Taste

“I’d like a glass of wine,” I said to the waiter as he handed me a menu in the garishly lit hotel restaurant in Karachi.  It was my first night in the country.  Jetlagged, I was looking forward to red wine and pizza before heading to bed.  “Oh, I’m sorry madam, we don’t serve alcohol in the restaurant,” he apologized.  “May I suggest you go to your room and call room service?  We are allowed to serve you alcohol in your room.”  No alcohol, because it’s an “Islamic” republic.

Until that point, it hadn’t sunk in that I was in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.  Having traveled to Muslim countries before, where mosques do not negate martinis, it didn’t occur to me that the south Asian country was actually… Muslim.  After all, it was a country where generals dominated, not mullahs.  It was a country where a female prime minister once reigned and where a whole cadre of women worked, some leading their own enterprises.  Those that I saw were not covered.  Some women I saw on the street were in modest Islamic dress with head covering, (no burqa sightings), as were the majority of Pakistani men who wore a taqiyah, an Islamic yarmulke, and sported the traditional Islamic beard.  Everyone interacted without any overt segregation, even if those men, and much to my shock Western appearing ones as well, avoided the touch and glance of women.

I silently gasped when a clean-shaven government official clad in a suit and tie refused the hand of my female colleague.  “He shook yours because you’re not Pakistani,” she said.  “But I’m a Muslim,” I replied.  “Don’t tell him that.”

I didn’t have to tell another Pakistani man I came across that I was a woman, Muslim or otherwise.  His sexism spoke volumes.  I didn’t want to see his behavior as such.  While I’m an ardent advocate for women’s empowerment, I’m not in favor of blaming or being critical of men.  Men are a vital part of ensuring women’s rights.

Yet, it was hard not to feel that this older gentleman, a former Pakistani government official, made it clear that he was not in favor of my rights: my right to speak and my right to be involved in the entrepreneurship project that I had been invited to Pakistan to participate in.  “You know,” he stuttered, “I remember a woman from New York who was a real go-getter –- you know the type: blustery, rude, always had something to say.  I didn’t like her at all.”

While it may very well be that he didn’t like me and not my gender, I couldn’t help but see his behavior as nothing more than discrimination.  I was cut off mid-sentence during several meetings and cut out of several discussions all together.  “How do you deal with this?” I asked one of my female colleagues.  “Oh this is Pakistan.  It is an Islamic country.  That is how men treat women here.”

It is tempting to reduce Pakistani men as Neanderthals and blame it on Islam, just as it is to reduce the country, as Cambridge professor Priyamvada Gopal once noted, “to generals, jets and jihadis.”

Not all Pakistani men treat women in such a way.  I’ve written about several of them in this Portfolio.com piece, Shamoon Sultan and Monis Rahman.  I’ve become friends with others such as Creative Chaos CEO Shakir Husain and writer Mosharraf Zaidi.  Both couldn’t be more mainstream — that is, “progressive minded.”  “I’d be happy to meet with you,” Shakir said as we were arranging our first get-together at his Karachi-based outsourcing office.  “But it can only be an hour.  At noon I have to go pick up my son from daycare.”

There is a generational difference between all of these men and my New York-hating government official.  Shamoon, Monis, Shakir and Mosharraf are all under 40, which, given Pakistan’s increasing Islamization over the past 20 years, should have made them more chauvinistic.  While there is no doubt that a large part of Pakistan’s society is insufferably sexist, it is not true that Islam has turned every man — in Pakistan or elsewhere — into a misogynist.  The fear of letting go of traditions and the inability to open one’s mind to change is the root of not only the country’s anti-woman scourge but one of the reasons for its fragile and failing state.  That is what left me with a most bitter taste.

The beer I was left no choice to order that first night in Karachi did too.  When I called for room service I was told, “Oh sorry madam, we don’t have any wine.”  I let out a sigh.  “I know you would prefer wine,” said the gentleman on the other end of the phone.  “Wine is a lady’s drink,” he paused. “I prefer it too.”

“The Lake Shore Limited runs between Chicago and New York City without crossing the Canadian border…armed Border Patrol agents routinely board the train, question passengers about their citizenship…’Are you a U.S. citizen?’ agents asked one recent morning, moving through a Rochester-bound train full of dozing passengers at a station outside Buffalo.  ’What country were you born in?’”

