So It Goes

My Election Night Wish

LAST YEAR I read a terrific book by Adam Goodheart called 1861: The Civil War Awakening.  As the title suggests, it’s about the eve and early hours of the American Civil War and the myriad factors that pushed the nation inevitably into it. Goodheart paints a vivid picture of a nation so profoundly fractured and its citizens so jaded by any possible last-ditch compromises that war became truly – and sadly – the only logical next step.

The tension Goodheart described felt a lot like what I was feeling in 2011, and now, on Election Day 2012, I feel it just the same. Please don’t misunderstand me: I didn’t think then we were on the precipice of a 21st century America civil war, and I still don’t. To say so would be overly alarmist and minimize how badly damaged America was in 1861.

But the sense that the conflict is unstoppable and, yet, unsustainable is all too familiar today. That's why I don’t think it’s far-fetched to say that, whoever wins the White House and Congress today, their biggest challenge will not be rescuing the budget, boosting the economy, solving the health care conundrum, grappling with the flaring conflicts and looming security threats around the world and settling our strained relationship with nations such as China.

Tough and important as those are, our leaders’ biggest and maybe most difficult problem will be defusing a highly fraught social and political atmosphere that pervades all of public discourse these days.  Indeed, it’s obvious that we can’t solve the big problems because we don’t have a modus operandi and a modicum of trust for moving ahead. Today (and for a while now) we have two large blocs of Americans who not only disagree about what should be but also about what is. It’s hard to find common ground and to solve problems when there are two often competing views of reality.

I fancy myself as rather post-partisan – that is, able and willing to look past what my preferred party and ideological peer group says. But that’s probably more wishful thinking than anything. No one, certainly not I, can be completely free of partisan bias.

Like so many others, I see mostly wrongheaded thinking and misperception on the other side of the spectrum and sensible, practical thinking on mine. And, in case my other blog posts aren’t obvious enough, I’m also burdened by the firm belief that the “other guys” are mostly responsible for the vituperation, intellectual dishonesty and vicious partisanship that has so poisoned the air and paralyzed our problem solving in the last number of years. But I accept, too, that they probably feel, with equal conviction, the same about “our guys.” That’s what we’re dealing with.

If I were President (oy vey), I’m not sure I’d know what solution to try first. This is really hard, especially for either Obama or Romney, men who are so strongly disliked and mistrusted by those who oppose them. They have to be part of the solution to this, but surely can’t do it alone. Who else is responsible? Media? Politicos? Citizen activists? Entertainers? Business leaders? Unions? Yes, all of those and more.

I’m sure political philosophers and civil society experts are way ahead of me on this, but I can think of at least a few values that all of us need to embrace if we’re going to move away from constant and continued conflict. I’d like to hear what others might add too.

• We need a little less sanctimony, the sense that we alone stand on the highest and holiest ground. Maybe that’s true for some of us at fleeting moments in our lives, but not as much as most of us probably think.

• We need a little more compassion. I don’t mean love or even respect, though those are nice values, too. I mean a real effort to understand where that other person or party is coming from and why. That won’t – and needn’t – require me to abandon my position for someone else’s. Indeed, we probably better understand our own views the more we get to know others’.

• We need a lot less presumption. Too often, based on only a snippet (sometimes unintelligible) of information, we form strong assumptions about what our adversaries (or even fellow travelers) are thinking or about what motivates them. Whether he is trying to trigger class war or motivated by racism,  we presume to know precisely what’s going on in that other person’s head, even when we’re really only reading tea leaves.

• We need more honesty, about ourselves and others. As Mark Twain once said, “When in doubt, tell the truth. It will confound your enemies and astound your friends."

• We need to see one another as real human beings not as abstractions. It’s so easy, and misleading, to “know” everything about another person by relying on shorthand labels like “liberal,” “conservative,” “socialist” or “libertarian.” I do this all the time and am constantly surprised by how, when I meet a real, live person from one of those categories, they often don’t fit as neatly as they should.

• We need a lot more humility. That is, we have to develop the capacity to recognize that we’re not always right and to declare ourselves more gently when we are right.

Universal values? Basic decency? The stuff we were supposed to learn in kindergarten? Yeah, it’s all of that. Concrete and comprehensive enough to heal a nation? No, not even close. But this is what our nation should be talking about immediately, tomorrow morning. This is the most urgent item on our national agenda. The usual confrontation that characterizes our civic life these days is killing us.

Our current slide into further incivility and division seems as inexorable as it might have to American citizens of 1861. I'm hard pressed, frankly, to figure how we might truly turn it around. But while the citizens of 1861 had, by that time, exhausted all hope that conflict was avoidable, we can still save the day. We have no other choice.

Jeff

"Emblematic" of Evangelical Christians? I Hope Not

AMID THE VOLUMINOUS coverage of yesterday's caucuses, the Washington Post ran a feature photo today of a family from Rock Rapids, Iowa, next to a headline "Witness Politics: Their Faith is in Santorum." It's the sort of 'glimpse of the inner world of voters' that attempts to offer a little authenticity to the volumes of blather that pundits produce to fill so much air time.

Both the husband and wife who were featured told the photographer they would vote for Rick Santorum, and the caption describes them as "emblematic of evangelical conservatives."

The extended caption (I'm going with the text in the printed edition, which is slightly different from the online copy) goes on to say that the husband and wife said :

[T]hey couldn't vote for Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.) because she is a woman, for Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.) because of his anti-war views, for Mitt Romney because he is a Mormon, for former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) because of his infidelity and for Texas Gov. Rick Perry because he didn't get past the surface of the issues.

Assuming this couple is truly "emblematic of evangelical conservatives" (and let me point out that the Post owes readers and their subject a bit more to prove this is empirically true -- a snapshot of two people does not a demographic profile make), I'm a bit startled to see that they would make this sort of admission publicly, let alone think it in the first place.

Now, there are a truckload of reasons not to vote for Michele Bachmann. But to say categorically that she is unfit to be President because she is a woman, well, wow. Forgive my precious naivete, but are there still a lot of people in America who think this? And do they really think it's no big deal to say it out loud without any apparent embarrassment ? Haven't we gotten past that one out?

