resistance from our own. Whether they are practicing Muslims, cultural Muslims, agnostic or atheist Muslims, regressive believers, or progressive liberal Muslims, and everyone in between - each and every group is going to find some fault or the other in the approach or stance of Muslim critics/reformers. So it is expected to have the slanderous 'House Nigger', 'Capo', or 'Uncle Toms' thrown around by the group most resistant to change / reform.
What is incomprehensible, reprehensible, and completely uncalled for is the 'Great Indian Liberal', joining the fray. This "racism of the anti-racists", the 'New Orientalism', in Maajid's words, is the new and deeply sinister form of bigotry because its racism, misogyny, and cultural bigotry thrive under our very noses undetected. Maajid used these words in the context of Roger Alpher's Haaretz opinion article describing Lucy Aharish as 'the Arab Woman' who 'had been neutralized' because she had 'committed the grave crime of forming an opinion', instead of 'mimicking the views' of her fellow Arabs.
This 'reverse racism' is familiar to us Kashmiris of the Indian subcontinent who believe Kashmir's future lies with its continued accession to India while condemning the high-handedness of the Indian political-bureaucratic-
This 'reverse racism' or 'cultural bigotry' is not visible or obvious enough because, again in Maajid's words, it emanates from those who shout the loudest that they are on "our" side, that they speak for "us". This is why C. S. Lewis's observations in his provocative collection of essays, God in the Dock, has been quoted by Maajid - "good men consistently may act as cruelly and unjustly as the greatest tyrants... in some respects act even worse..".
Now the question, the dilemma, the worrying factor is - if the Left, so historically having been the champion of the victims of racism, bigotry, and exploitation, turn out to be the biggest bullies of all, who will call them out? Who gets to invite the hordes of trolls (yes, they have picked up the traits of the right wingers and supremacists) and their penchant for ridicule, contempt, character assassinations, even threats, buoyed by extremists in the Islamist camps, delighted with the Left -Liberals speaking up for them?
Ex-Muslims, apostates, cultural Muslims and even pious, practicing believers do not tire of saying - "Ideas have no colour and truth belongs to no culture, but should be the pursuit of all"- (Maajid in his Daily Beast article) It is a bloodied war among Muslims that is being fought and may have a bitter end - the war against "practices in our culture that hinder our social mobility in a civilization". The "mainstream allies" like the Left, the Liberals, especially the "Great Indian" ones may inadvertently be contributing to the covert shutting up of dissenters and to the murdered bloggers.
Those fond of the Malcolm X coined 'house Negro', forget one crucial detail - the house negros working in the mansions with their masters often influenced them to be less brutal to a fellow negro or save the life of a slave. Capos (Jewish, SS appointed heads of labor squads in concentration camps) often worked against the SS at great risks to keep inmates alive and get their plight out to the Allies. In horrendous times, the lot that fell on individuals whether they working in mansions as compared to field slaves, the Jewish capos who had the misfortune of being selected as capos of the terrified labour squads, did what any normal person faced with certain death would choose to do - survive by any means possible and in the event probably save a life or two, instead of the brashness of being a martyr to the cause.
The "Great Indian Liberal" who terms Muslims cultural critics and dissenters as 'capo' or 'house Negro is actually making their work much more difficult - the work of lifting their communities out of doldrums, ignorance and willful denial. In addition to their own families, friends and the community which ostracizes and resists them, they now have the to deal with the 'reverse racism' of the Left and Liberal, who act as if they are doing a favor to minorities.
History teaches us, change in communities has always been difficult with the bitter truth often forced down people's throats in order to rip off the rose-tinted glasses from their eyes. Only Muslim dissenters from within can do it, with no small measure of help from non-Muslims. They are aware that every regressive practice they criticize and choose to overturn through legal recourse may be used by the right wing to bash up the minorities. In this dangerous obstacle course of reform, the Great Indian Liberal does a disservice to the brave women and men, in erecting hazardous barriers of libel, defamation and trolling.
It takes years to convince generations of traditionalists that what has been going on is not right - be it the instantaneous triple talaq; religion-sanctioned polygamy; hijab or burqa compulsory diktats; FGM among the Bohra community; dowry demands; domestic violence attributed to verse 4.34 in the holy text; and the general second class citizenship allotted to women in lieu of the 4:2 half-testimony of assault victims, blasphemy laws, etc. It takes just a few minutes on social media to besmirch a person with a photoshopped meme and throw him/her to the trolls.
Of course, that doesn't deter ground workers who take risks to speak out, but the Great Indian Liberal had better get his/her act right if it really wants a lasting peace in the subcontinent. Still reeling from the effects of the communal Partition. This hijacking of Malcolm X's legacy and appropriating the Jewish experience to silence Muslim dissenters is going to backfire in a bad way like it did for Malcolm X when he was killed by his own and before his death apologized for his race-baiting, racially-divisive language in his past.
