Islamophobia and Natural Language Processing update (March 28, 2022)
The Islamophobia and NLP project has been on a lengthy pandemic hiatus for much of 2021 and the first few months of 2022. This was not planned, but for pretty obvious reasons this just wasn’t the time to take significant steps with a relatively new project. However, hiatus does not mean forgotten or abandoned, and so one of my goals for 2022 is to re-engage with this project, and to begin to move forward once again.
To recap, the Islamophobia and NLP project began in the summer of 2019 with a focus on data collection and annotation. By the end of 2020 we had collected approximately 10 million tweets about or directed at Representative to the US Congress Ilhan Omar. She is a Democrat from Minnesota who represents Minneapolis and nearby suburbs, and is well known as both a progressive and a Muslim. We carried out two pilot annotation projects in 2020 that sought to identify Islamophobic comments directed at Rep. Omar. The results of these annotations were presented at two talks in late 2020, which you can see in these previous entries (November, 2020 invited talk at UMass-Lowell and December, 2020 invited talk at Muslims in ML/NeurlPS).
While I think our annotation effort was a valuable exercise, I no longer feel like creating and releasing a data set annotated for Islamophobia is an effective way forward. I have a few worries.
- What if annotation becomes an end in itself?
- What if we get trapped in the “annotate, classify, publish, repeat until plateau” cycle?
- What if these efforts are just another well meaning high-tech distraction?
- What harms could we be causing despite out best intentions?
When annotation becomes an end unto itself
Nearly any non-trivial annotation project ends up being far more challenging than anticipated, and annotations that seem trivial rarely are. Managing the challenges of annotation becomes its own problem, and it is very engrossing and can all too easily become the focus of a research effort.
That has certainly been the case with annotating for Islamophobia — it is fascinating to reflect on and raises a host of questions : Do we conflate or split types of Islamophobia, redefine them, create new categories, learn to live with a certain amount of error, what about annotator bias and background, can we automate some part of this increasingly complex process, how well do our automated approaches fare, can we improve them, is there a role for crowd sourcing?? … on and on until suddenly we are writing papers and grant proposals about annotation and looking no further.
And there is nothing wrong with that, in fact there is much to learn about a problem by doing very careful annotation. In the end though this project seeks to make connections to the world, and I don’t think even a masterful job of annotation achieves that.
Let’s do a thought experiment. Suppose we were able to create a data set reliably annotated for Islamophobia. What would that enable? If that data was released, researchers could train classifiers, evaluate and improve them, and repeat that cycle a few times until accuracy has been pushed as far as it will go. And then what? Is there any likely impact outside of the academic micro-world concerned with classifiers, data sets, and evaluation?
The “annotate, classify, publish, repeat until plateau” cycle
While a data set annotated for Islamophobia or anti-Muslim bias would be novel, the likely trajectory of its impacts would be that classifiers would be trained with it and these would attain steadily higher and higher accuracy until some plateau is reached. Along the way conclusions would be drawn that “… these results suggest that an Islamophobia detector trained on a wider sample of hate speech could be deployed in order to reduce the toxicity of social media thereby improving the climate online and showing that NLP contributes to social good …” That’s what would be claimed at least.
A far more likely conclusion is that the results get published, we feel good about our potential contributions to the world, we assume that someone else will create more data, train more classifiers, and somehow bring it all to fruition, and we move on. This is not meant to diminish the significance of improving classifier accuracy, of course that can be important, but it really isn’t clear that an accurate classifier trained on a small subset of examples from a finite time period is going to impact anything beyond this micro-world of papers and results.
You might be tempted to think that an Islamophobia detector built from annotated data would at least cause no harm. But, as is the case with any classifier it is not difficult to turn the underlying model or data into a generator, thereby fueling the creation of more online Islamophobia. We could also be lulled into a sense of complacency if we had such detectors available. However, none of them will be perfect, and those who promote hate speech will quickly figure out how to evade their underlying algorithms, perhaps using algorithms and bots of their own.
