The Mufti Speaks Out!

Yeah?

I can give you the standard line, because I’m a liberal, I’m (mostly) politically correct, and, besides, who hasn’t heard it? So here goes:

Islam is a religion of peace and love, there is no place either in the Quran or in the practice of the religion for violence against women or those who do not share the faith.

Then it goes further: Islam, unlike Christian religions, is non-hierarchical. There is no pope, no Archbishop of Canterbury who speaks for the believers. Rather, each Imam is the spiritual head and teacher of a mosque or university. Yes, some mosques for historical or theological reasons are more important than others, and thus some imams are more prominent than others, but no imam speaks for all.

How convenient!

I say this because the world has sat around for three weeks and watched as the Nigerian government did nothing about getting the 276 still-missing kidnapped girls freed from their captors, members of a group called Boko Haram. The group attacked the girls at bedtime in their boarding school, and the scene must have been horrific. And the head of the group issued a rambling-à la-bin-Laden speech promising to sell these girls in the marketplace. Oh, and that’s no idle threat, since Nigeria is a major…well, here’s NBC News on the subject:

The Global Slavery Index, an annual survey by the Australian anti-trafficking group the Walk Free Foundation, ranks Nigeria fourth on its list of nations with the highest number of people living in “modern slavery,” behind India, China and Pakistan.   

Right—so all the world has to sit around and watch this atrocity, but that’s not all. Because God forbid we should even breathe the suggestion—I’ll take a sledgehammer to the keyboard after I write this—that there’s something more than usually blood thirst about Islam. Readers, you’re my witnesses—I have more than once tsk-tsked the Catholic Church, and I refuse to comment on reports that this blog was more than a little responsible for the unprecedented resignation of Ben 16, or whatever the number was. My point? Not too many Christians out there are carrying out attacks on girls’ schools.

Oh, and there’s another thing. Since no one can speak for this religion, and since you, Dear Reader, are very likely doing other things, like working to pay your bills and raising children, then you have to assume that some imams out there are speaking out and decrying this atrocity….

Are they?

It’s hardly scientific, what I’m doing, but it’s more than I’ve seen anyone else do. I googled “top imams“ and got this link from ranker.com.

Are they really the top imams? Who knows, but I took each one of the top ten and googled his name (a curious lack of women in the group, by the way) and the words “Boko Haram.” And—perhaps unfairly—I gave them just one page of search, under the assumption first that it was a fairly narrow search and, second, that it was certainly topical.

So here it goes:

1. Abdul Rahmen al-Sudais is described in Wikipedia thus:

Abdul Rahman Ibn Abdul Aziz as-Sudais (Arabic: عبد الرحمن السديس‎ (ʻAbd ar-Rahman ibn ʻAbd al-Aziz as-Sudais), born Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 1960)[1] is the imam of the Grand mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and was the "Islamic Personality Of the Year" in 2005. Al-Sudais has called for efforts to combat terrorism,[2][3] preached Islam's opposition to "explosions and terrorism",[4] and has called for peaceful inter-faith dialogue.

OK—the Google search turned up nothing related to Boko Haram, but did, at the bottom of the page, have this:

Despite his sectarian, racist incitements that Jews are “scum…rats…pigs and monkeys,” the chief cleric of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Sheikh Abdul Rahman al Sudais, has been welcomed and invited to preach at the East London mosque in Whitechapel tonight, Tuesday evening, 4 August 2009.

Al-Sudais, who has close ties to the Saudi elite, has also insulted Christians and Hindus, referring disparagingly to Christians as “cross-worshippers” and Hindus as “idol worshippers”.

He has been banned from Canada for his anti-Semitism.

Guys? The imam of the Grand mosque in Mecca has been banned in Canada? Not looking good.

2. Abdul Rauf, whom you will know as the Ground Zero imam. In fact, the search was a bit problematic, since there are a basketball player and a Nigerian politician with almost identical names. So I added “Imam Abdul Rauf Boko Haram” and hit the enter button.

And I’m pleased to tell you, the Imam has been tweeting up a storm: “Six reasons the World Should Demand Action” he tweeted yesterday. But any public statements? New conferences? Op-Ed pieces? No, though there was this:

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf Accused of Embezzling Millions from Mosque Fund

Right—when a bunch of his guys abscond with over two hundred girls, what did this guy do? He tweeted!

3. Imam Abdul Wahid Pedersen is a Danish guy, and half of the search results were in…Danish. Right, but there didn’t seem to be anything much in the way of denunciations on the screen, though I dropped in on the Wikipedia article on him, and discovered that he was convicted and sentenced to over a year in prison for “buying and selling 5kg of hashish.” But look, he was 29 at the time (though he had converted to Islam a year earlier….)

