Image via Indian Country Today Media Network

By Mark Clatterbuck

“Tribal Alliances: The State of Israel and Native American Christianity” was originally published in the Journal of Ecumenical Studies, 49:3, Summer 2014 and is excerpted here with their permission. 

Introduction: Indians, Jews, and Jesus

But I having curiously examined whatever has hitherto been written upon this subject do find no opinion more probable, nor agreeable to reason, than that of our Montezinos, who says, that the first inhabitants of America were the Ten Tribes of the Israelites . . .     . . . I prove that the Ten Tribes never returned to the Second Temple, that they yet kept the Law of Moses, and our sacred rites; and at last shall return to their Land, with the two Tribes, Judah and Benjamin; and shall be governed by one Prince, who is Messiah the Son of David; and without doubt that time is near, which I make appear by divers things . . .[1]                                                      —Menasseh Ben Israel (1650)

So, now, when you touch me

my skin, will you think

of Sand Creek, Wounded Knee?

And what will I remember 

 

when your skin is next to mine

Auschwitz, Buchenwald?

No, we will only think of the pastas one second before

where we are now, the futurejust one second ahead

but every once in a while

we can remind each other 

 

that we are both survivors and children

and grandchildren of survivors.[2]

—Sherman Alexie (1993)

As the end of the world draws near, per the theological calculations of many American churchgoers, more and more indigenous Christians across the United States are turning their hopes toward Israel. They do so with an eye to fulfilling the requisite Last Days prophecies, buoyed by a sense of solidarity with the tiny nation born of a shared survivorship through centuries of oppression. Theories uniting Jews and American Indians in ancestral alchemy have flourished since Europeans landed on New World shores, beginning with Christopher Columbus.[3] Through most of that history, fascination with the presumed Jewish roots of indigenous Americans was located primarily—if not exclusively—among non-Native commentators on American Indians, captivating the religious and historical imaginations of European Christians and, occasionally, of European Jews.

More recently, however, the religious imaginations of a growing number of Native Americans have likewise been captured by the possibilities of a Hebrew origin. And, even among a swelling number of Native Americans for whom the Jewish-origins narrative seems unlikely, the allure of embracing a more symbolic expression of Jewish kinship is proving irresistible. In fact, indigenous expressions of solidarity with Israel have grown so common—and Israeli expressions of reciprocation so overt—that a number of prominent Native scholars, alarmed by U.S. tribal support of an occupying Israeli government linked to systematic Palestinian oppression, have signed onto the controversial “Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.” When the well-known Mvskoke (Muscogee Creek) poet, author, and musician Joy Harjo accepted an invitation to perform at Tel Aviv University in 2012, some of her Native peers in the academy begged her “to not cross the picket line called by Palestinian civil society.”[4] Harjo refused to change course, publically expressing her disapproval of the boycott. This prompted considerable outrage from certain of her peers.[5]

Even more recently, the tribal governments of the Apsáalooke (Crow) and Navajo Nations have each formally established political alliances with the State of Israel, fueled by the promise of economic prosperity and staked to expressions of kinship between sibling tribes with long histories of collective suffering. While a rising chorus of voices is drawing attention to the cultural, political, postcolonial, and development implications of this burgeoning pro-Israel movement among U.S. indigenous peoples, less attention has been paid to the underlying religious convictions that are driving these developments. Barely obscured beneath the rhetoric of political alliances and economic partnerships, lurking in the corners of press releases and tribal policy speeches, a Native Christian theology—rife with Messianic Jewish influence, prophetic visions, and eschatological urgency—is the real impetus behind this surprising surge in Indian-Jewish cooperation.

An exploration of the remarkable pro-Israel efforts flourishing today among the Crow and Navajo Tribes offers a glimpse into the ways that Lost Tribes mythology, Pentecostal eschatology, biblical literalism, and a savvy coalition of Messianic Jewish organizations are making a new flower of Zionism bloom in the indigenous plains and desert soils of contemporary Native America.

