You can listen to the Revealer podcast on Apple and Spotify. Make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any of our monthly episodes.

We hope you enjoy this important episode: “Combating Islamophobia in America.”

The post The Revealer Podcast Episode 20: Combating Islamophobia in America appeared first on The Revealer.

1) Are you one of the many Revealer readers who appreciated Susan Shapiro’s award-winning article “Forgiving the Unforgivable”? That article is now a chapter in Shapiro’s new book where she travels the country to speak with religious leaders and other captivating figures about coping with betrayal, pain, and catastrophic loss. Check out her powerful book, The Forgiveness Tour: How to Find the Perfect Apology.

2) Have you ever wondered what role religion plays in the Black Lives Matter movement? Olga Segura – author of one of the Revealer’s most-read articles about Father Bryan Massingale, a gay Black priest – published a book this year on race and Catholicism. Check out her book, Birth of a Movement: Black Lives Matter and the Catholic Church.

3) If you are looking for even more on race and religion, don’t miss Tracy Fessenden’s book on Billie Holiday. She wrote an insightful review for the Revealer about the movie Strange Fruit. You can learn more about Holiday in Fessenden’s fascinating book, Religion Around Billie Holiday.

4) As we approach the anniversary of the January 6 insurrection, you may want to learn more about the groups that stormed the Capitol. Sara Kamali wrote about some of those white nationalist factions in the Revealer’s February issue. Learn even more about such groups in her new book, Homegrown Hate: Why White Nationalists and Militant Islamists are Waging War Against the United States.

5) If stories about religion, sexuality, and social issues interest you, you should check out Michael J. O’Loughlin’s powerful new book on how Catholics responded to the AIDS epidemic. O’Loughlin wrote in the Revealer about some of those responses and how his research on this topic affected him as a gay Catholic. Don’t miss his important new book, Hidden Mercy: AIDS, Catholics, and the Untold Stories of Compassion in the Face of Fear.

6) And, if you’re looking for inspirational and incisive stories about gender and religion, Kaya Oakes has the book for you. Oakes authored a powerful personal essay about the Catholic Church sex abuse crisis, a piece the Religion News Association recognized this year when it awarded Oakes with the top prize for “Excellence in Religion Commentary.” Don’t miss her beautifully written new book, The Defiant Middle: How Women Claim Life’s In-Betweens to Remake the World.

Happy reading!

The post Winter Reading Recommendations appeared first on The Revealer.

(Image source: simranjeetsingh.org)

Simran Jeet Singh might be the busiest person I know. And he definitely has more Twitter followers than anyone else I know.

Simran is an author, a scholar, an advocate for the Sikh community, a public speaker, a parent, a marathoner — the list goes on — and he’s also the newly appointed Executive Director of the Program on Religion and Society at the Aspen Institute. Revealer readers may also recognize him from his time as our Henry R. Luce Initiative on Religion in International Affairs post-doctoral fellow, or from his articles on the vulnerability of being a public figure and the meaning of service.

Simran and I began talking in graduate school, and I’ve been fortunate to remain in conversation with him since then. We’ve discussed the risks and rewards of writing about religion online and how he navigates being both a scholar and an activist. For this exchange, I wanted to talk about Simran’s debut book for adults, which comes out in 2022 (he already published a wonderful book for children in 2020). Simran has crafted a unique career, moving between activism and academia, and his forthcoming book is a huge moment in that journey.

Kali Handelman: Simran, you have spent the past few years writing books that introduce the Sikh tradition to a wide audience. First, you published Fauja Singh Keeps Going, a children’s book, which my colleagues at NYU had the pleasure of talking to you about already (here). Your book for adults, The Light We Give: The Power of Sikh Wisdom to Transform Your Life, comes out next year. What can you tell us about this new book? And what does it mean to write about Sikh wisdom and to aim the book at a wide audience (the book is being published by Penguin Random House!)?

Simran Jeet Singh: Thanks so much for asking. I’m excited about this book for so many reasons, and being able to share Sikh teachings with the world is one of the foremost among them. Sikh wisdom has helped me find joy and peace in a world that can be really devastating. As I look around and see people struggling, I feel moved to share the tradition that has helped me find light within darkness.

In that sense, the book is about sharing principles and insights from a tradition that I have come to cherish in ways that feel meaningful for people of all backgrounds, from those who grew up in the tradition and know it intimately to those who might be encountering it for the first time. That there aren’t many books like it in mainstream publishing has been both a challenge and an opportunity: a challenge because it’s meant that I can’t assume a reader who picks up the book will know much about Sikhi, if anything at all, but also an opportunity to help tell that story from the beginning, without any expectations or strings attached.

KH: Could you give us an example of what you mean when you talk about Sikh principles and traditions, and maybe about the process of identifying what wisdom you wanted to share and how you wanted to share it? Are there examples from the book that come to mind?

Absolutely. I try to show rather than tell. I didn’t want it to be a didactic read in which the reader is hammered over the head with instructions and information. I wanted it to be an artful and enjoyable book where the reader absorbs the ideas and understands what they look like in our lives. In a way, this approach draws from my teaching philosophy.

For instance, one important principle in Sikhi is serving others and fighting for justice. I’ve been thinking about that principle a lot lately in the context of today’s call-out culture, and I think readers of all backgrounds could benefit from what the Sikh tradition says about activism rooted in love. But rather than simply stating this in the book, I ask what it was about the message of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhi, that created longevity, so that 550+ years later his legacy lives on. Part of that, I think, is how he responded to ideas that he opposed. He was not afraid to critique, that’s for sure. Yet unlike what we see so often in modern activism, he didn’t stop there; Guru Nanak always offers solutions, both in terms of how we can imagine change and also how we can achieve it personally and institutionally. He doesn’t simply denounce casteism, or misogyny, but he creates mechanisms to undercut those oppressions, including practices like the shared meal of langar to the adoption of a shared last name to abolish the sense of social hierarchy. Guru Nanak’s approach has been instructive to my own work in the world, including in scholarship, where so often we problematize and deconstruct, and then move on without ever considering how our work might contribute to greater justice and equity. But what would it look like to create and build in the way that Guru Nanak envisioned and enacted — how could it change what our world could be and who we might become?

KH: That’s a really compelling example that makes me want to ask you about your path to writing this book. You’ve spoken before about the importance of representation, of telling and hearing stories that are different from normative, mainstream ones (that is, stories about people who are white, Christian, able bodied, heterosexual, cisgender). Was representation — telling a different story and helping people to think differently about, well, difference, a goal for you in writing this book?            

SJS: Believe it or not, I have been dreaming of writing this book since childhood. Growing up in a country where 70% of Americans can’t identify a Sikh while looking at one, and where I was often on the receiving end of bigotry, it was always clear to me that our collective ignorance about one another contributes to our pain. What wasn’t clear to me was why Sikhi, as the world’s fifth largest religion, was left out of the conversation so often. Whether in our school textbooks or local interfaith programs, we didn’t even get to be an afterthought.

One of my goals in graduate school was to help make Sikhs more legible, and I attached a specific vision to it. One day, soon enough, I would write a book on Sikhi that appeared in the Religion section of a national bookstore. I didn’t know then that bookstores would soon be obsolete (too soon?). I also didn’t know then that I would have an opportunity to achieve this goal with my debut book. But to me, representation is absolutely a driver behind this book — not for its own sake, but because cultural and religious literacy is a key step in advancing pluralism and social cohesion.

KH: When we first spoke about doing this conversation, we talked about the idea of “values.” We were riffing on how there are at least two senses of “value” relevant to publishing your book. First, there’s the question of what the market — in this case, the publishing/literary market — values, as in, what people are expected to buy. That is the economic sense of the word. And then second, there’s the moral sense, the kind of values we hold — and this book is very much about those kind of values. But what I’m interested in asking you is where those two senses intersect. Could we say this book is important because it shows that there is room in the market for books and stories like yours and, at the same time, because you want to shift our moral sense of what is important and right — what’s valuable.

SJS: I love this question because it’s exactly the needle I’ve been trying to thread, both in my career and with this book. You know, one of the challenges I faced in getting this book off the ground was a chicken-egg problem. I couldn’t demonstrate this book would sell well because there were no comparable titles on Sikh wisdom with good sales; but there are no titles on Sikh wisdom with good sales because there’s no market demonstration that these books will sell well. To be transparent here, I spent more than a year working with my agent to finetune a proposal that we thought would help break that cycle and show potential publishers and editors that there was a strong value proposition here.

