Like his soul-mate Cornel West, Hatem Bazian, who is a Continuing Lecturer in Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies, Arab and Arab American Studies, Colonialism and Post-Colonial Studies, Comparative Liberation Theologies, Critical Race Theory, Muslim American Studies, and Palestine Studies at the University of California Berkeley, is a thinker who “doth bestride the world like a colossus.” Mere words cannot describe him. In 2020, he posted at his website a lengthy diatribe on the contemporary American university and its discontents. Like all of Bazian’s work, it does not date. His article, with its daring attack on racism and eurocentrism, and the “Othering of Muslims,” made a deep impression on me. His thought-provoking piece — all of his pieces provoke thought — deserves to be widely known.
When will the University be ready to reckon with the racism, neoliberalism, and eurocentrism that reproduces the society that we all are experiencing?
The University, as an institution, is at the forefront of reproducing the societal structures, political, social, cultural, and economic, to name the obvious, and embedded in all are the racial markers and signifiers that make racism so difficult to undo and challenge. Examine what is taught as the Canon, and you will find missing or totally erased the history and contributions of Blacks, both in the “New World” but more critically pre-enslavement in Africa. You can actually finish a BA, MA, and Ph.D. and not get exposed to any aspect of global south Black history or thinkers or Blacks in the Global North. At the same time, you still call yourself educated and part of a sophisticated company. You would not even know what happened down the street from your home where Black and Brown people lived, but you would be introduced to every ice cream parlor that was struck with Whiteness and is part of the local historical society records. Tulsa Oklahoma did not happen, if it is not in the curriculum and not taught except in a Black Studies course! The same applies to the erasure of Asians, Arabs, Latin Americans, and Muslims in the curriculum. It only appears when they are a problem that disrupts the “peaceful and normal” in everyday life at the Eurocentric University.
Yes, we do have “inclusion,” but the integration is often done through “contact” and “discovery,” which means Black academics or global south thinkers’ or authors are brought into the “White” world through a process that epistemologically replicates Columbus’ “discovery” of the indigenous people. I know that we have made progress, and we do have Black Studies and Ethnic Studies departments and diversity courses. Still, these were introduced as a result of struggle and are often problematized and marginalized by the “custodians” of the Canon and the academy. More importantly, the “custodians” who are always pursuing “discovery” insist that their standards would regress, research and scholarship would be undermined by this non-established and “feelings” or “emotional” university response to the protest that brought about the “new” field of studies. What are Black studies, Asian American/Diaspora Studies, Latino Studies, Arab and Muslim Studies, Native American/Indigenous Studies!…
The ranks of tenured faculty are overwhelmingly white, with campuses ranging as high as 80-90% being white faculty and 70-80 being White men. Simultaneously, all the lecturers, clerical staff, and lab technicians are Blacks, Asians, Arab, Latino, and Indigenous. Don’t dare to put the Asian model minority forward because they might have some numbers in the undergraduate ranks. Still, they diminish in numbers at the graduate level. Most of those at the faculty or administrative level end-up not moving up or in the science departments are looked into Labs that are managed by White colleagues who move up faster than a space rocket. Critically, the ranks at the top of the University are also overwhelmingly White and the same for governing boards, advisory boards, and alumni boards. Even the athletics where the number of Black athletes (Football, Basketball and Track and Field especially) is noticeable, the number of coaches, administrators and upper management tend to be still heavily White and also paid much higher than their Black counterparts if they happened to have a position within the institution….
I don’t know how Hatem Bazian does it. His website gives some idea of the depth and breadth of his activities as a scholar of Islam, Islamophobia, white racism, and the contemporary university. He is the founder of American Muslims for Palestine. He is an affiliate of, inter alia, the Muslim Legal Fund of America, the Islamic Scholarship Fund, Zaytuna College, and the Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project. He is a co-founder and Professor of Islamic Law and Theology at Zaytuna College, the first accredited Muslim Liberal Arts College in the United States. In addition, Prof. Bazian is a lecturer in the Departments of Near Eastern and Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. In the past he served as an adjunct professor of law at Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. He teaches courses on Islamic Law and Society, Islam in America: Communities and Institutions, De-Constructing Islamophobia and Othering of Islam, Religious Studies, and Middle Eastern Studies.
