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Gender, State & Society article

Religious Expression or Female Oppression?


In the wake of France’s total ban on the burqa or full-length veil, which took effect last month, on April 11th, it is an appropriate time to address “the” Islamic interpretation of the headscarf and its significance for Muslims. Scholars of religion inevitably get nervous when they are asked to speak about “the” interpretation of anything. Moreover, though I am a specialist in Islamic studies, I do not focus on women’s issues. So that makes me doubly nervous addressing this issue.

So I propose to draw on my personal experience as a Muslim and as an observer of Western politics and society to establish some context that may lead us to be more aware of certain uncritical areas in our framing of the question at hand.

The Present Context: Muslim Marginalization

Not only has France implemented its outright ban on the burqa, but the United States Congress conducted now notorious hearings in March on Muslim radicalization in America, which inevitably raised suspicions about anyone who happens to be an American Muslim. The state of Tennessee is entertaining a law to ban the practice of “shari‘a” in the state, going further than a similar law that was recently passed in Oklahoma. Last year, Muslims were being accused of insensitivity, if not outright transgression, for a proposed mosque and community center near “ground zero.” The issue was framed as a violation and affront to American “sacred space.”

All this is happening at a time when we are engaged in protracted wars in Muslim countries. Although the reasons that were originally offered in support of these wars ranged from “revenge,” “defense,” “security,” and “the spread of freedom,” nobody can deny that underneath may lie other motives, mostly tied to economic interests but not entirely free of more ambitious cultural agendas. Consider Laura Bush’s remarks less than a month after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001: “The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women.”

Challenging Modern Stereotypes of the Veil

This is perhaps why, in a book entitled Rethinking Muslim Women and the Veil: Challenging Historical & Modern Stereotypes, Katherine Bullock is incapable of separating the question of the “veil” from broader issues in Western culture. Bullock contends with feminist theory, Muslim thought and practice, and politics to challenge what she considers the problematic assumptions of those who criticize the headscarf as oppressive. She identifies six themes that antagonists use to oppose covering. For them, the veil:

  1. 1. covers up (hides), in the sense of smothering, femininity;
  2. 2. is apparently linked to essentialized male-female difference (which is taken to mean that by nature, male is superior to female);
  3. 3. is linked to a particular view of woman’s place (subjugated in the home);
  4. 4. is linked to an oppressive (patriarchal) notion of morality and female purity (because of Islam’s emphasis on chastity, marriage, and condemnation of pre- and extra-marital sexual relations);
  5. 5. can be imposed; and
  6. 6. is linked to a package of oppressions women in Islam face, such as seclusion, polygyny, easy male divorce, unequal inheritance rights, and so on. (Bullock, “Introduction.”)

In addressing these assumptions, Bullock has the following to offer. She says that covering:

  1. 1. does not smother femininity;
  2. 2. brings to mind the ‘different-but-equal’ school of thought, but does not posit essentialized male-female difference;
  3. 3. is linked to a view that does not limit women to the home, but neither does it consider the role of stay-at-home-mother and homemaker oppressive;
  4. 4. is linked to a view of morality that is oppressive only if one considers the prohibition of sexual relations outside marriage wrong;
  5. 5. is part of Islamic law, though a law that ought to be implemented in a very wise and women-friendly manner, and
  6. 6. can and should be treated separately from other issues of women’s rights in Islam. (Ibid.)

Katherine Bullock’s study came about, in part, from her own experience of embracing Islam and choosing to cover in graduate school in Toronto—a choice that evoked an immediate and overwhelmingly negative response from others.

The question for us is: What should we do with Bullock? Should we tell her she is wrong, that she doesn’t know she is oppressed, that she should go back home—to Australia?

We are complex individuals in a rapidly changing world. Simplistic distinctions of the past, such as “Islam is over there in that part of the world,” no longer hold.

Don’t Judge a Face by Its Cover

Take, well, me for instance. I am a Muslim who identifies with my local Muslim community and takes the shari‘a as a set of guiding principles in my life. I have female family members who both wear and don’t wear (mostly don’t wear) the headscarf; my children are American Muslims of Pakistani and German descent; I also have nephews and nieces who are half-Dutch, half-Pakistani-Europeans; and cousins who are half-African, half-Pakistani Africans from Botswana, and others who are half-French and half-Pakistani Pakistanis who live in Dubai!

Consider the following story. When I spent a year in Germany as a graduate student (2003-2004), one of the German provinces was grappling with the issue of a Muslim teacher of Turkish origin who was teaching Islam in a public school while wearing a headscarf. She was banned from teaching, the chief argument being that it would be a negative influence on the young children, and that the public schools are supposed to be neutral spaces. The controversy resulted in a number of town hall discussions, with opinions flying from all sides in all directions. During one of these exchanges, a “secular” Turkish woman stood up and scolded her fellow Turks: “Why don’t you go back home and fix your own society before coming here to corrupt this one,” to which a thoroughbred German woman in headscarf offered the following rebuttal: “What destination do you suggest for me?” (Not exact quotes, mind you, but this is my dramatized recollection.)

Women may cover for any number of reasons. Someone might be wearing a scarf or a veil as a hippie, or a Nun, or might be cold, dressed as Zorro or as a Ninja (as my wife has sometimes been lovingly called by our nephews), or may simply be a practicing Muslim woman. Others may be masked in a veil of plastic surgery. Are we going to single out only one of these kinds of women as “oppressed”?

Muslim women wear the headscarf or the veil for many reasons, which are inevitably explained in the public sphere in our “immanent frame” of secular discourse: they may offer that “it is liberating,” “it is my identity,” “I choose it because I am free,” “it is my right,” “you have no control over my body,” “I want you to engage my mind, heart and soul where true beauty lies,” “it makes me feel safe,” “without it I feel exposed,” “it is simply more convenient than having to dress-up all the time,” “I don’t want men to stare at my body.”  And yes, it is true that some may wear it because they are commanded to wear it by their husbands, fathers, or mothers. But so what? After all, are there no non-Muslim husbands, fathers or brothers out there who expect their wives, sisters or daughters to dress in this or that way? Could it be that a noble tradition is being lampooned because of some bad apples? Don’t we all have experiences with bad apples in our communities?

God-Ordained Modesty

Regardless of the worldly reasons, many devout Muslim women ultimately choose to wear the headscarf because it is their understanding of what God wants from them. According to the classical consensus, Muslim women are commanded to be modest and “hide their beauty” except for when they are with an inner circle of males. This has always been understood by (admittedly mostly male) Muslim jurists as suggesting that something akin to the headscarf should be worn, although the extent of its practice and its exact form have varied in different societies through history. Many, if not most Muslim women, choose to obey God’s command to be modest by avoiding clothes that are too revealing, without wearing a headscarf.

What precisely do states hope to regulate? Are we going to tell those Muslims who choose to wear a headscarf or a veil, in conformity with an accepted understanding of Islamic law from within the tradition, that this longstanding Islamic practice is universally oppressive, and subsequently either tolerated or banned, irrespective of individuality, choice, society, and traditions and beliefs, as precisely some prominent politicians and commentators have done? How is this to be viewed as anything other than an assault on the religion of Islam?

Do women in Muslims societies have problems? You bet. Do women everywhere have problems? Yes. For every Muslim woman who cries out for help from an oppressive individual, family, or the pressures of society, I’m sure we could also find a Western counterpart.

