“But why London of all places?” implored a friend of mine more perturbed than necessary over my choice of holiday destination. “I love London!” I effused passionately, much to her disapproval, as if my fickle admiration for the place under the current political circumstances was insufficient to justify my trip. I wondered if I would have sounded as convincing had I said “I love Baghdad!” or “I love Kabul!”
“I just don’t know about you,” she said in defeat rolling her eyes. “And I suppose that you’re thinking of traveling the subway wearing that hijab of yours? Just to add insult to injury,” she speculated idly. I thought seriously about crawling under her all too sensitive skin with the statement “I love hijab!” and watch in glee as she squirmed in agony, but refrained from doing so.
“How can a length of black cloth insult or injure?” I asked rhetorically.
“Can’t you just buy a nice looking hat?” she pleaded. I shook my head defiantly as she raised the white flag in surrender. Her parting shot was, “Well to any Londoner riding on the tube, or foreigner for that matter, you will come across as the personification of Mrs. Osama Bin Laden. Carriages will clear at the sight of your head scarf and you may even be shot dead for looking like a potential suicide bomber!”
Her last statement made me chuckle inside. How ironic that all these years I spent traversing the Piccadilly Line I cowered in terror at the prospect of being followed, mugged or raped by some destitute weirdo from the swelling ranks of criminal elements within the city and now I would become a source of fear myself.
Much as I am loathe to admit it, my friend’s sensationalistic lamentations did have a subliminal impact upon my psyche and when I disembarked at Heathrow Airport I expected inherent hostility from the immigration guys, topped with a possible cavity search to ensure that I was not importing any semtex, or other explosive derivative, along the length of my gastrointestinal tract.
My Saudi passport has a special stamp on it that effectively renders it an EC passport whenever I am in the region and I prepared myself for having this privilege instantly revoked.
I shuffled in the queue trying not to look suspicious and was greeted by a kindly Indian gentleman who flicked through my passport to the correct page, grinned in my direction (even though I looked stupefied and as guilty as sin) and shooed me onward. There were no sniffer dogs to greet my luggage in the baggage hall. No untoward groping in customs. In short I was out in half an hour trying to hold onto the fast evaporating image that I may be seen as a palpable threat to national security. A man even held the lift doors open for me and another walked the entire length of the building in an attempt to show me how to exit it.
As I write this I am sitting on a packed Central Line tube donning my Saudi garb and have yet to clear a single seat adjacent to me, leave alone an entire carriage.
As has been the case for as long as I can remember, people on the London underground never make eye contact with fellow commuters, unless of course they happen to be foreigners unversed in the etiquette of public transport.
It is as if the entire compartment full of people are working toward a PhD in advertising judging by the duration, intensity of concentration and tremendous interest they exhibit whilst reading and re-reading the overhead billboards.
No. There is no perceptible difference between this trip and any other I have made. I thought that I would be spat at, verbally abused and tried about my complicity in crimes that I didn’t commit.
But no. No such excitement. People were as detached, impersonal, friendly or unfriendly as they have ever been. That is why I still love London. The considerable fallout after the London bombings is highly unfortunate, but, nonetheless entirely understandable. It proved extremely painful to read accounts of how mosques, Islamic Centers and Muslim-owned houses and shops had been targeted and desecrated by those who had hijacked the opportunity to serve their own political ends.
Such an incident always allows the more extreme elements in any society to vent freely with little or no repercussion. That’s not really surprising. What is surprising though is just how resilient and forgiving the average Londoner is.
The tube, to most people is the nerve center of the city. This attempt to paralyze a universally used conveyance by people of all faiths was more than just symbolic. It was meant to serve a blow to the equanimity and multiculturalism of the city. What it actually did, in effect, was to damage the essential image of the faith in whose name the atrocity was allegedly committed the in the first place.
The most oft-forgotten element of the whole equation is that invariably the brunt of any of these terrorist-inspired attacks by so-called “Islamists” is borne by the entire length and breadth of the Muslim world. Violent misinterpretations to further the political agendas of a few have set back the aspirations of over a billion Muslims world wide.
The aftermath of the tragedies of 9/11, the Madrid Bombings, the Bali Bombings et al have affected the Muslim community more than any other. We suffered and still suffer the consequences of these acts and our future looks bleak with a guarantee of further persecution yet to come.
We steel ourselves daily for another onslaught by strangers we have never countenanced, have nothing in common with and who have become our own worst enemies. We are expected to apologize for these crimes on their behalf as if we are somehow communally responsible for them.
But why is it that we are so afraid to examine and identify the root causes of this reign of terror?
The bitter irony of the whole situation is that this monster of terrorism that we have watched grow and thrive in the world has been neither created nor inspired by any of us.
It was the Americans who played the part of Dr. Frankenstein when they promoted the spread of jihadist ideology during their struggle to eliminate the ‘Godless Soviets’ from Afghanistan. They encouraged the propagation of madrasas rallying the young to abandon their lives in favor of the sweet rewards of martyrdom. Much of the literature guiding innocent minds to pursue such a dangerous path was published and distributed by their agencies in an endeavor to achieve their own self-satisfying political ends. So it’s okay to sponsor and abet that kind of activity. Murdering Russians using the strategy of Holy War is absolutely justified.
This same exception for Americans can be seen in the call by Pat Robertson to assassinate Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez. How can a nice American be seen as perpetrating an act of terror? No. That can’t be right. After all, we as Muslims have a strict monopoly on all terrorists. Not forgetting, but of course, that those of us who have engaged in conflicts to promote American hegemony in the past, are also exempt from the general definition.
As Muslims we are desperately trying to dissociate ourselves from the acts of a few misguided individuals. However, when it comes to someone like Pat Robertson, would that make him representative of all Christians? I guess that’s a fair assumption judging by how our community is evaluated.
I personally find it absolutely amazing that no other religion is held accountable for the acts of a few of their deviants. Massacres of innocents take place all over the world and yet no followers of any faith other than that of Islam are called up to denounce, ask for forgiveness and grovel in contrition the way that Muslims are forced to. Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time, but regret for the things we didn’t do leaves us inconsolable.
(Lubna Hussain is a Saudi writer. She is based in Riyadh.)