It’s easy to become a well meaning high-tech distraction
Let’s do another thought experiment. Suppose we have created a reliably annotated data set of Islamophobia, and that we can guarantee that the resulting classifier is 100% accurate and that somehow neither the data nor the learned model can be used to generate more hate speech. Clearly this is all very unrealistic, but that is the fun of thought experiments. Given these assumptions, what would change in the world?
Our classifiers would clearly be busy and a lot of content would be flagged. But then some would be missed, and bad actors would be hard at work creating content or delivery mechanisms to bypass the detectors. Some of this activity would be noticed and reported, and so we’d need to update our models with more annotated data to account for this and then we’d deploy our new models which would then be subject to the same cycle. We can truthfully say we are working very hard on this problem, but we are also simply chasing the tail of our own solution.
We can claim to be using vast computational resources and the smartest minds to reduce or eliminate anti-Muslim bias, but in reality these efforts might well be an Islamophobe’s dream. We’ll be kept busy declaring small victories in our papers while missing the creative transformations that Islamophobia rapidly undergoes to evade our detection until we have managed to annotate more data and retrain our models, and then we replay the same sequence again and again.
This is not to say we should throw up our hands and declare online spaces a free for all where anything goes. Content moderation continues to be important, and automated tools are essential. But should those tools be based on annotated data and classifiers built by machine learning? I don’t think so, these methods just won’t scale broadly enough nor quickly enough to make a significant impact.
Even the best intentions don’t prevent harms
Islamophobia is not particularly hard to detect. It is not hidden. It is often public, blatant, frequent, and is often met with approval or even applause.
Consider the case of Representative to US Congress Lauren Boebert, Republican of Colorado, who repeatedly told “jokes” at political rallies in 2021 casting Rep. Omar as a terrorist because she is visibly Muslim. To date there have been no consequences for Boebert — in fact this likely emboldened her core of supporters and further normalized public expressions of Islamophobia. What do we imagine that labeling instance after instance of anti-Muslim bias will achieve if obvious widely reported high profile instances are greeted with a shrug?
Islamophobia is on full display in social media. It is often easy to recognize, although some instances are more subtle and may require more specialized local knowledge to understand. However, much of it is blatant and repetitive. What do we accomplish by automatically identifying many instances of it? What is it we expect to discover that we don’t already know? What end is served by collecting every instance of hate and carefully classifying it? To show that it’s a serious problem? To show that social media is toxic? To show that this content results in violence? We already know all that. Do we really need to keep collecting evidence? To what end?
The risk of insisting that we need to annotate more data to classify more instances is to make it appear that Islamophobia is very subtle and requires sophisticated high-tech tools and painstakingly labeled data to recognize. Do we sincerely believe that Islamophobia is so hard to spot that we need to dedicate vast computer resources and human annotator labor to somehow pick these hateful needles out of large haystacks of otherwise innocuous content?
The very negative effect of this is that it makes it appear the problem is obscure and hiding below ground and only apparent if you really look for it, while at the same time invalidating the lived experience of Muslims. After generation upon generation of experiencing and reporting Islamophobia, is our best response “Well hold on there, we need to annotate some data and build a model to confirm what you have been telling us…”?
Perversely those who wish to spread Islamophobia could point to these efforts and ask how they are expected to know what Islamophobia is or isn’t since it seems like you need a supercomputer to figure that out. This might then lead to proposals that detectors could be used as an education tool which allows users to “catch themselves” before inadvertently posting something hateful.
This has the very negative consequence of casting those who create and spread hate speech as Accidental Islamophobes who are unwittingly spewing anti-Muslim bias and is again an Islamophobe’s dream. This treats the perpetrators as innocents who if provided with immediate feedback will mend their ways. This seems like a particularly naive way to view the problem, and totally minimizes if not removes the responsibility from those who are creating and spreading this kind of content.
Where does this leave us?
I am not against annotation or building classifiers or even hill climbing if done in moderation and in well motivated contexts. However, I also don’t think this approach scales to the problem of identifying or moderating Islamophobia on social media or other online spaces. I don’t believe the answer to curbing Islamophobia is annotation followed by a few rounds of machine learning.
