Don’t Tell Me Who Deserves My Sympathy
White supremacy, mass shootings, Islamophobia, and queer anger: Fear and empathy in 2019
White supremacy, mass shootings, Islamophobia, and queer anger: Fear and empathy in 2019
Since the March 2019 massacre of 51 innocent Muslim people at prayer in Christchurch, I’ve had this sense of apocalyptic dread not unlike the one I felt immediately after the 49 people were killed in a gay nightclub in Orlando in 2016. Why have these two particular events affected me more than other atrocities? The former, because the killer was a white Australian, the latter because most of the victims were queer — two inescapable features of myself, a queer white Australian. I say ‘apocalyptic’ because the knowledge that a person like me is capable of irrational hatred towards others — also like me — tests a fundamental part of my psyche that keeps me hopeful for the future. That hope is hard won by a lot of people: our collective stories keep coming back to the theme of hope and love triumphing over fear and hate. It’s events like these that remind me of the ongoing internal battle between these forces, and how either win is possible. The fact that the victims in Christchurch and the perpetrator in Orlando were Muslim does not complicate this battle for me, but this seems incomprehensible to some.
There’s a vocal group of people online and in media, whether they be trolls or sincere purveyors of opinion, who rush to polarise events like this. It’s a human instinct to draw a line between yourself and what you find abhorrent. In the case of Orlando, non-Muslims were quick to pick apart Islam’s stance on homosexuality and the shooter’s affiliations with ISIL. In the case of Christchurch, Australian media were quick to portray the shooter as a good kid gone bad. A Nazi-sympathising senator used it as an illustration of why Muslims should never integrate into ‘Western’ societies. He was condemned by many, but it wasn’t a new opinion. For some, it was just the wrong time to say it. Australian media and politicians have been scoring points off Islamophobia for over a decade since September 11. Polarisation occurs when one group believes they’re morally superior to the other and politicians and the media know how to fan this fire. They tell us we’re good and the murderer is bad; or that we’re still good even though the murderer is one of us.
Moral superiority is usually insincere. Non-Muslim Australians would be insincere to suggest that we haven’t been — at the least — adjacent to the sentiment that Islamic practice is incompatible with ‘our’ culture. Similarly, I find it insincere when straight people rally behind marriage equality as their first public show of queer support and conveniently forget the homophobia they’ve ignored or been party to for decades. This insincerity should be an inconvenient truth that flies in the face of polarisation — that we are all capable of promoting or being bystanders to marginalisation — but for some it strengthens it. These people can’t bear to lose the higher ground. So when they see me show sympathy for Muslim victims, they call me an apologist, a lefty, a cuck: weak because I haven’t succumbed to the dark reality that people are divided — there really is an ‘us’ and ‘them’. Let’s read the comments:
Comment 1: “Good luck living in <Muslim Country>. You know they want to kill people like you?”
Response: I refuse to let my own criticism of anti-LGBT laws in Islam be used to fuel hatred towards an entire population of people. And: you don’t think I haven’t considered every factor, every stance, every geopolitical, historical, or cultural piece of information at my disposal? You don’t think I haven’t had personal experiences that have informed and shaped my opinion on this? (I’ve met hundreds of Muslim people in my professional life as an English teacher and through travel, for example.)
Congratulations! Your knowledge of the legal schools across the Muslim world extends to the laws around LGBTQIA+ rights. I bet you can also tell me about the enforced laws for women, too. I had no idea that religion tied to governance was “problematic”. I’ve never read about religious doctrine sanctioned in the education system — that critical thinking is bad, that the world has only existed for as long as the bible says it has, that science is pagan, that patriarchy never corrupts, that pedophilia will be protected. I must be wilfully ignorant of THE FACTS, I must have been brainwashed by “the liberal media” with its “PC ideology”.
If you hadn’t told me this Truth, I would’ve packed my bags and gone to Saudi Arabia with a feather boa, leather chaps and a dream of queer colonisation. Wait until they see my one man pride parade and accept me because I said I would accept them.
Oh wait. I’m from that libtard group of denialists, I forgot. I must subscribe to cultural relativism, then: the idea that every difference should be respected and is devoid of criticism from the outside. You do you, Saudi Arabia. You keep hanging those gay boys, Iran; can’t wait to be a cultural tourist of a stoning in Brunei! While I disagree with your practices, Nigeria, I will humbly admire our differences of opinion.
The nuance in this comment — that country x would kill a person like me — is that it can come from either a straight person or a queer person. The straight person gets a cheap thrill in reminding a marginalised group (queer people) that they are not wanted somewhere, or if they’re non-Muslim, they’re seeking to demonise Muslim people further. They suggest a country’s jurisdiction represents all individuals within it regardless of the gradation of individual beliefs; regardless of which bigot might be in power of their own country at this particular time. Thanks, I hate it when you think you know more about what it’s like for LGBTQIA+ people than LGBTQIA+ people do. As the Aslan meme says, “Do not cite the deep magic to me, Witch. I was there when it was written.”
What’s particularly tiresome about this cleverness is that it’s wilfully ignorant of the homophobia and transphobia that still exists everywhere else on the planet. Notice how a country’s more “enlightened” laws for human rights don’t determine every individual’s beliefs about them? Since 1996, South Africa’s constitution has decreed that no one should be discriminated against on any ground, including sexuality, and it has had same-sex marriage since 2006. However, four in ten South Africans in 2017 knew someone who had been murdered for being LGBTQIA+. The percentage of people whose unfavourable opinions about homosexuality and trans* people influenced by their religious or cultural beliefs is still closer to half the population, or over, in most places around the world. Queer people are a minority everywhere — even in Muslim countries! Funnily enough, one of the first gay-friendly, progressive mosques has been open in South Africa for the last four years. The queer Muslim experience is doubly hard, don’t you think they’re at the forefront of knowing that? Do you think the boycott of Eurovision — the “gay Olympics” — in Israel was painless for queer Muslims?
