Beyond Religion & Race: Reframing the Conversation on Palestine

ALL EYES ON GAZA:SINGAPORE

On 20 October 2023⁶;, PM Lee noted that Singaporeans are also following these events closely, stating that it happens “every time there’s violence in the Middle East”. He added “particularly I think the Muslim population in Singapore are very agitated about it because there’s a certain feeling of empathy and compassion, particularly closely felt for the Palestinian cause.”

Deputy PM Lawrence Wong echoed these sentiments adding⁷, “our Muslim community in Singapore feel it more strongly, because of the empathy and compassion for the Palestinian cause. But no matter our race, religion, or background, we cannot help but grieve that so many lives have been lost, and many more remain in danger.”

In many ways, Singaporean Muslims should be proud to be recognised as a community that has a deep understanding of humanity and justice. Everyone should be agitated and concerned that Israel is committing gross violations of human rights and international humanitarian laws, with almost no accountability.

However, in the context of Singapore, the impact of such statements can be misunderstood as singling out the Muslim community. In the same speech quoted above, DPM Wong added:

“On such emotive issues, it makes all the difference to have religious leaders who understand what is happening and what is at stake for Singapore. They are able to guide their flock and help to hold the social cohesion and trust between our different religious groups. Some may think that such guidance is not necessary. But they are mistaken.”

Despite this being a general comment, the Muslim community was the only faith community to receive a religious advisory, in Malay and English, to guide us on our response to “overseas conflicts such as the ongoing one between Israel and Hamas”. This was developed by the Office of the Mufti, under the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (MUIS).

It is different to organically get advice and reminders from our asatizah on how to understand bearing witness to oppression and injustices in this life and seek spiritual clarity and strength to show solidarity through offering prayers, donations and political action (such as sending emails and letter to our political representatives), as opposed to a centralised advisory that seems to only be for and by the Muslim community. Is it not reasonable to question whether other racial and religious communities receive such advisories?

The singling out of the Muslim community, as the only community that “needs guidance” as we are “particularly agitated”, assumes that (1) only Singaporean Muslims care about what is happening in Palestine because (2) most Palestinians are Muslims.

SOME DANGERS OF TALKING ABOUT PALESTINE AS A "RELIGIOUS ISSUE"

Despite these instances, politicians in Singapore have been responding to the genocide in Gaza as a humanitarian issue, with politicians issuing statements for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, calls for innocent civilian lives to be protected and consistent efforts to provide humanitarian assistance⁸.

With Palestinians documenting life under settler colonialism from the 2014 war in Gaza, which killed about 2,250 Palestinians, to being displaced by Israeli settlers from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah in 2021; from police violence in the Al Aqsa mosque in 2022, to the current atrocities in Gaza, there has been a shift in how people are viewing the “Israel-Palestine conflict”. Most understand it to be a humanitarian issue.

However, as described above, there seems to be an underlying racial or religious framing of a political struggle that needs to be addressed and rejected.

• THE 'ISRAEL-PALESTINE CONFLICT' IS NOT A RELIGIOUS ISSUE: IT IS SETTLER COLONIALISM p>Directly from the birthplace of Jesus himself in Bethlehem, Palestine, Rev Munther’s Christmas Eve sermon was a reminder against orientalist narratives that depict Israel’s settler-colonial project as a primordial feud between Muslims and Jews. By looking beyond the essentialist “religious issue” narrative when understanding Palestine, the violent nature of occupation and apartheid is something that can be challenged and removed, as Rev Munther demonstrated in his sermon. Historically, we have seen how apartheid was deconstructed and rooted out in South Africa in the 1990s.

Despite the majority of Palestinians being Muslims and the majority of Israelis being Jewish, going beyond the “religious issue” narrative allows us to realise that Israeli settler colonisation, occupation and apartheid are affecting Palestinians as a whole, not only Muslims but Christians, those of other faith denominations or those who do not belong to a faith community. As reflected in Rev Munther’s sermon, non-Muslim Palestinians also experience settler-colonial violence and resist in meaningful ways, seeking strength from their own faith traditions.

It is a sad reality but highlighting violence inflicted on non-Muslim Palestinians, reminds us to regard what is happening in Palestine as a humanitarian crisis, resulting from occupation and settler colonialism. Especially over the long course of the War on Terror⁹, it reminds those who have become apathetic to the deaths of Muslim, Brown and Black bodies that settler colonialism affects all Palestinians.

Without refuting the “religious issue” narrative, there is also the danger that Israel is positioned as the geopolitical face of Judaism, an assertion that many anti-Zionist Jews have critiqued. This is similar to asserting that Saudi Arabia is the geopolitical face of Islam, which does not hold true.

center>Figure 1: Palestinian writer and activist Mohammed El-Kurd on Twitter (now known as X)¹⁰/center>

• NORMALISING ISLAMOPHOBIAp>As Mohammed El-Kurd asserts, the “religious issue” narrative has been weaponised by the Israeli government. Palestinians have been and continue to be dehumanised and subjected to Islamophobic violence physically and rhetorically. Prof John Esposito observed that Israeli politics often uses Islamophobic rhetoric to portray Muslims and Arabs as the enemy^[11]. Early in the war, members of the Israeli government referred to Palestinians as “human animals”. Netanyahu even quoted the Old Testament, describing Palestinians as the “Amalek”, the Jews’ archetypal enemy. The impact of this is that it is justified to view victims of an indiscriminate war as less valuable than human beings – “collateral damage” in the name of national defence.

