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Authority, Community & Identity article

An Interfaith Encounter with America (Part 2)


In my spiritual quest that led to political Islam, I had one all-important stroke of fortune. Despite my zeal, I did not happen to get recruited by al-Qaeda!

Instead, I landed in a group called Tanzeem-e-Islami, a Pakistan-based movement that had a few unique elements going for it: (1) it encouraged followers to learn Arabic and engage the text of Qur’an directly for understanding and inspiration; (2) it advocated a nonviolent strategy of change; (3) it called for the “revitalization of faith with an intellectual dimension,” insisting that the ideas of the movement must appeal not merely to the masses but also resonate among the “intellectual elite” of society; and (4) it argued in rational terms that the implementation of the laws of God would lead to a more just world. I internalized these elements of Tanzeemi thought by traveling to learn Arabic, remaining true to a strategy of nonviolence, and pursuing the path of higher education.

Ironically, the fourth point — striving to make the world a better place by establishing justice — became increasingly obscure for me with academic achievement. Higher studies tend to take on a life of their own. The relationship between my life as a professor of Islam in Western academia and my original impulses for engaging higher studies as a religious actor had become tenuous until recently. Yet the desire to make my scholarship directly relevant to belief in God and a life of faith has remained a goal that is close to my heart.

While encouraging adepts to pursue the academic study of religion, the Tanzeem did not realize that the wind blows both ways. If the movement had wished for its ideas to influence the great minds and ideas of our time, it should also have been willing to accept the influence of those minds and ideas to shape and transform its own universe. Among the core lessons that I have learned from my journey is that whereas the Shari‘a may be an infallible abstract category that refers to God’s laws, the actual laws are made concrete in the minds of fallible people. Intelligent and sincere believers can and do disagree on what God wants for God’s creation. Pluralism is a fact not merely among faiths, but also within faiths.

This raises the question: to what authority does one turn in order to mediate differences among people? Clearly, this must be a neutral authority acceptable to all parties, and this authority cannot be God or a particular scripture when the interlocutors include atheists and adherents of diverse scriptural traditions. Perhaps a prophet, when present in flesh and blood, has the right to speak in God’s name. But does such an authority exist in a world without prophets?

Islam and Freedom

It might be that an appeal to reason in the public sphere is humanity’s best option. After all, the ability to choose one particular interpretation of religious sources over others requires a capacity for independent discernment. According to Islam, prophets deliver God’s message to people, but they are not responsible for the condition of our hearts or our choices. This is why the Qur’an emphasizes: “The truth is from your Lord; so let whosoever will believe, and let whosoever will disbelieve” (18:29). What purpose would such a revelation have if it did not offer a real choice? Classical Islamic theology (kalām) did not develop such verses into a universal theory of “freedom,” but rather delved into abstract notions about the nature and consequences of human acts, God’s omnipotence, and human responsibility. Instead, particularly in light of American culture and values, what if we were to see in such verses an acknowledgment of the fundamental condition of freedom in which we were created?

Consider for a moment the story from the second chapter of the Qur’an, in which the angels object to the creation of human beings as God’s vicegerents (“caliphs”) on earth because they will “cause mischief therein and shed blood” (2:30). How could this be explained if the very purpose of creation were not in some sense to explore our freedom in the process of an ever-unfolding, entangled, and contentious history of ideas and institutions?

The celebrated Orientalist Ignaz Goldziher once wrote, “Prophets are not theologians.” In my estimation, what he meant by this is that prophets act on impulses driven by the exigencies of the moment. They can live with apparent contradictions, which systematic theologians then later strive to reconcile. It is followers who try to tie everything together into a coherent system of abstract thought. Believers seek black-and-white answers in philosophic systems in an attempt to capture the conviction of Prophets, but these systems are ultimately extrinsic to the prophetic impulse.

Muslims who believe that “Islam” is the absolute truth must learn that they are not supposed to interpret it with prophetic authority. They must relativize their claims in order to contend with counterclaims made by people with alternate understandings of God’s words and ways. Fortunately, this caution is built into the Islamic religious tradition and may be considered an authentic part of the heritage of Islam. Whereas an intense encounter with modernity may lead some believers towards fundamentalism, it may also inspire others to rediscover a spirit of humility in their faith claims.

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Mahan Mirza
Mahan Mirza was appointed teaching professor and executive director for the Keough School's Rafat and Zoreen Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion on July 1, 2019.

An Islamic studies scholar and expert on religious literacy, Mirza brings extensive pedagogical and administrative experience to his roles at Notre Dame, including serving as dean of faculty at Zaytuna College in Berkeley, California, America’s first accredited Muslim liberal arts college. Prior to his appointment as Executive Director of the Ansari Institute, Mirza served as the lead faculty member for Notre Dame's  Madrasa Discourses project, which equips Islamic religious leaders in India and Pakistan with the tools to confidently engage with pluralism, modern science, and new philosophies. 

Mirza holds a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, an M.A. from Hartford Seminary, and a Ph.D. in religious studies from Yale University. He has taught courses and lectured on Arabic-Islamic studies, western religions, and the history of science, along with foundational subjects in the liberal arts, including logic, rhetoric, astronomy, ethics, and politics. He has edited two special issues of 
The Muslim World and served as assistant editor for the Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought (2018).

He is a fellow with the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies at the Keough School and continues to serve as an advisor for Madrasa Discourses.
 
Field Notes article

A New Covenant of Virtue


Central to the vision of Contending Modernities is the interplay between academic research and resources that can be used at the grassroots.  In east London, we are seeing the first fruits of this approach with the publication of “A New Covenant of Virtue.”  The booklet contains an essay by British and American writers on the Quranic motivation for Islamic engagement in multi-faith community organising, alongside a series of short case studies by local Muslim leaders on what this work looks like in practice.

The booklet was launched last week in east London at a multi-faith “Iftar,” the meal with which Muslims break their Ramadan fast each night.

The Iftar drew together hundreds of Christians, Muslims, Jews, and secular leaders, to celebrate a piece of community organising which has been going on during the London 2012 Olympics. This campaign has proceeded alongside the campaigns on the Living Wage, housing and jobs which I described in my previous post.

A Multi-Faith Campaign for 100 Days of Peace

Modeled on the truce that was observed during the ancient Olympics, churches, mosques and schools in Citizens UK called for “100 days of peace” around the Olympic and Paralympic Games. These 100 days are being used to advance the City Safe campaign, which was set up after the murder of Jimmy Mizen in a South East London Bakery in 2008.