Part of that value proposition, as you rightly state in your question, is that values themselves have value, that people in our world today are looking for that kind of guidance. I found this incredibly difficult to land, not because there’s no space for it in the publishing world — the self-help market speaks for itself — but because I didn’t personally feel like I had a unique perspective that added value here. Part of my own discovery process was recognizing how I downplayed what I brought to the table, not just personally as a Sikh, but also as a scholar of the tradition. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I had to figure out how to package the values of Sikhi in ways that appeal to publishers and editors, many of whom are white and have never heard of Sikhi before. Some of the challenge comes in what I have internalized over the years, and some have to do with pushing my way into an industry that has not had space for people like me or stories like ours. I’m hopeful that this book will solve some of those problems and open up new channels and opportunities.

KH: Let’s talk about “public writing” about religion, that is, non-academic writing. Along with a children’s book and this new book, you also write for Time, Washington Post, CNN, and Religion News Service (I honestly do not know how/if you sleep, but that’s not where this question is going). What I want to ask is, where does the academic work — your training and scholarship in religious studies — fit into the work you are doing now? Has that scholarly experience been relevant and, if so, how?

SJS: Oh, absolutely. My scholarly training has not only been relevant to my public writing, it has been essential. One obvious element is what many in the writing community refer to as “bonafides.” The credentials of being an expert commentator open up doors and opportunities that would otherwise not be accessible.

More than that, though, I’ve been served really well by some of the basic skills that scholars receive through our training, including the ability to research topics I don’t know much about, the ability to think through issues that communities are facing, and the ability to identify problems and challenges in the broader discourse. Of course, writing is probably the skill I lean on most heavily. It has taken some practice to learn how to speak to different audiences and write in different genres. There has been some unlearning too, including some particularities of academic writing. But overall, having a strong foundation in writing and the ability to think through what’s happening in the world has created endless opportunities — and I think that’s something anyone in religious studies could do if they are interested and willing to put the time toward it.

KH: You always have a ton going on — just casually dropping into conversations this or that amazingly cool new collaboration or publication — so, I have to ask, what are you working on now? What’s next that you’re especially excited about?

SJS: Oh gosh, lots to be excited about, some of which I can’t yet discuss because it’s still cooking. I’m excited about my new role with the Aspen Institute, because I think we’re developing something really special around cultivating pluralism and religious equity. I’m also excited (and nervous!) about a new short story I have coming out because it’s a genre I haven’t written in yet and that lends itself really well to dad-jokes.

I think what I’m most excited about and most focused on right now is sharing this book with the world and seeing what kind of reception it gets. I’m hoping to create lesson plans around it so that it’s easy and fun to teach, and I’m hopeful there will be opportunities to reach new audiences. In addition to sharing powerful wisdom, I hope this book will also help humanize people that they might have seen as foreign or unfamiliar. More than anything though, I’m hopeful this book gets me on Saturday Night Live and launches my new standup career — I can’t wait until my first Netflix special. I’d call it the Pun-jabi.

Kali Handelman is an academic editor based in London. She is also the Manager of Program Development and London Regional Director at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research and a Contributing Editor at the Revealer.

Dr. Simran Jeet Singh is Executive Director of the Aspen Institute’s Inclusive America Project and a Soros Equality Fellow with the Open Society Foundations. He is the author of  The Light We Give: The Power of Sikh Wisdom to Transform Your Life (Penguin/Riverhead 2022), which is available for pre-order now.  

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(Scene from United States of Al, a sitcom on CBS)

Muslim television characters have been popping up regularly on TV screens lately, and now there are even a few that will make you laugh. Most recently, Netflix greenlit a comedy series co-created by comedians and actors Mo Amer and Ramy Youssef. The show will center on Amer’s character, a Palestinian refugee stuck in a years-long immigration process, which is based on his own story of growing up as a Muslim refugee in Houston. His co-creator, Ramy Youssef, is the well-known star and creator of Hulu’s award-winning Ramy (2019–present), a sitcom based on Youssef’s life as an Egyptian Muslim kid growing up in New Jersey. With its critical reception, Ramy galvanized a resurgence in television comedies where Muslims are the main protagonists.

Part of why Ramy is so successful is because it sidesteps the common post-9/11 depiction of Muslims as terrorists and tells a story that is rooted in personal experience. Comedy has long been a way for minoritized communities to create shared experiences with broader audiences. Humor has the ability to persuade viewers through feelings and emotions rather than argument and debate, which opens up space to tackle complex issues and dissolve social tensions. Like other marginalized communities before them, Muslims are putting comedy to use as a strategy to produce more dynamic portrayals of Muslims on television.

The network situation comedy has emerged as a palatable genre to introduce a more complex portrait of Muslims to mainstream American audiences. Two recent examples include CBS’s United States of Al (2021–present) and TBS’s Chad (2021–present). These shows prompt audiences to consider how the representation of Muslims in American television is shifting. Does centering Muslim characters and narratives, written and developed by Muslims, establish a more diverse portrait of the American public and challenge an industry largely controlled by a homogeneous assembly of decision-makers? Sure it does. But instead of asking if this new comedic trend is “positive” or “negative,” it might be more helpful to ask who these shows are for, and consider what social or political consequences we can expect from this expanding spectrum of stories and personalities on network television.

Ultimately, while United States of Al and Chad center Muslim narratives, they oversimplify the religious lives of Muslims on screen and often perpetuate negative stereotypes about Islam, much like the harmful terrorist tropes of earlier television dramas.

***

United States of Al focuses on two people whose lives are intricately intertwined because of the twenty-year American war in Afghanistan: Marine veteran Riley and his friend Awalmir, or Al, an Afghan interpreter for the U.S. military. The pair worked closely together over a number of years, as revealed through flashbacks, and after a multi-year effort Riley was able to help Al obtain a visa to come to the United States. Season One tells Al’s story as he adjusts to his new American environment, including living with Riley’s family in suburban Ohio, learning neighborly social norms, navigating gender norms and relationships, handling finances, and dealing with homesickness. The show portrays all of this while simultaneously narrating Riley’s post-war veteran life, which tackles issues of death and loss, depression and trauma, and strained relationships with his estranged wife and daughter. Visually the show resembles a traditional multi-camera soundstage sitcom with a laugh track like network shows Friends and The Big Bang Theory. Altogether, the narrative threads about post-military life and a blue collar aesthetic make the show legible and appealing to prime time CBS viewers, which enables the program to introduce elements of Afghan culture to an audience that would likely not seek it out otherwise.

United States of Al should be commended for many things. While the show is produced by Chuck Lorre, the “King of Sitcoms,” the show has several Afghan writers. For mainstream television, Muslim writers, and writers of color broadly, are still uncommon. Their inclusion, as well as the production leadership of two Iranian-Americans, Reza Aslan and Mahyad Tousi, is notable for a program that attracts millions of viewers every week.

United States of Al also presents a wide range of Muslim characters, giving voice to those who are willing to collaborate with U.S. military as well as those who oppose any kind of U.S. intervention in Afghanistan. The involvement of Muslims in the production of the series and the strength of their on-screen representation has won the series some Muslim fans. Sue Obeidi, Director of the Hollywood Bureau at Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), even went so far as to say, “United States of Al is one of the most important shows on TV right now — and I mean that. We’re invested in shows like United States of Al because they reaffirm the impact of representation on screen and showcase how far our communities have come and how much work lies ahead.”

Despite all the ground the program is breaking, there is much to critique about the show. United States of Al tries to add depth to the main character by including elements from Al’s Afghan life and cultural background. But even with the presence of Muslims in the writer’s room, the show relies on unsurprising stereotypes, such as jokes about “strange” food, religious eating habits, and bargaining for deals. Al is presented as a model minority who is deferential to elders, communally and family oriented, and selfless. These virtuous qualities are often suspended over and above the flawed actions of his American counterparts who struggle in many ways. Al’s primary objective in the show is to help Riley get his life in order, which makes Al integral only because he supports the white male character.

Of additional concern is the casting of Al, played by Adhir Kalyan, who is a South African of Indian ancestry. The casting of a non-Afghan and non-Muslim as the main protagonist follows a long history of depicting minoritized characters as substitutable or interchangeable “others.” The lead Muslim actor’s ethnic and religious ambiguity tells viewers, and especially Afghans, that the producers do not believe Afghan self-representation is necessary when Afghans tell stories about themselves on television.

Some viewers might forgive these concerns, but other elements in the show more strongly reinforce prejudices and assumptions about Muslims. In one episode about Al’s quest to get his driver’s license, the woman DMV worker administering his test is wearing shorts, which Al finds shocking and distracting, so much so that it causes him to have a small fender bender. If the intention behind this scene was to demonstrate culture shock around sartorial differences, the producers clumsily wrap the scenario in stereotypes about the lustfulness of Muslim men. The leering camera angle, Al’s mystifying anxiety, and the reactionary accident cannot be detached from the media archive of sleazy sheikh images or public presumptions about Muslim men as sexual deviants. Unfortunately, for unfamiliar viewers it would be difficult to catch the nuances in such a portrayal.

