Other posts in the Incredulity of Privilege series are here and here. 

I listened to a fascinating edition of NPR's Talk of the Nation on Monday (5.10.10).  One segment was called Help Young Muslims Resist Jihad Cool.  Here's the full transcript and a button to listen if you prefer that. NPR host Neal Conan interviewed Asra Nomani about her recent contribution to the Daily Beast. (The Daily Beast article is well worth reading.) Here's Conan's introduction:

Every day, it seems we learn more about Faisal Shahzad, the accused Times Square bomber. We know that he comes from a successful family in Pakistan, became a naturalized citizen and married the American-born daughter of another prosperous Pakistani family.

And in a piece for The Daily Beast, Asra Nomani tells us what she learned about the would-be bomber's wife, Huma Mian, from her profile on a social networking site, including what she lists as her passion, shopping, and her favorite TV show, "Everybody Loves Raymond." Hardly what you'd expect from the wife of a would-be terrorist, but Nomani writes, that's a cause for concern because somehow in the West we are failing to give disenchanted yet talented young Muslims nonviolent avenues for protest to lure them away from the temptations of jihad cool.

Image source 

Here's how Nomani defines "jihad cool:

...jihad cool is this phenomena inside of our Muslim community now where young men, especially, think that it is cool to go fight for the jihad, to get on a plane from here in northern Virginia and go to a training camp in Pakistan, to join al-Qaida at the frontier territories between Pakistan and Afghanistan against this American aggressor that is in Afghanistan. It has unfortunately become popularized through YouTube, Facebook and all of these wonderful techniques of social networking that is being - that are being used by these clerics like Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen to lure our young boys, especially, to the dark side.

She claims that young Western Muslims are hearing the call to Jihad in their mosques:

We're hearing it in our mosques. I can tell you that in my mosque in West Virginia, I heard it every Friday from these sermons that would be spoken by PhD graduate students, by engineering professors, folks who were getting all of the advantages of our open society and yet, on Thursday night downloading from Saudi websites sermons that basically said, don't imitate the path, the disbelievers, meaning the West. And this is exactly that slippery slope that ends up with something like this Times Square bomb attack - attempt.

She believes the Muslim community in the West is largely ignoring the violent trajectory, but she says they must speak out against it and give their youth non-violent avenues of protest. She compares this moment in Western Islam to the Civil Rights Movement:

I honestly believe that if we turn the page back on history and look back at the Civil Rights Movement, you know, this was the same moment that African-American leaders faced when they to try to encourage their youths to civil rights protests that were peaceful, instead of protests for radicalization and the bombing of buildings. I mean, this is exactly where we're at in our Muslim communities. And what we do too often, I believe, is allow people like this Anwar al-Awlaki to roam freely through our mosques and go uncensored when he preaches things as he has done over a decade in America when he was here. And unfortunately, we are not also filtering, for our young kids, their messages as they're getting them through the Internet now.

Because he doesn't personally experience calls to violence in his own mosque, caller Victor denies that it occurs (Incredulity of Privilege), and says that anyway, Christians are violent too (which is of course true, but it's a Red Herring in this discussion):

VICTOR (Caller): Hi. I'm listening to this conversation with much interest. I think the conversation has gone from this particular individual's action to demonizing Islam. While there are circumstances that unfortunately we have no control on, al-Qaida would mention, according to our foreign policy experts, God has been marginalized. But we see new groups like Pakistani Taliban coming up, and there is a war. There is a war that's going on and that does affect young people.

Here in Michigan, we have a militia group called Haduri(ph). Now, I mean, they take their inspiration from the Christian scriptures. No one calls Christianity in the cause of what they do. They are motivated by certain things. There are people who fly to IRS buildings because they are sad about something. No one really looks into their faith.

We here in Michigan - if you come here next Saturday - 12 of our mosques have open doors. We are advertising extensively, come and see the Muslim community. The kind of messages that I'm hearing from Sister Nomani, I don't hear that in our mosques. Our mosque is called the Unity Center in Bloomfield Hills. We are participating. We have a women's groups here that - and we're very much involved with the school district. I was elected on my school board. This Saturday, we have walk as one in downtown Detroit. We're walking with the rest of the...

CONAN: Vic, I don't mean to interrupt, we just have a little time left. I wanted to give Asra Nomani a chance to respond.

Ms. NOMANI: I appreciate what youre doing inside of the community, but I have to say I'm just shaking my head because I think that, you know, the world is just so tired of us inside of our community not acknowledging that we've got a problem. It's not a demonization of Islam. This is a recognition of interpretations inside of our faith that are being used to draw young men into militancy, and that's being used to justify suicide bombings.

I mean, as many carwashes and walks and soup kitchen moments we may have, it's beautiful because we need that. We need to be involved in our community, but we also need to take on this ideology of violence that is very real. And I invite you to go to alminbar.com. Go check out the website. Go to any of these YouTube videos that's, you know, entice our your men into violence. And we have to realize this. I mean , until the uncles and the elders realize we've got a problem, we are losing that battle.

VICTOR: (Unintelligible) focusing on just one aspect. You know, there are things that are multidimensional. And in the conflict, you are on one crack.

At one point, Nomani sighs elaborately, expressing her frustration with Victor's myopic view. It's probably difficult for him to imagine a mosque in the US with a culture so different than his own.  I'm sure he's also extremely fearful of even acknowledging any militancy within Islam because that would certianly perpetuate the stereotypes and stigma that descended on Islam post-9/11.

I can understand Victor's concern.  There's certainly plenty of Islamophobia to go around. There are lots of people who actually believe "Islamofascist" is a real word. That said, I do agree with Nomani that this cultural shift toward increasing violence needs to be mitigated from within the Muslim community. Unfortunately that won't happen as long as people like Victor remain in denial.