What Are We Afraid Of?

To conclude, let me return to Bullock’s sixth point: “that covering can and should be treated separately from other issues of women’s rights in Islam.” I suggest that this may not be simply a subjective personal view, but is backed-up by empirical evidence in a recent Gallup survey of the global Muslim population, according to which Muslim women are overwhelmingly more concerned about issues such as poverty, security, and development. They are not begging to be saved from their men, or from the banning of shari‘a, and in fact often find solace from oppression by turning to the shar‘ia (Esposito and Mogahed, Who Speaks for Islam?: What a Billion Muslims Really Think, Chapter 5, “What do Women Want?”).

I believe that the prevailing discourses around Islam in the West stem from an increasing consternation with Islam itself, or “Islamophobia,” which is an irrational fear of all things with an Islamic ring: mosque, headscarf, Allah, Qur’an, Muhammad, shari‘a, Palestine, or even the very presence of practicing devout Muslims in our society, or in the world.

The last two minutes of the remarks of Rep. Keith Ellison (who is a Muslim Congressman) at the hearings on Muslim radicalization on March 10, 2011 were spent weeping. He wept as he told the story of a paramedic who disappeared on 9/11, while both he and his mother were subsequently reviled in rumors that he might have been an inside-man on behalf of the terrorists. Until, of course, the discovery of his remains revealed otherwise. He was a Muslim. He was a hero. He was one of “us.”

The question on whether or not the headscarf is religious expression or female oppression, says, to my mind, as much or more about America and the West, as it does about Islam and women. So let us ask the real question: Who are we?

5 Comments on Religious Expression or Female Oppression? Array
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

A Forgotten Episode in the History of Interreligious Dialogue


One often gets the impression that the history of Interreligious Dialogue (with the capital “I” and “D” standing for a specific social setting rather than a theoretical concept) is told in the form of hagiography, starting with “mystical figures” such as Akbar the Great or the Emirs of Granada, going on to the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religion in Chicago as its founding “Council of Jerusalem” and leading up to “present-day saints” such as Hans Küng, the Dalai Lama, and Mother Maya.

Like all hagiographies, this kind of history is highly selective and written with a particular audience in mind. There is, however, an important history of interreligious encounters that is generally excluded from the hagiography—a history that does not focus exclusively on shining examples and peaceful saints, a history that includes failure and dissent as well as understanding and comprehension, a history that has to be rediscovered in order to grasp the structures, potentials and losses of Interreligious Dialogue more completely.

Another Episode in the History of Interreligious Dialogue

A few weeks ago, digging into the Archive-materials for my research project on religious NGOs inside the context of the United Nations, I stumbled over one episode of this “other” history.

This episode deserves the special attention of the Contending Modernities project because it brings together all its main subjects: Catholicism, because this episode was centered around the Catholic student organization Pax Romana; Islam, because Muslim scholars played an integral part in the episode; and, last but not least, the Secular, inasmuch as the history is closely linked to the context of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

The episode took place in Manila in the year 1960. From January 2nd to 9th in that year, Pax Romana organized a conference in Manila under the theme of “The Present Impact of the Great Religions of the World upon the Lives of the People in the Orient and Occident.”

Pax Romana, or the International Catholic Movement for Intellectual and Cultural Affairs (ICMICA), invited several distinguished scholars of diverse religious and national backgrounds to comment on the theme of the conference. These scholars included Olivier Lacombe, Professor of Sanskrit and Indology from the Sorbonne; S. B. Das Gupta, Head of the Department of Modern Languages, Calcutta; Simon Greenberg, among other things founding President of American Jewish University; Hendrik Kraemer, at the time with the Ecumenical Institute of the World Council of Churches in Bossey, Switzerland; Raimon Pannikar, who later became professor for religious studies at the University of California-Santa Barbara; Mahmud Husain, Head of the Department of International Relations at the University of Karachi as well as Pakistan’s Minister of Education; and Osman Yahia, editor of the works of the Muslim mystic Ibn ‘Arabi.

Catholic Students…Inspired by Luther

The beginnings of the story of Manila 1960 actually date back to 1958. They were recounted by Ramon Sugranyes de Franch, who served as the first Secretary General of the ICMICA, from 1947 to 1961, and who, as it happens, died just a few weeks ago in February 2011. In the telling of Sugranyes de Franch:

Dans ce domaine [des Nations Unies], la page la plus intéressante s’est ouvert le jour où le Directeur général de l’UNESCO, Luther Evans, ‘in spite of my nage’—comme il l’a dit plaisamment—, est venu à un congres catholique (celui de Vienne) pour nous demander d’aider l’UNESCO à réaliser une partie primordiale de son projet majeur Orient-Occident (Ramon Sugranyes de Franch, Pax Romana: Son histoire, in: Urs Altermatt and Ramon Sugranyes de Franch, Pax Romana 1921-1981, – Gründung und Entwicklung -, Fribourg 1981, p. 31-48, here: 43).

So, in 1958 the parting Secretary-General of UNESCO with the name of Luther Evans was succeeded by Vittorino Veronese, a former Vice-President of Pax Romana as UNESCO Secretary-General. As he departed, he asked an international Catholic lay movement to organize an inter-religious encounter to take place in the wider context of an effort to foster reconciliation in the midst of the Cold War. This constellation was surprising indeed.

A Three-Fold Surprise

First, this proposal was formulated in a period when most UN institutions, including UNESCO, were reluctant to deal with questions of religion—so reluctant that Luther Evans needed to engage Pax Romana as a partner in order to “outsource” the conference on religion he dreamed of organizing. From this point of view, Manila represents a general shift in the orientation of international organizations— a shift towards the recognition of religious topics that began in the periphery of the United Nations system and preceded later developments by many years.

Second, the Manila meeting occurred four years before the establishment of the Vatican’s Secretariat for Non-Christians, which was renamed the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue in 1988 into the Secretariat for Non-Christians). In other words, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, a Roman Catholic organization was not an obvious candidate for hosting an inter-religious encounter. Pax Romana was a logical choice only because of its unique status and remarkable links with the United Nations system.

Third, beyond the boundaries of the Holy See, Catholic organizations—such as those that were members of the “Conference of International Catholic Organizations—were among the first non-state organizations to be active in the institutions of the United Nations. Among these Catholic NGOs, Pax Romana was one of the best known and most active. This helps explain why American scholar Luther Evans chose Pax Romana as the critical institutional partner for launching his interreligious project.

But it was more than the mere occurrence of Manila 1960 that was significant. What was said and done at Manila was also important. So… What did happen?

To answer this question, one needs to return to the distinction with which I began: the distinction between the official story and the unofficial story. Specifically, one must distinguish between the official story of Manila 1960, told in the published proceedings of the conference, and the unofficial story, buried in the archives of the Pax Romana in Fribourg, Switzerland. That unofficial story will be the subject of a future post.

