Chroniques Yéménites

Chercher

Numéros
n°13 (2006)
n°12 (2004)
n°11 (2003)
n°10 (2002)
n°9 (2001)
n°8 (2000)
n°7 (1999)
n°6 (1997)
n°5 (1995)
n°4 (1994)


Chroniques du manuscrit au Yémen
no.4 (Juillet 2007)
no.3 (Février 2007)
No.2 (Juin 2006)
no.1 (Février 2006)


Cahiers du CEFAS
Le règlement des conflits tribaux au Yémen


Colloque
War in Times of Peace


Index
Par mots clés
Par auteurs


Informations
Ours
Ecrivez-nous

Ce site adhère à
Revues.org

Lettre de Revues.org















Centre français
d'Archéologie et de Sciences Sociales de Sanaa
Lodel (accès réservé)
 

Non-Japanese Muslims after the September 11th, Self-Reliance victimized in Japanese Inconsistency
(War in Times of Peace, Sanaa, 2nd and 3d November 2002)


Tomoko Yamagishi

Abstract

This paper shows two incidents of non-Japanese Muslims in Japan after the 11th of September : the multi-national Muslims appeal against the bombing on Afghanistan in the November 2001, and the arrest of some Pakistanis in last March. Those are little known domestic affairs even in Japan inconsistency and the well find that those affairs illustrate the Japanese inconsistency and the impromptu response without a long-term vision to cope with the US policy.




Texte intégral

First of all, I should like to address my thanks to his Excellency the President of Yemen, the organizing committee for this conference, and other persons concerned to give me such a wonderful chance to deliver a speech in the country of the Queen of Sheba, Birqis. I really feel honoured.

What I am going to talk should look to be the minor domestic happenings in Japan; and truly these incidents are easily dismissed even by Japanese government. But I decided to take this chance to report such things because nowadays domestic affairs often have considerable significance in the international terms, and we should not overlook the grass-root movements of Muslims scattered all over the world.

Let me explain the general Muslim situation in Japan. Japan has long been indifferent to Muslims' fate, since Muslim population in Japan was negligible and Japanese generally conceived that Islamic culture or Muslim life is something which belongs to the other side of the world. If there has been any concern for Muslims or the Middle East, the issues were always related to natural resources or other economic problems. Though Japan rely more than half of her energy resource on the Middle Eastern petroleum, majority of Japanese still have little concern for Muslim activities. While Japanese people and the government were turning their face to “the West” as the international order, the situation has been changed for a considerable extent in the past decade.

The important change is that Muslims came to work and live in Japan since the end of 1980s. From the latter half of 1980s through the beginning of the 90s, Japan experienced an unprecedented economic boom, and the owners and managers of Japanese factories, especially petty factories, came to employ whosoever work for them. They started to employ non-Japanese, regardless of their nationality, or working permission. The de facto labour-oriented immigration started. Most of the immigrants were East-Asian origin; namely Koreans (of South Korea) and Chinese (of mainland, Taiwan, and the South East Asian countries.) From Asia also Muslims immigrants increased at the same time. Many of them were from Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Iran, the countries where large Muslim population reside. Though the sum of their number was smaller, their increase was so drastic: their number increased 10 times within a decade. However, we have to note that in sharp comparison to European countries, the population of those de facto Muslim labourers could and can hardly constitute 0.1% of Japanese total population.

Those non-Japanese labourers could earn quite good amount of money, much larger sum in comparison to their wages at their homelands. However, their misfortune was that Japanese government stubbornly refuses to accept what they call “unskilled workers” as immigrants. Actually they had not way of acquiring legal position in Japan, save those who married Japanese.

Neither Japanese police nor immigration office was capable of controlling those de facto labourers. Their increase was too rapid, their number was too large in terms of the persecution facilities, and the Japanese officers were not well trained or accustomed to investigate non-Japanese. In addition, economic circles in Japan wanted authorities to overlook them for the sake of securing necessary manpower. Thus eventually, both official and non-official social climate caused to let those labourers come in from “the back door”, while “the front door” was firmly closed for them.

In that circumstance those Muslims lived in Japan with much freedom, as they were virtually out of the governmental control. The circumstance also made them vulnerable in several respects: their basic human rights, including the labour's rights, were often violated, and they were exposed to the biased view of mass-media without having a chance of refutation. TV programmes, newspapers, and magazines reported frequently of their crimes, so that Japanese audience, who were looking at those Asian new-comers with some dubious feelings, generally came to regard them as the latent criminals. Japanese government and people thought that those over-staying labourers are those who are not supposed to be in Japan, or someone to go home in the near future. Those Muslims themselves also thought they would come back to their homeland one day, but nobody knew when.

Living in Japan for several years, many of the Muslims adapted to Japanese style of life. And in the last three years, we witnessed a striking fact that many Mosques mushroomed in and around Tokyo. Non-Japanese Muslims organized several groups for the Islamic purposes, and purchased or rent some buildings for their Masjid. We regard those groupings, or divisions of Muslims, are in accordance with their language differences; but they usually maintain that the difference of nationality is not important for Islamic activities. So far we have observed, at the core of each Muslim group, we find one nationality: and many of them are Pakistanis.

Here we should understand that Muslims are now settled in Japanese society; that means they are no more passers by. And in regards to Islamic activities, they are self-reliant, while two international networks based in Pakistan seem to be in contacts with two of the Pakistani groups.

