Filed under: Freelance
For the past five years, Shahed Amanullah has been working to create an open dialogue within the Muslim community. Educated at Georgetown University and University of California at Berkeley, and brought up in California by “proud Indian” parents, Amanullah is the brains behind altmuslim.com, a website that is not afraid to ask difficult questions.
An engineering project manager by profession, the Austin-based Amanullah is a consultant for the World Bank. Altmuslim.com has been active for five years, and Amanullah sees it growing consistently by about 20 percent every year. Today, it offers opinion, commentary, features and podcasts on a variety of subjects ranging from the arts and community issues to politics and conflict.
While Amanullah’s parents are not devout Muslims, Shahed is active in the Muslim community and considers himself to be very religious. He developed his religious identity in college, during a time of self reflection and contemplation about his “dual culture”, an angst common in the second generation.
“In college I was active in all the Indian clubs and in all the Muslim clubs as well,” he says, and he continues to play an active role in both communities.
In an interview, Amanullah speaks about some of the troubling questions plaguing the Muslim community and explains how his website is influenced by his unique position as an Indian, a Muslim and an American.
Excerpts:
What was your motivation for starting altmuslim.com?
After 9/11, Islam and Muslims were splattered on the front pages, but there wasn’t a real coherent message coming back from the Muslim community, a message that took extremism very seriously and wasn’t simply apologetic for it. The website was something that I had been thinking about for a while, but 9/11 really made it feel necessary. I wanted to create a voice that was self critical but proud. That is what got me started. There were so many people who fell to two extreme sides, either being completely apologetic and whitewashing it all or trashing the extremists. There was an intellectually honest path that I thought was lacking.
How has your Indian background influenced your work?
I was born here, but my parents are both proud Indians. I just got back from a visit to India. I think the Indian experience actually can contribute to this discourse. A lot of Muslims who come from a Muslim majority community are not used living in a pluralistic society. That’s part of the problem. They come to a place like America and they isolate themselves because they’re just not used to it. I think the Indian Muslim experience is unique among immigrant Muslim populations because we come from a country that is pluralistic. Yes, it might have its sectarian problems, but by and large it has learned how to deal with religious differences peacefully. I think that experience is what is lacking in a lot of Muslim circles today in American and in the west. In Europe you have huge problems of Muslims isolating themselves because they just can’t deal with a secular or multi-cultural or multi-religious society. I think Indian Muslims have, and that’s the part I’d like to bring forward to this from an Indian perspective.
And your American upbringing?
One of the great things about American culture is that Americans have a unique ability to be able to self criticize in ways that a lot of other people can’t. It is one thing that second generation immigrants, and I think Indians in particular, can do that their parent’s generation can’t. My parents are supportive of me, and they say they’re glad I’m doing what I’m doing but that there is no way they could have done that. It’s just not in them to be able to do that. They’re not thick skinned in that way. I think the American culture in me can take it.
What do you wish to accomplish with this website?
I do consider myself very rooted in the Muslim community; I regard myself as a mainstream Muslim. I don’t consider myself peripheral in any way. That’s something I want to accomplish with this website, to show that it’s okay for this kind of criticism to come from the heart of a community, from the inside. I’m not just targeting the things that are wrong with the Muslim community. I’m also [focusing on] people who are not Muslims. And I’ve always tried to put my money where my mouth is. I always try to tell Muslims to get involved in the community around them, and I try to do that myself. I don’t tell them to do anything that I wouldn’t do myself.
Do you feel that the Muslim community is alienated from the mainstream?
In every community, there are a few who are alienated to the point where they have no loyalty to their country of residence. Muslims are no exception, although I think that number is exceedingly small. In Europe, for example, Muslims have had a much harder time blending in and therefore their loyalty to Europe is compromised. Like most Americans, Muslims in the US had a renewed sense of commitment to this country; especially among those who were born here (this segment now makes up the majority of Muslims in America). I think most Muslims would say that Islam tells them to respect any country that provides so many benefits and freedoms. It would be ungrateful to treat it otherwise. Of course, being Muslim means there is an affinity and concern for Muslims around the world. But I can think of no Muslim who would be more loyal to a foreign country than the US.
