Religious Intolerance as a Form of Bullying in Karan Johar's My Name is Khan (2010) Sibel Aydin Abstract History shows us that imaginary racial, national, religious, and gender orientations have frequently brought about conflict and discrimination among certain social groups. Religious intolerance, which has inspired brutal wars lasting for many years with each side believing that their god(s) will carry them to victory, is probably the deepest-seated form of bullying. The most remarkable manifestations of religious intolerance range from, but are not limited to, the Muslim versus Hindu clashes in the land of Kashmir to the brutal mission of Crusaders, from anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany to the Ku-Klux-Klan extremist right wing movement born in the United States, from the Catholic versus Protestant clashes in Ireland to the ongoing Jewish settlement in Israel that is dislocating Muslim Palestinians and dispersing them across the globe, and ultimately to the ‘war on terrorism’ mission declared by the United Sates’ president George W. Bush Jr. after the September 11 attacks. Especially the latest unfortunate attacks are given a religious dimension by the Bush administrations’ uttering a scary statement such as, “either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists”1 which opened the path for marginalizing Muslim communities living in the West. This paper argues that politics has a significant power in producing religious discourses, which might take various forms of bullying and contributes to creating ‘Self’ and ‘Other’ images. In the following I will examine the types of bullying, that the victims of 1

Anonymous, “You are either with us or against us,” CNN.com. U.S. (6 November 2001), (Accessed on 18 April 2007), http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/11/06/gen.attack.on.terror/.

religious bigotry encounter in Karan Johar’s My Name is Khan (2010) movie. Examining diverse religious discourses in forming identities and the manifestation of those discourses into rhetoric of exclusion as a form of bullying will be at the core of this paper. Key Words: religion, intolerance, Islam, violence, terrorism, bully Religious Intolerance as a Form of Bullying in Karan Johar's My Name is Khan (2010) Partly due to their colonial histories some European countries, such as England and France, have been attracting various patterns of migration movements, which became visible through political discourses after the Second World War. Similarly the United States attracted immigrants since it is perceived as ‘land of opportunity’ for offering jobs and promising religious freedom for the Jews. Yet, from the 1980s onwards the European and the American immigration policy started to tighten. In Britain, Margaret Thatcher passed the immigration restrictive British Nationality Act in 1981 since the South Asians and Blacks were considered as the ‘enemy within’ who posed a threat to “social stability” and cultural values of Britain.2 Recently the British prime minister, David Cameron3 and the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel,4 declared officially the failure of the ‘multicultural’ project in their countries. The hostile politics of the United States towards the predominantly Muslim countries, and its’ ‘war on terror’ missions, which clipped the wings of Iraq and 2

John, Solomos, Race and Racism in Britain. (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, Third ed.):66. 3 Anonymous, “State multiculturalism has failed, says David Cameron,” BBC news UK politics, (5 February 2011), (Accessed 12 March 2011), http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12371994. 4 Carsten Heidböhmer, “Das Multikulti-Missverständnis, ” stern.de, (1 November 2010), (Accessed on 27 November 2010), http://www.stern.de/politik/deutschland/zuwanderungsdebatte-das-multikultimissverstaendnis-1615839.html.

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Afghanistan after the suicide aircraft attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon on September 11, is showing that the United States is not a safe harbour for the Muslim communities to live in anymore. Particularly the publication of the Runnymede Trust Report in 1997, in which the independent commission noted the aspects of “social exclusion” and the “vulnerability of Muslims to physical violence and harassment”5 raised the awareness to the existence of Islamophobia in the British public sphere. In parallel to the racist developments in Europe and Britain, Islamophobia was already reaching the peak point with the theories of famous Orientalist and political scientists such as Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington, who argued about an impending clash of civilizations between Western civilizations and Islam. When the September 11 attack occurred, those theories about the threat of Islam were justified, and an atmosphere with extreme prejudge against Muslims spread across North America and Western Europe. Karan Johar’s movie My Name is Khan is set against such a bleak backdrop in India and in North America, unfolding in the canvas of loss of a child and sheer radical discrimination against Muslims in the public sphere. It tells a love story of a Muslim Indian, Rizwan Khan, who suffers under Asperger’s syndrome, and a Hindu widow, Mandira, whose son is killed by school gangsters for having a Muslim father. Traumatized by her son’s murder, Mandira tells Rizwan that she can forgive him for her son’s being murdered by the school gangs only if he goes to the United States’ president and tells him that he is a Muslim but is not a terrorist. Taking the sarcastic word of his Hindu wife seriously, Rizwan launches on an adventurous road to find the president of the United States and to tell him that he is not a terrorist. Starting from his childhood onwards 5

