Pakistan and America Both Need APPNA’s Leadership
Central Punjab, March 2011. Photo by Pete Sabo.
The following article was commissioned for the APPNA Journal (Vol. 13 No. 1, Summer 2011, pp. 20-21), by its editor, Dr. Mahmood Alam:
This is a very difficult time for Pakistan, for Pakistanis and other Muslims living in America, indeed for all friends of Pakistan and of humanity and peace. Drone attacks, Osama bin Laden, Raymond Davis, the long-term damage from last summer’s severe flooding – which I saw for myself in February and March in the Swat valley and in rural areas of Punjab province – there’s no rest from the litany of crises Pakistan faces.
The Pakistani-American community, led by APPNA and other organizations I admire and support, is remarkably steadfast in addressing the acute and chronic humanitarian needs of Pakistani society. Year after year, crisis after crisis, fundraiser after fundraiser, my Pakistani-American friends walk the walk. I admire you enormously for knowing and doing what needs to be done for the men, women and, above all, children of Pakistan, regardless of the constantly changing and increasingly alarming geopolitical situation. And I want you to know that I will continue walking the walk with you.
One way I think I’m positioned to help is by educating the American public about the Pakistan I’ve come to know and love, since I first went there in 1995. We all know Pakistan is far from perfect, but the point I try to get across to mainstream America is that the real Pakistan is very different, and much more interesting and likeable, than the Pakistan they see on TV. That’s an easy and enjoyable thing to do if you know and like Pakistan as I do, and it needs to be done, because the American public’s attitude toward Pakistan greatly affects our ability to support all the urgently needed humanitarian work that must be done. This is so because, as I and others have diagnosed, the Pakistani-American community suffers from chronic and worsening donor fatigue, and the wider American public represents a largely untapped source of funds for nonprofits working in Pakistan. But even prior to that, we need to elicit the positive interest and human sympathy of non-Pakistani, non-Muslim Americans, for everyone’s sake.
And more than that, I believe the very future of Pakistan itself depends on the Pakistani diaspora’s ability and willingness to reach out assertively to mainstream America. I believe that the best defense is a good offense, and that if you want something done right – in this case, if you want Americans to have a correct impression of Pakistan and of Muslims – you’ve got to do it yourself. This is where I believe APPNA and its chapters and individual members can play a powerful leading role on behalf of the Pakistani-American community as a whole – and thus, by extension, on behalf of Pakistan.
To mainstream America, APPNA members are potentially the human faces of Pakistan and of Islam. I say potentially, because unfortunately the faces that the words “Pakistan” and “Islam” still conjure up to many Americans are those of people like Osama bin Laden and Faisal Shahzad, the disturbed young man who planted a bomb in Times Square in New York last year. This will change only if we make a concerted effort to change it – but we can change it. What’s called for is a very assertive public diplomacy initiative, to replace those faces with the faces of accomplished professionals, good neighbors, and active citizens – people like you. Each of you lives and works somewhere in America, many of you in very provincial and even remote cities and towns. And it’s exactly in those places that the need is greatest.
APPNA has the membership and institutional infrastructure to make a big difference throughout American society. What if APPNA were to do this systematically, encouraging and supporting members and chapters who take initiative locally by reaching out to churches, schools, civic groups like Rotary, and universities? And even if this were not feasible on an APPNA-wide scale, there’s no reason it can’t be done by regional or state chapters or individual members. It just takes initiative, resourcefulness, and imagination, all of which I know Pakistanis possess. Pakistanis are among the most resourceful people I know; you’ve had to be, because for 64 years your country has faced one enormous challenge after another. As author Emma Duncan pointed out more than 20 years ago, nothing is ever settled in Pakistan. That’s chronically frustrating, but it has also been good practice for our current and coming crises, both in Pakistan and in America. The Pakistani-American community, led by APPNA members, has a lot to teach other Americans about how to rise to a challenge.
