Friday, July 15, 2016

Inconcievable! Thoughts on Pseudo-Scholarship on Islam and Political Opportunism

I’m a child of the 80s.  I grew up watching and re-watching The Princess Bride.  I have two copies of it on DVD (the special features on each new anniversary edition are always different).  I was thrilled to learn that it was headed to Netflix.  As a world religions professor, I enjoy The Princess Bride because it makes a rather excellent teaching tool.  For example, when discussing the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism: “Life is pain, Highness.  Anyone who says differently is selling something.”  Or, when discussing the seven sacraments of Catholicism: “Mawage. Mawage is wot bwings us togever tooday.”  But my favorite use of The Princess Bride as teaching tool comes when we discuss Islam and, specifically, Sharia.  It typically involves this video clip:


Since 9/11, pseudo-scholarship on Islam has skyrocketed.  As someone who has dedicated years of my life to the study of Islam and the Middle East, I cringe every time someone starts a diatribe on Islam with something like “Well, I’ve never read the Qur’an, but….”  The problem only multiplies after a terrorist attack like the one in Nice last night.  We still don’t know much about the attacker, except that his name was Mohammed which is enough to get the Islamophobic rhetoric cranked up to an insanely high level. 

Newt Gingrich, who was on the short list of potential vice presidential candidates for the Trump campaign, said in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News last night, “We should frankly test every person here who is of a Muslim background and if they believe in sharia they should be deported.”  I was on Twitter last night after the interview and the collective response from Islamic Studies Twitter was a gigantic face palm.  My first thought was, “Oh, Newt….Bless your heart (said in the most Southern way possible, by the way).  You keep on using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Allow me to describe for you a religious law: this law, written centuries ago, contains 613 commandments that some practitioners of the religion believe must be followed explicitly.  These commandments include sections on agriculture, ritual purity, marriage and divorce, sacrifices, rituals and worship, and criminal and civil offenses.  Those who do not follow all of the commandments are seen by those who do as of lesser faith because they have deviated from the true law.  For those who are confused, the religious law I’ve just described is the Halakha or Jewish law and those who follow it explicitly are the Orthodox.  In many ways, Sharia is analogous to Halakha except that Sharia is much less explicitly stated in the Qur’an than Jewish law is in the Torah.

The problem with pseudo-scholarship on Islam as it relates to Sharia is that it all revolves around what we see as representative of Sharia on television: stoning adulterers, cutting off the hands of thieves, hanging apostates, etc.  However, these represent a very narrow interpretation of a very narrow portion of the Sharia that, frankly, most Muslims are not terribly concerned about these days.  Sharia means “the way” or “the path” in Arabic.  It is a mostly amorphous collection of wisdom, teachings, rituals, customs, and rules that govern all aspects of a Muslim’s life. 

The rules that govern prayer times, when to start fasting and to stop fasting during Ramadan, the correct order of events for the pilgrimage to Mecca, and a whole host of rather mundane day-to-day events in a Muslim’s life are covered by the Sharia.  Funeral rites, as well as wedding rituals, are governed by Sharia.  Marriage, divorce, custody arrangements, and inheritance are explored in the Sharia.  Sharia also discusses commerce and economic transactions, appropriate slaughter of animals, modest dress, and yes, criminal offenses.  The Sharia was given by God, but is interpreted by men as fiqh or jurisprudence.  In modern times, Sharia is a source of legislation in most Muslim countries, but exists alongside elements of French or English law (a remnant of colonial times) and other legal codes.  Muslims are expected to obey the laws of whatever country they reside in as long as such laws do not interfere with their duties as a Muslim.

Having explained Sharia thusly, the problem with Gingrich’s statement about Muslims and Sharia should be quite clear.  To be Muslim is to believe in Sharia.  To threaten deportation of Muslims who believe in the Sharia then is Trump’s Muslim ban on steroids.  Furthermore, the idea of deportation of Sharia-believing Muslims is particularly problematic for the estimated 37% of the American Muslim population that is native-born.  My friend Adam Soltani, the executive director of the Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations was born in Kansas.  Where should he go to be deported?  Back to Kansas?  [Insert obligatory Kansas joke here if so inclined.] 

Of course, here is the larger issue with what Newt had to say last night: It’s crap and he knows it’s crap.  Newt Gingrich is many things, but stupid is not one of them.  He’s a smart guy.  He’s also an insatiable political opportunist.  That, perhaps, explains why today, he’s walking back his statement, having seen the backlash against it.  However, despite his protestations to the contrary, Islamic Studies Twitter (also First Amendment Twitter) did not take his statement out of context.  We are rightfully calling Newt out on his nativist, xenophobic political opportunism.  Newt is attempting to toe the Donald Trump Republican party line. 

Sharia is wielded as a weapon by politicians like Newt to scare Americans who don’t know any better about a non-existent threat from Muslim-Americans.  And it works.  In Wichita, a man posted on Facebook that he would no longer eat at Le Monde CafĂ©, a Mediterranean restaurant, after learning that the owner and manager were both Muslim.  Luckily, the good and decent majority in Wichita has banded together to support the restaurant, including a day during which people are planning to inundate the restaurant with business as a show of unity. 

Closer to home, everyone’s favorite Islamophobic Oklahoma state representative John Bennett proposed a study by the Oklahoma State House of Representatives into the “current threat posed by radical Islam and the effect that Shariah Law, the Muslim Brotherhood and jihadist indoctrination have in the radicalization process in Oklahoma and America.”  This is the same John Bennett who, in the fall of 2014, said of Islam, “This is a cancer in our nation that needs to be cut out.”  