We already know a lot. Is there Islamophobia on social media and in mainstream media? Yes. Where does it come from? All directions. Is it intense? Yes. Is it dangerous? Yes. And so what if we accept those as givens? Will detecting large numbers of instances of Islamophobia online solve the overall problem, or even affect he amount of anti-Muslim bias online? I don’t think we can annotate ourselves out of this problem.
And so I think it’s fair to say our days of annotation are behind us. I have however reflected on the fact that modern day NLP really seems to lean in on annotation and building classifiers to solve problems. Certainly this was among my first thoughts for this project, and it’s where we have already invested considerable time and energy before realizing we might not really be making any progress. What else can we do? I think there is quite a bit, and we are in discussions now about possible avenues forward. We should have more to say soon.
Reading
During this hiatus I have continued reading, and I’ve made some notes about some of the longer works although what is reported here is a bit of a jumble. But, it seemed worthwhile to get what I had down somewhere.
I. Nation of Islam
I’m generally interested in understanding the origins and development of The Nation of Islam (NOI) in the USA, for which the following proved to be an invaluable source.
Islam in Black America : Identity, Liberation, and Difference in African-American Islamic Thought, by Edward E. Curtis IV, 2002 https://twitter.com/EdwardECurtisIV
https://www.sunypress.edu/p-3584-islam-in-black-america.aspx
This book profiles some of the key leaders among Black Muslims in the USA over the last two centuries. It’s important to say that Black Muslim and Nation of Islam are not synonyms, but there is certainly a significant amount of crossover and influence among those profiled in this book.
Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832–1912) was a Liberian writer and intellectual who advocated for African exceptionalism and the return of Black Americans to Africa. This idea is most often associated with Marcus Garvey (1887–1940) and the Pan-Africanism movement, but clearly Blyden was thinking along similar lines much earlier. There is a strong analogy to Israel and Zionism in his thinking, where Black Americans could return to Africa after generations of hardship and exile to their true home. Blyden also believed that Islam was a more genuine religion for Africa and Black people than Christianity. In effect Blyden was arguing for both a physical and spiritual separation of Black people from white, which goes on to become a fundamental idea for many years in NOI.
Noble Drew Ali (1886–1929) founded the Moorish Science Temple of America, which promoted a form of Black nationalism. He believed that all African Americans were descendants of the Moors and advocated for Moorish pride. Similar to Blyden, he believed that Islam was the true religion of the Moorish people. Wallace Fard Muhammad (1877–1934?) was a prominent member of the Temple. When Noble Drew Ali died suddenly in 1929 WF Muhammad claimed to be the reincarnation of Ali and sought to lead the Temple. However, he was not accepted as Ali’s successor and so went on to found NOI in 1930 before mysteriously disappearing in 1934.
Elijah Muhammad (1897–1975) became the leader of the Nation of Islam after WF Muhammad’s disappearance. He was considered by NOI to be the Messenger of God, whereas WF Muhammad was God in Person (or the Messiah). Elijah Muhammad believed that Black people were the original humans, and that white people were an evil race created by the scientist Yakub 6,600 years ago in order to oppress Black people. He was a strong advocate for the separation of the races, and formed several alliances with White Supremacists. The status of WF Muhammad and Elijah Muhammad in NOI doctrine and the history of Yakub are among the factors that put the Nation at odds with more traditional mainstream Muslim beliefs.
Malcolm X (1929–1965) was the most visible and effective spokesperson for the Nation of Islam in the 1950s and early 1960s. However, his relationship with Elijah Muhammad gradually deteriorated to the point where Malcolm left the Nation in 1964, which seems to have directly led to his assassination on February 21, 1965. After leaving NOI Malcolm made a pilgrimage to Mecca and was moving towards a more traditional Sunni practice of Islam.
