I’m tired of seeing those books at my local Barnes and Noble….all Muslims, who like going to bookstores, know exactly what I am talking about. The book about the poor Muslim women in war-torn countries who find the magic of Jesus. Oh, Praise the Lord! Okay, I’ll stop being sarcastic. Yet these books annoy me because they are advertised in the shelves, alongside books about Muslims worshiping ancient Babylonian Gods, next to the “other” religion section. It wouldn’t be that big of bother if the Islamic section of the store had more books with Islamic themes besides the Quran and Rumi. It is not like there aren’t normal Islamic books with huge Western influence, actually, books like Reclaim Your Heart, Being Muslim, The Productive Muslim, and Prayers of the Pious (to name a few) are wonderful religious books that should and can be sold at major bookstores.
I realize it is only a dream to expect more from Barnes and Noble, but I just can’t help but be frustrated at books claiming the evils of Islam. If a Muslim bookstore or a normal bookstore carried the “evils of the white man or evils of Christianity” it wouldn’t be on the shelf. If you have books about converts to Christianity, I would like some good books written by Jews and Muslims on the same topic. I have nothing against a woman who chooses to worship Jesus as God or joins Christianity, it is a tempting religion. I am sure these books have wonderful stories that are meant to be told. So, before you think I’m against these books from being made or sold, I’m not. Some Barnes and Nobles do carry wider ranges of Islamic and Judaic books; along with New Age topics. There is a BN about forty-minutes away from me that does have a good religious, philosophy, social and history sections. If I want a local bookstore, I do live nearby a Jewish bookstore in the Hasidic part of Detroit. It is an amazing store, that has many Jewish and African American novels.
The same stories are repeatedly born and reborn again from a constructed consensus shared within the Orientalist trope. Languages and text carry an imprint of institutional, national, and group interest; there can never be a thing such as neutral language. unheard in their own majority communities. According to Said, Islam is “covered” by “a handful of recklessly general and repeatedly deployed clichés.” The foundation of media framework, political policy, politicians and ideological pressures have ideas in Orientalism and Colonialism that perceive Islam as “negative”, “threatening”. These prejudice ideas are constantly promoted in all forms of media. Maxwell McCombs describes the frame as a “central organizing idea for news content that supplies a context and suggests what the issue is through the use of selection, emphases, exclusion, and elaboration…Frames call our attention to the dominant perspectives in these pictures that not only suggest what is relevant and irrelevant but that actively ‘promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation and/or treatment recommendation for the item described.”
What is frustrating is as a Muslim you want to see representation in major bookstores like BN too. When all you can find are female accounts of leaving an “abusive” Islam, its frustrating. Never in my life have I read convert stories to Islam, that painted Christianity as an evil religion with abusive parents or pastors. (I’m sure they are out there) Stereotyping Muslims by only selling books about “Jihad”, “Evil”, “Shariah law”, “veil”, and etc. I would love to see books written by ex-Muslims who found Christianity in a Western setting, not promoting stereotypes. These books purposely use words like “veil” to bring an image to the Western audience of an oppressed veiled Muslim woman. The images of the cover will show bare feet, tiles, face-veiled women who somehow in the book find Jesus and throw away culture out the window and embrace the beautiful White Christianity.
Nonsexual foundational elements of identity can have a similar fixation as fetishism: “In later life, the grown man may perhaps experience a similar panic when the cry goes up that Throne and Altar are in anger, and similar illogical consequences will ensue.”(Feud) When the White world, Christian White world, or Western World perceive a loss in power and thus form physic formations and impulses, such as anxious alarms raised over the threat to Christian and White civilization. The “affection and hostility in the treatment of the fetish – which runs parallel with the disavowal and the acknowledgment of castration – are mixed in unequal proportions in different cases, so that the one or the other is more clearly recognizable.” The niqab is a threat, so is the hijab and other visible markers of non-Christian European culture, because it feeds upon the white races on insecurities of being taken over and losing power. A fear the “other” will treat them the way they have treated them.
