Here & Now

Noon Wednesday with guest Asifa Quraishi-Landes

Marisa Wojcik:
Welcome to Noon Wednesday. I’m Marisa Wojcik, a multimedia journalist with Here & Now on Wisconsin Public Television. We have a very special guest today. Asifa Quraishi-Landes is a professor of U.S. constitutional law and Islamic law. And a lot of her teaching centers around how these two systems interact, but also how they don’t. So we met at a conference and it was meant to educate journalists on how to be better with their reporting on Muslim-Americans.

Asifa Quraishi-Landes:
Right.

Marisa Wojcik:
So what was your objective when you went to that conference?

Asifa Quraishi-Landes:
Yeah, I was asked to come and talk about Sharia, this word that’s made its way into American conversation a lot in a very scary way. I think too many Americans don’t really know much about it and it seems like something they might not like and so since I do teach it, they asked me to come and explain it.

Marisa Wojcik:
And what was a lot of kind of the basis of what you wanted to present to that conference. I mean, what is Sharia and is it law? I mean you’re a law professor.

Asifa Quraishi-Landes:
So that’s one of the big questions in how it’s addressed in our conversations. The phrase Sharia Law is thrown around a lot and I think that’s the starting point of some of the confusion because is it law? Well yes and no, it depends on how you’re thinking about it. So, in the west we tend to think of law as the something that the state does the government does and it’s not law in that sense. When Muslims talk about Sharia they’re talking about their guidelines for living their life. How to pray, who to marry, how to get divorced what to eat, what to wear, who you do you leave your money to when you die. Those are rules, as you can tell some of them we would call law in our sense like divorce law, but other stuff is manners and ethics. And so, that’s really what Sharia is to Muslims It’s guidelines for your life and there’s actually many different interpretations of how to do that. The entire collection of rules comes from different scholarly interpretations so it’s actually quite diverse depending on which school you’re following. So you might meet one Muslim who behaves one way and another who behaves the other way and they’re both following Sharia it’s just in their own, you know, which one makes the most sense. The metaphor I give my students is Sharia’s like a recipe, a recipe that God has given us for how to live a good life but you don’t actually taste a recipe it’s a piece of paper, you only taste a recipe when the chef makes that recipe and different interpreters of a recipe will read it different and make it differently. So, that’s what Sharia feels like to Muslims It’s quite diverse and it’s your personal life One of the questions is well wait isn’t it like, I’ve heard about Iran I’ve heard about Saudi Arabia. You get the sense that Sharia has something to do with government, and there is a part of Sharia that does have to do with the state. But it’s a real big mistake to think that any Muslim majority countries now are representative of what Sharia would say about a state. It’s all a combination, I don’t have time to go into now, but history of colonialism and post-colonial independence and all that stuff But suffice it to say if you look at sort of the classical, pre-colonial ideas about what a state’s supposed to do, it really all boils down to doing the public good. And that’s something nobody really talks about when they talk about Sharia and the part of Sharia that’s about state is there’s lots of details about the kinds of things that state should do but not really a lot of particular legal rules, it’s mostly just do the public good. And so that’s the two things rules for living your life and some stuff about the state taking care of us as the public welfare.

Marisa Wojcik:
So it’s like other religions where its about morals, beliefs, ethics.

Asifa Quraishi-Landes:
Yeah.

Marisa Wojcik:
How you choose to live your life.

Asifa Quraishi-Landes:
Yeah, I mean that’s the thing if you ask a Muslim to talk about Sharia they’re not going to talk about government law they’re going to talk about those kinds of things that are personal choices about how I live some of them are law in the sense that that’s how I want my divorce to happen or that’s how I want my inheritance to be distributed. But a lot of it we wouldn’t call law a lot of it would be called like I said ethics, manners, dress I mean like it’s rules for life like a vegan has rules for living their life, like other religious communities have rules for how you get married, what is a valid marriage But it’s not in the sense that what I think of Sharia for me has nothing to do with what I think the state should impose on other people. Very different things.

Marisa Wojcik:
So, as a law professor?

Asifa Quraishi-Landes:
Yeah.

Marisa Wojcik:
Are you teaching these concepts separately are you teaching US constitutional law separately from Islamic law?