This comes just a few days after another NYT piece “New Life in U.S. No Longer Means New Name,” pointing out that immigrants to the United States are no longer “Americanizing” their names.  At glance these pieces are in contradiction, but upon closer observation they’re connected. Neither is good.

Unlike today’s article, “no new name” was meant to be a feel-good feature demonstrating America’s tolerance and diversity.

Here is why it wasn’t: There is no such thing as an “American” name.

That’s something I learned traveling from Sarajevo to the United States in 2004 when I was asked by a Dutch security official,  “Where are you from?”

“I’m American,” I replied.

The tall hazel-eyed Dutchman was not amused.  “No, you didn’t understand me, I want to know where you are from,” understanding all too well what he meant.

“Oh, I see, I’m from Brooklyn.” He clenched his jaw and continued to interrogate me about where my family was from, and finally where my name was from.  “Your name is not American.”  I told him that he was out of line.  He nearly hit me.  His colleagues restrained him.  I broke down in tears.

Letter after letter to Schiphol Airport and the Dutch Foreign Ministry, I demanded an apology – and explanation for such behavior.  “Never would I have expected,” I wrote,

“that in such an open and tolerant society (the Netherlands), which values self-determination, civil liberty and democracy, would I encounter such belligerent and horrendous behavior.  Questioning my identity as an American because of my name was inappropriate at best.  America’s wealth lies in the trove of its unique and diverse citizenship; there is no single definition or profile of an American.”

To which I received this reply:

“One of the signs our agents have been trained to scrutinize, (sic) is the surname of the passenger.  Your last name, although in your case belonging to a US citizen, probably has its origin somewhere in the Balkan region.”

Here’s why I wouldn’t accept that response:

“My name originates from Brooklyn, NY….  Bayrasli is every bit as American as Van Buren, Eisenhower, Powell, Chavez, Giuliani or Shinseki. We all carry the same passport, and allegiance to a government that is based on equal rights and equal protection, because our identities originate from a Constitution that knows only values, not ethnicity.”

Here’s why this is important:

We are currently living in a post 9/11, Glenn Beck-restore-honor-to-America-Sarah-“there will be no ground zero mosque” Palin-immigrants-are-not -welcome-in-Arizona world.  Anti-immigration and Islamophobia are escalating to the point where dark-skinned men are being violently attacked and  some believe that “it is impossible for a Muslim to be a good citizen in America.”

Declaring that people are no longer “Americanizing” their names leads one to believe that a single group defined the American identity – particularly those from that single group.  While it may be true that a single group first came to America, they built it so that no single group or single person could dominate it.  That, unfortunately, is at risk.  Just read the apology I eventually received from Schiphol Airport:

“One of the security measures, regarding U.S. flights, approved by the Dutch Government and the TSA is the procedure of pre-flight questioning, the so called profile check, in which numerous possible signs are listed. One of those signs approved in the procedure, is the surname of the passenger.”

When TSA approves racial profiling; when border patrol agents wake “foreign looking people” to question their citizenship, America’s own name is in jeopardy, not just those of its citizens – new or old.  And that’s certainly something to be afraid of.

Greece is on the verge of bankruptcy.  As a member of the European Union, and more importantly the “Euro zone” this has become a problem for the entire club.  Many fear that it can drag Spain, Portugal and Italy in the crisis.  That’s half the EU.  No wonder German and French leaders are scrambling hard to figure out how to rescue Athens.

There is speculation that Berlin will have no choice but to bail out Athens.  My question is: where does Berlin get the money?  Where every other government gets money, the taxpayer. From the looks of it, Germans are not at all happy about this.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is resisting making any announcement about financial assistance.  I fear she won’t be able to hold out any longer.  And that makes me fear even more for the nearly two million Turks living in Germany.  Like most minorities in any country, the Turks are the first to get blamed for Germany’s economic malaise.  They’re accused of taking away jobs and burdening social services.  If the German taxpayer feels they have to dole out even more in tight times in order to support “foreigners”, their patience for their country’s Turkish minority might further dissipate.

Is the Greek crisis the start of trouble for the Turks?

Not all Muslims are, as I can personally attest, fundamentalist jihadists. In fact, moderate Muslims outnumber extremists significantly. Interestingly they are growing in power and influence in places such as Turkey and Dubai.

