Muslim-Americans Need to Engage in Self-Analysis

(You can also read the article here.)

Muslim-Americans are reacting to the increasingly strident anti-Muslim rhetoric of Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ted Cruz with emotions ranging from shock and disbelief to wariness and resignation. The latest came in the wake of the Brussels bombings when Mr. Cruz called “to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized.”

The suggestion is absurd. Most of the 3 million American-Muslims of widely diverse backgrounds, about 1% of the population, live in integrated neighborhoods. A recent landmark study by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding reported that in the San Francisco Bay Area, there are about 250,000 Muslims living over six assimilated counties. South Asians comprise 30%, Arabs 23%, Afghans 17%, African Americans 9%, Asian/Pacific Islanders 7%, Whites 6%, and Iranians 2%. My neighbors in San Jose, for instance, include Christians, Jews, Chinese, Korean and Indian Americans, but not a single Muslim.

If Muslims do cluster in certain neighborhoods, as in Queens, New York, it is based more on ethnicity than on religion. When I visit friends in Jackson Heights, I see far more Bangladeshis spending long stretches of time in ethnic restaurants serving Samosas and Biryani than in mosques serving piety. There is no equivalent Molenbeek in America, the ghetto in Belgium that breeds petty thugs and criminals who, bereft of a future, real or imagined, become foot soldiers for ISIS.

So if Mr. Cruz can identify Muslim neighborhoods that require special patrolling, he will not only be helping law enforcement but, even more, Muslim-Americans. Whether the senator knows it or not, Muslims have been at the forefront in foiling terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. Of the 72 known terrorist plots since 9/11, 56 were detected by law enforcement, 44 of which happened with tips from Muslims. In the 15 years since 9/11, the number of Americans killed by Muslim terrorists in the U.S., including San Bernardino, is 45. That’s 45 too many, which is why we would like Mr. Cruz to tell us where to look, so we can help apprehend the radicalized without going through ‘needle in haystack’ hunts.

Here are the facts, however. N.Y.P.D. has almost 1000 Muslim officers, some of whom are also combat veterans. For the record, combat experience on behalf of the United States is something that is missing from Mr. Cruz’s resume. 

But while the threat of Islamophobia is real, it is not preventing Muslims from engaging in serious self-analyses. Because of our diversity, such analyses assume many forms but the basic goals are the same: Confront our internal problems honestly and work on solutions that will help us become more open and responsible.

Based on my years of observation and interaction with fellow Muslims, there are three areas we need to work on, even though we are making cautious progress on all three.

First, we must curb our excessive reverence for imams and scholars.

Enlightened Muslims who have earned their reputation deserve our respect but the attitude of some of us toward them verges on hero-worship. The infatuation with celebrity imams is fraught with peril for all. I have also seen highly-educated Muslims turn into toadies in blindly accepting the most banal, absurd, misogynistic, or downright stupid, religious statements made by some of our imams and scholars, often members of an old boys’ club trained in religious schools abroad without any exposure to modern subjects. At a Friday congregational prayers, for instance, I heard a ‘scholar’ claim in his sermon that if a Muslim woman walks by a group of men and the men experience lust because she is improperly dressed, it is the woman’s fault and she is the one who has sinned! The Quran mandates that each one of us use our faculties for critical thinking. Letting the clergy do our thinking for us is against the spirit of Islam. The way out is to revive the practice of Ijtihad, an Arabic word that means to think independently, and to reinterpret sacred text in the context of the times.

Second, we must shun religious chauvinism.

I come across Muslim-Americans who are condescending toward followers of other faiths and are eager to proselytize, convinced that those who are not like them are destined for hell. They are a minority but because of their strident nature, play a disproportionate role in shaping the Muslim discourse in America. The Quran insists on respect for people of all faiths. A verse states, “O mankind! We created you from a single pair of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, so that you may know each other.” Diversity of faith, culture and language are a human condition. If we all followed the same faith, wore the same clothes and ate the same food, we would go mad with boredom. Religious chauvinism leads to arrogance and is at the root of terrorist organizations like the Taliban, al-Qaida and ISIS.

While many Muslim-Americans condemn religious chauvinism in the privacy of their homes, such condemnations are becoming more frequent in our places of worship as well. In mosques around the Bay Area, including the Evergreen Islamic Center that I attend, we are required to speak about other faiths with respect and humility. A contributing factor is our increasing alliances with interfaith groups that are guided by the principles of pluralism, democracy, freedom of religion and secular governance. Still, much remains to be done.

Finally, we must reject the culture of victimhood and embrace the culture of self-assurance.

In the past, particularly before 9/11, Muslim-Americans were focused mostly on rights and not much on responsibilities. Islamophobia is a serious, and sometimes deadly, threat for us. We have to speak out for our constitutional rights, as when Muslim passengers are forced to get off planes only because they happen to be Muslims.