Warith Deen Muhammad (1933–2008) became the leader of NOI after his father Elijah Muhammad’s death in 1975. WD Muhammad rejected the elevation of WF Muhammad to Messiah and preached for more unity and worship with white people. He also adopted The Five Pillars of Islam, which are the core of more mainstream Islam. As a part of this reform effort he disbanded the Nation of Islam and created several new organizations which were more in line with traditional Sunni belief.
Louis Farrakhan (1933 — ) was considered a potential leader of NOI after Elijah’s death, and did not agree with WD Muhammad’s new direction. He broke away from WD Muhammad in 1978 in order to re-establish a more traditional version of NOI which continues to this day.
Curtis’ book emphasizes the dueling priorities of particularism and universalism — is Islam in America a religion for Black people with a desire to create a separate Black community in the USA or Africa, or is it a religion open to all? The split between Warith Deen Muhammad and Louis Farrakhan neatly illustrates the dilemma, where Muhammad has a more universal approach, and Farrakhan continues to advocate particularlism. That said, in recent years NOI under Farrakhan has become more ecumenical, for example by establishing links to Scientology. However, Farrakhan also remains notorious for making strong anti-Semitic statements.
There is perhaps no more visible person associated with the Nation of Islam than Malcolm X, and so his autobiography is indispensable reading.
Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley, 1964
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Autobiography_of_Malcolm_X
I first read this as a teenager. A neighbor family had a particularly interesting book shelf in their upstairs hallway, where I had previously discovered Crime and Punishment and The Invisible Man. I remember that when I first saw the Autobiography I didn’t know who Malcolm X was, but the name seemed interesting, and I must have assumed it would be a good book given my prior experiences with that book shelf. I also must have recognized Alex Haley, who was famous for the book Roots which I had at least heard of and had perhaps even read.
I was not to be disappointed. The Autobiography is a dramatic story told in the first person that recounts a misspent youth of drinking, dancing, and petty crime, and then a jailhouse conversion to Islam that was guided by an extensive correspondence between Malcolm and Elijah Muhammad.
Beyond the story of personal redemption there is also the story of Malcolm’s education in the Nation of Islam, and his evolving relationship with Elijah Muhammad. This relationship was at first one of great admiration but then evolved into one of mistrust and then finally became toxic. In the end Malcolm left the Nation in 1964 seeking a more traditional Sunni practice of Islam. And of course we know the tragic conclusion, with Malcolm X assassinated on February 21, 1965.
During my very recent re-reading I realized that for many years the Autobiography was my only exposure to Islam. While it shows Malcolm’s theology evolving into a more universal vision, my main association with Islam from this book were his earlier statements about “white devils” and the strong impression that Muslims wanted a separation of the races just like white supremacy groups such as the KKK. I do not think this impression was unique to me, this seems even now to be a common theme surrounding Malcolm X and Black Muslims (violent, hateful) as contrasted with Martin Luther King Jr. and Southern Baptists (peaceful, loving).
The spiritual life of boxer and heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali captures many of the transformations in the Nation of Islam from the 1960s into the 1970s and beyond. It is remarkable to look back and to realize how public Ali was about his faith, and the degree of hostility he encountered as a result. We often say that sports celebrities can get away with almost anything in our society. While that may be true, it does not seem to include getting away with being Muslim, even if you are the heavyweight boxing champion of the world.
The Universal Title : Muhammad Ali’s Spiritual Journey, by Precious Rasheeda Muhammad, 2021 podcast (6 episodes) https://twitter.com/PreciousSpeaks
https://www.theuniversaltitle.com/
This podcast is about Ali’s faith, starting with his very traditional upbringing in the Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky. His conversion to Islam started well before he announced it in 1964, among the influences he credits was seeing a cartoon in the Nation of Islam newspaper which showed a white slave owner beating an enslaved Black man while demanding he pray to Jesus. Ali believed that this showed Christianity to be the religion of the white oppressor, whereas Islam and the Nation of Islam was the true religion of the Black man.