I want to continue rising to our shared challenges with you, because I believe we’re all in this together. On June 1, I gave a speech at a prestigious TEDx event sponsored by the Princeton Public Library in Princeton, New Jersey. In it I pointed out, to a mostly non-Pakistani audience, that many Pakistani friends of mine – many of them physicians who volunteered their time and lifesaving skills – responded immediately and with real sympathy, concretely expressed, after the earthquake in Haiti. I also said that I felt American society had missed the opportunity to show similar human concern for Pakistanis last summer, when 20 percent of Pakistan was under water. And I quoted from a message I received from Dr. Uzma Shah of Boston, after I had published an article titled “Pakistan Floods: Why Should We Care?” on the Huffington Post and on my website. “It’s hard to see pictures from Pakistan,” Uzma wrote, “and I can’t help but choke back tears when I see all that desperation. And amidst all the furor about all things bad and hard about Pakistan and ‘Islam,’ it’s comforting to read your article. Because at the end of the day, we are all human, living in one world, sharing the same life.”
This is the point we must keep making, as often as necessary. It’s easy to explain away America’s failure to respond adequately to the floods: Americans suffered from “compassion fatigue” after Haiti; Pakistan is farther from the U.S. than Haiti is; a flood is a slow-moving disaster whose effects are less immediately dramatic than an earthquake. But it’s also hard to avoid facing the effects of a decade-long national climate that has made Muslims the only group in America against whom it’s considered permissible, sometimes even fashionable, to be bigoted. I believe, though, that – like all people – Americans are capable of responding to what Abraham Lincoln called the better angels of our nature, if they’re invited and given the opportunity to do so. Many of you know this from your own experience. As my friend Dr. Shahnaz Khan of Zephyrhills, Florida told me, “It becomes personal. [My patients] actually tell me they think of me when they listen to the news. In fact, a lot of them probably didn’t know I was from Pakistan before 9/11, or didn’t even care. They say, ‘Be careful, Dr. Khan. Come back safely. Don’t get lost, don’t get hurt.’ It’s a good feeling, a lot of goodwill.” Just as the real Pakistan is better and more interesting than the Pakistan we see on TV, so is the real America.
So how can we effectively engage with and influence the real America? One thing I do is give away copies of my book, Overtaken By Events: A Pakistan Road Trip, to students, libraries, religious and political leaders, and others in positions of influence in American society. The Pakistani novelist Bapsi Sidhwa understands what I’m trying to achieve; she says its “personal perspective … lends the book much of its charm and veracity and makes Overtaken By Events so compulsively readable.” The program’s potential is well illustrated by an email I received from Texas Christian University student Paul Jorden in January, just after I spoke to his World Religions class taught by Professor Mark Dennis. “Dear Mr. Casey,” Paul wrote,
Thank you very much for the copy of your book. I am thoroughly looking forward to learning more about life and the hardships of those in Pakistan and how terrorism shapes our (Americans’) perception of Muslims. Thank you for taking the time to speak to our class. I sincerely appreciate the importance of issues such as this, especially during times when it seems that our lives are permeated by a constant fear of terrorism via the news. Best of luck with promoting awareness.
The American mainstream media isn’t going to do the task for us, because – as Paul Jorden shows he understands in the quote above – the media is a major source of the problem. By all means, let’s try to influence politicians, policymakers, media moguls, and celebrities, but let’s not be seduced by the polite hearings and photo-ops that they offer us from time to time. We need to go over the heads of the American media and establishment, by reaching out directly to the American public. My public and classroom speaking and book sponsorship program are among the ways I’ve thought of to do this. I’m able to give away books thanks to the support of Pakistani-Americans like you, who sponsor multiple copies of Overtaken By Events. The more books are sponsored, the more I can give away. For example, I have an opportunity to give away 300 copies when I’ll be the keynote speaker at the annual Region III convention of NAFSA: Association of International Educators in Oklahoma City in October. I will also be at this year’s APPNA convention in St. Louis, speaking at the Fatima Jinnah Medical College alumni dinner on Friday evening and at the Social Welfare and Disaster Relief meeting on Saturday. Please find me there, or contact me any time on my cell phone (206-226-0509) or by email (ethan@ethancasey.com).