For many viewers, the most harmful cliché is the show’s very premise, centered on Muslim allegiance to U.S. patriotism and militaristic nationalism, which reinforces the limited portrayal of Muslim characters since 9/11. One of the most biting critiques comes from scholars Sahar Ghumkhor and Anila Daulatzai who lampoon the program for its whitewashing of the war in Afghanistan and its trivialization of the resulting human and material loss. The show’s underlying assertion is that America’s goal of saving Afghans was altruistic and outweighed the disturbing consequences that military intervention created in Afghanistan.

Overall, United States of Al can pessimistically be read as propaganda for the U.S. empire that constructs a “good Muslim” archetype rooted in American patriotism. Despite the range of Muslim identities and the individual depth each one is given, the show cannot escape its anchoring in the “War on Terror.” According to the logic of the show, Muslims who support U.S. policy abroad are the only ones of value to American public life.

***

The other new series that centers Muslim identities is TBS’s Chad. Unlike United States of Al, Chad has a more cinematic feel. The main character Chad Amani, played by the Iranian American writer and creator Nasim Pedrad, is an odd and generally unlikable teenager. He is awkward, self-absorbed, opinionated, and frequently unable to read situations and the social cues of his peers. As a Persian American, Chad is embarrassed by his Middle Eastern family heritage and struggles with his personal identity. In his quest for confidence, he is easily swayed by what he perceives as cool and the whims of his classmates. Chad’s story unrolls alongside sub-narratives about his mother Naz, younger sister Nicki, and Uncle Hamid, who all feel more comfortable in their skin and secure in their identities. The show is written empathetically about a Middle Eastern family, but also includes a relatable flawed main character who resembles the awkward teenage years of many non-Muslim viewers.

Chad takes an unusual, but perhaps realistic, approach to the role of Islam in the lives of its characters. The creators tackle Muslim identity as both a narrative challenge for its characters and as opportunity to counter stereotypes about Islam. One way they do this is by contrasting Chad’s irritation with his religion with the depiction of his mother’s Muslim boyfriend, Ikrimah.

For Chad, he sees Islam as an obstacle to his social goals and worthless for his personal growth. The tension is made explicit in the show’s first episode through a conversation between Chad and his mother:

CHAD:
You’re dating a Muslim guy?

NAZ:
Chad, you do realize we’re technically Muslim?

CHAD:
Yea, we’re Muslim enough. We don’t need people thinking that’s like our whole thing.

NAZ:
What is your problem with our heritage?

CHAD:
I’m embarrassed by it and I’d like to fit in. I’ve made that very clear to you. If you wanted us to be so Muslim you should have raised us in freakin’ Ramalaladon (sic).

In these opening moments, Islam does not fall prey to typical stereotypes, but it is certainly not shown in a “positive” light. Chad believes his Muslim heritage is incompatible with American cultural values, and therefore, shedding signs of foreignness is his best strategy as a 14 year old trying to fit in. Even while Chad may embody a desire for assimilation that reflects the experiences of some Muslims, the portrayal may still displease many Muslim viewers. Most Muslim spectators won’t see themselves in a character who is constantly disparaging Islam and likely won’t see this type of representation as a productive move forward for their community.

In other moments Chad works to rupture common assumptions about Muslims. For example, when Naz’s date arrives in the scene described above, Chad obnoxiously asks before opening the door, “On a scale of 1-10 just how Muslim will his physical situation be?” Without waiting for a response Chad cracks the door, and the camera pans up as Chad looks at his mother’s boyfriend Ikrimah, a handsome and fit Black Muslim man. The juxtaposition between the viewer’s likely expectation of an Arab man (a sentiment embodied by Chad) and the image of someone from the largest racial group of U.S. Muslims forces spectators to confront their beliefs about Muslims. Here the show uses stereotypes to its advantage and disrupts viewer expectations about who Muslims are in America.

This dual personality of Chad reveals the burden of representation for Muslim creatives. It is difficult to meet the inclinations of mainstream viewers while also telling personal and peculiar stories that resonate for Muslim audiences. If more Muslims were on television, the quirky or stereotypical stories would just be one among a wide spectrum of narratives. But since Muslim-centered shows are still limited, unsophisticated portrayals seem even more damaging.

***

United States of Al and Chad both keep their specific Muslim audience in mind by adding cultural specificity while also putting universal themes to work to appeal to their broad network viewers. Most of the Muslim creatives involved in these projects have communicated their goal to humanize Muslims through nuanced storytelling and “positive” representation. This presumes that their target audience may not already believe this about Muslims and, with network television skewed toward an older demographic of viewers, it is easy to conclude that they are largely made for a broad, predominantly non-Muslim audience.

But the sitcom genre relies heavily on caricatures in order to make Muslims legible to non-Muslim audiences, which makes it difficult to meet the progressive goals of its creators while also being successful in that type of television environment. Consequently, it would seem that it is only when television writers inform their stories with messy versions of Muslim culture and identity that they are able to succeed in portraying characters in “authentic” ways. But such cultural specific elements might be off putting for non-Muslims who cannot recognize their preconceptions about Islam in these presentations. This is why, as scholar and activist Su’ad Abdul Khabeer has noted, “representation is a trap because mainstream media is a powerful space of recognition—on someone else’s terms and to preserve someone else’s power. This results in a lot of policing and gatekeeping, internal and external.” These challenges have been shared by other minoritized groups, such as Asian-American, Black, Latino, LGBTQ, and Jewish, as they strive to represent their communities authentically. In order to be entertaining and alluring for broad audiences, the Muslim sitcom cannot stray too far from preconfigured network television audience expectations.

In United States of Al and Chad we see the current spectrum of possible Muslim representation on mainstream American television. This ranges from a neutered self-denial of Muslim cultural or spiritual heritage (compare this with Aziz Ansari’s “Religion” episode on Masters Of None where he also rejects normative modes of Muslim religiosity and identification), to a more nuanced Muslim accomplice of U.S. patriotism. It’s hard to imagine widespread support from Muslim audiences if the choice is a program that trivializes the tradition or one that reproduces silly and damaging stereotypes tied to the domination of global Muslim communities.

Luckily network television isn’t the only game in town and other creative environments have opened up interesting ways to depict Muslim stories on screen. Streaming platforms, which garner a different and younger audience, have been able to work with a more complex production-reception exchange where unique storytelling connects with both popular and critical audiences. While networks need to ensure their prime-time slots attract viewers to appease advertisers, streaming platforms can take chances with novel programs that aim for more limited audiences because their funding model does not rely on commercials. Hulu’s Ramy exemplifies this notable direction. Netflix’s forthcoming Mo Amer show might see similar success. Recent British sitcoms such as We Are Lady Parts (2021–present) and Man Like Mobeen (2017–present) follow a comparable template that use creative narratives and varied Muslim characters that hit the mark with audiences, and frame Islam as just one part of dynamic intersecting identities.

While these programs tread new ground for the representations of Muslims, it may be that they have simply entered a new enclosure that governs the types of identities that mainstream networks will tolerate. In the end, network sitcoms open up new opportunities for Muslim storytelling, but such comedies may only reinforce the limited options for Muslims in American public life. If the development of the Muslim sitcom is orchestrated by the laugh-track of network television genre conventions, we will continue to see a narrow range of Muslim characters on the small screen who reinforce white liberal notions of secular multiculturalism and American patriotism.

Kristian Petersen is the editor of Muslims in the Movies: A Global Anthology (ILEX Foundation & Harvard University Press, 2021), and New Approaches to Islam in Film (Routledge, 2021), and co-editor of Digital Humanities and Research Methods in Religious Studies: An Introduction (de Gruyter, 2021). He co-hosts the New Books in Islamic Studies podcast on the New Books Network. You can find him on Twitter @BabaKristian.

The post The Rise of the Muslim Sitcom appeared first on The Revealer.

(Image source: Shutterstock)

The following excerpt comes from Caelb Iyer Elfenbein’s book Fear In Our Hearts: What Islamophobia Tells Us About America. The book explores reasons for America’s anti-Muslim attitudes and hate crimes, and what everyone can do to make the United States a safer place for Muslims.

This excerpt comes from the books fifth chapter: “Humanizing Public Life.”

***

In November 2015, Samer Shalaby stood before a packed room in Fredericksburg, Virginia. He was at a public planning meeting, representing the Islamic Center of Fredericksburg, whose members were seeking to build a new mosque to replace one that had served area Muslims for over thirty years. When we enter the scene, things are more or less moving along as you might expect at this kind of meeting. Storm drains. Sewage removal. Traffic. Parking spots. And then things quickly change.

One member of the audience asks a question about parking spots. Would forty be enough to accommodate all the worshippers?

“That’s forty too many,” one audience member says, first softly and then louder, with more confidence.

