Mormonism has emerged as a booming facet of our country’s culture, as well. Perhaps most prominently, two mega-wealthy Republican presidential candidates (Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman) hail from Mormon backgrounds, and Mormons are the subjects of Broadway’s newest hit musical comedy The Book of Mormon. Brigham Young University, currently America’s largest religious university, is owned and operated by the church. Basketball fans will recall that the school’s team, the Cougars, recently rose to March Madness stardom. Right-winger Glenn Beck is a Mormon, as is Democratic Senate Majority leader Harry Reid. So is the founder of JetBlue Airways, David Neeleman, and singer David Archeluta. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir has even garnered a Grammy.

Overall, Mormons appear to be flourishing. So how do they fit into America’s religious mosaic? American Grace provides an overly politicized account of the Latter-day Saints, but overall provides an important glimpse of what’s starting to look like a major American movement.

The book frames its account of American Mormonism in a political context, noting a variety of opinions but concluding that the church is becoming increasingly right wing. Specifically, the authors document the church leadership’s support of the controversial Proposition 8 in California three years ago as alienating Democrats in the church. The authors’ tone is respectful, but I see a general trend of reluctance to consider Mormons qua Mormons—not as actors in some other narrative. Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven, for example, recounts the admittedly controversial history of the Latter-day Saints movement, but does so alongside the story of a vicious double murder by Mormon fundamentalists. Even though Krakauer professes admiration for the Mormons he knew growing up, the juxtaposition of homicide with a chronicle of Mormonism in America darkens the reader’s perception of the church itself. While not as dramatic, the amount of actual religious anthropology devoted to Mormonism in American Grace is dwarfed by its largely anecdotal political demography; the context portrays Mormons as more of a voting block than the burgeoning national force it truly constitutes outside of mere party politics.

Nevertheless, the authors give us a succinct—albeit lopsided—snapshot of contemporary Mormon life in America. The book provides brief sketches of the church’s growing diversity when readers encounter a rather eccentrically festooned African-American convert. Fervent missionary efforts come off as an impressively global operation. And the church’s staunch commitment to the family gets it due at a warmly personal level: The book follows one family’s participation in the church’s Family Home Evening program, which “usually involves staying in on Monday nights and taking time to ‘pray and sing together, read the scriptures, teach the gospel to one another, and participate in other activities that … build family unity.’” Call it goofy, but at a time when many American households can’t even manage to congregate around a dinner table, “family home evenings” look like a domestic dam against today’s deluge of work, extracurriculars, and Facebooking.

The statistical picture that concludes the book is more troubling, however. Sifting through the data from their Faith Matters survey, the authors find that “Mormons like everyone else, while almost everyone else dislikes Mormons. Jews are the exception, as they give Mormons a net positive rating (suggesting that there is a perceived commonality, given that they are both minority religions).” Consonant with the preceding findings, “60 percent of Mormons report hearing disparaging remarks about their religious beliefs either often or occasionally…”—much higher than other mainstream sects. (I would venture to say that many American who profess any knowledge about Mormonism gleaned such factoids from South Park’s “All About Mormons” episode, which I might add concludes with an extremely perceptive moral to its story.)

But why? 98% of Mormon respondents—the most of any religious sect surveyed—even answered that “[people] not of my faith, including non-Christians, can go to heaven.” Plus regardless of this apparent conviviality, we’ve seen how the church’s adherents have evangelically permeated the public sphere.

Perhaps there is an American analogue of sorts between Jews in the 20^th century and Mormons in the 21^st. As American Grace notes, Mormons “resemble an ethnic group,” possessing a “high strength of religious identity” and sharing a “distinct culture.” Mormons subsequently have a high rate of intermarriage and associate closely with one another. While this sounds peculiarly like American Jewry, which comprises its own brand of “ethnoreligious” group, the historical parallels are even more compelling. Fleeing pogroms in Europe, Jews found refuge in America, setting up their own enclaves in places like New York City and Florida. Likewise, Mormons were violently run out of the American East-coast and Midwest (the book notes an 1838 extermination order by Missouri’s governor that embarrassingly stayed on the books until 1976), eventually settling the barren Utah territory in outposts like Salt Lake City and Provo.

For much of the preceding century, Jews faced prejudice throughout the country as an outsider group, while this century’s Mormons—although to a far lesser extent—continue to be the object of widespread disparagement as reflected in the book’s data. Yet through hard work and communal development, Jews were able to break through what the authors call the “stained-glass ceiling” of religious intolerance, rising to become senators, entertainers, heads of academic institutions, and CEOs of major firms. And, as the Faith Matters survey reports, Jews have managed to become the best liked of the country’s religious groups.