And then what about their view on Romney? Believe me, I'm aware of the theogical (and maybe it's even social and cultural) discomfort many evangelical Christians have when it comes to Mormons. But are we still living in a country where religion is a make-or-break factor in some people's judgment of their fitness for higher officer, or, presumably, anything else? (Well, when it comes to Muslims in particular, as I have discussed frequently in this blog, yeah.) Would I be justified in dismissing a candidate of a certain faith (say, an evangelical Christian), even if that person is clearly qualified and completely in synch with my own political views?

The comment about Paul is slightly more complicated, I think, though it raises questions. It's tempting to conclude that the couple here is "pro-war" because they rule out Paul for his "anti-war" views. But they could mean that, while war is undesireable and should be avoided at all cost, it is sometimes an option we have to choose. (Paul is, apparently, categorically against any sort of military action, or so I understand.) That's not such an unreasonable position, but I personally would not have been comfortable characterizing my vote so simplistically, knowing how much misunderstanding might be lurking in the vagueness. Maybe the journalist owed them a little more clarity than this. Or maybe she got them just right.

As for their objection to Gingrich: no surprise. Same for Perry, though I would argue (as The New Republic has in this excellent essay) that none of the Republican candiates got "past the surface of the issues." (Democrats are not immune from this at times, either, by the way.)

I'm hesitant to make any broad-sweeping generalizations about evangelical Christians based on this isolated example. Indeed, much as I may disagree with many on certain issues, I sincerely believe most evangelical Christians are representative of the whole of society, which is to say they have good and decent intentions. And this could be a case of bad translatiby the newspaper.

But, not that any will listen to me, but if I were an evangelical Christian, I would step up and say that these two are not at all "emblematic" of their community. And, if I were Rick Santorum, I would do the same. Otherwise, we're left with the feeling that they embrace pretty unfortunate views. And Santorum would need to prove to me that as President of the United States, he will represent all the American people.

Jeff

No Lone Perpetrator Behind the "All-American Muslim" Controversy

WHAT SURPRISES me most about much of the discussion that has swirled around The Learning Channel's "All-American Muslim" program is how surprised many seem to be about it.

The shameful anti-Muslim fervor that tripped the wire of wall-to-wall coverage this time is part of a troubling and growing pattern, and it was not, as some of the discussion seems to imply, the work of a lone perpetrator. Lone perpetrators don't get this much traction unless the conditions are right in the first place. And they were.

The program (which I have never watched) reportedly portrayed Muslims in Michigan as, well, all-American -- which is to say, not especially unusual Americans. They carried on their lives -- as most Muslims in America do -- rather prosaically.

Indeed, as one Muslim American wrote in a Wall Street Journal essay, "The plotlines featured in the previews -- a young couple preparing to wed, another planning the arrival of a baby, a high school football coach putting his athletes through grueling practice -- seemed high on sweetness and low on drama. Since the ordinariness of a Muslim life is something I experience everyday, I felt no need to have it demonstrated for me on television."

That banality may have been bad TV (a criterion that hasn't kept other such reality shows from getting good ratings), but it was a red flag for the Florida Family Association, which has a reputation for dangerous intolerance.  The all-American Muslims on the show just didn't square with FFA's central assumption "that Islam and those who practice some of it’s [sic] deviant rules have been doing so for thousands of years and are a threat world wide including in America."

Enough has been said, I think, about how businesses by Lowe's and Kayak faltered morally by caving in (only "in part", they say) to FFA's campaign to gin up a false threat about Islam and the Muslims among us. These businesses and the many other people who bought into this bigotry should really be ashamed, and I'm pleased to see there's been a big groundswell of condemnation for their views. Their behavior is about as un-American as it gets.

Before someone tries to take this discussion in direction that is beside my point, let me stipulate, as I have in previous posts  that, yes, there are Muslims who are truly a violent threat to Americans and other "infidels". They scare the shit out of me, and the world must stop them. End of disclaimer.

(But I'm also convinced (based on empirical research and lots of anecdotal evidence of my own) that the vast majority of Muslims do not buy this extremist notion of Islam. In fact, for good reason, many despise these miltants more than even the FFA.)

One of the nutrients that enriches soil for the sort of bigotry FFA cultivates is the noise we hear from advocates against sharia law. These folks have convinced themselves that Muslims have an agenda to replace secular U.S. law with Islamic (sharia) law. They have conjured this completely out of thin air by pointing to (real) Islamically based theocracies such as Iran as the model of what most Muslims want to do in America. They leave aside that, unlike the Irans of the world, the U.S. has a strong and resilient legal tradition that prohibits this very possibility.  (I don't think it's a stretch to assume, by the way, that most of these same people would be untroubled if Christian theology replaced much of American civil law. These details get in the way.)

As far as I can tell, the anti-sharia-ists still represent a minority view in the U.S. According to a recent opinion study, a substantial majority of Americans reject the notion that American Muslims ultimately want to establish sharia as the law of the land in the U.S (61 percent disagree, 30 percent agree).

But, wait: why don't a much higher number of Americans see the anti-sharia crusade as snake oil? I'd like to see more than 90 percent, but I guess that's dreaming.

And if anti-sharia-ists are in the minority, how is that, as the New York Times reported, "Since last year, more than two dozen states have considered measures to restrict judges from consulting Shariah, or foreign and religious laws more generally. The statutes have been enacted in three states so far." All of these are likely to be struck down, even by sensible conservative jurists, as unconstitutional.

One of the most visible (but far from only) evangelists for the dangerous lie about sharia in the U.S. is none other than Newt Gingrich. Because he is such a profilic dispenser of so many whacky views (even the danger of electromagnetic pulses!), I probably shouldn't be surprised that his espousal of anti-sharia nonsense over the last 18 months or so got a lot less attention than it deserved. Until recently, that is, when his candidacy.for the Republican presidential nomination began to surge and heightened scrutiny followed. 