I’m finding young Americans the most receptive to learning about the Pakistan I know and love, and this brings to mind another asset we have to work with: your own community’s younger generation. When I spoke at the Islamic Association of Greater Detroit in January 2010, I was so moved by the efforts and accomplishments of the young volunteers there that I felt compelled to include in my speech this line: “We all know that America is a nation of immigrants. As an American whose ancestors came here in the 19th century from Ireland and Germany and France, I want to thank you for contributing not only your talents and material resources, but also your impressive children, to help build a new, improved America in the 21st century.” I’ve re-used that line many times since then. On this important level, America’s gain doesn’t have to be Pakistan’s loss. In my observation, Pakistani and other Muslim families give their children precisely the confidence, moral education, and sense of purpose and direction that are sorely lacking in all too many other American families. Your children are poised to become real leaders of American society, and that bodes well for all of us. And they are already in positions of influence with their peers at many of this country’s greatest universities. Congratulations – and let’s continue enlisting and empowering them.
And let’s continue working together to reach out to mainstream America, with the confidence that this country is in great need of your visible and vocal presence and leadership. I say that as an American who worries about my own country at least as much as I worry about Pakistan. By virtue of your profession, you enjoy a position of prestige and trust in American society, in cities and towns from coast to coast. If you invite me to your city, I’ll do my best to visit. And I invite you to make use of me, as a gora who enjoys sharing his friendship and appreciation for Pakistan and Pakistanis with other goras. Together we can change the relationship between Pakistan and America – one church or synagogue, one Rotary Club, one high school class at a time.
Ethan Casey is the author of the books Alive and Well in Pakistan and Overtaken By Events: A Pakistan Road Trip. He is currently writing a new chapter, “After the Flood,” to be added to the next edition of Overtaken By Events. He is also writing Bearing the Bruise: A Lifetime in Haiti for publication in 2012. He is on the Web at www.facebook.com/ethancaseyfans and www.ethancasey.com.
Is America Any Different from Pakistan?
Postscript, January 13: By all accounts, President Obama rose to the occasion in his speech in Tucson. Garry Wills is calling it Obama’s finest hour. Maybe, just maybe, this will be remembered as the moment Sarah Palin overreached, like Joe McCarthy, and America suddenly became sane again.
SEATTLE, JANUARY 12 – So now we know: The American right wing knows no shame and apparently will stop at nothing to bully the rest of us into shutting up and taking whatever they dish out.
On the sound principle – understood by right-wingers but not by liberals – that the best defense is a good offense, Sarah Palin has released a self-exonerating video statement asserting that “acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own.” The right-wing blogger Michelle Malkin has coined the phrase “Tucson massacre opportunists.” And the tendentiously “moderate” New York Times columnist David Brooks – whose previous low point, a year ago just after the earthquake, was blaming the victims in “places like Haiti” for lacking “middle-class values” – writes of “vicious charges made by people who claimed to be criticizing viciousness.” Meanwhile, a CBS News poll tells us that 57% of Americans reject any connection between the attack and the country’s political atmosphere. That’s the problem with democracy: sometimes the majority can be dead wrong.
And, as I said in my last article, if we Americans are going to dish it out to countries like Pakistan about how they should keep their radical elements in check, we need to be able to take it too. “The best way to forestall the development of a scenario is to keep your events episodic,” wrote Norman Mailer in his book Oswald’s Tale. This is what the American establishment and its media machine are masterful at: chopping the world up into distinct “stories” and doling them out severally, semi-intentionally creating what Ronald Reagan’s people called plausible deniability. But, as someone who grew up deep within white America and who knows Pakistan well enough to have written two books about it, I see all too many parallels.
What brings these into stark relief is the spooky coincidence of the assassination of Salmaan Taseer in Islamabad and, days later, the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson. In an analysis in The Times of India to which I contributed a comment, Atul Sethi wrote:
The slow death of outspoken liberalism out in public [in Pakistan] has meant that clerics refused to lead the prayers at Taseer’s funeral, fearing reprisal from Islamist hardliners. The mood, says an observer, is one of extreme caution and “even moderate groups do not want to appear to be supporting Taseer’s cause.” The murder was not mentioned at all in the many sermons delivered after Friday prayers in mosques across Islamabad. [G Parthasarthy, former Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan], for one, is not surprised. “When it comes to the blasphemy law, nobody is going to question its premise after Taseer’s killing.”