In this effort, shops, businesses and other buildings are being designated as “safe havens” that are open to young people fleeing violence, and whose owners commit to working with police to report 100% of all crimes they learn about.  By the end of the 100 days, Citizens UK will publish a map that shows where City Safe havens have been set up during the Olympic period.

The campaign is making wide ripples. Press coverage of the Iftar included reports on MSNBC and in the Independent Catholic News.

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Angus Ritchie
Canon Dr. Angus Ritchie is an Anglican priest. For over twenty years, he has served in parishes in East London involved in community organizing, playing a leading role in campaigns for the Living Wage, affordable housing, and a cap on interest rates. He is the founding director of the Centre for Theology and Community. His latest book, Inclusive Populism: Creating Citizens in the Global Age was published by the University of Notre Dame Press in 2019, and was recently discussed by Pope Francis at a conference of Catholics involved in community organizing.
Authority, Community & Identity article

An Interfaith Encounter with America (Part 1)


“If Islam is so great and things are so wonderful back home, why did you come here?” These words are a vivid memory that I carry with me from my first year in college at an American university in 1992. As an international student from Pakistan who had grown up in a relatively privileged household, my transition to college life in America had promised to be seamless. And in many ways it was, at least outwardly.

Culture Shock

So my culture shock was rather abrupt, coming in the form of a sudden spiritual crisis. In the course of a midnight conversation on religion and politics, a fellow student had jolted me out of my comfort zone with his jarring question: “Why did you come here?” Since that time, I have been on a quest to reconcile the theoretical greatness of Islam with the actual greatness of America. In this sense, my formative interfaith encounter was with America rather than Christianity.

America presents itself to me in religious terms. It has founding (sacred) texts, requires a pledge of total allegiance, strives to shape the world in its own image, and inspires service, valor, and ultimate sacrifice. America is a “way of life.” It has its own set of preachers, warriors, fundamentalists, apologists, dissenters, and enemies. It also has what might be called a sacred historical narrative, complete with “founding fathers,” a “shining city on a hill,” and an “end of history”. My exploration of the relationship of Islam to America has challenged and shaped how I view myself, religion, history, and God.

After going through college sampling Sufi, Salafi, and Tablighi options, I settled into the arms of an Islamist movement with the aim of re-establishing the caliphate, first in one country and then eventually over the entire globe. I learned Arabic, studied the Qur’an in Lahore, attended an interfaith seminary in Hartford, resigned from my position as a career engineer, and ultimately pursued Islamic studies in a secular graduate school in the Ivy League. These various experiences, particularly in light of the anxiety in which we live our lives after September 11, 2001, have allowed me to see numerous parallels between Islam and America. This essay presents a few provocative impressions of such parallels, which are in the end more intuitive than anything else, along with a personal attempt to grapple with my “Muslim-ness” with an ever increasing sense of “American-ness.”

Muslim or American?

Initially, I was inclined to see a contradiction between being a true Muslim and a faithful American. How could one swear allegiance to a country with human-made laws, while Islam calls to submission to the will and law of God? How could one pay taxes that contribute to agendas that one disagrees with, or consider legislation that conflicts with God’s will as legitimate and binding, simply because the whims of the masses, unwittingly cajoled along their path by the power of sinister corporate interests? It is an Islamist movement that prodded me to ask these questions sharply. According to the Qur’an, “It is He [God] who has sent His Messenger with the guidance and the religion of truth, that he may uplift it above every religion, though the unbelievers be averse” (61:9).

The logic of scripture as commanding believers to engage in an all-out struggle in the path of God in pursuit of the supremacy of Islam presented itself as ever so clear. It appeared incontrovertible that the Prophet had in fact left his lifelong career as an example for believers to follow. The Prophet’s method was, in a nutshell, the communication of God’s revelation, the Qur’an, to humanity, along with engagement in an organized effort to make God’s word a lived religious, social, political, and cultural reality. One prophetic report sums it up: “The best of you is the one who learns the Qur’an and teaches it to others.” My task, then, was to learn and teach the Qur’an to the world, spread its ideas, teach its beliefs, and establish its law. This is what it would mean to “make God great.” “God is great” are not mere words to be uttered by the tongue (to say “Allahu Akbar”). The task is to demonstrate that God is great by performing, legislating, and institutionalizing His greatness in the world.

Establishing Justice

In my spiritual quest that led to political Islam, I had one all-important stroke of fortune. Despite my zeal, I did not happen to get recruited by al-Qaeda! Instead, I landed in a group called Tanzeem-e-Islami, a Pakistani-based movement which had a few unique things going for it… and which I will discuss in my next post.

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Mahan Mirza
Mahan Mirza was appointed teaching professor and executive director for the Keough School's Rafat and Zoreen Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion on July 1, 2019.

An Islamic studies scholar and expert on religious literacy, Mirza brings extensive pedagogical and administrative experience to his roles at Notre Dame, including serving as dean of faculty at Zaytuna College in Berkeley, California, America’s first accredited Muslim liberal arts college. Prior to his appointment as Executive Director of the Ansari Institute, Mirza served as the lead faculty member for Notre Dame's  Madrasa Discourses project, which equips Islamic religious leaders in India and Pakistan with the tools to confidently engage with pluralism, modern science, and new philosophies. 

Mirza holds a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, an M.A. from Hartford Seminary, and a Ph.D. in religious studies from Yale University. He has taught courses and lectured on Arabic-Islamic studies, western religions, and the history of science, along with foundational subjects in the liberal arts, including logic, rhetoric, astronomy, ethics, and politics. He has edited two special issues of 
The Muslim World and served as assistant editor for the Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought (2018).

He is a fellow with the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies at the Keough School and continues to serve as an advisor for Madrasa Discourses.
 
Authority, Community & Identity article

Faith Confronts Culture in “American Dervish”


American Dervish, by American actor and author Ayad Akhtar, is set in one of the many places in the world with vibrant Muslim communities.  In this case: Wisconsin.

Akhtar skillfully develops wonderful characters.  As I delved into this novel I kept wanting to find more and more time to read so I could find out what would happen to characters such as the main figure Hayat; Mina, a dear family friend; and Mina’s suitor, the kind Jewish doctor Nathan.  Also, Akhtar powerfully tackles the serious, generally taboo topics of Jew-hatred and domestic abuse.  (This courageous novel goes beyond abstract “anti-Semitism”; American Dervish confronts outright hatred and its real-life consequences.)

