Motyl With the Face of the Enemy

Arab American Literature Since 9/11
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-3-593-46081-9
Verlag: Campus Verlag GmbH
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 321 Seiten

Reihe: Nordamerikastudien

With the Face of the Enemy focuses on the writings of Arab American authors between 2001 and 2011. Positioned as Arab Americans in the post-9/11 U.S., this underexamined group of writers projects unique insights into both the Western and Arab worlds. Using the lens of postcolonial literary theory, Katharina Motyl explores how the »War on Terror« turned Arab Americans into enemies within their own country. Countering the master narrative of a »clash of civilizations« between the Islamicate world and the West, the fictional and poetic texts discussed in this book alternate between deconstructing neo-Orientalist stereotypes and critiquing U.S. neocolonialism in the Greater Middle East, on the one hand, and critically examining Arab culture - for instance, its patriarchal outlook - on the other. Motyl pays special attention to texts written by Arab American women, who have radically advocated for self-determination in areas like sexuality and mode of dress, thus rejecting the stereotype of Arab women as oppressed victims. With the Face of the Enemy takes a serious look at how the aesthetics of Arab American literature negotiates the many psychosocial consequences the domestic »War on Terror« and the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have had on the Arab American community.

Katharina Motyl, Dr. phil., ist Akademische Rätin am Lehrstuhl für Amerikanische Literatur und Kultur der Universität Mannheim.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Motyl, Katharina

Leseproben

1.The Situation of Arab Americans after 9/11

1.1.Anti-Arab Backlash after 9/11

On September 11, the wheel of history turned and the world will never be the same. […] The attacks of September 11 were acts of terrorism against America orchestrated and carried out by individuals living within our borders. Today’s terrorists enjoy the benefits of our free society even as they commit themselves to our destruction. They live in our communities – plotting, planning, and waiting to kill Americans again. […] The federal government cannot fight this reign of terror alone. Every American must help us defend our nation against this enemy.

Ashcroft’s statement may be read as a prediction of the backlash Arabs and Muslims were to face in the U.S. in the early “War on Terror.” In his speech, Ashcroft raises the specter of an enemy within, announces the government’s intention to fight this internal enemy, and calls upon the American public to aid the government in this fight. And indeed, dominant discourses21 were to construct Arabs and Muslims as enemies of the West who deserved to be disciplined or even punished; the government enacted policies that specifically targeted Arabs and Muslims; and private individuals subjected them to harassment and hate crimes.

1.1.1.Arab Equals Potential Terrorist – The Bush Administration’s Rhetoric

On September 20, 2001, President Bush famously said before Congress: “Every nation in every region now has a decision to make. Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists” (G. Bush 2001a). The Bush administration continued to use this rhetoric of “us versus them” to create the image of an Arab, Muslim enemy (cf. Merskin 2004).22 According to Edward W. Said (2001), the Bush administration framed the “War on Terror” as a “clash of civilizations,” a notion Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington had popularized in his eponymous 1993 essay and 1996 book, predicting that “[c]onflict between civilizations will be the latest phase in the evolution of conflict in the modern world” (Huntington 1993, 22). The logic underlying the “War on Terror,” then, pitted the U.S. as the epitome of Western civilization against the Islamicate world, which positioned Arab Americans as enemies within. To illustrate, in Ashcroft’s speech quoted above, the attorney general makes “individuals living within our borders” responsible for the terrorist attacks. Ashcroft’s speech indexes the way the Bush administration evoked the association of Arabs and Muslims with terrorism; Arab and Muslim men who were at most visa violators were transformed into “terrorists”:

“In the war on terror, this Department of Justice will arrest and detain any . Our single objective is to prevent terrorist attacks by taking off the street. If suspects are found not to have links to terrorism or not to have violated the law, they are released. But will be convicted, in some cases deported, and in all cases prevented from doing further harm to Americans.” (Ashcroft 2001b; my emphasis)

Moreover, members of the Bush administration conveyed the impression that Islam is a cruel religion; on another occasion, Ashcroft said: “Islam is a religion in which God requires you to send your son to die for him. Christianity is a faith in which God sent His son to die for you” (qtd. in Shaheen 2008, 5). Since most Americans are not familiar with the Muslim faith, false statements such as this informed the image many Americans created of Islam. Other members of government spread the notion that Muslims were religious fanatics. To illustrate, Representative Peter T. King (Republican), who would later serve as Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said on a radio talk show in February 2004: “80-85 percent of mosques in this country are controlled by Islamic fundamentalists […] This is an enemy living amongst us” (qtd. in WND 2004). President Bush, on the other hand, made efforts to distinguish between Islam and militant Islamism when he referenced Muslims in his speech to a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001:

“We respect your faith. It’s practiced freely by many millions of Americans, and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah.” (G. Bush 2001a)

However, such attempts at differentiation were drowned out by rhetorical strategies such as Bush’s question “Why do they hate us?” (2001a), uttered in the same speech. His obfuscating use of suggested that Muslims at large hated the U.S., thus fanning fear of an evil Muslim enemy.

The Bush administration mobilized its construction of an Arab, Muslim enemy to justify going to war with two Muslim-majority countries – Operation Enduring Freedom against Afghanistan (with support of the U.N.) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (without support of the U.N.) – and to relativize the violation of the Geneva convention in the U.S.’ treatment of Arabs and Muslims in Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, and black sites around the globe (cf. Danner 2004; Sadat 2006; Margulies 2007). Domestically, the narrative of an Arab, Muslim enemy served to justify draconian security measures enacted against Arabs and Muslims, which I will outline in the following.

1.1.2.Domestic Security Policies Targeting Arabs

Twenty-five of the thirty-seven known government security initiatives implemented between September 12, 2001, and mid-2003 explicitly or implicitly targeted Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. (Tsao and Gutierrez 2003). According to sociologist Louise Cainkar’s comprehensive study ,

“These [security] measures included mass arrests, secret and indefinite detentions, prolonged detention of ‘material witnesses,’ closed hearings and the use of secret evidence, government eavesdropping on attorney-client conversations, FBI home and work visits, wiretapping, seizures of property, removals of aliens with technical visa violations, freezing the assets of charities, and mandatory special registration.” (2009, 119)

Scholars conservatively estimate that at least 100,000 Arabs and Muslims living in the United States personally experienced one of these measures, though other sources point to much higher numbers (ibid.). Cainkar found that the most severe measures were taken against noncitizens, who were accorded a lesser set of rights than Arab and Muslim American citizens and permanent residents, whose treatment still did not meet the standard most would consider appropriate for U.S. citizens (ibid.).

Mass Arrests, Detention, Surveillance

Mass arrests and indefinite detention were the first security measures enacted after 9/11. Shortly after the attacks, some 1,200 Arab or Muslim males were arrested and detained as “persons of interest” (Cainkar 2009, 119). According to Georgetown Law professor David Cole, in many cases, men who matched an Arab / Muslim phenotype and were deemed to be suspicious for any reason were locked up; thereafter, the government searched for violations with which to charge them (Cole 2002, 962-63). In...