There is a murmur in the crowd.

“Let me tell you something,” he continues. “Nobody. Nobody. Nobody wants your evil cult in this town.”

Some people voice obvious displeasure at where this is heading. Other people clap and encourage him to continue, which he does.

“I will do everything in my power to make sure that does not happen.”

Another voice chimes in, “We don’t want it.” Others clap.

“Because you are terrorists. Every one of you are terrorists. I don’t care what you say. I don’t care what you think.”

Samer meets the outburst with a bemused, nonthreatening expression as some others continue to clap.

“You can smile at me. You can say anything you want. Every Muslim is a terrorist. Period.”

Samer begins to speak in a calm manner.

“Shut your mouth. I don’t want to hear your mouth. I’m done with you. Everything that I will do, everything I can do, to keep you from doing what you are doing, will happen. That will happen.”

Law enforcement officers ended the meeting after the audience member walked out.

It’s not necessarily unusual that a planning meeting turns contentious. But this incident is of a different nature than disagreements about stop signs, traffic lights, or run-of-the-mill building permits.

What the audience member said to Samer is, sadly, not all that surprising. What is surprising, though, is that the audience member felt so free to speak publicly in this way. Aside from murmurs of dissent, no one intervened. No one shouted down the audience member.

A planning meeting like this one exemplifies local public life. The fact that the audience member was able to accuse Samer of being a terrorist without any apparent repercussions—in fact, with open support from some other audience members—reflects the conditions of public life in our country. It’s pretty easy to imagine how such an encounter in public space could leave someone with questions about whether they are full citizens.

The familiarity on display in the meeting is striking. People refer to each other by first name. The proposal under discussion is clearly part of an ongoing discussion. After all, the Islamic Center of Fredericksburg has been around for over three decades with no incident. The Shalaby family has been a part of the community for almost as long and, as a trustee of the Center, I am sure Samer has been in front of that same room many times before. The whole incident just doesn’t add up.

There is a disjuncture between the familiarity that comes from shared histories and experiences in local communities and the kind of hostility on display in this meeting. It seems that for the hostile audience member and those who encouraged him Samer was just a stand-in for a larger, more abstract group. “Every one of you are terrorists.”

***

On Monday, February 26, 2017, Mohammad Qamar stepped up to the podium at a meeting of the Downtown Rotary Club in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He’d been invited to address the civic organization as the director of his mosque’s public outreach and interfaith initiatives.

After introducing himself—and noting that he has two kids, both of whom were born in the United States—he says, “I have a confession to make. I’ve been doing talks such as this, visiting churches over the past year, hosting different groups at our center. But I would much rather not have to do this.” And yet he’s there, which he says “is not just important. It is a necessity.”

Dr. Qamar, a nephrologist, arrived in the United States in 2004. He is a member of South Dakota Faith and Public Life, which describes itself as a group of religious leaders committed to respectful discussion of difficult social and political issues. His deep engagement with public life is clear. Now here he finds himself giving a talk that I’m sure he has delivered many times over. He spends a lot of time describing why.

Sometimes he uses humor to do so, noting, for example, that while approval ratings of Muslims are going up, they still are competing with pretty much only zombies at the low end of the scale. Most of the time, though, he is serious. He notes that the number of anti-Muslim hate groups increased from four in 2010 to over one hundred in 2016. He discusses the fact that nearly six in ten Americans report not knowing anyone who is Muslim.

He has taken on the burden of speaking to audiences in Sioux Falls so that in his city, at least, that figure will decrease. He is humanizing himself so that Muslims don’t remain an undifferentiated other. He wants his audience to feel like they know him and that he fundamentally shares their values.

He talks about his first visit to the United States, which happened to coincide with the September 11 attacks, to illustrate this point. He talks about being terrified, of wanting to return to Pakistan as soon as he could. But what he found surprised him. He describes feeling like President Bush was speaking directly to him when he offered reassuring words that Islam was a religion of peace. Although he was aware of anti-Muslim activity occurring across the country in the wake of the attacks, he describes experiencing tremendous kindness from those around him.

He decided then and there that he wanted to make the United States his home.

***

It’s hard to move past the idea that Dr. Qamar thinks outreach of the kind he does “is not just important. It is a necessity.”

During his talk, he says that he and the other three thousand or so Muslims in Sioux Falls have decided to make the small city their home because they feel comfortable. They feel certain that, despite the conditions of public life nationally, they and their kids can move through their everyday lives in Sioux Falls without serious, immediate threat.

Yet his mosque has an entire center devoted to public outreach, which, despite having a demanding professional life and kids at home, he directs. He also clearly spends a lot of time preparing and giving talks to audiences like Rotary. Why?

Together, the stories about Samer Shalaby and Mohammad Qamar present in microcosm a larger phenomenon in American public life. The anti-Muslim sentiment on display during Samer Shalaby’s town planning meeting presentation exemplifies the conditions of public life that have emerged with a general rehabilitation of public hate. Mohammad Qamar’s talk at the Rotary club helps turn our attention to how American Muslims have responded to these conditions in showing how and why they are part of this country.

Read side by side, these stories highlight the fact that both anti-Muslim sentiment and American Muslim participation in public life aren’t always simply reflections of direct experiences that people have. We draw on things we see on TV, read on social media or in magazines or books, and hear from friends near and far. These indirect experiences also inform the paths we take in our public lives.

It’s unlikely that many people clapping in the audience at the 2015 planning meeting in Fredericksburg had direct experience supporting the claim that every Muslim is a terrorist. Still, their clapping and encouragement suggested that they had traveled far down a certain path guiding their participation in public life in that moment. This path was cleared by people seeking to rehabilitate public hate, taking a fact—that there are a small number of Muslims in the world who do awful things—and distorting it into terrible generalizations about millions of people.

For his part, Dr. Qamar stood before the Downtown Rotary Club in Sioux Falls because others around the country had been so successful in paving this path of public hate, not because of a particular history of anti-Muslim activity in the city. In response, he was following, and helping to further build, another path of public life, one built on the idea that humanization—the simple idea of reminding others of our common humanity—makes it harder to hate.

The paths we select as we decide how, when, where, and why to engage in public life typically reflect our local settings. Yet these settings, and thus our decisions related to public life, are always tied into larger networks. Studying anti-Muslim sentiment and activity shows in very real terms that the conditions of public life come from the complex interaction of local and national factors.

This national-local dynamic explains how something like anti-Muslim sentiment and activity exists in very different places across the country—towns and cities with and without Muslim communities, towns and cities that have and have not experienced violence perpetrated by Muslims. It also explains how American Muslim responses to anti-Muslim sentiment and activity have unfolded across the country.

Reading these stories side by side also highlights the close relationship between anti-Muslim sentiment and the humanizing work of American Muslims. It’s not really possible to understand the remarkable growth of outreach efforts undertaken by everyday American Muslims across the country—like Dr. Qamar in Sioux Falls—without considering the rise of anti-Muslim sentiment and activity like we saw in Fredericksburg.

These hostile conditions in effect create a need—even a requirement—for American Muslims to engage in public life in particular kinds of ways. Their own fear, they own expectations of routine harm, have created the need to minister to others’ fears. This has led to an unprecedented, largely organic, outreach and public engagement effort by American Muslim communities.

Humanizing outreach comes in many different shapes and sizes. The goal, whatever the form, is always the same: humanizing Muslims in the face of anti-Muslim sentiment that assumes that all Muslims are the same (bad, in a nutshell).

An April 2018 mosque open house event in Roxbury, Massachusetts, captures the spirit of this kind of work. The event featured tours of the mosque, mini classes about Islam, opportunities to learn about Arabic calligraphy, and an afternoon prayer that visitors could observe. Above all else, the open house provided opportunities for people of all ages to talk together. Speaking to the Boston Globe, Yusufi Vali, one of the organizers, said of the event, “The real benefit of this is people get to meet real people and make their own judgments about who Muslims are.”

(Mosque in Roxbury, MA. Photo source: Jesse Costa for WBUR)

By embarking on an incredibly ambitious humanization effort in the face of rising anti-Muslim sentiment, Muslim communities and individuals have worked hard to create a path for others to follow when fear descends on public life. Many non-Muslims have certainly supported them in this work, but the resiliency American Muslims have shown in responding to anti-Muslim sentiment and activity is really quite remarkable.

In many of the media reports I’ve read, people doing this humanizing work have expressed joy at the connections their outreach has made possible. Just because they enjoy the work, though, doesn’t mean that the conditions of public life have left them with much choice about doing the work in the first place. Are Americans like Samer Shalaby and Mohammad Qamar really free to choose how they engage in public life? The answer to this question, at least as I’ve come to think about it in researching and writing this book, troubles me.

