Interview done November 20th, 2023
The Importance of Palestine to the Ummah, the discourse of “Whiteness” in the conflict, the two wings fighting for the soul of the Palestinian cause, and more with Imam Tom Facchine:
AY: Assalamu Alaikum wa Rahmatullah Imam Tom, thank you for speaking with me. As the war and bombardment in Gaza kicked off, like most of us, most Muslims who don’t have a day-to-day investment in the Palestinian cause raced back and made it their primary concern once again, bringing a level of unity to the discourse that I haven’t seen to this level before. This unity we’ve built however is being faced with the largest Zionist propaganda campaign ever unleashed; amid this war, both online and offline, there arises the once again big question by the uninvested as to why the issue of Palestine and al-Aqsa is so crucial to most practicing Muslims, whether they’re Palestinian or not. How would you explain this phenomenon to a layperson puzzled by the spiritual vigor Palestine inspires in the Ummah?
TF: Walaykum salaam wa rahmatullahi wa barakaatuh! Muslims are facing oppression and barbarity in multiple places the world over, from East Turkistan to Yemen, from Syria to Kashmir. A true Muslim feels for all his/her brothers and sisters and prays for their victory, rectifies his/herself to have those prayers answered, and pursues any legitimate available means at his/her disposal to accomplish that victory. What makes Palestine unique in its ability to galvanize Muslim solidarity are at least two factors. The first are the well-known spiritual merits of Palestine, from the sanctity of Al-Quds and Masjid al-Aqsaa to it being the first direction toward which Muslims prayed, to it being the location of the Prophet Muhammad’s ﷺ Night Journey and Ascension, to it being–as per the hadith–the location of the ta’ifah mansurah, that select group of believers who will continue to be upon right guidance no matter who betrays them.
However, the second factor that makes Palestine unique is a bit less-discussed, and that is its historical and symbolic value. When Omar ibn al-Khattab conquered Palestine and placed the Christians under his protection it demonstrated not a mere tribalistic victory but rather the supremacy of the Shariah as a Divine system of just, humane governance. This point is easily lost on non-Muslims who assume that Muslims are only interested in owning or controlling land. A properly calibrated Muslim is not content to merely have land ruled by Muslims, it must be ruled by the Shariah as well. Shariah rule in Palestine was only seriously challenged by the savagery of the Crusades, in which parts of Palestine were lost due to the weakness and corruption of the Muslim leadership. But even that challenge was met with courage and honor as Muslims rose up to restore Shariah rule in Palestine. Palestine was not lost again until the dissolution of the Caliphate of the Ottomans after WWII, which created a power vacuum in which the Zionists could execute their plans. The fact that the Zionists relied upon the British colonial apparatus, then the UN and the US-led international order post-WWII sums up the farce of the international liberal order’s pretensions to freedom and democratic will, an order that has had devastating effects on Muslims. Since EuroAmerican colonialism has displaced Shariah rule from Muslim lands in general and in Palestine specifically, the historical experience of the people of those lands has been general misery and bloodshed. Palestine thus symbolizes the Western colonial imposition of its order and the displacement of a Shariah-based society experienced the world over. Hence, any properly constituted Muslim across the globe connects emotionally to the occupation of Palestine and takes it personally.
AY: A big accusation I see by right-leaning figures, even those who claim to be neutral or uncaring regarding the Zionist question, is that the mass support for Palestine they’re seeing is just a reflection of “anti-White hatred” by third-world immigrants in Western countries since, in their view, those who are pro-Palestine view the state of Israel as a colonial white creation. When speaking to some of these folk, they seem to derive this from the already apparent hatred of white people that permeates most leftist circles today. How would you respond to this?
TF: This is a really crucial point that demonstrates the sensitivity of the language and frameworks we use to pursue justice, as well as the difference between how things are intended when spoken versus how they are heard in context. Axiomatically speaking, Islam and Allah’s Shariah stress accountability for things within our power, such as our decisions and the principles we choose to guide our lives, rather than things we have no control over such as our ancestry, physical features, etc. The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ said “Surely Allah does not look to your faces and your wealth but He looks to your heart and to your deeds,” collected by Muslims. Hence, to hold contempt for someone because they have white skin is foreign to Islam and actually an affront to Allah who created people in all their forms and colors. Allah says in Surah Al-Rum [30:18], “And among His Signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the variations in your languages and your colors: verily in that are Signs for those who know.”