Back in July 2010, Gingrich delivered a speech in which he defiantly declared that no court anywhere in the United States should be "allowed to consider sharia as a replacement for American law. Period." He claimed that:

"radical Islamists want to impose sharia on all of us - for legitimate reasons. Let me be clear: you can respect your adversary without agreeing or giving in. They have profound and deeply held beliefs, and one of the great challenges for securalists is they can't understand the level of passion that a belief, which is derived from an underlying religious form, leads one to have, which is why, frankly, deeply believing Christian and Jewish Americans have a much better understanding of what's going on than do secular intellectuals from deracinated unversities looking out of their ivory tower trying to wonder what it is that would lead people to kill themselves and having no comprehension of the emotions and the depth of passion.

...[S]tealth jihadists use political, cultural, societal, religious, intellectual tools and violent jihadists use violence. But in fact they're both engaged in jihad, and they are both seeking to oppose the same end state, which is to replace Western Civilization with a radical imposition of sharia.... Sharia in its natural form has principles and punishments totally abhorrant to the Western world and the underlying basic belief, which is that law comes directly from God and is therefore imposed upon humans and no human can change the law without it being an act of apostasy is a fundamental violation of a tradition in the Western traditiion, which goes back to Rome, Athens, and Jerusalem and which has evolved and given us freedom across the planet on a scale we can hardly imagine and which is now directly threatened by those who oppose it.... The principle of sharia is painful execution, not just death.... [It] is a direct, mortal threat to virtually every value that the Left has.

Whew. Sorry to bog down the discussion here, but I think it's instructive to see how much Gingrich mixes up a bunch of ideas that sound really smart but have no relation to one another when you look closely. It's what gives him the appearance of being an intellectual. In this short space he includes:  irrelevant attacks on "secularists" in their "deracinated" "ivory towers (but wait, by opposing the threat of sharia, isn't he playing a "secularist" himself?); chastisements of those who belive that "law comes directly from God" (but won't that offend many folks, like those at FFA, who think the same thing about their own bibles?);  and "respect" for the very adversaries who are such a threat to Western civlization.

Imagine the justified hue and cry that would follow a speech from a similar prominent figure who made the same sort of statements about Christian theology or Jewish law. But it's striking that Gingrich can say things like this and get only a shrug from most, if that.

But the worst problem is his use of truly trivial examples that offer no proof whatsoever of a concerted effort to impose sharia law on America. Later in the speech, Gingrich talked about a legal case in New Jersey in which (according to Gingrich) a judge excused the violent acts by a man against his wife because they were an extension of the religious law (Islam) the man follows.

No, Professor Gingrich, as terrible as that ruling may have been (a higher court rightly overturned it), that's not an example of how Muslims are trying to impose sharia on American law. It's a misapplication of important U.S. laws that allow reasonable accommodation of a person's religious beliefs. (For example, in some states Jews can be exempted from laws that require autopsies, which are prohibited under Jewish law.)

It's telling, too, that Gingrich appeared to have jumped on this bandwagon last year (and, at the same time, contributed to it) when he was openly entertaining the idea of running for President. Similarly, 2010 was the time when his views appeared to moving toward the extremist outlook of many Tea Partiers, and he was effusive in his praise of them. Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions, but, if I'm right, it's sickening to think that he's fanning flames of bigotry just to win votes. His only other defense is that he doesn't realize he's doing it. Either way, that's not what I call presidential material.

What's scary is that these are the sorts of examples Gingrich and like-minded zealots have relied on to generate the rage against Muslims. In other words, like the FFA's critique of "All-American Muslims", the fury is based on a made-up threat, a straw man. Indeed, research and anecdotal evidence suggest that most Muslims support America's tradition of separation of religion. This means the controversry is really about pure ethnic hostility, not about a clash over the "big ideas" and "values" guys like Gingrich pretend to stand for.

I'm not pinning all the anti-Muslim fervor in the U.S. on Gingrich or even on the others who peddle the anti-sharia gospel. There are plenty of other sources of the misinformation and hostility about Muslims in America, to name a few: the guy in Florida last year who threatened to burn Korans; the people who turned the Muslim community center in Lower Manhattan into a sinister symbol; Herman Cain's ominous declaration earlier this year that he would never have a Muslim in his cabinet, and so on.

So while there is no excuse for how Lowe's and Kayak panicked when they heard that there was something subversive happening at TLC, one can almost understand why they reacted the way they did. They can probably feel the way the wind seems to be blowing. It's reminiscent of how the entertainment industry responded to Joseph McCarthy's bluster in the 1950s.

It is dangerous and, if I may borrow a sentiment, a sin, to traffick in lies that one religious minority is a mortal threat to the rest of society. As a Jew, I find that chillingly familiar and scary. As an American, I'm ashamed and worried about the future of this country and the ideals that have made it great. 

Jeff

Cordoba House and American Pluralism

I'M BEGINNING TO WORRY THAT the Cordoba Initiative, which is building a community center a couple of blocks near the site of the destroyed World Trade Centers, took America's claims of being one of the world's most pluralistic cultures a bit too much to heart.

Not that we shouldn't have expected and even understood some opposition to the plan. After all, Ground Zero is practically -- and rightly -- sacred to so many in this country and around the world, and the crimes there were unabashedly carried out in the name of the Islam. Even to someone like me, who has no objection to the building of the the facility -- which will be known as Cordoba House and contain, alongside other secular facilities, a mosque -- I see why it makes some uncomfortable. Symbols are powerful. Our message to them cannot simply be "get over it."

From the little bit I've read about the Cordoba Initiative and its leader, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the builders of the Cordoba House are trying to create a catalyst of peace and reconciliation. The Cordoba Institute promises to "steer... the world back to the course of mutual recognition and respect and away from heightened tensions" and to "serve the Muslim and non-Muslim community." That may sound a bit earnest, but hardly threatening, and I'll take earnestness over cynicism any day.

But, aside from those who feel the symbolism is awkward, there are still others for whom opposition has more to do with a profound antipathy toward all things Muslim.