Yet we cannot allow Islamophobia, and its attendant culture of victimhood, define us. As we demand our rights, so we must also act on our responsibilities, one of which is to engage with the broader community, particularly with our neighbors, in helping the needy, feeding the hungry and opposing injustice of any kind against any group. If victimhood is the foundation of our identity, we will remain weak, objects of pity and prone to conspiracy theories. We are mostly middle class, mainstream and moderate. It does not suit us to be grievance collectors. We must have the self-assurance to legally secure our rights while working with Americans from all walks of life to help ours become a just and generous nation.

Trump and Our Darker Side

Donald Trump’s meteoric rise as the Republican nominee for the highest office in the land continues to stun, baffle and frustrate many Americans. Who could have anticipated that a crude and clueless bully with a reckless disregard for truth and reason would be where he is now?

It’s more complicated than that, of course. Ignoring Trump’s appeal to his acolytes, that also include some of the very people he considers pariahs, only serves to boost his candidacy. What needs to be understood is why Trump is winning and what collective raw nerve he has touched that reflects on us as individuals and as a nation.

Trump supporters assert that Americans are fed up with the status quo and with career politicians whose milquetoast ways are no match for today’s tough challenges. They want someone who tells it like it is and whose kick-ass attitude is proof enough that he has the guts to back up his words with action, with the military might of the United States if necessary. They are looking for a candidate who will close America’s borders to undesirable hordes and remove the afflictions of the working stiffs, particularly white working stiffs, with financial wizardry. Trump, to them, is the fearless cowboy to today’s toadies, the Rambo to the confused ‘to be or not to be’ appeasers.

But how to separate myth from reality, or can it be done at all? Consider a few of Trump’s policy proposals.

On defeating ISIS: Since ISIS and Syrian dictator Bashar Assad are mortal enemies, why not let ISIS finish off Assad and then go in and take out ISIS? If that doesn’t pan out, let Russia get rid of ISIS. “What the hell do we care?”

In other words, if Trump’s hero Vladimir Putin can deliver the goods, why worry about ISIS at all?

On keeping America safe from barbarians, that is, Mexicans (‘criminals and rapists’) and Muslims (each a potential terrorist): Build a 1,200-mile wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and ensure that the Mexican government foots the $10 billion bill. Ban Muslims from entering America and open a registry for those already in so they can be tracked. Round up all undocumented immigrants and deport them. "If I win,” said Trump during a campaign rally in New Hampshire, “they (the Syrian refugees the U.S. may accept after rigorous vetting) are going back."

On boosting the economy: Given that 44% of Americans say the economy is their number one concern, Trump modestly declared in his speech for candidacy for the president in June last year that “I will be the greatest jobs president that God ever created.” Although short on details, Trump’s proposals include massive tariffs on China and Mexico so that jobs from these and other countries will return to America, keeping the minimum wage fixed at $7.25 per hour, getting Wall Street professionals to run the economy and, of course, repealing Obamacare.

According to former treasury secretary Larry Summers, Trump’s proposals are likely to “introduce great uncertainty at home and abroad. The resulting increase in risk premiums might well be enough to tip a fragile US economy into recession.”

Trump’s ideas to ‘Make America Great Again’ just don’t add up, be it in foreign policy, in keeping Americans safe, or in creating well-paying jobs for Americans who need them the most.

So what accounts for his victories in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Virginia, Vermont, Louisiana, Kentucky, and in undoubtedly more states to come?

When we feel besieged, playing to our worst fears work, and often work spectacularly well. This is the phenomenon we are observing as Trump continues to triumph in state after state. Although this is particularly true for mostly middle-class white Republicans, who have seen their fortunes decline as African-Americans and Hispanics have made gains at what would appear to be at their expense, it is a part of human nature, and Trump is exploiting it for all it is worth.

Many Americans are also in awe of wealth. They see in Trump a fabulously successful businessman and are given to vicariously enjoying his private jet and soaring towers, his name emblazoned in gold across his holdings, a brand almost as well-known (at least to them) as Apple and Google. This weakness for wealth is far more common than we think. It doesn’t matter that Trump got a huge head-start by inheriting millions from his father, or that he had filed his businesses for bankruptcy four times since 1991. ‘All that glitters is not gold’ may be true for others, but to those who worship wealth, Trump is both glitter and gold. And that’s reason enough to vote for him.

If there is a silver lining to Donald Trump’s run for president, it is that he has revealed our darker sides to ourselves, our propensity for overlooking the fatal flaws of the wealthy, (like the careless people in The Great Gatsby ‘who smash things up and then retreat back into their money or their vast carelessness’), our tendency to confuse demagogues with saviors, and our misplaced confidence in people who can seduce us with false hopes. Only by confronting these weaknesses in our character can we ever hope to defeat them.