American Grace might then be catching Mormons midway on their national ascension. Like American Jews, the formerly marginalized Latter-day Saints have gone out and started their own companies, schools, and communities, and are taking leading roles across the cultural stage. If their countrymen’s acceptance ultimately follows—as it did for America’s Jews—it will likely be derivative from these Goliath efforts, ones that have moved many Mormons closer to the core of our country’s politics, business world, and media. With all this in mind, the miraculous trajectory of Mormons in America seems to have already shattered the stained-glass ceiling and be racing straight towards the heavens.

And as it happens, these charts are predictive — I am pretty secular.

Of course, if you asked me why – over drinks, maybe – I wouldn’t talk about demographic statistics. I’d give you explanations. I’d talk about John Dewey. I might channel old Bertrand Russell essays that I read when I was 14. I’d argue from the premise that I chose my beliefs as a thinking and feeling free mind. This wouldn’t be surprising; everyone can explain their beliefs.

But how seriously should we take those explanations? Did I really begin with an open-minded appraisal of my options, choose a Deweyian secular progressivism because it was the best possible position, and then proceed from there? Or did I begin where I am now, as a secular New York Jew who’s “unmusical” to religious things, and then go on to construct a vocabulary (with Dewey and Russell in it) to justify those beliefs that already existed? Charts like these caution skepticism. How seriously can we take beliefs that would be radically transformed by the roll of the demographic die – by being randomly born into another state, or to richer parents, or if we encountered different books, or met different people?

Richard Rorty tells us to be “ironic” towards our moral vocabulary. Use it to fight for a better world, he says; but acknowledge that the world we’re fighting in is not one of our choosing, and neither are the words we’re fighting with, or perhaps even the side of the fight we’re on.

That’s seems about right to me.

Last week, I watched Tommy Wiseau’s cult classic, The Room. A few days ago, I attempted to camp on the beach. And yesterday morning, I attended the synagogue of a group popularly known as ‘Jews for Jesus’. An alert to my co-ethnics: I am in no danger of being ‘converted’. I’m a strong agnostic, and I don’t take to anyone’s attempts at religious persuasion. I just happen to be curious.

Fortunately, I had an in. A good friend had told me that his father, a freewheeling fifty-something Cuban-American, had recently begun to practice as a Messianic Jew. Drawing on my background as an amateur anthropologist of religious experiences (I’ve explored a Breslov Hasidic Shabbat service, the Druze hamlets of the Golan Heights, the LDS museum in Missouri, etc.), my friend invited me to Saturday morning Messianic services – a chance at which I jumped.

I didn’t know very much about Messianic Jews, other than that they adhered to the trappings of Judaism, but also believed in Jesus (Yeshua) as the Messiah. In my early estimation, they were Jewish Christians, a more generous appraisal than they’re used to. To a majority of Jews secular and Orthodox, Messianic Jews are Christians at best, and traitors at worst.

On the way to the synagogue (housed in a Methodist Church), my friend’s father spelled out a litany of differences that Messianics have with the traditional Christian watchwords – unrevered, the cross is stripped down to an ‘execution stake’; subtly re-explained, the Trinity is rebranded ‘the Unity’. Presaging an important theme of my visit, he asserted plainly: “We’re not Christians”. They’re also not so hot on being called ‘Jews for Jesus’.

I opened the door to an unremarkable, well-worn scene: the basket of bar mitzvah kippot, terse ‘shabbat shalom’ handshakes, and a bearded simulacrum of Ben Bernanke who happens to be the rabbi.

From here, things fade into dissonance. I snag a kippah and a special visitors’ kit. Bernanke scurries off to the side, and the sanctuary opens to a charismatic, decidedly Christian worship service. Many ecumenical songs of the Lord’s grace, some guitars, some exotic drums. In some liberal, creative enclaves, this could be a Reconstructionist Jewish Saturday service – except that the people here actually care, as measured by the hands waving skyward and the eyes meditatively shut.

The medium-sized cohort of black ladies dressed in their Sunday best seems especially at home – and a motley crew of ethnic Jews and white gentiles struggle to keep to the Pentecostal rhythm. But from the circle of women dancing to the melody to the large Altaic man banging away on the drum, it’s clear that everything, for a change, is with intent. Scattered and relatively new, the Messianics are a community of volition.