During the question-and-answer session of Dr. Qamar’s talk, one member of the audience asked him where they could find moderate Muslim voices denouncing extremism. This request is a common variation on the general theme of collective responsibility. In response, Dr. Qamar provided a number of resources and issued an open invitation for everyone to visit his mosque and ask any questions they had about Islam.

I’m not sure the person who asked the question recognized that Dr. Qamar was a living, breathing answer to the question—or perhaps he just thought that Dr. Qamar was an exception.

No matter how misguided it may be, the commonness of the audience member’s question is precisely why Dr. Qamar thinks it’s “not just important,” but “a necessity” to give talks like the one at the Downtown Rotary Club. He and others trying to humanize Muslims to non-Muslim audiences are doing so because of assumptions that all Muslims are responsible for the bad things that other Muslims do.

These assumptions, as well as the conditions of public life for American Muslims in general, in effect demand a response from Muslim communities—an accounting of why all Muslims should not be subject to suspicion.

There are Muslims, or people identifying as Muslim, who do terrible things. The same is also true for virtually every other conceivable group of people. Yet there is a particular demand on Muslims for a collective response, and it comes in different forms. The question posed to Dr. Qamar is an example of an explicit demand for a response. The planning meeting in Fredericksburg is an example of an implicit, but no less pressing, kind of demand.

For a community made insecure by anti-Muslim sentiment and activity around the country, demands by others require a response. For the thousands and thousands of people engaging in these efforts over many years, the requirement for humanizing work has meant less time with family, less time building careers, and less time participating in public life in other ways. In very important respects this was not truly a form of voluntary participation in public life, which is a crucial element of life in a democratic system.

In the face of horrifying levels of public hate, American Muslims like Dr. Qamar and so many others have nonetheless responded to these demands as they try to humanize the conditions of Muslim public life. As they have gone about this very difficult—even if sometimes joyful—task, American Muslims have provided a model of public life that looks at fear head on and chooses a different path, a path of openness and welcome.

American Muslims serve as an example to others because so many of their relatively small number in the United States have done, and continue to do, such an amazing job meeting fear head on with openness and transparency. Yet this is a burden that no vulnerable community ought to bear. The burden to humanize oneself and others with whom we might share elements of our identities because of other people’s fears cuts against a core principle of our democracy: that all of us have the right to decide when, where, how, and why to participate in public life.

Caleb Eyer Elfenbein is Associate Professor in the Departments of History and Religious Studies at Grinnell College where he is also Director of the Center for the Humanities.  

***

Interested in more on this topic? Check out episode 20 of the Revealer podcast: Combating Islamophobia in America.

The post Humanizing American Muslims appeared first on The Revealer.

(Image source: Relevant Magazine. Article homepage/main image source: Terry Laban)

The September 14, 2021 Hanover County Public School Board meeting in Ashland, Virginia began with a prayer. As everyone in the room rose to their feet, a school board member bowed his head and gave an “invocation”:

“Gracious God, we come before you tonight, and ask that you be with us, as we deliberate on the issues before the Hanover School Board. We ask that you be with us, as we listen intently to those who come before us. Please help us to use wisdom and your guidance as we make decisions that better our community and on behalf of all students and faculty and staff and parents of Hanover County, and in all things that we do, we pray that thy will be done. This is my prayer. Thy will be done. Amen.”

Following this explicitly evangelical prayer, the crowd put their hands over their hearts as a group of white elementary school children led the room in a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance and its declaration that the United States is “one nation, under God.”

As the Pledge of Allegiance ended, I looked around the meeting room. Two local officers serving as security guards stood on opposite sides of the room; both were white and unmasked. Earlier, when I entered the building with my mask on, one of them escorted me in, looked down at me, snorted, then said, “You won’t find many people with masks.” I nervously smiled beneath mine, “I thought it was the law.” “School’s not in session,” he said with a shrug. We parted ways when entering the meeting room. It was quickly apparent that, other than the school board members, almost no one was wearing a mask and nearly everyone was white. The school board and superintendent were all white men, other than the school board chair, a Black woman.

I attended this meeting to explore how white Christian nationalism informed the anti-critical race theory “crusades” in secular public-school board meetings. Christian nationalism is a cultural framework through which a pervasive set of ideals merge American and Christian group membership, shaping political action. Since Christian nationalism is a flexible ideology enabled by white supremacy, its examination across a range of contexts is critical to understand its significance outside of religious institutions as well as its relationship to white identity politics.

At this school board meeting, the ritual of prayer followed by the Pledge set the stage for a 60 minute-public comments section—each speaker had three minutes, and no one was allowed to applaud or express signs of approval or disapproval. I was surprised to find that white Christian nationalism was inextricably embedded and enacted in Hanover County’s agenda and procedures.

***

Hanover County, Virginia, only 26 miles northwest of Richmond but considered rural rather than suburban, is staunchly Republican in the Tea Party mold. Residents voted for Trump two to one in the 2016 and 2020 elections. The population is 86% white and 9.5% Black. The Sons of Confederate Veterans have a “camp” in the county and a booth at the annual Hanover Tomato Festival, where the Virginia Flaggers have given away free Confederate flags. Until 1950, Hanover provided no high school education to Black people, and the county was among the last to fully integrate in Virginia.

In June 2020, as the Movement for Black Lives swept through the country, Hanover residents formed a “community service organization” called the Hanover Patriots, which they believed was necessary, in their words, “after our entire nation was rocked to its core with civil unrest and uncertainty…to keep a watchful eye on our neighborhoods, schools, and local businesses…to interface with local law enforcement and keep our community safe!” The Hanover Patriots eventually “evolved” into the HanPat School Partnership. The group announced that, “Many families have moved here not only for the schools, but also for Hanover county’s traditional values. Yet sadly, both of those things are being attacked by outside activist groups and political & personal agendas.” In May 2021, they held an “anti-equity rally” over “COVID-19 mandates as well as school policies relating to equity,” stating: “We will use our 1st Amendment right to tell [the school board] we WILL NOT have our students indoctrinated with progressive politics, [Critical Race Theory], and other racist, divisive policies.”

In July 2021, the HanPat School Partnership hosted another demonstration. They declared, “We do not need this hate ideology pushed on our kids. It’s disguised in their nice little word they like to use called ‘EQUITY’!” Protestors included a white girl outfitted in red, white, and blue with a sign held high over her head: “I AM NOT AN OPRESSOR.” Another poster said: “CREATING RACIAL TENSION.” A final placard summarized, “How to Identify Critical Race Theory in the Classroom,” in a twenty-one-bullet point list of buzzwords: “Social justice or restorative justice”; “Systemic/structural/institutional racism”; “Power structures or racial hierarchies”; “White privilege/fragility/supremacy/culture/prejudice”; “Identity”; “Ally or ally-ship”; “Social constructs”; “Black lives matter.”

***

Critical race theorists analyze social practices, such as the law, while rejecting “colorblindness” as an ideal because consciousness about race is necessary to address systemic racism. According to critical race theorist Gary Peller, crucial to the “critical” part of CRT is the understanding that “no objective and neutral idea of merit can explain the distribution of wealth and power in America.” Therefore, critical race theory is an instrument to advance the opportunities of all people, including whites, who are undermined by the ways the professional classes define “merit.” This approach demonstrates how racism is structural and material, and that race, class, religion, gender, sexuality, and dis/ability are relational. Critical race theorists such as Peller have pointed out that CRT is not a racist ideology that declares all white people privileged oppressors, and it is not taught in K-12 public schools. I teach critical race theory in some of my undergraduate-level university classes; it is also taught in graduate school and law school.

However, explaining what critical race theory is does not matter to those adamantly campaigning against it in public schools. Peller says as much when he observes that the CRT-panic, “taps into a dependable reservoir of racial anxiety among whites. This is a political strategy that has worked for as long as any of us can remember, and CRT simply serves as the convenient face of the campaign today—a soft target.” At stake in the assault against CRT is the teaching of texts and implementation of policies that address white supremacy, structural racism, and Black experiences.

(Image source: Evelyn Hockstein for Reuters)

Currently, 25 states have enacted or are considering laws to “ban teaching CRT.” Texas now precludes any teacher from exploring the state’s history of enslavement if any student should “feel discomfort, guilt, [or] anguish… on account of the individual’s race or sex.” Critical race theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw has observed that white children are “once again the front line in this current war against critical race theory in the classroom — it’s a tried-and-true method of racial retrenchment.” Anti-racism has been re-cast as racism against white people.

Coverage of the anti-CRT crusades in Virginia has mostly focused on Loudoun and Fairfax Counties, where suburban development and diversifying demographics factored in the state’s Democratic “blue” shift around 2015. The anti-CRT propaganda push by people like Ian Prior, executive director of Fight for Schools and former Director for Public Affairs in the Department of Justice under President Trump, has garnered attention on Fox News for encouraging CRT resistance during pubic school boarding meetings. Video clips of white parents erupting over mask mandates, CRT, and policies that support transgender students have proven popular in stoking outrage on social media.

