Anti-Arab and Anti-Muslim Racism since 9/11

Anti-Arab and Anti-Muslim racism is a pervasive feature of Australian society. It is a structural dimension of society embedded in the operation of all of our institutions and leading to ongoing prejudice, various forms of injustice and to discriminatory treatment. It is also the grounds for racist political mobilisation inspiring individuals and groups to engage in hateful practices aimed at hurting Arabs and Muslims economically, politically, physically and psychologically. 9/11 did not give birth to either of these dimensions but it certainly legitimised and exacerbated them making the struggle against them particularly difficult.

There are many facets to the struggle against these different dimensions of racism, but it can be said that the two key aspects of the struggle involve diminishing the presence and the power of racism in both institutions and politics, and the second is to protect the racialised from the effect of racism. When one looks at what has been achieved in the twenty years since 9/11, one has to say that anti-racist politics has failed to effect much change: Anti-Arab and Anti-Muslim racism remains a salient feature of Australian society both structurally and politically. While there is considerable change happening in the cultural spaces of younger Australians, this change has not found itself an expression in mainstream politics yet, let alone in the institutions of the state. The only other space where one can note a relative success is in the way that Arab and Muslim Australians have successfully immunised themselves against the most pernicious psychological and symbolic dimensions of racial hatred. Racists can try and make Arabs and Muslims feel inferior as much as they like: They don’t feel inferior. They might try and make them normalise their marginality, they don’t show any sign that they have accepted their marginality.

It can be even said that, in this regards, and to the chagrin of racists, Arabs and Muslims have managed to foster among themselves, particularly by mobilizing their cultural, communal and spiritual traditions, a healthy dose of unperturbed narcissism that remains immune to all racist attacks. This is an important thing to protect. It is arguably the most important single resource needed for a future politics.

If there is a problem in this regards it is more to do with how to ensure that this narcissism remains a healthy one. For like all defensive narcissisms it grows in two different directions: one one hand there is a love of self that is open to critique and that sees in critique an opportunity to grow and become better, and on the other there is a narcissism that invites excessive defensiveness, paranoia and cultural sclerosis. This latter kind of narcissism is no different from the narcissism of the racist right wing movements Arabs and Muslims face. It is a narcissism that  equates criticism and the acknowledgment of past mistakes with weakness. It  conflates strength with the ‘avoidance of guilt’ and sees virtue in the uncritical adherence to conservatively conceived communal, national or religious tradition experienced as a variation on the ‘law of the father/land’. Such a fascistic adherence to imagined tradition always wears a masculinist, patriarchal and homophobic garb. It opts for a politics of one-ness over a politics of plurality, and valorises autonomy over relationality.

Here Arabs and Muslims face a question of particular importance as it comes to define the kind of social space they aspire to live in. For some peculiar reason, it is a question that is often left for White anti-racist Australians to think about. The question is this and it clearly opens up a space of reflection rather than have some kind of unique good answer to it: what kind of togetherness with non-Arab and non-Muslim Australians, both indigenous and non-indigenous, do Arabs and Muslims fantasise about? If they are reasonably clear about the figure of the White enemy, what consitutes the contours of the figure of the White ally?