Asifa Quraishi-Landes:
They’re different classes, yes. So I teach your generic constitutional law if there’s anyone out there who’s been in my classes they only know me as a constitutional law professor and that’s fine and I love American law and I love constitutional law as a topic. My electives that I teach is Islamic law and so I teach an introduction to Islamic law and I talk about it as a comparative law field. And understanding another legal system many law schools have comparative law classes on understanding other legal systems and that’s what I’m interested in is looking at Sharia Islamic law as an alternative way of thinking about rules and thinking about law and how do you construct a legal system that doesn’t start with the presumption that all laws owned by the state.

Marisa Wojcik:
Why do you think that in kind of popular culture its kind of a, its gotten the rep that it has?

Asifa Quraishi-Landes:
I think a lot has to do with plain ignorance. People don’t know Muslims so they don’t have anyone to ask these questions to. A lot of it is governments that are Muslim governments are claiming to do things in the name is Islam and so when the average American is watching the news they don’t know enough to distinguish and I know just as an American-Muslim growing up here I would cringe often when I would hear things on the news thinking God, you know, they don’t have any personal knowledge to counter what they’re hearing so they’re going to believe this person claiming this is Islam, they’re going to believe that.

Marisa Wojcik:
And one of the things that you spoke to at the conference was, you know so Wisconsin for example has about 1% Muslim population but the United States does as well And so if you only know one Muslim person you’re asking them to speak for the whole community. What happens if that is the case?

Asifa Quraishi-Landes:
It’s a huge burden and it’s complicated and everyone does it imperfectly. Like, if you’re asked to speak for an entire comm– I mean, like, lets say you are the only American that somebody meets. And they ask you about– tell me about America and you end up– you’re supposed to explain law, music, sports, education, the criminal justice system.

Marisa Wojcik:
Politics.

Asifa Quraishi-Landes:
Healthcare, politics music, art, you know, all of it how accurate do you think your portrayal is going to be to that person? They’re going to get a very unique perspective but not full understanding of all of this stuff and so its already skewed to expect that from one person and the second thing is that some of this stuff that its in the news is highly complex and complicated so Sharia itself it’s a whole body of legal analysis and scholarly analysis and religious doctrinal thinking that the average Muslim doesn’t know all of those nuances and yet the way that it shows up in the news is really pushing at these high level things and so if you ask the average American to explain constitutional law, they’re not going to be able to do it very well I mean unless they maybe went to law school and even then they may not be practicing in that area you know or asking someone who’s not a doctor to explain medical things. Some of this stuff is very complicated and so you’re going to get an imperfect story I don’t think that means you shouldn’t ask Muslims about Islam I think its really, really important to talk to an actual Muslim to get a real life explanation but understand that you’re going to get one piece of the puzzle just like talking to an American about America is going to give you one piece of the puzzle too.

Marisa Wojcik:
And reading stories in media do we tend to focus on Muslims that aren’t even in our own community

Asifa Quraishi-Landes:
Yes, I think that a lot of the news is well a lot of the way most Americans hear about Muslims is about media and most of the media presents Muslims as foreign and from somewhere else. There’s not a lot of depictions of home-grown American Muslims like myself. Grew up in California, right so you tend to think about Muslims as something away from where you live and not realizing that there’s three mosques in Madison for example.

Marisa Wojcik:
So, if someone is living in Wisconsin and they think that they’ve never interacted with a Muslim why do you think that they should feel like Okay I should learn about Muslims?

Asifa Quraishi-Landes:
Well, on the one hand it’s people fear the things they don’t know and the fact is that there’s a lot of media attention that’s very negative about Muslims disproportionate to the actual reality of Muslims in the country. The negative stories versus the positive stories or just neutral stories Just American Muslims being Americans is really just disproportionate so if all you’re getting about Muslims is from media you’re going to get some, I don’t blame people being afraid if that’s all they know or they’re confused they don’t really understand but the worry, the danger of that is that you end up walking around with these stereotypes in your head that then can lead to serious physical harm if not just bias so for example just thinking of Jeanine Pirro on Fox. Very recently she basically accused Ilhan Omar, a congresswoman from our neighboring state of Minnesota, well because she wears this headscarf perhaps that means she follows Sharia and of course there’s all this negative understanding of Sharia and therefore she may be disloyal as an American. That implies a whole lot of really unfair things you’re accusing a fellow American, elected congresswoman for not being loyal to the United States, I mean that’s a federal crime to not be loyal, that’s treason to the United States. It implies that she is somehow advocating a parallel legal system because you don’t know what Sharia is to her you think that a headscarf indicates this kind of disloyalty and then when that gets taken to people who are willing to then take up arms against her and is living under multiple death threats, she has been for a long time you can actually do some serious hate only just because of ignorance. I mean it’s just a matter of I think it’s important because it will keep, it will give you an inoculation against the kind of negative attitudes and maybe worse behaviors that are based on ignorance.