As Laurie Goodstein of The New York Times reported in an article this past Sunday, all over the U.S. there are fierce fights against a growing presence of Islamic houses of worship.

"At one time, neighbors who did not want mosques in their backyards said their concerns were over traffic, parking and noise — the same reasons they might object to a church or a synagogue," Goodstein wrote. "But now the gloves are off.

"In all of the recent conflicts, opponents have said their problem is Islam itself. They quote passages from the Koran and argue that even the most Americanized Muslim secretly wants to replace the Constitution with Islamic Shariah law."

One photo accompanying the Times story shows a woman with a picket sign that reads: "Mosques are monuments to terrorism."

If there's any question that such highly vocal anti-Islamic acts are anomalous in the U.S., the Pew Research Center last year found that 52 percent of Americans say they are "very concerned about the possible rise of Islamic extremism in the United States," up 46 percent in 2007. Depending upon how you look at this finding, it could be a lot worse, but it could be a whole lot better, too.

There are at least two notably and disconcerting assumptions embedded in Americans' fear of Muslims that deserve some scrutiny.

First, that the people involved in the erection of this mosque -- and, to many, just about all Muslims -- are "radical Islamists," as one other high-profile leader has branded them, or "terrorists," as the woman with the sign claims. According to these folks, Muslims are categorically guilty of being a threat until proven innocent.

Second, that Muslims are bent on the "imposition of sharia," or Islamic law, on American society. Never mind that our First Amendment case law has pretty strong safeguards against such an outcome, which is ironic because many of the conservatives who are warning of Islamic takeover of American society are probably the same ones who have fought vociferously for getting rid of those safeguards. Also, this charge has the ring of 19th and 20th century cries about the "Papists" who would be a Trojan Horse for the Vatican in its attempts to Catholicize the U.S., and of the Jews' alleged subversion of American culture with their alien theology. As Ecclesiastes said, there's nothing new under the sun.

Obviously there are some Muslims -- call them "radical" or "militant" or whatever you wish -- who truly intend to do harm to Americans and other "infidels." Their goal, no doubt, is to impose their religious laws on secularly governed societies -- as they have in a number of countries. No doubt the people who subscribe to this approach are a bad and dangerous lot. Ground Zero is Object Lesson No. 1 of this. These people give the vast majority of good Muslims a bad image and scare the hell out of non-Muslims.

But those increasingly vocal and angry Americans who paint all Muslims with the same brush of such "radicalism" are doing great damage not just to the objects of their rage but to America itself. We Americans fancy our society as "exceptional," particularly in the way we manage our pluralism. Aside from some notable and tragic examples, we've lived up that to that ideal a lot better than most nations.

It feels rather unremarkable to say this, but apparently it needs to be said: if we go out of our way to alienate an entire category of people -- in this case, a large and growing part of our nation -- based on some misguided assumptions, we will as a nation be much less well off and hardly exceptional. 

Jeff

From Abstractions to Human Beings

I GIVE A LOT OF CREDIT to Professor Henry Louis Gates, police Sgt. James Crowley, and President Barack Obama for making good on their promise to sit in the lawn of the White House and share a few beers.

Not that I think it will really overcome the issues of race and intergroup relations in the United States or because I believe the act of throwing back a few beers is really all that therapeutic. (Why do we so often  think that beer can settle anything?) Nor was this a truly thorough and candid grappling with this most difficult issue. (In fact, I've been struck in recent years by how little good public discussion we've had on intergroup relations.)

Rather, I think it takes a lot for three people who have been at odds with one another -- especially in such a public arena -- to back away and face each other calmly. They did the right thing. There were no apologies at this meeting. But the gathering (Obama rightfully scoffed at the term "summit," which many in the media had given it) modeled something that will help us better address the divides among America's ethnic, religious and racial groups: it converted all the players from abstractions to real, complex human beings.

The one who was most abstract, of course, was Crowley. We know a lot already about Gates, one of America's most prominent public intellectuals, and we know him to be a good and gifted man. (I have been a big fan of his for years.) Needless to say, we know a lot about Obama, too.

Crowley was new to the public consciousness. And in the immediate aftermath of the confrontation on the front porch of the Gates' house in Cambridge, Mass., Crowley was the racial profiler, prone to lord his white policeman's privilege over the black man. 

I'm not the one to say which was right and which wrong (and that's where President Obama slipped when he passed judgment before getting all the facts). A family therapist I know of once said that when family members fight, they see different truths and narratives, each one legitimate in their own minds. So there really is no truth that any objective third party can get his hands around. That's, I think, the best we can make of the altercation between Gates and Crowley. And that's why no apology. The truth is somewhere between the two of them, but don't ask me what it is.

But when we started to get more facts, the archetype of the policeman got blurry and the real person came into focus. It turns out that Crowley actually leads trainings for other police about avoiding racial profiling and that he's had a fairly exemplary career on the police force. We gather that Gates had gotten pretty vituperative during the incident, and that's something that taxes the patience of many policemen, and I can imagine why. Suddenly, what looked like a "stupid" arrest (as the President put), was a little less simple to explain.

What's important is that transformation in the eyes of the public -- from cartoon to three-dimensional person. Because of the severe separation among many difference racial and ethnic groups in most of the places we live, and there's not enough opportunity for that kind of process. Without firsthand interaction, we jump to shorthand -- one may call it prejudice -- not because we are all virulent bigots (though they are out there) but because we have too little information to go on.

Formal dialogues between members of one group and another are helpful. But, speaking as someone who not only participated in more than my share of these but also administered a program dedicated to "promote tolerance" among students, I think such formal dialogue has its limits. It can be, on the one hand, a bit too earnest at times and, on the other, a little too threatening to some. (I remember going into the restroom during the break from one such dialogue session and speaking with another white participant -- a local public official -- who muttered that his objective was to say nothing and get out before he got into trouble.) And I've seen these sessions in the hands of a less-than-skilled facilitator create intergroup tensions when they did not exist.

