[Dean's World] Ali Eteraz: Discuss: Should I Put Eteraz.Org In Hiatus?

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Posted by Ali Eteraz:
Discuss: Should I Put Eteraz.Org In Hiatus?
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1175111304.shtml


   I come to you with great sadness and heartbreak.

   I also come to you guys to get an objective opinion. Should I put
   Eteraz.Org in hiatus? Here are my reasons:

   1 - Due to time, personal and professional constraints, all of the
   frontpagers (Willow, H, and Thabet) have had to excuse themselves.
   There are many reasons for this and I really do not want to get into
   them. As they left, I only managed to pick up two new frontpagers.
   They were inadequate for our purposes and were let go. At the moment
   the only contributors to the frontpage are myself and a philosopher
   (Christian) friend who is helping to keep the site ticking. I cannot
   do this by myself.

   2 - I cannot do this by myself because of my personal situation which
   has required me to relocate and essentially begin my life anew, while
   still dealing with the specter of my earlier life. Nor am I certain
   where exactly I am going to settle, nor what my profession will be (I
   have left the legal practice), and as such, I do not have money to
   throw around.

   3 - I cannot do this by myself because I am writing a book. All the
   tracks are laid in the publishing industry. Now I have to finish the
   product. When the original frontpagers were around they were planning
   on picking up the slack. They also were very much in step with my
   vision, and, as such, I did not have to worry about someone with an
   agenda coming in and effectively hijacking the project. I do not have
   this luxury anymore. Nor can I find another Ali Eteraz; certainly many
   budding ones, but they would require mentorship, and for reasons
   already mentioned I cannot do that.

   4 - While the reader diaries have been a success, they have often
   derailed the project of the website. They quite often deal with issues
   of Muslim identity rather than Muslim constructiveness. I didn't
   launch Eteraz.Org to fight Islamophobia. That is a fight that doesn't
   interest me and is not part of the Islamic Reform project.

   5 - The good writers that the reader diaries have produced are almost
   all theoreticians and not activists. I know real life activists and
   they simply do not have time to come and write of their works on a
   website. This is due to the fact that being an activist in the Muslim
   community is very lonely, individual work. The entire staff of the
   National Association of Muslim Lawyers, for example, is one person.
   She is also the staff for two other national organizations.

   6 - Our tech person has had to recuse himself due to the fact that he
   has to feed his family, get a master's, be involved with his mosque,
   and raise two children. PERL is a notoriously difficult and time
   consuming system and there aren't very many Muslim PERL experts out
   there. I could "buy" such experts but I am not currently working.

   7 - For the most part, Muslim academics in the United States have NOT
   taken to the website. A few very prominent ones did. However, Muslim
   graduate students in Near East and Middle East studies programs (in
   the hundreds or even thousands) have not. Again, most of them want to
   "defend" Islam. Certainly this could have been remedied over time. I
   will admit that I was counting on these academics to be there for me.
   They haven't been. Part of this has to do with the fact that they are
   all theoreticians. Thus, when I need an answer to what school of
   jurisprudence so and so belonged to in the 11th century, I have many
   helpers. If I want to know what kind of legislation is being passed in
   the Muslim world today, they are useless. Thabet, our British
   frontpager, called them "wine and cheese Muslims." I don't see how
   this can be remedied. I am not about to start offering tours through
   the Muslim world.

   8 - American Muslims are the wrong community to talk Islamic Reform
   about. Ultimately every American Muslim is an American first. Their
   concerns, if they are black Muslim are things like relations with
   immigrant Muslims, and local social problems; if they are immigrant
   Muslims are things like sending kids to college, not get
   discriminated, and maybe have a nice mosque somewhere. To be more
   stark, the immigrant Muslims in America are the "quitters" of the
   Muslim world. They left because they knew that a better life in the
   Muslim world was not possible. Now that they have a better life here,
   it is hard to shake them from their wealth worship. Those that do take
   an interest are the aforementioned wine and cheese Muslims.

   9 - The premise of the site was to turn individual opinions into
   collective opinions. This did not work. I believe that the better
   approach would be the one that [1]Avaaz.Org is taking: have a closed
   set of dedicated activists who pre-fashion both the message and the
   delivery method and collective action comes in via petitions or text
   message campaigns. Getting individual people to write letters, sign
   letters, deliver letters, contact Muslim leaders around the world, is
   just way too hard.

   10 - The premise of Eteraz.Org is wrong. There is no way of taking
   action on "Islam." In the real world there is no Islam, but Islams.
   Not only that, but these Islams are all beholden to temporal and
   political power called the nation-state. As such, real reform occurs
   on a country by country basis. Theological reform is certainly
   necessary but if you want to do that, you cannot be a hedonist, party
   loving, liberal like Ali Eteraz, you have to be a long bearded, thowb
   wearing, old man with certifications from religious schools. However,
   like I said, theological reform is not even the first thing that is
   necessary as long as there is legislative reform. I just conducted a
   massive media analysis of how Islam has been discussed over the last
   three decades and found that until very recently no one discussed
   "Islam." We only discussed individual Muslim countries. Only after
   9/11 did we start talking in terms of "Islam." Methinks that we are
   now going back to the original position: country by country
   discussions. If you check out the news, you'll see that to be the
   case. Eteraz.Org was "States of Islam." Wrong premise.

   11 - I believe that given the fact that many Muslims simply never
   became net savvy the way the American left did, I first need to be
   exposed in the media before I can start trying to talk people into
   "joining" anything. This requires me to go out and show my face and
   talk and travel. I am willing to do those things, however, as I
   already mentioned, I have no help. Besides, these things would be
   received better if I have a book in hand.

   12 - The website we set up is technologically unable to handle
   multiple languages. Our aim was to make the frontpage posts in Arabic,
   Farsi, Urdu and English. Between the four original members we had all
   those languages covered and could have done our own translations. So,
   even if I go on a platform (for which I do not have money) that can
   handle multiple languages, I now don't have the core.

   So those are my reasons. What are your thoughts?

   We did launch a couple of excellent projects. These would be the
   [2]Muslim Countries Legislation Project and the [3]Muhammad Asad Quran
   Distribution Project. For the sake of these two projects I'd leave the
   website online. I actually believe that I can do more for these
   projects by myself, on my own, if I can give them more regular
   attention than I am currently able to do. For example, the Muslim
   Countries Legislation Project requires talking to people out in the
   Muslim world. Thus, instead of just keeping it on the web, I should
   head out to the Muslim world and start talking to people and make
   in-roads. I am, in fact, leaning in this direction. Without the
   responsibility of a job or a community to run, I can easily get away
   for the requisite travel. The Quran project I can keep as a paypal on
   my personal blog and somewhere prominently on .Org and only appeal to
   it when I do speaking engagements (instead of collecting honorarium).

   The rest, i.e. the articles on apostasy and extremism that I wrote,
   can go back on my personal blog. Since I will still be in the
   blogosphere, once the book is out, and a new set of frontpagers can be
   found, and new technology can be paid for, I can re-ignite Eteraz.Org

References

   1. http://www.avaaz.org/en/
   2. http://www.eteraz.org/tag/mclp
   3. http://eteraz.org/tag/quranproject