Nodding along to the closing bars of the worship service, the rabbi takes the podium and conducts the more identifiably Jewish part of the service in Hebrew and English, leading the basic prayers (e.g. Amidah, Barchu) in familiar Ashkenazi melodies. The slapdash – or perhaps just unfamiliar – arrangement of the service is brought to order by the opening of the ark to behold a Torah scroll, dressed normatively in blue velvet with golden stitching.

To a well-traveled visitor of Conservative and Modern Orthodox Jewish synagogues, what happens next is uncanny. The Torah is immediately returned to the ark, and the rabbi begins to reference English-language verses from the Book of Numbers – upon which, congregants draw out their own personal Bibles, ready to mark them up with commentary from the sermon (religion is rarely so personal outside Protestant Christianity). I’m caught off guard when the rabbi, fluent and animated, moves seamlessly into the New Testament book of Acts.

His sermon – d’var torah in Jewish parlance – doubles effortlessly as an apologetic. According to his reasoning, Messianic Judaism is what Judaism was meant to be. Normative Jews, he explains, fail to grasp the continuity of purpose between Old and New Testament. Christians, he accuses, have lost sight of the Jewish basis of belief in Jesus – and absolve themselves unjustifiably of the laws of Moses.

With every rhetorical flourish, I get the sense that I’m being honed in – not as a target for attack, but as the first-time visitor with olive skin and dark hair who sang along in Hebrew. At no point do I mind: though irreligious, it has always made sense to me that people who believe that they have the way to God would want to show others. I find myself less sympathetic to being shown a microphone with which to announce my visiting presence to the congregation: politely, I introduce myself as ‘Josh from Marlboro’ and return to my pew.

There’s no shortage of attention: as a first-time visitor, I’m allowed by statute to the front of the line at the kiddush luncheon. I cannot say that I mind. Congregants of all backgrounds and rabbi’s wife ferry me around the building, asking about my background and telling stories about their journeys to Messianic Judaism. The rabbi sits me down to a long-winded, scholarly talk (just the way I like them) about the biblical basis for Jewish belief in Yeshua as messiah, and I listen, mind open, bagel and hummus on my plate. And I can’t help but shake the idea that he should be spending his Saturday at the Federal Reserve.

It ends predictably: he argues well, I leave unconvinced. We shake hands. Shabbat shalom. As I suspected, there’s nothing perverse about the Messianics – except, perhaps, that unlike some Reform and Conservative Jews, they actually believe in what they’re doing. Their arguments are at least as coherent as any Chabad street rabbi’s – and to be fair, I’d be more inclined to believe in Yeshua than in Menachem Mendel Schneerson.

Then again, I’m not particularly inclined to believe at all. As eager for new membership as followers of any movement, the congregants seem to have misjudged my motives (although I thank them for their hospitality). I am not looking for a new faith. I just happen to be interested in the plurality of human expression, which, if you’re lucky to live somewhere as diverse as central New Jersey, is almost always within reach.

If you get a chance, tap into it. Don’t ever believe that ‘culture’ is limited to the Met and The New Yorker. Hungarian-American community centers and Christian Science reading rooms count too. Even Messianic Jewish Shabbat services. Whether or not they manage to convince you of anything, you’re guaranteed an experience.

But theory and reality were unfortunately quite separate in this case. Instead of a debate of pluralism in modern society, or even a cursory discussion of pluralism myths, the forum devolved into a vague meditation on faith. Although the audience heard plenty on the importance of pluralism, it heard little in the way of how it can be achieved, how governments and individuals play a role, or even a concrete definition of the term.

The main problem of the night was the focus on the speakers’ personal stories of faith. While Dr. Eck and Dr. Ramachandra’s descriptions of their respective religious beliefs were interesting, they also allowed little time for the forum to delve into a deeper discussion of pluralism. Knowing that Dr. Eck has perhaps “been to more Hindu temples than any other Methodist” ultimately provided little insight into the real topic of pluralism.

Worse still, moderator Rodney Peterson, the Executive Director of the Boston Theological Institute, encouraged the speakers to get off topic. Instead of pushing them to address the theme of the evening, Peterson continued to question Eck and Ramachandra on how their personal histories. At one point during the forum, when the talk began to approach the advertised topic, Peterson joked about how little the forum had managed address its advertised subject.

