The View from Medina

September 10, 2016 9:45 AM

My mother begins a slow, thorny grieving. Time wrinkles around her periodically heaving body. In May, she decides we will make umrah, pilgrimage, in my grandmother’s memory. My immediate family doesn’t do field trips. I can’t remember the last time that we, all seven strong, went anywhere together—we are always too busy or too dispersed. By month’s end, we are flying to Saudi Arabia for the first time in fifteen years.
posted by latkes (11 comments total)

Thanks for that; it's a fascinating read. For those who suspect it might be some sort of glurgy religious/family reminiscence, trust me, it's not. An excerpt:

It’s almost impossible to get off the no-fly list: the Canadian government doesn’t have to tell you that they’ve put you on it, and if somehow you find out that you’ve been blacklisted and attempt to challenge that listing, the government doesn’t have to tell you or your lawyer what evidence they’re using against you to keep you on it. The Orwellian paradox of laws that openly parade their concealment makes it difficult to map, let alone fight, the list’s reach.

Under Trudeau, the no-fly list has been expanded through the so-called “anti-terror” bill C-51. Though the bill was introduced by Harper, Trudeau voted to make the bill an act, and has refused to heed calls for its repeal. Of the act’s myriad racisms, the list, with all the resources required to execute it in airports across the country, perhaps most visibly exemplifies racialized paranoia. But in the nearly two decades since 9/11, Canada has made such ample use of secret trials against Muslims that ultimately the mass surveillance of the no-fly list feels cynically unremarkable.

posted by languagehat at 10:59 AM on September 10, 2016 [3 favorites]

Thank you, and timely for the upcoming Eid-ul-Adha this Sunday/Monday (depending where you are).

I've long been increasingly uncomfortable with the fact that my religious obligation materially provides the means (though definitely not as much as its other forms of revenue) from which KSA the state can continue to act in very unjust and cruel and harmful ways. That's the main reason why I've not even seriously thought about the haj myself, but I think eventually my own sense of piety will compel me to.
posted by cendawanita at 11:22 AM on September 10, 2016 [4 favorites]

This is plain sad. Compare it to Malik Shabazz's experience.
Saudi Arabia and radicalized Islam as a world force directly are a consequence of the destruction of the Ottoman Empire.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 11:35 AM on September 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

Saudi Arabia and radicalized Islam as a world force directly are a consequence of the destruction of the Ottoman Empire.

Sure but uh, what are we gonna do about that now?
posted by atoxyl at 11:56 AM on September 10, 2016 [2 favorites]

@ atoxyl: Sadly it's too late.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 12:54 PM on September 10, 2016

What a fantastic essay! Thanks for posting it here.
posted by teponaztli at 1:00 PM on September 10, 2016

A fantastic read, thanks for posting this. While I admittedly don't pay much (enough) attention to Canadian politics, this paints a very different Trudeau than the bits I had read before. A reminder to be cautious and measured in considering foreign governments, whether friend or foe.
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 1:52 PM on September 10, 2016 [2 favorites]

Sure but uh, what are we gonna do about that now?

Time machine.
posted by PHINC at 3:07 AM on September 11, 2016

Sure but uh, what are we gonna do about that now?

End the need for this military pact by moving from US oil addiction?
posted by eustatic at 5:30 AM on September 11, 2016

I really wanted this to be longer. Now I'm off to look up more of Fathima Cader's writing.
posted by jordemort at 9:47 PM on September 11, 2016 [1 favorite]

Great post, thank you for sharing.
posted by Ziggy500 at 3:04 AM on September 12, 2016