Huma Abedin deserves widespread media support, not slander

Huma Abedin: Refusing to be humiliated

http://blogs.tribune.com.pk/story/6597/huma-abedin-refusing-to-be-humiliated/

Abedin and Weiner on their wedding day

Generally, the world loves to side with famous women whose celebrity husbands’ extramarital escapades are chronicled by scandalous headlines. Judging by the smorgasbord of sympathetic magazine covers, TV chatter and internet buzz that supported the marital tribulations of Maria Shriver-Kennedy-Schwarznegger (her‘Governorator’ husband’s affair with their housekeeper that resulted in a ten-year-old son), Elin Nordegren-Woods (whose golfer husband Tiger’d it out with countless prostitutes) and, of course, Jennifer Aniston-Pitt (who continues to get public sympathy six years after theBrangelina coupling), Huma Abedin-Weiner should be the public’s darling by now.

Instead, she seems to be bearing the brunt of the bigoted, self-righteous backlash to Weinergate while she remains maddeningly calm.

Until recently, Abedin, 35, had managed to maintain a reasonably low profile in a high profile career (she is Secretary Clinton’s Deputy Chief of Staff).  Congressman Anthony Weiner‘s, 46, (Dem/NY with 7 straight terms) sexting scandal not only ‘exposed’ his lascivious fascination for college students and porn stars but has also threatened his wife’s public image (the same Congressman Wiener who introduced a bill against internet predators five years ago).

Outspoken Right-Wingers have gone far beyond mainstream neo-Con ‘Weiner’s weiner’ jokes (as well Wiener’s own wiseguy-phallic humour), to attacking the heritage and upbringing of his wife (and, thereby, the Democrats) for alleged links to radical Islamists, all in the name of protecting American national interest. While Islamophobic ranting has led to fulsome conjecture and conspiracy theorieswhizzing across cyberspace, here in Pakistan, it seems absurdly unjust that Abedin’s Saudi upbringing is seen as suspicious; after all, Saudi Arabia is America’s leading ally in the Middle East, but then, so is Pakistan, though Abedin’s half-Pakistani ethnicity has also contributed to the backlash she’s experiencing.

At best, she’s been called “unflappable” by the Washington Post. The Washington Times briefly posted a racist blog (before removing it soon after) by Eliana Benador, former president of Benador Associates (who worked on spin doctoring Bush’s ‘War on Terror’ in the media) and US Representative of the Shomron Liaison Office (Israel-occupied West Bank).

According to Benador,

“Huma and the silent creeping Sharia(h)…” would “advance a socialist-Muslim agenda” in Congress and “bankrupt America, breaking its population and paving the way to surrender to wealthy Muslims” like the Saudi Royals.

Had her name been Jennifer (or Aniston), we could have expected headlines in the vein of “Huma’s Anguish” and more sympathetic covers than being called “Mrs. Crotch” by sex blogger, Shirley Coco.Either Abedin is an easy target or her calm, collected persona prevents her from instigating positive reactions in her favour. In any case, Abedin doesn’t try to appear like a victim and succeeds in coming across as elegantly in her marital crises as she does in her evening gowns. On Facebook, there are only a handful of people who have started fan pages and groups in her name.  As of June 24th, “Huma Abedin for Congress” had a paltry 83 members while “Support Huma Abedin—she should leave Anthony Weiner” had a dismal 20 members. Anthony Weiner’s official fan page, on the other hand, had 59,671 members.

Now, former Congressman Weiner is heavily into social networking (as his Twitter scandal illustrated), whereas Abedin has always maintained a low profile. She enjoys the rare privilege of being a Muslim woman who enjoys Hillary Clinton’s confidence, from the Office of the First Lady to the New York Senate and the State Department. The only other known South Asian-American Muslim woman in an influential position at the State Depertment is the Srinager-born Farah Pandith, who also reports directly to Secretary Clinton as the Special Representative for Muslim Communities.

Very impressive, ladies!

- Huma Mahmood Abedin was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1976, raised in Saudi Arabia and speaks English, Arabic and Urdu.

- She studied at GWU (George Washington University in Washington, DC), and has worked for Hillary Clinton for a decade and a half.

- Her father, Syed Zainul Abedin (who died in 1993), was an Indian Saudi who founded an institute on interfaith dialogue, while her Pakistani mother, Prof. Saleha Mahmood Abedin, is a prominent educationist in Jeddah who pioneered a women’s college.

- She also has a sister, Heba, a fashion stylist in New York, and a brother, Dr. Hassan Abedin, who is a Fellow at Oxford University’s Centre for Islamic Studies.