That being said, there is an important distinction between Whiteness, as theorized by the left, and simply having a fair complexion. Whiteness is the normativity of being white, the idealization of white skin, aesthetics, ways of knowing, values, and by extension the dehumanization, erasure, and annihilation of Otherness (in this case, non-Whiteness). Whiteness, leftists correctly point out, is an invented colonial construct designed to legitimize and structure the domination of people at home and abroad. Fair and Lovely, the refusal to marry a few shades darker, and the clear double standard at play between Ukrainian and Palestinian refugees are all examples of Whiteness in action. Where things get messy is when Whiteness as a constructed ideal is mapped onto actual individuals in an attempt to deduce their complicity or culpability in this structure of oppression. In leftist circles, fair-skinned EuroAmericans could variably be considered complicit in the violence done by Whiteness not just by explicitly championing White-supremacy, but also by actively self-identifying with Whiteness, placing their sense of self-worth in it, materially benefit from it, or failing to dismantle it. If you look at that list, you see that there is a spectrum of complicity, however the differences between those levels are often blurred or collapsed entirely.
There are at least three issues here. One is that Whiteness is not as simple as it is often made to seem when it is deployed. Although white skin is idealized, clearly not everyone with a fair complexion is an exemplar of Whiteness as a structure, as our Bosnian and Kosovar brothers and sisters well know. When it comes to aesthetics, ways of knowing, and values, things get even murkier. European and North American history is made up of multiple, sometimes conflicting strands of each. Even the Enlightenment is made up of multiple, sometimes conflicting strands. What we really mean to say is that some of those subtraditions are hegemonic and displace, even subjugate, other traditions within that space and then in foreign lands outside that space. At this point one is entitled to question if Whiteness is the best term to describe this dynamic, since it conceals and thus neutralizes the rival knowledge and value traditions within European and American history.
Things only get more complicated from there. Dr. Sherman Jackson distinguishes between Plymouth Rock whites and Ellis Island whites. Ellis Island whites never owned slaves, and some Ellis Island whites like the Italians or Irish were initially racialized as non-White upon arrival. How complicit or culpable is a person who is racialized as White, benefited from segregation, then redlining and other discriminatory housing practices versus someone whose ancestors ran a plantation and owned slaves? How does that complicity or culpability change when a person actively takes pride in their whiteness versus someone who abhors and disavows the white supremacism of their ancestors? Virginia Theological Seminary and Georgetown University, for example, have explored reparations to the descendants of slaves who worked on their campuses. Sh. Joe Bradford has an important preliminary reflection on the Islamic case for reparations (https://joebradford.net/does-islamic-law-take-a-position-on-slave-reparations/). There’s actually a really rich conversation to be had here about complicity and responsibility for inherited wrongs, but the way that “white” and “Whiteness” is casually thrown around might obstruct rather than facilitate this worthwhile exploration.
The second issue is that the ascription of privilege to whites due to Whiteness is materialistic. That doesn’t mean it’s false, it just means that it is only partially true. No one can deny, I think, the monetary reparations due to the descendants of enslaved people in the Americas. But there are other ways in which materially benefitting from Whiteness might actually be a liability in spiritual terms. My undergrad advisor, Professor Himadeep Mupiddi, was very adamant about proving how much of what we call privilege is actually deficiency, or what he would call “lack.” But he is a minority voice in a sea of people who ignore the spiritual maladies of the oppressor class and their descendants. The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ told us that a poor person will enter paradise 500 years before a rich person (Sunan al-Tirmidhi, sahih) and that the prayers of an oppressed person face no obstacles (Sunan al-Tirmidhi, sahih). These are undeniable advantages for those attuned to the spiritual dimension of reality. Far from a romanticization of the poor and oppressed, this avoids the politics of despair that materialist analysis lends itself to.