The most excruciating part of the forum certainly came with the audience’s opportunity to ask questions of the two speakers towards the end of the evening. It seemed that student after student took their time at the microphone to ask about how they could reconcile their Christian faith with the need to engage with those of other faiths in the true spirit of pluralism. Probing questions were replaced with requests for step-by-step instructions for modern Christians living in a pluralist society. Regardless of the Veritas Forum’s Christian leanings, the focus on the Christian experience alone missed the point of having a discussion of pluralism in the first place.

The Veritas Forum, it should be mentioned, is a Christian organization and takes no pains to hide the fact. The programs advertised how the Forum seeks to discuss “the relevance of Jesus Christ to all life” and relate important debates to “the person and story of Jesus Christ.” But even with these Christian ties, it was nothing short of a disappointment to see a discussion of religious diversity become so one-side.

Where was the discussion of how different faiths interact in the United States? Why was there no mention of the idea of secular governments and how they relate to the idea of pluralism? And most damming of all, where was the mention of pluralism myths, the very tagline of the event? To see what could have been an engaging discussion between two such interesting speakers turn into so much less was both disappointing and frustrating.

All this negativity does come with a few caveats. The forum was by no means boring. In fact, Dr. Ramachandra’s story of his own path to Christianity was an inspiring one and said much about how he was able to live in a pluralist society. But the talk on that Friday night and the advertised Forum simply did not match. The big questions were left unanswered and untouched, in that respect the Forum truly failed.

Graphic: Scott Yi (Brown ’05)

A bucolic riverside village of 2,000 in the Galilee’s far north, Ghajar could fit inconspicuously anywhere on the Syrian, Lebanese, or Israeli landscape. Until regional tumult during 1967’s Six-Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors, it did. Originally citizens of Syria, the residents of Ghajar accepted Israeli occupation and many became citizens under the Golan Heights Law in 1981.

Natural growth expanded the village across the border into Israeli-occupied South Lebanon – a fact that split the village in half when the UN drew a ceasefire line down the middle of Ghajar upon Israel’s 2000 withdrawal from Lebanon. In what’s perceived as a diplomatic gesture, the Israeli army has recently announced its intention to withdraw from the northern half of the village. Although villagers don’t feel particularly Israeli, many feel hard-pressed by the prospect of a divided existence.

And if that weren’t difficult enough for the residents of Ghajar, they also happen to be Alawites, members of a quasi-Shiite sect that most conservative Muslims reject as heretical. In Lebanon, where many Sunnis and Christians resent Syrian puppetry in the government, Alawites are distrusted as the scions of the Syrian ruling family (the Assads, against all odds, are members of the sect). And in Israel, despite harmony among neighbors in the Golan Heights, there isn’t a single other Alawite community in the entire country.

This quintessentially Middle Eastern problem of identity is not only the problem of Ghajar’s 2,000 Alawite villagers. In the midst of controversy over Jews and Palestinians, Hezbollah and Hamas, Iraqi Kurds and Iraqi Arabs – a colorful cast of embattled third-party minorities falls through the cracks.

Take the Druze, a basically Arab ethnoreligious group straddling the contentious borders between Israel, Syria, and Lebanon. Following in the theology of 11th century preacher named Anushkatin ad-Darazi, they practice a secret offshoot of Islam that reveres the biblical Jethro and believes in reincarnation.

Numbering perhaps one million, the Druze have managed to do the impossible: among Jews and Arabs alike, they’ve lived in peace as loyal citizens.

In Israel, while most Arab citizens vote for ethnic-interest parties and are happily exempted from military service, the Druze defy prediction – serving in the army with distinction and voting for right-wing Jewish politicians.

As you move away from the cradle of Abrahamic religion, the strange minority permutations of Middle Eastern culture get stranger. In Iraq, up to 500,000 Kurds and a handful of Arabs practice Yazidism, an Indo-Iranian polytheistic faith that gives special acclaim to Melek Taus, the peacock angel. Eastern Turkey is dotted with communities of Turks and Kurds who self-describe as Alevi, a syncretic, liberal religion that draws on both Islam and Tengriism, the old religion of the Turkic shamans. Just before you hit the Khyber Pass, you meet the Kalash – a blue-eyed mountain people numbering 6,000 who worship a pantheon of protector-gods in the Taliban’s backyard.

Like Ghajar, it seems like nobody making policy in Iraq or AfPak has heard of the Yezidis or the Kalash. But amidst the bombs and the religious zealotry, it comes as no surprise that the rich, arcane ways of life that they’ve preserved are under assault.