The analogy in America is to the right wing’s systematic encroachment on all public discourse, appropriation of all patriotic symbols and words (including “tea party”), and brazen aggression in accusing others of playing politics with a tragedy, when that is exactly what they themselves are doing. Those of us who instantly noted the Tucson attack’s political context were correct in doing so, and Paul Krugman was absolutely right to say this:
It’s true that the shooter in Arizona appears to have been mentally troubled. But that doesn’t mean that his act can or should be treated as an isolated event, having nothing to do with the national climate.
That should go without saying, and the fact that it needs to be said at all is an indicator of the national climate. What’s even worse is that America’s radical elements, led by Sarah Palin and her ilk, are trying to stigmatize stating the obvious and enforce a corrosive, de-politicized national piety, whose effect would be to leave them dictating the terms of any conversation. Within 48 hours of the shooting, Krugman had predicted precisely such a move:
So will the Arizona massacre make our discourse less toxic? It’s really up to G.O.P. leaders. Will they accept the reality of what’s happening to America, and take a stand against eliminationist rhetoric? Or will they try to dismiss the massacre as the mere act of a deranged individual, and go on as before?
One more thing needs to be said. An American friend of mine, of Pakistani origin, asks why, in all the commentary that’s spewed forth since Saturday, no one has used the word “terrorism.” What is it that allows us to consider Jared Loughner a mentally troubled young man acting alone and Faisal Shahzad, the mentally troubled young U.S. citizen who tried to blow up Times Square last May, a terrorist “Made in Pakistan” (as he was portrayed in breathless TV reports at the time)? We need to accept responsibility for the fact that Jared Loughner was made in America.
This is why it’s especially important – as I’ve been tub-thumping for a while now – for Pakistanis and other Muslims who are members of American society to continue becoming more visibly active, not only in civic affairs but in this country’s political life. If you lie low, you will continue to find yourselves silenced, caricatured and scapegoated. And America needs your involvement, because this society urgently needs to rediscover its conscience and its soul.
ETHAN CASEY is the author of Alive and Well in Pakistan: A Human Journey in a Dangerous Time (2004) and Overtaken By Events: A Pakistan Road Trip (2010). He is currently writing Bearing the Bruise: A Lifetime of Learning from Haiti, to published in fall 2011, and collaborating with filmmaker Naeem Randhawa on a collection of stories by and about Muslims living in America. Web: www.ethancasey.com or www.facebook.com/ethancaseyfans
Gulzar Ahmed: Peace starts with me
Better late than never, I want to share this op-ed written by my friend Gulzar Ahmed, who lives in Oregon:
“Peace starts with me,” OregonLive.com, May 7, 2010
“For the many American citizens of Pakistani origin living in the Portland metropolitan area, it’s incumbent upon us to come forward and condemn acts of terror in the strongest possible way. Our communities have to be willing to criticize ourselves and quit putting the blame on others. Let us not remain silent. A silent majority cannot allow an ideological minority to hijack the religion of Islam, which promotes peaceful coexistence among people of all faiths.”
Some of My Best Friends Are Pakistanis
by Ethan Casey
SAN DIEGO, May 4 – As I write this, the news that the man arrested for trying to blow up Times Square is a U.S. citizen of Pakistani origin has only begun to sink in. What is this going to mean for other U.S. citizens of Pakistani origin – and for me, as their friend?
This article’s headline is an ironic allusion to something people used to say to disavow bigotry: “Some of my best friends are Jews.” It’s also a straight statement of fact: some of my best friends are Pakistanis. And I want the world to know that, especially in these times and at this moment, because I think it’s very important for us to remember that not all U.S. citizens of Pakistani origin blow stuff up.