***

I have followed how the debates over critical race theory have played out in Hanover County since May 2021. I listened to audio recordings of Hanover County’s Public School Board meetings, watched over livestream, and I attended in-person. At the meeting I attended in September, the first and only Black speaker, a woman, removed her mask and gave a brief history lesson from slavery and Reconstruction to the Black codes and Jim Crow. She then mentioned the film Birth of a Nation, a movie by D.W. Griffith, and said that it, “displayed negative and derogatory images stereotyping Black people, creating fear in the Black population. 106 years later, in 2021, we are still trying to erase those degrading images and stereotypes.” She proposed that Hanover public schools offer an African American history class and develop a diversity, equity, and inclusion policy, “so that no one is discriminated for who they love, their race, or their economic class, in order to close the achievement gap.”

Throughout this testimony, the unmasked white woman a seat down from me sighed, squirmed, and muttered under her breath, her audible and visible expressions of disapproval impossible for me to ignore. During the public comments, as white speakers spread racist, dangerous misinformation while railing against CRT, masks, and trans students’ rights, expressions of approval grew deafening. 

I was struck by how the Black woman’s description of D.W. Griffith’s 1915 Birth of the Nation, a film that portrays the Ku Klux Klan as protectors of the white Christian nation, was not far removed from the present situation in Hanover and many parts of the country. In 2019, the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan—formed in 2011 in Pelham, North Carolina, just across the Virginia border—garbed in white hoods and robes held a “recruitment rally” outside the Hanover courthouse. The Loyal White Knights have opened their ranks to native-born white Christians of multiple denominations in order to “restore America to a White, Christian nation founded on God’s word” and were one of the many white supremacist factions that participated in the Unite the Right violence in Charlottesville in 2017. Loyal White Knight member and Hanover County resident Harry Rogers struck two Black Lives Matter protestors in 2020 with his truck after driving over a median by a Confederate monument near Richmond. Before he was arrested, Rogers boasted about the attack on a Facebook live video, “This Chevrolet 2500 went up on the curb and through the protest. They started scattering like (expletive) cockroaches. It’s funny if you ask me.”

In October 2021, the Loyal White Knights spread propaganda flyers around two Black-majority neighborhoods in nearby Henrico County that stated, “[Matthew] Maury, [Stonewall] Jackson, [Jefferson] Davis, [Rober E.] Lee, and [J.E.B.] Stuart—Heroes That Opposed Federal Aggression—Their Spirits Are Still Alive—Commies, You Took Down Statues, You’ll Be Took Down Too…100 percent Americanism. Pray for white Americans.” In January 2021, the Loyal White Knights mailed anti-Black letters and posted antisemitic messages throughout Hanover, Henrico, and Amelia Counties: “Greetings fellow Patriot! The BLACKS cost us the election of our GREAT LEADER. All over America, we plan to send them a message on Inauguration Day.” The letter instructed white people to place a slice of watermelon and Kentucky Fried Chicken in front of Black residences so that members could “get to the right houses.” Business store fronts were plastered with flyers with Nazi swastikas and “we are everywhere” printed on them.

Notably, the Loyal White Nights were far from the only citizens in Hanover County who advocated messages of Christian nationalism. At the school board meeting in September, one unmasked white man began, “Tonight, I want to talk to you about the truth of mask mandates,” and then he quoted scripture: “Ephesians Chapter 5, Verses 11-14. The Bible reads, take no part in the unfruitful work of darkness, but instead expose them…For anything that becomes visible is light. Awake oh sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” After this invocation to Christ in a debate about public schools, he preached about our age of “great misinformation, fear, and government overreach,” pleading, “it is time for everyone to wake up, fix our eyes on Jesus Christ. We the people do not comply with this government overreach; we the people do not comply with this illegal and unethical mask mandate for the sake of our children.” He concluded, “there’s not one scientific study that supports children wearing masks,” which is untrue.

Another unmasked white man began his testimony with a preamble about teaching his sons the “golden rule,” a reference to biblical verses about treating others as you would like to be treated. He then recited a quote attributed to, but not spoken by, Martin Luther King Jr. that was also used by Republican Glenn Youngkin during his successful campaign for governor of Virginia: “it’s the content of your character, not the color of skin.” He continued, “the recent controversy over CRT does nothing but demoralize,” then said, “most everyone has a part in slavery, not just white over Black; a Black man became the first American slave owner. Anthony Johnson, an African sold in Virginia who completed his indentured servant contract, became a landowner and used a Black man, John Casor, to work his fields indefinitely, making Casor the first slave.” There was an eruption of loud applause as the speaker walked back to his seat wearing a smug grin.

Anthony Johnson was a captive African who became one of the few Black landowners in 17^th-century Virginia, but his life morphed into a meme and manipulative trope used by right-wing pundits such as Glenn Beck to assert that slavery “is a human problem…it’s not a white condition or a Black condition.” Johnson’s case has been used to invert the narrative that American slavery was predicated on white supremacy. Tellingly, the speaker employs the Johnson myth-story after a quote erroneously accredited to Martin Luther King Jr. that is oft-recited when white people defend anti-Black racism through colorblind ideology. Reading directly from King’s “I Have a Dream” speech gives the seemingly neutral, decontextualized phrase “it’s the content of your character, not the color of skin,” racial meaning: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

The debates about critical race theory also included diatribes about policies that provide rights to transgender students. An unmasked white woman warned the school board not to let “biological males in girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms,” speciously referring to a sexual assault case in Loudoun in June 2021, when a cisgender male student wearing a skirt raped a cisgender female student in a school bathroom before the transgender student policy went into effect. This mother then made a joke met with laughter, “My two teenage boys will swear up and down that they identify as a girl to see naked girls,” effectively calling her sons sexual predators while categorizing transgender students as such, when evidence shows that trans people are targets rather than perpetrators of such violence. After this crude attempt at humor, the speaker threatened that if the board decided to implement diversity, equity, and inclusion policies with tax-payer money, there would be a mass exodus from public schools to homeschool co-ops.

The Hanover Patriots have a hand in supporting a “brand new homeschool co-op” advertised as an affordable alternative to public school for grades preK-5 located at the Oasis Church in Richmond. Harbor Christian Academy offers small classes “to supplement your homeschool education…taught with a Christian worldview,” concentrating “on core educational principles built on a Christian foundation.” The HCA Board of Directors are white women who often speak during Hanover school board meetings.

In the United States, homeschooling is almost entirely deregulated. In Virginia, parents are required to notify local school districts that their children will be homeschooled, but there is an exemption for “religious beliefs.” A high school diploma is required to homeschool children, but that can also be waived based on “religious belief.” The annual assessment of homeschooled children’s learning progress allows for “moral, philosophical, or religious exemption.” Effectively, Virginia parents can homeschool their children without subject requirements or assessments. According to Homeschoolers Anonymous co-founder R.L. Stoller, three of the most popular curriculum companies in homeschooling—Abeka, Bob Jones, and ACE—started as providers to white-only religious private schools and their curricula are full of historical revisionism, Christian Nationalism, and straightforward racism.

***

White Christian nationalism is shaping not only homeschooling curriculum and debates at public school board meetings, but American politics broadly. White Christian nationalism was rampant at Republican governor-elect Glenn Youngkin’s campaign events, namely the Family Research Council’s annual political advocacy conference held at Cornerstone Chapel, a predominantly white nondenominational church in Leesburg, Virginia. The senior pastor of Cornerstone, Reverend Gary Hamrick, invited Youngkin to a service, where he spoke during worship as he sought votes. Politicking from pulpits is not new, and Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe, a self-identified Catholic, did his share at predominantly Black congregations. However, Youngkin played a role in founding Holy Trinity Church in McLean, Virginia, a “non-denominational church with Anglican roots and a contemporary charismatic expression,” where he serves as a lay leader. He also opened campaign staff meetings with a prayer. During the Cornerstone service, Youngkin testified to his faith and said that his campaign grew out of “an amazing call on my prayer life,” promising that after taking the oath of office “on a holy Bible” he would lead the Commonwealth “in a moment of prayer” to give thanks and ask for guidance.

A day after Youngkin’s victory, Republicans began to rally around “parental rights.” The Metric Media network, an organization funded in part by “a Catholic political advocacy group that launched a $9.7 million campaign in swing states against the Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden,” has published tens of thousands of articles about CRT nationwide through its 1,200 sites masquerading as local news in 50 states and Washington DC. Between January and November 2021, 28 Metric Media “local news” sites in Virginia published 4,657 articles about CRT in public schools. In turn, Youngkin capitalized on this anti-CRT momentum. He promised to ban critical race theory in schools on his first day in office, a sign that the anti-critical race theory crusades will be formidable tool in the 2022 midterm elections. White Christian nationalism is impacting local, state, and national politics in ways that are underexamined, through mundane practices of U.S. citizenship that intersect with tactics of electoral politics.