Quran “Translation” Conundrum

Along the way, American Dervish has one of the most interesting wrestling matches I’ve seen yet over whether or not to make the Quran accessible in languages other than Arabic for people who do not know Arabic.  (While I as a non-Muslim am an onlooker to these intra-Muslim “wrestling” matches, I myself have sat through more than a few Catholic Masses in Latin trying to figure out why we weren’t using a language the people present would actually understand.)

I’ve read academic paper after academic paper on language and the Quran.  I’ve listened to quarrels about whether renderings of the Quran in other languages should be called “interpretation,” “translation,” or “version.”  Yet none of these analytic discourses have captured potential spiritual implications of this question for individuals the way Akhtar does in American Dervish.  He gives the reader a view into this question through the eyes of the little boy Hayat as he emerges into the first inklings of spiritual awareness and begins to encounter the Quran.

Quran as Toxin vs. Quran as Tonic

Hayat’s father Naveed, an immigrant to the U.S. from Pakistan, where he was raised Muslim, is beyond fed up with those he views as nut-case Muslim fundamentalists.  In Naveed’s mind, “mosque” = “den of hypocrites,” and “Quran” = “fundamentalist fuel.”  Naveed doesn’t want Hayat to go near the mosque and forbids his son from reading the Quran.  At first, none of this means much of anything to Hayat, who is more interested in ice cream and riding his bicycle.

Then Mina, a friend of Hayat’s mother from Pakistan, comes to stay with their family along with her five-year-old son.  Mina is a delight.  She is smart, vivacious, and she has a deep awareness that there is more to life than material possessions and social status.  At the same time, Mina is divorced and now a single mother, a combination considered toxic in her social circles in Pakistan.  Mina and Hayat’s mother hope some time in America will offer Mina some respite, and perhaps even a new lease on life, insulated from the social prejudices of home.

Mina’s spiritual life is rich, and the Quran is foundational for her.  Mina is aware of Naveed’s “allergy” to anything with the label “Islamic.” So she keeps her conversations with Hayat, and eventually her Quran lessons for him, between the two of them.  In these informal tutorials, Hayat awakens to beauty, mystery, and wonder.  Mina emphasizes to Hayat, “[D]on’t just start with memorizing.  Read it first.  See what it means…Words don’t matter if you don’t know what they mean.”  From this, on his own initiative and telling no one, Hayat begins memorizing chapters of the Quran from the copy Mina has given him.  He uses his recesses at school to learn new chapters and practice until he has memorized them.

Hayat keeps hearing about a cousin three years older who has become a “hafiz,” i.e. one who has memorized the Quran.  Every mention of this cousin includes praise and boasting.  Hayat’s sense of relative belittlement and intimidation are only magnified when Hayat discovers that the cousin is coming to the U.S. to attend a family wedding.

Yet when Hayat meets this cousin who is treated like a saint by the family, it turns out the boy is a brat through and through, and quite a crude one at that.  The boy’s father is proud of having invested in a tutor for three years to help his son memorize the Quran, “It cost me a fortune….” says the cousin’s father. “But it’s worth it.  Heaven is worth every penny and a hundred million more.”  As if one could buy heaven, as if this excuses this father for not investing in developing his son’s character.  As for the boy, when he tells Hayat about the experience of memorizing the Quran and his views of the Quran itself, his mouth spews only disdain, disgust, and profanity: “What a f[***]ing nightmare… Memorizing that stuff.  Like drinking castor oil every day for three years.  Jeez-f[***]ing-Louise.”

The Quran for Hayat, on the other hand, is the text from which he has learned about mercy, compassion, kindness, all reinforced by the expression of these values in Mina’s character and her day-to-day life.  These first encounters with the “saintly” Quran-hating hafiz cousin bring fissures of cognitive dissonance into Hayat’s life as he watches cultural prejudice and practice eclipse what he has been learning from the Quran.  These fissures become canyons in the years that follow.

At the family wedding, Hayat and his cousin are called forward to share a Quran recitation with the audience.  The cousin stops scowling just long enough to recite some verses.  Much to Hayat’s surprise the recitation is in Arabic, a language this cousin from Pakistan does not know.  The cousin is commended with looks of pride, the imam tells him “Wonderful….Just wonderful,” and there is robust applause from the audience.  Next up is sweet little Hayat, who flawlessly shares part of the memorization he has worked so hard on.  But it is in English, Hayat’s native and only language.  The Imam, surprised to hear the Quran in English, interrupts Hayat rather than letting him continue.  So ends his recitation.  The best the imam can muster is to call it “original” while the cousin tells Hayat he’s a “moron.”

The Heart of a Marriage

The community’s praise for text without heart and condemnation of heart-based encounter with the text is a mirror of the community’s attitude to the marriage itself at this ceremony.  I can’t tell you whose wedding this is, for that would be a serious spoiler.  But this much becomes clear: a marriage that launches on such a trajectory comes to a landing that is gut-wrenching.

As for Hayat, a would-be American dervish of sorts, his head is sent spinning more into confusion than enlightenment, and Akhtar handles the complexity of this well (or, mostly well).  Hayat is not simple.  Even little Hayat struggles, and for a little while allows himself to be pulled along by cultural and social currents in spite of how counter these currents run to what Mina has taught him; Hayat learns the hard way that the results of this are terrible.   (Less deft are Akhtar’s depictions of Hayat’s emergence into adolescence which are at times just plain jarring, more jarring than seems fitting to this novel.)

Overall, however, Akhtar weaves this tale well.  And the confusion Hayat develops is the kind of confusion that can — eventually — be intensely fruitful.  It is the confusion that asks hard questions when practice conflicts with the guidance of prophecy.  It is the confusion that comes from thinking critically and from seeing the devastating human costs of failing to do so.

Raising Problems Is the Start to Solving Problems

The challenges American Dervish holds up to Muslim communities left me more hopeful than sad.  A hefty portion of the novel is a powerful challenge to those Muslim communities that are silent about internal problems of Jew-hatred and domestic violence.

The unrelenting efforts of Muslims who are asking hard questions and thinking critically about serious issues within their community are deeply moving and impressive.  In works such as The Prohibition of Domestic Violence and Islam and The Jew is Not My Enemy, Muslims themselves are the ones questioning some of these customary practices and examining what the Quran and the Hadith actually have to say on these topics.  Significantly, this challenge is coming from inside Islam, from courageous individuals such as these authors and from the author of American Dervish, who are using their talents to raise protest.

