There is no better microcosm for the disconnect between Muslim and Western worlds than the fact that Katie Couric, in her interview with President Ahmedinijad, raised the case of Neda Saqa Sultan, innocent female victim of Iranian repression of protestors, and not only couldn’t anticipate Ahmedinijad’s retort of “Marwa Sharbini”, but didn’t even know who Marwa Sharbini was, by far the most well known female Muslim there is right now.  What an awful mistake on her part, as it simply reinforced Muslim stereotypes of the West—you talk of human rights, the claim goes, but in fact you only care when people who agree with you die.  When women wearing headscarves die, in fact when the police are involved in killing them, you don’t care at all.  So runs the claim, and the fact that a premier Western journalist, justifiably acclaimed, didn’t know this, didn’t help matters at all.  All the Holocaust discussion, all of her other sharp and good questions fell away on Arabic news channels, and at the Friday prayers throughout Iraq and Iran today from what I’ve been able to tell.  What really nailed is remembered, and I’m in Iraq where the press is free, is that Ahmedinijad took up the cause of Marwa, and Couric didn’t even care to look her up before interviewing him. Ahmedinijad protects our people, he raises their concerns, the West just ignores them and hates him because of he reminds them.  Not a very good message.

Following Arabic news channels here in Baghdad, it would be as impossible not to know the name of Marwa Sharbini as it would not to know Michael Vick in the US.  (It’s a good contrast I think—imagine an Iraqi journalist prepared to ask Barack Obama about animal rights and not being able to identify Michael Vick).   I think the story is misunderstood, even by people I respect like Hamid Dabashi at CNN.com, who seemed to think if Couric had known who she was, she could have retorted quickly and effectively to Ahmedinijad on why her case wasn’t like Neda’s.  I disagree, I think it’s far more nuanced than that.

In summary, Marwa Sharbini got into an argument with a fellow named Alex W at a playground where her son and his niece were fighting over a swingset I think.  She wears a headscarf, he called her an Islamist terrorist and a slut (sort of tough to be both, but anyway), threatened her repeatedly, said people like her did not deserve to live, and finally police came and intervened and she pressed charges.  She won.  At the appeal, no guards were present, nobody was searched.  Alex W the neo Nazi walked over to her, pulled out a knife, and stabbed her 16 times, killing her.  She was three months pregnant at the time.  Her husband attempted to intervene but a guard was summoned from the outside.  Seeing two people fighting, he thought the husband was the attacker and shot him instead.  He survived.  Policeman is under investigation, Alex W obviously charged with murder.

Now what Hamid Dabashi says (http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/10/01/dabashi.couric.ahmadinejad/) is that if Couric had known, she could have pointed out that Marwa was killed by a vicious neo Nazi thug on trial, who deserved to be on trial, who will now be tried for murder instead of just harassment, whereas Neda was killed by the police themselves in Iran.  The problem is, it ignores the root of the grievance for those of us who are angered by the Marwa incident, and the complete Western indifference that followed.  

Of course the two situations aren’t comparable, I’ll explain why in a minute, but it’s not as simple as random neo Nazi thug kills a woman, and he is tried for murder, it’s awful but what in the world could Germany do but prosecute the nutcase who did it?  Ahmedinijad is playing on a grievance that runs deeper and that is to my mind in some ways legitimate (though the idea that it justifies what happened to Neda is absurd of course).

First thing Ahmedinijad said in describing the case tells much.  He said she was killed in a court of law.  Now of course if Couric had known of the incident, she could have clarified, killed in a court of law isn’t killed by a court of law. That is, if you say killed in a court for wearing a headscarf, and one thinks of a Star Chamber where death sentences are announced and immediately carried out for wearing the headscarf.  In fact, it was the opposite, it was the Nazi’s harassment of her for wearing the headscarf that got him into court in the first place, she was the witness against him, not the defendant. 