In the Spring 2009, Prof. Bazian founded at Berkeley the Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project at the Center for Race and Gender, a research unit dedicated to the systematic study of Othering Islam and Muslims. Prof. Bazian in Spring 2012 launched the Islamophobia Studies Journal, which is published bi-annually through a collaborative effort between the Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project of the Center for Race and Gender at the University of California at Berkeley, the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative for the School of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University; the Center for Islamic Studies at the Graduate Theological Union, the International Centre for Muslim and non-Muslim Understanding at the University of South Australia, and Zaytuna College.
In addition to academic work, Dr, Bazian is a weekly columnist for the Turkish Daily Sabah Newspaper and Turkey Agenda online magazine. Dr. Bazian is founder and national Chair of American Muslims for Palestine, board member of the Islamic Scholarship Fund, Muslim Legal Fund of America, President of Dollar for Deen Charity, and Chair of Northern California Islamic Council.
All I can say is, I am deeply impressed. And I am sure Hatem Bazian’s works and days will make the same impression on you.
John T R Gorman says
Is his actual name Hatem, as in, “Hate ‘Em”? It fits the Muslim-as-victim narrative. What a crock of crap!
I remember 9/11 as if it happened yesterday. Islam was the most evil so-called “religion” in the world, for every good reason!
Ever since liberal morons elected the unvetted, ineligible and corrupt President Osama bin Obama, Muslims have been allowed to cause bloodshed the world over without Obama saying or doing anything against them. If anything, because of him and now Biden, Muslims are victims now. What garbage!
Notice also that every single time that Obama quoted the Bible — especially when quoting Jesus Christ — Barack could never get it right! Yet Barry, who adopted and kept his Muslim “Obama” name, could quote from the Un-holy Quran from memory and get it exactly right every time!
Shalom says
Superb post.
gravenimage says
John, Hatem Bazian was involved with “Islamophobia in post-9/11 America”:
https://belonging.berkeley.edu/video-islamophobia-post-911-america
I like the idea that you are “othering” Muslims if you don’t want to be murdered by them in a Jihad terror attack. Just grotesque.
Patrick Kelley says
The last thing I want to hear about is the glorified studies on Islamophobia. Who gives a damn about anything Muslim, Muslim’s are the demise of the world, including America. Obama initiated the momentum of Muslims in America, while Trump normalized Islam by inviting the King of Saudi Arabia to invest in America. So the King invested $80 billion to construct radicalization centers in what Muslims call mosques. Praying in streets, raping of young American women, killing of Christian ministers and Jewish Rabbi’s, while destroying their churches and synagogues, Muslim men with multiple wives to out-birth American families. Islam and Muslims work daily, to destroy America as fast as possible.
Hoi Polloi says
“not get exposed to any aspect of global south Black history or thinkers or Blacks in the Global North.”
So does he ever manage to set foot on a campus, or is that chain of titles too heavy to drag out of his house, so he never ventures out? We studied this when I was a kid, and the leeway they have to push it now is egregious. One school here locks the students in every MLK day to be lectured as to how white parents don’t really love their children; black families are the real families.
“lecturers, clerical staff, and lab technicians are Blacks, Asians, Arab, Latino, and Indigenous. Don’t dare to put the Asian model minority forward”
So a) How many Christians run schools in Saudi Arabia that have primarily muslim students? b) Is this the UK definition of Asians used to obscure muslims’ criminality, or is he admitting that his isn’t a model minority (as if 1.4B could be a minority ) or ?? c) So all those of different origins are dominating, but he wants rockets for all? If everyone gets 1B$, then what good is $1B? Did he tell us what the average IQs are? Did he discuss abilities, academic background, or number of openings?
His mother named him appropriately.