Protest Akhtar does, delivering in American Dervish a one-two punch.  I mean this almost literally.  As the plot around Mina and Nathan unfolds, I was so saddened by what happens to them that it felt like a fist to the gut.

And this is the brilliance of American Dervish.  Akhtar expresses the human consequences of Jew-hatred and domestic violence not in statistics but much more powerfully through the medium of a novel, in the lives of individual characters.  In his creations of Mina and Nathan, and Hayat too, Akhtar walks the reader into a dreamland of a budding, genuinely loving relationship, and then through a wasteland of human devastation and destruction. And his depictions of both genuine love and terrible destructiveness are beautifully crafted. Akhtar is yet another Muslim who is silent no more.

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Jennifer Bryson
Jennifer S. Bryson is a Visiting Fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC. from 2009-2014 she served as Director of the Islam and Civil Society Project at The Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, New Jersey. She studied Political Science as an undergraduate at Stanford, medieval European intellectual history for an M.A. in History at Yale, and Greco-Arabic and Islamic studies for a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, also at Yale.
Field Notes article

Faith-Inspired Community Organising and the London Olympics


It is just days before the Opening Ceremony for the 2012 Olympics.  A significant — though usually undiscussed — factor in the success of London’s Olympic bid was the diversity of cultures and faiths in the city, and particularly in east London, where the Olympic Park is located.

Community Organising and the Olympics

In December, I blogged on the work of the Contending Modernities project in east London and its research on Christian, Muslim and secular involvement in community organising. A noteworthy recent development is that Britain’s community organizing alliance — Citizens UK — has played a significant role in shaping aspects of the 2012 London Olympics.

This 2005 article gives a flavour of the way churches and mosques that are part of Citizens UK have been working together over a number of years.  This has borne fruit in a number of very tangible ways.  First of all, those working on the construction of the Olympic Park, and those working in it during the Games being paid a living wage.  In recent months, Citizens UK’s churches and mosques have hosted “Jobs Fayres” that have helped over 1200 unemployed locals find work at the Olympics.  Research by the Institute for Public Policy Research has contrasted the effectiveness of community organizing in identifying “job ready” local people with that of private contractors paid significant amounts to do much the same thing.

Earlier this month, community organizing won a third significant victory, as the Mayor of London signed Mayoral Decision 1028. This creates east London’s first Community Land Trust (CLT).  It is the fruit of almost a decade of campaigning by churches and mosques in London Citizens.  They have campaigned for CLTs in successive Mayoral elections – winning commitments from all the main Mayoral candidates at 2500-strong Citizens Assemblies (the most recent of which is described here by Ruhana Ali).   Along with celebrating this success, churches and mosques in east London are now turning their attention to the need for affordable, community-owned housing on the Olympic Park after the Games.

Forthcoming research

This summer will see a number of publications connected with the Contending Modernities project:

  • A Covenant of Virtue will tell the story of Islamic involvement in community organising, both in terms of its theological motivation, and through case studies.  This short booklet is aimed at increasing Muslim engagement in public life, and deepening the dialogue between Muslims and people of other faiths and worldviews.  As the Olympics fall within Ramadan, we hope to launch the booklet at a multifaith Citizens Iftar during the Games.
  • In the next few months, we will also be publishing two pieces of qualitative research on Christian and Muslim engagement in community organising — exploring the different motivations for this work, and its wider impact on the way diverse communities negotiate and promote a common good
  • We will also be publishing some work on the role of faith communities in the response to last summer’s riots — and their ongoing importance in “reweaving the fabric” of civil society.

I will be blogging again soon about two longer-term pieces of research, which Contending Modernities is conducting in partnership with Theos, a London think tank.  One of these will be largely empirical, involving fieldwork in east London and three other English cities, and the other will be a more conceptual piece, growing out of my forthcoming book on morality and religion.

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Angus Ritchie
Canon Dr. Angus Ritchie is an Anglican priest. For over twenty years, he has served in parishes in East London involved in community organizing, playing a leading role in campaigns for the Living Wage, affordable housing, and a cap on interest rates. He is the founding director of the Centre for Theology and Community. His latest book, Inclusive Populism: Creating Citizens in the Global Age was published by the University of Notre Dame Press in 2019, and was recently discussed by Pope Francis at a conference of Catholics involved in community organizing.
Authority, Community & Identity article

Which Language, Whose Vernacular?: Vatican II and Liturgical Politics in Bangalore (Part 3)


What Language Represents

While the first two demands of the pro-Kannada group in April 1990 were specifically about the issue of language in the liturgy, their next two demands reflected broader concerns: that (more) Kannada Christians be ordained priests, and that churches in villages be renovated. Clearly for the nationalists, the denigration of the status of their language is one of the key reasons for the perpetuation of inequalities vis-à-vis important roles — not only in the Church but also in a rapidly modernizing society. Even while the new archbishops have been chosen from within the state of Karnataka, the groups remain dissatisfied because most bishops chosen are not of Kannada origin (even though they may be fluent in the language).

The conflict therefore cannot be seen as purely a matter of language. To a great extent, it has to do with economics. With the shift of the liturgical language from Latin to the vernacular of the majority of every parish, Tamil-speaking priests began to enjoy prime (urban) postings, whereas Kannada-speaking priests were relegated to rural areas. So it was not simply a slight to nationalist pride in their language, but felt to them like salt in their wounds that they were also denied the privileges of city life and assigned to “backward” areas where roads and electricity were often lacking. Some priests I interviewed, who identified with neither language group though they spoke both languages, mentioned how their confreres who were assigned to these areas complained about lacking the basic comforts that they had even in seminary, and a sense of insult that they were denied this precisely because they were sons of the soil.

To attempt a resolution of the issue, one archbishop mandated a rotation of assignments so that nobody would be indefinitely relegated to a rural posting. But this apparently only brought up further complaints from priests, who were unable to adjust to either environment. The rapid modernization of the city meant having to deal with the growing prominence of English as a necessity for survival in the global economy.

There are further complications to the story. For instance, some told me that many of the so-called Kannada priests did not actually speak Kannada as their mother-tongue, but rather, Telugu, which is the official language of another neighboring state, Andhra Pradesh. This makes their insistence on the primacy of Kannada all the more peculiar, because their criterion for worth is neither mere fluency in the language, nor simply one’s having been born and raised in the state of Karnataka, but having Kannada as a mother-tongue. Their grievance is not simply against Tamils, but also against Konkani speakers (from regions like Mangalore, also in Karnataka), who enjoy positions of prominence in the Archdiocese — for instance, the past three archbishops are of Konkani origin.