According to Framing Muslims “the stereotype seeks to fix an image of the Other, to freeze it at a particular present-centered moment in time, then the eradication of the historical perspective – both personal and cultural – becomes crucial.” It was the Muslim world vs. the Western world, the Muslim world would somehow rise up and attack the Western world because of the removal of a hatred tyrant in Iraq. The same stories are repeatedly born and reborn again from a constructed consensus shared within the Orientalist trope. Languages and text carry an imprint of institutional, national, and group interest; there can never be a thing such as neutral language. According to Henri Tajfel stereotypes have three overlapping themes (functions): “social causal function” where the group is seen as a cause of a particular event (WWII, 9/11, terrorism, economic recession); “social justificatory function” the stereotypes are created to justify a behavior towards the group (lynching, colonialism, slavery, child immigrant camps, concentration camps, genocide, Jim Crow Laws); and “social differentiation function” which differences between groups and favor one group.
The portraying the difference of legitimate violence carried out by a state and the acts of terror mean that the main official discourse will depict the violence of outside agencies as irrational and without context. When Iraq was invaded or when Afghanistan was invaded it shocked people that the persons living in the community opposed or clashed with “Western” values. When the other is depicted as irrational it excuses the reactive violence of the state in pursuing and suppressing the violence. The make-believe outside threat has led to “strong states”, “authoritarian statism”, or the “national security state”, which curbs the average person freedoms or minority freedoms and “expanded category of subversion”.
Stereotyping works by fixing the person to markers and marks them with a set of projected characteristics. Stereotyping doesn’t always lead to prejudices, but it usually is the foundation of most people’s foundations of racism and prejudice of a group. When veiled women are seen wearing only black, with words like oppressed, terrorist, murder, or abused we create a stereotype on a what a Muslim woman should look like. Regardless that most spokeswomen in the West for Islam are not veiled women and lead pretty academic and progressive lifestyles. The face veil or burqa is equivalent to what is “true Islam” for non-Muslims who feel that they are the voices of Islam. Muslims are objectified because they are not seen human enough to be authorities of their own religion. It is non-Muslims, with no experience with Islam who claim to the West on Media outlets that Islam is violent and wanting Sharia law. It is these “voices” that make outrageous claims on one of the world’s major religions. A religion that has numerous followers, complexities, schools of thoughts, and etc. that is openly and actively talking about itself that is so misunderstood by the Western World. Karim Karim pointed out that Islam is a term “that is manipulated according to the needs of the particular source discussing it. Among other things, it has come variously to refer to a religion, a culture, a civilization, a community, a religious revival, a militant cult, an ideology, a geographical region, and historical event.” Europe’s political discourse responds to any “outsider” or difference with an “obsessive insistence on integration or assimilation.”
The books like The History of Jihad, on purposely use false facts about Islam to create an image to non-Muslims that Islam promotes violence. The author of this book even states that Muhammad quoted that he spread his religion by the sword. While another book promoted to Christians, it was in the Christian section, that Muslims worship ancient Sumerian Gods who are bent to destroy Christianity to create a new world order. The problems with Palestine isn’t due to an invader but no to evil demons wanting to prevent Gods plan. Other books like to promote how women in war-torn countries fought off ISIS and the Taliban with the power of Jesus after they realized the truth of God.
Not only do these books depict all Arabs as Muslim, but it also depicts all Muslims as evil abusive creatures. Many Westerners do believe that Islam is evil at its core. The Middle East or countries like Iraq, do have Christians. Christian communities that have existed before Islam was founded. These areas like Iraq and Iran also had Jewish communities that eventually fled the regions do to oppressive regimes. The country Lebanon actually has to have a Christian president, with the vice president being Sunni Muslim. When those books depict the poor Muslim girl who is abused by her father and eventually finds Jesus and faces the death of Taliban, it twists a story. It takes an abused woman who has a spiritual awakening to demonizing this woman’s entire culture. Yes, regardless if the woman or girl does convert to Christianity she is still an Arab woman.