Even in the Post 9/11 World?
There are two possible reactions to a post-9/11 America: withdraw into a close-knit cultural community, or expand efforts to reach out to other Americans. At a leadership level, Muslims have pursued the latter vigorously, although there are some communities that have pulled back for fear of prejudice. There is much more work to be done, however, to interact with others.
How do you account for Islamic Extremism?
I subscribe to the thesis of Prof. Robert Pape, whose book “Dying to Win” cited territorial conflict, rather than religion, as a primary driver of suicide bombing. It just so happens that a lot of these territorial conflicts are happening in Muslim countries (a notable exception being Sri Lanka, where the Tamil Tigers have used a large number of suicide attacks.) Of course, religion can play a role in attempting to alleviate guilt for the crime (for example, the handlers of suicide bombers go to great lengths to convince them of the divine sanction for their actions), but the vast majority of Muslims scholars remain opposed to such attacks.
One of the reasons extremism is a problem in the Muslim world is because the interpretation of Islam has been democratized (there is no central authority to confer legitimacy to any one version of Islam). This can be a good thing, in that it allows people to modify their application of Islam per the needs of people in different areas of the world, but it can also be bad in that it allows people the theological room to interpret Islam in an exclusivist, extremist way.
The political strife of the Islamic world, unfortunately, provides a climate in which extremist ideologies thrive. And as 9/11 showed us, it only takes a few of these to cause immense damage if they were to take their extremist thought far enough.
What has been the reaction to your Website?
About half of the visitors are Americans or Westerners who are just curious about what the Muslim voice in the Western light is. Most of the traffic comes from people who are making random Google searches and find one of our articles and then just kind of poke around. Because we publish so many different issues we cover a wide variety of topics. The other half is immigrant and second generation Muslims, more second generation than not.
The website is primarily geared towards the West; however, I’m trying to branch out a little bit. I’m recruiting journalists from the rest of the world and just hired a columnist from India. One thing that I’m very sensitive about doing, I don’t want to talk down to the East from the West. It would be presumptuous to feel like I understand exactly what’s going on on the ground in those countries.
Why do you feel the need for such a public forum to discuss issues that affect the Muslim community?
I think it’s really healthy for Muslims to have their internal discourse clearly visible to everyone else, to show them that we’re actually dealing with the problems in our community. It’s valuable for Muslims and it’s valuable for non-Muslims. We need to publicize the very fact that this discourse is going on. It can’t happen behind closed doors for very long without dying for lack of other voices coming in.
How have your parents reacted to altmuslim.com?
Both my mother and father are both very, very supportive of me. My mom works for the State Department, so she sees on a daily basis how the image of Muslims and the image of immigrants affect US policies. She sees a need to argue the case that we are moderate, we belong here, and we’re contributing members of society. My dad is a real Indian patriot; he retired and went back to India. And he just loves the fact that I’m pushing the envelope, pushing the boundaries. He’s really reveling in it.
During your visit to India, did you observe an open debate on social issues?
Indian society can be very honor based. If you’re going to discuss a sensitive issue, you might as well be accusing them of being guilty of it. It’s a shame. I think all communities could benefit from shining a light on their community. India is trying to grapple with a lot of issue that are very, very serious, like women’s issues, minority issues, and the Dalit community. But it’s hard for them to have a discourse about it without really touching on nerves. When I was there, I was thinking that in America we can have an all-out discussion on race and people have big differences of opinion, but nobody gets offended about it. There it’s still very, very sensitive, even today, even decades after starting to talk about those issues; you really have to tiptoe around them.
Originally published in The Indian American, March-April 2007