What's the answer, then? In addition to holding judgment as long as we can until we know the full story (something neither I nor any mere mortal will ever be immune from), learn more about the people in our midst. We can't wait for that education to come us -- as the incident in Cambridge did out of nowhere. We must seek out information, with honest curiosity, about other groups, about their lives, their circumstances, their traditions, their founding myths. We can never know everything we need to know about others, but if we don't make any effort we cannot make any progress. We are, in that case, practicing indifference.

As Holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel has said, indifference is the real problem when it comes to intergroup conflict. "The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of beauty is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, but indifference between life and death."

Jeff

"What is the Matter With You People?"

Yesterday's Sunday comics section included a Doonesbury strip that I think says a lot about the relationship between the Islamic world and the West.

The strip (which is a "Flashback," meaning it ran once before, I think in 2007) shows two soldiers -- one of them American, the other Iraqi -- in an armored vehicle patrolling through a tough neighborhood in Iraq. Their dialogue begins:

American soldier: "Ready to do this, partner?"
Iraqi soldier: "ZZZ."
AS: "Great!... Okay, that's the safe house -- the big white building at the end of the street."
IS: "I know this house. The owner is Sunni scum."
AS: "Oh, yeah?... Well, intel wants us to capture the guy alive."
IS: "This will not be possible. I am sworn to vengeance!"
AS: "Why? What'd he ever do to you?"
IS: "A member of his family killed a member of mine."
AS: "What? When did this happen?"
IS: "1387"
AS: "What is the matter with you people?"

Whether or not this exchange reflects reality, Garry Trudeau is saying, within only a few frames and with only few words, that cultural differences between the Islamic world and the West are immense. Trudeau reflects not a "clash of civilizations," as so many of us want to believe exists, but rather the first-time encounter of two people who don't really know or understand one another.

The American in the strip views Muslims as one big, backward and dysfunctional family that is trapped in the past and unprepared for the present. He finds the Iraqi's talk of sectarian revenge -- based, no less, on something that happened more than 600 years ago -- incomprehensible. The Iraqi does not understand the cultural vocabulary of the American or fully grasp the reality of the moment. He sleeps through his patrol and is willing to ignore what sounds like a reasonable command, possible triggering a dangerous showdown.

For his part, the Iraqi embraces history as something truly meaningful and relevant today, even if it means ignoring the realities of the present. Americans tend not to look back too much on the past, or to understand why it stands for so much to other cultures.

I'm not knowledgeable enough to say how fair these characterizations are generally of people on both sides Muslim/Western divide. But I'm glad that Trudeau gets us thinking at least about what we all don't know. That's precisely what Akbar Ahmed, a professor of Islamic studies at American University, does, though he can fill in the gaps for us. Ahmed (about whom I have written before and for whom I have done some p.r. work) is foremost a translator between people who do not know each other and who literally and cultural speak completely different languages.

In other words, he occupies a critical role at a time when Islam and the West needs people like him the most. Through his many books, documentaries, lectures, diplomacy (he was Pakistan's High Commissioner to the U.K.) and plays, he has been a prime interpreter of Islam to the West, helping us get past the misguided shorthands we have about Muslims. At the same time, he interprets the West to the Islamic world, which swirls with myths and downright bizarre assumptions about Westerners.

If there is one message that Westerners would do well to take from Ahmed, it is that Islam is more complex than we truly comprehend. In his recent book, "Journey Into Islam: The Crisis of Globalization," which was the product of anthropological visits to eight or nine Islamic countries in the Arab Middle East, South Asia and East Asia, Ahmed leaves no doubt that Islam expresses itself in countless ways, often within a single country or region and even within a single family.

Moreover, he argues that the very encounter with the West -- lately through the fast-moving, border-busting phenomenon of "globalization" -- has brought about many different challenges and responses in many parts of the Islamic world that were previously mostly insulated from the outside.

Islamic reactions to that encounter with the outside world are mixed, Ahmed shows, describing them using three broad typologies. "Islam's response to the forces of globalization... takes at least least three distinct forms: mystics reach out to other faiths, traditionalists want to preserve the purity of Islam, and modernists attempt to synthesize society with other non-Muslim systems" he writes in "Journey Into Islam." "Because most people in the West do not understand the complexity of Muslim society through models such as [these], they reduce understanding of U.S. relations with the Muslim world to good versus evil, and divide Muslims crudely into moderate versus extreme."

These three models "have been in play for the last two centuries," Ahmed  told an audience at the Brookings Institution last June when discussing his book. "This is an ongoing dynamic, an ongoing dialectic within Muslim society. Since the first impact with Western colonization in the middle of the 19th Century, and you are seeing, in a sense, the drama being played out right now. 9/11 was a catalyst. It escalates the drama, but it does not create the drama."

America's and the West's failure to understand the complexities of the Islamic world, Ahmed writes in the book, has led to much of the miscalculation and disaster that is the Iraq war. The U.S., he says, "needs to quickly appreciate the nuances of these societies. Muslims widely complain of the lack of justice, widespread corruption and collapse of law and order. Too frequently, the United States backs strong military intervention, unaware of how this support encourages turmoil and how negatively this support is seen within a country."

At the Brookings event about "Journey Into Islam," scholar Stephen P. Cohen seconded Ahmed's analysis by pointing out that a "wonderful euphemism that is circulating around Washington is kinetic solution, that is, beating up somebody or shooting them. Kinetic solutions don’t work. If you have to use a kinetic solution, that is, shoot them, you have already lost the war especially the war of ideas."

"America’s great strength," Cohen continued, "its practical approach to problem-solving, has really become a weakness of ours. We don’t take the time to listen, to understand, if not to respect, at least to understand other cultures and civilizations. The policy implications here are really get out and talk, meet with people, reestablish the libraries around the world. We used to be culture centers for many countries. I know in Pakistan when I first went there I think there were eight different American centers. There are zero now. In Pakistan and other countries, the American center, the American library was often the cultural and intellectual center point of local and national dialogue about their states as well as relations with the U.S. These kinds of institutions have disappeared around the world. They are still relevant. They are still powerful. We really need to rebuild them to be able to compete in the world."

