2025 Readings 37

 This morning I finished a very quick reading of Sarah Kendzior's The View From Flyover Country: Dispatches From the Forgotten America. Yes, this is the second Kendzior book that I've read in the last week - with two more in the queue.  This is the book - and the essays - that introduced her to America as a brilliant social critic and Casandra-esque ignored prophet of the age of Trump. As with The Last American Road Trip, it's difficult for me to praise her work too highly. If you care about the state of the US right now you should definitely be reading her and following her on social media; she's the real deal. Her essays on race and inequality and education are insightful, thought-provoking, inspiring, and also humbling. In this case, let me quote from her essay "The Fallacy of the Phrase 'the Muslim World.'"

   "It is time to retire the phrase 'the Muslim world' from Western media. Using the phrase in the manner above disregards not only history and politics, but accurate reporting of contemporary events. The protests that took pace around the world ranged in scale and intensity, in the participants' willingness to use violence, and in their rationales. The majority of 'the Muslim world' did not participate in these protests, nor did all of the Muslims who protested the video advocate the bloodshed that took place in Libya.

   By reducing a complex set of causes and conflicts to the rage of an amorphous mass, the Western media reinforce the very stereotype of a united, violent 'Muslim world' that both the makers of the anti-Islam video and the Islamist instigators of the violence perpetuate.

   Essentialist views of Islam and Muslims are nothing new. In Western media, Islam is often presented as a contagion, with Muslims as the afflicted, helpless to their own hostile impulses. What is different about the current crisis is that it comes in the aftermath of the 'Arab Spring' - another series of intricate events depicted as interconnected and inevitable. Democracy would 'spread' from one Muslim country to another, analysts argued, regardless of the unique historical trajectories of individual states. Some analysts wet so far as to suggest it would spread to Central Asia, a region of largely isolationist dictatorships uninfluenced by Middle Eastern politics. The current protests are being portrayed as an 'Arab Winter' - a simplistic reversal of a simplistic perception of success, with Muslims, undifferentiated, receiving the blame.

   There is, of course, cohesion among Muslims, in the sense that there is cohesion among followers of any faith. The notion of the umma is an essential part of Islamic doctrine. But the way the idea of 'the Muslim world' is expressed within Islamic communities is different from the way it is expressed outside them. It is rare to hear the phrase 'the Christian world' used in the English-language media, because doing so would generalize about the motives of over 2 billion people. No such respect applies to the world's 1.5 billion Muslims. Googling the phrase 'the Christian world' yields 5.8 million results, while the phrase 'the Muslim world' yields 87 million results, many of them wandering what is 'wrong' with the queried target. When the phrase 'the Muslim world' is invoked, it is usually to reduce, denigrate, or impugn."