4. No, there’s nothing recent about this guy from Queens—but I do give you this, from the Wikipedia article on him….

Ahmad Wais Afzali (b. 1972 (age 41–42)) is an imam, formerly from Queens, New York. He was deported from the United States in 2010 as part of a plea bargain after lying to the American FBI regarding a conversation he had held with acquaintance Najibullah Zazi,[1] a man later convicted of terrorism charges in the United States.

Guys?

5. Imam Ahmed Yassin—OK, this guy was a problem, though maybe it’s just that my brain has gotten dazed by so much ole-time religion. The problem? I kept getting results for Sheik Ahmed Yassin, and I didn’t think I wanted that. But I pursued the sheik, and he may be our man. And who was he? A founder of Hamas, who died in 2004.

OK—look, I was going to be fair. My father, I have no doubt, would have gotten all the way down the list of the top ten imams: he would have found some imam willing to step up to the plate and bat one for religious moderation. And in fact, I can report that the Egyptian mufti (and wouldn’t it be fun, by the way, to be a mufti? Just for a day or two, you know, kind of check it out…)....

Sorry, I was about to tell you that the mufti has come out and “slammed” Boko Haram! Hah! Take that!

I started out skeptical, but guess what? That’s fallen completely by the wayside!

Whew….

So, unable to endure any more, I have called my sports consultant, who happens to be my brother.

“Johnny, what do you call it when one team is getting slaughtered and nobody can stand it any more?”

“The mercy rule.”

Mercy, indeed!

Moral Proximity

I came upon it by accident, as I do most things, by trawling through the ever-more-depressing news in search of something to write about. So here it is: 60,000 young Christians from around the world held candles in the Atlanta night and pledged to fight against slavery.

They did more—they put up a bunch of cash by using tablet computers; last year they raised three-and-a-half million dollars.

I’ve written about this before. There is a building in my neighborhood with a Chinese restaurant on the first floor. The upper floors are rooms for rent.

Or are they?

“It’s a whorehouse for Asian guys who work the cruise ships.”

Words a co-worker spoke fifteen years ago.

Was it true?

It was strange, those mornings at five when I was heading for the bus to take to work, that there was frequently loud music coming from the upper floors of the building. Oh, and that the door to those floors which was always closed during the day was flung open. And certainly most houses in Puerto Rico have rejas (security bars or burglar proofing). But almost always they're on the outside, this one appears to have the bars on the inside. Odd, too, that the restaurant on the first floor is so often empty.

Five or six odd things. Which may mean nothing. Or it may mean that there’s a whorehouse in my neighborhood.

In the days when I was walking past the open door to the staircase to the upper floors with the blasting music, I wasn’t alive. I was middle management working at Wal-Mart, a circumstance so extraordinary I still can’t believe I did it. Somebody else had to deal with the world, I was dealing with Wal-Mart.

Now I have time. So I took an hour to read the report from 2010 that the Ricky Martin Foundation sponsored on human trafficking in Puerto Rico.

There is human trafficking here, as opposed to human smuggling. The difference? You’re a Dominican guy who has saved up the thousands of dollars that you will pay a guy with a yola (a small and probably leaking boat) to take you across the deepest and sharkiest (exists now, computer!) waters of the Atlantic to Puerto Rico. Once there, or rather if there, you’re done. Transaction’s finished.

That’s human smuggling.

Now then, you’re a Dominican woman and a Puerto Rican guy meets you at the resort where you’re changing the sheets and cleaning the toilets and he’s got money and you fall in love. And he takes you to Puerto Rico and you wake up in a room and you’re naked and bruised and he’s nowhere in sight. Oh, and he has your passport. And also the key to the lock on the door.

See the difference?

What isn’t known is how much and what kind. But some facts leapt off the screen. Puerto Rico. Starting, for example, on page 1:

 Although specific statistics on cases of human trafficking in Puerto Rico do not exist, the high number of minors living in “upbringing” (crianza) or foster homes (close to 9,000), the nearly half of all families (48 percent) living in poverty and the high levels of immigration to the Island, taken together with gender discrimination, suggest the high potential for trafficking and exploitation in Puerto Rico. These factors, among others, contribute to Puerto Rico’s status as the third highest country in Latin America in which social inequality is most evident, preceded only by Paraguay and Brazil (El Nuevo Día, Nov. 12, 2009).

       1 The terms “human trafficking” and “trafficking in persons” will be used interchangeably throughout the document.2

Wow! But then there’s the statement of a police chief, “fathers having sex with their daughters is a cultural pattern in the rural, mountainous areas.”

Or how about the report on the Dupont Plaza Hotel? Remember that fire, and all those people on the roof, and the helicopter rescues? Well, somebody had to go in there and find all the belongings and give them back to the owners, if possible.

What they found was shocking.