The drivel being peddled by Newt Gingrich, Donald Trump, and others will not make us safer.  It will not reduce our risk of terrorism.  It certainly will not make our Muslim friends and neighbors safer.  But it will win votes.  The consequences to America’s long-term security are immaterial to the Republican presidential nominee and his supporters, despite warning after warning from people who know better than these canards only reinforce the narrative of ISIS and others.  As long as it gets the necessary number of votes, the details aren’t important.  Except that they are.  I can only hope that Americans are smarter than Donald Trump and Newt Gingrich give them credit for.

Wednesday, June 15, 2016

On Muslims, America, and the Value of the First Amendment

I’ll give The Donald this much: he sure does offer a scholar of Islam a variety of options to rebut his xenophobic nonsense.  I could talk about Islam and how ISIS is not “real” Islam.  But “real” is a social construction, and it sure seems like the Islam of ISIS is real to them.  I could talk about American Muslims and how cool they are as a group, but experience is better, so by all means, find an interfaith iftar (the meal at the end of the day to break the fast during Ramadan) and go meet some for yourself.  What I want to talk about instead is why I’m not afraid of American Muslims, of shari‘a, of ISIS, of anything BUT Donald Trump and his hateful and incendiary rhetoric.  And, good Baptist that I am, I will do so, in part, by extolling the virtues of the First Amendment.

Yesterday, President Obama responded to Trump’s allegations that he was afraid to use the term “radical Islam” and that as such, he was either hurting our counter-terrorism efforts or worse, aiding our enemies.  You can listen to the president’s remarks here.  I affirm what the president says here—“radical Islam” is not the “open, sesame!” of counter-terrorism.  Calling ISIS “radical Islam” will not make our efforts to contain it easier.  In fact, it will likely make it harder to shut down ISIS.  Perhaps now is a good time to discuss how college students of the early-2000s wrote a lot of papers without a lot of effort.

"Work smarter, not harder:"  Wise advice, given by many college professors, including me.  In the late-1990s and early-2000s, many political science, sociology, and religion majors at colleges around the United States did so by writing paper after paper rebutting Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” hypothesis.  Trust me on this: I was one of those undergraduates.  Huntington argued, first in a 1993 Foreign Affairs article then in a 1996 book, that the next world war, if there was to be one would be between civilizations rather than nation-states.  Specifically, he predicted a clash of civilizations between “the West” and “Islam.”  Here’s where undergrads like me started to have a field day.  You see, there is no “the West” and there’s no “Islam.”  Every country contained in both of those supposed civilizations has its own issues, history, culture, and political obstacles.  When posed this way, however, any conflict between any part of “the West” and “Islam” plays into the narrative, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The problem today is that ISIS has latched on to the “clash of civilizations” hypothesis with a vengeance.  ISIS wants Muslims in the West to become disenfranchised, to feel bullied, ostracized, and ganged-up on.  Because then it can step in and be the savior: "Those people hate you.  Come hang out with us.  We LOVE you!"  Thus, everything Donald Trump opens his mouth to say something bad about Muslims, he’s helping ISIS.  In short, Donald Trump’s openly bigoted and Islamophobic rhetoric is treasonous.

Last night, appearing with Sean Hannity on Faux…I mean, Fox News, Trump said that even American Muslims were dangerous because they haven’t assimilated into American society well.  As usual, The Donald is full of it.  Study after study suggests that not only have Muslims in America assimilated, they are, in fact, the gold star immigrants—successful by every metric, prosperous, educated, and engaged in their communities.  The same can be said with even greater confidence of Americans who converted to Islam.  Law enforcement agencies from local police forces to the FBI will tell you that the American Muslim community is the best source of intelligence on radicalization in the U.S.  American Muslims DON’T want terrorist attacks, because such attacks threaten their lives and livelihoods.  Inevitably, The Donald and his surrogates will point to the problems Muslim immigrants have assimilating in Europe and say, "See?  They don’t like us!"

Again, not the let the facts get in the way of a good story, but what’s happening in Europe and what’s happening in the United States are night-and-day different.  For one thing, all kinds of immigrants in Europe face barriers to assimilation, especially if they are of a different faith than the established religion.  In Europe, indeed in much of the rest of the world, there is an established faith, supported either tacitly or legally by the state.  That support could mean leaning on religious leaders of that faith for legitimacy, tax-payer funding of churches/mosques/synagogues/temples, and/or the conferring of privileges to members of the established faith.  Because Islam is not the privileged religion of any of the major European countries, Muslims find it quite difficult to fit in.  Occasionally, such disaffection leads to protests and riots as Paris saw in 2005.  Other times, disenfranchised young Muslim men turn to violence, as happened in Paris last fall and Brussels this spring.  That violence is often given rhetorical significance and currency by ISIS. 

Contrast that with the United States.  Here, we have a legal separation of church and state.  There is no church establishment nor are there barriers to being able to freely practice one’s religion.  Muslims can immigrate to the United States, find educational and employment opportunities, and maintain their religious faith without fear of persecution or loss of opportunity.  In the United States, it is and rightly should be, okay to be Muslim.  THIS is the heart of the religious liberty that my Baptist forefathers fought so hard for.  Unfortunately, even some Baptists have forgotten this.  Our First Amendment protects Muslims from xenophobia and Islamophobic nonsense.  It also protects the rest of us from the (as yet unrealized) threat of “creeping shari‘a.”  If no religion can be the established faith of the United States, than means that shari‘a (which is, by the way, not as scary as everyone thinks it is) can never become the law of the land.  See how fun the First Amendment can be?