Historic War Cemetery of Chittagong, Bangladesh

Seven hundred and fifty-five soldiers are buried in Chittagong's historic War Cemetery. The 'War' refers to the Second World War and the graves belong to soldiers of the sub-continent, England and Africa who perished while taking Burma back from the Japanese after years of fierce fighting.

The Burma War lasted from 1941-1945. It began when the Japanese seized the Tenessarim airfields in mid-December 1941, causing the closure of the strategic Burma Road to Allied forces. Rangoon fell to the Japanese on March 7, 1942, compelling the Allied forces to withdraw up the Irrawady and Sittang Valleys to Mandalay and then to India.

It's worth noting that only one hundred thousand Japanese soldiers conquered Burma in 1942 from the more numerous British and Indian troops. When they marched on Rangoon, the Japanese walked for 45 minutes and slept for 15, such was their steely discipline. When they slept, they made sure their feet pointed toward Rangoon so they didn’t march in the wrong direction when they woke up!

However, in 1943, new airfields constructed in India allowed the British to regain air supremacy, proving a turning point in the war. Supply to China, whose soldiers were fighting alongside allied forces, was resumed from airfields in Assam. In December, the 15th Corps attacked on the Arakan Front. A Japanese counterattack in February 1944 was decisively defeated.

There was now no stopping the allies who launched an offensive on three fronts. The American-Chinese forces attacked from the north. The Arakan 15th Corps captured the airfields at Akyak and Ramree while the 4th and the 33rd Corps captured Meiktila and Mandalay and pursued the fleeing Japanese army southward to Pegu on 1 May, 1945. Five days later, these two Corps linked up with the 15th Corps that had entered Rangoon on May 3 after an unopposed landing. Japan had lost Burma to the Allied forces and a formal cease-fire in August, 1945 merely cemented the fact.

A staggering number of 45,000 Commonwealth soldiers lost their lives in the Burma War, of whom 27,000 came from what is now Bangladesh, Pakistan and India. They are commemorated in headstones and cremation memorials in nine cemeteries in Bangladesh, Assam and Burma. The 755 soldiers buried in the Chittagong War Cemetery came from the Chittagong General Hospital in Ander Killa (Inner fort) where they succumbed to their injuries sustained in the Burma War.

As you walk along rows and rows of headstones, you read the names of soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice to defend freedom from fascism decades ago, and you experience a sense of the sacred and the profound.

Muhammad Bahadur of the Indian Pioneer Corps, dead on 13 June, 1945, at age 30.

Muhammad Aziz, a sepoy of the Royal Indian Army Service Corps, on 22nd June, 1944, at 25.

Lance Naik S.M. Dada Bai of Indian Engineers, in June ’45, age 18!

Flying Officer M.T.W Pain, with the Royal Australian Air Force, in August ’44, age 21.
“Loved son of Rev. & Mrs. W. K. Pain, of Wahroonga, N.S. Wales”

Sergeant C.C. Young, Wireless Operator/ Air Gunner with the Royal Air Force, in March ’45, age 21 “He was so young, his heart so brave. In the midst of life God called him away.”

Flying Officer W.R. Thomson, a pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force, in February ’45, age 21 “In loving memory of our dear Bill”

Pilot Officer E.C. Dowling, Pilot with the Royal Air Force, in August ’43, age 27 “In loving memory of my dear husband Eric. Your wife and son.”

Craftsman Muhammad Ishaq, Indian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, in October ’45, age 19.

Driver Audu Salamu, West African Army Services Corps, in June ’45.

Sepoy Sadiq Mian, Indian Army Medical Corps, in March ’44, age 24.

Sepoy Roshan Zamir, 12^th Frontier Force Regiment, in February ’44, age 17!

Sepoy Gul Rahman, Infantry, in March ’45, age 16!

And on and on …

In one corner of the cemetery lie buried  19 Japanese soldiers in unmarked graves, 18 of whose names are recorded in a plaque, "with one of their comrades whose name is unknown."

At the entrance of the cemetery is a Memorial Register, 1939-1945, containing “the names of 6500 sailors and merchant seamen who died in the service of their motherland and have no graves but the sea.”

Bangladesh's port city of Chittagong is home to 8 million people. It is a tragedy that the War Cemetery, constructed and meticulously maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, is one of the very few spots that offer Chittagoneans a refuge from the maddening traffic and the impossible gridlocks of a bustling yet utterly unplanned and unkempt city. Students, young lovers and couples of all ages stroll by the bougainvillea hedges or lean against the Champa trees, whispering sweet nothings.

But something else has taken over the visitors that I had not anticipated since I brought my wife here 35 years ago and photographed her in this pristine setting, before migrating to America. The Cemetery seems to have become the Selfie capital of the world! Everywhere you look, girls and boys are busy capturing themselves on their smartphones. I have not seen such selfie-frenzy even at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, or at the scenic Carmel-by-the-Sea in Northern California.