3 Comments on A Forgotten Episode in the History of Interreligious Dialogue Array
Karsten Lehmann
Karsten Lehmann is head of social sciences statistics at the King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural dialogue. He was previously Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at Bayreuth University in Germany, and for the 2011 calendar year a Research Fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs of Georgetown University. With his colleague Stefan Kurth, he publishd an edited volume on research methods in religious studies (Religionen erforschen - Kulturwissenschaftliche Methoden in der Religionswissenschaft, forthcoming 2011).
Deadly Violence & Conflict Transformation article

Hope in the Face of Tragedy


In the face of unspeakable tragedy and loss of innocent human life, whether because of terrorism on 9/11 or the natural disaster unfolding on a massive scale in Japan, human beings are compelled to ask: Why? Why me? Why them? How do we cope? Where is God in all of this? The answers to these questions are not easy. One of the fundamental teachings of the Qur’an is that God has power over all things. An immediate response of a believer to tragic events should be in reference to this ultimate reality. God, of all things, is aware. No matter how incomprehensible, nothing happens without a higher purpose.

Belief in the absolute unity of God, as omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent, Agent Supreme, has led many down the path of a theology of predestination. A surface reading of certain passages of the Qur’an lends credibility to such a conclusion: “No calamity befalls on earth, or within your souls, that is not already inscribed in a book before we bring it to pass, and this is easy for God.” The reason follows: “So that you may not excessively grieve over that which escapes you, nor rejoice in that which you are granted, for God loves not every arrogant boaster.”

These verses of the Qur’an say more than what first meets the eye. Although apparently leaning towards predestination, they open a window into something more. On the one hand, events are out of our control in some ultimate cosmic sense. On the other hand, we choose how to deal with them, and so are free to adopt a range of attitudes, including grief, arrogance, and contentment.

Equanimity in the Face of Blessing & Bereavement

Most significantly, the Qur’an exhorts human beings to assume a posture of equanimity—the attitude should be constant (within human limits—“as much as you can” according to other verses) whether we have been afflicted and bereft, or gifted and enriched. It is an attitude of “islam” or submission to God’s will, and a realization that both situations are, in fact, fleeting. Our individual existences are infinitesimally brief moments, blips, in the movement of time. In this perspective, we err gravely if we assume that enrichment is God’s blessing and bereavement is God’s punishment.

The Qur’an tells us: “As for when man is tried by his Lord, who showers him with (worldly) blessings, he says ‘my Lord has blessed me.’ And as for when he is tested with poverty, he cries ‘my Lord has forsaken me.’ Nay! But you are not generous to the orphan, nor do you encourage the feeding of the needy. You greedily devour that which God has caused you to inherit, and hoard wealth with intense devotion.”

This is a Test

So the two conditions come together, fashioning the perfect test: the rich need the poor as much as the poor need the other; the materially impoverished, while tried through poverty, are needed to test those who have been enriched as trustees of God’s bountiful resources. “Verily,” says the Qur’an, “We have made everything in the world as an adornment for it, to test which of them is best in conduct.”

To add a twist to the story, other places in the Qur’an also indicate that our condition in this world may, in fact, be a sign of God’s pleasure or displeasure here on earth. And that our actions actually do matter, and have consequences. Is this a contradiction? For believers, a contradiction would be impossible. So reconciliation is called for, and one is at hand. The key is recognizing that one can never know whether one’s material condition is the result of God’s test, or of recompense for one’s deeds and good intentions. One simply has to accept one’s lot, not knowing where one stands. This is perhaps a reason why, according to Islamic theology, “[T]he heart of a believer should remain balanced between fear and hope.” One does their best in every given circumstance, fearing that they have fallen short, but hoping for God’s reward, and for God’s love. In the words of the Qur’an: “God loves the doers of beautiful acts” or “agents of excellence”, inspired in all they do by virtue, not malice.

Taking a legendary story from the Islamic tradition that every Muslim child learns while growing up… One of the heroes of Islam, Ali, was once dueling with the enemy. Ultimately overpowered, the adversary spat on Ali’s face as a final and desperate act of defiance. Instead of striking him down, Ali immediately sheathed his sword and walked away. When asked for what reason the opponent was spared, Ali replied that initially he was engaged in a battle for truth and justice, in an attempt to spread God’s mercy, but had he struck his opponent down at that moment of defiance, it would have been out of spite, which is something for which he would “fear” the reckoning upon meeting his Lord.

Such themes are not uncommon in popular culture. Many of us are familiar with the epic saga of Star Wars, where Yoda, Jedi Master, cautions young Anakin Skywalker: “Fear leads to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.” To speak in direct reference to the 9/11 attacks, one can follow this precise trajectory of emotions in the collective American response. Fear-anger-hate-suffering. Yoda apparently missed one important element, however—the element of grief. But perhaps, grief and fear stem from, and are aspects of, one single sensation—the sense of profound loss.

To Hope or Not to Hope

We experienced and suffered unfathomable loss on 9/11/2001. The immediate and direct victims of the tragedy are gone. The question of whether to fear or to hope is relevant to those who have been left behind—those who have lost loved ones, been displaced, called to respond, or watch from afar. Fear lies in hate and revenge, hope lies in forgiveness and understanding. Fear lies in selfishness and greed, hope lies in charity and sacrifice. Fear lies in perpetuating indifference and dehumanization, and hope lies in the pursuit of beauty and embracing our common humanity. Fear lies in feeding our anger and despair, hope lies in thirsting for a better world.

It is in this light that I propose we see the topic of “hope in the face of tragedy and loss of innocent life.” Tragedy and loss come in different ways. To some it happens suddenly through random accidents or unspeakable acts of violence. We are all confronted by events that are beyond our control.

The earthquake and tsunami in Japan on March 11, 2011 are compelling, recent reminders of this reality. But they are not the last. No matter how the final reminder comes to any one of us, by sudden calamity, illness, or the natural process of aging, we are all dying.

What matters is what we do in the time we have. According to one Prophetic tradition, we are told to plant the seed for a tree even if you know that the world will end tomorrow. In other words, it is not the end product of the tree, but your act of planting it, that is sacred. The teachings of Islam, as I have understood them, seek to direct our ethical conduct in the here and now, with the imperative to place our trust in a higher power for what lies beyond. Hope lies here. Plant your tree.

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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.
 
Governance, Citizenship, Rights & Obligations article

Human Dignity: the Foundation of Human Rights


March 21st is annually commemorated as Human Rights Day in post-Apartheid South Africa, in remembrance of the 1960 Sharpeville massacre in which the apartheid police force opened fire on a crowd of anti-pass law protesters, killing 69 and maiming 189. On Human Rights Day, we pay tribute to the Sharpeville martyrs and all those who sacrificed their lives for a non-racial and democratic South Africa.

But Human Rights Day also provides an opportunity to reflect on the never-ending struggle to affirm the dignity and rights of all human beings, both locally and abroad. Specifically for Muslims, it is a useful time to become familiar with the latest thinking on the longstanding and robust debate about the compatibility between “Islam and Human Rights.”

Beyond Essentializing

Neither Islam nor human rights can be essentialized. They are both complex entities subject to interpretation.

Even though the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights remains the primary reference for defining what is meant by universal human rights, the concept of human rights remains open to different and conflicting interpretations in our pluralistic world. It is unfortunate, therefore, that with few exceptions debates almost always refer to international human rights as a monolithic and essentialized concept, rather than a concept that has been consistently reinterpreted in a transnational context.

Among Muslim scholars, the human rights debate runs the gamut from those scholars who denounce “human rights” as a sinister imposition of a particular set of Western values, to those that embrace it and work for an overlapping consensus between universal human rights and Islam.