After the 11th of September 2001, on the 11th of November, Japanese Non-Government Organization named APFS (Asian People Friendship Society), who had been supporting non-Japanese labourers, together with a Bangladeshi-dominant Muslim group, a Pakistani-dominant Muslim group, and Japanese Muslim association, organized a symposium titled “Islamic Society and History”. The purpose of that symposium was to make an appeal to call for more talks between the suspected Muslims and the US, not to resort to arms. The symposium was also at the same time planned to call out for Japanese to understand more of Islamic past and present situations.

So far as I am concerned, it was the first time that Muslim residents in Japan made a political joint appeal. The participants of the symposium seemed to be around 200: they were of different nationalities, while Pakistanis were the majority. Japanese participants were few, but Japanese language was used by most of the speakers: 2 of them Japanese (including myself), 2 of them Pakistanis, 1 Bangladeshi, and 1 Nigerian. Only that Nigerian Muslim spoke in English.

The Muslim panellists cited some verses of Qur'an and gave explanation to the basic ideas of Islam, and also argued what they conceive important is something in common for all the humankind. 3 of the panellists criticized the arbitrary attitude of the US, saying that someone whom United States claims “terrorists” have once been “freedom fighter”, and it is the US interests that make fun of Muslims' fate. One of the panellists questioned: why, while the struggle of East Timor for independence is approved, the Muslim struggles are not approved? Another panellist started his speech with inflammatory words: “I want to clarify which is the terrorist, Osama bin-Ladin or America?” The audience were excited at his words to clap their hands and to bang the tables. Some criticisms to the United States were fervently addressed, however, all the panellists concluded to call for more dialogue and the third party's judgement for the 9-11 case. Being the chairperson of the session myself, I was afraid the discussion should become too enthusiastic to loose the due sobriety. However, despite my anticipation, all of the panellists concluded that there must be more talks and peaceful solution.

In the following discussion, one of the participants proposed it would be better to add another item to request Japanese government not to send the Self Defence Force to Indian Sea. His proposal was largely accepted by applause, and that item was inserted to the appeal draft.

I am sorry to report that supposed to be no Yemeni or Saudis were there at the Symposium. Also it should be noted that very few Malay or Indonesians seemed to have participating in the symposium, though Malay-Indonesians constitute the largest Muslim population in Japan. This coincides with my finding that Malay-Indonesians appear to have no Islamic group or Mosque peculiar to their language group. Besides, the Turkish Imam of the newly reopened Tokyo Jami', a beautiful Ottoman style Mosque, refrained from joining to the appeal. That is because the Turkish Imam had been despatched by the Turkish authority of Islamic Affairs, and he or his secretary did not dare do something which might be against the Turkish government's policy.

The following day of the symposium, some part of the participants of the symposium marched to the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the US Embassy at Tokyo to hand the written appeal.

Here, we see one success of grassroots collaboration of Muslims and non-Muslims in Japan. It was not on a large scale, and could not make any influence on Japanese policy, but we can evaluate it favourably, since it is an example of a voluntary dialogue of civilizations which took place in Japan.

The aftermath of the symposium was something that I could not foresee. In March 2002 Japanese public security officers investigated one of the Mosque located at the downtown of Tokyo, and arrested several Muslims there, bringing the charge of the violation of Japanese immigration law, i.e. over-staying. One of the arrested Pakistani was the actual manager for one Muslim group and he was the one who brought the November symposium into success. It was very shocking news, and we observe the members of that Muslim group became very cautious to associate with Japanese.

Several in formations indicate that the US authority had requested Japanese security committee to look for one Pakistani, who was suspected to be a member of al-Qaida. Japanese security officers were informed that the suspected Pakistani had visited that Mosque, so they made an official investigation of the Mosque, consequently arresting the Muslims, whose visa had been expired, but had nothing to do with al-Qaida.

It is reported that the suspected Pakistani said that his bank account was used by his friend to send millions of money so to arouse some suspicion, and he denided to have had any connection with al-Qaida. The truth is not yet evident. Misfortune was those who were arrested incidentally: they have been settled in Japan peacefully for more than ten years, and all of a sudden, they lost their living.

Two points could be commented to their arrests. First, it was a part of the world-wide phenomenon after the 9-11 that the Muslims living outside their homelands were put under unfavourable conditions. We hear several cases that innocent Muslims were put under wrong suspicion, detention, or deprived of their peaceful life after the US-advocated “attack against terrorism.”

Second, we can maintain that those arrested Muslims are the victims of the Japanese government's ambiguous response to the de facto labour immigrants. They have been living on the legal margin of Japanese society. Japanese people and local communities, for the most part tolerated Muslim labourers. Japanese historically had no enmity towards Muslims, and despite the lack of public support, we have witnessed that the troubles or frictions between Japanese and Muslim labourers were relatively small in number.

The arrest of overstaying Muslims at a Mosque was shocking, and some Muslims took it as a warning from Japanese government. Those Muslims, who once tried to be communicative towards Japanese, are now withdrawing and shrinking in the Japanese public sphere.

We should think the uncommunicative situation is unfavourable for both parties: the present situation demands us for our security to have more dialogue with Muslims living in the margin of the societies, rather than more isolation for them. In my view, for the sake of the security, we have to keep in touch with them, not to isolate them or humiliate them. The feeling of humiliation or depression, when inflamed with some emotional and political incitement, can easily turn into brutal attacks. It is strongly requested for the authorities and the organizations in concern to analyze the cause and the effect of their measures, to avoid make Muslims feel devastated. In Japan we have a proverb “a mouse may bite a cat when driven into a tight corner.” Before their patience turn into a brutal explosion, we should think of releasing them from distrust and unfair assault.


  Sommaire
Sommaire

  Sommaire
Sommaire

Page générée par LODEL | Nous adhérons à www.revues.org