The third issue is that Leftists themselves blur the line between critiquing Whiteness and merely critiquing people racialized as white with unfortunate frequency, which is alienating and unhelpful. We might feel good in the moment of these declarations…it’s cathartic to unload on white people. But beyond potentially hurting our cause, it might be symptomatic of our own internalization of the racialized and tribalistic thinking of the system we’re trying to replace. We don’t want to replace white supremacism with another supremacism. As Muslims, we have to hold onto our Shariah-supremacism and our Shariah-based concepts of thinking through and experiencing the world, even if we have been oppressed according to the constructed categories of others.
With all that groundwork now laid out, I can actually address your question, which is related to how our activism for Palestine fits into the Euro-American Culture Wars. If Whiteness is to blame and we simultaneously slip between blaming Whiteness and “whites,” there is no redemptive dimension to this struggle that people racialized as white can grab onto. We risk the struggle becoming one of rival identities or clashing civilizations rather than a battle between Truth and Falsehood. Islam was powerfully appealing in 7th-century Arabia partly because it wasn’t an identitarian struggle, in fact it cut across previously established identitarian categories and invited all people of conscience to respond to its call. We need to offer this redemptive dimension to the world. Even if we retain our critique of white-supremacy–as we should–the messaging needs to be “Hey, this isn’t working out for you either, come demonstrate your virtue, come distinguish yourself based on your courageous choices, not on an ethnic, racial, or civilizational identity.” Then people can imagine a role for themselves in the struggle and hopefully reckon with themselves enough to join it.
If we fail to do this, our activism for Palestine will simply be shoe-horned into the Culture War, which makes us easily dismissed from the right and undermines the universality of our cause.
AY: The two main competing ideologies for the soul of the Palestinian cause have always been: the secular, nationalist side that rides on Marxist-leninist origins; and the Islamic side that’s much reviled by many, including Palestinians who have accepted the former as the only path towards liberation. This has always been a struggle for us because these alliances with the left-leaning, secular types were made before most of us were even born — yet now, many of us realize how dumb and useless this angle of the struggle has been. Should Muslims care about gradually trying to shift the message to one led by piety and Islamic unity so as to not upset this shaky alliance with the left “for Palestine only,” or is it not worth maintaining at all as we thrust into the more religious direction?
TF: Muslims should absolutely care about shifting the message to one led by piety and Islamic unity, but the pertinent questions as you properly highlighted are how, how quickly, and what are the obstacles to achieving this? To answer these questions you need to grapple with the reality of internal colonization. When I say that, I’m not singling out the secular activists, there is actually plenty of internal colonization to go around on both sides. In fact, since I conceptualize it as a shared problem of internalized colonization I personally think we need sympathy for those who are seduced by the secular anti-imperialist left. They despise colonialism and thus have a type of useful foundation for coming around, but two things need to happen for that to occur. One is that they need to understand how secular leftist politics is a reformist tendency within the colonial project and not true fundamental resistance to it. Two is that they need to see courageous Islamic voices and Islamic political action that gets results, and that brings me to the internal colonization on the Islamic side.
Islamic political activism has been hampered by the quietist, defeatist, and nationalistic attitudes of Muslim scholars and rulers. The last six weeks have exposed many. Some are saying that the Palestinians are to blame for their own oppression or that if they had proper aqeedah this wouldn’t be happening. Some are saying leave it to the ruler and don’t dare speak out against him and that you must wait for his permission to even call for a boycott. Some are saying that protests and voting are haram, a perennial low-level conversation. Others are saying we just need tazkiyya and tahajjud and all our problems will evaporate. These are all either shallow takes and/or false dilemmas. And that’s not to throw out all the good work of the figures who have espoused these views or question their motives, but political action is a discrete area that should be left to its experts just like fiqh and aqeedah are discrete areas that should be left to its experts. Now, we also have to be careful to not fall into sectarianism because if we are being fair-minded and not simply looking to score points for our own favored group we would admit that such positions are not limited to one group. There are quietist Sufis, quietist Salafis, etc. just as there have been courageous, principled voices from all camps as well. But what this draws attention to is the understandable skepticism of secular activists towards a more Islamic framework. If I’m a secular Palestinian activist on the left and these are the voices that are sermonizing towards me, I would be very likely to dismiss it.