During the public-school board meetings that I observed, conspiratorial thinking about critical race theory, transgender student policy, and mask mandates, converged in narratives and enactments of white Christian nationalism. Framed by evangelical prayer and biblical verse, expressions of approval and disapproval that flouted the public comment rules attested to the militancy of white ignorance and feelings of white immunity. The anti-CRT crusades reimagine and defend the United States as a Christian nation in which white cisgender heterosexuality is the norm. Challenging this dynamic of authority requires disrupting the mythological power of one nation, under one God.

Jessica Johnson is a Visiting Scholar of Religious Studies at the College of William & Mary and a Sacred Writes/Revealer Writing Fellow. Her ethnographic study of the rise and fall of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Biblical Porn: Affect, Labor, and Pastor Mark Driscoll’s Evangelical Empire, was published by Duke University Press in 2018.

***

This article was made possible in part with support from Sacred Writes, a Henry Luce Foundation-funded project hosted by Northeastern University that promotes public scholarship on religion.

The post The Crusade Against Critical Race Theory in Hanover County, Virginia appeared first on The Revealer.

(The former king and queen of Nepal, Gyanendra Shah and Komal Shah. Photo source: AFP File Photo)

On April 11 of this year, a car pulled up in front of a Hindu temple in Haridwar, India.

Out stepped the former king of Nepal.

Nepal’s ex-king does not appear often in public. Though he was not officially exiled or formally limited from public life following his forced abdication in 2008, Gyanendra Shah (now 73) mostly lives quietly at his private residence in Kathmandu. He opens his gates to his supporters on his birthday and on the national holiday of Vijaya Dasami, but the world’s last Hindu king rarely grants interviews or attends events.

This year, though, he was an invited VIP guest at the Kumbh Mela, a festival where millions of Hindus bathe in the sacred River Ganges. He and his wife, former-Queen Komal, had made an exception to their normal reclusiveness, and flown to India a day ahead of the designated Shahi Snaan— “royal bath” day.

Upon their arrival, the Shahs went to the Dakshinkali Temple. A small group of journalists waited for them near a red publicity backdrop. Gyanendra looked relaxed, a half-smile across his face. A red tika-mark on his forehead marked him as a devout Hindu; a traditional topi hat marked him as a proud Nepali.

As the journalists looked on, Nepal’s former king received his official welcome from orange-swathed holy men of the Niranjani Akhad (one of thirteen groups who organize the Kumbh Mela). They draped one another with flower garlands and made small speeches. Gyanendra then declared that “Nepal and India share the same culture and traditions.” The holy-men suggested that Gyanendra was the Vishwa Hindu Samrat, which could be translated either as the “king of the world’s Hindus,” or the “Hindu king of the world.” The head holy-man of the temple, Kailashanand Giri, proclaimed that “the only Hindu nation in the world is Nepal.”

As he started to speak, Kailashanand Giri’s cloth pandemic mask dangled from one ear; he soon pulled it off entirely to talk more easily into the microphone. Most of the other holy men wore cloth masks around their chins. Gyanendra’s own face was bare.

On April 12, Gyanendra and Komal Shah bathed in the Ganges, alongside an estimated 3.5 million fellow pilgrims. They spent the rest of the week in India, and flew back to Nepal on Sunday, April 18.

The following Tuesday, the former king and queen were both diagnosed with COVID.

***

The Kumbh Mela festival this year drew together millions of people right at the beginning of India’s devastating Delta wave. Despite health precautions, thousands of pilgrims were exposed to illness and took the virus home with them. There may have been hundreds if not thousands of COVID-linked deaths among participants, including a politician from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and a prominent holy man who was instrumental in the Kumbh Mela’s own planning. Without contact tracing or effective data-collection, the true toll cannot be fully known.

(2021 Kumbh Mela festival. Photo source: Prakash Singh for Getty Images)

The former king and queen of Nepal both ended up hospitalized for weeks following their COVID diagnosis. Former-queen Komal spent seven days in intensive care.

Fortunately, they both survived and were discharged in May to finish recuperating at home. In a public statement to the nation in October, during Nepal’s Dasai festival, Gyanendra seemed entirely recovered.

But the Shahs’ trip to India, and their brush with COVID, raises an important question: Why would a reclusive pair of former royals decide to risk their health for a pilgrimage?

And further, why would Mela-organizers in India even want to invite the former king and queen of Nepal?

In order to answer these questions, we need to understand what kingship means to modern nationalism in Nepal and India (the world’s two Hindu-majority nations).

And we need to understand how Gyanendra and Komal Shah came to be the former king and queen of their country.

***

Hindu kingship has a long and complex history in South Asia.

Long before the lines were drawn to create the borders of modern India and Nepal, there were shifting kingdoms all over the subcontinent. Some Hindu rulers (rajas) controlled vast territories; others presided over a single city or valley.

Hindu rajas were both political and ritual figures. Most claimed their right to rule based on their special ritualized relationship with a Hindu deity, and most received special ritual consecration. They endowed temples and supported priests; they appeared in public festivals, and sometimes had access to secret powerful spaces or rites. Some rajas controlled extensive armies and administrative apparatuses; others wielded far less practical power.

The legacies of Hindu kingship diverged, however, between the lands that would become India and Nepal.

In India, Hindu kingship waned. Under Islamic rule (starting in the 1200s with the Delhi Caliphate) and then under British colonial rule (starting in the 1700s), Hindu rajas were progressively displaced. Some lost territory; some went into exile. Some nominally stayed kings, but ended up relegated to purely ceremonial roles.

After independence in 1947, all of India’s remaining royal territories were folded into the secular state. Royal families were briefly given stipends, but all official titles and privy-purse payments were cut off in 1971. Some of India’s former Hindu kings (like the Raja of Singrauli) became hoteliers or businessmen. A few become politicians, such as Madhavrao Scindia of Gwalior, who served nine terms in the Indian Parliament. Many continue to participate actively in local rituals: the raja of Puri inaugurates his city’s Jagannath festival, while the raja of Varanasi is an important patron of all city-wide holidays. These ritually active “royals” hold local social importance, but no official titles or political roles.

In Nepal, by contrast, the modern nation-state developed entirely around the Hindu monarchy. In the mid-1700s, Nepal became a single polity for the first time when an ambitious young raja from Gorkha conquered neighboring territories throughout the Himalayan foothills. His descendants, the Shah dynasty, stayed on the throne for the next 240 years. In the 1800s, the Shah kings were sidelined from politics, when a succession of child-kings were relegated to ceremonial roles while powerful prime ministers ran the government.

(Source: Britannica)

In the mid-20^th century, the power of Nepal’s kings expanded once again. In 1950, King Tribhuvan collaborated with democracy activists to overturn the reigning regime and ascend to a newly powerful role. Tribhuvan’s son and grandson consolidated full control of the nation’s government, running Nepal as a royal autocracy from 1960 until 1990, when King Birendra stepped back into a more moderate role as an active but predominantly ceremonial head of state.

Throughout the modern period, Nepal’s kings were at the center of the nation. In some ways, the king was the nation. Nepal’s rupee notes showed the king’s face, school curricula taught the king’s biography, the national anthem lauded the king, and the king’s birthday became a national holiday. Throughout the year, the king would perform religious rituals in his capacity as head of state. The Nepali word sarkar meant both “government” and “[his] majesty.”

At the turn of the millennium, Nepali nationhood was inextricably bound up with Hindu monarchy. Yet, within less than a decade, the entire institution collapsed.

***

The last king of Nepal, Gyanendra Shah, came to the throne in 2001 under the worst possible circumstances.

Gyanendra was the younger brother of King Birendra, one of the longest-ruling kings in Nepali history. Birendra and his wife, Queen Aishwarya, had been ruling for nearly thirty years, since 1972. Prince Gyanendra had lived his whole life as a palace insider and confidant to the king, but as third in line to the throne (after his brother’s two adult sons), he ought never have expected to become king himself.

Then on June 1, 2001, twenty-five members of the extended royal family gathered for dinner at the Crown Prince’s residence. That gathering became the site of a horrifying mass shooting. Fourteen royals were shot. Ten died, including the king, queen, and all three of their children. The king’s eldest son and heir to the throne, Crown Prince Dipendra, was named in the official report as the shooter.

Prince Gyanendra was not present at the dinner. His wife Komal had attended without him, and survived—though she was shot through the left lung, inches from her heart.

Now, suddenly, Gyanendra and Komal were the new king and queen of Nepal.