“They found everything, from substantial amounts of money—up to $40,000—to pornographic photos, especially of men having sex with minors. This was in approximately 20 rooms” (Interview with a police officer in Puerto Rico, 2008).  

Right. I’ve read the report. I can give money. I can raise my voice and light a candle and feel good.

What can’t I do?

Get a bunch of people together and march up the stairs of a building in Old San Juan and figure out just what the hell is going on.

A staircase to…?

Let me write a sentence that will stir no excitement in you.

I woke up this morning and walked to the beach.

Let me write a sentence that would cause elation for a score of women two blocks away, were they able to write the sentence.

I woke up this morning and went to the beach.

Sometime in the 1990’s a coworker and I were walking past a Chinese Restaurant where—now that I think about it—I’ve never seen anybody eat.

Clue number one?

“It a whorehouse upstairs,” said my coworker. “Oriental girls. Service the guys who work the cruise ships.”

Two.

I tucked the fact away, mildly repulsed. In those days, I had maybe 500 bucks to my name, a few cellos, some rugs and art. Nothing else—I was busy getting by.

(Hmm—defensive, Marc?)

I took a cruise, and did notice that the guys in the engine room were all Oriental, and wearing grey jumpsuits. And I see them from time to time in the grocery store, buying 40 or 50 packages of—what else?—Ramen noodle soup.

Then I started to work at Wal-Mart, which meant that I passed the building every morning at 5AM. And yes, the doors to the staircase leading to the upper floors were open. Music, on occasion, would be blaring out.

Clue number three?

Odd time for a legitimate business to be open, I’d think, and then remember.

Then Franny broke a hip. I went to hang with her in the nursing home. And met, on one of those occasions, a woman whose son had written a book.

An excellent book, in fact, on an abominable crime.

Slavery.

“Scholars estimate the total number of modern-day slaves is greater than at any point in history.”

That’s what E. Benjamin Skinner wrote.

Well, you read a fact like that and you’re pretty much compelled to find out more. So I bought two copies of the book. Read them several times. Went to look for a copy just now, and realized that I had likely thrown them out. No, not on literary or factual grounds, but because they had been consumed by others, smaller though more numerous.

Termites.

But as I remember, there are many faces and forms that slavery takes. Yes, sexual slavery is one of them. And gets most of the spotlight. But actually, wage slavery is more common. 

Remember the company store? You worked at the factory, lived in tenements the factory put up, paid rent to the factory, and had to buy in the company store. A variant of the scheme still goes on.

Circle back. A rumored whorehouse, curtains drifting from the windows of the upper floor windows, and a wide, inviting 5AM staircase, leading to…?

Oh, and by the way, I’ve never seen any Oriental women in Viejo San Juan. Tourists, yes. The jumpsuit guys, yes. Where are the ladies, the “sex workers,” if they exist, getting their Ramen noodle soup?

The Internet?

So it was more than likely, I thought, piecing this picture together, that, in fact, there is a whorehouse, there are sex workers / slaves, and guys in jumpsuits are using or abusing them.

Well, I say this with no pride. Did I do what Skinner did—here’s another part of his story:

He had first flown in under enemy radar with an Evangelical group purporting to buy slaves en masse to secure their freedom. Afterwards, on his own, he hitched a ride on a U.N. Cessna to the frontlines of the north-south Sudanese civil war. There he met Muong Nyong. Like Skinner, Nyong was 27 at the time, and pondering what to do with the rest of his life. Unlike Skinner, he had spent the first part of that life in bondage.

In this, he was following family tradition—his great-great-grandfather was a Quaker as well as a fiery abolitionist.

Well, Skinner is a better guy than I am.

For those interested in excuses, I was busy, the last few years, helping my mother die, waiting for Wal-Mart to “realign” me, losing my mind, and writing a book.

Not sure that’s good enough.

Moral proximity. If there’s a slave in your neighborhood, you gotta do something. And in my neighborhood?

Another thought. Virtually every woman student of mine would tell me they planned to visit Chinatown, should they be visiting or traveling to New York.

No, not for the food.

For the handbags.

And where were those bags produced? And by whom? And under what conditions?

Ladies, you may be just a guilty as the Ramen soup guys.

Or as guilty as I. Though doesn’t it seem curious that a gay guy, an English teacher, would know something like where the Oriental guys get “serviced?”

So maybe some others are a little more guilty than I? Like the boys in blue (actually, black) with the guns in their holsters and the handcuffs and bullet-proof vests?

Aren’t open doorways and blaring music and 5AM all facts to stir curiosity in police minds? 

Here’s my last thought.

A flash mob.

Everybody has an intelligent phone, everyone is on Facebook and Twitter. I won’t do it alone, but I’ll sure join a couple hundred women in the plaza and march down the sidewalk, course up the stairs, and fling doors open.

…even bring the chain cutter.

Ben—whaddya think?