Our friend Bassam Tariq from 30 Mosques in 30 Days just posted a fascinating story over at Times.com about a Bangladeshi candidate that ran for local office in NYC. (hat tip, Sharaf!)
It’s the classic story, with a modern twist. Bangladeshi immigrant Mujib Rahman wants to be elected to New York’s City Council. It’s the story of an immigrant, running for office on the Republican ticket, wanting to make a difference for his community. The clip shows how he tries to campaign in the local Bangladeshi community to gain votes – to get one of their own Bangladeshis in office. But the campaign he’s running on is based on a divisive message – letting voters know his opponent is gay.
I was conflicted as I watched this. On one hand you want this hard working Bangladeshi uncle to achieve the bootstrap American dream. He’s getting himself and his community involved in civic engagement. But on the other hand, his closed minded smear campaign just reflects all the reasons I stopped talking politics with my father’s generation of uncles. Were any of our readers involved in Mujib’s campaign? Did any of you have the chance to vote (or not vote) for Mujib?
Um… an anti-gay Republican? His campaign sounds despicable and I wouldn’t vote for him even if he WAS my uncle. This is why politics should be about the platform and not the person. Being brown is never, ever enough for someone to get my vote.
I’m not really torn on this at all. The guy deserved to lose convincingly and he did. I’ve always felt uneasy about politicians using their ethnicity as a crutch to gain votes that they should be earning through good work in the community and by coming up with good ideas. It’s good to see that voters didn’t buy the BS he was selling and that they didn’t let the other candidate’s homosexuality become an issue. The uncle who starts speaking at around the 4:25 mark came out looking the best in this video, kudos to him.
In the end, its always about the message. And this guy’s message is one of ignorance.
They sure know how to throw a party!
There cannot be an easier decision ! I am disgusted at his narrow minded, anti gay comments. Agree with what the guy at 4 :37 says. It is never enough that he is brown / Bangladeshi. Also something about the way the guy at 1:20 says “America needs us” creeps me out.
The mustachio’d campaign manager is a fascinating character. He almost felt like an actor, his expressions were so vivid. There’s a novel lurking in his past.
But yeah, Abhi’s right. No policy, ignorant attacks, non-ideas about what it means to be gay and be a family man and to want your community to advance—this is not the guy to win the seat.
“Not one of our classier Indians”… hehehe
well, Mujib did say his opponent is “a gay”, as opposed to “the gay.” Progress
Thing is, these “uncles” aren’t even in the loop of the younger brown generation to know they’re turning off so many young folks with their bigoted rhetoric. Taz, thanks for being a champion of us queers!
interestingly, this guy more progressive than that one on this issue.
I’m not torn either. I wouldn’t vote for him…even if he were my dad. Certainly not brown enough to win an election with such ignorant views and cheap tricks/slander.
how come his sticker says “democrat”?
I find it kind of ironic that he compares himself to Obama, considering that the latter didn’t run his campaign on a platform of division, but rather inclusion. It’s good to know that people can see past ethnic ties to the bs underneath. What the hell was this guys stance on issues anyway? All I heard was talk about his opponent being unfit because he knew nothing about family and is gay……sheesh, glad he lost.
I don’t know anything about this guy, but I will say that it’s important to be cautious about generalising. I spent an afternoon interviewing people in Jackson Heights (where he’s from, apparently) during Queens Pride, which ends in Jackson Heights. I tried to speak to LGBT people about their attitudes towards immigrants and to brown, white and other people who didn’t seem to be there as lgbt people at Pride about their attitudes towards LGBT people. In the second category, I found not frequent, but ocassionally surprisingly positive comments from people like – “if my child has rights, I want gay people to have the same rights” and “they deserve the same human rights as anyone else.” And of course I met people who seemed uncomfortable with the LGBT thing as well.
In any case, I think rather than rejecting an entire generation of people who are a mixed bag like every other generation, in context, it’s worthwhile to talk politics with them as a way of actually gleaning what’s important and what’s not, who you’re going to share values with and who you won’t. I’ve done this and found that it helps in figuring out who you can relate to, adult to adult, and share a friendship with, vs. who you may have and may still love from your childhood, but have to write off in terms of mature friendship because you simply don’t share the same values and so there’s no room to build something with them.
Part of life, methinks.
