On December 15 in Martin Place, Sydney, a man with a gun took 17 people hostage and tried to claim it in the name of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. Beyond the immediate tragedy of the deaths of Katrina Dawson and Tori Johnson, and the harrowing experiences of the other hostages, this attack on the Lindt Cafe had the potential to deepen racial divisions in Australian society and even perhaps lead to violence. What happened instead was totally unexpected. The #illridewithyou hashtag has taken social media by storm as a symbol of solidarity between Muslim and non-Muslim Australians, and effectively silenced voices calling for reprisal attacks.
The hostage-taker, Man Haron Monis, had no connection to ISIL, or to any other terrorist group. Iranian-born Monis was out on bail for being an accessory to the brutal murder of his ex-wife and facing more than 50 sexual and indecent assault charges. His former lawyer said that “he was on the fringe of the fringe. No community had accepted him, not the Iranians, not the Muslims.” Monis converted from Shia to Sunni Islam just weeks before the attack, and evidently did not have the time or forethought to procure a real ISIL flag. Instead he used a Shahada flag, with white Arabic text on a black background inscribing an affirmation of Islamic faith, “There is no God but God.”
From the moment the flag appeared in the window it tapped into deep racial tensions in Australian society. It was nine years almost to the day since Sydney’s Cronulla riots — the biggest race riots in Australia’s history — and yet as the hostage crisis unfolded their shadow loomed large over the frenetic discussion on social media. On Twitter the Australian Defence League, a far right-wing and anti-Islamic group, called for “all Australians to converge … tonight” on Lakemba, a Sydney suburb famous for its Muslim community, if the hostages were harmed. A similar message circulated via text message was the spark which set off the Cronulla riots in 2005.
Just as racist comments were gaining steam, however, they were suddenly eclipsed by the explosion of the #illridewithyou hashtag. Beginning as one woman’s offer to ride on public transport with anyone wearing religious attire who was afraid of reprisals, #illridewithyou generated 90,000 tweets in just the first three hours. As an outpouring of goodwill and symbol of solidarity between Muslim and non-Muslim Australians, #illridewithyou made headlines worldwide, and sent a swift and unequivocal message to those calling for violence.
In the days since the attack, #illridewithyou has faced a number of valid and insightful criticisms — for example that it perpetuates simplistic dichotomies between “good” and “bad” Muslims. This is where it becomes important to distinguish between short and long-term strategies of resistance to racism.
Social media is a place of extremes. Everything is either “the literal worst” or will “restore your faith in humanity.” Twitter’s 140 characters leave no room for nuance; there can be no considered exploration of the issues, no shades of grey. Social media is also a place where things happen fast, especially when combined with breaking news stories. Twelve hours after Monis walked into the Lindt Cafe, the hashtag #sydneysiege was generating more than 260 tweets per minute. This was a discussion that allowed neither time nor space for subtlety. Combating calls for reprisal attacks demanded an immediate and uncomplicated message which mainstream Australia could get behind. Whether by chance or design, #illridewithyou provided just that.
In the aftermath of the attack on the Lindt Cafe it is appropriate that we interrogate the undertones and inherent assumptions of #illridewithyou. At the same time, however, there is no denying that it provided a powerful boost to national solidarity at a time when it was sorely needed. The #illridewithyou hashtag should be celebrated for what it was — a blunt instrument with which to repel rising calls for racist violence in the heat of the moment — and recognized for what it is not: a nuanced and insightful long-term strategy to unpick racial narratives.
In the Al Jazeera article you link, the journalist Nazry Bahrawi refutes the deeply ingrained misconception that Muslims have failed to denounce acts of violence such as that committed by Man Haron Monis.
Bahrawi also calls our attention to how mainstream media outlets don’t use ethnic or religious profiling to depict similar attacks committed by non-Arabs and non-Muslims such as the shooting spree in Pennsylvania by Bradley William Stone.
But Bahrawi does not draw from the I’ll Ride With You Twitter campaign itself to provide us with any examples of a colonialist, good Muslim-bad Muslim mentality he claims blemishes the well-intentioned effort.
Without seeing such examples of White or Western condescension, one might ask. Why let the perfect be the enemy of the good ? The Twitter campaign was a tool for solidarity in defiance of the logic of hatred (‘they’ attacked ‘us’ so now ‘we’ must attack ‘them’ ).
The twisted logic of hatred often involves people being harmed because they are perceived to share a racial, ethnic, religious or other feature with a wrong-doer, whose actions they probably don’t condone. For example, what did the murder of the two cops in NYC last week contribute to addressing the injustices of racist police brutality?
The I’ll Ride With You Twitter campaign is encouraging. Calling hatred for what it is when we see it, and advocating love, clearly and consistently, is vital for building a global justice movement.
I’m not clear on what some Christians mean when they talk of loving one’s enemies, but I am certain that it’s defeating to our communities when we allow hatred to motivate us, whether it pertains to a genuine enemy or someone we conceive as ‘the other.’
Advocating love and opposing hatred is relevant to waging nonviolence. Attempts to cohere communities by hating ‘the other’ with appeals to nationalism, religious intolerance, racism, or heterosexism are short-sighted, but they can do a lot of damage to human freedom and cause a lot of unnecessary suffering in that short period of time. Consider Hitler’s hateful narrative for explaining away Germany’s glitches with capitalism and its frustrated attempts at colonialism.
Hating ‘the other’ enables abuses of power, dividing-and-conquering social justice movements, while generally undermining our political freedoms.
(Bear with me only a bit as I venture beyond the stated topic of the article.) I don’t even know what it means to ‘dismantle capitalism,’ but I’m fairly sure that the abuses of capitalism are global, and that global solidarity is vital for correcting those abuses.
Rising above xenophobia, racism, ethnocentrism, religious intolerance and other forms of prejudice is vital if we want to build global solidarity. Therefore, advocating love and opposing hatred is key. That’s why I took the time to comment on this article about the I’ll Ride With You effort on Twitter.
If we base our actions on love, those abusing power will have a harder time dividing and conquering us, as we form alliances that are nontraditional and otherwise hard for those in power to anticipate.
Love also reduces egotism. If the leaders and other participants in social movements are motivated by love, and are thereby more humble and unselfish, it will be harder for the mainstream corporate media to co opt and fetishize our movement, and harder for police to use petty intrigue to infiltrate and manipulate us.