So I busy myself reading the headstones as a mark of respect for the dead. As daylight fades and crows gather on the Krishnachura trees, I look around at the laughing couples and playful kids and realize that those who are commemorated here have not given their lives in vain. In a sense, this laughter, this peace, this sanctuary in a troubled world is their fitting legacy.

Epilogue: Abdul Barek has been a gardener at the cemetery for 37 years and Abul Bashar for 12. They have been tending to the roses, the noyontaras, the lantanas, the gardenias, the lilies, and hundred more varieties year after year. They helped me identify the plants that thrive in the cemetery through their care, even though living on meager wages. I offer them some money. Both refuse. "We are well cared for," says Bashar. "We are happy doing what we do. What can beat that?"

American Muslims Must Reclaim Their Faith from Terrorists

Who could have imagined that American Muslims would produce their own Bonnie and Clyde?

Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow robbed banks and killed 13 people between 1932 and 1934, during the height of the Great Depression, in Central United States before dying in a hail of bullets by police in Louisiana.

Now we have Tashfeen and Rizwan, assailants at a potluck party at a county health department in San Bernardino, killing 14 people in the span of a few minutes before dying few hours later in a shootout with the police in a quiet residential street nearby.

Tafsheen Malik, 29, born in Pakistan but raised in Saudi Arabia, came to the United States on a fiancé visa in 2014, the wife of Chicago-born Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, of Pakistani parents. Their victims ranged in age from 26 to 60. It was the deadliest mass-shooting in the U.S. since the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in 2012.

Unlike Bonnie and Clyde who early showed psychopathic signs, there is as yet no consistent explanation for the depravity, the utter inhumanity that motivated a reclusive Muslim couple to consign their 6-month-old daughter to orphanhood- even an animal would not abandon its baby with such callous cruelty as this couple did - and murder 14 innocent people enjoying a quintessential American holiday tradition. (It is not unreasonable to suggest that this monster became a mother only to conceal her terrorist identity.)

All we know is that the trajectory of their seemingly normal life hit a shocking singularity on December 2, raising a million questions and unleashing a tidal wave of rage and sorrow.

While details are emerging daily about the couple, Malik pledged fealty to ISIS on the day of the attack, for instance, the central fact is clear: Malik and Farook planned the terror attack centered on their own malevolent ideas, the seeds of which may have been sown abroad, nurtured by social media and facilitated by the absurdly easy access to guns in America. The last-minute allegiance to ISIS was more likely a desperate attempt at notoriety by the wife desperate to hitch her wagon to an infamous organization.

Beyond that, who can comprehend what Faustian bargain this couple made and why.

So what now?

The average American is angry at, and suspicious of, his or her Muslim neighbor and co-worker. This does not include xenophobic bigots like Donald Trump and Ben Carson and their followers, whose numbers naturally spiked following the killing, as did the sale of guns and ammunitions.

No, I am talking about Americans who are not bigots and who are not hostile toward Muslims by instinct. But they are undoubtedly worried and rightly so. A Muslim friend, who has a college-going son, told me that his neighbor, whom he has known for years, asked him this troubling question a day after the San Bernardino shooting: “Does your son own a gun?”

We Muslims must have the self-assurance, the integrity and the honesty, to acknowledge that these Americans are not suffering from Islamophobia. They cannot be categorized as Islamophobes. They have raised an existential question and the least we can do, we must do, is to address it truthfully and practically.

The first step is to engage our neighbors and co-workers in frank discussions, not just in the wake of a shooting, but on a regular basis, about our faith, our rejection of violence, and our loyalty to America. Too many Americans are beginning to think these aspects of our lives are mutually exclusive. We must dispel this notion. Inviting Americans to visit local mosques can help but that is too limiting. It is the open and personal interactions at the neighborhood and the office levels that we urgently need, and not just in liberal coastal cities but in America’s hinterland.

But talk can go only so far. We need to become a more integral part of what makes America, America. This can include opening small soup kitchens, Muslim doctors holding weekly or monthly medical clinics, creating a shelter for abused women, promoting the gift of reading, tutoring neighborhood kids, organizing community evenings to look at stars and constellations, and so on. Many Muslims communities are already engaged in these activities but the number needs to increase.

The second step is to be alert for signs of extremism in our midst. For an Imam of any mosque to say that “I saw no signs of extremism in this or that Muslim” is becoming increasingly indefensible. If a seemingly moderate Muslim suddenly stops coming to a mosque, the Imam and one or more congregants need to become proactive and try to determine what may be brewing. It could very well be that this particular Muslim had become fed up with mosque politics and decided to pray at home. But it could be something sinister as well. If a Muslim suddenly starts sprouting strident piety, that should raise a red flag. If someone begins to show an inordinate fondness for guns, that too should ring an alarm bell.

