Deconstructing my internalized Islamophobia alongside my pro-Palestinian stance
Just because I am pro-Palestine does not mean I am free of biases.
In fact, the very fact that I am a supporter of Palestinian liberation has been an excuse to ignore the ways my internalized Islamophobia showed up to the discussion.
First, I want to be clear: as I also clarified in my piece about deconstructing my antisemitism, our internalized biases don’t mean that we are bad human beings. It just means that we have a functioning human brain and body that has been conditioned to believe certain things, and we are equally capable of unwiring those conditioned beliefs to show up for those we care about more competently.
Now, the reason I say that my support for Palestine has been an excuse to ignore my internalized Islamophobia is that I made my position on Palestine about me rather than about the human beings directly impacted. Meaning, this was the prevailing thought I had: “I stand for Palestine because that is what *I* believe in based on the information that I have, and that is enough. That is enough to be on the right side of history.”
What I regret about this thought is that I made my position a final destination instead of treating it as a starting point for learning and understanding the human experience of the Palestinians and Muslims directly affected by the war. In some ways, because I decided that I had identified with their pain, I used their pain to find my place and belonging in the world.
This is not how I want to move through the world.
The way I want to operate is by remaining humble and curious about the human experiences that I know nothing about. This doesn’t mean that their experience is superior or more of anything; it just means that I get to relate to them in ways that allow us to hold space for our differences.
Because each human being is so different, I strongly believe that our willingness to hold space for our differences is one of the most important skills in standing for our collective humanity.
The starting point for building that skill is being aware where I have fallen short in my capacity to hold space for the differences. Here are some instances I can think of where I have fallen short:
1- Until this war, I did not have any Muslim or Palestinian friend or close acquaintance with whom I could have regular opportunity for connection.
I don’t believe this means that I should have actively sought out Muslim or Palestinian people for the sake of creating a connection with humans with those identities because that would also have meant that I was using their labels for connection rather than connecting based on our shared humanity.
Each human carries all kinds of different identities, and our geographic and religious identities are simply two of them.
What I do want to inquire and examine are the following:
Where have I showed up in a way that felt unsafe or unfamiliar to those carrying such identities?
What are the ways I can witness their human experiences so that they can find safety despite our differences?
How can I become more skillful in holding our differences?
Where am I making assumptions about their experiences and what they want?
Where do I feel entitled to them giving me the benefit of the doubt when my choices have provided reason for doubt?
As my teacher James-Olivia Chu Hillman always says, “I cannot know you without you.” My greatest transgression was that I did not know them, I was unwilling to know them, and worst yet, I did not know that I was unwilling to know them.
This is an area where I want to build capacity to know those who carry different sets of identities so that I can stand for their humanity and our collective humanity together. Like any other type of work, the work here in expanding my capacity never ends.
2- I decided that my own decisions alone were sufficient to prove allyship.
I had decided that once I “take a side,” that alone establishes allyship. I discovered that to be untrue when I saw that allyship cannot exist in an isolated vacuum. Allyship exists only with the person we are being an ally to.
This means that our allyship will change and evolve along with those we are proclaiming to be allies to. It also cannot exist without ongoing relationship with those we are proclaiming to be allies to.
Which means that we cannot make the decision on whether we are being competent allies. That is a decision that only they can make because it stems from their experience of the support that we are proclaiming to offer to them.
The competence of our allyship cannot exist without their experiences.
But every person has different requests and requirements. Something that is sufficient allyship to one person will be profoundly insufficient for another. To require everyone holding a particular identity (e.g., being a Palestinian Muslim) to be satisfied with one particular form of allyship is using their identity to feel better about how we show up in the world. That is not allyship.
This means that the work of an ally is to commit to the ongoing work of remaining humble to each individual human experiences and their truths. Because we show up to each human interaction with our own set of beliefs and paradigms, many of which may be unfamiliar or unknown to the other person, our actions arising out of our beliefs and paradigms may create an unsafe space for others.
This is why I must continue to examine my beliefs and where I am insisting that I am right.
There is nothing to prove. Proving is something that exists with a sense of finality. The currency of trust is something that we continue to build as we are willing to fail and mess up along the way with no end in sight because our collective humanity is not a destination but a journey to be experienced.
3- I was unwilling to acknowledge a power imbalance and the existence of supremacist paradigms.
I am going to share what I have witnessed, which doesn’t have to be what anyone else has witnessed. This is what I have found and perceived with only my own eyeballs:
There is a disproportionate attention and platform available for white voices, including white Jewish voices, that speak to what is going on in Israel and Palestine. This is in the mainstream media and social media. I am not finding a proportionate number of Muslim Americans being able to speak to the violence they are also experiencing without being attacked for not condemning terrorism. For example, there is a number of employers dominated by white Jewish individuals who are denying space and employment for Muslim Americans for protesting and speaking up. (Google: “employer denying pro-Israel” vs. “employer denying pro-Palestine”)
Along those lines, there is an increasingly scant level of effort on the part of white Americans and outsiders to listen to perspectives of those they do not understand. This is an example of privilege where we take for granted the comfort of being an outsider without the effort to understand others’ pain.
This does NOT mean:
We ignore the pain of the Jewish human beings whose families and communities are going through immeasurable levels of loss.