Marisa Wojcik:
And when we met, it was shortly after the event in New Zealand. And part of his manifesto included some of these things against Muslims. And then Wisconsin isn’t that foreign to some of these hate crimes including in 2012 at Oak Creek there was a Sikh that had a mass shooting, right here in Wisconsin so, is part of that violence stemming from this, what you call, ignorance?

Asifa Quraishi-Landes:
Yeah, I mean again, people fear what they don’t know. If you don’t have, most Americans don’t know a Muslim or they don’t know that they know a Muslim. They may have had a taxi driver or someone in school but they don’t know about what their beliefs are and their behaviors and so if you don’t have any positive knowledge to counteract the negative, I don’t care who you are, you’re going to walk around with stereotypes coming from the media if you don’t have any personal counter narrative. And so that could lead to actions that are dangerous. And the thing that I see about Oak Creek and, I mean, in that case it was like double ignorance as I understand it he attacked them cause he thought Sikhs were Muslims because of how they were dressed. So that’s just plain ignorance about dress code indicating what. But the other bigger picture of that is there all connected so the attacks on, hate crimes against Sikhs, Islamophobia Anti-Semitism, even misogyny, antisemitism all of this is reflections of fearing those who are other than you and not taking the time to find what is the in humanity of that person that is a mirror of myself. How is this person like me and when you can do that, then that dissolves the hate and sometimes violence. And there’s been examples of people who have been recipients of this kind of hate and responded with just come into our mosque and ask us some questions and that has dissipated it but that was at least on the part of the attacker willing to think again and open their mind and its very dangerous if you are not willing to do that. And the more there is negative attitudes out there the more that we’re going to sadly see that kind of actions, I mean after the Christchurch massacre, you know, Muslims around the country were terrified that going to Friday prayer that day they were at risk. And, the wonderful thing was other communities who have been at risk of the same kind of violence reached out. So the Jewish community in Madison I saw at the vigil that we held at the University I’m the faculty advisor for the Muslim Student Association so I spoke at a vigil that we had that day and it was the Jewish community on campus that said we’re with you this is something we know as well. And so more the more of one can realize that this is all just different phases of the same problem in our society and that the cure is understanding and communication. Plus we’re really nice. I mean Muslims are some of the nicest people I know I mean if you actually took the time to think about and talk to Muslims and what Muslims are doing, I think that people would find the kinds of things that Muslims are doing in America are benefiting America, are benefiting United States, I mean, I just read about a Muslim restaurant owner in Washington, DC who regularly feeds the homeless for free. There’s free medical clinics all around the United States that are run by either mosques or Muslim organizations You know, Pete Buttigieg, Mayor Pete right after that massacre in Christchurch reached out wrote a really moving letter to the Muslim community in South Bend, saying you enrich our, I don’t remember his exact words but you enrich our community, we’re better because you’re here. And I really think that if more Americans did take the time to get to know what Muslims are doing on the ground there are things that are contributing to society I mean even Sharia has values that I think a lot of Americans would recognize and appreciate like the right and obligation to an education is a Sharia value like we can all get behind that.

Marisa Wojcik:
One thing I think about is that a lot of times it does just feel so far removed you know, people in the news will localize the issue after a big event happens but then it falls by the wayside. And that’s something that we talked about is okay maybe we should have this conversation after a little bit of time has passed after this event because this is something that shouldn’t be a one-time deal and then we all move on. How is the media, you know, getting it wrong? How is the media getting it right?

Asifa Quraishi-Landes:
So I, and that is exactly the kind of conversation I would love to have with more people who have an impact on the media because yeah, Muslims are the news when there’s something bad attached to a Muslim name or maybe Ramadan, Ramadan’s coming up, there’s a few stories about Ramadan usually having to do with food not much else of what we do during Ramadan we’re also refraining from hate and anger and trying to keep ourselves calm and spiritual but anyway, but yeah like when something Christchurch shows up we talk about that and then it goes away. And so the stories that are not normalized as everyday Americans they’re a one off kind of topic.

