Our own Isle of Dogs (Kelsey Hunter, Week 11 Substantive)

In reading David Morely's chapters "Borders and Belongings" and "Cosmopolitics," I kept thinking back to an article that was in this week's Brown and White about reactions of the Bethlehem community to Lehigh's new Center for Global Islamic Studies. There has been a bit of a backlash in the community and comments that the program supports terrorism and disrespects the courage of America's founders. These comments came back to me as I read Morely's piece; the Bethlehem citizens have become like the whites living in the Isle of Dogs by their rejection of anything foreign and strange, and especially anything that threatens their homes and community. While the Center for Global Islamic Studies does not in an way threaten the lives of people in this community, the idea that Lehigh would accept "the Other" of Islam and attempt to learn about the culture, traditions, politics, etc. of the Islamic world is abhorrent to those who are frightened by anything outside their own level of comfort. The comment in the article by Professor Richard Matthews, the chair of the Political Science department, perfectly reflects the conditions described in Morely's article, he (Matthews) says "Their opinions are born out of fear and ignorance, and that is a dangerous combination." Morely discusses this phenomenon in his summary of Hoggett's interest in the periods of social and economic change that "[destroy] social networks and traditional patterns of loyalty and security, of triggering, at the individual level, such a strong sense of anxiety that fear can no longer be effectively 'contained' but must then be projected outwards on to some demonised other" (page 216). The demonised other in this case is the Islamic community, which since 9/11 has been viewed by Americans as a collective, one indistinguishable person from another, to be blamed for the tragic events of that day. Unlike mere immigrants, who may invade communities and bring along new cultures, Muslims today are still viewed by many with suspicion as "terrorists." A further observation that reflects Ignatieff's beliefs that "the more strongly you feel the bonds of your belonging to your own group, the more hostile, the more violent will be your feelings towards outsiders," is the fact that after 9/11, one of the first instincts of Americans was to wave the flag and rally as a nation to stand unified to the threat of the Other. Now that we have spent considerable time battling the Other in Afghanistan and Iraq, for some the feeling of patriotism has faded, but for others those feelings of hatred remain etched in stone.

By establishing a center for Islamic studies, Lehigh is seen as forcing the "Other" (in this case "the terrorist") onto the community. However, my feelings are more in line with Janet Abu-Lughod's on this topic and I think the motivations for establishing the CGIS are similar. that the best way forward is one of "mutual awareness, sensitivity and, if not acceptance, an attempt to interpret and evaluate the beliefs and acts of others on their own, not our, terms" (page 135).