“Jesus Christ Is Lord” on the Crow Indian Reservation 

On April 8, 2013, the Crow Tribal Legislature joined the tribe’s Executive Branch in passing a resolution carrying the following title: “A Crow Tribal Joint Action Resolution to Establish Crow Tribal Policy Officially Supporting the State of Israel on a Nation-to-Nation Basis.” Tribal Chairperson Darrin Old Coyote served as the bill’s sponsor. Perhaps due to the unusual nature of this bill, the legislation’s preambulatory clauses offer a wide-ranging justification for such an alliance, using political, historical, and even biblical appeals.

First, the resolution establishes the tribe’s right to enter into such agreements with any nation it chooses, insofar as the Apsáalooke Nation is a “federally-recognized sovereign tribal nation” with a history of entering into treaties with the U.S. “on a nation-to-nation basis.” As for why Israel should receive special recognition by the tribe, the bill’s framers begin with the claim that Crow Indians and the State of Israel enjoy a kinship by virtue of their respective histories of persecution. After highlighting threats posed to the Crows’ “sacred homeland” over the years—first by neighboring tribes (including “attempts to eradicate the Crow Tribe from its very existence”) and later by non-Natives seeking access to the reservation’s considerable mineral wealth—the bill’s authors conclude that “the State of Israel has faced similar historic challenges as the Crow Tribe to its territorial integrity and survival, many of which are still ongoing today.”

After noting Israel’s support,[6] in 2007, of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples—a declaration that was immediately supported by Crow legislative action[7]—the resolution takes a decidedly biblical turn:

Whereas, according to the King James Version of the Holy Bible, Book of Genesis, Chapter 12 . . . the words of the Creator (“Akbaatatdia”) to the nation of Israel provide that: “I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing. And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee, and in thee shall all families of the Earth be blessed.”

Having expressed such bold confidence that divinely appointed blessings would visit not only friends of the ancient Hebrew patriarch but also friends of the modern State of Israel, the bill’s authors declare, “The official policy of the Crow Tribe of Indians shall be to support the State of Israel, especially in its efforts to maintain economic, territorial and political integrity.” Toward this end, provisions are made to ensure that copies of the resolution are delivered to the Israeli Ambassador to the U.S., the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, and the United Nations. It also stipulates that “an official flag of the State of Israel is flown at the Veteran’s Park in Crow Agency” as a “monument” to this declaration. The resolution passed with unanimous support.[8] In March, 2014, during a private ceremony in Washington, DC, Crow tribal leaders formally presented the resolution to Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer.

This conspicuous mingling of religious conviction with political action might have generated more surprise than it did among observers of Crow tribal politics, except that an even more stridently religious bill had passed in the Crow Legislature just one month earlier. On March 6, 2013, a special legislative session approved LR 13-02, titled “A Resolution of the Crow Tribal Legislature to Honor God for his Great Blessings upon the Crow Tribe and to Proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord of the Crow Indian Reservation.” In its preambulatory material, the bill claims that “today a large majority of Crow tribal members are Christians,” highlights two Crow-language names for Jesus, and draws attention to an informal policy of offering prayers before legislative sessions, “all of which are typically done in the name of Jesus.” The resolution then gives “recognition to the fact that God has guided the Crow Tribe throughout its history” in hopes that “future generations have extraordinary opportunities with continued guidance from God to significantly improve the social, economic, and political conditions of the Crow Tribe and Crow Reservation,” adding, “and, more importantly, that everlasting life in Heaven (the ‘Other Side Camp’) is available to those who accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and personal savior.”

The legislation resolves to give “thanks and appreciation . . . to God for all of the blessings which have been bestowed upon the Crow Tribe” and “honors the powerful works of God in protecting the Crow Tribe.” Therefore, it resolves that “Jesus Christ is hereby proclaimed as ‘Lord of the Crow Indian Reservation’ by the Crow Tribal Legislature.” Toward a public demonstration of this decree, the Secretary of the Legislature is entrusted with the task of displaying a monument to this proclamation in the Legislative Chamber, and the Legislature itself pledges support to the local pastors in erecting signage along Interstate 90 in Crow Agency, Montana (“and in other areas of the Crow Reservation”), declaring, “Jesus Christ is Lord of the Crow Indian Reservation.”[9] The resolution passed without a single vote in opposition.[10]

