What to do about Islamophobia

Hi Katalusis friends,

I've sat through far too many arguments between secularists and those who follow the teachings of a particular religion, and the accusations of one group toward the other sometimes get ugly. For example, a secularist might label his or her adversaries as irrational or worse.  In response, a religious fundamentalist might warn the secularist that it can get mighty hot where he or she is headed. At this point in my life, I mostly get bored with that kind of talk.

I'm better off, I've concluded, to spend my time reading material such as the Charter for Compassion's newsletter, which hit my inbox today with a comprehensive guide to Islamophobia. The pdf version of the guide is 90 pages long, so I've only had time thus far to scan pages of immediate interest. Thanks to Karen Armstrong's input, those pages include intelligent, well-informed discussions of the differences between secularism and religion.

The initial email message is from Marilyn Turkovich, Director of the Charter for Compassion International:

Dear Friends,
A Happy New Year!  It just doesn't seem proper without stating those words and realizing beneath the surface that the majority of us are hoping for a year that will be filled with peace.  In a 1992 lecture, writer Susan Sontag asserted that “a writer is someone who pays attention to the world…[someone who is] a professional observer.” Let us assume that we are all writers and it is our task not only to observe the world but work, even in the smallest ways, on behalf of humanity in 2016. In today’s newsletter there is information about wishing for a new approach to the year, observances on what is happening within our communities regarding the rise of Islamophobia, and suggestions for taking our observances and acting with hope and determination to put our positive marks on each new day.  As always, we’d like to hear what you are doing and what our compassionate cities and communities are working on.  Let us know how you are paying attention to the world.
With much gratitude to each of you for your work.
Marilyn

And here's a specific word or two from the Charter for Compassion on Islamophobia that offers a link to the online version of the Guide:

Islamophobia Guide
At the end of 2015 the Charter set out to assemble a Guide Book on Islamophobia. The Guide Book will be updated again by mid-January and added to monthly. In this document you'll find a variety of resources—some are opportunities to reflect, others are more prescriptive. We recommend you browse the full document so you get a sense of what's available—contextual framing from Karen Armstrong, guidance for Muslims by Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid, an overview of Islamophobia from Barbara Kaufmann, and links to resources by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and others—many geared toward educators. Finally, you'll find a reflective article by Cambridge Muslim College dean, Abdal Hakim Murad and a list of resources for your further study.  You can access the Guide on the Charter’s website and a PDF link is available at the end of the Introduction section of the Guide. 
We will be announcing our efforts to create similar guidebooks in the next few months.  Please let us know where you think we should be putting our efforts and if you are willing to help prepare additional documents.

What does ISIS have in common with the Vietcong?

Vietnam War photo (public domain)

David Ignatius, foreign affairs columnist at the Washington Post, is one of a couple of pundits whose opinions I continue to respect. So it was chilling this morning to read his take on President Obama’s strategy for responding to the Islamic state.

Connecting the current conflict with ISIS to America’s tragic involvement in the Vietnam war, Ignatius writes:

Underestimating an adversary’s will to win can be a costly mistake in war, as Director of National Intelligence James Clapper noted in an interview last week. He said the U.S. had made that error recently in assessing the Islamic State, just as it did nearly 50 years ago in evaluating the staying power of the Vietcong.

Clapper’s comment was part of a broader trend over the past week in which senior military and intelligence officials have been unusually forthright about issues involving President Obama’s strategy for combating the Islamic State. In addition to Clapper’s remarks, this “push back” has been evident in comments by Gen. Martin Dempsey and Gen. Ray Odierno, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and chief of staff of the army, respectively, about the possibility that ground combat troops might be needed in Iraq and Syria.

It’s as if senior officials, having been through the vortex of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, don’t want to make the same mistake this time of suppressing concerns or misgivings. Many military, intelligence, and foreign-service officers had doubts a decade ago about the wisdom of invading Iraq, but those worries were mostly unexpressed. Not this time.

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How should America react to the ISIS-produced video beheadings of journalists?

Photo credits: public domain.

In a recent email conversation, a friend and I exchanged concerns about the flare-up of violence throughout the Middle East and where it might lead. My friend despaired of ever understanding the roots of war in that area. In reply, I noted the readiness to kill one another off for religious differences among various sectarian factions in the area.

All too often leaders of the opposition party in the U.S., media reps, and ranting Facebook or other social media participants plunge in to take sides in one conflict or another, frequently offering unqualified recommendations for intervention by the United States. That’s why it’s always such a relief to read NY Times op-ed columnist Tom Friedman’s analysis of foreign affairs. Friedman has the intellect and knowledge to grasp the complexity of Middle East conflicts and offer a few wise insights, even in response to the evil forces motivating the ISIS beheadings of journalists.

Friedman writes:

President Obama has been excoriated for declaring that “we don’t have a strategy yet” for effectively confronting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. In criticizing Obama for taking too much time, Representative Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told “Fox News Sunday” that “this ‘don’t-do-stupid-stuff’ policy isn’t working.” That sounded odd to my ear — like we should just bomb somebody, even if it is stupid. If Obama did that, what would he be ignoring?

First, experience. After 9/11 that sort of “fire, ready, aim” approach led George W. Bush to order a ground war in Iraq without sufficient troops to control the country, without a true grasp of Iraq’s Shiite-Sunni sectarian dynamics, and without any realization that, in destroying the Sunni Taliban regime in Afghanistan and the Sunni Baathist regime in Iraq, we were destroying both of Iran’s mortal enemies and thereby opening the way for a vast expansion of Iran’s regional influence. We were in a hurry, myself included, to change things after 9/11, and when you’re in a hurry you ignore complexities that come back to haunt you later.