The Ethical-Moral Foundations of Human Rights

One of the major problems with many Muslim studies is that they largely approach the compatibility between human rights and Islam from the point of view of shari’a defined narrowly as a legal framework, rather than considering how universal human rights resonate with the moral and ethical foundations of Islam.

One of the few Muslim scholars who has not restricted himself to looking at human rights from a juristic perspective is Abdulaziz Sachedina. Sachedina is primarily interested in identifying the ethical-moral foundations on which human rights may be understood in Islam. In his book, Islam and the Challenge of Human Rights (2009), Sachedina suggests that the cross-cultural discourse on human rights should be rooted in the concept of human dignity (karamat al-insan). He argues that the concept of human dignity is at the core of the ethical-moral worldview of Islam.

Sachedina cites the most primary source of Islamic guidance, the Glorious Quran, to argue that dignity has been bestowed on all humans (karamat al-insan) because of their “human-ness,” rather than their belief in Islam. That is, every human being is afforded dignity because of his/her human personhood, irrespective of religious beliefs. He bases this claim on Sura al-Isra’, chapter 17 verse 70:

“We have honored (all) the children of Adam with innate dignity (karam); and provided them with transportation on both land and sea; and given them sustenance from the good and pure things in life; and favored them far above most of those We have created.”

From this Qur’anic perspective, living human life with dignity for all should be the primary objective of human rights advocacy. In our understanding, human rights comprises all rights, from the personal to the political. These rights rest on the innate dignity of all human beings, and they enable all human beings to live their lives with full dignity. In other words, the denial of anyone’s human rights constitutes a violation of their human dignity and thus contravenes a core teaching of Islam. From this understanding of Islam, every human life, Muslim or non-Muslim, male or female, adult or child, rich or poor, has exactly the same intrinsic worth, and should therefore be afforded exactly the same human rights.

 

Furthermore, I would argue that the Qur’anic concept of human dignity in fact goes beyond the materialistic realm to include the metaphysical. This distinctive Islamic concept of human dignity is best illustrated in Surah Al-Sajdah, chapter 32, verse 9, which reads:

“[God] fashioned [the human being] in due proportion, and breathed into him something of His spirit (wa nafakha fihi min ruhi). Then He endowed you with [the faculties of] hearing and sight and feeling [and understanding]: but little thanks do you give!”

This well-known Qur’anic injunction once again illuminates the egalitarian ethic of Islam. This powerful ethic obliges Muslims to look upon each and every human being—whatever their professed beliefs—as carrying within her or him, the breath of God. Thus the denial of human rights to anyone not only constitutes a violation of human dignity but is ultimately an affront to God.

Drawing on the primary source of Islamic guidance, the Glorious Qur’an, the concept of human rights may thus be unequivocally interpreted as the honoring and protection of the dignity bestowed on all human beings, without prejudice or discrimination.

The Centrality of Human Dignity

In conclusion, a Muslim discourse on human rights needs to foreground the concept of human dignity, which is central to the ethical-moral worldview of Islam. It is this consonance between Islam and human rights through “human dignity” that needs to be highlighted by Muslim scholars and activists in their efforts to develop a meaningful Muslim human rights discourse.

It is fortuitous that the African National Congress’s theme for this year’s human rights celebration is: “Working together to protect human dignity for all.” This theme resonates well with the Islamic concept we have articulated. It is in this spirit that we support the call from the ANC-led government for this year’s celebrations to be “a call to unite in the protection of human rights for people’s dignity.”

On this Human Rights day we ask God, the Sublime, to help us to protect our human dignity and rights, and, with the same vigor and determination, to defend the human dignity and human rights of others.

1 Comment on Human Dignity: the Foundation of Human Rights Array
A. Rashied Omar
A. Rashied Omar is associate teaching professor of Islamic studies and peacebuilding in the Keough School’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. He also is a fellow of the Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion. In addition to being a university-based researcher and teacher, Omar serves as imam (religious minister) at the Claremont Main Road Mosque in Cape Town, South Africa, and a trustee of the Institute for the Healing of Memories in South Africa
Deadly Violence & Conflict Transformation article

Another error in the “war on terror”


From the outset, the so-called “war on terror” has proceeded erroneously. The first error was an incorrect diagnosis of the root causes of 9/11. The second error was the response. The third error has been the faulty narrative that has sustained the conflict. I would like to call these three errors primary errors, under the shadow of which a number of secondary errors have sprouted, such as extra-judicial drone strikes, extraordinary rendition, Blackwater, waterboarding, the Abu Ghraib fiasco, and the Guantanamo embarrassment.

The cumulative effect of these errors has been devastating for our national soul, typified by the recent “ground zero mosque” controversy, anti-shari‘a movements in several states, never-ending attempts to paint Obama as un-American because he might be Muslim, hate-spewing banter on talk-radio, and most recently the Congressional hearings on the radicalization of American Muslims.

Our instinctive questions after 9/11 were correct: “Why did they attack us?” “Why do they hate us?” Our answers were incorrect: “They hate our freedom.” “They hate our way of life.” Although this diagnosis has been repeatedly challenged by academics with empirical studies (Robert Pape), CIA analysts (Michael Scheuer), Politicians (Ron Paul), preachers (Jeremiah Wright), and even some conservative radio hosts (Jason Lewis), it is drowned by incessant insinuations and slander in almost every conceivable forum, and fails to make a dent in the global posture of the United States. Congressman Paul put it simply: “They don’t come here to attack us because we’re rich and we’re free. They attack us because we’re over there.” Even Bin Laden himself mocked: “Let him [Bush] tell us then, why did we not attack Sweden?”

A Fictional Grand Narrative

After the attacks, the U.S. had the sympathy of the entire world. Instead of capitalizing on this overwhelming support, including from all quarters of the Muslim world, the U.S. went it alone with its rhetoric and warmongering, alienating Muslims and even antagonizing close allies. Anyone remember those “freedom fries?” An ongoing war on terror has since been sustained by a fictional “grand narrative” that has the following four elements: 1) they attacked us because we are free, 2) the 9/11 attack was unprovoked, 3) this is an existential battle to the death, and 4) it is not possible to negotiate with “evil.”

Elements of this narrative constantly reemerge to justify the ongoing wars.  President Obama’s “audacity” draws on this narrative in his speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, in which he speaks about security threats and the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan: “make no mistake:  Evil does exist in the world.” Attempts to challenge the grand narrative are treated with suspicion and could be detrimental to one’s standing as a “true American.” Examples from the religious community are Jeremiah Wright and Feisal Abdul Rauf (the Imam of the so-called “ground-zero mosque”), each of whom have been maligned for suggesting that our foreign policy bears some responsibility for 9/11.

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 backed America into a corner. We had two choices: 1) To admit that our support of repressive dictators in the Muslim world has been counterproductive, and that our uncritical support of Israel at the expense of Palestinian dignity and rights has been morally wrong, or 2) To dig in and stay the course.

Digging In

Essentially, we dug in. Granted, navigating Option 1 (to engage in introspection, take responsibility, and change course) would be unimaginably complex, because it might be taken as weakness or as “giving-in to terror.” Soul-searching balanced with inner strength, poise and resolve, while simultaneously prosecuting the terrorists of 9/11 and organizing for future security threats, would have been a tremendously challenging balancing act. Alas, our moment of greatness was not meant to be. As a Pakistani rock star put it, 9/11 made us like an elephant in a china shop. Since then, it has been a slippery slope.

