Digital Discourse

Silence as an Occidentalist tool Voyeurism
“She wants my views on things like “assimilation,” p18

""“The notion of “us” versus “them” is hardwired into every religion. If you don’t believe what | believe, leave your foreskin on to prove it or drink this wine and believe it’s the blood of the Lord or turn your face away from Jerusalem when you pray. The Buddha said, Islam itself says, that there is only one truth out there, only one message that’s sent down over and over. Just the one message, one truth, one well from which everyone drinks. And yet somehow the message gets twisted and corrupted and adulterated by our own clumsy attempts to humanize it, to create systems from the ineffable. The Voiceless, The New Press, 10 May 2017 »

"““The Voiceless is a young immigrant from the Middle East studying for a degree in Political Science.” It’s an online degree, but she doesn’t need to know that.”p27"

"“Not interfaith dialogue, but just dialogue, and I wonder if I can slip that into a piece for Josie without it coming out trite.( in the feast party at the mosque) p 47

"This is his first error, an error more naive than I would expect of him. It’s one you see repeated on the news, in op-eds, in documentaries, in social media posts. There’s this idea that if only you bombard bigots with enough facts and data and statistics, you can cure. them." p54

“We watched the events in Egypt unfold in that cramped room. Not on TV but through our mobile screens. On Twitter, on Facebook, via messages whipping back and forth, invisibly, through air and space, we watched Egypt unravel. We saw the thousands in Tahrir Square, the square of freedom, where the impossible became | inevitable. We passed shaky videos of chanting and protests between ourselves and heard about those who were missing and those who were gone. We watched as the Fridays acquired monikers—the Day of Revolt and the Friday of Anger and the Friday of Departure. And we waited. »p60

". At a time when access to data is quite literally limitless, ignorance cannot be anything other than a choice, and | wonder how many of the people those BBC and Guardian and Independent pieces are targeting actually watch/read/follow them?"p73

"It’s an algorithm. You will have heard of it. Thought up by some hi-tech brain in some town in California where we’d all love to live. As you click on links or heart various articles or follow certain organizations, the algorithm goes to work streamlining your feed, so that when you log on, you are steered towards content you like and views you already hold. They call it an echo chamber, but it seems to me it’s more of a cage, limiting your views and experiences to the extent that nothing unexpected or unsolicited ever crosses your path. " p73

". And what other outcome can

"A device like that have but reduced tolerance? The question then becomes one of how people might break out of it. Or, perhaps more accurately, how do we break them out of it? Because it seems the onus is on us."p73

"They said the internet would bring us all closer together, that it would turn the world into a little village, but it hasn’t. Instead we have splintered, split off into islands drifting further and further apart. After all, the internet that elected the first black US president and set the Arab Spring ablaze is also the internet which ripped the UK from Europe and elected Dr Strangelove over in America.” (draft article she sent to Josie) p74

“... At the end of the day, anyone who says he’s a Muslim is a Muslim. What follows is if they say their actions are motivated by religion, then we should probably take their word for it. Cries of “That’s not Islam!” or “They aren’t real Muslims” or “They’re not us” are not only unhelpful but fundamentally flawed. There is no cult of orthodoxy in Islam, no pope, no keeper of the faith. There is no higher authority to judge your piety, no intermediary between you and God, no gatekeeper to salvation. Perhaps if there were, these attacks would not happen. The truth is that Islam is a religion of self-governance, a true ( page 109) democracy where consensus forms around individual imams and religious scholars. There are brands of Islam with wildly different tenets: one says tattooing your body is fine, another says it’s haram; one says anal sex is only distasteful while another says it annuls your marriage in the eyes of God; one says self-flagellation is an important act of commemoration, another says it is an affront to Allah. Like most things in life, there are pros and cons to this. On the one hand, it means free will and self-determination are built into Islam—“There shall be no compulsion in the religion.” On the other hand, there’s no one around to tell fundamentalists to knock it off. The Voiceless, The New Press, 31 May 2017 » p108

"… I take what I think, what I know, what I learn and hear, and I package them into little one-to-two-page articles. It is exactly what Josie wants, and she could not be more pleased with me." p109

“They accuse me, me, of painting with | a wide brush, of not understanding my own culture and religion, that I’m no better than once-upon-a-time Muslims who leave the faith only to immediately begin attacking it.”p110

“@SkyRider: Im a Muslim and I can tell you they AREN'T real Muslims.”p110

“@BrewMan: What exactly are this person’ qualifications again?”p110

"“@TheLionOfGod: The Voiceless doesn't understand the relationship between creator and creation. This is the problem with their opinion of Islam.”p111

“ @Mattbow199: has the Voiceless ever heard of protestants?”p111

“ @theSavageLiberal: The majority of my friends are Muslims & not one of them agrees with this horseshit.”p111

"“(I keep asking Josie to disable them, but she says the goal is to encourage discussion, not shut it down),. Josie assures me that my writing is clear, and that such comments are to be expected— You want intelligent discourse from a comments section? »p111

“Some acknowledge the validity of what I say, others hedge and soften it with “maybes” and “some.” »p111

« There are still others who tell me to burn in hell, that I am blaspheming somehow with my opinions. They tell me the fundamentalists are upholders of the “true faith,” whatever that is. They say these people are fighting the oppressors, the Western devil, the insidious ideologies of freedom of thought and action. They compare me to Salman Rushdie and Ayaan Hirsi Ali as though have gone anywhere near that far with my words.” P111