The Nation newspaper in Pakistan called her “dignified” but that’s about all that’s been said about Abedin here in Pakistan, where male politicians’ adulterous behaviour has never lost them significant political standing, and where the wives of famous figures aren’t given much sympathetic editorial space to begin with. The US media circus and its fixation with the private lives of its elected representatives remains an enigma here. Washingtonian politics, far more conservative than Islamabad’s, have cost many American politicians their careers including several presidential hopefuls and even the impeachment of a former president, all for the sake of an illicit relationship.

The Huffington Post cited the Weiner-Abedin pairing as a living example of their theory that “attractive men don’t make the best husbands,” yet, continued the report, high powered women continue to look for physical attractiveness in their mates. Although Weiner could be perceived by some as attractive, it’s Abedin who’s described more frequently as “beautiful,” along with “well coiffed,” “elegant”and “smart” by political aides, journalists and colleagues. A slender 5’6,” she has distinctly Indo-Pak features with characteristically medium-long dark hair. She’s famously tightlipped about her personal life, which includes ex-boyfriends from Hollywood’s enviable A-list, George Clooney and John Cusack.

In 2010, Time magazine listed her among their complimentary “40 under-40s,” feature describing her as Hillary’s second “shadow.” She has also featured in a glamorous photo shoot for US Vogue in 2007, where Hillary is quoted as saying:

“Abedin has the energy of a woman in her 20s, the confidence of a woman in her 30s, the experience of a woman in her 40s, and the grace of a woman in her 50s. She is timeless, her combination of poise, kindness, and intelligence are matchless.”

However, even the closeness of Abedin with her boss has met with untoward suspicion—‘is she Hillary’s secret lover and does she live with the Clinton’s household,’ went the malicious Republican rumour mill. Even Huma’s elegant wardrobe, penchant for designer handbags and purchasing of an apartment in an upscale Washington DC neighbourhood has conspiracy theorists wondering where her money came from, suggesting that she is a “Saudi intelligence officer.” Yet, there are others in the American media who identify the backlash as a blatant “witch hunt against Huma Abedin” and Eliana Benador’s blog as “paranoid Islamophobia.”

Huma Abedin started her illustrious career as an intern at the Office of the First Lady and has remained by her side since. In 1996, while Monica Lewinsky infamously interned for President Bill Clinton, Huma earned Hillary’s trust during the ensuing scandal and has remained by her side since then; she was her right hand person during Hillary’s meteoric rise to New York Senator, during her presidential campaign, and continues to be her trusted confidante at the State Department. Hillary is always effusive in her praise of her, promoting her from Intern to Staff Assistant to the First Lady’s Chief of Staff, and then to aide and advisor to Traveling Chief of Staff before her current role as Deputy Chief of Staff to the Secretary of State.

Weiner courted Abedin during Hillary’s presidential campaign in 2008 and, according to a speech he made at their wedding, he pursued Huma relentlessly despite her initial rejection of him. She was aware of Weiner’s playboy past, though unlikely to have guessed that it would continue into their married life together. The besotted couple married in July 2010 with her family’s blessing (aka ‘rishta’), at the fairytale-like Oheka Castle in Long Island, New York, in a garden ceremony with a jazz band playing in the background and the glamorous guests dressed in tuxes and gowns. At a pre-wedding celebration earlier, Hillary had made a touching speech, saying:

“I have one daughter. But if I had a second daughter, it would [be] Huma,”

On the Abedin-Weiner wedding day, the bride wore her Pakistani grandmother’s heirloom necklace and a ravishing, custom designed east-west fusion gown using burnt gold embroidery by Oscar de la Renta. Designer De La Renta, a close friend of the Clintons’ and Abedin’s, spoke fondly of Huma saying that he made her a dress “that reflected her history.”

He added:

“It was like dressing Scheherazade, the beautiful queen from ‘One Thousand and One Nights.’”

The ceremony was officiated by former President Bill Clinton, who remarked ominously at the time that politicians did not make easy spouses because it is “easy to distrust them, whatever their religion.”

In wake of the sexting scandal and the revelation that she was pregnant with the couple’s first child, she continued her rigorous job and continued to travel with Clinton as she immersed herself into her work since Huma Abedin is not merely the wife of a Congressman but a powerful entity on her own. According to CNN’s Alan Duke:

“Her popularity among movers and shakers in the Democratic Party should have been an asset for Weiner’s future.”

Although Abedin seems to have received lukewarm sympathy in the media, there hasn’t been an strong outpouring of pubic support as one might have expected in such a case. However, an internet spoof report about Huma Abedin running for Congress caught on as a rumour with a generally positive response (which in itself is no small feat for a Muslim American woman in post-9/11 America). Cairo-born former Assistant Secretary of State Dina Habib Powell once said that Huma “certainly feels a deep responsibility to encourage more mutual understanding between her beliefs and culture and American culture.”