Ahmed's criticisms of the Muslim world are the mirror image of those he has of the West.

• "Muslims need to recognize that the most effective 'weapons' for addressing their grievances are knowledge and reason, rather than brute force...."
• "Muslim leaders must [also] strive to live up to their own vision of the ideal society. Too many Arab rulers use the crutch of Israel directly or indirectly to avoid working toward democracy until that 'problem' is solved."
• If Muslims had reacted to the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq with restraint rather than violence, it "would have impressed people in the West and created sympathy for Muslim causes. As it happened, the beheadings, the suicide bombings, and the hyperbolic rtheroric of violence... confirmed already existing steteotypes of Muslims. Very soon, people in the West began to equate violence and terrorism with Islam itself... and see all Muslims as inherently bloodthirsty...."

So, to paraphrase the American soldier's question in the Doonesbury strip: What is the matter with all these people? "Ignorance of other cultures leads to serious policy mistakes, whether conducting warfare of peace negotiations," Ahmed answers.

The real task, then, is to accelerate the pace with which we eliminate that ignorance among as many people on both sides of the divide as possible.

Jeff

Still No Goode

YOU'D THINK THAT THE CONTROVERSY surrounding Congressman Virgil Goode's intemperate remarks this week about Muslims would have drawn some statesmanlike responses from his colleagues on Capitol Hill and in the Republican Party. But most appear to be conveniently out of touch.

Justin Rood, an intrepid correspondent for TPMMuckraker.com, one of the subsidiary sites to the liberal Talking Points Memo blog, has spent the last few days phoning the offices of Republican members of Congress to get them to comment and, presumably, distance themselves from Goode. He has also called the campaign offices of some of the prospective Republican candidates for President.

"Of course, it's the Friday before Christmas, so many offices were empty, press aides were unreachable, or members were traveling," Rood wrote yesterday. "And who knows -- a couple flacks said they'd respond by 5 p.m., so they've got a few minutes. But I think it's pretty safe to say that no GOPer wants to touch this issue. Calls to the RNC, the NRCC, all GOP presidential candidates, the House GOP leadership, and a number of rank-and-file Republicans garnered not a single response. Were it not for a snoring dog here at the D.C. bureau, I would say I could hear crickets."

Also, according to the New York Times, the White House has officially demurred on this matter, too, stating, “We’re aware of the situation, but no judgments have been made.”   

In fairness to the Republicans, it's a little disingenuous to expect to get calls returned at this time of year. And, of course, it's a little bit of a cheap shot to be aiming only at one party in this case -- though we we can be sure the Dems will take full partisan advantage of Goode's intolerance.

Rood did point out in a December 22 posting that "Sen. John Warner (R-VA) released a statement yesterday in which he offered that he respects the right of all members of Congress to freely 'exercise the religion of their choice, including those of the Islamic faith utilizing the Quran.' No mention of Goode's proposed immigration restrictions on Muslims."

All that said, why wouldn't the Republicans see this as an opportunity to speak out proactively to position themselves than as one to hide? They shouldn't be waiting for a reporter to call. Hiding will just confirm to everyone either that 1) they really are a party that doesn't stick up for minority rights, or that 2) they buy into or are afraid to shoot down the mythology of the dangerous Muslim.

The truth is, I have no reason to believe that most Republicans fit either of those two attributes. So why don't they -- or one or two of their leaders -- just come out and say clearly that what Virgil Goode said is beyond the pale and has no place in American society? I know that's hard for colleagues who work together and have to count on one another to trade legislative goodies. But aren't there more important issues at stake here?

It's worth pointing out, by the way, that prominent Jewish groups -- such as American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League -- have spoken out against Goode's statements. That might strike some, who have rarely seen these groups agree with the likes of the Council on American Islamic Relations, which is getting a lot of ink around this controversy, as unlikely. But all these groups agree that wholesale characterizations of an entire community based on stereotypes are pretty fundamental transgressions in a pluralistic society.

And that's all the Republicans really have to say. It's pretty basic American civics, which every politician should wear proudly on his or her sleeve.

Jeff

No Goode

A FEW WEEKS AGO, I WENT TO A LECTURE by a supposedly prominent academic, who was giving a small group of us a primer on the history of Islam.

He recounted the life of Muhammed and then proceeded to summarize the teachings of the Koran in such a way that you would think it only preaches warfare, frightful intolerance of non-Muslims (especially Jews, whom, he pointed out, it classifies as swine and monkeys) and other rather barbaric practices.

I am terribly uninformed about Islam (which is why I went), but even this seemed to me to be rather skewed. When he was ready to take questions, I raised my hand and told him that I was shocked by what seemed like a selective reading of the Koran. Had there been any Muslims present, I said, I would have been ashamed.

I should say that he was trying to make the point that many of the more extremist, militant Muslims in the world today have been influenced by the passages he cited from the Koran. But even when I pressed him, he wouldn't really come out and make a clean and clear distinction between those Muslims and the vast majority of others. They all buy into the whole package, he implied, adding that it is the essence of their faith was not to question the word of Muhammad. What I heard was that, basically, those Muslims are all alike. With that, I walked out on his lecture. [I'm not mentioning any names here, by the way, because this was not a public event.]

The news yesterday about Congressman Virgil Goode, a Republican from Virginia, reminded me of this. In a letter to his constituents, Goode became the latest conservative to attack Keith Ellison, a newly elected Democrat to Congress and a Muslim who has said he will take his oath of office by placing his hand on a Koran. 

Though you'd think that Goode has more important issues to worry about these days, he wrote in his letter that he does "not subscribe to using the Koran in any way."

Well, apparently this is about more than which book is the right one to swear by. Goode also said that "The Muslim Representative from Minnesota was elected by the voters of that district and if American citizens don't wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration, there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran."

Goode added that "We need to stop illegal immigration totally and reduce legal immigration and end the diversity visas policy . . . allowing many persons from the Middle East to come to this country," Goode said in the letter. "I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America."

