Selective Muslim Outrage & Social Identity Theory

As I write this, news of the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) bomb­ing UN pro­tect­ed schools in Gaza is mak­ing the rounds. The impuni­ty with which Israel is car­ry­ing out war crimes, the impo­tence of world pow­ers and the UN, and the com­plic­i­ty of Arab lead­ers makes Pales­tine an epit­o­me of uni­ver­sal shame.

The pos­i­tive side is that protests have tak­en place all over the world to con­demn atroc­i­ties in Gaza. Notwith­stand­ing the need for glob­al efforts to end Israel’s ille­gal occu­pa­tion, it is inter­est­ing to note the hypocrisy with which some have come forth to express val­ues they do not stand up for in home-grown and oth­er con­flicts.

In recent years: over 250,000 have been killed in Syr­ia by ISIS, al-Nus­ra and Bashar al-Assad; 5,500 killed in Iraq in wake of ISIS’s recent offen­sive against Iraqi Shias, Sufi Sun­nis and Chris­tians; 300,000 killed in Dar­fur as a result of trib­al rival­ry; 2,000 killed in Nige­ria by Boko Haram; plight of the “worlds least want­ed” Rohingya Mus­lims; sys­tem­at­ic per­se­cu­tion of Kurds by Mus­lim coun­tries, human rights vio­la­tions in occu­pied Kash­mir; 2,000 killed in Baluchis­tan and sev­er­al thou­sand miss­ing; siege of Parachi­nar, Haz­ara-Shia com­mu­ni­ty and more than 10,000 Shias (to quote a con­ser­v­a­tive fig­ure) killed in direct tar­get­ed attacks in Pak­istan; Chris­t­ian exo­dus in Mosul; hun­dreds of attacks led by Islamist extrem­ists on many coun­tries; burn­ing of Chris­t­ian and Hin­du neigh­bor­hoods in Pak­istan and Bangladesh. These and sev­er­al oth­er inci­dents have drawn lit­tle or no out­rage from Mus­lims.

Some of the con­flicts list­ed above are per­pe­trat­ed by non-state actors and some are enabled by state patron­age and direct state oppres­sion. Fur­ther­more, some are cas­es of ille­gal occu­pa­tion, such as Israel’s occu­pa­tion of Pales­tin­ian ter­ri­to­ries, and oth­ers rep­re­sent struc­tur­al dis­crim­i­na­tion against peo­ple of var­i­ous sects, races and iden­ti­ties. Of course men­tion­ing oth­er con­flicts does not belit­tle or negate the Pales­tin­ian tragedy, but it does reveal how some pro­tes­tors (read some, not all) hold a bias in val­ue prop­a­ga­tion and con­se­quent con­dem­na­tion. For instance, many sup­port­ers of Hamas don’t know that Ahmadis do not have the right to reli­gious free­doms in Pales­tine, yet they do in Israel. They are also unaware of the vio­lence between Hamas and Fatah that killed more than 500 Pales­tini­ans, or of some report­ed attacks on Shias in Gaza.

Anoth­er glar­ing exam­ple of this comes from the Ahma­di homes that were set alight in Gujran­wala a few days ago, with the arson­ists cheer­ing the death of those inside, includ­ing women and young chil­dren. Much like the cel­e­bra­tions report­ed after the 9/11 attacks or Sipah e Saha­ba Pak­istan (a banned ter­ror­ist out­fit) cheer­ing the mur­der of Pak­istani Shias. Some of the SSP mem­bers who open­ly call for the purg­ing of Shias from Pak­istan protest for Gaza and so forth. Face­book memes and car­toons point­ing out the same dis­crep­an­cy have been self-reveal­ing:

Why is the Mus­lim street (rel­a­tive­ly) qui­et on atroc­i­ties com­mit­ted by Mus­lims as a group or by Mus­lim states?

‘Right to live’, ‘Resis­tance to state oppres­sion’, ‘Con­dem­na­tion of mur­der’, ‘Right to reli­gious free­doms’ — these are some of the prin­ci­ples that form the basis of mod­ern uni­ver­sal moral­i­ty. How can some­one con­done mur­der at home and con­demn it else­where? How much will this selec­tive out­rage and moral bank­rupt­cy weigh on an un-biased eye? How can par­ti­san val­ue prop­a­ga­tion form a bet­ter world?

The same applies to many West­ern coun­tries, includ­ing the EU and the USA, who in spite of pub­lic pres­sure are selec­tive in adapt­ing the val­ues they prop­a­gate.

Some of the ques­tions asked above can be answered with the Social Iden­ti­ty The­o­ry which social sci­en­tists believe forms the basis of social psy­chol­o­gy and the con­cept of social iden­ti­ty as a way to explain inter-group behav­ior.

In soci­ol­o­gy, an in-group is a social group to which a per­son psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly iden­ti­fies as being a mem­ber. By con­trast, an out-group is a social group to which an indi­vid­ual does not iden­ti­fy. In our case, it is being an Arab, a Pak­istani, a Ben­gali or sim­ply a Mus­lim.

Once a relat­able social iden­ti­ty is formed, in gen­er­al instances or in par­tic­u­lar con­flicts, it leads to in-group favoritism and out-group dis­crim­i­na­tion. In-group favoritism (also known as ‘in-group bias’) is an effect where peo­ple give pref­er­en­tial treat­ment to those per­ceived to be in the same in-group.

We have to let go of this selec­tive val­ue prop­a­ga­tion if we dream of a bet­ter world and desire a clean­er con­science. There should be con­sis­ten­cy in our prin­ci­ples and val­ues. Unless we pre­serve some integri­ty in our expres­sion the “yours vs. mine, theirs vs. ours” nar­ra­tive will ensure we con­tin­ue to live in a world in love with hate, rich with pover­ty and at war with peace.