Dick Cheney (this guy) has a lesbian daughter and still worked with one of the most viciously homophobic movements in recent memory in OECD countries. Goes to show that you can take a single-issue stance on anything (whether it’s supporting brown people or minimally supporting LGBT people) and still be a right bastard, a hypocrite, and a murderer. So it’s not really interesting at all.
back to regularly scheduled programming.
Apparently he’s a registered Democrat but running on the Republican and other tickets. Sounds like a super guy 😉
That lady’s comment about him not being one of the “classier Indians” cracked me up. I’m glad this guy did not win. He gives desis a bad name.
No.
But I’m too brown to vote here.
Thanks for posting this, Taz. I’m not sure who made me more uncomfortable, the candidate or his campaign manager.
Why would a Muslim support the Republican Party.
They were responsible for the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq, with the eventual goal of toppling the regime in Tehran.
This same party supported Musharraf in Pakistan and all but abandoned Afghanistan, since that was never considered a “crown jewel.”
Being brown is not enough to get elected.
Homosexuality is common and prevalent throughout South Asia. In Bangladesh, local imams reach out to male prostitutes to combat the epidemic of AIDS in that country.
Considering the Islamophobia facing Muslims, South Asian or not, or those who are mistaken for being Muslim like Sikhs, this is outrageous.
I find no conflict at all – this man is homophobic. I don’t care if he’s brown or black or white. I wouldn’t vote for him.
“That man is a gay.”
I am a gay Muslim and even though this man does not wear a beard, high water pants, and is part of Tablighi Jamaat, his intolerance despite his “secular” appearance is equally reprehensible.
He had no platform and fittingly deserved to lose.
If the white gay candidate was to use anti-Muslim sentiments, Desis would protest furiously.
He cannot rely solely on the support of the Bengali community to win, he has to appeal to people of all backgrounds, not just simply his own.
conflicted? seriously? his ethnic background is enough to cause confusion or hesitation at condemnation of his anti-gay stance when if this was a white person you would know without hesitation where you’d stand? this is why the whole identity politics aspect of sepia mutiny sometimes leaves me cold. nice to see that everyone had the same reaction.
Sure, pointing out his opponent’s “uncouth choice of lifestyle” (As mr. Rahman sees it) displays his sheer ignorance, but above all, it shows us how incompetent he is for the job. I mean to have to go to that extent in an attempt to win proves that he has nothing to offer to begin with. And the way he was desperately hounding people to vote for him was just plain wrong…
Talk about 20 steps back to the dark ages. The campaign manager is one sleazy sly dude.
I think we have enough homophobic politicians in office. Don’t need to elect another just because he’s brown.
This struck me too. Civic engagement has its uses and its weaknesses as a tool, but it’s just a tool. Getting Bangladeshis into the more rather than less conservative of the two parties seems like a not good use of getting people involved in civic engagement, even though it might provoke a response. On the other hand, it does hopefully help to put some fear into the Democratic Party. I read too many commentaries in which all nonWhite people are taken for granted (even though there are many nonWhite communuities that don’t even vote Democratic!) and that blatant slaps in the face like the immigartion aspect of the health care debate can simply go uncontested.
So I would say perhaps given the state of the debate in the U.S. in terms of politics, when thousands of Bangladeshis were targeted and deported (among many others) just a few years ago and nary an apology has been heard, even from the allegedly progressive obama administration, perhaps a different form of civic engagements would be useful – such as a social movement to press for noncitizen voting in new york, or support for groups like ANdolan which have heavy Bangladeshi presence and are also in Jackson Heights, community associations (which often already exist), groups like SAALT and AALDEF, and others who play a productive and progressive role in getting people involved in society writ broadly. Elections are just one part of it, and are often not going to serve the people who are thoroughly marginalised at a given time – even when they’re a majority (see: Stupak amendment).
How anybody who claims to be progressive can be conflicted about Uncle Mujib is beyond my comprehension. If his homophobia doesn’t turn you off, his unctuous political manager will. The ugly truth is that were it not for “war on terror” a majority of first generation Muslim immigrants, and some second generation, would be natural Repubilcans. The entire aunty uncle crowd and several cousins in my family voted for Bush W. in the 2000 election because he was a man of faith, for prayer in school and not too hot for these gays.
this shouldnt be any kind of surprise or conflict. why would a liberal want a bunch of conservative homophobe muslims in office in america??