LR 13–02 was sponsored by Senator Conrad J. Stewart of the reservation’s Black Lodge District. The thirty-nine-year-old senator had run a hard-fought, social-media-savvy campaign to be the Tribal Chairperson the previous fall, though his bid ultimately fell short. Stewart is an outspoken Pentecostal Christian, being the proud great-grandson of Nellie Pretty Eagle Stewart, who was both daughter to Chief Pretty Eagle and founding pioneer of Crow Pentecostalism in the 1920’s.[11] On the Facebook page dedicated to his senatorial reelection campaign, Stewart describes himself as “a Christian with Crow Traditional Values.” The Bible headlines his list of favorite books, and he paraphrases Rom. 8:31 as his favorite quotation: “If God be for you! Who could be against you??” He describes his religious views in one word: “Christianity!!”[12]

In addition to sponsoring the “Jesus Is Lord” resolution, Stewart was also a key backer of the bill supporting Israel. In an interview I had with Stewart in July, 2013, he expressed great enthusiasm about passage of these resolutions, which he regarded as sister bills. He repeatedly explained that, taken together, these votes were “planting a seed of faith” that will usher in a wave of spiritual and economic blessings for the tribe. In a press release immediately following passage of the “Jesus Is Lord” resolution, Stewart announced: “This is a step forward for progress for the Crow people. Today the Crow Legislative branch supported me in planting a seed of faith to propel the Crow Nation into Greater Prosperity.”[13] The subsequent resolution declaring support for Israel was seen as a logical—even necessary—next step toward realizing this “greater prosperity.” Indeed, just before the vote was cast on the Stewart bill, legislators agreed that the next action to be taken up should be a formal tribal declaration of support for the state of Israel.[14]

Protest and “Redwashing”

Not surprisingly, the escalating support for Israel among Native American communities has attracted its share of critics. In addition to the many grassroots protests that have sprung up among the Navajo, Crow, and other tribes over a range of concerns related to these partnerships, a strong voice of disapproval has also been registered by a group of deeply concerned indigenous scholars who contend that Native partnerships with Israel represent a betrayal of indigenous values, history, and identity. One of the most prominent voices among them is Robert Warrior (Osage), a professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and the founding president (in 2010) of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA). He studied under the Palestinian intellectual Edward Said and authored the highly influential essay, “Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians” (1989), in which he critiqued the biblical Exodus narrative for its enmeshment with the conquest narrative of “the indigenous inhabitants of Canaan” that immediately follows it—a narrative that has too often been used to justify subsequent conquests of indigenous populations, including in the U.S. He argues that “[t]he obvious characters in the story for Native Americans to identify with are the Canaanites, the people who already lived in the promised land.”[15]

In a letter sent to Shelly in April, 2013, Warrior, on behalf of nine other prominent indigenous scholars whose names appear on the letter, expressed “grave disappointment” over Shelly’s ongoing public support for Israel. He wrote, “As indigenous educators, we find your support for the state of Israel to be in complete contradiction to our values and sense of justice.” Challenging the tendency among Native supporters of Israel to feel more solidarity with Israelis than Palestinians, Warrior argues: “Like the Diné people, our various peoples (Osage, Choctaw, Dakota, Lenape, Kanaka Maoli, and Pohnpeian) have suffered the process of settlement, colonization, or militarization of our homelands. Thanks to the wisdom of our ancestors, we have persisted”—pointedly adding:

A similar process has unfolded for Palestinian people over the past half century. Indeed, Israeli demolition of the homes of Palestinian families is not all that different than the Long Walk your people endured in 1864. Your collusion with the Israeli government is a betrayal of that shared history and of the wisdom that has helped all Indigenous peoples survive for centuries.

The letter concludes, “We ask that you rethink your partnership with this corrupt and contested state and seek out international relationships that better reflect on all of us as Indigenous peoples.”[16] Warrior has yet to receive a formal response from Shelly.