This is compounded by my impression that the groups doing most of the legwork politically on the ground are the secular groups, not the Islamic ones. Look at the national march on Washington DC, the groups who organized it are more secular in nature (granted there isn’t always a binary). Even if you scroll down the dozens and dozens of endorsements, you see MAS, credit to them, but where is ISNA? Where is ICNA? I have met the leadership of some of these organizations so I’m not trying to belittle the good they do, but I do want to offer a sincere and public challenge to do better and step up. It’s not a good look when a march for Palestine has more endorsements from Queer organizations than Islamic centers, what type of politics do you think will result from that coalition and that base? And what is a young, passionate person to think when secular activism is getting a lot more done and many of the religious voices leave much to be desired?
I went to the national march in DC a week after I went to a demonstration in Albany organized mostly by regional Islamic centers. The difference couldn’t have been more dramatic, and I’m not just talking size. In DC I almost got a contact high from standing behind a ganja-smoking group toting rainbow flags (I relocated). The messaging was occasionally shrill and laced with profanity. I would not have brought my kids. In Albany, the messaging was tight and Islamic. There was no vandalism, it was a family-friendly environment. I’m not trying to take away credit from the more secular groups, obviously, they did a remarkable job mobilizing so many people on short notice for a worthy cause, but I’d like to see Islamic activism get to that scale and draw those numbers because I think we could have an even bigger impact. So to answer your question definitively I think we should be building our own Islamic framework and networks and interfacing regularly with the more secular groups, sometimes joining forces, sometimes doing our own thing, and providing the opportunity to show people a new type of political activism.
AY: On your podcast a couple of weeks ago with Mohammed Hijab, you mentioned that you weren’t a fan of the “march through the institutions” and “institutional capture” style of advocacy and change because it’s filled with manipulation, and nasty politics, and creates resentment. I want to push back on that a little. I do find the way many people describe institutional capture to be naive and unprincipled, but it’s not something without precedent. When Sultan Salahuddin worked as a vizier for the Fatimids — a corrupt non-Muslim institution — it ended up being for the eventual goal of overturning and reigning them into the fold with little blood to be shed. This is, though medieval, a nevertheless clear example of such a thing being done, without much care for what the masses thought. I’m interested in what you think of that. Do you believe Muslims who don’t buy into this democratic casuistry we see constantly today still have to pretend to “play ball” with it to get anywhere?
TF: Granted, though I think the Fatimids were probably a better example of institutional capture than Salahuddin, who was much more in line with popular sentiment. The fact that the Fatimids fell so easily is a testament to that. The underlying point is the role of popular opinion and perception. If you embark upon a “long march through the institutions” but don’t build popular support, the obvious risk is that you plant the seeds for your own demise. It will breed alienation and resentment; people will pray for your downfall and cheer on your enemies. I think if we look at the Prophetic example, power was built more organically and ground-up than that. We’re not talking halal/haram, we’re talking about risk. It’s a high-risk game to play, thinking that you can capture these institutions and not lose your soul to careerism and assimilation in the process. In fact, if there’s one thing we’ve seen from the genocide currently going on in Palestine, it’s how fruitless the “change it from the inside” strategy has been for Western Muslims. We confuse access with power. We confuse proximity to power with the ability to influence. We confuse bussing the table with having a seat at the table. For all of the Muslim staffers in the White House and Congress, all the journalists, politicos, etc. that played this game for the last 20 years, it has done nothing to stop the slaughter of over 10,000 Palestinians over the course of a single month. The only thing changing the conversation and putting the word “ceasefire” on the table is mass movement and popular action.
AY: Before October 7th, for the past year or so we’ve seen many Muslim Imams, influencers, writers, etc. start to entertain the idea of allying with figures on the conservative right for the sake of social issues (such as fighting against LGBT madness), and disavowing/cutting ties with our leftist allies who rode that rainbow and tried to drag us along with them. It seemed like progress on that front was being made, but literally the day the conflict started we saw all that go right into the shredder. The vast majority of these conservative pundits and figures with whom we’ve tried to build bridges instantly reverted to 20-year-old rhetoric about the “evils” of Islam and Muslims, when just months prior were indicating regret at the hysteria induced by the War on Terror. The thing now is: as the people in Gaza and Palestine suffer for Allah knows how long, we in the West are still facing these issues in our mosques and schools; is it still worth it to work with the “anti-woke” crowd on these issues despite them showing that their psychotic ghil for us never really went away? Should we only look for a bloc in this crowd that is anti-Zionist as well?
