After all, reverence and respect, even surrender, only go so far. More sensitivity is needed as well. In a recent meeting with Daniel Sutherland, head of the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties division of the Department of Homeland Security, American University's Akbar Ahmed had some suggestions, beginning, according to an online report in the Pakistani Daily Times, with pretty much eliminating Muslim profiling at airports. This, of course, would do nothing to spare my own white-haired mother and white-haired mother-in-law from the next checkpoint body search, but the boost to world image would be colossal. "You simply cannot humiliate Muslims like this," Akbar said, describing a "peak level of anger" in "the young generation on the edge." Just one more pat-down and they'll blow. He also suggested "more social and cultural contacts" between government officials and American Muslims, and an unspecified reading list on Islam.
Maybe such a list would include one of his own books, "Islam Under Siege" (Polity Press, 2003). There, he describes the kind of gathering Homeland Security could really learn from -- roughly 60 Muslim-American professionals from Cleveland, Ohio, whom Ahmed addressed in October 2001.
"When I stated that Islam had suffered a major setback after Sept. 11 (for a grossly un-Islamic act of violence), that every Muslim was in the dock as a result ... I was challenged by some Arabs and Pakistanis," he writes. "They" -- Muslims in Cleveland, Ohio -- "called Sept. 11 a glorious event for Islam. The taking of innocent lives was justified, they argued, as Sept. 11 was the continuation of a full-scale Islamic war taking place against Israel, which is backed by the United States. I heard a similar debate when the Muslim Council of Britain hosted a dinner for me in London in July 2002."
Maybe this last bit helps explain why the Queen of England this month bestowed a knighthood on Iqbal Sacranie, general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain. "Sir" Iqbal Sacranie: a body blow in the war on image. And also why, as Sutherland reportedly told Akbar, Homeland Security "has undertaken many measures to eliminate racial profiling." I think I see a strategy emerging. Little by little, we'll win this war on image. So what if we no longer recognize ourselves.