Another prominent voice expressing sharp opposition to Native-Israeli alliances is that of J. Kehaulani Kauanui (Kanaka Maoli), a Native Hawaiian activist and associate professor of American studies and anthropology at Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT. As reported in Indian Country Today, Kauanui expressed her opinion of Shelly’s posture toward Israel in this way: “The contested State of Israel perpetuates the violent domination and removal of the Palestinian people from their homeland, much like the US settler colonial state’s treatment of Native nations. Why any tribal leader would want to partner with Netanyahu is beyond curious; it is morally repugnant.”[17] She has popularized the term “redwashing” to describe the process by which Israeli institutions are using alliances with U.S. tribes to their own political advantage. Specifically, she defines redwashing as the promotion of Indigenous Peoples of the Americas as a deliberate strategy to conceal the continuing violations of the Palestinian people. In these cases, Israelis typically appeal to indigenous peoples by drawing parallels between their respective claims to indigeneity, legacies of genocide (evoking the Jewish holocaust), and ongoing adversity regarding threats to “cultural extinction.” In turn, many indigenous groups and individuals have responded.[18]

In January, 2014, Kauanui led a panel discussion dedicated to exploring the topic at an international conference hosted by the American University of Beirut. Additionally, she has served on the advisory board to the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel since 2009, an effort that calls for a comprehensive boycott of all Israeli institutions that fail openly to oppose Israeli policies toward Palestinians. In December, 2013, clearly with an eye on the rising tide of Native-Israeli partnerships, the Council of the NAISA issued a formal statement of support for the Boycott, declaring: “The NAISA Council protests the infringement of the academic freedom of Indigenous Palestinian academics and intellectuals in the Occupied Territories and Israel who are denied fundamental freedoms of movement, expression, and assembly, which we uphold.”[19]

Conclusion: Spiritual Warriors and the New Indigeneity

With nods to the U.N., appeals to past oppression, and dreams of economic prosperity, the official rhetoric surrounding Crow and Navajo partnerships with Israel appears to suggest, at first blush, that political concerns and business interests are the driving forces behind them. However, a closer look reveals that religious convictions are every bit as much responsible for these emerging alliances—if not more so. While such outspoken critics as Warrior and Kauanui have tended to focus on the troubling political, cultural, and colonialist dimensions of these alliances, too little attention has yet been paid to the foundational influence of an emerging Native theology that blends a spiritualized vision of tribal kinship, a prophetic zeal born of biblical literalism, apocalyptic fervor, and a strong current of Messianic Judaism. Not only is this wave of blended religious currents giving rise to a new breed of tribal alliances, but it is also ushering in a new generation of Native Christian warriors charging headlong into battle, trampling popular notions of Native authenticity under the banner of a radically revisioned indigeneity for the twenty-first century.

Liberally interspersed in the religious rhetoric of Native Christian support for Israel is the imagery of spiritual warfare associated with a religious movement that is sometimes referred to as “dominion theology.”[20] It is a movement preoccupied with spiritual conquest, with “spiritual mapping” to identify regional “demonic strongholds” and “territorial spirits,” with waging “intercessory warfare,” and with retaking land stolen by the devil. Through this lens, catastrophic unemployment rates, rampant alcoholism, and a variety of public health concerns among Native communities are primarily regarded not as consequences of failed economic policies or systemic racism or centuries of colonial oppression; rather, these are the work of “territorial spirits” and “generational curses” to be discerned and overcome through the strategic intercessory prayer of spiritual warriors. For Native believers allied with this theology, a long-overdue reclamation of lost ground is taking place right before their eyes. Although the literal soil of Native lands may be lost for good, Native Christian supporters of a pro-Israel eschatological vision are taking back the spiritual inheritance they believe was previously lost through the greed of settlers, the work of demons, and the pagan practices of their own ancestors.