The point is, almost always, there are signs. We just have to become more vigilant. Consider the statistics. Published reports indicate that there are currently 900 American Muslims under investigation by the FBI for possible ties to ISIS. Given that there are about 3 million Muslims in America, it translates to 3 Muslims per 10,000. Let’s say two of these three Muslims are proven to have no ties to terrorism. That leaves 1 out of 10,000, which is still 1 too many! A single psychopath, or a couple for that matter, can create carnage in a community in the blink of an eye, as we saw in San Bernardino.

Finally, we need to increase the quality of engagement with the youth in our mosques. Many Imams in America, particularly those born abroad, cannot speak meaningfully with the youth. (For that matter, many have not even mastered English, even though they have lived in the U.S. for decades.) Many youth are alienated by the obscure and irrelevant discourses they are forced to sit through in mosques and conferences. Inevitably, they turn to the Internet to figure out for themselves what Islam means and how they can practice their faith. In such a vacuum, these vulnerable, impressionable youth fall prey to the seductive, ‘purpose-driven’ language of social-media savvy terrorist organizations like ISIS. The process of selecting an Imam for any mosque in America needs to become more rigorous, and preference should be given to U.S.-born Imams who can relate to young Muslims as a kind and friendly teacher, rather than as an authoritarian figure.

American Muslims are at a crossroads. If we only pay lip service to our faith, not engaged in any meaningful way with the society at large, the terrorists will define our faith for us and we will lose. On the other hand, if we make it a priority that we will define our faith through action that will influence our society for the better, while remaining alert for any misguided and malcontent Muslim capable of giving us a collective black eye, we will have lived up to our highest calling, a state in which everyone is safe from our hands, and our neighbors are secure with us around them.

We Must Unite to Fight ISIS

As an American Muslim, I cannot find words strong enough to condemn the barbaric attack in Paris by ISIS that has claimed over 100 lives and injured many more. I hope that a significant proportion of the estimated 5 million French Muslims, the largest in Europe, will take to the streets to denounce the terrorist organization. The cancer of ISIS must be eliminated not just for the sanctity of human civilization but for its survival.

It is tragic that Muslims are fleeing their homelands (Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and more) by the thousands because of the persecution and the instability wrought by a band of fanatics. The Paris attack by ISIS will worsen their condition as suspicion and intolerance against them mount.

Two wrongs, of course, cannot make a right. In this case, there is only one wrong that must be made right, and that is to decisively defeat ISIS and cleanse the earth of its nihilistic ideology.

Some of us fall for the seductive appeal of the “Yes, But” syndrome to explain away any event or catastrophe. Yes, Afghanistan is a mess but isn’t American overreach in the aftermath of 9/11 one of the main causes? Yes, Iraq is an unending disaster but isn’t George Bush’s war against Saddam Hussein based on the mythical weapons of mass destruction the main reason why things are the way they are?

True on both counts but the “Yes, But” explanation cannot be used to justify the horror that ISIS has unleashed around the world. Whatever the dark forces that gave birth to it, this terrorist organization is now bent on destroying anything that stands in the way of its brutal worldview through murder and mayhem.

Which is why we must unite against it, irrespective of our race or creed.

Recent events indicate that ISIS is on the run. Kurdish and rebel Syrian forces, with the help of airstrikes by a U.S.-led coalition, have retaken several strategic towns in northern Iraq and Syria. Evidence is also mounting that a drone strike has killed Mohammed Emwazi, the infamous “Jihadi John” responsible for beheading American journalist James Foley, among others. (Not many Americans are aware that Kuwait’s Jassem Emwazi, the 51-year-old father of “Jihadi John,” called his son a dog, an animal, a terrorist and hoped that he would die and go straight to hell when the first video of the beheading surfaced.)

So what does a terrorist organization do to keep its flickering flame alive in the hearts of its delusional followers? Sow seeds of anarchy by killing people at random when they are out enjoying a concert, for instance, or dining at a restaurant. That’s what happened in the City of Light last Friday.

Although lingering echoes of “where are the moderate Muslims” still persist in some conservative corridors of America, by and large this canard is gradually receding. There is a reason for it. All major Muslim organizations in America, and for that matter, around the world, have condemned the attack in Paris.

This did not keep Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump from calling for more scrutiny of American mosques. Mr. Trump would have done Muslims a favor if he could also identify which mosques should be under surveillance, unless he meant, of course, all mosques.

In the Friday congregational prayers that I attended in recent months in the Bay Area, for instance, the majority of the sermons by Imams were directed against ISIS and how it was violating the most fundamental tenets of the faith through its contempt for life. A YouTube video made about a year ago against ISIS by Hamza Yusuf, one of the most prominent Islamic scholars in America, has been viewed by close to half a million people around the world.