When I say I’m not conflicted in my sympathy for Muslim victims, I am talking about that three-year-old child shot in the head, too young to have learnt the bigotry inherent in its church. I’m thinking about that teen who could have been gay, that father who had his own private relationship with Allah in spite of the teachings of the imam, that mother who moderated her faith with her feminism, who may one day yet find the love for her trans* child. The reason that intolerance towards homosexuality and trans* experiences persists is because a majority of people don’t understand them. At the heart of all intolerance is a frustration with a world that is different to your own and, unfortunately, a minority remains alien to the majority until they can be used. Supporters of the myth of ‘Western enlightenment’ use queer people as a reason to further vilify Muslims. Similarly, ‘Western’ multiculturalism relies on the food and festivals of minority cultures to prove its social cohesion to itself.
This brings us back to the anti-Muslim queer person. On the face of it, of course a queer person has more reason to reject a system of beliefs that seek to ostracise, or worse, kill them. But does it follow that they should hate an entire group of people for it? If you follow this logic — that religious dogma and personal beliefs are entwined, that an individual cannot reason beyond their upbringing and circumstances — you might consider preemptively hating everyone. Being queer is fraught with an environment of ill-informed opinions, even from those most well-intentioned. If I hated every person who has said something homophobic to me, I wouldn’t have any friends, I’d be estranged from my parents, my soul would be crushed — I’d still hate myself. That battle between hope and despair has been fought countless times over the course of my life. If I leant into the darkness and hated anyone I perceived to hate me, Muslims wouldn’t be the only target, there would be many other factions of society, too.
black hole / light in the dark
Comment 2: “If there was no religion this sort of thing wouldn’t happen”.
To which I say: Wow, thanks! You, a person who completely rejects religion in all the ways it permeates your society (hanging your Christmas stocking with care), I’m sure you came to all your moral conclusions by yourself. I’m sure you know that white nationalism can also be unaffiliated with religion. I’m sure you know that irreligious countries like China, Japan and Russia have never practiced imperialism, nor persecuted any minority groups. I’m sure it’s just religion and not human nature to be a total f*cking despot. In my experience all atheists have been the torchbearers of compassion and kindness </sarcasm>.
What the trolls and ‘realists’ understand is that I, too, have moments of “F*ck everyone and everything”. However, they see it as disingenuous when I choose to find compassion and hope over succumbing to antagonism. Doing so is a harder path to walk. Or, at least, it’s a harder path to find. In my recent moments of apocalyptic dread, it’s been hard to find any hope for dismantling the status quo of white supremacy in Australia. I see now, though, that the trolls and ‘realists’ jaded by hope live in a constant state of apocalypse. It’s fight or flight. Eat or be eaten. Kill or be killed. They once aspired to the trappings of life as a winner under the patriarchy and capitalism and now they hate the Chads, the immigrants, the (other) women, the gays, the politically correct; or they made nihilism their M.O. and lurk on the internet yucking other people’s yums for the hell of it. They want everyone else to hate themselves and watch the world burn as much as they do.
Or, more overtly, the haters are a part of the status quo, and it’s inconvenient having to deal with a world outside of the one they’ve been told is the norm, or the one that already benefits them the most.
When I say I will stand up to Islamophobia, I’m talking about standing up for those who are marginalised. Those minorities in adopted or imperialist countries, who suffer the insidious question of whether they belong. I’m not talking about supporting Muslims with power who spout hate. I hold them in as much contempt as I do Catholic priests who molest children and those in their clergy who cover it up and deny their people contraceptives and abortions. The same contempt I reserve for a fascist gay man, for a white supremacist who shot up a mosque, for an atheist central government that is steadily trying to ‘re-educate’ minority groups in their billion plus population. I also have the dexterity to see how an agnostic Prime Minister wearing a veil to mourn with Muslim women who live in a country (NZ) with religious freedoms as a sign of respect is not the same thing as a theocracy (Iran) not giving women the agency of choice and physically forcing women to wear the hijab. When I say I support Muslims, I’m not thinking of a homogenous group of people with the same level of prejudices. Islam has to contend with LGBTQIA+ issues in its own time and way. Similarly, white Australians are responsible for our own bigotry towards and subjugation of non-whites living here. Could you imagine this process sped up by the condescending criticism from another culture? Australians do not love being told what to do. Being gay doesn’t let me off the hook for being white and the privileges that brings. A queer Muslim understands their duty to question the prejudices in their faith, as I understand my duty to continue questioning discrimination and calling out white supremacy in this country. This is a harder path to go down: to do the work in spite of other hardships you face. It’s harder to see yourself in your oppressor.
Don’t get it twisted: while I can climb out of apocalyptic dread and back into hope, don’t think that hope means rainbows and lollipops. Oh, I’m still angry. Anger drove me to write this. I can leverage anger to get back to hope. I’m angry that victims are still blamed. I’m angry that people deny the ways in which they’re privileged. I’m angry that a majority of LGBTQIA+ people out there are being discouraged from taking part in their societies, rejected, rounded up and jailed, or killed. I’m angry that we had to appeal to straight folks’ sensibilities with a thing like marriage. I’m angry that a man can shoot up a group of people in their safe space based on nothing but flimsy ideology. A gay man didn’t kill the Orlando shooter’s mother; a Muslim didn’t kill the Christchurch shooter’s father. Both killers had ill-informed motives and acted on them. Don’t tell me not to sympathise with those who are an inconvenience in the way of powerful shitc*nts. Don’t lecture me on who hates me and who deserves my sympathy. I already know.