Chris Allen, “The ‘first’ decade of Islamophobia. 10 years of the Runnymede Trust report ‘Islamophobia: a challenge for us all’”, 2007, (Accessed 10 April 2012), http://www.euromedalex.org/sites/default/files/Decade_of_Islamophobia.pdf

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Rizwan and his family encounter many forms of religious intolerance that manifest in actions of bullying. Bullying is a term referring to a range of harmful behavior, which might be both physical and psychological. Usually the action of bullying involves uneven power relationships, leaving the bullied one with feelings of distress, fear, loneliness, and lack of confidence. The act of bullying can be perpetrated by one individual, in one-to-one action, or by a group on one individual or by a group on another group. It might take many forms, such as calling names, using abusive language, mocking, making offensive personal comments, threatening, intimidating, creating situations in which someone is humiliated or made look ridiculous, spreading hurtful rumours or damaging someone physically and psychologically. Certainly the act of bullying is framed within a certain discourse, that is made either against someone’s physical appearance, faith, or simply since the bully person might have also been bullied by someone else and therefore desires to demonstrate his or her power. In the movie, the reasons for bullying actions somehow revolve around religious discourses. Taking into consideration that the movie has a power to function as a socio-cultural commentator, addressing the audience from symbolic orders through its’ fictional world, it is important to look at the ways the ‘Other’ is defined through religion and bullied in the movie. William James defines religion as “the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.”6 Cultivated in necessity for self-definition atmosphere, religion has, in many cases, worked hand in hand with politics to transform the masses and, consciously or unconsciously, created seeds of discrimination in public spaces. In the movie, it is possible to find many examples of this interconnection between 6

Quoted by David M. Wulff, “Listening to James a century Later”, in William James and the Varieties of Religious Experience. A Centenary celebration, Jeremy Carrette ed. (London and New York: Routledge, 2005): 47-57.

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religious and political discourses that motivate the masses to disenfranchise certain social groups or individuals. One of the first religious conflicts scene takes place between Hindus and Muslims during 1983 when the projector is turned to Rizwan Khan’s childhood in Mumbai. As a school child, Rizwan sees the Hindus burning the Qur’an and beating Muslims in the streets. Noticing her child’s intimidation, Razia Khan draws a picture of two men, one of them holding a weapon to shoot the other man while the next man is holding a flower to give it to the man directing his weapon against him. She tells her son that their family belongs to the religion of Islam, which preaches peace and tolerance, and therefore he should never discriminate against other people. Obviously Rizwan, as a child, is deeply influenced by the conflicts he sees on the streets and is afraid to go to the public school. However, his affection to his mother makes her words cling in his ears. He forgives other school children’s humiliating gazes at him. In addition to having a form of autism syndrome, one feature that distinguishes Rizwan from other kids is his having a special ability to repair mechanic tools. Noticing his gift, Razia pays him extra attention and gets him tutored by a scholar privately. This special care on his brother makes Zakir jealous, and eventually he leaves his family behind for a life in the United States. Afterwards, despite his resentment, Zakir sponsors Rizwan to come to San Francisco to live with him and his wife, after his mother’s death. Zakir’s wife, Haseena, is a teacher of psychology and diagnoses Asperger’s Syndrome in Rizwan. She convinces her husband to give Rizwan a job so that he can meet other people and socialize in order to overcome his syndrome. Soon Rizwan starts to sell herbal cosmetics for his brother and meets Mandira, who is a Hindu hairdresser, with her son Sameer. Despite Zakir’s hostility and opposition to the match, due to religious reasons, Rizwan marries Mandira and settles down a perfect marriage, which is disrupted after September 11 attacks on New York City.