Some Western pundits claim that ISIS is winning the war of ideas against the West. This leaves most of us Muslims scratching our heads. Really? Exactly where is this happening? Certainly not in our mosques where we have called ISIS by what it is: a terrorist organization that has nothing to do with Islam and that must be destroyed.

Yet it is also true that some young and vulnerable American Muslims have fallen prey to ISIS’s slick social media campaign for recruitment. (A recent Danish intelligence report states that the typical age range of foreigners joining ISIS is 16 to 25.) One such was Northern Virginia’s 17-year-old Ali Shukri Amin who was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison last August for helping another teen travel to Syria to join the fight there. In acknowledging his guilt, Amin also stated that when he sought advice about the war in Syria from the adults in his life, including imams, “they could not provide adequate answers” or seemed “too busy to try.”

One could make the case that Amin was unlucky because many American Imams have been counseling disillusioned youth planning to travel to Syria to reconsider their decision. One such is Imam Mohamed Magid of Sterling, Virginia, who was able to persuade several youths from his congregation to abandon their decision to join ISIS simply by asking them to “use your mind.”

So while we Muslims condemn the Paris attack, we must also take our youth seriously if they show signs of alienation and disillusionment with their lives and reason with them in ways that make sense to them, instead of being patronizing toward them.

Of Guns, American Campuses and Killing Fields

Fueled by an irrational sense of grievance and revenge, a student finds his campus easy picking. He knows the location of the classrooms and the class schedules. Once the doors are shut, he knows there is no escape for those trapped inside.

A partial list of campuses that turned into killing fields in recent years include Columbine High School in Littleton, CO, (1999, 13 killed), Virginia High Tech (2007, 32 killed), Oikos University in Oakland, CA (2012, 7 killed) and Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT (2012, 20 killed).

Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, is the latest addition to this infamous list. On October 1^st, 26-year-old student Christopher Harper-Mercer went on a rampage in the pastoral campus, killing nine and wounding nine before killing himself. His victims included 18-year-old students and a 67-year-old English professor. He was carrying six guns and five ammunition magazines. Police found another eight guns and assault weapons in the apartment he shared with his creepily over-protective mother.

Apparently this disturbed person was legally able to buy 14 deadly weapons without any problem.

Can more security prevent such horrific campus killings? Budget constraints have forced many educational institutions, particularly community colleges, to cut back on security. But even if campuses bristled with round-the-clock police patrols, a psychopath bent on mayhem will find a way because the police cannot be everywhere at once.

The fundamental issue is not one of campus security or lack of mental treatment, as the National Rifles Association (NRA), its acolytes and political enablers (Senators, Congressmen, Governors and State Legislators) claim. After all, the mentally ill do not go about advertising their illnesses. Besides, those closest to them blame society for their illnesses, as happened with Harper-Mercer’s mother. Also, most killers look eerily normal, their inner demons hidden from view.

No, the real reason why campus killings occur with such sickening frequency in America is our absurdly easy access to guns.

In the college where I teach, the simplest algebraic equations students learn to solve are linear equations in one variable. All the data from countries similar to ours suggest that the solution to gun violence can be reduced to

Fewer guns = Fewer killings

Comparison with Australia is apt. Australians love their guns as much as we do but in 1996, when a gunman killed 35 people with a semiautomatic rifle at a tourist destination in Tasmania, the government responded by banning rifles and shotguns and imposing tough licensing requirements for gun owners. It also offered a buyback program that led to the destruction of more than a million firearms.

The result? In the 19 years since, there has not been a single mass shooting in Australia.

The NRA and its supporters will say that Australia doesn’t have a Second Amendment like the United States: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

The argument about what exactly ‘a well regulated Militia’ constitutes, and what the intent of the Founding Fathers were when they phrased the Amendment thus, will never cease. We go through this ad nauseam until … nothing happens and then it is back to business as usual: more killings on our campuses, malls, theaters and other public places.

Here are a few (and only a few) statistics of what guns have done, and continue to do, to our nation:

• Since 1970, more Americans have died from guns than dies in all U.S. wars going back to the American Revolution.
• On the average, 92 Americans die every day due to gun violence.
• According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, almost three times more preschoolers are shot dead each year than police officers in the line of duty.
• There are anywhere from 270 million to 300 million guns in circulation in the U.S. As President Obama said in his statement after the Roseburg killings: “There is a gun for roughly every man, woman, and child in America.”
• According to the gun violence archive, so far in 2015 there have already been more than 40,000 incidents of gun violence in America that has resulted in more than 10,000 deaths and 20,000 injuries. The dead include more than 2,000 youth between the ages of 12 and 17 and 560 children under 12. And we still have over two months left this year!

The grim toll relentlessly marches on. The truth is as clear as it is devastating: Far too many Americans regard their guns not just as culture but as religion, and the faithful are prepared to defend their religion to death, literally.