Even within the rhetoric of “right to national self-defence”, Netanyahu’s government legitimates this all-out war in Gaza by equating Hamas to ISIS (The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria). The 7th October attacks were carried out by Hamas, however Netanyahu and mainstream media claim that these attacks represent all that Hamas is. As Prof Esposito clarifies, ISIS is an extremist militant group and transnational movement whose vision and mission was to create a caliphate in the Middle East, whereas Hamas’ roots are an integral part of the history of Palestinians. It has been a major political movement that governed in Gaza for many years¹².

The media were also quick to fan the flames, without checks and balances. For example, the initial reports that were coming out of Israel mentioned the beheading of babies. President Joe Biden withdrew his statement, confirming its falsehood¹³. But the damage had been done by imprinting the image of irrational Muslim terrorists.

Inevitably, by painting Hamas with the ‘terrorist’ label that morally dismisses non-state perpetrators of violence and omitting the historical context of 7th October¹⁴, Palestinians, especially in Gaza, are being painted as terrorists or terrorist sympathisers. On the contrary, Palestinians understand the root of violence to be settler colonialism.

This has extended to those who support the Palestinian cause. United Kingdom Prime Minister Rishi Sunak recently warned against the ‘rise of extremism’ in Britain. He was referring to the overwhelmingly peaceful protests calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, and those who had challenged the UK’s export of lethal weapons which kill innocent civilians abroad. In the United States, there are complaints of Islamophobia and anti-Arab bias ranging from verbal harassment to violence against Palestinian human rights supporters.

Locally, in Singapore, the advocacy for Palestine has been largely multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, uniting people of different ages, backgrounds, gender and sexuality – online and offline (see letters for Palestine, audience of the Palestine Film Festival and Gaza Monologues). However, the impact of normalising Islamophobic rhetoric when speaking about Gaza, as well as singling out the Muslim community as “particularly agitated”, was a proliferation of sweeping and outrightly bigoted social media comments about the Muslim (particularly Malay-Muslim) community in Singapore¹⁵.

• FOR THE MUSLIM COMMUNITY: PALESTINIANS ARE NOT 'RESILIENT'p>Despite Muslims ourselves arguing that we support the Palestinian cause because it is a matter of justice and human rights, at times, we have also internalised these assumptions – the “religious issue” narrative on Palestine.

At times, Muslims paddle a romanticised narrative of Palestinians being ‘chosen’ to live in the Holy Land and so we expect supernatural ‘coping mechanisms’ of strength, resilience and patience from Palestinians facing unimaginable horrors. Idealising Palestinian resilience using religious language can unintentionally minimise the reality of their suffering. Palestinian academic Dr Malaka Shwaikh argues against expecting “resilience” from Palestinians arguing that it “imposes mythical terms on our experience and our everyday struggles. It obscures our humanity, reduces the depravity of Israeli violence, and ignores other forms of violence, especially the structural violence that we continue to face every day”¹⁶.

While Muslims do believe that injustices and trials are a reality of this world and being patient through the trials are a sign of deep faith and strength, which the Palestinians have demonstrated time and time again, this should not result in our negligence towards our ethical responsibility to demand for justice. While we may use our faith traditions as a lens to process harrowing scenes of injustice and violence, what is happening in Palestine and Israel remains to be deeply political and a humanitarian crisis.

A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE

It should be clear that what has been happening in Palestine and Israel for 75 years is not a religious conflict between Muslims and Jews. We are witnessing a humanitarian crisis, with the clear root cause of settler-colonialism.

However, how do we understand the long history of solidarity from Muslim masses across the world, and particularly within the Global South? Historically, as well, Singaporean Muslims have always been in solidarity with Palestine. There are newspaper reports from 1947 about protests against the United Nations’ partitioning of Palestine¹⁷. Is the ‘secular’ in the language of “humanitarian issue” the only project to encourage intersectional solidarity or the capacity to reach out to the “Other”?

Anthropology scholar Dr Muneeza Rivzi articulates “indeed, believers in Palestine, like their co-religionists elsewhere, situate their opposition to colonial domination not only in the flattening idioms of humanitarian compassion or the politico-juridicial register of rights, but also with reference to the moral universe of the umma, a concept traversing multiple temporalities and attached to dynamic notions of divine order, dignity, endurance, death and victory¹⁸.”

In centring the rhetoric of a “humanitarian issue”, it is also important to not erase the many ways Palestinians are resisting occupation, often meaningfully rooted in their own faith traditions.

FINAL REFLECTIONS

The “religious issue” rhetoric is harmful as by projecting the orientalist narrative of a primordial feud between Muslims and Jews, it not only obscures Israel’s settler-colonial project, but it also has unintended consequences of essentialising Muslim communities all over the world and normalising Islamophobia.

At this political moment, we, as a global community, have to reject the dehumanisation of Palestinians by bearing witness to the genocide, remembering the lives lost and calling out the depravity and injustice of Israeli violence on the Palestinian people.

I end by making space to affirm the sanctity of life, a common thread found within all of our sacred traditions. Along with so many around the world, I express my grief, sorrow and anger for every person who had their lives taken unjustly and brutally, whether Muslim, Christian, Jewish, person of any faith, or no faith.

Dr Muneerah Ab Razak holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of St Andrews. She was formerly a research associate at the Middle East Institute, NUS. Her research interests include comparative political thought and conversations surrounding decoloniality.