Understood this way, Native adherents of this theology experience it as greatly empowering, as a means of reclaiming their cultural inheritance as warriors, and as an assertion of their birthright as the original spiritual caretakers of this territory. In a 247-page handbook, Thy Kingdom Come Thy Will Be Done, Native pastors Jim and Faith Chosa from the Crow Reservation devoted considerable time to questions of indigenous identity in the context of global and national spiritual warfare, teaching that, just as God “set forth relational principals, which would apply to all nations, through His relationship with the First Nation of the globe, Israel,” so the indigenous peoples of North America likewise carry a heavy spiritual responsibility with respect to “the true ownership of the spiritual landscape of the continent.” This “true ownership” persists despite the fact that “the land they were given by God was stolen from them by broken treaties.” Therefore, “Native Americans are still the earthly host authority for the land of America, and the Native believers as new creatures of Christ restored to Heavenly authority in the Name of Jesus are the only ones who can righteously and permanently deal with any and all ancient issues of iniquity affecting the spiritual and natural landscape.”[21]

In the unfolding dialogue between Native critics of the pro-Israel movement and the movement’s Native supporters, I find it particularly significant that many of the voices being raised in defense of Israel do so by appealing precisely to this issue of indigenous identity. This comes even as Native critics of Israeli policies often imply that U.S. tribal support is detrimental to indigenous interests, an affront to the struggles endured by Native people everywhere. In short, they see it as a betrayal of Native identity. Against such accusations, many Native Christians are not merely defending their support for the Israeli state; they are also actively redefining the terms of the debate over what constitutes Native authenticity, who has the right to speak on behalf of Native people, and how to define and defend indigenous interests. To that end, they are simultaneously asserting their credentials to speak as Indians on behalf of Native interests, even while calling into question the legitimacy of their critics to do the same.

I first noticed this development in conversation with a Crow tribal legislator about his support for the “Jesus Is Lord” and “pro-Israel” resolutions. When I asked him to discuss opposition he has faced from the tribe over these bills, he pointed to a handful of online attacks posted by Crow tribal members who, he noted, “live miles and miles away from Crow Reservation but they’re Crow—maybe just a portion Crow.” He went on to say: “And I didn’t understand that, you know? We live right in the heart of everything and I’m almost full-blood Crow—and yet there’s some out there that might not even be one-quarter Crow and yet they wanted to say something bad against that. So it’s kinda funny how that worked out that way.”[22] His message was clear: The loudest critics of this legislation do not speak as real Indians. Rather, the full-blooded (or nearly so) Crow tribal members who are living on the reservation and who were voted into elected office by the people of the reservation are the true carriers of that distinction. And, according to the voting records, the majority of those voices proclaim “Jesus as Lord” and support the State of Israel. Even while sparring with critics across a variety of online forums, Native supporters of Israel consistently question the indigenous authenticity of pro-Palestinian Native voices.[23]

Therefore, as baffled and furious opponents persist in regarding these Native-Israeli alliances as blatantly antithetical to indigenous interests, a sell-out to the conquerors, and a betrayal of oppressed people everywhere, participants on the inside are experiencing a radically different reality. Through the forging of alliances with Jehovah’s Chosen People, these spiritual warriors are advancing the Reign of God on earth, ushering in the King of Kings, inviting spiritual and economic blessings on their chronically impoverished people, and reclaiming enemy territory they lost to colonial oppression while living under the spell of pagan darkness.

So, the wave of Native Christians across the country who are blowing shofar horns, performing Davidic dance rhythms, signing declarations in support of Israel, and booking pilgrimages to a Zion all too eager to welcome them home will likely continue to swell as this remarkable confluence of spiritual streams convinces many that they are engaged in a victory celebration for the resurrection of the once-mighty First Nations, freshly blessed for daring—in the face of critics, boycotts, and even the devil—to befriend Israel, the friend of God.

***

[1]Menasseh ben Israel, The Hope of Israel, ed. Henry Méchoulan and Gérard Nahon, Littman Library of Jewish Civilization (Oxford, U.K., and New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 101–102. Originally published 1650; E.T., Moses Wall, 1652.

[2]Sherman Alexie, “The Game Between the Jews and the Indians is Tied Going Into the Bottom of the Ninth Inning,” in Sherman Alexie, First Indian on the Moon (Brooklyn, NY: Hanging Loose Press, 1993), p. 80.