Anyone who has a shred of integrity will acknowledge that American Muslim leaders, such as Ingrid Mattson (vice president and then president of the Islamic Society of North America from 2001-2010), have worked tirelessly with the Muslim community and Homeland Security to deal with the turmoil in the decade after 9/11. Muslim leaders and organizations have repeatedly issued statements against terrorism. Extremists have been ostracized from their communities and reported to the authorities, although FBI tactics of entrapment have at times alienated communities from cooperation.  Moreover, Muslims who have actually engaged in acts of terrorism invariably cite political grievances as causes, such as the never-ending humiliation of Palestinians and civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is consistent with the findings of a recent Gallup poll of the global Muslim population that politics, not religion, is the propellant of extremism (John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think, Chatper 5, “What Makes an Extremist,” (Gallup Press, 2007).

Doubling Down, Thanks to Peter King

Instead of engaging in some real introspection and changing course where necessary, Congressman Peter King’s hearings on the radicalization of Muslims are a doubling-down on a path of errors. Research has shown that Muslim terrorists get a disproportionate amount of coverage in the media, but not when trends show that attacks are on the decline. To put things in perspective, one Muslim scholar has noted that last year, more Americans died from dog bites than from terrorism. We also know from a major Pew survey that American Muslims are well integrated, moderate and mainstream, and that the best strategy for dealing with terrorism in the Muslim community is to understand what really makes a terrorist, rather than stick to mistaken assumptions.

The irony, or one might say tragedy, is that the hearings of Congressman King not only ignore Muslim leaders who are allies in the “war on terror,” but also further alienate the Muslim community at large, which is precisely the wrong thing to do if one is interested in results that will keep us all safe.

The real danger to our nation lies in opportunist politicians like King, who, as an Irish Catholic, supported the IRA when it was declared to be a terrorist organization by the U.S. and our allies. It is too bad that King is unable to draw on his past experience to bring about an end to our prevailing conflict with Islamic extremists through a peace process that involves dialogue, a recognition of grievances, and reconciliation, as was accomplished in the case of the IRA. Instead, he has embarked upon an inquisition.

I Believe in America, but Also in the Shari’a

The correct way to fight the war on terror is to empower Muslim leaders and respect the religion of Islam. This strategy has proven successful, for example, in gaining the release of Raymond Davis from a Pakistani prison.  Davis, the CIA contractor who was being held for murder, was released by going through the shari‘a, which provides the relatives of the victims three options: 1) life for life, 2) bloodwit, or 3) outright forgiveness. Another example is the heroic work of Greg Mortenson in the remotest regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Mortenson earned the trust and protection of the local population by honoring local customs. Instead of denigrating the shari‘a, he upheld it in order to bring about positive change. Whenever a local religious leader issued a fatwa against his activities to build schools for the education of women, there was always a higher Islamic authority at hand to issue a counter-fatwa in his support!

After 9/11, Muslim scholars and institutions, from the Ayatollahs of Qom to the ulema of Azhar, condemned it. 9/11 was a crime according to the shari‘a as interpreted by the overwhelming majority of Muslims. Unfortunately, the worst of Muslims continue to be portrayed as ideal representatives of Islam, and the entire shari‘a continues to be caricatured by a handful of its most controversial elements. I believe in America, but I also believe in the shari‘a. Just like the good in America is capable of correcting what’s gone wrong with America, the good in shari‘a can be used to correct what’s gone wrong with Islam. The congressional hearings are driving a wedge between these natural allies, yet another tragic error in the conduct of the war on terror.

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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.
 
Global Migration & the New Cosmopolitanism article

Muscular Liberalism or Multiculturalism?


Last month, in a speech before the Munich Security Conference, British Prime Minister David Cameron declared that multiculturalism had weakened Britain’s collective identity and helped to make young British Muslims vulnerable to extremist ideologies.  In response to these failings, he argued that European governments needed to build stronger national identities that rejected “passive tolerance” in favor of “a more active, muscular liberalism”:

A passively tolerant society says to its citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone.  It stands neutral between different values. A genuinely liberal country does much more.  It believes in certain values and actively promotes them.  Freedom of speech.  Freedom of worship.  Democracy.  The rule of law.  Equal rights regardless of race, sex or sexuality.  It says to its citizens: this is what defines us as a society.  To belong here is to believe in these things.  Each of us in our own countries must be unambiguous and hard-nosed about this defense of our liberty.

The speech generated something of a firestorm among the chattering classes in Europe and North America, particularly in light of similar recent comments by the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the French president, Nicholas Sarkozy.  Some saw Cameron’s speech as an attempt to align himself with his two most prominent European counterparts. Others viewed the speech as a rather clumsy effort to address a volatile domestic issue in an international setting—a setting in which, unfortunately, multiculturalism and Europe’s growing Muslim minority were associated none too vaguely with the need to address “security.”Predictably, the “left” reacted angrily to what it perceived as Cameron’s conflation of multiculturalism with extremism. And the “right” cheered him on for finally saying that multiculturalism was a failure.

In retrospect, it appears that neither side really understood what Cameron was trying to say, but in fairness, that may have been because Cameron’s speech was more about sound bites than substance.

No Getting around Multiculturalism

Most people in Britain see multiculturalism as a way for people of different backgrounds, cultures, and traditions to respect and appreciate one another within the context of a larger, unified British political identity. In this they perceive on the ground what many academics have been theorizing about for years: citizenship is being decoupled from membership in a particular cultural community.  David Cameron himself alluded to this reality in his speech when he identified the root source of unity in Britain as a commitment to liberal values rather than in some cultural notion of “Britishness.”  Modern social, legal, and technological conditions mean that immigrants and migrants no longer feel obligated to immerse themselves totally in the preexisting social and cultural environments of their new homes, certainly not to the extent that would have been expected a generation or two ago.  Most British people see a more multicultural Britain as a better place for everyone, including, not insignificantly, “natives” like the Scots and the Welsh who can now demand respect for unique aspects of their culture within a more self-consciously diverse Great Britain.

Seyla Benhabib has written extensively on the emergence of a citizenship of residency that allows for multiple and often overlapping ties to locality, region, and transnational institutions.  To this I would add commitments to diasporic or universal religious identities, which in the case of Catholics might be encompassed by transnational institutions, but for many Muslims could be seen as completely separate from any institutional or geo-political structures. A number of political, legal, economic, and social changes since World War II have made this disaggregation of citizenship possible.

Primary among these changes has been the emergence of cosmopolitan legal norms linked to the expansion of international human rights.  As individuals are seen as bearers of certain fundamental rights regardless of the territories in which they find themselves, the notion of state sovereignty has weakened and, consequently, the ties of citizenship to particular cultures and territories have withered as well.  As these changes progress, an awkwardness about the meaning of citizenship and membership has developed in places like Europe and the United States as these societies reckon with the status of individuals in their midst who once would have been seen as members of peripheral cultures that were perhaps suitable for assimilation, not accommodation.