Well, I've got to give Congressman Goode credit for one thing: He doesn't cloak or code what's on his mind. He says exactly what he means, which is keep those subsersive Muslims out of here.

When he talks about preserving the "values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America," he's got it wrong. America's values and beliefs don't reflect one religious group's ethos; indeed, that's the ethos of America.

He also uses the word "fear," which is, I think, where his story and the one I related at the beginning come together. There is a long history of politicians and respected academics who have warned of the damage one group will be doing to our country and even the world. Virtually every new immigrant group to America has been the object of this kind of fear-mongering (ironically, by the way, Keith Ellison is not an immigrant but an American-born convert to Islam).

To be sure, there are many Muslims living around the world today who frighten me, as they are bent on threatening all infidels (Israel, Jews, Christians, Americans, Europeans, and, yes, modern Arabs and Muslims) with violence and even annihilation. I'm the first to recommend vigilance against them, both domestically and abroad. But they are only a sub-section of Islam; in fact, they are an enemy of much of the rest of Islam. So to say that all Muslims follow that same philosophy, or at least espouse a view that they are superior to all others, is misinformed and it crosses a dangerous line.

Muslims themselves bear some responsibility in making that distinction clearer to the rest of us, and some do a better job than others, in my opinion. Some, for example, couple speak out more forcefully against the deplorable acts their co-religionists conduct in the name of Islam. It is difficult, I know, but the rest of us need to see the bright line.

But non-Muslims have a responsibility, too. We need do some work to understand who Muslims are, even if we've never met a Muslim ourselves (and that lack of contact is a major problem). We need to learn that of the millions who practice Islam, the odds are that far more of them must be good people just like most of the rest of us -- people who just want to prosper, do what's best for their families and their communities and live side-by-side with others.

In other words, we must have faith -- if I can use that word -- that what most people in the world, including Muslims, want is to live in peace. That's what most of the rest of us want. Why, Congressman Goode, would Muslims be any different?

Also, if Congressman Goode really doesn't care for Muslims, would he prefer not to be treated by a Muslim doctor should he be rolled into an emergency room at a hospital? Would he give away all the technological innovations that Muslim scientists in America have developed for U.S. companies? Would he tell the only available cab in Washington, D.C., during a torrential downpour to pass him by because it was being driven by a Muslim cab driver?  How seriously beholden is he to his "values and traditional beliefs"?

It is curious to me that Keith Ellison's rather innocuous statement that he will take the oath on a Koran has set off a bunch of conservatives like Goode, Dennis Prager (who, has been censured by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum because he sits on its Council, or board) and some evangelical Christian groups offended that he would not use the Chrisitian Bible. It also troubles me that an otherwise respected academic would beat around the bush to suggest that all of Islam is out to get us.

What is it with these guys?

Jeff

Can the Clash of Civilizations Be Averted?

MORE THAN A YEAR AGO, I was introduced to and did some work with Akbar Ahmed. It’s difficult to describe in a sentence or two who Ahmed is and what he has accomplished in his 63 years. But, in short, he has been a high-ranking official in the Pakistani government and one of its ambassadors to Great Britain. He is a well-published scholar and documentarian, principally on the history and modern world of Islam. Indeed, his gift has been interpreting Islam to Western audiences that otherwise have difficulty understanding it -- an important role these days.

Right now, he holds an endowed chair in Islamic studies at American University in Washington, D.C. From that perch he not only inspires many students but also lectures widely around the world and is a regular commentator on just about every major media outlet you can think of.

Last year he co-edited (with Brian Forst) a volume of essays (called "After Terror: Promoting Dialogue Among Civilizations) by many prominent world figures and scholars that essentially asked them to answer the question: can the clash of civilizations be averted? Mind you, he was asking this question before September 11, 2001.

Akbar Ahmed is a determined optimist. But he is a realist, too. Indeed, as one who has traveled extensively throughout both the Islamic world, Europe and the U.S., he is all too familiar with the challenge. He sees better than most the huge barriers we must overcome and the conflicts and misunderstandings that exist now.

I say all this by way of directing you to an interview with him by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of 9/11 attacks. (You might also be interested in a companion interview with Samuel Huntington, on the 10th anniversary of his book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.)

Some excerpts from the interview with Ahmed:

• “Even if [Muslims are] successful and affluent, they still have the sense that the world is not quite in control and they feel under siege. They feel their honor is being threatened. That's why I use the title [in his 2003 book] Islam Under Siege. And I argue that it's not only Muslims feeling under siege. I argue that after 9/11 Americans also feel under siege. Israelis feel under siege, surrounded by the Arabs. It's a time in history when several societies are feeling under siege.”
• “My advice not only to Americans but to Muslims — is to make an effort to visit each other's places of worship, to understand each other's festivals. Muslims have several major festivals during the year. We have what is called Eid to end the month of fasting. We have a great celebration where we commemorate Abraham, a very respected figure in Islam. Once Christians and Jews begin to understand this common connection with Abraham, and Muslims in turn begin to understand something of Judaism and Christianity, friendships grow.”
• On lecture tours with Judea Pearl, the father of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was beheaded by terrorists in Pakistan: "It was a very difficult dialogue at first and a very uneasy one because I was aware that I would be sitting onstage, and I would be seen as a symbol of a civilization that had produced the killers of Judea Pearl's son, Danny Pearl, in Karachi, the city where I grew up.... And yet the goodwill that Judea and I had toward each other, which was very apparent even early on, then blossomed into a friendship that helped us overcome the initial awkward patches of the dialogue. The momentum grew and we have conducted about 12 of these dialogues. We went to the United Kingdom, Canada and all over the United States. We are meeting again shortly in San Francisco. We have hundreds of people coming to listen to us and participate.  The success was twofold: Judea is able to keep alive the memory of that remarkable young man, his son, and I am able to pay tribute to that memory. Both of us are able to transform that into a bridge between Jews and Muslims and between American and Muslim civilizations...."
• “Not everyone was happy. There was a headline in a Pakistani paper that said 'Akbar Ahmed, Sole Muslim Voice Wanting Dialogue with the Jews.' I got a lot of threats and nasty emails from people saying 'I don't approve of what you're doing,' 'you're selling out' and I was even called an 'Uncle Tom.' It was not very encouraging."
• “I made a commitment to dialogue after 9/11, and I stuck by that commitment. Dialogue by itself is empty. It's rhetoric, it's a cliché. Two people talk, they go home and nothing happens. But dialogue that leads to understanding leads to the idea of actually getting to know each other, of understanding. I've gotten to know Judea. I've come to know the pain, the history and the traditions of his people. From this dialogue we have seen the possibility of friendship and friendship changes everything. When people become friends, they don't think of blowing themselves up and killing each other. They are prepared to make compromises, to change, to accommodate.”