[3]In a remarkable compilation and exegesis of biblical texts titled The Book of Prophecies (1501/02) prepared for the King and Queen of Spain, Christopher Columbus claimed that he had discovered remnants of the Lost Tribes of Israel among the Caribbean Islands, inhabitants who would now—by God’s grace and his own ingenuity—have the gospel preached to them. He declared this would precipitate a mass conversion of New World Jews to reinforce the Christian army that would retake Jerusalem for the Catholic Crown, rebuild the temple, and usher in “the end of the world,” an event Columbus predicted to be a mere 150 years away. In 1650, roughly one year before the date identified by Columbus as the culmination of history, Dutch-Jewish philosopher Menasseh ben Israel penned his own arguments asserting “that the first inhabitants of America were the Ten Tribes of the Israelites.” And, like Columbus, Menasseh ben Israel wed the Indians’ Jewish origins to the consummation of history, at which time these children of the Lost Tribes “shall return to their Land” of Israel and “be governed by one Prince, who is Messiah the Son of David.” À la Columbus, he added: “no doubt that time is near.” See Delno C. West and August Kling, tr., The Libro de las profecías of Christopher Columbus: An en face edition (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1991), pp. 105–111; and Menasseh Ben Israel, The Hope of Israel, pp. 101–102.

[4]The appeal not to cross the picket line was made by J. Kehaulani Kauanui, a Native Hawaiian scholar and activist, as quoted in Ali Abunimah, “Acclaimed feminist author, musician Joy Harjo lands in Tel Aviv to find boycott calls from Native American peers,” The Electronic Intifada, December 7, 2012; available at http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/acclaimed-feminist-author-musician-joy-harjo -lands-tel-aviv-find-boycott-calls.

[5]Writing from Tel Aviv, in a lengthy posting on her blog, Harjo responded to the pressure from colleagues to boycott the event by defending her decision to perform, even while acknowledging the right of her critics to disagree: “I admire and respect the scholars and artists who have backed the boycott. I stand with their principles, but they will not see it that way.” She concluded: “I will perform at the university as I promised, to an audience that will include Palestinian students. The students have written in support of me being here” (Joy Harjo, Joy Harjo’s Poetic Adventures in the Last World Blog [December 10, 2012]; available at http://joyharjo.blogspot.com/search?q=tel+aviv).

[6]Despite the resolution’s claim that Israel voted in support of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in September, 2007, Israel was actually among thirty-four U.N. member-nations that were absent for the vote.

[7]Joint Action Resolution 07-07, “Resolution to Urge Support of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,” July 18, 2007. Approval of JAR 07-07 preceded, by almost two months, the United Nations General Assembly vote on the Declaration, with the authors of the resolution urging the U.S. “to fully support the adoption of the Declaration.” However, the U.S. joined with Canada, New Zealand, and Australia as the only four U.N. member nations to oppose the Declaration. In December, 2010, President Barack Obama, who was adopted by the Black Eagle family of the Crow Tribe in 2008, announced that the U.S. was giving its belated endorsement to the Declaration, the last of the original opposing nations to reverse course.

[8]The official tally was: 13 Yes, 0 No, 0 Abstentions; five senators were absent for the vote.

[9]LR 13-02, “A Resolution of the Crow Tribal Legislature to Honor God for his Great Blessings upon the Crow Tribe and to Proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord of the Crow Indian Reservation,” March 6, 2013; sponsored by Senator Conrad J. Stewart, Black Lodge District, Crow Reservation, Montana.

[10]The official tally was: 14 Yes, 0 No, 1 Abstention; three senators were absent for the vote.

[11]For a detailed study of Crow Pentecostalism, see Mark Clatterbuck, “Healing Hills and Sacred Songs: Crow Pentecostalism, Anti-Traditionalism, and Native Religious Identity,” Spiritus 12 (Fall, 2012): 248–277; available at.http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/spiritus/v012/12.2.clatterbuck.pdf.

[12]Available at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Re-Elect-CJ-Stewart-Black-Lodge-District-Repre sentative/273528969328494?sk=info.

[13]Conrad J. Stewart, “Jesus Christ Is Lord on the Crow Reservation!!!” (Crow Tribal Press Release, March 7, 2013).