Yeah, isn’t it interesting why Nancy Reagan supports stem-cell research. Maybe if we send Cheney’s daughter to Afghanistan or Iraq, his positions on the war on terror will flip too. Now that’s a low probability, high impact event I would welcome.
I don’t get why anyone would vote for this douchebag. For one, his agenda was xenophobic and racist. The only reason Bangladeshis were voting for him was so the “Bangladeshi community” could come up. If a white man said that he was only voting for someone because they want the white community to come up, he would immediately be labeled as racist scum. Secondly, if anyone other than a Muslim went on an anti-gay attack, they would be soundly punished. But because Mujib is a member of an “oppressed community” (more like an oppressive community), there wasn’t too much made about it. I am elated that Mujib lost, and lost in a horrific manner.
right on.
“So imagine if I had said that Mujib is promoting a Muslim agenda. What is a Muslim agenda? There is no Muslim agenda. You know, Muslim people want the same thing as everybody else.”
That was his opponent. Glad he won!
The ugly truth is that were it not for “war on terror” a majority of first generation Muslim immigrants and some second generation, would be natural Repubilcans.
there was proactive outreach in 2000, though obviously class was an issue. african american muslims were pissed at the time that immigrant-dominated muslim groups were speaking for muslims as a whole and responding to grover norquist’s arguments. but in fact, the pew survey shows that muslim americans seem to resemble african americans: socially conservative-to-moderate and fiscally liberal.
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/483/muslim-americans (click the PDF, it has the details)
~25% of muslims are black, but that’s not enough to explain the effect.
and for the record, i lean-right and so have no issues with republican brownz. the issue is that if someone is at variance with your ideology views voting for them because they are “like you” is pernicious. it happens all the time, how many times do liberals complain that working-class whites vote for republicans because of identity politics? how’d you like them apples? (the social science data on this truism is actually probably disconfirming of this, see andrew gelman’s work).
I’m glad whenever this issue comes up because it’s the only time I agree 100% with Razib
And that’s the difference between a liberal on one end of the spectrum and a populist social democrat. The latter doesn’t complain about why some group of people is voting some way or behaving in some way or deny that it’s the case if it is- they try to figure what’s going on (if anything) and address it. And i think that’s exactly the tack that needs to be taken in this context. There are homophobes and there are homophobes – Rahman’s views are objectionable becuase he’s homophobic, but he’s more deeply objectionable as a politician (or his campaign was) because he was self-serving, hypocritical, opportunistic, divisive AND homophobic (as well as incompetent)- and expoloitative of his own community on top of all that. In that way, he actually undermines a broad social justice agenda – which should be the basis for an identity politics that makes sense – as you can see from the islamaphobic comments that are passing by unnoticed above because they are on the same side as everyone else who can quite easily write off rahman. and that too, is one of the effects of his self-serving strategy.
The implication of Manju’s point about Dick Cheney bears repeating – it’s the total assembly of a person’s views, behaviors, and actions that should lead to a decision to engage, support, or otherwise work witht hem – not a litmus test based on one issue in one context.
i don’t get it. what exactly is objectionable about him besides his homophobia. why’s he opportunistic and hypocritical, because he a democrat running as a repub, presumably because he couldn’t get the dem nom? didn’t bloomie do that? so, if he’s just a rino wouldn’t taking the totality of his views together produce a reverse Cheney effect for you, meaning you could vote for him (if is opponent were less progressive ) because the totality of his views would make him a better choice, despite the opportunistic bigotry. not unlike say many progressive voted for fdr despite his opportunistic cowtowing to the southern dem bloc racism and the indeed even the kkk.
I’m glad whenever this issue comes up because it’s the only time I agree 100% with Razib
probably not a coincidence. your colleague saurav & i would tend to make similar arguments from different political perspectives as far back as 2005 on this issue. i do get a sense that identity-based-politics are on the decline around these parts since then so. why? i suspect it’s bobby jindal. i think he illustrates to people that when push comes to shove race can be just an accident of birth, and f**k that someone is a desi. i’ve come to appreciate vinod’s argument that brown american culture can enrich one’s life personally since i’ve been reading this weblog, but it’s pretty obvious to me that a south asian american political orientation which is not reducible to generally being liberal democrats on the hwole is moribund excluding a few narrow issues (e.g., profiling).
p.s. i’ve assembled a bit of circumstantial data that asian american republicans are much more likely to be christian: http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2008/10/asian_american_republicansits.php
the republican party has become much more of a christian party in its perception since 2000, so i think that’s one reason that socially conservative non-christian immigrants just aren’t going to be winnable for a while for the party. the american jewish identification survey shows that those of jewish background who are christian by religion (around 1 million of them) tend to be republican, and don’t fit the voting profile of irreligious and jewish by religion jews.