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All the Khan family are shattered by the violent prejudice of the American societies against them. Firstly, the clients of Mandira turn their back to her. She loses their trust, and ultimately is forced to shut her shop down. Although Mandira herself is not a Muslim, being married to a Muslim man appears to be enough reason for her friends to turn against her. Despite the fact that she is very successful in her job, the racist actions of the American societies against Muslims deprives her of her job. She fails to find a job even as a clerk due to her husband’s surname. The interesting point is, very few of the people who turn their back to her can give her any logical explanation for their refusing to communicate with her except for her carrying a ‘Muslim’ surname. This religious intolerance is clearly a form of bullying performed by the society against an individual which affects her psychology very deeply. Taking Rizwan’s surname costs Mandira her son and results in collapse of her family life. Mandira’s innocent son, Sameer, is killed in a schoolyard by teenager gangsters purely because of religious propaganda. First, Reese Garrick, the Khan family’s next door neighbour and Sameer’s close friend gets offended with Sameer since Reese’s reporter father, Mark Garrick, was killed during the Afghanistan war when he was reporting from there. Every time Sameer Khan gets close to Reese Garrick and expresses his deep sorrow for the death of the latter’s father, Reese insults Sameer and accuses Muslims for his father’s death. Then school bus driver refuses to pick Sameer up when he drives to the school. The school kids tear Sameer’s clothes away and call him names such as “Son of bin Laden” or “terrorist Paki.” Sameer feels psychologically depressed and comes home with scars for being beaten by his friends at school. Still, in order not to offend his father, Sameer tries to look strong. The worst case happens one afternoon in the schoolyard when a bunch of teenagers start punching and kicking Sameer to express that Muslims do not have any space in their communities. The Garricks’ son, Reese, tries to hold the gangsters back and save his friend. In order to get his revenge back, Sameer hits the leader of the gang and calls him “asshole.” Hearing this all the teenagers start beating Sameer to death with a soccer ball. Seeing that Sameer is bleeding, the gangsters 6

threaten Reese not to tell anything to the authorities and they leave Sameer alone in the schoolyard. Once the ambulance comes to pick Sameer up from the schoolyard, it is too late, as the child dies of internal bleeding. Being afraid of what he saw but also being intimidated by the teenagers’ threatening him, Reese does not tell Mandira anything for a while despite her begging him to tell her about what happened to her son at school. It can be argued that those acts of violence are propagated by political discourses constructed against Muslims and are taken by ignorant people with unquestioned acceptance of Islam’s being an inherently backward, barbaric and irrational religion. In the movie, the American televisions depict Muslim men with long beards and turbans while the Muslim women are shown with their veils. Muslims in general are stereotyped as fanatic extremists, who kill people for their religion. However, the irony is the American communities who call themselves ‘civilized Christians’ use very similar rhetoric and act more dangerously than the ‘fanatic Muslims’ they present in their media. In the movie this ironical situation is best represented during Rizwan’s picaresque-like journey across North America to find the president of the United States. While waiting for his flight to Washington D.C., being heard praying in Arabic by an American lady, Rizwan is taken away by the police as suspect. He’s kept naked in a cell for many hours and is exposed to strong light which makes him sick. In the meantime he misses his flight and is humiliated by the police who hears that Rizwan wants to go to Washington D.C. to meet the president. As he does not have sufficient money to go with the next flight, Rizwan is forced to travel to his destination by bus, for which he has to wait outside all the night long. In this scene Rizwan is both physically and psychologically bullied by the American police not only for being a Muslim but also for his Syndrome. The police’s laughing at Rizwan and telling him that he should say, “how are you doing?” to the president in case he sees him, which Rizwan takes seriously too, shows the brutality of the police against Muslims.