People with privilege should be reduced to one-dimensional and ignorant robots who don’t care.
What this DOES mean is that we always have room to acknowledge our privileges and expand our capacity to hold differences. Here are some questions we can ask to that end, once we decide that we are available for them:
Where am I needing my reality and my pain to be others’ reality and pain, too? How can I find validation and legitimacy in my own pain without needing it to be others’ pain as well? How can I let my own pain be witnessed without needing it to elicit pain in others?
Is there a possibility that, despite the heaviness and suffering I am experiencing, I am the beneficiary of privileges that allow me to insulate myself from the unique kinds of pain that others without the same privileges are experiencing?
How do I want to use the privileges I have to hold space for those I don’t understand? How am I willing to expand my capacity to understand them?
Am I willing to be wrong while I carry out my commitment to hold space for others in messy and imperfect ways?
What do I care about so deeply that I am willing to feel shitty for?
For a moment, I was unwilling to ask these questions out loud because I was unwilling to acknowledge the existence of the power imbalance and supremacist paradigms. The last thing I wanted to do was to blame and shame anyone in any capacity because that felt incongruent with my commitment to seeing the human being.
But I had to recognize that we are capable of seeing each other in our humanity while recognizing the power structures that impact different groups of people in different ways without shaming anyone. This is a skill I am constantly sharpening because I will be imperfect at this every step of the way.
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When we are in the deepest form of pain, there will be moments where we’ll do anything to escape it. Sometimes, that involves hurting other people just so we can feel like we are not alone in our hurt.
I know this firsthand because I am the first to throw tantrums when I cannot stand my own anger and loneliness. It is one of many ways I experience my human emotions, though it is not my favorite.
And sometimes, these tantrums are necessary. There are ways people I associate with that have exploded in ways that allowed me to witness them in their pain.
As my teacher Melissa Tiers says, everyone shows up to activism differently.
[I personally don’t subscribe to the word “activism” because I think it’s just a fancy word for caring about humanity. The word activism isolates “activists” from other human beings, and I don’t think that is the kind of paradigm I want to subscribe to. Maybe more on that later.]
Because everyone shows up to caring differently, there is no part of me that will deprioritize myself for the sake of showing up in a way that is “right” or “wrong.”
While I continue to examine myself, there is no place I am willing to dehumanize myself for the sake of submitting to others’ rules, narratives, and rhetoric. There is no place I am willing to abandon my own truth and how I want to show up because I cannot exist without my truth.
This means:
Sometimes I will be available to listen to others’ rhetoric and emotions. Sometimes I will not be. Just because I honor others’ truth doesn’t mean that I need to be available to witness it in any capacity.
I get to decide what is mine and what is theirs. Just because someone is angry does not that mean that their anger also has to be mine. There is a difference between holding space for someone’s anger and internalizing that anger to be my responsibility.
There is no point in time where I will say and do anything that is pleasing to every single person. This means I prioritize what is important to me now so that I can care in a way that feels most genuine to me at the moment.
Sometimes I will be silent because otherwise I will say and do things that are not true. This does not mean I remain silent. This means that I will always be in search for what is true.
I am willing to change my mind, be disappointed, be disappointing, and everything that I am not “supposed” to be for the sake of knowing the human beings behind the politics and the rhetoric.
I am willing to feel insufficient because I am just one person wanting to know human beings one by one and continuing to sharpen my skills in showing up for those I care about.
All of the above decisions come from an incredible place of privilege. The way I use my privilege is to care about others at the pace of my own body, show up genuinely for those I care about, and walk with those who are willing to walk with me.
All of the above decisions also arise from a strong sense of trust in myself to care deeply and act decisively about what I know must be done and said. The more I trust myself, the more I trust my community to walk with me in their own truth as well.
There is a part of me that is embarrassed that it took the war for me to care even more deeply about more humans. But I am allowed to feel embarrassed. I am allowed to feel whatever is true to me. I declare this because I get to honor others’ truth more deeply when I honor mine. That has proven to be the case over and over again for me, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
Here are the questions I want to leave with when we feel such a profound sense of uncertainty, pain, and confusion:
Is it possible to examine my own biases without making it mean that I am a bad person?
Where do I feel the urge to disagree and make an opponent out of the person I am speaking to, and is that the way I want to move through the world?
What am I requiring of myself that makes me feel wrong for even existing?
What do I really want to care about right now, and what does that look like?
Are there decisions and assumptions that I have made about other people that I want to examine so that I can see who they are as human beings?
Is it okay that I don’t have any capacity but to take time and space for myself and myself only right now? How does that allow me to care more deeply?
What am I available and not available for in the pursuit of caring for myself and others?
What does it look like to trust my own thoughts, feelings, and my humanity even if it feels entirely uncomfortable at the moment?
I strongly believe that there are no right or wrong answers here. Just your truth. As we remain faithful to our truth, may we also find capacity to honor others’ truth and care about them even more deeply.
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If you found any of the above inaccurate or hurtful to your own experience, my ears are open. I am sorry that you had to experience disappointment in my words, and I want to learn more about it if you have the capacity to share. You can comment here or send me a message. You can also find more of me at angela-han.com.