This guy’s disgusting comments make my skin crawl. They’re outrageously intolerant. And comparing himself to Obama. Umm, excuse me Uncle, you ain’t no Obama and your campaign manager–mustache notwithstanding–is no David Axelrod.
anonymous, for the record i wasn’t objecting to homophobia or slimy politicians. both are part of the universe we live in. i was objecting to the inclination to give someone a pass on views you might find objectionable because of ethnic solidarity. taz doesn’t seem like she’s supporting rahman at all. and as a human it is normal and expected to identify in one’s “gut” with someone because of commonalities, whether it be race, religion, class, etc. but, at the end of the these are accidents of history, and if someone holds extremely pernicious views, mitigating circumstances shouldn’t even be on the table. as it happens, mitigating circumstances do have an effect much of the electorate, which is composed of dullards (you can see for example that obama underperformed john kerry in mass., which is dumb IMO). but political sophisticates should put these issues to the side IMO, unless you hold some mystical view of identity (i.e., brown-folk having a common ‘world soul’ or something).
as for islamophobia, there’s plenty of christophobia and hinduphobia and sikhophobia on these boards too. if you think there’s a lack of balance, shoot me an email and i’ll be happy to berate whatever primitive superstitions people hold.
I know this man fairly well. Made his fortune by doing construction business in NYC, lives in a posh Long Island suburb (probably that qualifies him as a classy Indian :)) with his Connecticut native wife who is definitely not brown. I doubt he has any philosophy or any vision. His only goal is winning an election. He ran a record 5 times in Bangladesh Society of NY election, spent all his fortune (several hundred thousand dollars, reportedly), lost badly and finally voters were annoyed into voting him in for one term. Nobody really knows what is Bangladesh Society of NY’s vision other than holding an annual circus called election.
He drives to poor district 25 in Jackson Heights only when he runs an election from here. I don’t see entering mainstream politics claim has any validity or substance. He started his career electioning for one fraction of Comilla district (A district in BD where he hails from) shomitee and then locked into an epic struggle to win Bd Soc NY. These activities have, by no means, any hint of mainstream politics. He epitomizes the identity crisis in blue color Bangladeshi immigrant population in USA.
On a different point, we all have to accept the fact we the second generations or ” educated” deshis should not ask for a similar pleuralistic mindset in our parents/ uncles generation who grew up in a bigoted environment back in a village near Sylhet, Bangladesh, Chandigarh, India or Multan, Pakistan. Nobody can ignore the fact on how our parents would feel/ react if one of us wants to marry a black guy/ girl compared to a white guy/ girl. What Mujib Rahman is showing is nothing more than an extention of that mindset.
Comilla district (A district in BD where he hails from)
i’m totally feelin’ this guy now. he’s a brother from comilla 🙂 (father, chandpur, mother humna thana. though i’ve never been to chandpur, i have been to humna)
african american muslims were pissed at the time that immigrant-dominated muslim groups were speaking for muslims as a whole and responding to grover norquist’s arguments. but in fact, the pew survey shows that muslim americans seem to resemble african americans: socially conservative-to-moderate and fiscally liberal.
I’m an Afghan American, and most mainstream mosques are either runned by Arabs or Desis.
The problem is, this often will alienate those who are not part of this community.
Their is dispute if the largest segment of the Muslim community is either African American or South Asian.
Many South Asian Muslims, even if they denigrate Hindus for the caste system, exercise a form of classism which tends to be endemic in Desi culture.
To me, the Qur’an is a psuedo-socialist document which mandates “zakat” (obligatory charity) to those less fortunate in society. Islam’s current theological issues address social dynamics and the divergences between “traditional” societies and our post-modern reality.