What do these changes signal for our understanding of citizenship and membership in societies like Britain as we move forward?  The numbers of global migrants may have dipped a bit due to the decline in the global economy, but most observers see this as temporary.  Furthermore, economic factors are just one of the many reasons that spur migrations, and the changes wrought by previous migratory movements are now a permanent part of the political and social landscape of nations around the world.

Muscular Liberalism Yes, as Well as a Respectful Pluralism

Unless there is some other coherent idea for engaging the new realities of multiple and overlapping identities, any failures of multiculturalism will not be addressed by abandoning the concept.  A more robust commitment to democratic values is a start. But it is those very values and critical questions about how they should be defined that force a deeper recognition of and respect for difference within a democratic nation-state.  What does religious freedom mean when the conversation moves beyond Protestants, Catholics, and Jews?  Can pluralism flourish in places like the Britain and the United States if it means that some citizens will choose lifestyles that encompass practices many other citizens will find illiberal?  Lines separating the acceptable and unacceptable will no doubt have to be drawn, but separating real threats to liberal democracy from fear of a cultural or racialized “other” is not always so easy.  Rep. Peter King’s hearings on Muslim “extremism” offer one troubling example of where the confusion might lead.

Looking ahead, it seems very likely that new, transnational forms of identity are destined to emerge that will allow citizens to share various types of geographic, political, and social space while still remaining connected to other identities—such as religion and ethnicity, including the robust transnational identities and communities fostered by Islam and Catholicism—that transcend territory.

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Vincent Rougeau
Vincent Rougeau has been Dean of Boston College Law School since 2011. He previously worked as a Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame.  He teaches and writes in the area of law and religion, with an emphasis on Catholic social teaching, and is the author of Christians in the American Empire: Faith and Citizenship in the New World Order (Oxford, 2008).
Authority, Community & Identity article

Civility 101: Do Unto Otters


Review of Do Unto Otters by Laurie Keller (New York: Henry Holt and Company LLC, 2007).

Shrillness, vitriol, and a distinct lack of civility characterize much of our public discussion in America these days.  America is torn and tense.

Public Hate

One example is that the topic of Islam in public discussion has become almost radioactive.  A jolting, disturbing reminder spread across the internet last week in video footage of loud, rude, and at times vicious anti-Muslim protesters who held a rally in February at a mosque in Yorba Linda, California. This was on an evening when the mosque was holding a fundraiser to support relief and charity work in the U.S.  (There were over 600,000 views of this “Hate Comes to Orange County” video on YouTube before it was removed due to a copyright dispute.)  And Rep. Peter King’s hearings on Islamic radicalization in America have been the focus of intensely polarized—and not particularly civil—national debate.

How we proceed will have an impact both domestically and abroad.  At home we need to decide whether to strengthen or to rip apart the fabric of our own society.  Abroad, what we are at home determines how we look in the world’s eyes. If we are hateful to others at home, we dare not be surprised if others are hateful towards us abroad.

The stakes are high.  We would do well to take stock of what is happening to fundamental public civility in our country.

I offer a proposal that may sound unusual, but if an unusual route is what it takes to restore at least some level of public civility, so be it (or so “bee” it, as is the case in my recommendation).

 

Public Civility, Advises the Wise Owl

I propose that we turn to a rabbit, some otters, and an owl for a useful lesson.

In her book Do Unto Otters (A Book About Manners), talented author and illustrator Laurie Keller offers us a way to return to public civility and vibrant, peaceful pluralism.  Such civility and pluralism have at other times have been among the core strengths of our society.  We have done this before.  We can, if we want to, do it again.

I am well aware that reviewing a book about a goofy bunny, a polka-dot-trouser-wearing otter, and a bow-tie wearing owl, along with some funky bees, may seem like an unusual response to the ugly vitriol that played out in Yorba Linda in February and is playing out now as the nation debates Congressman King’s hearings.  Of course I don’t view Keller’s book as any kind of panacea for our very serious troubles today.  Do Unto Otters, does, however, show a way to return to civility, and it reminds us that we can be civil to others who are different—without having to sacrifice who we are in the process.

I think widespread reading of Keller’s book Do Unto Otters would be one of the best things that could happen to America today.

Calling all kids: please read this book to your parents!

Mr. Rabbit’s Confrontation with “the Otter”

In Keller’s book, Mr. Rabbit lives in a tree in the forest on the banks of a pretty river.  One day he arrives home to discover that a family of otters has decided to move in next door.

Before he has even met them, Mr. Rabbit gasps in a panicked horror, “OTTERS?  OTTERS?  My new neighbors are OTTERS!  I don’t know anything about otters.”  He goes on to imagine the worst from this new predicament, as Keller’s funny illustrations make abundantly clear.

Mr. Rabbit has no idea what to do.  Wise Mr. Owl then offers Mr. Rabbit a way to approach this seemingly scary situation of having to live next door to a new, strange type of neighbor: “Do unto otters as you would have otters do unto you.”

Mr. Owl invites his hare-brained pal to consider how he, a rabbit, would like otters to treat him.  Mr Rabbit seems taken aback by this approach to his pending crisis, as I suspect the readers of this review may be taken aback by approaching some of the serious tensions in our society today though a children’s book.  Upon further reflection, Mr. Rabbit gives Mr. Owl’s approach a try.

That’s lesson number one: It can’t hurt to try.

Mr. Rabbit’s Other Approach

Mr. Rabbit tells Mr. Owl that he would like otters to be “friendly…polite…honest…considerate…kind…[to] cooperate… to play fair…to share…[not to] tease… [to] apologize…and be forgiving.”  For each of these Keller offers charming, very amusing illustrated scenes of Mr. Rabbit imagining what such behavior would look like.

Yes, the book is heavy on levity—all the more reason to recommend this not only for children but also for adults.

That’s lesson number two: A little silliness won’t kill us.  But hatred and fury could.  We need to find another way to handle living together and discussing our shared public future together in our diverse population.

In the end, importantly, Mr. Rabbit discovers he does not need to become an otter, and the new otters in his neighborhood do not need to become rabbits, for all of them to get along.  Instead, with basic mutual civility and considerateness, they can live side by side with their differences.  And not just that. When these different creatures find a way to treat each other with mutual decency and fairness, they discover they can even play together.

To be sure, Do Unto Otters is not an alternative to complex and vital discussions about religion and politics; no, we need to have these discussions.

However, what Keller’s book does provide is a guidebook for how we have these discussions and how we live side by side constructively with, not in spite of, our differences.  Her book provides us a way to maneuver through these differences.

Given the tone of our current public discussions and public protests, I think a return to basics could serve us well, doing unto others, including otters, as you would have done unto you.

4 Comments on Civility 101: Do Unto Otters Array
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.
Global Currents article

Equal Citizenship Must Replace Sectarian Violence in Egypt


All Egyptians—Christian and Muslim—have a fundamental right to live in safety. Acts of sectarian violence such as have been witnessed in Egypt in recent days are an affront to the entire nation and must be met with a unified front. The future of Egypt depends on the cooperation and goodwill of all its citizens, and now is the time  to work towards good; now is the time to banish sectarianism from our vocabularies once and for all.