And whatever we think about peace between Jews and Arabs or Kurds and Turks, there’s a banner that every sensible person can take up: the rights of the Middle East’s ancient minorities. The first step, of course, would be acknowledging their existence.

Because after all, not everyone in the Middle East accepts the revelations of Mohammed, Jesus, or Moses. Some still worship bulls. Some even worship peacocks.

Brave? Arguably so. At the very least, I think it’s pretty cool. It certainly has me on the side of Ghajar’s villagers, who never chose to straddle the border between two countries that are barely their own.

Photo source: Wikimedia

Credit: Gil Yohanan

Religious plurality comes in many shapes and sizes. Take the case of Israel, often dismissed by foreign observers as simply ‘the Jewish state’. The lion’s share of international focus on Israel stems from conflict between the Jewish majority and an Arab minority.

Yet outside mixed-ethnic areas like Jerusalem and the Upper Galilee, most Israelis don’t deal with Jewish-Arab problems on a daily basis. Rather, the schism on everyone’s mind is playing out between a secular Jewish majority (Israel is considerably more atheist than the US) and a vocal Orthodox Jewish minority – two full-fledged sectors of society. Besides having different concepts of God and the Jewish tradition, they tend to live in separate neighborhoods and cities, vote for different political parties, and have totally different ideas for the civilizational identity of Israel.

As interest in the peace process wears down, the secular-religious divide is making a media comeback. With PM Netanyahu’s coalition dependent on the cooperation of religious parties, the ultra-Orthodox Shas party is attempting to pass through Knesset a $30 million worth of stipends for students at yeshivas – religious institutes of Torah and Talmud study. And secular university students are up in arms.

Coming on the heels of a court ruling that provided for equality of funding, the stipend bill led on Monday to a general strike of students and professors at Hebrew University, Israel’s premier secular university. To the surprise of many demonstrators, university president Menachem Ben-Sasson offered his support for protests, offering, “the university management shares the students’ concern.”

The Hebrew University protests remind us that within Israel, the ethnic Jewish community is cloven between some who think that yeshiva study is a waste of resources, and some who believe that it’s the only way to keep God on the embattled country’s side.

America isn’t totally foreign to this dichotomy, but a key difference is in play: unlike the US government, which is uninvolved in religious matters, Israel’s government maintains an official status on religion. Though all of Israel’s prime ministers, left or right, have been secular, they’ve participated since a 1949 compromise in a system that recognizes Orthodox Judaism as the state religion. Political quid pro quo at its finest, no doubt. The Orthodox give up their dreams of a theocracy in exchange for a theocratically-inflected democracy. But over the past half-century, the consequences have been devastating for all but the most extreme on both sides.

First, the government essentially recognizes the secular and the religious as separate social classes – constructing different welfare policies, school systems, and military obligations to suit each. To its credit, it allows atheists to imagine they live in Northern Europe and gives Hassidic Jews the illusion of personal theocracy. But it’s tragically polarizing. Over the past few decades, religious Jews have fled Tel Aviv and secular Jews have fled Jerusalem, creating two opposite cultural poles only 36 miles apart. That’s less than the distance between San Francisco and San Jose: imagine if they were that starkly different!

As a result, the two sides are essentially able to create two very different cultural landscapes on the face of the same land.

Neither has to deal with the other very often. Predictably, this can entail a great deal of misunderstanding and mutual resentment. Religious Israelis often blast secular Israelis for ignoring the reality of living in the Middle East, and secular Israelis have been known to lambast religious Israelis for not participating in a twenty-first-century economy.

Unlike the Israeli-Palestinian divide as envisioned by Jimmy Carter, this sounds like state-supported apartheid to me. And more, though it’s actually well-meaning, it needs to go: Israel can’t afford any more polarization.

While no answer is perfect, the first step is clear to a majority of Israelis and Western observers alike: separate church and state! In a society where most Jews are not Orthodox at all, it makes little sense for all marriages and divorces to be conducted through an Orthodox Jewish civil legal system. Separating it from the government would do nothing to change the lives of believing Orthodox Jews – with the possible exception of making secular Jews less resentful of them.

Moreover, the very acknowledgement of a state religion instigates all sorts of undemocratic behavior on behalf of the religious minority. Ofrit Liviatan, a professor of government at Harvard, notes “Orthodox legislative success on the question of ‘who is a Jew’, the placement of non-Orthodox individuals on religious councils, the importation of non-Kosher meat, [and] the distribution of funds to non-Orthodox religious institutions.”

