When Muslims are under threat: "Is it safe to pray?"

Religious freedom at its most fundamental is when people are threatened for peaceably practicing their faith.  And religious freedom is indeed under attack in the US and the UK....but the victims are not CHristians.

Two news stories today expose western Islamophobia in heartbreaking fashion.

In Virginia, a 17 year old girls was killed on her way home from evening prayer

Nabra was reportedly among four or five teenagers who had left the mosque in the early hours of Sunday. It was not unusual for worshippers to walk after nightfall in what is usually a safe neighbourhood.

A Fairfax county police statement said: “An investigation determined she was walking outside with a group of friends when they got into a dispute with a man in a car. It appears the suspect, Darwin A Martinez Torres, 22, of Sterling, got out of his car and assaulted the victim. Her friends could not find her and police were called to help.”

Her body was found, reportedly beaten to death.

In London, another case of a van driving on a sidewalk to mow people down--but this time, the targets were Muslim worshipers leaving their mosque.  The crowd caught the driver and the local imam reportedly protected him until the police arrived. 

SITE, the terrorism-monitoring group, said Monday white-supremacist organizations were celebrating the attack in Finsbury Park, while pro-ISIS groups used it to incite Muslims.

The Guardian adds,

A report by the Council on American-Islamic Relations found that anti-Muslim hate crime incidents rose sharply in 2015 and increased a further 44%, from 180 to 260, in 2016. Human rights groups have called on Donald Trump to be more forceful in speaking out against acts of violent intolerance.

An article in the Atlantic looks at the consequences for the community.

"It’s a really scary question to have to think about, to be honest—to even have to be in the state of mind where you have to ask the question, ‘Is it safe for me to go pray?'"

That, friends, is what religious persecution is.

Allies and assumptions: I'm not, but....

The rise of rights for LGBT including the right to marry, and in some places, non-discrimination protections, has depended upon two important phenomena:  first, the willingness of LGBT people to come out and identify themselves (often at great risk), and second, the willingness of straight allies to stand up for the gay minority.

Indeed, those non-gay allies, the people who are members of the majority, are an important and vital voice for the community. A gay person advocating for their rights is different than a  straight person  arguing for  gay rights. The straight person is assuming not to have a dog in the fight, so to speak:  it's as though they are legitimized because of their dis-interest.

Still, there's a difference between people who can say "I'm not gay, but I support the community", and allowing someone to assume you are gay yourself, even if you aren't.  It's joining the marginalized where they are.  Less effective in some ways, more effective in others.  It's also what happened with the twitter tag earlier this year, #jesuischarliehebdo.

As many of you know, I'm a non-believer who regularly attends an Episcopal church;  a secular Christian, as I call myself.  I'm active in many ways in our church and I am not in the closet about my lack of belief.  Outside of that community,  I'm gay, an academic and a scientist,  identities that are  widely assumed to be non-religious, if not actively hostile.

Recently, I have had several instances of identifying myself in my professional community as church-friendly, and I have decided to let those people assume that I am a practicing Christian.  It shakes them up:  it breaks the mold about me and challenges easy assumptions both about religion and who believes. 

These are little things.  I asked vendors at a local convention exhibition for donations of spare t-shirts for the homeless program run by our church (the vendors, who are generally not scientists, were quite friendly about it.)  This amused my wife, who  had wondered if I would bring church into the request.  

More strikingly, though, was pointing out to my university that a major committee meeting currently slated for Good Friday and Holy Saturday was occurring on a significant religious holiday and personally quite inconvenient to me, which seems to have left them nonplussed.  

Here's the thing:  I am fairly confident  that they would never schedule a meeting on, say, Rosh Hashanah.  It seems odd to me  that they would not have the same awareness of Easter as one of the two major annual Christian holidays in the country, thus making the assumption that none of us on the committee would be celebrating.

I will be interested to see whether the assumption that I am a Christian has any further consequences.   However, I should add that I was careful to identify myself as participating in the Episcopal church.  The fundamentalists can find their own advocate!

And all this is turning around in my head as I look at the dangerous rhetoric surrounding Muslims in this country.  

What is the most effective way to be allies to our Muslim brothers and sister? Is it to use our position of privilege as non-Muslims to speak out?  Or is it to allow the assumption to be made that we are ourselves Muslim?  I think in particular of the Christian professor at evangelical Christian Wheaton College who was suspended for donning hijab in solidarity with the Islamic community  (though they now  claim it's because she said God is the same God for Muslims and Christians.  But so much for tenure....).

How do we most effectively advocate for justice? 

Ugly Americans

Yesterday during the San Bernardino shootings, I was following Twitter trying to figure out what was going on.  Under the tag #SanBernardino, people were posting their horror, news updates, and what they could learn about police activity on the scanner.