Moderate Muslims are growing in power so much so that Vali Nasr, a professor at Tufts University and currently an advisor on Afghanistan and Pakistan to State Department envoy Richard Holbrooke, believes that they will be the “forces” that will eventually topple the Osama bin-Ladens menacing the world. It is a thesis we should all take a look at.

His tremendous book Forces of Fortune analyzes the rise of a moderate class of Muslims who embrace a conservative brand of Islam but reject anything that resembles the jihad.

An Iranian-American, Nasr previously authored The Shia Revival, knows all-too-well about the dangerous affects of jihadi ideology. That makes him a convincing authority we should listen to on how to best defeat it. That doesn’t mean, however, we shouldn’t question some of the things he says.

Some of the things he says pertain to the rise of a moderate Muslim class in places like Turkey and Dubai. Nasr devotes a lot of ink to the “Anatolian tigers” who are conservative businessmen from central Turkey who took advantage of the country’s economic reorganization in the late 1990s and became lucrative entrepreneurs. They helped create jobs and draw large-scale investments into Turkey. That has helped bolster Turkey’s standing in the globalized world. And that has helped devout Muslims to rethink their attitudes toward capitalism – and extremism.

For so long, secular governments in the Muslim world such as Turkey and Indonesia denied their Islamic origins, dismissing pious Muslims as “yokels.” But with economic liberalization, places like Turkey and Dubai saw that despite their religious disposition, observant Muslims were no different from their secular brothers and sisters.

Nasr uses the example of Dubai to illustrate his point that observant Muslims want to stay at “five star hotels and pray at five star mosques.” They are religious and interested in fine service and luxury – one does not preclude the other. Thankfully so, Nasr says, because it is this desire to blend Islam with high-quality living that has allowed a moderate Muslim class to emerge in Dubai and in Turkey. And that, Nasr believes, provides a welcome alternative to extremism. No one who shops for Prada wants to die.

It is a persuasive point, but Nasr fails to mention that Saudi Arabia has long mixed Muhammad with bling. In fact, many of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis who were not poor yokels, but hailed from the middle class.

In person Nasr acknowledges this point. He says that it is true that the 9/11 hijackers were well off. But they weren’t self-made entrepreneurs. Saudi Arabia, he maintains, is an oil-rich country that suppresses its people and doesn’t allow them to innovate. And that is the root of extremism.

In Forces of Fortune Nasr argues that it is the entrepreneurs of Turkey, Dubai and Indonesia that are transforming the Muslim landscape. And that the West can help them succeed by removing tariffs and providing investments. He argues that instead of trying to promote “free and fair elections” in the Middle East, the U.S. should develop an economic-based policy toward the region that will lead to more job creation and growth. More jobs, Nasr rightly points out, give young men and women who make up the majority in the Middle East a stake in their communities.

One point that Nasr ignores in his book is the role of women within this new moderate Muslim class that he admires. He touches upon the headscarf issue, pointing out that contrary to belief that men strong-arm women to don the veil, many Muslim women voluntarily cover themselves. He tells us about progressive threads within Muslim communities in Egypt and elsewhere where women have become imams and lead prayer. He cites a Muslim cleric that talks about the equality of women in Allah’s eyes.

The trouble is Allah doesn’t run governments. And none of the moderate Muslims Nasr praises includes women in decisions or leadership. This is true in Turkey with the Justice and Development Party (AKP) that Nasr admires and hopes will be an example for other Muslim-majority countries, especially his own Iran. In the AKP there are a handful of female parliamentarians but none have decision-making power or are in Turkish Prime Minister and AKP party leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s inner circle.

That is unacceptable, but a point that Nasr believes we must unfortunately accept. In a conversation I had with him he told me that while these moderate Muslims were progressive they were not liberalizing. Many draw their roots from small towns and villages where traditional values still dominate. The unfortunate consequence of that, he says, is that they are not as open to women’s rights as they should be.

Still, Nasr believes that while it is not good news for women today, the rise of this new moderate Muslim class will lead women to the economic and political equality that they deserve. There’s no doubt that he has a point, and that Forces of Fortune is a great value add to our knowledge about the Middle East, but as a Muslim woman I’m tired of waiting.