Functionally, these decisions have meant that religious moderates, a la America’s Conservative Jews, have been shut out of the social dialogue. As a direct result of government policy, most Israelis have to choose between religious and secular, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, theocracy and democracy. The society that grows up is fragmented, unsure of its identity, and decidedly not what the first Zionists envisioned.

It has even reached the point where ultra-Orthodox Jews, expecting the entire country to abide by their social dictates, have rioted against parking garages that stay open on the Sabbath. This is a society that a majority of Israelis are unhappy to countenance. As a secular Jew, I would be, too.

A Muslim chaplain in the Navy conducts a prayer session with military and civilian personnel

The Cambridge School Committee recently decided that, beginning in the 2011-12 school year, schools will close for one Muslim holiday each year. On the heels of two events that paint America as an increasingly Islamophobic nation, those being the controversial Ground Zero “mosque” and the lunatic antics of that pastor in Florida, the School Committee’s refreshingly tolerant decision couldn’t come at a better time.

The decision, however, has been met with considerable backlash from the greater Boston community. After all, just one month ago a Wellesley, Massachusetts middle school garnered national media attention when its students visited a local mosque, some participating in the prayer ritual. Such articles about that event claimed students were “blatantly mis-educated [sic] about Islam,” with other pundits fallaciously claiming that “the students were separated by gender and the boys were asked to join the Muslim adults in prayer.” The readers’ comments for these articles were even uglier.

The School Committee’s decision, the first of its kind in Massachusetts but preceded by an identical decision from Burlington (VT) public schools last month, has generated much of the same fear as the middle school’s mosque trip. Boston’s 7NEWS – WHDH offered its viewers the chance to share their thoughts about the decision on Facebook and received mixed responses. As a student who attended the most culturally-diverse high school in my state, I applaud the School Committee’s decision for making its holiday policy more inclusive to all students, especially with the rise in Muslim students.

On the other hand, as a former student representative to my local school committee, I feel the community of Cambridge, led by the School Committee, is now obligated to educate those with personal reservations about this decision. There are clearly persistent misconceptions about Muslims, their adherence to Islam, and the Qur’an. The School Committee’s decision is certainly a bold step in the right direction, but the policy change must be accompanied by an education movement to make the social change truly successful. This education is, in fact, just as important as the policy change itself, because what’s the point of closing schools if students don’t know the day’s significance?

Back in Maine, we’d organize events called “community conversations.” We would bring in a couple of individuals knowledgable on the subject at hand, then reach out to the community and invite parents, teachers, students, business owners, and concerned citizens to attend. People came to these events not to debate or argue, but to learn.

I truly believe that if such events were organized in Cambridge, they would be met with overwhelming success. The School Committee’s decision, however optimistic, only marked the beginning of a long process. After all, tolerance is learned, not legislated.

Photo credit: U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Jhi L. Scott

Proposed site of an Islamic community center

One non-bigoted case against the erroneously-named “Ground Zero mosque” seems to go something like this:

“Religious freedom is legitimate and important, and the promoters of the planned community center have a constitutional right to build the complex in Lower Manhattan. But still, the community center should be built somewhere else, out of sensitivity to earnestly held objections, and out of respect for the families of 9/11 victims.”

Perhaps the most forthright statement of this argument came from the Anti-Defamation League:

“… ultimately this is not a question of rights, but a question of what is right. In our judgment, building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain — unnecessarily — and that is not right”

Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) suggested something along these lines when he said today, through a spokesman, that he “respects [freedom of religion] but thinks that the mosque should be built some place else.” And this seems to be what Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) was getting at when he said, “This is not about freedom of religion. I do think it’s unwise to build a mosque in the site where 3,000 Americans lost their lives as the result of a terrorist attack.” This line of argument seems to be the preferred tack of those who oppose the “Ground Zero mosque,” but who want to keep a safe distance from blatant anti-Muslim bigotry and suggestions from the likes of Newt Gingrich that Muslims are to 9/11 as Nazis are to the Holocaust. That is, this seems to be the go-to argument of those who recognize that there are moderate, peaceful Muslims, and who may even grant that the promoters of this community center are examples of the type.

Of course, it is entirely possible to have a right to do something that you ought not do, morally speaking. As I pointed out last week, one may have a right to use expletives in the course of a public demonstration; but to deliberately direct the protest to the vicinity of a schoolyard would be insensitive, to say the least.

