Artists and Anti-Muslim Oppression
At a recent Allies to Muslims Workshop, the leaders, Azi Khalili (International Liberation Reference Person for South, Central, and West Asian-Heritage People) and Dvora Slavin, carved out the space to open up the enormity of anti-Muslim oppression and its cost to all of us.
I met with artists at lunch and talked about the cartoons and caricatures of Muhammad and other Muslim leaders, including the president of Turkey. Artists, currently and historically, have used insulting caricatures and portraits of leaders to express dissent. They have justified this by saying they are speaking out against tyranny, abuse, and exploitation and have the right to “freedom of expression.” (It’s not surprising we artists do this, given how thwarted, criticized, and silenced we have sometimes been.) The posters, banners, and puppets—used as organizing tools—have been made to humiliate and degrade and prey upon people’s racism and vulnerabilities. They have made some people into the “enemy” and ignored history, oppression, and the core of what it is to be human. In RC we know that organizing on the basis of painful emotion is never a good or a lasting tactic.
Part of our liberation as artists will be to build unity among all artists. We can oppose and organize against work that restimulates and manipulates distresses while at the same time not organizing against the artists who have produced it.
USA
Reprinted from the e-mail discussion list for RC Community members
(Present Time 202, January 2021)