Lecturer on Islamophobia never mentioned 9-11 or ‘terror’

By Elad Morad

SAN DIEGO —  I attended the “Islamophobia: A Mainstream Ideological Formation” lecture on March 8  at UCSD university. The lecture was sponsored by the Middle East Studies program, part of the Social Science department and the speaker was Stephen Sheehi from the Arab Culture and Comparative Literature Department from the University of South Carolina.

In the past six months I have attended a wide range of lectures, all of which have directly or indirectly dealt with Israel and the Middle East, but this was my first time attending a lecture on this particular topic. As in any other lecture I came open minded, wishing to be enlightened about the topic, so-called Islamophobia, a term which has been used quite often in the past few years.

The room was packed with students, scholars and some curious people who came to listen: there was no Student for Justice in Palestine involvement.

Stephen Sheehi is an Arab Muslim immigrant from Lebanon who wrote a book called The Ideological Campaign Against Muslims.  As a speaker he was quite awful, extremely unorganized, and quite often became scrambled with his own words. Yet he spoke with lots of passion about the topic and used lots of cheap sarcasm to emphasize his points.

The lecture started with a short video called “hate comes to Orange County,” where you can see a rally held against the Muslim population and unpleasant pictures of insults against Arabs and Muslims. There is no doubt why the speaker started his lecture with this video.  To innocent eyes it could seem to be the situation in all of America and put the audience in the right state of mind for what is to come.

Next Sheehi started to expand the conversation to some examples of vandalism, job discrimination and harassment against the Arab population. He spent most of his time presenting an evidential document of one New York Police Department unit in charge of “spying” on  Arab populations. He presented pictures and quotes of police officers sharing their thoughts and their observations.

As a listener it was incredibly jarring to see how he was trying to avoid  important information, for example saying “the unit started to operate beginning in 2001” as if 2001 was just another year. He talked about the NYPD and Homeland Security as a group of racists led by the the “Whites” to discriminate against the Muslim population.

As an Israeli I couldn’t avoid noticing the similarity of these arguments to those used against the IDF at the check points.  Basically Homeland Security was castigated by the speaker with the same complaints that Palestinians make against the IDF.

Sheehi put the blame on the media and the white society wishing to acquire more power by sending U.S troops to Iraq or Afghanistan in search of oil and money.  He emphasized   that we are all under daily surveillance by the government. He blamed the Obama administration for passing more and more regulations which he claimed  were turning the country into a fascist nation.

As a listener,  I was struck that this  lecture about Islamophobia never mentioned the word “terror”  as if the problem always been there.  It was as if Homeland Security woke up one day and decided to begin harassing the Arab Muslim population for solely racist reasons. I wondered how, as a speaker, can you present the problem without presenting the symptoms?

Is it possible to have a lecture about Global Warming without using the word “pollution” even once?

I believe the speaker confused the words “secured country” with “fascist country” and tried to draw the picture as he wished by portraying reality in a way that would support his lecture.

Sheehi presented the Arab Muslim population as the victim of the American society and asserted that “the highest anti-faith crimes are against Muslims,” but by a quick check on the FBI website you can see that 65% of the  anti-faith crimes are against Jews.  “Jews are the most persecuted religious group in America.”  I am not trying  to present it as if there is a competition to decide who is more victimized in American society. Rather, my point is to prove how even a victimized group  is still free to flourish and need not search for the blame inside the system.

The Arab Muslims  indeed are victims in the American society: they are victims of themselves, victims of their own actions led by radicals.  And blaming the media or the “white” society is the real discrimination.  A smashed mirror is being  held in front of the Arab Muslim society.

As for the questions-and-answers following the lecture:

For the first few questions it felt as either the audience didn’t see the problem in his lecture or was just afraid to say the king is naked. I did feel I had to raise a voice, and indeed addressed my question regarding all of my doubts mentioned above, but without any disrespect.I talked about the security  situation, and the fact that he didn’t use the word “terror” even once during his lecture while talking about 2001 as if it were just another ordinary year. I addressed his criticism against “the white” society and Homeland Security, pointing out that also, “as you can see, I am not so white.”

His answer was simple and shallow with no effort to address half of what I was asking, but I guess his lack of answer was more important than what he actually said.

Another woman criticized his speech due to his disrespectful accusation against another scholar with a different point of view. The speaker mentioned how he doesn’t think this other scholar deserves any credibility. I found it brilliant how she asked if there was anyone in the room who agreed with him about that and no one raised their hands, not even any of the professors in the room.

The lecture finished on somewhat of an embarrassing note: it felt like the Sheehi was standing there answer-less to some of the questions and he preferred to refer the audience to his book instead of giving direct answers.

Some of the feedback I received at the end of the lecture came from an Arab student who approached me to say she liked my question and would like to meet and inform me further about the topic. I said thank you and mentioned the fact I’m an Israeli: I’m still waiting for a phone call.