When the suspect's name came out (which it did quite early on), there was a pile-on by the right wing about Muslims and terrorists.

Never mind that this man was a born US citizen.  His foreign name and presumed Muslim religion was enough for them to come out, the Islamophobes.

Never mind that mass shooters are disproportionately white males, most of them probably Christian.  Those aren't terrorism.  They aren't brown.

It's more than enough to make you sick.

This morning, we all react in horror and confusion about why this man and his wife went to shoot up his co-workers at a holiday party. His family is stunned.  CAIR, the Council for American-Islamic Relations, immediately deplored the shooting.

Expect Trump the demagogue to call for mosques to close and a registry of Muslims.

But we've seen that before.  Do we really forget that this is how the Holocaust started, "othering" the Jews in Germany?

Do we really forget so easily the "othering" of our own Japanese American citizens, expropriating their property and putting them in concentration camps?

Be watchful.  Speak out. Build bridges to our Muslim brothers and sisters.  Wearing hijab in this climate is a brave move for any Muslim woman;  be supportive.

We must stand up to the ugly Americans.

Discrimination against white Americans?

Last week, the Brookings Institute and the Public Religion Research Institute released a report based on a new survey, asking about diversity in America on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. In amongst the expected questions about opinions of Islam and immigration, there is this gem:

Nearly half (46 percent) of Americans agree that discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities. A slim majority (51 percent) disagree. 

• •A slim majority of whites agree that discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against minority groups, compared to only about 3-in-10 blacks and Hispanics who agree. 
• •Approximately 6-in-10 Republicans and those identifying with the Tea Party agree that discrimination against whites is as big a problem as discrimination against minority groups.  
• •Nearly 7-in-10 Americans who say they most trust Fox News say that discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities. In stark contrast, less than 1-in-4 Americans who most trust public television for their news agree."

I admit to being flabbergasted. i don't know how any white American can possibly imagine they suffer discrimination anything similar to a black person in this country. I just don't.

It's right up there with the idea that Christians are somehow victimized, despite being a clear majority. And then there's this:

More than 8-in-10 (83 percent) Americans say that self-proclaimed Christians who commit acts of violence in the name of Christianity are not really Christians. In contrast, less than half (48 percent) of Americans say that self-proclaimed Muslims who commit acts of violence in the name of Islam are not really Muslims.

Got that? So Anders Breivik, who massacred his fellow Norwegians and justified it by his Western Christian culture, isn't REALLY a Christian, but Mohammad Atta, who flew a plane into the WTC, is a stalwart Muslim.

I despair.

Muslim and gay

Religion Dispatches has an interview with Scott Kugle, who is Muslim and gay and the author of Homosexuality in Islam: Islamic Reflection on Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Muslim Activists.

As scholar Scott Kugle knows well, to be both Muslim and gay means the possibility of having to "come out twice"—with the likely chance of encountering either homophobia or Islamophobia (or both), depending on the context.

But in recent years, a new discussion of Islam and sexuality has emerged, led in large part by professor Kugle, who teaches South Asian and Islamic Studies at Emory University. Having written many books on Islam, including Homosexuality in Islam: Islamic Reflection on Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Muslims (2010), he is currently working on a collection entitled Voices of Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Muslim Activists (forthcoming in 2012, NYU Press).

Read the interview here.

The face of hate (updated)

Glenn Greenwald points out the virulent anti-Muslim hate growing in this country, and shows us a video from a protest last month in Orange County, CA where vicious comments were hurled at the Muslim community attending a charity event. Some of the remarks came from a sitting Congressman. Greenwald writes,

I think what was most striking about that video is that the presence of small children didn't give these anti-Muslim protesters even momentary pause; they just continued screeching their ugly invective while staring at 4-year-olds walking with their parents. People like that are so overflowing with hatred and resentments that the place where their humanity -- their soul -- is supposed to be has been drowned.

Look familiar? Make no mistake: we've seen it before, in different guises.







Should this vile speech be blocked? No! But it's important that we see it, that we know who engages in it (a sitting Congressman????!!!!) and we react accordingly. Only if we know about it can we counter the ignorance, fear, bigotry, and hatred that it represents.

UpdateIt continues: two elderly Sikhs shot in Elk Grove CA.

Police said Saturday that they don't know why someone gunned down two men – frail from heart attacks and advancing years – as they slowly ambled through a quiet Elk Grove neighborhood during their daily afternoon walk.

Surinder Singh, 67, died Friday afternoon on the sidewalk along East Stockton Boulevard near Geneva Pointe Drive. Gurmej Atwal, his 78-year-old friend, was shot twice in the chest. His family said he was in critical but stable condition.

In a statement released late Saturday, Elk Grove Police Chief Robert Lehner called on witnesses to come forward and said, "We have no evidence to indicate there was a hate or bias motivation for this crime; however, the obvious Sikh appearance of the men, including the traditional Dastar headwear and lack of any other apparent motive, increasingly raise that possibility.