Ali did not announce his conversion until he became the heavyweight champion, for fear that his title fight with Sonny Liston might be canceled as soon as he was known to be a Muslim and a member of the Nation. Once he went public and changed his name to Cassius X and then Muhammad Ali, he faced questions for many years about whether he hated white people and if he was truly loyal to the United States. This was particularly true when he declared himself to be a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War, where he risked prison by refusing to serve in Vietnam. He took his case to the US Supreme Court which upheld his right to refuse military service due to his religious beliefs. While he was pursuing this case he lost the heavyweight title, his passport, and was also unable to fight professionally.
Upon the death of Elijah Muhammad in 1976, Ali decided to follow Warith Deen Muhammad towards a more mainstream practice of Islam. He followed the move away from the doctrine of racial separation advocated by Elijah Muhammad and Louis Farrakhan. WD Muhammad also encouraged less reliance on charismatic leadership and more on individual study and conscience, which Ali followed.
Ali argued for a more universal brotherhood among Muslims, and made various appeals on this grounds in high profile situations. For example, he attempted to intervene in the kidnapping of US journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan in 2002. Ali appealed to the kidnappers as Muslims, reminding them that to save one person is to save all of humanity, and that to kill one person is to kill all of humanity. Sadly he was not successful and Pearl was murdered by his kidnappers on February 1, 2002.
Ali worked to normalize Islam in the USA throughout the rest of his life, up to and including his funeral on June 10, 2016 which was streamed globally, and was likely the first experience for many of a Muslim burial.
While the podcast traced Ali’s entire spiritual journey, a 2020 film focused on a critical moment in his spiritual life — the evening after he had become the heavyweight boxing champion of the world.
One Night in Miami, directed by Regina King, 2020 film https://twitter.com/ReginaKing
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10612922/
https://tiff.net/events/one-night-in-miami
This film takes place in the late night and early morning after Muhammad Ali (then Cassius Clay) fought Sonny Liston on February 25, 1964 in Miami, Florida. To the surprise of many, Ali defeated Liston and became the heavyweight boxing champion of the world. This film is based on actual events, where Ali, Malcolm X, football star Jim Brown, and singer Sam Cooke got together in Malcolm’s hotel room for a post-fight celebration that featured ice cream and a lot of serious discussion.
Much of the conversation focuses on Ali’s imminent announcement of his conversion to Islam and his joining the Nation. As that comes into focus we learn of Malcolm X’s planned departure from the Nation (while still remaining a Muslim). During this conversation Malcolm X asks Ali to follow him away from the Nation of Islam, to his new organization, which Ali declines to do.
Ali becomes Cassius X, and is then introduced to NOI as Muhammad Ali by Elijah Muhammad just a few days later on February 27. Shortly thereafter on March 8, 1964 Malcolm announced his departure from the Nation of Islam, and then was assassinated less than a year later on February 21, 1965.
II. Syrian Immigrants in the Midwest
Curiously enough a popular series of children’s books from the 1940s and 1950s draws attention to an important part of Minnesota history, and that is a Syrian neighborhood that existed in Mankato, Minnesota in the late 1800s and early 1900s. During this time the country of Syria did not exist, and so these immigrants were most likely from Lebanon.
The Betsy Tacy books are a series of 10 books that are based on the childhood experiences of author Maud Hart Lovelace, who grew up in Mankato in the early 1900s. Mankato is renamed Deep Valley in these books, and the Syrian neighborhood is referred to as Little Syria. It is said to be populated by Lebanese Christians who lived simple but decent lives in this less affluent part of town.
Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill, by Maud Hart Lovelace, 1942 https://twitter.com/btsociety
https://www.betsy-tacysociety.org/product/betsy-and-tacy-go-over-big-hill-maud-hart-lovelace/
In this book (set in 1902), Betsy, Tacy and Tib go over The Big Hill to visit Little Syria, which is on the other side of Deep Valley. They are seeking votes for Tib, so that she can be elected the Queen of Summer. In addition to putting Betsy’s older sister in her place, the girls hope her election might lead to an innocent romance with the newly crowned and very young King of Spain (Alfonso XIII), who they think is quite handsome. When they are canvassing Little Syria for votes they meet their friend Naifi, [spoiler alert] who we come to learn is a real-life Syrian princess and so she of course becomes the Queen of Summer.