It seems almost naive to say at such a chaotic and dangerous moment in time that we can avert the clash of civilizations. But Akbar Ahmed makes it sound possible. Indeed, he makes it sound like a task from which none of us can afford to shrink.

Jeff

The Devil Is a Jerk

A COUPLE OF WEEKS AGO, my family wanted to see the movie "The Devil Wears Prada," even though I really didn't want to (not the first great sacrifice I have made for my family). I had read some lukewarm-to-bad reviews and really don't care about what appeared to be a foofy profile of the fashion industry, something I care about even less.

But I misjudged. Not that it was one of the greatest triumphs in the history of filmmaking. In fact, the story was fairly formula. About 15 minutes into it, you could predict with near precision pretty much where it was going to go.

Other than Meryl Streep, who delivered a masterful performance (I truly could not wait for her next entrance and wished that she would never leave any scene), all the  other actors were appealing and carried out their roles about as well as the script would allow. (Not surprisingly, the exception was Stanley Tucci as Streep's loyal henchman, who took his role a lot further, I suspect, than even his script writers could have imagined. His character revealed a tender, independent interior aching to break out of a brutal, up-tight exterior.)

But what really grabbed me about this film was what it said about the working world. Streep's character, Miranda Priestly, based on the editor of Vogue magazine, Anna Wintour, is miserable, sadistic and manipulative  to everyone around her: not only to the subordinates who report to her, whom she seems to delight in putting through her equivalent of Marine boot-camp humiliation tactics, but also: fashion designers, who would kill to have a mention of their lines on her pages; would-be challengers to her throne; her husband; and her own publisher, the only one who, other than God (if she believes she is not the deity herself), to whom she is theoretically answerable.

She runs her powerful kingdom -- and it is powerful, shaping the fortunes of businesses and tastes of millions -- through fear and intimidation. And, as played by Streep, she does it without ever raising her voice and sometimes through a mere pursing of her lips or other cryptic signals that everyone is required to understand.

What's amazing to me is how all these people jump to her every command -- whether it has to do with the serious business of the next issue of the magazine or to the peculiar way she likes her cappucinos. And, God forbid, anyone should slip up, or she will bring down her wrath upon them.

I was discussing this with a colleague at work yesterday who had seen the movie four times already (she loved looking at the clothes, she said). Even if this an exaggeration of what the real Anna Wintour is like (and the word is, it's not, but, in fairness to Ms. Wintour, I'm not relying on first hand information), I said that it's a pretty sad state of affairs. And, I said, how is it possible that Vogue is still able to put out what every has to agree is a good product given its culture of fear and intimidation -- let alone, from my vantage point, clownish snootiness?

Well, my colleague argued (though she wasn't defending Wintour or Streep's Priestly but rather playing devil-wears-Prada advocate), maybe the nastiness only extends as far as Wintour's immediate circle.

But, I countered, my experience is that the person at the top tends to set a tone in an organization's culture, and if that leader shows all the managers down the line that this kind of behavior is okay, they will feel safe in behaving the same way. I don't want to take this comparison too far, but, hey, how do you think so many in fascist societies feel free to carry out hideous atrocities and other garden-variety indignities on their fellow citizens? Because they know they can do so with impunity and, indeed, might even be affirmatively rewarded for acting that way.

What's more, doesn't it seem natural that, when hiring others, a leader will look for qualities that he or she likes in himself or herself? If that's the case, who do you think will populate those upper-tier and middle management positions?

Also, I said, how could putting people under such perverse pressure bring out their best and get them to perform well? My colleague answered that in an environment like that people know that if they don't perform well they can be replaced easily. "There are thousands of others who would die to have your job," Streep keeps saying.

And that's probably true. And it's probably true that there are many supremely talented people who are willing to put up with these sorts humiliations to practice their craft at a place like Vogue, which will be their ticket to admission into virtually any other design, editing or photography job anyplace else -- if they can just stick it out long enough at Vogue.

But if they are dying to get out almost as much as they are dying to get in, what's that say about the place? If they perform to spite their boss not because of her leadership, vision and encourgement, how good could that be for the finished product, really? And doesn't that mean that the success of the place balances precariously on a weak foundation that would take only a good, well-focused competitor to undermine?

The exhibit I have in my argument is that I happen to work at a place that is about as opposite as one can get to the kind of environment portrayed in "The Devil Wears Prada," and I can say without any hyperbole that my firm is one of the best performing in its class. People around the industry -- clients and competitors -- acknowledge this, and many of my colleagues who have worked in other firms say ours is one of the most collegial environments they've been in. I think that, not fear and intimidation, is what brings out the best in us and makes us succeed.

As I said in an earlier blog about jerks, bad behavior ought to be a factor when leaders are selected. But, sadly, it's usually overlooked or rationalized ("he's so brilliant," "she's a genius, you know," "he's a very good fundraiser," "I'm not sure what we would do without her,"... ), even when it's obvious and unbearable to everyone. (My experience is that the people who have the real power to remove a jerky leader, his or her superiors, are the ones who who are least likely to bear the brunt of his or her antics, even if they're aware of them, which is why these problems never gets addressed and the underlings keep taking their hits or just keep quitting).

If enough of us would just stop playing along with them and indulging their jerkiness, we could put them in their place -- far from the corner offices and positions of authority where I think they do more damage than good.

Jeff