As Egypt turns a chapter in its history, it is important to remember that as we cast away injustices of the past, we must never cast away what has made our nation strong and resilient. We should never compromise our national unity and we must honor the sacred duty to remain true to our principles, to insist as the Qur’an teaches us: “to stand firmly for justice, as witnesses to God, even if it be against your selves.” To do otherwise is to risk losing our rich traditions of tolerance, our social unity and cohesion, indeed “our very selves” to the forces of instability and violence.

The recent tensions between Muslims and Christians in Egypt are a reminder that much work lies ahead of us. Both faith traditions teach the sanctity of human life and importance of coexistence. The Qur’an teaches that to kill an innocent person is the equivalent of killing all of humanity. Not only are places of worship considered sacred spaces within the confines of Islamic law, but also more importantly human life is considered sacred. Transgressing these bounds is a grave sin that will only lead to turmoil in this life and the life to come.

The Islam that we were taught in our youth is one that calls for peace and mercy. The first prophetic saying that is taught to a student of Islam is, “Those who show mercy are shown mercy by the All-Merciful. Show mercy to those who are on earth and the One in the heavens will show mercy to you.” What we have learnt about Islam has been taken from the clear, pristine, and scholarly understanding of the Qur’an, “O people, we have created you from a single male and female and divided you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another.”

This sort of violence cannot be the outcome of any proper understanding of religion. It is rather a manifestation of the immorality of people with cruel hearts, arrogant souls, and warped logic. There is no doubt that such barbarism needs to be denounced in the strongest of terms, and opposed at every turn. Now is not the time for voices of reason to prevail, now is time for the peacemakers to take action.

Needed: The Full Meaning of Equal Citizenship

The sectarian violence must end. Egyptians are sick and tired of using painkillers and bandages to cure the chronic sectarian disease. A solution that addresses the deep roots of the sectarian quagmire is urgently needed as we move into this new era. I think the solution lies in putting into practice and actualizing the full meaning of citizenship, which accords every citizen, regardless of religious affiliation, equal rights and responsibilities before the law.

I call upon the Egyptian and international media to take part in promoting a sectarian-free Egypt. I call upon the educationists to review the school curricula to make sure they are free from sectarian biases and stereotypes. I call upon all political, administrative, and executive players to facilitate the full participation of all Egyptians in building the new Egypt. The sectarian issue is like an iceberg that is sure to melt down with the sunshine of freedom in our beloved country.

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Shaykh Ali Gomaa
Shaykh Ali Gomaa was Grand Mufti of Egypt from 2003-2013. One of the most respected jurists in the Sunni Muslim world, he headed the Dar al Ifta, which issues thousands of fatwas per week.
Authority, Community & Identity article

Inequality, Masculinity & Modernity


M. CHRISTIAN GREEN

In the weeks and months after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, speculation swirled over the attackers’ possible motivations.  The pseudo-religious zeal of Mohammed Atta’s final letter to his comrades was only one aspect of it.  Attention also centered on the attackers’ possible socioeconomic motivations.  Many of the 9/11 terrorists seemed to fit the profile of the burgeoning masses of young men with dim economic prospects said to populate the Middle East.  And yet the ringleaders all had graduate degrees, often from European universities.  Their activities in the United States while biding time before the attacks demonstrated no lack of familiarity with American-style consumerism and modern masculine pastimes—including the seamier diversions of casinos and strip clubs.

Some of the socioeconomic analysis of 9/11 focused on the gap between educational background and actual opportunity that may have haunted the minds of the more educated attackers. In that analysis, their ambition may have been enough to get them out of their countries of origin and into European universities, but it also brought new knowledge of the gap between the limitations of their home countries and the affluence of the West.  Theirs was not a problem of absolute poverty, but of relative poverty. In their new environs, they could never quite fit in culturally—or perhaps religiously, morally, or spiritually—given the marginalization of immigrants that persists in many European countries even among immigrants who aspire to “assimilate.”

The Spirit Level of Inequality and Modernity

In the recent book, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, public health researchers Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, compellingly catalogue the overwhelming public health effects of inequality along a number of markers.  The authors never deal as directly as they might have with the spiritual level suggested in their book’s title.  But the implication is that inequality disintegrates not only societies, but the spirits of the individuals who inhabit them. And they do note that “more unequal societies seem more masculine,” (58-60, emphasis added) and “more hierarchical” (141, 200-207).  By Wilkinson and Pickett’s account of the upward trend in inequality, throughout the industrial era, but particularly the last half century, inequality seems to be a distinctly modern phenomenon as well.

This attention to inequality in public health comes at a time when economists are beginning to look at the connections between economics and identity.  It turns out that matter and spirit—money and soul—may not be as easy to separate as many religious traditions may suggest, with the bright lines they sometimes draw (or imply) between materialism and spiritualism.  Inability to procure the basic necessities of life, affluence aside, remains a problem in most of the world, and it is a problem with which more and more Americans are becoming intimately and painfully familiar in the Great Economic Recession.

As suggested in phenomena as diverse as the motivations of the 9/11 attackers and the recent self-immolation of the fruit-seller Mohamed Bouazizi that touched off the “Tunisami” (hat tip to Rashied Omar) of revolutions now sweeping North Africa and the Middle East, what is also emerging is a sense of the connection between inequality, masculinity, and modernity.  Observers have commented for decades now on the global “feminization of poverty.”  It may now be important to turn our attention to the “masculinization of inequality” as well.

Religion and Globalization

Again, in the spirit of the animating question of the “Contending Modernities” project— “Where can Catholics, Muslims, and secular views come together to address the problems of modernity?”—the masculinization of inequality might be another problem to address.  On the Catholic side, at Notre Dame, the inquiry is already well under way.  This year’s Notre Dame Forum 2010-2011 has focused on “The Global Marketplace and the Common Good.”  In this impressive undertaking, scholars from around the university were given the common task of reading Pope Benedict XVI’s recent encyclical on economics, Caritas in Veritate (“Charity in Truth”) and journalist Tom Friedman’s book Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution. The result has been a series of events that have generated important interdisciplinary perspective on globalization, inequality, and the common good.

These issues need interreligious as well as interdisciplinary perspectives—and not just on the economic and technical issues that might lead to a green revolution, but also on the social and spiritual dimensions of these issues, which seem to be sparking a gender revolution.  The Catholic tradition has a long line of thought on economic matters, spanning a number of key papal encyclicals and exceptionally well represented in the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ pastoral letter, Economic Justice for All. That 1986 letter is a veritable Catholic “best seller” and is a staple of courses on economic ethics everywhere.  The Muslim tradition, born amidst both desert scarcity and ancient trade routes, has also had a significant focus on economic justice and globalization, centuries before globalization assumed its status as one of the great cultural and political buzzwords of our time.

The Gender of Humiliation

Where the Catholic and Muslim traditions might want to focus their long legacies of economic thought, together with secular and other religious counterparts, is on the spiritual questions that emerge particularly with economic justice and questions of gender.  For one of the great risks of economic inequality, both within particular societies and worldwide, is that it may produce toxic experiences and emotions of dishonor, shame, and humiliation.  Sadly, many women have such experiences and emotions in abundance through their poverty, objectification, exploitation, and subordination in cultures around the world.

But for many men in modernity, these are new experiences, and ones with which they seem poorly equipped to cope.  From Mohammed Atta to Mohamed Bouazizi, something is going on when even foreign policy and counterterrorism security wonks sense a masculinity problem.