It seems that her husband’s scandal has created an even greater necessity for this.

…And, not that it’s anyone business, but Judaism is passed on from mothers to their children, not from fathers.  Baby Abedin-Weiner is likely to reflect his/her maternal grandparents legacy of interfaith dialogue and respect, as well his/her parents’ interfaith efforts within their own marriage: his/her mother Huma married a man with a secular Jewish background from Brooklyn; his/her father Anthony has fasted with his Muslim wife during Ramadan and given up alcohol. It may not be everything, but it’s more than many couples can claim to share even when they profess the same religion.

A recent photograph of Huma and Anthony showed the two smiling as they grocery shopped on their way to a weekend in the Hamptons. Anthony Weiner may have resigned in disgrace and ended a promising political career but, as her loyalty to Hillary Clinton has already proved, Huma Abedin is not likely to leave his side.

Yorkshire Curry (The Friday Times, 2004)

When I first set eyes on the (in)famous Manningham Park, I was fascinated by the visual bricolage of Pakistani migrants adapting to their urban northern English habitat. Women in niqab jogging with their friends, bearded maulanas playing tennis in knee-length shorts, inter-racial couples with their young children throwing breadcrumbs at cooing pigeons, adolescent girls in shalwar-kameez sharply swearing at desi boys in urban sportswear endeavoring to chat them up. This scenery was accompanied by the soundtrack of blaring bhangra music from screeching BMWs, all driven by young Asian boys—an accepted irony in this economically deprived neighborhood in the heart of Bradford.

 

Bradford. The name instantly brings to mind two types of media-infused imagery. The first—the Angry Muslim Male image invoked by the July 2001 Bradford Riots, when Muslim youths rioting with stones and petrol bombs fuelled dramatic headlines worldwide. The other—a parody of migrant Pakistani Corner-Shop Culture as portrayed by the UK box office hit, East is East (the ‘Welcome to Bradfordistan’ sign that appeared in the film was later imitated by graffiti artists near its city center in an example of life imitating art).

 

We were to discover layer upon fascinating layer of socio-political nuances in our journey to document the aftermath of the Bradford Riots on the social fabric of Bradford and its surrounding regions. The project: After the Bradford Boil, a documentary series for ITV/Yorkshire TV by Serendip Productions, led by the inimitable Huma and Dr. Farooq Beg and a diverse team from Pakistan and Yorkshire—Haroon, Imran, Linda, Tim, and myself. Our role: to build bridges between ethnic minorities and native (white) communities and in doing so, represent a range of perspectives, and experiences in a multiethnic society that has faced considerable challenges and is bravely standing up to them.

 

Though located in the heart of the quiet, green country that is Yorkshire, the city of Bradford is dramatically different from nearby metropolitan Leeds, quaint, cobble-stoned York, or the romantic, heathery hillsides surrounding Haworth that Emily Bronte vividly described in Wuthering Heights. 80% of British Muslims originally hail from Mirpur, in Azad Kashmir, that to 1^st, 2^nd and even some 3^rd generation British Pakistanis, represents an almost mythical image of a dearly loved motherland. Despite fond memories, many migrants have not set foot in their maiden country for as many as 30 years, thereby finding themselves trapped in a cultural time warp which not only contrasts sharply with certain modes of metropolitan Britain, but also with social trends in contemporary urban Pakistan. Some interviewees even complained that they found their visits to Pakistan “disturbing” as it had become “too westernized” for them to relate to.

 

Many of the original Pakistani migrants were initially lured to England to provide valuable labour force needed for running factories and mills in cities such as Bradford and Sheffield in the 50s and 60s. Philip Lewis, in his Diocese of Bradford, describes the collapse of the textile industry in the early 90s, which resulted in the loss of 60,000 jobs. With limited employment opportunities, the ethnic community has successfully turned towards providing services for a niche market. Operating family-run small businesses such as corner-shops, taxi services, and ethnic restaurants has been a suitable means of earning one’s livelihood. Over time, with hard work and prodigious luck, the most ambitious of the lot have emerged into business tycoons with restaurant chains or construction companies complete with inspirational success stories. Their personalized license plates on fleets of gleaming Mercs symbolize their ascent to the upper echelons of the British economy.

