QISAS
Words by CKW | He/Him | North Lebanon
Content Warning: Christchurch Terror Attacks
I caught a guy sneaking glances at my tattoo in the gym mirrors, where the base human instinct to be exposed, to be noticed, is indulged. He wanted to know what it said, and he told me about his linguistic studies.
I explained to him that it was the story of how my Mother’s family came to New Zealand. My “family tree” wraps over the top of my thigh, above my knee. Arranged in the shape of a cedar, the emblem of Lebanon, it is an Arabic calligram: Arabic calligraphy arranged into a specific shape.
It tells the story of how my great-grandfather came to New Zealand, a solo father with 4 daughters and one son, who would become my grandfather. I know him as Careem Koorey.
Traditionally, tattoos are frowned upon in Islam, considered Haram. Nevermind my family isn’t Muslim, and never was—but in the way of the uneducated Westerner, I conflated Islam with the Arabic language. I know I’m a part of something, I just don’t know what it is.
As it turns out, a conversation with my barber showed me the right path. A Syrian immigrant with tattoos down his arms, he helped me translate what I wanted it to say. He also put me at ease—it is a tattoo after all, and if you second guess your decision you probably shouldn’t wear it.
He should know. His is the story so common to the Middle Eastern diaspora—fleeing a country torn apart by Civil War, corrupted by Western disruption and neglected for years. He went to jail twice in Syria, the first time when he was 14, and told me how his strategy for survival was to beat up the biggest inmate as soon as he came in. He came to New Zealand in 2009, a prospect for a Wellington gang chapter and is receiving his colours at the end of the year. Out of the frying pan, into the fire. As an immigrant, he seems to need to reclaim his identity through hyper-masculinity.
I am not Muhammed. We come from vastly different backgrounds. But I saw something in his defiant, steadfast manner, how I imagine my great-grandfather would have had to carry himself: A hard man, from a hard country raising hard sons and daughters. Solo fathers were a rare sight in 1950s New Zealand, let alone Assyrian ones, so he must have stuck out like a sore thumb. He changed his names, “anglicised” them, to try and fit in. Karim to Kareem. Khouri to Koorey.
Tattooing my family tree was a way to pay homage to this man I barely know, and try to capture some of the defiant staunchness of the man: The solo provider, playing Dad and Mum. I want people to notice. I want them to look. I want them to feel intimidated.
So it was empowering to see the victim impact statement given by Ahad Nabi after the sentencing of the Christchurch Mosque shooter. The striking image of the muscular man wearing a Warriors jersey, with old English tattoos stamped on his forearms. A muharib with a qalb al’asad. A warrior with the heart of a lion.
Ahad Nabi’s expressions of anger and resolution to not forgive the Christchurch shooter come from a magnitude of grief I will never understand. His grief is his own to deal with, and he should be allowed to express it in the way that helps him to heal.
But how striking it was to hear a Middle Eastern voice that was not portrayed as a victim, a guest, let into the country by the good grace of the West. It appealed to my inner, testosterone-fueled need for power, justice, my desire for retaliation. Something that has come to be seen as harmful, toxic masculinity.
But is it? Or is it just the expression of a base human desire for equality, the most bare mechanism of which is retribution—for which people will use extreme means?
Karl Marx asserted that in any epoch, the ideas of the ruling class become ruling ideas. It seems that young men have internally colluded with society’s objectification of themselves, resulting in a profound misrecognition of their own identity.
The way I felt, watching the video of the sentencing and feeling my need for justice satisfied is one I share with a multitude of others. Disaffected, alienated, young men have long been the recruits for religious and ideological extremism in the West, longing for a mechanism with which to reclaim their dignity as men. Considered violent, antisocial, brutish—they adopt stereotypes of themselves and, in the process, invert societal criticism and wear it as a badge of honour. Young men deal with the putdown, the insult, the hidden injury to mental health and self-esteem, by upending social values, and upholding the undesirable as desirable. Physical strength and violence are celebrated; vulnerability and compassion are denigrated.
Muhammed told me that in Islam, good deeds and bad deeds are piled high on a scale, with sin weighing twice the amount of a good deed. Dunya (the material world) is a test, and Muslims try to pass this test by taking responsibility for their actions, both good and bad. Young men, creating their identities with aggressive, antisocial masculinity have found themselves unable to balance this scale, seeking to reclaim what they feel was taken from them through acts of hyper-masculinity and violence. Young men who no longer see themselves in the world around them seek to change this through the adoption of poisonous, extreme white-supremacist beliefs.
In the wake of the terror attacks, Ahmed Kilani, a prison chaplain at Goulburn Supermax in New South Wales, seemed to predict the tragedy when he commented: “I always said a white supremacist guy will make our Muslim prisoners [convicted of terrorism] look like boy scouts.”
Both factions have stoked each other’s convictions, with miserable results. The imbalance has occurred. The scale was tipped on 15 March 2019 as the terrorist acted to right perceived insults, establish his warped perception of the world, and 51 Muslims said goodbye to their families, left the house, and never returned home.
It has been said that masculinity and ethnicity, “abrade, inflame, amplify, twist, negate, dampen and complicate each other.” When I consider Muhammed’s need to prove himself through gang membership, or my attempt to reconnect with my heritage through a tattoo, or the tragic consequences of abhorrent actions, I see a response to an environment in which young men feel they have very limited power. I see alienation determined by class and ethnicity, enacted in masculine terms. I see an attempt to reclaim identity through the most evil act capable of a human being.
My cedar is always with me. I need only look down to see its length and breadth, it’s foundation, bare below my shorts, spread across the top of the nerve endings in my knee—the most painful part. I earnt the right to honour my family forever, with pride. I earnt the right to attract stares after years of insults about bombs and guns, statements from people I thought were my friends that I “wasn’t that Lebanese”, as if my identity was a social privilege to be given and taken away. My own inability to pronounce my names right, the worst shame of all.
It can’t be taken from me now. I have made sure of that. So look at it. Admire it. Feel fear, repulsion, attraction in equal parts. I don’t care. It’s mine. I have staked my claim to my own identity.
After the Christchurch shooter was sentenced, the media called for a prisoner swap with Australia, to save the millions it will cost to keep him in prison for life without parole.
He is from New South Wales and would be housed in the Goulburn correctional centre, a super-maximum-security prison facility only for males. In Goulburn supermax, the majority of prisoners believe in Salafi-Jihadism, due to its cut and dried sense of right and wrong, and its fundamental, politicised version of Salafism. It calls for active expression of belief over personal observance of the teachings of Islam. It’s a coping mechanism, providing a structured routine for young men in an ultra-hostile environment where your survival is dictated by your ability to cope. After all, there’s not much to do in prison except wait, pray, and train. Train for the day your enemies are in front of you. Train for when you can take what is owed to you, even if that means tearing someone open from limb to limb.
They call Goulburn supermax, “Goulburn supermosque” because if you’re not Muslim in there: Good luck to you. Justice will be enacted, in its most bare terms.