Samia Bouazizi saw the problem when a policewoman slapped her brother across the face because he would not move the fruit stand from which he expected his meager earnings. She remarked of the incident, “She humiliated him. Everyone was watching. Our family can accept anything, but not humiliation.”  In the new era of inequality, masculinity, and modernity, humiliation—at the spirit level—is an intolerable condition we must redress, and one the Catholic and Muslim traditions have special resources for understanding and transforming.

Further Reading

  • Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett  The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger (2009)
  • Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild, Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy (2003)
  • Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide (2009)
  • Isobel Coleman, Paradise Beneath Her Feet: How Women Are Transforming the Middle East (2010)
  • Reihan Salam, “The End of Macho,” Foreign Policy (July/August 2009).
  • “Man Up! Why We Need to Reimagine Masculinity,” Newsweek, September 20, 2010,
  • Hanna Rosin, “The End of Men,” The Atlantic Monthly (July/August 2010)
  • Dominique Moïsi, The Geopolitics of Emotion: How Cultures of Fear, Humiliation, and Hope are Reshaping the World (New York: Doubleday, 2009)
  • Karim Fahim, “Slap to a Man’s Pride Set Off Tumult in Tunisia,” The New York Times, January 21, 2011
  • Roger Cohen, “Facebook and Arab Dignity,” The New York Times, January 24, 2011
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M. Christian Green
M. Christian Green is a scholar, teacher, researcher, writer, and editor working in the fields of law, religion, ethics, human rights, and global affairs.  Green is currently a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion, a general co-editor and the book review editor for the Journal of Law and Religion, and editor and publications manager for the African Consortium for Law and Religion Studies. She blogs at Cakewalks and Climbingwalls.
Gender, State & Society article

Truth & Reconciliation Amid Sexual Violence


Like many universities around America, Notre Dame recognized Sexual Assault Awareness Week at the end of last month (February 20-27) in a world in which sexual violence against women and girls—and sometimes men and boys—remains a persistent evil.  As one of the world’s oldest forms of violence, present throughout the ages, particularly in situations of conflict and war, sexual violence seems distinctly anti-modern from both religious and secular perspectives.  How is it that sexual violence remains such a blot on human nature, human society and, particularly, the relationship between men and women?

The sexual assault of CBS war correspondent Lara Logan by a mob of men amidst the euphoria of Tahrir Square on the day of Hosni Mubarak’s resignation, on February 11th—a sexual assault described as “brutal and sustained”—is just the most recent high-profile instance of the scourge of sexual violence inflicted on women throughout the African continent, most heinously in the Congo.  This scourge is well-known to brave and seasoned conflict journalists like Logan, who hails from South Africa, a country with the highest incidence of sexual assault in the world.

The Horror of a Ugandan Girl’s Story

At the “Contending Modernities” project launch in New York in November 2010, Jacqueline Moturi Ogega, director of the Women’s Mobilization Program at Religions for Peace, gave a compelling testimony of the gravity of such violence.  She told the story of a fifteen-year-old who had been abducted into sexual slavery as a young girl by the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda.  Continually raped and almost certainly denied any form of medical care as she accompanied the “soldiers” in their campaign of terror, she gave birth to five children in captivity and was pregnant with a sixth child when she came to the attention and care of Ogega’s group.  The idea of “forced pregnancy” rankles those who are justifiably keen not to disparage the circumstances that give rise to new life—and yet there seems no more apt description of the girl’s ordeal.

As Ogega recounted this girl’s story, there was near complete silence in the large and virtually packed hall of attendees at the “Contending Modernities” launch. The story was not addressed in the rich discussion following the panel of women scholars who introduced the “Contending Modernities” project’s inaugural focus on “Women, Family, and State.”  In truth, the audience and panelists may have been struggling simply to register and reconcile the horror of the Ugandan girl’s story.

Muslims and Catholics: Together Against Sexual Violence?

And yet one of the inaugural questions of the “Contending Modernities” project was “Where can Catholics and Muslims come together to address the problems of modernity?”  I would suggest that the issue of sexual violence is such a problem, where they can come together, and that something like a religiously-grounded “truth and reconciliation” process around gender and sexual violence might be a step towards a common effort and solution.

Both Catholicism and Islam have complicated histories when it comes to sexual violence.  Islam has a strong concern for women’s honor, but requires multiple witnesses to establish guilt in cases of rape and sometimes metes out harsh punishments for sexual improprieties, including stoning—sometimes for the female victims themselves. In Catholicism, St. Thomas Aquinas’ discussion of the crime of rape mostly as an offense to a woman’s father, husband, or possibility of obtaining a husband, does not tend to sit well with modern ears. And yet in his discussion of the sexual violence that can result from the sin of lust, Thomas is clear that the first harm is to the woman “by reason of due honor not being paid to her” (Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 154, a. l).  St. Augustine also addressed the problem of sexual violence in the context of conflict and war, urging women who had been raped not to commit suicide—perhaps not the most enlightened comment in light of modern understandings of women’s capacity for resilience and survival—and yet here Augustine, like Thomas, references women’s honor in maintaining that “[t]hey have the glory of chastity within them, the testimony of their conscience.  They have this in the sight of God, and they ask for nothing more” (City of God, bk. I, ch. XIX).

This charity from the fathers of the Church is certainly more than women can expect today in many, if not most, societies around the world.  In secular feminist discussions of sexual violence there has, at times, been discussion of whether rape is a crime of lust or a crime of violence—the prevailing view being that it is a matter of violence.  Noted feminist legal theorist, Catharine MacKinnon (Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues) has sought to transcend this debate, arguing that rape, while certainly a crime of violence, has an inescapably gendered dimension. Even men who are the victims of sexual violence are victimized largely by being treated as women.

In fact, it seems that women who suffer sexual violence in many parts of the world are not being treated even as women but rather precisely as objects and instruments. Particularly in the case of gang rapes or family members being forced to rape one another at gunpoint, as has happened regularly in the Congo, there is a way in which the intended victims of such assaults are not women as such but the families and communities of which they are members. The women in such cases are merely instruments and tools—inhuman, inanimate objects to be used to inflict violence and terror on whole groups. Moreover, the tendency of the male perpetrators to participate in such acts in groups, suggests another audience, as well. They are watching each other—and assessing the strength of their fellows’ perverse displays of masculinity and power.

Towards “Truth and Reconciliation” around Sexual Violence

The Muslim tradition has as many resources as the Catholic tradition for addressing men’s abuses of power in sexual violence. Would that both religions would revisit and, where necessary, reinterpret their traditions to intensify the struggle against such abuses!

One way Muslims and Christians might collaborate would be to engage in something like an interfaith “truth and reconciliation” commission to investigate the roots of, and responses to, sexual violence in their traditions.  Such a process might produce strong statements from both religions on sexual violence in all its forms. Perhaps then, as Cathleen Kaveny suggested in her address that preceded Ogega’s at the “Contending Modernities” launch—men and women might truly be able to be “friends” in modernity.

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M. Christian Green
M. Christian Green is a scholar, teacher, researcher, writer, and editor working in the fields of law, religion, ethics, human rights, and global affairs.  Green is currently a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion, a general co-editor and the book review editor for the Journal of Law and Religion, and editor and publications manager for the African Consortium for Law and Religion Studies. She blogs at Cakewalks and Climbingwalls.