(In the days following the Roseburg shooting, for instance, gun sales in the area shot up dramatically. Within days, a freshman at Northern Arizona University killed a student and wounded three and at a student-housing complex at Texas Southern University, assailants killed a student and wounded another.)

How do we go about changing the status quo, even though it is impossible to rationally engage in a debate with the NRA and gun-activists?

First, we must believe that we are not helpless in the face of this continuing horror. The NRA is extremely powerful, no doubt, and has many politicians in its pocket, but it can be defeated. We have got to have this conviction.

Second, there must a concerted nationwide movement to hold elected officials accountable for their voting records on gun laws. If they are cowed by the NRA and hide behind a misreading of the Second Amendment despite the horrific toll on public health that unfettered access to guns take in America, we must work together at the local, state and national levels to defeat them at the polls. Politicians are driven by one overriding thought: How will we fare at the polls? Any prospect of a defeat can change a mind faster than, well, a speeding bullet.

Third, our government ought to consider offering a gun buyback program as was done in Australia, expensive though it will be. But we need a compelling demonstration from concerned citizens, particularly from responsible gun owners, to boldly say: “We have an unacceptable level of gun violence in America and therefore we renounce our gun ownership to save lives.” 

Many gun-owners are on record as saying that the NRA does not speak for them.

In his statement to the nation after the Roseburg massacre, President Obama said: “We collectively are answerable to those families who lose their loved ones because of our inaction.”

Inaction will inevitably lead to recurring tragedies. We Americans from all walks of life must recognize that we are being destroyed from within by the false religion of gun and so have to take on the NRA and the gun lobby. Given their power, it will be a long and drawn-out battle but if we endure, we will win.

Point Lobos: Nature's Healing Power

Nothing refreshes the mind and cleanses the soul more than wilderness, be it the wilderness of the woods or of the shore. Point Lobos, a California State Nature Reserve about eighty miles south of San Jose and covering approximately 9 square miles, is one of those rare places where visitors find a merging of the woods and the shore, timeless trails lined by ancient pines and colonies of seals and cormorants on rocks shaped by wind and surf over millennia.

It is difficult for any photographer to comprehensively capture the haunting beauty of Point Lobos across the seasons, although Edward Weston, one of the earliest (1886-1958) and among the elect, tried. His lyrical black-and-white prints of unusual rock formations at the reserve have inspired scores of nature lovers to flock to the California coastline over the years.

With a summer of record-breaking temperatures in drought-stricken California winding down, I recently found myself approaching the Pacific from a pinecone-strewn trail at the Reserve.

The tide was coming in, watched over by a preternaturally calm gull poised on a rock. Colorful pebbles, green, brown, white and red, glistened in the sun, as did pink and white corals shaped like miniature trees.

Most striking were the tide pools reflecting bits of the sky and filled with the flower-like sentient anemones that closed and opened every time some seawater food got inside it while surging waves crashed on the rocks around them, sending white spray skyward.

Hermit crabs seemed to appear from nowhere, some falling awkwardly trying to scale the slippery slopes of the rocks. Others met headlong only to sidle away in opposite directions. Snails were out in force as well, crawling from nooks and crannies to approach the tide pools. Limpets, barnacles, and starfish used their suction-like holdfast to add to the diversity of the shore. With each wave, the starfish seemed to change its location.

The predator-prey relationship that had evolved over millennia was in full exhibit everywhere you looked. The tiny creatures looked fragile but there was an element of resiliency and fierce fight for survival in them that was palpable.

A tangled forest of kelp and rockweed farther out sank and surfaced as the tidal surge washed over them. A flock of gulls wheeled over them. Next to the kelp was an oystercatcher, a real work of art. Its deep-black body, bright red bill and yellow feet made it look both pre-historic and ultra-modern. It was feeding on the ocean flotsam that had washed up the shore and emitted a piercing cry that stopped me cold in my track when I tried to approach it. I did the only brave thing I could do: I quietly withdrew.

In a rock island farther out in the sea, saw hundreds of birds preening and, well, socializing. And farther beyond were seals talking up a storm in their rocky habitat, a combination of grunts and exclamations, punctuated by what seemed uncannily like the sound of laughter.

As I stood back to take the whole elemental scene in, I smelled it, the pine-scented breeze wafting in from the ancient grove nearby, and I thought: The music of the forest is lapping at the shore of eternity!

The sun moved across the sky with an urgency rarely witnessed on a normal day. And when it set in a blaze of yellow and crimson, with a flock of pelicans flying in formation across its golden orb, I knew I had gotten what I had hoped for: the gift of a fresh perspective and the appreciating the blessings of being alive.

Movie Review: "Mr. Holmes: The Man Beyond the Myth"

Creative reimagining of the canon is an art unto itself.

Such is the case with the movie, “Mr. Holmes: The Man Beyond the Myth.” Based on the book, “A Slight Trick of the Mind” by Mitch Cullin (1985), it explores the life of Sherlock Holmes in retirement as he raises bees in a farm upon the South Downs in Sussex in the south coast of England.