TF: I personally experienced this. I had done a phone interview with a conservative Jewish columnist on gender ideology in schools before October 7th. One of the themes we kept returning to was the political homelessness of Muslims (and many Jews) and the necessity of building new political alliances going forward. After October 7th the article was tabled and she acknowledged that we would be in very different places on Palestine. It remains to be seen if we can still get this article published once things cool off. It will be an interesting test of political maturity to see if we can work in a principled way with allies on one focused issue while acknowledging our deep differences on other issues.
The elephant in the room for Muslims is that our political capacity is incredibly small considering our potential. People unfortunately think of voting as the supreme political act, but why aren’t we starting PACs and pushing our own candidates? So we do need to organize a core bloc of political actors (voters, donors, lawyers, propagandists, candidates, etc.) who both value the traditional family and are anti-Zionist. Once that bloc is established we can collaborate across the aisle on specific issues and initiatives as needed while maintaining our platform, discourse, and values. To give a concrete example, Mark Pocan is someone we wouldn’t necessarily want to vote for due to his politics on the family, but someone who, if in power, is a potential ally on Palestine specifically. We shouldn’t have to compromise our politics on the traditional family to work with the Pocans of the world to get something done for Palestine. And that means we should be ready to walk away from the table if someone who is an ally on one issue demands a compromise or concession on a different issue. It also means having high aspirations and not settling for the lesser of two evils. Our problem is that we only think short term, so in a given election it will likely be Pocan, who is pro-LGBT and anti-Zionist, against another candidate who might be the opposite on both issues. The short term calculus centers around just that election and who is less bad, but that’s not enough, that’s not a winning long-term political vision. We should never vote for a “lesser of two evils” candidate without simultaneously pursuing the means to recruit, fund, and run a better candidate to replace him or her in the following election. So if you’re in Wisconsin and you bite the bullet and vote for Pocan because of his stance on Palestine, the very next day after the election you should be figuring out how to replace Pocan with someone who is pro-Palestine and pro-traditional family by the time the next election rolls around.
I also think that we can never allow our thinking to get so categorical that we miss opportunities for wedging existing political blocs and forming new ones. Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson have been examples of people on the right who are willing to think more critically about US support for Israel, so there’s something to work with there. More than ever, average people can see that both parties are completely beholden to foreign interests like AIPAC and the Israeli lobby. People like Sam Parker and Mark Pocan were not possible 20 years ago, so even though we have setbacks, and the “Islamophobia” machine revs up and does its thing, there does seem to be incremental change in a positive direction. If I ran a PAC right now, I would be blasting the airwaves showing the average American that US politicians are being held hostage by foreign interests.
AY: You were one of the signatories for the controversial Navigating Differences statement for the Islamic stance on LGBT issues back in May of this year, which is how I first found out about you. When remembering that something occurred to me: the main people involved in the creation of the statement clarified that one of the uses of the document was as an official defense to be used by school or public officials, lawyers, etc. where Muslims’ civil rights were being infringed upon in daily life due to their uncompromising stance on opposing the overwhelming mass of LGBT propaganda. Now, we’re witnessing the same exact level of repression where many Muslims in the West are having their rights infringed upon for their support of Palestine. In light of this, as well as the sudden appearance of “Islamic” scholars who are actually in favor of Israeli normalization; do you think a similar statement should be put together now? Would much benefit come from it? Personally, I believe Navigating Differences Part 2 is in order.
TF: This is a very interesting proposal and one I frankly hadn’t considered, likely due to the fact that the Palestinian cause aligns with leftist politics in ways that advocating for the traditional family doesn’t, so many Muslim advocacy groups that are at least perceived as being left-leaning are already doing the heavy lifting in supporting students and employees facing repression regarding Palestine. The stance that Navigating Differences took on LGBT issues obviously aligns more with right-wing political positions, so for that reason, there were far fewer voices and organizations willing to take a stand on it and hence the importance of taking a stand in the first place.
That being said, the normalization angle is compelling. I’ll give it some thought!
AY: Thank you for speaking with me Imam. We wish you the best, Jazak Allahu Khairan.
TF: May Allah guide us to what He loves, ameen wa iyyakum!