Arrest of Nafis: the Orwellian socialist syndrome in "Capitalist" America
The arrest of Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, a 21-year-old Bangladeshi student, in an FBI sting operation for his alleged attempt to blow up the Federal Reserve Bank in New York has some disturbing resemblances with the typical syndromes of a socialist totalitarian government that George Orwell had shown in his anti-totalitarian novel Nineteen-Eighty-Four. These Orwellian socialist syndromes in modern "liberal democratic and capitalist" United States of America raise more questions than answers in the war by the US against terrorism.
The arrest of Nafis that, according to the statement of the Department of Justice, was the culmination of an undercover operation during which he was closely monitored by the FBI runs astonishingly parallel to the story of Winston Smith, the revolutionary protagonist of Orwell's book Nineteen-Eighty-Four. A hater of the totalitarian control and enforced repression characteristic of the socialist government, Mr. Smith seeks the cooperation of the Brotherhood, an organisation concocted by the government itself for catching potential rebels off guard. O'Brien, a key leader of the ruling elite, throws a constant web of surveillance for a period of seven years over the activities of Winston Smith for his questionable attitude towards the party in power. He pretends to be connected to the Brotherhood merely to trap Winston in an act of open disloyalty to the Party, inducts him into the non-existent organisation and ultimately arrests him. Barring a few points of differences, the two arrests traversed the same route of egging the victim on.
The arrest of Winston Smith in Orwell's novel ended in extreme torture, closely calculated brainwashing, meek surrendering or renunciation of ideologies and a potentially ignominious death. It is still not clear what is going to happen to Nafis in the long run, and makes us ponder over the US's strategy for dealing with the growing anti-American feelings in Muslim minds.
One can cite the Nafis case as "a bad apple," as Congressman Joseph Crowley, the founder and co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on Bangladesh, opined in an interview with New York Times, and argue that this is not part of a larger sentiment of Bangladeshis who are hard working and good people. But one can also trace the Nafis case back to the overall Muslim sentiments towards America.
Most Muslim youths at present have an ambivalent attitude towards the US. Whereas many of them dislike the Americans for the continued presence and atrocities of US troops in several Muslim countries, they also plan to build a dream future by studying in the US. This might as well be the ambivalence of the century. The influx of these types of students in the US is unstoppable. Ideally, the US administration should have checked up on all such young Muslims. But it has done the opposite by trapping one such young man.
Nafis's Bangladeshi father told the press that Nafis was more religious of his two sons but never fanatic. In the contemporary world, a devoutly religious person runs the risk of being labeled fundamentalist. This is why it is sometimes very difficult for many to identify the borderline between religious militancy and religious piety. Any provocation or error in judgment may lead to fatal consequences. Young minds which always seek direction for future action are particularly susceptible to this. Rezwanul Haque Nafis is no exception. The FBI provided the wrong direction and channeled the religious spirit of an aspiring naïve young devout Bangladeshi Muslim man into something that is purposefully evil and sends a wrong message to the world regarding the war by the US against terrorism. The FBI source and agent acted in the same ways as a propagandist would with any person vulnerable to influences from outside. Nafis is only a victim of questionable methods of stopping potential criminal activities.
The statement of the Department of Justice that Nafis came to the US only to deal a deadly blow to the US interests does not seem plausible as the US consular section is notorious for sometimes not giving visa even for valid purposes. Furthermore, the law enforcing agencies are yet to identify any links between Nafis and radical groups before his arrival in the US. Many questioned the funding of Nafis in the US and intimated that he might be funded by al-Qaeda. This is blatantly wrong. Nafis is one of two sons of a vice president of a private bank in Bangladesh. The father informed the journalists that he spent his life savings to send the quiet, timid boy to college in America. Evidently, he went to the US to study, not to plant a bomb.
At worst, Nafis has committed, in Orwellian terms, a "thoughtcrime" -- thinking of a crime before actually committing it. The FBI is responsible for all later developments. According to the information so far divulged, Nafis had no direct connection with any al-Qaeda elements except the FBI source and the agent who claimed to be an al-Qaeda facilitator. The recent American movie, The Innocence of Muslims, has facilitated such types of "thoughtcrimes" among some Muslims all over the world.
According to a CBS news report, Nafis, who is facing charges of trying to use a weapon of destruction and provide material support to al-Qaeda, could face life imprisonment if found guilty. It would certainly be a mockery of justice if Nafis is jailed for bomb plotting when he does not even have the minimum knowledge of distinguishing non-working explosives with which he was duped. The attackers of 9/11 were accomplished engineers, not a beginner like Nafis who has just reportedly started his study of cyber security.
The FBI did to Nafis what O'Brien did to Smith in Nineteen-Eighty-Four. While it was meant to stop anti-US elements in the country, there remain valid questions regarding the nature of the sting operation that entrapped a gullible student. Smith was a 39 year old mature thoughtful party man of INGSOC in the imaginary state of Oceania. But a sophisticated socialist technique of controlling opposition had been used in dealing with a 21 year old young pious Muslim student. How devastating can it be! And it has been so for Nafis.
While everybody would appreciate appropriate methods of stemming the tide of religious fanaticism, care should be taken not to misguide the people who are yet to have the authority of their own to make their own opinion. The Nafis case should be given more serious thought. All perpetrators of crimes should be brought to justice. But if Nafis becomes the victim of questionable socialist techniques of opposition control, this could only worsen the situation in a globalised world in which the interests of Muslims and Christians, Americans and non-Americans, the East and the West are inevitably and unavoidably intertwined.
Orwell's novel was set in 1984, and was meant to criticise the then intellectuals who thought favourably of the newly evolved socialist forms of government. The novel warned them that if they continued to nurture the same feelings, the West also would turn into a similar living dystopia of Oceania. Has the West learnt anything from Orwell, or just internalised the socialist totalitarian repressive apparatuses and started practicing it at last? Are we heading towards a US dystopia: the worst human society imaginable? Where has the American Dream gone?