Is the US having a tantrum?

Ekklesia carries this essay by Martin Marty:

The tantrum in the US — let’s call it what it is — against government, taxes, Muslims, and moderates continues to rage, and will through November and perhaps long after.

A child in a tantrum eventually stops stomping and rejoins the family, where speaking and hearing, agreeing and disagreeing, can resume.

In the meantime in these mean times, out of thousands of choices from columns, blogs, and books for analysis, let me select two, one of the best, and one of the worst.

In The New Republic Leon Wieseltier challenges readers with a question: Is Islam, as some defenders say, “a religion of peace?” He answers, “It is not. Like Christianity and like Judaism, Islam is a religion of peace and a religion of war,” depending on which era and which circumstances bring forth “the tendencies” within the religion. To relate terrorism to movements within Islam “is not Islamophobic. . . Quite the contrary: it is to side with Muslims who are struggling against the same poison as we are.”

As for the World Trade Center attacks, he pleads, don’t erect a cross as a memorial. “Christianity was not attacked on September 11. America was attacked. They are not the same thing.”

American Christians who use the cross in their ads against Islam “do not deplore a religious war, they welcome one.”

By contrast, read William McGurn in The Wall Street Journal. Ask yourself what does he and the tantrum-throwers to his far right, the Newt Gingriches and company want? Peace? Moderation? Can you find the beginning of the beginning of a way to peace in the McGurn column?

Note that, for good measure, he links American liberalism to radical Islam. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, “perhaps” a “moderate Muslim,” Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations, and others support “‘interfaith dialogue,’ and called for American Muslims and non-Muslims to ‘break bread’ together.”

Not on your life, says columnist McGurn. Stooping lowest he asks, “What are the fruits” of the efforts at moderation and dialogue?

These efforts, he writes, produced as fruit the “obscure Florida Pastor” and other would-be Qur’an burners, those who tear out pages of the Qur’an in front of the White House, and—this one is half right—“angry marches between pro- and anti-Islamic Center crowds,” all to be blamed on one “typical experiment in liberal bridge building.”

He implies that there should be no efforts at “interfaith dialogue,” “breaking bread together,” or differentiating moderates from extremists in all faith traditions.

Whom to blame for the current rages? Muslims, of course; one Imam, of course; and “folks who cling to their liberalism and their antipathy to people who aren’t like them.”

McGurn does have the grace to scold “Republican politicos” who, thanks to “liberal hectoring,” exploit tensions, “saying no mosque near Ground Zero until we see a church in Saudi Arabia.”

Which sets us up for Wieseltier’s best line: “I also hear that there should be no mosque in Park Place until there are churches and synagogues in Saudi Arabia. I get it. Until they are like us, we will be like them.”

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(c) Martin E. Marty The author is a leading US commentator on religion - and the Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago. His biography, current projects, upcoming events, publications, and contact information can be found at www.illuminos.com.

With grateful acknowledgements to Sightings, and the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School, Illinois, USA.

Attacking the other

Will Bunch, writing at the PHiladelphia INquirer blog Attytood:

In 2010, a large swath of the American public -- led by ratings-mad media mavens and immoral politicians like Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin -- had declared out all-out war on "the Other" in America in all its alleged forms, from immigrants to Muslims to non-white aides working in the West Wing of the White House and of course the president himself. ...

So a smooth-talking, mixed-race Democrat in the white house becomes a demon, and the code word "Muslim" begins to represent everything they are afraid of. Muslims and gays.

Bishop Gene Robinson wonders at the timing of the new religious demonization relative to the sudden movement on GLBT rights. He writes,

Now, however, it appears that gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people’s success in achieving equal rights in this country is impending and virtually assured. It makes me wonder, then, if a new “enemy” is now being chosen—Muslim Americans and Islam.

However, it's worth remembering that the common thread to both of these is the opposition of the rigid Christian Right. Christopher Hitchens picks it up, writing about on Glenn Beck's tent revival on the mall:

In a rather curious and confused way, some white people are starting almost to think like a minority, even like a persecuted one. What does it take to believe that Christianity is an endangered religion in America or that the name of Jesus is insufficiently spoken or appreciated? .....Saturday's rally was quite largely confined to expressions of pathos and insecurity, voiced in a sickly and pious tone. The emotions that underlay it, however, may not be uttered that way indefinitely.

And in fact, already the ugly side of American bigotry is out in the open, fanned by religious fervor.