Here a further issue emerges. In the principal Kannada Catholic Association’s recent complaints against the present Archbishop, Bernard Moras, it is noticeable that in berating him for not appointing more Kannada bishops (i.e., those whose mother-tongue is Kannada), they also accuse him of favoring his “brahminical community.” While many priests and religious I spoke to denied that the caste system had anything to do with the problems in this Archdiocese — they said it was certainly a more prominent issue in other places — the influence of caste may simply be less visible here. If, as some claim, the majority of Mangalorean Catholics have Brahmin roots, then their prominence in the church leadership might inadvertently reproduce caste inequalities. However, it is not clear that Kannada priests represent a caste minority.

Conclusion

It is difficult to offer more than a brief outline of the history of this complex problem. Most people I have interviewed about the consequences of Vatican II in Bangalore, priests and laypeople alike, considered this a lamentable episode in their history, and one that drained the Church of a lot of its energy and resources that should have been better spent addressing more serious social problems.

(Some were unwilling to speak about this openly, and were especially hesitant to go on the record. This was understandable in light of stories of nationalist groups — with the consent of priests as well — carrying out attacks on individuals and families who challenged them. Even Simo’s historical volumes, which I mentioned earlier, were forcibly confiscated from bookstores and publicly burned, because of his criticism of their behavior that he had voiced at the end of the second volume. It involved considerable effort to track them down in Bangalore, though thankfully — albeit surprisingly — there seem to be copies available in some American university libraries).

Disputes about liturgical language — and particularly discontent over the three-language formula — continue in the Archdiocese of Bangalore till today, though its principal protagonists are now older and the violence has all but disappeared. Certainly this is only one aspect of the tale of the implementation of Vatican II in this part of the world. But it is an important tale of unintended consequences, one that challenges a simple progressive vision of modernization.

Certain readings of the Council share the conceit of modernization theory of the sort developed by Talcott Parsons and others in the 1950s. As Vilho Harle notes, the pervasive assumption among these social theorists was that modernization and urbanization would produce emotionally-restrained and self-interested individuals who would simply be unaffected by racial or ethnic concerns. The various forms of ethnic and national revivals that emerged in the second half of the 20th century have proved to be one of the more formidable challenges to modernization theory. And the checkered history of Vatican II in Bangalore serves as another case illustrating the contradictions and contentions in the project of modernity.

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Brandon Vaidyanathan
Brandon Vaidyanathan Chair of the Department of Sociology at the Catholic University of America. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Notre Dame in 2014. He has researched and worked on the cultural dimensions of institutions in South Asia with his work being published in journals such as Business and Society and the Journal of American Academy and Religion.
Authority, Community & Identity article

Which Language, Whose Vernacular?: Vatican II and Liturgical Politics in Bangalore (Part 2)


Blame It on the Bishops?

In 1971, Archbishop Lourdusamy was appointed the Joint Secretary of the Sacred Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, and was whisked off to Rome. His successor, installed about a year later, was Packiam Arockiaswamy.

The first strike against him was that he was Tamil. He was literally brought in from Tamil Nadu, where he had served as Bishop of Ooty. The short biography introducing him to the Archdiocese, however, mentions him as hailing “from an ancient Kannadiga family which migrated from Mysore to the neighboring Kanarese [i.e., Kannada-speaking] area of present Tamil Nadu.” Also, in his letter accepting this new position, he noted, “Though I am coming from outside the Archdiocese, I am not a complete stranger to you,” since he underwent his clerical training in Bangalore. Curiously, hardly anyone remembers or even seems to be aware of this background; it seems that he left the impression only of having been a Tamilian.

The second problem was his wavering and indecisive behavior on the language issue. One retired priest I spoke to called him “a man with no vision”; another said he had “no spine.” Arockiaswamy was unable to command the authority of his predecessor. In the judgment of Fr. Anthony Simo, a historian who compiled a two-volume history of the Archdiocese — and this is one rare occasion in which he introduces his own voice, since the volumes contain mostly primary materials such as circulars — Arockiaswamy “proved to be the man that should have never been in Bangalore as Archbishop.”

Such criticisms notwithstanding, many admit that he was a pious man who was easily able to empathize with people. Perhaps this quality prevented him from making a firm decision on the language issue. As Simo notes, “the pressure on him [made] him tilt this way and that just to accommodate [these] demands…. And once this hesitation was realised as a part of the man, the pressure became the stronger.” Under pressure from Kannada priests, Arockiaswamy decreed that Kannada would be “progressively given more prominence.” But Tamil diocesan priests were unhappy with this and pushed back, effectively creating a stalemate.

The early 1980s saw the emergence of Kannada Catholic associations for priests and laity. These associations began to voice complaints about the neglect of the Kannada-speaking community, including a lack of Kannada-speaking catechists and priests as well as a lack of representation among bishops in the Archdiocese. As historian Janaki Nair notes, less than half of parishes at the time had Kannada masses available, while Tamil and English services were available daily in most parishes. Some even claimed that Kannada-speaking seminarians and aspiring religious were discriminated against in the selection process.

Feeling that they lacked sufficient voice, the group, headed mainly by a group of twelve priests, is said to have joined hands with the broader “Hindu fundamentalist” wing of the Kannada movement that was gaining ground in the state. The concerns of these Catholic Kannada priests were then amplified in local newspapers by Hindu Kannada activist writers, who criticized the Church for its imposition of Tamil. Meanwhile, a vocal Tamil faction of priests and laity emerged, which expressed outrage at these demands and insisted instead on more Tamil Masses for parishes with a Tamil-speaking majority.

Mounting tensions eventually gave way to violence. In 1981, members of the Kannada nationalist coalition — including priests, apparently — disrupted the Chrism Mass at the St. Francis Xavier Cathedral in Bangalore, which was a Tamil-majority parish and the seat of the Archbishop, and even attacked Archbishop Arockiaswamy. They also attacked another church with a Tamil-majority congregation, demanding the liturgy be celebrated in Kannada.

The shaken archbishop appealed to Rome for help, and in the interim, issued a circular declaring that “Kannada being the regional language of the State, there shall be a Mass said in Kannada in every church.” Further, for occasions that might require Mass to be celebrated in more than one language, he proposed a three-language formula of Kannada, Tamil, and English, with Kannada given prominence in the first part of the Mass as well as the homily.  This hasty response would prove to be problematic, as would the response from Rome and the attempts to resolve the conflict by Arockiaswamy’s successor.