It is not that I am angry that these books are created, they will be created no matter what. What frustrates me is the lack of books that counter the argument in Barnes and Noble. These books purposefully spread ignorance, at least the demon and jihad books do. Muhammad never said his religion should be spread by the sword. The war verse in the Quran is depicting the story of Muhammad at war, one he tried to avoid. Islam isn’t a religion of the sword or religion of the veil. Yet it can’t be ignored that there are huge terrorist groups that take advantage of war-torn areas, areas created because of colonialistic pursuits. While the West was able to protect its own people’s rights, slowly, and provide schools, sewer systems, and etc; the colonies weren’t given the same thought. Cities, where the Whites lived, were recreated in a European image, given running water and good commodities, the vast majority of the colonies remained villages. People were not allowed to be themselves in their own country, often living in segregation and prevented from participating in the government. When colonies finally were able to topple the European governments, European and American governments placed restrictions on the new countries. Preventing these countries from producing wealth they needed to provide an infrastructure for their people. People became unhappy with the corrupt governments and no one had jobs, with the invasion and meddling of Russia and America the distrust of the people of the Western world started to rise. The combination of all these issues was a perfect breeding ground for terrorist groups like ISIL and the Taliban. Not to mention these terrorist groups where supplied weapons by America and Western weapon experts.
The reason ISIL doesn’t represent Islam, nor the Taliban is because these men do not adhere to the basic principles of Islam. If I wanted to learn about Christianity, I wouldn’t take the word of a Nazi terrorist serial killer as the fundamental teacher of Christianity. Nor would I point to all the Popes who caused wars, had prostitutes in the Vatican and etc. Nor would I assume Hitler speaks for all Christians or etc., Christians are allowed to differentiate in society because no one sees a particular Christian as the sole spokesperson of Christianity. While Muslims are seen as a collective unite, like some sci-fi parasitic host.
The misinformation of Islam, especially in books that promote the idea that Muslims worship ancient Sumerian Gods who are demon entities bent on destroy the purity of Western society, is one of the leading factors to anti-Islamic laws. These books promote ignorance and violence among people. As Muslims, we need to make Barnes and Noble accountable for its lack of religious diversity. Promoting books that spread ignorance and false information on Islam breeds nothing more than prejudice. BN isn’t a religious bookstore, but it can do more to promote interesting diverse books on Islam that help counter the extremist far-right books it produces. If you are willing to sell books on false Islamic information, then having Islamic books written by scholars, feminist, biographies, or etc. by practicing and scholars of Islam or even people who are interested in Islam should be a good counter to the misinformation that you sell.
Examples of books BN and other stores can sell:
We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir by Samra Habib
Purification of the Heart: Signs, Symptoms and Cures of the Spiritual Diseases of the Heart by Hamza Yusuf
The Guide of the Perplexed by Moses Maimonides
Taking Action: The Busy Entrepreneur’s Guide to Mastering Time Management and Setting Smart Goals by Barakah Kemi Hassan
From Victims to Suspects: Muslim Women since 9/11 by Shakira Hussein
It’s Not About the Burqa: Muslim women on Faith, Feminism, Sexuality, and Race
The Muslims are Coming: Islamophobia, Extremism, and Domestic War on Terror by Arun Kundani
Slavery and Islam by Jonathan A.C. Brown
Halal if You Hear Me by Fatimah Asghar
The Quran Journal by The Dua Journal
Yes, I’m Hot in This: The Hilarious Truth about Life in a Hijab by Huda Fahmy
Threading my Prayer Rug by Sabeeha Rehman (got from one BN)
Laughing all the Way to the Mosque by Zarqa Nawaz (got from one BN)
From My Sisters’ Lips by Robert Na’ima
Any book by Fatima Mernissi or Ibn Arabi
Any book about Sufism and Kabbalah
Books on modern Jewish biographies that aren’t just the Holocaust (still sell these books) or any book on Judaism that doesn’t play to what the Western world thinks of when they say Jew or Jewish history.