While there are some stereotypical descriptions of both the neighborhood (poor, dirty) and the Syrian people (dark, ebullient), in general the portrayal is sympathetic and advocates for tolerance and inclusion. It is often mentioned that the Syrians are Christians, and at one point it is said they are fleeing persecution by the “Mohammedans” and so shared a common desire for religious freedom with the Pilgrims.
My edition of this book includes an appendix with the story of Little Syria in Mankato, which was known as Tinkcomville. It was named after the founder of the community, developer and business person James Ray Tinkcom. While this community seems to be a thing of the past, Mankato is just 250 miles to the south, so a visit to investigate further is certainly not out of the question.
There is quite a bit more information about this neighborhood in an article published by the Blue Earth County Historical Society :
Tinkcomville was once a well known place in Mankato, by Hilda Parks, 2019
https://blueearthcountyhistory.com/2019/05/04/tinkcomville-was-once-a-well-known-place-in-mankato/
A number of Betsy Tacy fans mentioned that given my interest in the Syrian neighborhood of Deep Valley that I really should read the Emily book. And so I did!
Emily of Deep Valley, by Maud Hart Lovelace, 1950
https://www.betsy-tacysociety.org/product/emily-deep-valley-maud-hart-lovelace/
Emily Webster is a young woman who has just finished high school in Deep Valley in 1912 and is facing an uncertain future. She’s caring for her grandfather, her parents are deceased, and because of this combination of circumstances she is not going to college. She feels left out and perhaps discouraged at the turn her life has taken. She is a peer of Betsy and Tacy and they make a brief appearance in this book, and Emily is mentioned in some of the other books, but is not really a part of the 10 book Betsy Tacy series. The character of Emily is based on a friend of author Maud Hart Lovelace named Marguerite Marsh who lived a life much like Emily’s, and because of being both an orphan and a caregiver was left out of the high school social circle.
Once her high school friends go away to college, Emily becomes friends with two young Syrian boys, Yusef and Kalil. She organizes a club for them, and from this decides she would like to offer English classes to the adults who live in their neighborhood, as part of an “Americanization” program to help the Syrian people become citizens. Emily advocates for this program to the school board. Despite some jingoistic opposition, Emily is able to use her skill as a debater to prevail and start her program.
No less than The New Yorker weighs in on Emily of Deep Valley and Little Syria, in the larger context of the Syrian refugee crisis of today.
The Little Syria of Deep Valley, by Jia Tolentino, 2017
https://www.newyorker.com/books/second-read/the-little-syria-of-deep-valley
The piece points out that Emily was arguing for tolerance of the Syrian people back in 1913, and that in many respects this attitude is more compassionate than what we see today.
There are also at least two academic articles about Deep Valley and the portrayal of the Syrian immigrants by Maud Hart Lovelace. The general point made is that while she writes with some sympathy about the Syrian Americans, she also tends to emphasize their “exotic” customs and appearance along with their desire to assimilate, and thereby falls prey to the Orientalism that governs our perceptions of Arab and Muslim people then and now.
Mills, Claudia. “Diversity in Deep Valley: Encountering the “Other” in the Betsy-Tacy Series.” Children’s Literature, vol. 32, 2004, p. 84–111. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/chl.2004.0018
https://twitter.com/claudia_cmills
Haque, Danielle (2021) “From the Beqaa Valley to Deep Valley: Arab American Childhood & US Orientalism in Children’s Literature,” Research on Diversity in Youth Literature: Vol. 3 : Iss. 1 , Article 6.: https://sophia.stkate.edu/rdyl/vol3/iss1/6
Finally, the development of Emily by author Maud Hart Lovelace is discussed in an article in the Deep Valley Sun (Vol 15, Issue 1, Winter 2022) entitled “Discovering Emily : An Enlightening Look at Maud Hart Lovelace’s Research for Emily of Deep Valley High” by Anna Rose Johnson. https://twitter.com/GymnasticsRosie
Interestingly enough, there is a recent non-fiction work on Syrian immigrants to the Midwest. I have my copy and it is at the very top of my reading queue.