There are no words to describe the vileness of the video beheadings of two American journalists by ISIS, but I have no doubt that they’re meant to get us to overreact, à la 9/11, and rush off again without a strategy. ISIS is awful, but it is not a threat to America’s homeland.

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“The pornographic violence of religious killings”

The beheading of James Foley. Photo via NYDailyNews.

The phrase, “the pornographic violence of religious killings,” jumped out at me as I read David Ignatius’s column titled The Hooded Face of Evil. Ignatius is commenting on the beheading of journalist James Foley, which the Islamic State has been boasting about lately. As a seminary graduate, I appreciate that Ignatius makes clear that “no faith teaches people to massacre innocents. No just God would stand for what they did yesterday, and for what they do every single day."

Ignatius provides a reasoned account of the developments culminating in Foley’s death and President Obama’s response so far:

WASHINGTON -- The propagandists of the Islamic State must have imagined that their brutal video of the beheading of journalist James Foley would intimidate and terrorize the world. But people aren't built that way, not in Muslim countries or anywhere else. When they see sadistic, uncivilized behavior, they are disgusted -- and angry.

President Obama spoke with special precision and moral clarity in reacting to the video's release Wednesday. The Islamic State, he said, "speaks for no religion. Their victims are overwhelmingly Muslim, and no faith teaches people to massacre innocents. No just God would stand for what they did yesterday, and for what they do every single day."

The videotaped beheading was a sign of the Islamic State's weakness, not its strength. "People like this ultimately fail," Obama explained. "They fail, because the future is won by those who build and not destroy." He spoke, as a president must, about the consequences of killing U.S. civilians: "We will be vigilant and we will be relentless. When people harm Americans, anywhere, we do what's necessary to see that justice is done."

 The life and death of Osama bin Laden illustrate why the terrorist strategy is destined to fail -- if civilized nations maintain their will. Obama authorized the mission that pursued the al-Qaeda leader to his lair in Abbottabad, Pakistan. But in the months before his death, bin Laden knew he had failed.

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The complementarity of social justice and mindfulness meditation

Chaos in Iraq, June 11, 2014.

Amanda Mills: public domain.

Say, friends, you may have noticed the variety of posts at Katalusis that rank as the 10 most popular - current topics include housekeeping mindfully, animal rights (see Raju the elephant), sex trafficking, racism, the Dalai Lama, and the Charter for Compassion.

The diversity in my subject matter at Katalusis notwithstanding, I’ve been following the daily news since childhood when an older brother was pulling combat duty during the Korean War. My father listened to the news on the hour whenever he was home from work, and I picked up the habit. Meanwhile, I developed a strong commitment to social justice.

Lately, listening to Diane Sawyer’s World News (ABC) program at 5:30 p.m. weekdays and scanning emails from politicos begging for money while trashing their opponents in 2014 might be depressing if I lacked the resources to stay centered most days and thereby respond more effectively- hey, Iraq is falling apart, and the Israelis and Palestinians continue to kill one another off.

Which is why I practice mindfulness meditation, keep a literary type novel on hand for downtime instead of TV, work out regularly, journal daily, and hangout with upbeat people whenever possible – I especially enjoy keeping company with my meditation group.

A little reminder here: the daily practice of spiritual disciplines is not antithetical to taking a stand for social justice on behalf of marginalized people, which includes women, who represent 51 percent of America’s population.

Don’t take my word for it – search the database here at Katalusis. You might start with the topic of drones.

RX for the Middle East: pluralism in politics, education and religion

Courtesy of thomaslfriedman.com.

Tom Friedman, op-ed columnist at the NY Times, is promoting a radical solution to the latest outburst of sectarian violence in Iraq and other hotspots in the Middle East. In his column titled ISIS and SISI, Friedman, a native of the Twin Cities, is talking about pluralism (inclusion rather than exclusion) in education, politics, and religion.

Friedman is being true to his roots in the Twin Cities. For example, the St. Paul Interfaith Network actively promotes religious pluralism, and my alma mater, United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, describes itself on its website as: "Home to interfaith and intercultural Initiatives, where every graduate has academic grounding and personal experience to lead in a pluralistic society."

It's going to take a while longer for the rest of the world to catch up with enlightened folks in Minneapolis-St. Paul, but Friedman is doing his part by encouraging a movement toward pluralism in the Middle East where sectarian violence has long been a way of life:

The past month has presented the world with what the Israeli analyst Orit Perlov describes as the two dominant Arab governing models: ISIS and SISI. 

ISIS, of course, is the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the bloodthirsty Sunni militia that has gouged out a new state from Sunni areas in Syria and Iraq. SISI, of course, is Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the new strongman/president of Egypt, whose regime debuted this week by shamefully sentencing three Al Jazeera journalists to prison terms on patently trumped-up charges — a great nation acting so small.

ISIS and Sisi, argues Perlov, a researcher on Middle East social networks at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, are just flip sides of the same coin: one elevates “god” as the arbiter of all political life and the other “the national state.”

Both have failed and will continue to fail — and require coercion to stay in power — because they cannot deliver for young Arabs and Muslims what they need most: the education, freedom and jobs to realize their full potential and the ability to participate as equal citizens in their political life.

We are going to have to wait for a new generation that “puts society in the center,” argues Perlov, a new Arab/Muslim generation that asks not “how can we serve god or how can we serve the state but how can they serve us.”

Perlov argues that these governing models — hyper-Islamism (ISIS) driven by a war against “takfiris,” or apostates, which is how Sunni Muslim extremists refer to Shiite Muslims; and hyper-nationalism (SISI) driven by a war against Islamist “terrorists,” which is what the Egyptian state calls the Muslim Brotherhood — need to be exhausted to make room for a third option built on pluralism in society, religion and thought.

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