Failed Solutions

Rome’s response was to tackle the issue by way of an Episcopal Commission consisting of three bishops from north India. Their concluding report, published in December 1982, recognized that Kannada Catholics have felt themselves a suppressed minority in their own state. But it also emphasized that the criterion that should determine language-use was “the fuller and more active participation by all the people,” and this would require “a sense of realism and fair-play” “in such a cosmopolitan city like Bangalore.” This meant that “the Parish Priest in consultation with the Parish Council and Parishioners would be the best body to decide the language to be used” in the liturgy in the parish. However, in most churches, parish councils were not yet in place. So, the report concluded, somebody besides the Archbishop needed to make decisions about language-use in different liturgical celebrations. For this, his Vicar General, Msgr. Colaco, was appointed.

This seems to have failed to satisfy the nationalists too, since a few months later, in March 1983, Arockiaswamy seems to change his mind again, declaring in another circular, “The policy of the Archdiocese of Bangalore is to make Kannada the principal language of its liturgical worship within five years or even earlier,” even though it may not be the mother tongue of the majority. But several Tamil Catholics, dismayed by this, took the issue to court. A little over a year later, the Archbishop announced that “[i]n view of the situation prevailing in the Archdiocese and for the good of the Church,” he was going on indefinite leave. Msgr. Colaco became interim administrator, but he took seriously ill about a year later. In 1986, Alphonsus Mathias was appointed archbishop.

Archbishop Mathias, in his attempt to resolve the language problem, issued a circular declaring that in light of the history of the controversy and the failure of previous attempts, canon law gave him the prerogative to lay down “liturgical regulations which are binding to all.” Specifically, he noted that because of the diversity in the archdiocese, “uniformity in the matter of liturgical worship cannot be enforced in respect of language… without detriment to the peace, unity, and spiritual growth of the people of God.” It was in this light, he argued, that his predecessor’s 1983 circular “ha[d] to be read and interpreted.” Given the seeming promise in that circular that the archdiocese’s official liturgical language would be made Kannada, it is not surprising that the nationalists would be outraged.

Archbishop Mathias furthermore reaffirmed the “three-language formula” that Archbishop Arockiaswamy and the Liturgical Committee had proposed for all Masses celebrated by the Archbishop at the diocesan level. The exception, however, would be midnight Masses at Christmas and Easter, which would be entirely in Kannada; earlier Masses could be in other languages. Soon after this circular was issued, around 1,500 religious priests and nuns assembled in the compound of the archbishop’s house in demonstration of their support. A headline in The New Leader announced in July 1989 that the “Row over Liturgical Language comes to an end in Bangalore church.”

This announcement of a resolution turned out to be premature. The nationalists could not stand such wavering and compromise, which is what seems to have motivated the attack on the Archbishop’s house in April 1990, mentioned at the beginning of Part 1. The first two demands in their printed manifesto, copies of which were strewn about the house during their visit, were for the implementation of Arockiaswamy’s March 1983 circular, and for all Good Friday and Easter Masses to be only in Kannada.

The next two points in their manifesto, however, reveal that the conflict was about more than language.

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Brandon Vaidyanathan
Brandon Vaidyanathan Chair of the Department of Sociology at the Catholic University of America. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Notre Dame in 2014. He has researched and worked on the cultural dimensions of institutions in South Asia with his work being published in journals such as Business and Society and the Journal of American Academy and Religion.
Science & the Human Person article

Aliens and the Longings of Late Modernity: Reflections on “Independence Day”


My youngest son celebrated his golden birthday on the Fourth of July. After the birthday festivities, I took a long afternoon nap, missed fireworks, and was up most of the night with allergies and my usual late-night restlessness. I decided to watch a movie: a re-run of Independence Day. The movie was only a small bookmark in my millenial pop-culture memory bank of the 90’s, so I found it surprisingly engrossing, fresh, and new. In what follows, I will make a few remarks and observations that stuck with me since then.

In a previous post — After Science? — I noted Slavoj Zizek’s remark about how we can imagine the end of the world but cannot entertain the end of capitalism. Following this remark (and Zizek’s well-known psychoanalytic style), I realized that almost every depiction of “aliens” I have ever seen or heard of, from cartoons to movies, is a projection of our love of science and technology, a sustaining narrative that fuels our inability to change the ways we live in late (capitalist) modernity.

We Are the Aliens

There are no Amish aliens. No Wendell Berry-types who fall from the sky and only want to garden and make a small, sustainable life for themselves and their families.

What we depict as an “alien” could be understood as a desire for a future that vindicates the broken promises of modern science. Aliens are simply what we would like to be, what we should be by now if modernity got things right the first time: almost superhuman beings aided by advanced technology, leading to more powerful access to information, power, and total control over nature — beings, in short, who would enjoy supreme and unchallengeable independence, for ever.

We are the aliens. Or at least we are in our unfulfilled cinematic fantasies.

Defeated through Victory

By defeating the aliens, we do not simply emerge victorious; in fact we only temporarily placate our frustrated modern longing to someday become aliens ourselves — space invaders, robotic geniuses, sophisticated mind-powered modifications of nature, the messianic vindication of IBM’s dark dictum, “Let’s build a smarter planet.”

Aliens are so high-tech, of course, because they cannot arrive on planet Earth without advanced technology to begin with. But space exploration is based on a similar, if not the same, principle: we need the science to travel. This need for travel stems from a certain, hopeless sense about the future. We seem to foresee that we may have to leave this planet someday in search of more fertile, undiscovered ground. We may have to become interplanetary, postmodern conquistadores to survive the apocalypse.

In the end, I think we can see that the figure of “the alien” in sci-fi/apocalyptic pop-culture can readily be understood as a trope for the late-modern realization that science and technology have not created a better world for us. “If only we could be like the aliens, if only we had better technology,” we whisper to ourselves, “everything would be much better.”

With narratives like these, we recharge the weak myth of modernity again, buy more gadgets (like my new iPad), and pine for a day when we become either the Jetsons or the monstrous, technofantasies of Independence Day.

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Sam Rocha
Sam Rocha is Associate Professor of Philosophy of Education University of British Colombia as well as president of the Society for the Philisophical Study of Education. He is also the author of Things and Stuff, an edited collection of blog posts, and an unprofessional musician. For more information, see his website: www.samrocha.com. 
 