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), creator of the wildly popular detective, wrote fifty-six short stories and four novels (A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of the Four, The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Valley of Fear) centered on his super sleuth.

But when Doyle ‘exiled’ Holmes to his apiary (The Blanched Soldier, The Lion's Mane and His Last Bow), it only kindled the imagination of writers convinced that age could not possibly dim this prodigious mind.

The stories in the canon suggest that Holmes would have been about 50 years old when he retired in late 1903. The movie opens with Holmes (played by Ian McKellen in an  Oscar-worthy performance) pushing 93 in 1947 in post-WWII England. His mind is as agile as ever but his memory is failing him. That explains his recent visit to Japan where he went in search of the elusive “prickly ash,” a plant with alleged ingredients to spruce up the memory, the ginkgo biloba of its time. He and his Japanese guide (Hiroyuki Sanada, who has a mystery of his own that he wants Holmes to solve) discover the plant in the bomb-blasted ruins of Hiroshima. Holmes’s physician derisively calls the plant “Ashly prick” but is unable to convince Holmes of its uselessness.

Mrs. Munro (Laura Linney, also brilliant) is Holmes’s long-suffering housekeeper, burdened by her gifted son Roger (Milo Parker, gifted actor indeed!) who helps Holmes with the upkeep of the bees and shows all the signs of a budding Sherlock Holmes in his own right. The pair’s verbal back-and-forth can carry the movie for those for whom a riposte goes farther than an edge-of-the–seat car chase.

Roger and Holmes run circles around Mrs. Munro with their observations, their air-tight logical inferences. “She doesn’t even know how to read,” says Roger in an outburst of cruelty that earns him a rebuke from Holmes. The practical Mrs. Munro wants to move out for the sake of her son’s future, a possibility that distresses both Holmes and Roger. “Exceptional children are the product of unremarkable parents,” Holmes arrogantly tells his housekeeper, indifferent to the cruelty of the remark. But he redeems himself by also telling Roger that “a good son always does what a mother asks him to.” Holmes also makes clear his distaste for people who “cloak cowardice in flags of sacrifice” and who does not wish, particularly at this stage in his life, to be a “last resort for lunatics out there.”

The story revolves around an unfinished case that Holmes investigated thirty years ago, of a devoted wife (Ann Kelmot, played by Hattie Morahan) whose miscarriages left her, and her husband Thomas Kelmot (Patrick Kennedy), in misery and suspicion. When finally Holmes takes the mystery to its logical conclusion, it leads not to a sense of satisfaction but to a despair unknown to the First Detective who commanded mass adulation in his prime. “Human nature is a mystery,” says a rueful and chastened Holmes, “that logic alone cannot illuminate.”

What of the man beyond the myth? Earlier in the movie, Holmes informs an incredulous Roger that Dr. Watson, his quintessential sidekick (who had “at that time deserted me for a wife, the only selfish action which I can recall in our association” as Holmes recalls in The Blanched Soldier), was not beyond taking poetic license in transcribing his adventures, including associating the iconic detective with the hat, the pipe and the cigar. He wishes to correct the embellishments of Watson who “turned me into fiction.” When Holmes struggles to recall the case of Ann Kelmot, it is Roger who supplies the crucial link that allows him to reconstruct the tragedy that unfolded so many years ago. As to why the case haunts him, Holmes tells his young protégé that “one shouldn’t leave this world without a sense of completion.”

Holmes’s enigmatic brother, Mycroft Holmes (The Greek Interpreter, in which Holmes confided to Watson that “If the art of the detective began and ended in reasoning from an arm-chair, my brother would be the greatest criminal agent that ever lived”) makes an appearance to help viewers tidy up the case of Holmes’s Japanese guide. There are also allusions to Jack the Ripper and, of course, to the fearsome and ferocious Hounds of the Baskervilles.

There is a subtle, and it turns out, telling difference between the sting of a bee and that of a wasp. When Holmes comes upon the seemingly lifeless body of Roger on his estate with angry stings all over his body, his first instinct is to summon an ambulance before informing the boy’s mother. In anguish, the mother accuses Holmes of exploiting the boy and not really caring for him. “But I do,” laments Holmes as he breaks down before the mother in a heart-breaking scene of pain and guilt, remorse and repentance.

At the confluence of art and science lies the power of observation. This is what saves a distraught Holmes, already reeling from an “outbreak of mortality,” as he suddenly realizes what really happened to Roger now fighting for his life in the hospital.

“What will happen to the bees when you are gone,” Roger had asked Holmes earlier. That question helps Holmes figure out the chain of events that ensued when Roger went to check in on the bees dying mysteriously in their hives.

Curious? Then consider seeing this poignant, cerebral movie.