 

British Asians have also over the years excelled in the academia to become prominent surgeons, barristers, professors, social workers, clerics, Members of Parliament and even Peers of the Realm, or alternatively, prospered in the arena of professional sports. There seem to be enough positive examples for ethnic Bradfordian youth to turn to for inspiration. Unfortunately, this is not always so and the lure of quick money and a flashy lifestyle seems all too appealing. Many of Bradford’s young Asians are notoriously associated with for earning their BMWs by dealing illegal substances, namely, drugs. The tragedy in this lies in possible shortcomings in their upbringing. According to some of our interviewees, this was ascribed to the double standards synonymous with British Muslim parenting, being “more concerned with their daughters remaining at home to preserve their family’s honour,” whilst turning a blind eye on “the easy money” their sons were bringing in without a university education, even continuing to “live in welfare housing projects while luxury cars line their driveways.” Although this may be true in some cases, it is also an unfair stereotype, which other more diligent and conscientious British Pakistanis do not agree with in their daily endeavors to make better lives for their families. It is interesting to note, however, that from the 16-24 age bracket, only 31% of Bradfordian ethnic youth are employed, compared with 40% of ethnic youth nationally and 60% of white youth nationally (www.bbc.co.uk). There are, however, many attempts being made at the grassroots level to provide mentorship programs for delinquent youth so that their energies may be diverted toward a more positive direction.

 

Among the diasporas of people interviewed with a range of professional and ethnic backgrounds, a growing picture has begun to emerge of a city that is being ripped apart by generation and cultural gaps, a city that has once too often become a guinea pig for British policy makers and legislators, whose residents ask themselves the following questions:

• Why is it that the Bradford Riots were made the object of national scrutiny, with “unusually harsh sentencing” for the accused rioters and “one-sided criticism” from Home Secretary David Blunkett even though there have also been racial riots in cities like Leeds and Oldham?
• Why did the National Front—a political party with an anti-immigrant stance—get away with provoking the Bradford Riots when they tried to start a rally through Asian-populated areas?
• What is the harm, they ask, in cultivating predominantly Asian neighbourhoods if that is the domestic environment they feel they can relate to? Lord Ouseley, in the famous Ouseley Report titled ‘Community Pride, not Prejudice,’ printed soon after the Bradford Riots, explained that the ethnically segregated “comfort zones” which characterized many Bradfordian neighborhoods caused minimal interaction between ethnic minorities and the mainstream. Importing Imams and spouses from rural areas in Pakistan further deterred the “integration” process—a major keyword for the many government-funded efforts being made such as Bradford Vision to invite investors back to this stricken city.

 

Going to one of the many well-organized Melas that are organized annually in every major British city, one would think otherwise, that integration is already taking place and that Asian culture has already been accepted into mainstream Britain. This fanfare of South Asian cultures attracts a diverse ethnic population, not to mention sponsorship from a growing number of firms and media who are recognizing the consumer power of Britain’s largest ethnic minority. In terms of popular culture, British Asians have already succeeded in winning over the mainstream: urban-bhangra music like Panjabi MC has topped the pan-European charts, comedienne Shazia Mirza performs successful gigs at comedy clubs whilst donning her hejab, Asian-genre film and tv programming like Bend it like Beckham and Goodness Gracious Me and West End musicals like Bollywood Dreams are targeted at an eager white audience, chicken curry has become part of a traditional English pub menu, there are Bollywood-themed evenings at clubs and parties, and punjabi vernacular has made it’s way to the Oxford English dictionary. Certainly, in the entertainment spectrum, it seems that British Asians have truly arrived.

 

However, there is a great struggle for identity taking place beneath the deceptively cheerful beat of the dhol, in the gritty world of interior England. In Bradford, British Asian migrant culture is coming on it’s own. For subsequent generations of British-born Asians questioning both their parents’ traditions and the values of mainstream English society, it is a time of reflection. For instance, many young British Muslims are educating themselves about Islam and rejecting the culturally infused views of religion of their parents’ generation. The age-old slur, “Paki, go back to where you came from,” is no longer applicable since the majority of today’s British Asians are born in Britain, not in Pakistan. A staggering 43% of them are under the age of 22 and have known no home outside of Britain. The often-conflicting parallels may create confusion and angst amongst today’s youth but they also work to create stronger beings with more control over the direction in which their futures will develop. Where their parents remained quiet, even docile, today’s minority youth elect to raise their voices in debate or alternatively, exhibit their frustration in the boisterous style of English football hooliganism. Whatever the manner, they are getting their point across: they want to be heard.

 

The many ingredients in the socio-cultural pot of emerging identities could very well simmer with misunderstanding and resentment, thereby boiling over and causing another Bradford Boil. Alternatively, the juices of integration could effectively marinate communal strife to create the flavours that social workers and theorists are trying to stir in—assimilation on a national level without risking the freedom of preserving and expressing both personal and sub-cultural identities. The answer is, that there is no one answer.

 

Will today’s Yorkshire Pudding and Chicken Curry become tomorrow’s Yorkshire Curry? We’ll just have to wait and see.

 

 

The writer is Researcher and Coordinator for After the Bradford Boil, which is scheduled to air on ITV/Yorkshire TV in the UK in Spring 2004.