Authority, Community & Identity article

Which Language, Whose Vernacular?: Vatican II and Liturgical Politics in Bangalore (Part 1)


This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council of the Catholic Church, or Vatican II. Given the significant global presence of Catholicism, it is widely accepted that this event and the transformations it has entailed constitute an epochal era in the history of the modern world.  While a great deal of scholarly attention has been paid to the Council, the focus of much of this research has been on matters such as the politics of the event itself and the theological significance of its documents. A rather different question that has been neglected for the most part is what the impact of this event was “on the ground,” so to speak, in the diverse local cultural contexts in which the Church is situated.

Vatican II is generally understood as a modernization of Catholicism. It signaled an “updating” of the Church that was informed by, rather than hostile to, secular modernity. But in many ways, when implemented around the world, the measures envisioned by the Council have generated unintended consequences that complicate any facile narrative of progress and improvement.

One of the most important of such changes, at least in terms of the impact it would have on most Catholics around the world, was the revision of the liturgy. With the aim of improving lay participation, the Church began to encourage the celebration of the Mass in the vernacular instead of in Latin. It is clear that in many places around the world, this was a welcome move that simply made the Mass more accessible to laypeople, who, for the most part, were certainly not fluent in Latin. In some places, however, the question of what constitutes the vernacular was itself a matter of much dispute — even violence — and one that has yet to be resolved even decades later.

Casualties in a Language Tangle

On April 6, 1990, a group of eight to ten people marched into the house of the Archbishop of Bangalore. The Vicar General then, Fr. D’Silva, said that he was in his office at that time when the watchman informed him that a group of people had come to see him from Adigondanahalli, a village about an hour south of Bangalore city. “We want Mathias,” they demanded in Kannada, the official language of Karnataka, the Indian state whose capital is Bangalore.

They meant Archbishop Mathias, but D’Silva thought they must have been referring to an elderly priest with that name — he said it didn’t occur to him that they wanted the Archbishop, since nobody else normally addressed him by his last name in this manner, “without respect.” So he directed them towards the priest’s room. Evidently unimpressed, some members of the group went straight for the Archbishop’s office. He was away at the time, but his secretary, Fr. Jeganather, was in. According to the Vicar General’s report, the group then bolted the door from the inside, threw red chili powder into the secretary’s eyes, and then returned to Fr. D’Silva’s office and picked up a chair and smashed it onto his table. His driver, who tried to intervene, was threatened with a knife and so he backed off. The group apparently then disconnected the phones and left the building, throwing stones through the windows and leaving a broken glass table-top as  further reminders of their visit.

In the police complaint filed by the Archbishop, the prime antagonist accused for this violence was the parish priest of Adigondanahalli, who was one among a group of 12 diocesan priests in the Archdiocese who had become increasingly vocal and violent in its demands over the past decade or so. The group’s main demand was rather straightforward, disproportionate though the means employed in its pursuit may have been — the implementation of Kannada, the official state language, as the main language of the liturgy in the archdiocese. And the April 1990 incident was not the first act of violence to stem from these demands.

But how did the issue of liturgical language of all things grow to become a cause for such violence?

Liturgical Language in the Archdiocese of Bangalore

While Bangalore is a relatively young city by Indian standards, having been founded in 1537, Catholicism has had a fairly long-standing presence in the city that dates back to Jesuit missionary activity in the 1600s. The archdiocese currently is the third-largest in the country in terms of Catholic population. From its beginnings, the diocese housed Catholics of multiple ethnicities and languages — Kannadigas, Tamilians, Mangaloreans, Goans, Malayalees, Anglo-Indians, and more — most of whom maintain their linguistic and ethnic identities in Bangalore to this day.

Bangalore is the capital of the state of Karnataka, where the official language has been Kannada since shortly after the country’s independence. The majority of the Christian population of the city, however, among Catholics and Protestants alike, is from the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu and speak Tamil. Many of them were brought in as laborers during British rule over the previous century, but even historical records from 17th-century Jesuit missions indicate a prominence of Tamil Catholics in Karnataka missions. While they had assimilated sufficiently to speak and write in the local language, they still maintain their mother tongue. At the time of the Second Vatican Council, it is estimated that at least 65 percent of Catholics in Bangalore were Tamil speakers.

In 1964, the then-Archbishop Lourdusamy, a Tamilian, decreed that to faithfully implement the Council, the language of the liturgy should reflect that of the people. This was interpreted to refer to the mother-tongue of the people rather than the official language of the state. Tamil, being the mother-tongue of most Catholics in the Archdiocese, and particularly in the city of Bangalore, therefore suddenly gained more prominence.

Now in Bangalore in the 1960s, tensions between Kannada and Tamil had already been boiling. For instance, Tamil films had become more prominent in the city than Kannada ones. There were accusations that these movies depicted the Kannada people unfavorably, and demands arose that cinemas showing Tamil movies be shut down. In the following decades, tensions would worsen with the outbreak of other disputes, such as the sharing of the waters of the Kaveri River between the states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

But in the Church, while the issue was bubbling under the surface, it did not really come to the fore while Lourdusamy was archbishop. Many older priests and laypeople I spoke to who recall those days share the opinion that despite seeming to favor Tamils, Lourdusamy commanded considerable authority and trust.

The real problems erupted only with the advent of his successor.

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Brandon Vaidyanathan
Brandon Vaidyanathan Chair of the Department of Sociology at the Catholic University of America. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Notre Dame in 2014. He has researched and worked on the cultural dimensions of institutions in South Asia with his work being published in journals such as Business and Society and the Journal of American Academy and Religion.
Global Currents article

Cooperating Modernities in Tunisia?


In April, Columbia political scientist Alfred Stepan came out with an article in the Journal of Democracy on “Tunisia’s Transition and the Twin Tolerations.” If the article is right, Tunisia’s secularists and Islamists are participating in an encouraging pattern of political cooperation that bodes well for the country’s democratic development. There is good reason to be hopeful about the relevance of an emerging “Tunisian model” of secular-Islamist negotiation, not only for Tunisia’s future but for all those countries affected by the Arab Spring. Yet there is also reason for caution.

The “Twin Tolerations” and Tunisia

The “twin tolerations” are two simple political conditions governing the relationship between religious actors and political institutions, which Stepan first described in the Journal of Democracy in 2000 and in an updated version in the recently published volume, Rethinking Religion and World Affairs, which Stepan edited with Timothy Shah and Monica Toft.