Or consider flag-burning. The Supreme Court has ruled that the right to freedom of expression protects the burning of the American flag. But we shouldn’t shrink from disapproving of protesters who deliberately try to injure others, say, by burning a flag outside of a VFW hall. The Constitution makes moral assumptions and propositions, but constitutional law and political morality are not coextensive.

The moral principle at work in my two examples seems to be that we ought to defer to strongly held feelings, and not provoke or antagonize people unnecessarily. But then there is the countervailing thought that not all feelings are worth deferring to. Fareed Zakaria, responding to Abe Foxman’s notion that “anguish entitles [the 9/11 families] to feelings that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted,” points out that, unless we put some sort of restriction on this logic, we end up with conclusions like “the anguish of Palestinians entitles them to be anti-Semitic.” Unless we add some qualification, this is political correctness with a vengeance: anything that offends a vocal group of people “ought not” be done. This reasoning would cripple our moral universe; people on both sides of a moral question would get offended by the people on the other, and then where are we left?

My point, and it really is a simple one, is that we need to inquire into why people are offended, and whether they have good reason to be. As with all moral questions, this gets dicey. But it’s pretty clear that the veterans would be right to take offense to protesters who sought them out with the intent of offending them. I think the element of deliberateness is key here. In the rough-and-tumble of democratic life, we all have to put up with things we don’t like. But being deliberately offended, that’s a different story. Sarah Palin appealed to this moral intuition when she said that the community center was an “unnecessary provocation.” The implication is that the community center’s planners wanted to hurt people’s feelings.

Notice that the focus has now turned from the “victims” to the “perpetrators.” This change of focus is inevitable unless we are to ratify every sincerely held feeling under the sun. We have to ask whether those feelings are factually accurate and morally justified, or whether they are, as Foxman would have it, “irrational and bigoted.” And figuring out the answer to that question requires us to determine the right attitude to take towards the people or things that have offended, not just those who have been offended.

So, people like Harry Reid, John Cornyn, and Abe Foxman have to take a position on questions that they’d rather avoid. Questions like: Were the planners of this project trying to provoke 9/11 families, as Palin implies? Or were they, as they themselves have contended, trying to build a monument to interfaith cooperation and tolerance? Of course, it’s hard to know what’s in a person’s heart. My best guess is that the planners were well-intentioned, but naive in thinking that this project would be understood in the way in which it was intended.

But maybe you say that deliberateness isn’t all that matters, and you grant that the organizers of the complex mean well. Can you still hold that the project should be abandoned? One proposition, which I’ve heard from several down-the-line liberals, is that the community center should be built elsewhere just for the sake of satisfying the people who have gotten worked up over it. But what kind of morality is that? That might be the easier course to take in this instance, but what principle could possibly justify it? And what are we going to do the next time some group of people claims to be offended by another group’s activities?

Once we’ve granted good intentions and rejected the proposal of surrender, I struggle to see how one can oppose the community center without crossing the line into bigotry. For, assuming good intentions, how can a Muslim community center be worse than a Christian or Jewish one?

Please note that I’m not saying that anybody who opposes the project is a bigot. I’m saying that there are no good non-bigoted reasons to be offended by the proposed community center, and those like Foxman, Reid, and Cornyn who think that they have found one are mistaken.

But maybe I’m missing something (maybe we all are). Can someone explain why this community center is a bad thing without suggesting that all Muslims are complicit in terrorism? Can someone elaborate on what makes it “inappropriate” to have a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero, when there’s one four blocks away, and when Muslims already pray inside the Pentagon? Can someone show me a principle worth defending here, rather than a jumble of emotions being stoked by opportunistic politicians for short-term advantage?

Photo credit: Wikipedia

A couple weeks ago the ADL came out with a statement recommending that “a different location be found” for the Cordoba House, the Muslim community center, similar to the YMCA and JCC, that is being promoted by a Manhattan imam with a long record of ecumenicism and moderation. (One of his books is called “What’s Right With Islam Is What’s Right With America.” Really.)

The ADL argued that “ultimately this is not a question of rights, but a question of what is right.  In our judgment, building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain – unnecessarily – and that is not right.” The principle at work here seems to be, “Whatever the victims of September 11th don’t like, isn’t right.” It reminds me of the idea that we should support the death penalty because the families of murder victims tend to want murderers executed.

What I found even more astounding was the ADL’s notion that this is “not a question of rights.” The group calls itself “the nation’s premier civil rights/human relations agency,” and it’s sniffing at the idea that Muslims have a right to build mosques (not to mention swimming pools, restaurants, and the rest of the Cordoba House’s features) wherever they please. The ADL has argued in court against the use of zoning laws to restrict the construction of houses of worship, but apparently “sensitivity” is more important than religious freedom.