Mike says
In order to have a prosperous democracy with capitalism, basic equality under law, and secularism (official separation of religion and government), a country needs to have an average IQ of at least 90 or so.
Most Muslim-majority countries have average IQ scores in the low 80s. I think Turkiye may have an average of 90, but its relatively secular and prosperous staus has bern going into a regressive mode, largely due to Erdogan’s leadership.
Malaysia has an average of 92, I believe, but they also have a non-Muslim population of around 35%, which likely contributes to their overall success and prosperity and stability.
Jews have average IQs of 104-106, and Ashkenazi Jews have average IQs of 115 and some of them much higher than even that figure.
Israel has an average IQ of roughly 96-97, but that average includes a non-Jewish population of nearly 23 percent (mostly Arab Israeli Muslim, but also Arab Israeli Christian, Druze, Armenian, Samaritan and some other minor groups).
Rufolino says
From what I’ve noticed, Jews are among the most gifted and talented people in the world, and I’m proud to call Jews friends.
When I told a Jewish friend how often I was astonished at how talented Jewish people were, he replied, “Because they had to be !”
James Lincoln says
Rufolino,
To your point, I have learned much from my Jewish physician colleagues.
Hoi Polloi says
High levels of consanguinity among muslims contribute to low IQ as well as birth defect rates. Every top ten nations for consanguinity list I’ve seen consists of ten muslim nations. Disturbingly, the father/daughter incest levels are a part of this.
James Lincoln says
To your point Mike, people with lower IQs are more easily brainwashed…
Larry Estavan says
I like this little 6 min. clip of Bazian blathering about Islamophobia –
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4793739/user-clip-islamophobia-inquisition-muslim-ban&removeClip=
PRCS says
The video, along the others there, make ever more clear that no longer is it just the camel’s nose that has made its way into the tent.
gravenimage says
Thnks for that link, Larry.
Hudders. says
Pah! What a twisted desert dung demon, growling his grandiloquent garblings, which are namely classic muslim apologetics, dressed up & hidden behind a muddled modern educational fascade & sweeted with sugar coated satanic semantics.
How sad it is that in this deluded day & age, when the true bestial nature of islam has been so devilishly concealed, that heralds of hell such as Hate-filled Bazian, have such a ready & willing audience a plenty, eager to be brain washed & drawn into the cauldron of medevial minded horror of islam & all it entails.
Meanwhile law abiding folks, such as Yommy Robinson are now as you read this comment, locked in a room in Canada having their freedom to speak truth taken away!
Mockery after mockery…..
TIJERANDY says
An obviously brilliant mind – wasted on ‘Muslim Arab, Palestine, Islamophobia’ studies. Can he differentiate Arabs from the Cult? Not all Muslims are Arabs, nor are all Arabs Muslim. Does he realize the part Muslims played in the history of Slavery? Does he give a damn of the Muslim enslavement of women, or the murder of minorities: gays, pagans, atheists, Bhudists etc etc. His selective ignorance, willful or otherwise, exposes his limited knowledge of History.
Marym says
The man is delusional and racist.
OLD GUY says
HATE EM should not be teaching at an American college or University .
gravenimage says
Hatem Bazian ‘Splains It All to You
……………………………………………………
Fine piece from Hugh Fitzgerald.
This thug Hatem Bazian is esconsed at my alma mater UC Berkeley. His claims are just risible–that there is no study of people of color, at this campus, escpecially.
And what is he ranting about here? “…but you would be introduced to every ice cream parlor that was struck with Whiteness and is part of the local historical society records”? I studied history at Berkeley, and somehow managed to miss ‘Ice Cream Parlor studies’ for the entire four years.
And how is an ice cream parlor “struck with Whiteness”? He is illiterate as well as an unhinged racist.
Jerome from Layton says
The scary thing is I recognized some names on the “white” board.
somehistory says
Mr. Horowitz, Mr. Emerson, Ms. Geller and others are telling the Truth about islam, and that’s why he has their names on his *hit* list.