According to Stepan, the “twin tolerations” are essential to any relationship between religion and politics in a democratic regime. They are: first, religious leaders cannot lay claim to veto power over democratically elected representatives; but, second, citizens are free to publicly organize around religious goals that do not contradict the constitution. These “twin tolerations” have enjoyed a wide resonance within the scholarly community because of their explicit implications for the Muslim world and their challenge to oft-held assumptions in political theory that exclude religious institutions, ideas and actors from the public sphere. And Stepan has just offered a fresh articulation of the power and relevance of the “twin tolerations” in an interview on the Immanent Frame.

Adding it to his list of other exemplars — including Senegal, Turkey, India, and Indonesia — Stepan spotlights the recent Tunisian experience as another successful democratic transition in the Muslim world that simultaneously respects the twin tolerations and creates a substantive role for religious leaders in the political framework of the nation.

The article is important, as the success of the Tunisian transition is important, for recognizing the alternative pathways available for democratization processes in religiously charged settings. One of Stepan’s strengths is that he highlights the pragmatic virtue of democracy as an accommodating set of decision-making rules. In Stepan’s account, Tunisian leaders from both the secularist and Islamist camps recognized this virtue and worked together to craft a successful transition by focusing their incipient energies on the establishment of clear rules for the new political game, rather than battling each other over their substantive political differences.

Part of Stepan’s goal is to challenge models of aggressive laïcité or assertive secularism. For years, such models were held up as the only possible response to integralist Islamist movements in North Africa and the Middle East. In this vein, Stepan pointedly contrasts Tunisia’s present transition with two other cases: Kemalist Turkey as well as Tunisia under Habib Bourguiba, who ruled the country for thirty years from 1957 to 1987. In both cases, Islam was aggressively removed from many corners of the public sphere and this, in part, spawned the rise of more radical Islamists.

A Note of Caution

There is a warranted desire among many scholars to praise the post-Jasmine success of Tunisia and recommend the model for other predominantly Muslim countries with recent histories of religious conflict. I think a model of religiously friendly democratization has great potential in the Middle East today. And Stepan makes a laudable case that secular and Islamist modernities can cooperate within a framework defined by the “twin tolerations.”

All the same, I want to highlight one difficulty with the use of Tunisia as a model for the region.  In fact, this same difficulty has the potential to undermine the relevance of what could be called the new Turkish model, in which the rise of the AK (Justice and Development) Party since 2002 has weakened the hold of secularist Kemalism and led to the emergence of a more religion-friendly as well as arguably more democratic Turkish republic.

The Dueling Legacies of Secularism

The difficulty concerns the ambiguous legacy of the secular reforms forced on both countries by their founding leaders, Presidents Ataturk and Bourguiba.  In Stepan’s account, Ataturk and Bourguiba are largely blemishes on the political records of their respective countries, in which religiously oriented political movements were violently and illegitimately excluded from the political arena. Rather than responding to this exclusion with hardline religious politics, however, the political leaders of the present-day AKP — which Tunisia’s present-day Ennahda emulates — rose to success by championing democratic reforms, clean politics, and inclusive political platforms.

The resulting lesson that many Islamists (and scholars in the West) take away from this response is that political parties with Islamist pasts can successfully integrate into democratic environments and should not be barred from them.

To many secularists in the Middle East, however, the lessons of Turkey and Tunisia are entirely different. In their view, the only reason Islamist-oriented parties have not established Islamic states in either country is that these parties had first been beaten into submission by powerful and successful secular states. One could make the case that these states were successful in the sense that both achieved relatively high levels of economic wealth and in the sense that their progressive push for gender equality and the legitimacy of non-traditional, less-religious lifestyles was widely absorbed.

This ambiguous legacy stems from the fact that Turkey and Tunisia were outliers in the Middle East and North Africa with respect to the intensity with which state leaders pursued laïcité-like policies. As a result, Tunisian and Turkish Islamists had to deal with much stronger secular opposition forces and less religious polities than almost anywhere else in the Middle East.

The contrast between Tunisia and Egypt is especially revealing. Egypt is a country whose state policies governing religion were never really secularist and which also never achieved a high level of economic growth. In Tunisia, where regularly practicing religiosity was reported to be at only 36% in 2010 according to the World Gallup Poll, Islamists garnered slightly more than 40% of the new regime’s founding elections in 2011. In Egypt, where practicing religiosity was reported to be at 61%, Islamists garnered 75% of the vote. Religiosity is by no means synonymous with support for Islamism. And religious political parties cannot assume the vote of religious individuals. But Islamist parties are right to expect that most of their support will be found among religious individuals. Theoretically, therefore, a more religious country presents greater electoral potential and fewer electoral constraints.

Other Lessons from Tunisia

This contrast does not mean that Tunisia or Turkey is an irrelevant or unimportant model for the Muslim-majority world. Emulation of Ennahda’s consensus-building instincts by Islamists outside Tunisia would be particularly welcome.

But the secular pasts of both Tunisia and Turkey force us to think hard about what exactly these cases teach us. There is still a temptation for many scholars to measure the success of Tunisia’s transition by gauging how much Ennahda is willing to shed its religious agenda. In this sense, the recent verdict against the owner of a television station that broadcast the film Persepolis, which some Muslims find derogatory to Islam, represented a major setback for democracy in Tunisia in the eyes of many Western observers, as witness recent Amnesty International reports. Ennahda formally condemned the film as a “violation of the sacred.”

But in other countries in North Africa and the Middle East, Egypt included, there will be even fewer electoral and demographic brakes on religiously oriented politics. The question for democracy, then, is not whether Islamist parties in any of these countries drop their religious agendas. The only question is how they will pursue them.

What will be important for the relevance of Tunisia as a model of religiously friendly democratization, therefore, is how Ennahda frames and responds to the tensions and challenges that will arise from its “Persepolis moments.” In other words, what does Ennahda decide to do with its religious tenor and orientation when it does not have to compromise on its religious goals?

If Ennahda and the AKP can develop an authentic brand of religious politics that keeps them and everyone else in the democratic game, they could represent a worthwhile model for the many other Muslim-oriented parties in the region. And in the process they might create a new model of Muslim democracy that does not involve the surrender of their religious identity, but keeps it integrally tied to a firm respect for constitutional norms, liberties, and rights.

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Michael Driessen
Michael Driessen is Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at John Cabot University in Rome, Italy. He teaches courses on Religion and Politics and co-direct the University’s Interfaith Initiative. His research interests include the nature of public religions in Catholic and Muslim societies and the role of interreligious dialogue in contemporary global politics.