Muslims of the Heartland How Syrian Immigrants Made a Home in the American Midwest, by Edward E. Curtis IV, 2022
https://nyupress.org/9781479812561/muslims-of-the-heartland/
III. Islam in the Midwest
A Short History of the Mosque in Minnesota, by Melissa Aho, 2019 https://twitter.com/melissaaho
https://melissaaho.com/books/mosque/
This short book discusses the development of mosques and Muslim communities around Minnesota. Nearly all mosques in Minnesota do not have the characteristic dome and minaret architecture, but are often instead repurposed homes and storefronts characteristic of the neighborhood in which they are located. This book also reminds us that there is no single Muslim community in Minnesota, but rather a diverse mix of Shia, Sunni, and Nation of Islam.
There is a brief history of the Islamic Center of the Twin Ports which is the mosque in Duluth, and various other mosques, although the book focuses most extensively on Masjid An-Nur in Minneapolis. This is the only Minnesota mosque with the traditional dome and minaret architecture. There is a detailed history of the mosque and its evolution and renovation to its current form.
I read the following two books in parallel. They are entirely different views of local Somali communities, one in Garden City, Kansas, and the other in St. Cloud, Minnesota. The contrast is as extreme as it possibly could be.
White Hot Hate : A True Story of Domestic Terrorism in America’s Heartland, by Dick Lehr 2021
This book is about a foiled plot to blow up and murder Somali immigrants living and working in Garden City, Kansas. The plotters were three white nationalists who hated immigrants and Muslims. A potential fourth member of the group (Daniel Day) was troubled by their violent plans, and became a source for the FBI and recorded many of the meetings of this group. These recordings serve as material for the book, which includes a remarkably detailed representation of the group’s thinking and hatred of both Muslims and immigrants.
The plotters see the Somalis as a threat to the “American Way of Life.” One member of the group refers to himself as orkinman, named after a company known for exterminating cockroaches. While unstated, the fact that most of the Muslim immigrants in Garden City are from Somalia and are Black was surely a part of the “problem” the plotters hoped to solve. What is unique about this group is not their thinking, but the degree to which they were recorded. No doubt this also played a significant role in their subsequent convictions in federal court.
By way of contrast, a recent documentary set in Garden City focuses on the long history of immigration and diversity that has fueled the town for generations.
Strangers in Town, 33 minutes, A film by Reuben Aaronson and Steve Lerner, 2018 (33 minutes)
http://strangersintownthefilm.com/
Garden City’s economy has been very dependent on meat packing for 40 years and much of the labor is provided by recent immigrants from around the world. There is a brief mention of the plot to blow up Somali people, but more so it focuses on the positives of diversity, and paints a picture of Garden City as “The Ellis Island of Kansas.”
The other perspective is from the Somali point of view, and provides an in-depth picture of that community in St. Cloud, Minnesota. Like Garden City it is made up of recent immigrants drawn by work and affordable living.
From Somalia to Snow: How Central Minnesota Became Home to Somalis, by Hudda Ibrahim, 2017 https://twitter.com/HuddaOmar
Central Minnesota has seen a large influx of Somali immigrants in the last 20 years, and this book is written for a non-Somali audience in hopes of making this community more understandable and familiar to the outside world. It starts with careful introductions to the history and culture of Somalia, as well as to Islam and common religious and cultural beliefs.
The book includes many interviews and provides first person perspectives. The motivations for being in St. Cloud come down to finding work, affordable housing, and to connect with the existing Somali community. It describes the challenges of finding housing for large extended families, and also the language barriers that make it hard to find work, navigate government services, and access health care.
The book also makes an important distinction between immigrant and refugee, since many of the people from Somalia are not leaving by choice but are instead fleeing for their own safety. It also explains that Somali people tend to gather in businesses and neighborhoods that cater to that community because the language is familiar and the cost is low, not because they do not want to become a part of the larger community.