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On his way, Rizwan cures Joel’s bleeding knee in Georgia and befriends his mother, Mama Jenny. He tells them about the purpose of his travel. Later, while waiting in a crowd to meet President Bush, Rizwan repeats loudly, “My name is Khan and I am not a terrorist.” The reporters only hear what they want to hear, namely the word “terrorist” and start to urge the crowd to move away by charging Rizwan with carrying a bomb and aiming at killing the president. He is arrested and interrogated in the prison as a terrorist suspect. A group of media campaign analyse the videos carefully and embark on proving Rizwan’s innocence, which they ultimately achieve. After his release from the prison, Rizwan goes to hurricane-hit Wilhemina to save Mama Jenny and all those who need help. His efforts attract the media’s attention and numerous Muslims come to Georgia to help the victims of hurricane. Once more, Rizwan’s being interrogated as a terrorist when he was trying only to convince the president about his innocence and his being subjected to merciless threats by the interrogators arise the sympathy of the audience. By the end of the movie, Rizwan and Mandira meet the new-elect president Obama, who congratulates Rizwan for his kind-heart and tells him that he knows, his name is Khan and he is not a terrorist. Also Reese confesses to Mandira the names of the gangs who killed Sameer, and Reese’s mother, Sarah, comes to Mandira to apologise for the misbehaviour of her son. Despite the fact that the end of the movie gives the audience a glimpse of hope about the probable improvement of interreligious relationships with the coming of the new American government, in general the movie comments on the unfortunate realities of discriminatory behaviours of the politics against Muslims. As it can already be seen from the scenes of the movie, religion on its own is a neutral relationship between the individual and the entity he accepts as the divine. It is the discourses constructed around the idea of religion reinforced with political propagandas which mobilize the masses and opens the path for violence. All the above illustrated scenes of bullying happen due to -so to speak- religious intolerance. Yet, many of the bullies were probably not even aware of their 8

neighbours’ or friends’ being Muslims. With the atrocities of the September 11 attacks all the features of the individuals are squeezed into the bag of ‘Muslim identity’, whatever this term might mean, as if all Muslims are a homogenous entity. The role politics and media play in shaping those ‘Self’ and ‘Other’ which leads to bullying and disenfranchising actions is undeniable. My Name is Khan is a movie which functions as a socio-cultural commentator from its’ symbolic world by means of showing how media and politics are arbiters of certain discourses and play a pivotal role in shaping the actions of the masses. Bibliography Johar, Karan. My Name is Khan. 2010. DVD. Allen, Chris. “The ‘first’ decade of Islamophobia. 10 years of the Runnymede Trust report ‘Islamophobia: a challenge for us all’”, 2007, (Accessed 10 April 2012), http://www.euromedalex.org/sites/default/files/Decade_of_Islamo phobia.pdf. Anonymous. “State multiculturalism has failed, says David Cameron,” BBC news UK politics. 5 February 2011, (Accessed 12 March 2011), http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12371994. Anonymous. “You are either with us or against us,” CNN.com. U.S. 6 November 2001, (Accessed 18 April 2007), http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/11/06/gen.attack.on.terror/. Heidböhmer, Carsten. “Das Multikulti-Missverständnis,” stern.de, 1 November 2010, (Accessed 27 November 2010), http://www.stern.de/politik/deutschland/zuwanderungsdebattedas-multikulti-missverstaendnis-1615839.html. Solomos, John. Race and Racism in Britain. Third Ed. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Wulff, David M. “Listening to James a century Later” in William James and the Varieties of Religious Experience. A Centenary 9

celebration. Jeremy Carrette ed. London and New York: Routledge, 2005: 47-57.

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