• Item: A New York taxi driver is attacked by a knife-wielding passenger who asked "Are you Muslim?"
• Item: a gay candidate for office in Kansas receives a death threat
• Item:A series of attacks against GLBT people in Covington KY by white supremecists
• Item: Arson against the construction site for a mosque in Murfreesboro, TN
• Item: Seattle shop clerk attacked as a Muslim (though he was probably Sikh)
• Item: Teenagers harass and fire shots at a mosque in western NY

Yes, there is some pushback. Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York, is offering a spirited defense of the non-mosque that is proposed for not-ground-zero, and so did Orrin Hatch of all people. There are other examples of people who get it. But the simmering violence under the surface in this declining republic continues to bubble over. Too many people are afraid and ignorant, and the spark of their fear is fanned by strident demagogues wrapped in religion.

It seems to me that if any issue cries out for moral voices, it is this one. Can anything be more fundamentally opposed to both American ideals and truly Christian values? Or perhaps it is easier to think, "I did not care, because I am not a Muslim." At some point, we will all be "other". Will anyone speak for us?

Of mosques and history: fear and loathing in America

The US is not at her best right now. In the ascendant is an old fashioned nativist party, not unlike the aptly named “Know-nothings” of a previous age . We’re seeing this play out in the conflict over Islam in this country, from sea to sea. In New York City, in Murfreesboro Tennessee, and in Temecula California, local groups are protesting the presence of mosques (or in the case of NYC, an Islamic prayer center—not a mosque). The press colludes in this, allowing the nativists to set off “The Muslims” from “Americans”. A whopping 70 % concurs (poll) and the President is taking heat for defending the Constitution Amazingly, some attempt to justify this blatant prejudice by claiming that Islam is not a “real” religion, that somehow our Constitutional freedom of religion does not include Muslims.

Writing in the NY Times, Ross Douthat opines,

There’s an America where it doesn’t matter what language you speak, what god you worship, or how deep your New World roots run. An America where allegiance to the Constitution trumps ethnic differences, language barriers and religious divides. An America where the newest arrival to our shores is no less American than the ever-so-great granddaughter of the Pilgrims.

But there’s another America as well, one that understands itself as a distinctive culture, rather than just a set of political propositions. This America speaks English, not Spanish or Chinese or Arabic. It looks back to a particular religious heritage: Protestantism originally, and then a Judeo-Christian consensus that accommodated Jews and Catholics as well. It draws its social norms from the mores of the Anglo-Saxon diaspora — and it expects new arrivals to assimilate themselves to these norms, and quickly.

This seems perceptive, but then Douthat puts himself firmly in the 2nd group.

For Muslim Americans to integrate fully into our national life, …. they’ll need leaders whose antennas are sensitive enough to recognize that the quest for inter-religious dialogue is ill served by throwing up a high-profile mosque two blocks from the site of a mass murder committed in the name of Islam.

They’ll need leaders, in other words, who understand that while the ideals of the first America protect the e pluribus, it’s the demands the second America makes of new arrivals that help create the unum.

Our friend Counterlight has some more comments specific to the NY conflict.

The America of a “distinctive culture” that Douthat celebrates is the same America that was violently opposed to Catholicism in an earlier time. Indeed, in the 1700s, Catholic priests were forbidden entry into New York. Ironically, in Murfreesboro in the 1920s, there was opposition to construction of a Catholic church not unlike the protests today against the mosque.

[O]hers were not pleased by the anticipated construction of a Catholic church. The local and vocal chapter of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) took exception….. One of the organizational catalysts [of the Klan] was the massive immigration of that period from the largely Catholic countries of eastern and southern Europe. This new Klan preached racism, anti-Catholicism, nativism (favoring of native inhabitants over immigrants) and anti-Semitism. It was organized at a national level and flourished particularly in the Midwest where it took control of several state governments.

Hmmmmm….. sound familiar? Despite Klan protests and a march that included many prominent citizens, the new Catholic church was dedicated in Murfreesboro in 1929. Apparently memories there are not long enough.

But it doesn’t stop with protests against religious buildings. In Pennsylvania, an archeological dig has uncovered the bones of Irish laborers in a mass grave from the 1830s, and with them, signs of violence that killed them. The Irish immigrants were loathed and feared at that time. Nearly 200 years later, there is a spate of violence against Mexicans in New York. . We have changed our definition of The Other, but we are still attacking him with violence.

In 1942, Japanese Americans, including legal citizens of this country, were imprisoned in remote prison camps throughout the west: no due process, because there was no crime. In 1988, the nation finally apologized to the few survivors. I took these photos in Manzanar, where the remains of one of the camps sits on the bleak plains below the Eastern peaks of the high Sierra. This was a brutal, bitter, horrible place where we as a people inflicted cruelty on our fellow citizens simply for being a recognizable minority.

We seem destined to re-live the hysteria of the past, over new groups, the gays, the Muslims, anyone who the mob can be inflamed to fear and loathe. I'm surprised that Lady Liberty in New York Harbor doesn't pick up her skirts and walk back to France. There's little here to admire anymore.