The public was grieving, angry, and traumatized. Vast numbers of Nepalis rejected the official report on the palace shooting and instead placed blame for the tragedy on their new king.

At the time, the country was five years into an armed guerilla insurgency in the western hill regions, and the central government in Kathmandu was riven with infighting. The political situation worsened in the months and years immediately following the royal murders, and, in 2005, King Gyanendra decided to take the government into his own hands. He dissolved the existing administration, appointed himself Chairman of a council of ministers, and attempted to rule directly.

That decision managed to unite every faction in the country against him.

In April 2006, a little over a year after he took direct control of the government (and just over five years after he became king), Gyanendra’s opponents took to the streets. All over Nepal, massive demonstrations paralyzed the country for nearly a month. King Gyanendra capitulated.

An interim government took over and immediately set about stripping Gyanendra of every form of power. They excised him from all government work, pulled his budget, erased him from the currency, and wrote a new king-free national anthem. They disinvited him from all public rituals that had been central to the Shahs since the 1700s.

In May 2008, a new legislature voted to end the monarchy.

The now-former king and queen left the palace in June 2008 and took up lives as private citizens. They continue to live quietly in downtown Kathmandu, a mile north of the palace. Former king Gyanendra’s public life is minimal—but he does periodically go to weddings, temples, and the occasional public ritual (where he hangs onto a vestige of his old identity).

***

In the early 2000s, when King Gyanendra was deeply unpopular in Nepal, he was nevertheless extremely popular among Hindu nationalists in India.

For the past few decades in India, an increasing number of Hindus have located their national identity in a deep, ancient, Hindu past—a past they see as tarnished by conquests from non-Hindu outsiders (first Muslim, then British). These advocates want modern India to claim a strong and pure identity as a Hindu nation. This is the ideology of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP party, and it has been linked to a sharp rise in anti-Muslim hostility, policy, and violence.

For such nationalists, the disappearance of Hindu kingship from India was part of their broader national tragedy. They accordingly developed a nostalgic attachment to Nepal’s Hindu monarchy. They decried the dissolution of Gyanendra’s kingship in 2008 as a loss to world Hinduism.

Today, some would like to see him reinstated.

***

Which brings us back to Kumbh Mela in 2021.

Gyanendra Shah is, according to the reports of those who know him, a deeply devout man. He enjoys religious activities, seeks out religious specialists, and visits significant temples. He also appears to be a true believer in the significance of monarchy generally (and his family specifically) for Nepal. Nothing could feel better to him than an invitation to bathe in the holy River Ganges on the “royal” day and be celebrated by a group of holy men as the Vishwa Hindu Samrat—the king of the world’s Hindus.

For their part, the Indian holy men who invited the Shahs do not care much about Nepali politics or the Shah dynasty. Instead, they are invested in a vision of a post-secular Hindu India, a political order that includes the former king of Nepal while excluding India’s Muslim citizens. Kumbh Mela allowed both the former king and his hosts to act out their vision of how the world should be. It allowed them to perform Hindu nationalism through ritual gestures.

Gyanendra Shah’s participation in a “royal bath” reflected his past royalty, but it also renewed that royalty and extended it into the future. His presence at the Kumbh Mela suggested that he continued to be a unique and important person—someone valuable to Hindus even beyond Nepal’s borders. For his hosts, his presence suggested that Indian Hindus have more salient ties across borders than they do within the multi-religious modern nation.

Ultimately, the ritual presented the public with a vision of Hindu-ness and politics that does not match the current real-life political world where Hindu kings only exist in the past. But it did match the sentiments and aspirations of both the former king and those who invited him.

And that, as it turns out, seems to have been worth a life-threatening brush with COVID.

Anne Mocko is associate professor of Asian religions at Concordia College (Moorhead, MN), and the author of Demoting Vishnu: Ritual, Politics, and the Unraveling of Nepal’s Hindu Monarchy (Oxford University Press, 2016).

The post COVID and the King appeared first on The Revealer.

Dear Revealer readers,

For me, the following story encapsulates 2021: In early summer, the New York City mayor’s office announced they would host a “Welcome Back” concert in Central Park. With the vaccine rollout going well, they scheduled the concert for August. Celebrity singers like Jennifer Hudson and Paul Simon committed to performing. The New York City Police and Parks departments collaborated to host 60,000+ attendees. Such a spectacle, the mayor’s office believed, would showcase New York City’s triumphant victory over the virus and broadcast to the world that Manhattan was open for tourism once again. “Welcome Back,” they named the event.

Revealer Editor, Brett Krutzsch

On Saturday, August 21, the concert opened with a performance by the New York Philharmonic. The next several performances went well. But dark clouds started to form over Central Park’s Great Lawn. As Barry Manilow sang a medley of his hits, rain fell on the crowd. Manilow’s microphone suddenly went silent, and someone announced over the PA system that everyone should exit the park and take cover. The concertgoers scattered as thunder boomed above them. Unwilling to accept what was happening, Mayor de Blasio grabbed a microphone and told the crowd to stay in Central Park. Even with lightning flashing in the sky, the mayor insisted the concert would resume. But the planet had other plans. Hurricane Henri was barreling toward the East Coast. Over the next several hours, the hurricane deluged Central Park with more rain than the park had seen in its 163-year-history. The concert never resumed. New York City’s victory-over-the-virus celebration washed away as the city’s elected leader refused to believe that danger was imminent.

The Welcome Back concert is, to me, the emblematic story of 2021. The year started with high hopes that vaccines would end the pandemic. But then came Delta, a variant that barreled through the country like a hurricane and made clear that the pandemic’s end was not in sight. Likewise, the mayor standing on stage, claiming everything will be okay, is the story of too many politicians who have stared directly at clear COVID and climate data and told people not to worry. And a hurricane walloping New York City in the middle of August reminded us that, even if we end the pandemic, the climate crisis will not allow the celebration to last long.

2021 was a year of emotional whiplash. January started with an insurrection on our Capitol, followed by the inauguration of a new President and the hope for less political polarization. But social divisions became even more visible as white nationalists and Christian nationalists, and the many people who are both, fought vaccine mandates, mask mandates, history lessons about racism, and access to safe abortions. At the same time, 2021 was a year when friends saw one another for the first time in months, when industries hard-hit by the pandemic rebounded, and when museums, theaters, and galleries re-opened to a public craving the arts.

The Revealer’s December issue considers these wide-ranging issues that we are facing and offers incisive perspectives on them. The issue opens with Anne Mocko’s “Covid and the King,” where she considers how Hindu nationalism helps explain why the dethroned King of Nepal risked death from COVID when he agreed to participate in India’s Kumbh Mela festival this year. Next, in “The Crusade Against Critical Race Theory,” Jessica Johnson reports on how Christian nationalism has shaped recent protests against teaching about racism in public schools. Then, in an excerpt from Fear in Our Hearts: What Islamophobia Tells Us about America, Caleb Elfenbein shares how Muslim communities have attempted to combat anti-Muslim prejudice through an array of outreach efforts to “humanize” Muslims. Along similar lines, in “The Rise of the Muslim Sitcom,” Kristian Petersen examines how Muslim-produced sitcoms on broadcast television use humor to portray Muslims as relatable Americans, even as such sitcoms reproduce common cultural stereotypes about Islam.

The December issue also includes articles that offer much hope. In “Sharing Sikh Wisdom with the World,” Kali Handelman interviews Simran Jeet Singh, a frequent Revealer contributor, about his forthcoming book on the Sikh tradition and how Sikh teachings can help everyone who cares about equality and social harmony. And I am excited to share our annual “Winter Reading Recommendations” of new books by Revealer writers. All of this year’s suggestions offer important insights about our world.

The issue also contains the newest episode of the Revealer podcast, “Combating Islamophobia in America,” in which Caleb Elfenbein joins us to discuss what Islamophobia reveals about life in the United States today. We explore why anti-Muslim fear persists throughout the country, how Muslim communities have responded to Islamophobia, and what everyone can do so that Muslims can thrive in the United States. You can listen to this important episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

As I reflect on the past year, I take comfort in thinking about the articles we have been able to publish in the Revealer. Our writers have offered remarkably astute observations about religion’s place in so many of the issues facing our country and world. I have learned much from their sharp analysis. Their insights have given me clarity, hope, and a reminder that many people are working – day in and day out – to improve life for many others. That work can seem slow and arduous. But it continues. And my hope is that all of us remember, as we say goodbye to this year and look ahead to the next, that countless people want a world with more justice and equality. Let us hold on to that knowledge as we embark on this new year.

Yours,
Brett Krutzsch, Ph.D.

P.S. We do not publish a January issue, so we will be back with a new issue of the Revealer in February 2022. We cannot wait for you to see what we have in store in 2022!

The post Editor’s Letter: Looking Back on 2021 appeared first on The Revealer.