Don’t get me wrong, sensitivity is important. But in order to demand that one party be more sensitive, there has to be some rational basis for another party’s feeling offended. If I cursed loudly and deliberately in the vicinity of schoolchildren, you would say, I may have a right to do that, but I should have been more sensitive because there’s a legitimate interest in protecting children from dirty words. Maybe I believe that children don’t need to be protected from curse words, but still, sensitivity to the sincere beliefs of others requires me, morally if not legally, to hold my tongue.

The Cordoba House situation isn’t like that at all. The only reason to take offense at a Muslim community center built two blocks north of the World Trade Center is the assumption that all Muslims have some connection with, and responsibility for, the actions of the 9/11 terrorists. That’s why we have seen politicians and other commentators blur the difference between moderate and jihadist Muslims and imply that we are at war with Islam per se. Carl Paladino, a Republican running for NY governor, says the proposed community center would be a “monument to those who attacked our country.” Newt Gingrich points out that there are “no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia,” as if the center were sponsored by the Saudi government, not a moderate Sufi Muslim leader about as far, spiritually speaking, from radical Sunni Islam as any Jew or Christian. Pat Buchanan says building a mosque near Ground Zero would be like “building a Shinto shrine” at Pearl Harbor. Because, you see, we’re at war with Muslims just as we were at war with the Japanese. It really is that simple for them. But it’s wrong, not to mention painfully counter-productive, and the ADL should have so and left it at that.

As Peter Beinart says, “Would the ADL for one second suggest that sensitivity toward people victimized by members of a certain religion or race justifies discriminating against other, completely innocent, members of that religion or race? Of course not. But when it comes to Muslims, the standards are different.” Exactly, because they don’t see Muslims like Feisal Abdul Rauf as “completely innocent.” This is collective guilt, pure and simple.

The whole sad affair with the ADL reminds me of Beinart’s great article a couple months back about how American Jewish organizations have sacrificed their human-rights liberalism on the altar of Zionism, in the process losing the allegiance of many younger American Jews. Beinart wrote, “These groups would never say, as do some in Netanyahu’s coalition, that Israeli Arabs don’t deserve full citizenship and West Bank Palestinians don’t deserve human rights. But in practice, by defending virtually anything any Israeli government does, they make themselves intellectual bodyguards for Israeli leaders who threaten the very liberal values they profess to admire.”

Now the threat to liberal values has come to New York, and the ADL has blown a major opportunity to stand up for them.

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In February, Newsweek‘s Lisa Miller argued that Harvard was doing its students a disservice by slighting religion in its curriculum. Louis Menand, the Harvard English professor and New Yorker writer, was one of Miller’s primary sources. On page 36, we have an interview with Menand, the full version of which is available on HarvardPoliticalReview.com.

As I wrote in response to Miller on the HPR blog, the HPRgument, I don’t see much evidence that Harvard, unlike many other schools, lacks a religion department. But I’m not sure how much this proves. Does it show that Harvard is uncompromisingly secularized, that its administrators don’t think religion is an important field of study? I don’t think so. And scholars like Diana Eck might be surprised to hear Menand imply that, if only we had a Religion Department, we would start to cultivate experts in that field. The Harvard Divinity School provides undergraduates with an ample supply of excellent scholars and courses in the study of religion.

Still, Miller and Menand’s argument is well-taken, even if some of their premises are questionable. Of course Harvard students should learn something about religion, whether by taking a class on Islamic history, European secularization, or American politics. Or, as Menand suggests, a class on religiously-inspired literature. The unifying aim of such classes would be to expose students to a way of thinking, a set of problems, a field of study, that they might not otherwise be exposed to.

That might not seem like much to the biggest proponents of a genuine Great Books curriculum. But it’s more than Harvard now offers, with its vaguely defined “Culture and Belief” field, in which students can take classes on subjects like photography and the Roman Games. Harvard needn’t define its task as narrowly as the Great Books fans do; it should not exclude all the historical, political, and sociological issues that the study of religion properly entails.There is a middle ground between Great Books chauvinism and Harvard’s current curricular laxity.

It is our hope that this issue of the HPR occupies that middle ground, examining issues like religious demographics, government aid to religious groups, and the rise of secularism. We think there is a role for campus publications, as well as classes and curricula, to play in students’ education.