On a different point, we all have to accept the fact we the second generations or ” educated” deshis should not ask for a similar pleuralistic mindset in our parents/ uncles generation who grew up in a bigoted environment back in a village near Sylhet, Bangladesh, Chandigarh, India or Multan, Pakistan. Nobody can ignore the fact on how our parents would feel/ react if one of us wants to marry a black guy/ girl compared to a white guy/ girl. What Mujib Rahman is showing is nothing more than an extention of that mindset.
My grandfather is from Kabul, he came to this country in the 1950s when the number of Afghans allowed to immigrate lawfully was limited to 1,000 slots annually.
My grandfather married my grandmother, a woman who is Native American and white.
He cheated on her and eventually married a Kurdish woman from Iran’s Caspian Sea region.
My grandfather tells me how as a pilot he would fly to Lahore to visit the brothels and would cross into Amritsar for more casual exchanges.
My grandfather, as much as I love him is a chauvinist pig!
I’m an Afghan American, and most mainstream mosques are either runned by Arabs or Desis.
hm. well, i don’t know much about mosques. but i would say one issue non-black american muslims have is that they don’t really even know about the whole black american muslim world. so what you term “mainstream mosques” may simply be viewed as “immigrant mosques” by black american muslims.
Their is dispute if the largest segment of the Muslim community is either African American or South Asian.
according to pew, http://religions.pewforum.org/portraits, the biggest component now is actually middle eastern! don’t know if this is correct, but yeah, earlier data i’d seen had always been a toss-up between black & brown.
To me, the Qur’an is a psuedo-socialist document which mandates “zakat” (obligatory charity) to those less fortunate in society. Islam’s current theological issues address social dynamics and the divergences between “traditional” societies and our post-modern reality.
when it comes to religion & politics mileage varies. pro-capitalist muslims point out that muhammad was a merchant, so how exactly could he have been a socialist? redistribution is different from controlling the means of production. remember that there are christian anarcho-capitalists and christian socialists.
a story, a few years ago manish put me on a CC about testing an alpha version of a muslim dating site. there were about 10 males & females who were featured on the front of the site; diverse, they looked to be arab & south asian, some women with head scarfs and some without, etc. but i noticed no black americans amongst them. probably not a conscious oversight, but i think goes to show the extent of cultural segregation between native born black muslims and swarthy-type-which-might-be-profiled which so many readers of this weblog are confused for despite their bona fide non-muslim status (the low bound fr black americans as a proportion of american muslims is probably on the order of 15-20%).
Razib,
In the Afghan community, skin color is not an important issue.
However, for Afghans who fled to Pakistan, where the Punjabis and Sindhis are more color-conscious in terms of marriage, Afghans in Pakistan have acculturated to the idea that fair skin equates to beauty.
Furthermore, we are consumers of all things Bollywood, and so Desi notions of beauty influence Afghan standards of beauty and even influence wedding planning.
In a poor country, the average Afghan can spend up to $10,000 US Dollars in a nikah (Muslim wedding), this is a definite Indian/Pakistani influence. This is no small sum.
I am not opposed to the possession of private wealth, but I do feel that all societies should ensure a minimal level of comfort to all its people.
yo all, i didn’t bring up color in my comment above. just for the record 🙂
While I recognise the comment 41 by Ahmed about who he is was written after your comment, suffice it to say that I am not at all surprised by what I read. You can glean a sense from a politician by the way they carry themselves, what they say and do, etc. Of course it’s somewhat surface level and colored by media presentation if you don’t meet them, but there’s NOTHING likable about this person from anything that I have read – from working in the real estate industry to being homophobic to having no strategy and therefore using homophobia as an attempted means to appeal to a conservative base. He is, I would say, to Cheney, as a mainstream, genuine, relatively decent but socially conservative brown politican would be to Obama or Huckabee(who reviewed death penalty sentences one by one). I wouldn’t vote for any of those people, but I would only be completely compeltely disgusted on a personal level by the crass political opportunism and contempt for the people that people like Rahman and Cheney exemplify to me.
In any political constellation, you will have people you differ with, disagree wtih – even vehemently, but shared values or sensibilities can go along way in allowing you to continue to work together. This is just an example of how there is a disagreement, and, I suspect, just a total lack of character. I might empathise with him as a human being, but not as a political figure, at ALL, and my point was it’s not because he’s homophobic – it’s because he’s homophobic AND an asshole with little room for growth without serious introspection as to why he is attempting to engage in politics. as far as I can tell.
Always reserve the right to change judgement with additional or different information, but this is my impression right now.