The book compares and contrasts assimilation and integration, where assimilation means total acceptance of the prevailing culture (and a rejection of the old) whereas integration means being a part of the larger culture while maintaining some traditions. The prevailing culture often talks about (or demands) the need for immigrants and refugees to assimilate, but in fact that’s not really the history, nearly all immigrant groups and refugees have integrated, and then as the generations pass perhaps become a part of the mainstream culture.
IV. China
In the Camps China’s High-Tech Penal Colony, by Darren Byler, 2021 https://twitter.com/dtbyler
https://globalreports.columbia.edu/books/in-the-camps/
This is an absolutely harrowing but essential book. It describes the extensive and invasive surveillance used by the Chinese government to monitor and incarcerate the Uyghur population of the Xinjiang region (in the northwest of China) simply because they are predominantly Muslim. There seems to be absolutely no privacy for the Uyghur — personal devices must be turned over for scanning upon demand, cameras and facial recognition are ever present, and people must provide biometric data when interacting with the government.
Very ordinary activities are considered “pre-crimes” and are grounds to be detained in a re-education camp where you are in harsh light 24 hours a day, forced to sit or stand without moving for hours at a time, live in a dormitory with a shared bucket for a toilet that is rarely emptied or cleaned, and compelled to sing patriotic songs loudly and repeatedly to receive a meager meal. The camps carry out electronic surveillance constantly, and if you are detected speaking when you aren’t supposed to be you are shouted at or punished … every aspect of behavior is monitored and subject to harsh controls. Some of the camps are linked to factories where detainees work for tiny amounts of money and continue to be subject to the same invasive and cruel levels of surveillance and punishment.
What are the activities that result in people being put in these circumstances? Using WhatsApp, accessing a VPN, downloading an app to learn about Islam, going to a mosque, praying, or growing a beard. The book includes interviews with those who have been detainees and those who have worked as guards, and even the guards are monitored by other guards to make sure they are enforcing the rules and not showing sympathy or compassion. They run the risk of being considered “two-faced” where they express loyalty to the government but then may secretly sympathize with the Uyghur people under detention.
This is a very disturbing book. It shows the Chinese government exercising cruel and inhumane level of control over the actions and thoughts of Uighur people, simply because they are Muslim and are regarded as the enemy in a contrived War on Terror.
V. The Queue
I have a long queue of reading and other materials, but this is what is near the top right now. Recommendations are of course welcome!
Muslims of the Heartland: How Syrian Immigrants Made a Home in the American Midwest, by Edward E. Curtis IV, 2022 https://nyupress.org/9781479812561/muslims-of-the-heartland/
Tangled in Terror : Uprooting Islamophobia, by by Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745345413/tangled-in-terror/
The Trojan Horse Affair, by Brian Reed and Hamza Syed, 2022 podcast (8 episodes) https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/podcasts/trojan-horse-affair.html
Places of Mind: A Biography of Edward Said, by Timothy Brennan, 2021 https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374146535/placesofmind
Caliphate, by Rukmini Callimachi, 2018 podcast (13 episodes, retracted due to falsified content) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/caliphate/id1357657583
Fear in our Hearts: What Islamophobia Tells us About America, by Caleb Iyer Elfenbein, 2021 https://nyupress.org/9781479804580/fear-in-our-hearts/
America & Islam: Soundbites, Suicide Bombs and the Road to Donald Trump, by Lawrence Pintak, 2019 https://pintak.com/books/america-islam-soundbites-suicide-bombs-and-the-road-to-donald-trump
History
2019 updates:
- July (project kickoff)
- August (background reading, Ilhan Omar, Minnesota)
- December (background reading, Genocide)
2020 Updates
- May (annotation scheme)
- August (data statement)
- November (invited talk at UMass-Lowell)
- December (invited talk at Muslims in ML/NeurlPS)
Please stay in touch!
- Email : tpederse@d.umn.edu
- Twitter : @SeeTedTalk