Marisa Wojcik:
And they’re associated with a tragedy

Asifa Quraishi-Landes:
Usually a tragedy sometimes a tragedy perpetuated by a Muslim without any kind of the context of we wouldn’t assume the same thing about all Christians if was a Christian, you know, white supremacist or something like that So, I think that the media is at fault for the percentage of stories that present Muslims in a negative light far outweigh the proportion of Muslims in the country or Muslims events and actions that Muslims are doing in the country. The stories about the free clinics and the helping clean water in Flint, Michigan like these are not given the same kind of play or the same kind of repeat play as the ones that are scary. And so, so that’s a challenge but I do think, I mean the fact that we’re talking now, several weeks after Christchurch, not the day after and also I think that journalists, good journalists are trained to seek the truth, they’re trained to find out information And so once somebody comes up and says hey there’s all this stuff happening with Muslims you’re not talking about and it is newsworthy journalists by and large listen. And I think that they’re open to re-tooling and re-prioritizing how they identify a news story and I really do appreciate that that is something they’re getting right and honestly I think that the way that Muslim Americans are portrayed on the news when you’re getting a commentator to talk about some issue thankfully it doesn’t feel as foreign as it used to. So it does feel foreign sometimes, but I remember growing up in the United States in the ’70s every single Muslim that I saw on any news show had a very thick accent and was a man. And it gave this impression that it is this thing that’s coming in and it’s not familiar to our lives. And now I see regularly, I see people speaking as Muslims from the United States who were born and raised here, who speak without an accent, not that an accent is bad but it just perpetuates this idea that its foreign that is a breath of fresh air, I’m not sure I would’ve anticipated that I had sort of inundated, you know, got myself ready to feel like people are going to think of me as another even though I was born in this country So you know this othering that happens to Muslims I think we’re getting to the point where when you have a Muslim speak there’s intention to that. Could do a little bit better with the African American faces of Islam because lets face it African Americans have been Muslims, have been in this country African American Muslims have been members of the American community since before there was a United States.

Marisa Wojcik:
And it’s a huge percentage of them.

Asifa Quraishi-Landes:
It’s a huge percentage larger than a lot of the minority Asian, Arab other populations so there’s a stereotype that we’re stuck with like Arabs equal Muslim and vice versa and Arabs are 10% of the world’s Muslim population it’s reflected in the country too so getting a little bit more of the proportionality of what the fabric of American Muslim society looks like its a lot more colorful than looking just to a particular population but, its getting better.

Marisa Wojcik:
If there’s one thing that if someone’s reading an article that at all relates to Islam, or to the Muslim population what do you want people to keep in mind as they’re reading? Or watching or listening?

Asifa Quraishi-Landes:
So I have two. So, on the topic of Sharia ’cause that’s my professional field, I think that we need to realize that A, it’s very diverse how individual Muslims practice so you’re going to see lots of different practices within the Muslim community and they’re all equally trying to live their life according to Sharia. The second thing is that Sharia itself says that we have to follow the law of the land and nobody really talks about that very much its always like well how is Sharia different in its doctrinal content than what we understand as American law. Yeah okay that’s an interesting comparative law topic, but it doesn’t mean that Americans living in the United States are going to naturally try to change the doctrine of American law to fit whatever they would like if they were applying it to themselves. So the reality is that Muslims have lived in non-Muslims societies since before there was a Muslim state so early on during persecution they lived under a Christian king in Abyssinia so the rules for how we live in an quote unquote non-Muslim land are very clear in that is you follow the law of the land so I wish that that was taken more seriously and that we’re really kind of nice I mean really, we’re American, we’re as American to anybody else we’re just as diverse, we’re one of colors of the American fabric of diversity and once you realize that, then we’re as American as everybody else and America is as complicated and diverse as any place could be.

Marisa Wojcik:
Well Asifa thank you so much for having this conversation with me.

Asifa Quraishi-Landes:
Absolutely, I’m happy to be here.

Marisa Wojcik:
For more from Here & Now and Wisconsin Public Television you can visit WPT.org and thank you so much for joining us on Noon Wednesday.