But still, does the nation of Germany care so little for its most discriminated against citizens that when they are insulted, and told they don’t deserve to live, it doesn’t think to search the persons entering the courtroom in such instances to make sure they don’t have knives with three inch blades they are going to use to stab people?  Seriously, if a white supremacist was known to have said to some pregnant black woman “you don’t deserve to live” and then managed to walk into court at his own trial or appeal and stab that woman, would it be possible to believe the African American community might not be upset?  When you say, as the Germans have, that it’s routine not to search, you are effectively saying you aren’t going to do much to protect the threatened and disadvantaged, and that this is a matter of routine.

Now of course you can still say that is at best negligence on the part of Germany, they still didn’t kill her or want her dead and may have learned from this instance.  It’s a point, but add in the cop now.  Yes Jazeera puts out nonsense that the cop must have wanted to see the Muslim woman dead, he hated her and her husband so he shot her husband and was happy she was going to die.  Yes that’s very very unlikely at best, stupid at worst. 

I assume he's a normal white cop.  I assume he shot the guy who he genuinely thought was the aggressor and that he is as any normal cop would be, tortured by the fact that he shot the wrong person.  But let’s think about that for just a second.  He saw a scarved Arab woman stabbed on the floor bleeding profusely.  He saw an Arab professor and a neo Nazi fighting.  Working off instinct and not thought because there was no time for thought, he assumed the professor was a wifebeater or something and was beating up a Nazi who had come to save a woman wearing a headscarf.  The research doctorate position Marwa's husband had at Max Planck didn’t help him.  Her pharmacy degree didn't help her.  They weren't white like the neo-Nazi was. This part in particular very much resonates with me, and it disturbs me that Americans don’t know about this incident.  After this, as an Arab law professor with an Iraqi wife, what am I supposed to think is going to happen if a skinhead attacks my wife and a cop walks in on me trying to save her?

The point is, even if Couric had known who Marwa was, and even if she had pointed out to Ahmedinijad that Marwa wasn’t killed by the police like Neda was, she would just walk straight into the trap of “no you’re right, the police did not shoot her, they only shot the professor who was trying to save her.”   

To show the situations aren’t comparable, you would have to go into a deeper analysis.  You have to show the Iranian security services didn’t just exceed bounds in this one instance, whereas the German police don’t shoot headscarved Muslim women or their husbands every day.  You have to show the Iranian investigation into the death of Neda was a sham, while the German investigation into the policeman who shot Marwa Sharbini’s husband was more substantial.   You have to show the details surrounding each death to show why one police shooting might be more justified than another. You need more data and time basically, than one interview with a head of state can afford.

But still, had she known who Marwa Sharbini was, it would have avoided and not reinforced the stereotype.  She also could have used it much to her advantage, but not so much in challenging the death of Neda Sultan (there you could just say one tragedy does not another excuse), but when it came to the Holocaust.  Why, Ahmedinijad, asked her, are you so concerned about these deaths in World War II when 60 million people died?  Her answer, because you deny them, was good, but imagine if she knew and understood the Marwa case and the origins of the Muslim grievance better.  Here’s what I would have said to him.

You just gave me a single case, the tragic murder of one woman for her religious conviction, and you ask me why I care about six million others for theirs?  I see nothing wrong in insisting on the human dignity of Europe’s Muslim population, and your using the tragedy of Marwa Sharbini to demand better treatment of people, human beings, who deserve more respect than they have received, could be understood to be a noble quest.  But I want you to walk with me on another quest—let’s pretend that there wasn’t one Marwa Sharbini, there were 6 million.  And the police didn’t just shoot the people trying to save these Marwas, they organized the killing themselves.  Might I ask how you might feel if the Prime Minister of Israel then looked at you and said “that never happened”?  Can you credibly talk of human dignity for Europe’s Muslims, a matter of fundamental importance, and demand more Western attention to it, also a matter of fundamental importance, yet show such spectacular disregard for the human dignity of people of other faiths?  

It might have gotten a better point across, for the world’s aggrieved Muslims.

HAH