Assuming we’re being told the truth about 30-year-old Faisal Shahzad of Bridgeport, Connecticut, it might be fair to ask: With friends like these, who needs enemies? But it’s precisely because of the horrific misguidedness of a dangerous few that we need to stay calm and remind ourselves and each other that we’re all in this together. I said exactly this, in fact, on Sunday when I spoke in support of The Citizens Foundation at the South Asian American Arts Festival put on by Zanbeel Art at the Santa Monica Art Studios. I’ll say it again tonight, when I speak to the Pakistani Students Association at UC-San Diego.
The Citizens Foundation is one of several well-run nonprofits supported by the largely very suburban and middle-class Pakistani-American community that are quietly doing the most urgently necessary work: providing education, and thereby hope and self-respect, to the burgeoning young generation of the Pakistani poor. Too quietly: groups like TCF-USA must start tooting their own horns more assertively to the American public. I would go so far as to say that countering the impression of Pakistanis conveyed by the likes of Faisal Shahzad is not only an opportunity for the Pakistani-American community, but an obligation.
I’m not saying that Pakistani Americans have to prove that they’re not terrorists. The rest of us must remember that there is no such thing as collective guilt, and that the presumption of innocence is a basic American principle. I am saying that the existing institutions of Pakistani America need to move – now – beyond inviting each other to the existing endless round of charity fundraisers, worthy and useful as those are. Pakistani Americans are a remarkably talented and resourceful community who pay a lot of money to the U.S. Treasury in taxes and contribute very substantially to American society as physicians, engineers, teachers and business people. For better or worse, Americans listen to people who insist on being heard, and if you don’t toot your own horn, nobody else is gonna toot it for you.
My writing and public speaking are all about emphasizing to Americans the humanity of Pakistanis, their experience of and views on contemporary history, the complexity of their political and geographical situation, and the enjoyable and interesting apects of my own experience of Pakistan, dating back to 1995. As my friend Todd Shea likes to say, Americans hear 2% of Pakistan’s story 98% of the time. I feel very fortunate to have experienced Pakistan directly at a relatively innocent time both in history and in my own life, before the country’s name became a dirty word in the West. We can’t go back to that time, but we can remember it – and we can and should take a deep breath, reach out to each other as allies, and work together to do what needs to be done.
What needs to be done? Young Pakistanis need to be given hope and self-respect by way of education and jobs. This is already being done by The Citizens Foundation, by Developments in Literacy – at whose San Diego fundraiser I’ll be speaking this Saturday, May 8 – by the Human Development Foundation, by Pakistani pop star Shehzad Roy’s Zindagi Trust, and famously by Greg Mortenson.
But why is Greg Mortenson’s the only one of these efforts that’s well known? Part of the answer, of course, is that he’s white: church ladies and Oprah watchers can relate to him as a virtual nephew or brother-in-law. This is fine. But we need to get beyond the toxic supposition that America is primarily a “white” and/or Christian country. It’s not, anymore, and that’s a good thing.
So the other thing that needs to be done is that the Pakistani community needs to ratchet up both its involvement in American society and politics and its visibility. Call up your local schools and churches, invite your neighbors to your home, all that good stuff, and by all means enlist me, Todd Shea, and Greg Mortenson as envoys. But also support Pakistani-American and other Muslim candidates for public office; insist on meetings with existing officeholders, not only but especially those you consider hostile to Muslims or Pakistan; and support and expand the lobbying work of groups like the Pakistani American Leadership Center and the Council of Pakistan American Affairs. Get in the American public’s face, as fellow Americans, and help us all begin having a more honest conversation about Pakistan, America, terrorism, and where our countries and world are headed.
And I ask two things of my fellow non-Pakistani Americans: Go to the trouble of educating yourselves about Pakistan – my books and inviting me to speak are, indeed, good places to start. And, when you see pictures of Faisal Shahzad over the coming days, keep in mind that, except for the buzz cut, Tim McVeigh looked a lot like me.
ETHAN CASEY is the author of the travel books Alive and Well in Pakistan: A Human Journey in a Dangerous Time (2004) and Overtaken By Events: A Pakistan Road Trip (2010).