"One man calls me the Voiceless Apostate, which I have to admit _ has a nice ring to it.”p112

"“@IAGA: this guy knows what’ up. ""p113
@NickPick: Sad to see someone who should know better spouting this shit. TheShahmansays: YOU are the problem! The prophet (PBUH) and the Quran said that if you kill one person, it’s as though youve killed all of humanity. The logical conclusion from this is that these terrorists DO NOT REPRESENT ISLAM. Why is this such a hard concept to get into your head? »p113

“Most of the time I am successful in keeping my words as they are, and it has resulted in people online accusing( 116 )me of faking my refugee status. They call me one of the elite, charge me with intellectual snobbery, say that I am no more a voice for the voiceless than an MP would be for the average citizen”p114

"This time there’s a conflation, in the minds of a disturbing majority, of Muslim Refugee and Muslim Terrorist. They are seen as one and the same, and the nuances of the situation are largely ignored. Xenophobic rhetoric turns into propaganda, which becomes legitimized into political platforms, which then justifies acts of violence and hate, which brings about retribution, which is then recycled into more anti-Muslim rhetoric. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle, into the cogs of which no one has managed to shove a wrench." p139

"Humanize. That’s what they say, when they’re fawning over certain books and documentaries and films. A word uttered easily and without too much thought. A well-intentioned word that nevertheless concedes the argument that some people are not people and so require some art form to render them human."p140

"" What I want to say is that Im concerned you might be glossing over the very real, unequivocal violence that has been occurring in Great Britain over the last few months. In making your statements about Islamophobia and refugees, etc., Im afraid you might be downplaying the horrific violence that is happening on our streets. There is a sense here among some of my colleagues at the magazine that you might be trivializing, or splitting hairs even, when talking about this issue. Real people have died in these attacks. Real people with families and lives and jobs and friends. People who were here last week and are now suddenly not. And now they're saying that one of the attackers might have been an asylum seeker at one point. So, I think that maybe you need to be careful of making sweeping statements about how we shouldnt fear Muslim refugees because they dont have the capacity for violence or something. These are just some things to keep in mind as you compose future articles. Best, Josie »p145

“Tt has always struck me as odd, to take such fervent pride in something you had no part in claiming. You don't choose where you're born. You don't choose the nation or the religion or the caste or sect or class. You. choose none of it, and yet you're expected to fight for and be proud of this label* above-all* to the exclusion of all others. It becomes entangled in your identity. I am Syrian. I am Iranian. I am American. I am French. I am Muslim, or Jewish, or Hindu. I am all these things that I did not choose to be. »p152

“She still asks for memories… She wants stories about home, about family, about the journey and the camps. The whys and hows of it all. And yet, here I am, swallowing the personal in favor of the political. Again. Why? Is it easier? Safer? After all, if no one knows your personal story, they can’t use it against you. »p154

« Throughout the day, responses trickle in. Most are positive. People tell me I’m welcome here and that they’re glad I made it and they wish me a good life. There are those who say they cried while reading it, and they can’t imagine having the fortitude to make such a journey (I never imagined it either, but you would be surprised what the human body can endure). People chuckle at the music and TV references, astounded that I would find humor and entertainment in the same places they do. It is mostly positive, though I wonder if it is just another echo chamber at work. Does empathy translate to action? »p168

“Some attack me, naturally. Mustafa from Birmingham says it's wrong for me to try to be English, that I ought to hold on to my heritage and culture and religion and that my family would surely be ashamed to read such things from me. Amina from south London tells me it’s ignorant to think I need to take off my hijab to be a part of this country, and that she was born here and she wears hers with pride. It is a fair point. »p169

“She asked if I could tone down the descriptions of the weather, saying it matched up too well with the emotional undertones of the memory, that the reader didn’t need the symbolism of the weather. »p180

“She wanted me to alter the memory, so as to show a contrast, some symbolism over reality. »p180

“It’s like I said. People aren’t interested in the truth so much as the narrative. »p181

“I don’t know what such a story would even look like, what shape it would take. The structure of narrative has collapsed; imprecise in my own mind, with jagged pieces it takes so much to screw together. What could a story like that accomplish? Do I risk turning us—me, Khalid, Amer and Ossama, Mama and Baba and the others and the little ones—into nothing more than characters, to be followed and felt for but ultimately supplanted with newer, fresher takes? What do all these stories do? I wonder if Khalid would want this, or if he would see it as just another kind of treason.”p187

" | want to tell these writers to look beneath and around the lines of the tales given to them, pay attention to the gaps**,(page 191**) to the lacunae, to the silence, to what is not being said. Could they turn their minds to the questions no one is asking and the answers that remain buried in the caverns of a person’s chest or embroidered on their tongue? That’s where the story is. The Voiceless, The New Press, 5 July 2017 ""

“I do want to publish these. Don't get me wrong. But maybe we could lighten them a bit, or just focus on one episode and unpack it for the readers. »p192

“Maybe I’m done with Josie. Maybe I’m done with all of them. Maybe it’s time, again, for silence. »p192

« In the beginning, we didn’t use social media to organize anything. It was pure word of mouth that sent hundreds and thousands streaming into the streets, whispered phone calls and typo-riddled texts. It was spontaneous, natural, a human response to the inhumane.”p216