[14]Conrad J. Stewart, interview with author, June 17, 2013 (Crow Legislative Branch Office, Crow Agency, MT).

[15]Robert Allen Warrior, “Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians: Deliverance, Conquest, and Liberation Theology Today,” in James Treat, ed. Native and Christian: Indigenous Voices on Religious Identity in the United States and Canada (New York and London: Routledge, 1996), p. 95; originally published in Christianity and Crisis 49 (September 11, 1989): 262.

[16]Robert Warrior and others, letter to the Honorable Ben Shelly, April 3, 2013; made available to the author by Robert Warrior.

[17]Gale Courey Toensing, “Indigenous Scholars Oppose Navajo President ‘Becoming Partners’ with Israel,” Indian Country Today Media Network (April 6, 2013); available at http://indiancountrytodaymed ianetwork.com/2013/04/06/indigenous-scholars-oppose-navajo-president-becoming-partners-israel-1486 45.

[18]Excerpted from the abstract of Kauanui’s paper “Redwashing: Israeli Claims to Indigeneity and the Political Role of Native Americans,” prepared for presentation as part of a special panel dedicated to exploring the concept of “redwashing” at a conference hosted by the Center for American Studies and Research at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, in January, 2014.

[19]The full statement is available on the NAISA website: http://www.naisa.org/declaration-of-support-for-the-boycott-of-israeli-academic-institutions.html?highlight=YToyOntpOjA7czo2OiJpc3JhZ WwiO2k6MTtzOjc6ImJve WNvdHQiO30%3D.

[20]C. Peter Wagner is a founding voice in this movement, to which he has assigned the name “New Apostolic Reformation.” The titles of published works by him and a network of self-described prophets and apostles associated with this movement—religious leaders whose influence, as detailed above, have made significant inroads among Native Christians—illustrate the movement’s underlying narrative of spiritual conquest. See, e.g., three by C. Peter Wagner: Prayer Shield: How to Intercede for Pastors, Christian Leaders, and Others on the Spiritual Frontlines (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1992), Warfare Prayer (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1997), and Territorial Spirits: Practical Strategies for How to Crush the Enemy through Spiritual Warfare (Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image, 2012); two by Chuck Pierce: Worship Warrior: Ascending in Worship, Descending in War (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 2002), and Time to Defeat the Devil: Strategies to Win the Spiritual War (Lake Mary, FL: Charisma House, 2011); Cindy Jacobs, Possessing the Gates of the Enemy: A Training Manual for Militant Intercession, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Chosen Books, 2009); and Jim and Faith Chosa, Thy Kingdom Come Thy Will Be Done: A First Nation Perspective on Strategic Keys for Territorial Deliverance and Transformation—A Resource, Equipping Manual for Repossessing the Earth One Acre at a Time (Yellowtail, MT: Day Chief Ministries, 2004).

[21]Chosa, Thy Kingdom Come, pp. 98 and 137. The conclusion of their Day Chief Ministries Vision statement highlights this hope for a reclamation of the “ancient Indian warrior” waging spiritual battle for the Great Warrior Yeshua: “Think of it! Countless thousands of young Native Americans brought to a newness of Spirit-life, and given the vision of becoming ‘Mighty Warriors’ with the Lord Jesus Christ as their indwelling, Great Warrior Chief and partnering together with all ethnic peoples of the world to advance the Kingdom of God.” See the full “Outline of Vision and Mission” statement of Day Chief Ministries at http://www.daychief.org/vision.htm.

[22]Anonymous, interview with author, June, 2013 (Crow Agency, MT).

[23]E.g., see Jay Corwin (Tlingit, Alaska), “Native American academics do not endorse the boycott of Israeli academics,” The Times of Israel (December 25, 2013); available at http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/ native-american-academics-do-not-endorse-the-boycott-of-israeli-academics/; and Ryan Bellerose (Métis, Alberta), “Don’t Mix Indigenous Fight with Palestinian Rights,” Indian Country Today Media Network (January 11, 2014); available at http://indiancountrytodaymedia network.com/2014/01/11/dont-mix-indigenous-fight-palestinian-rights. For a robust rebuttal to Bellerose, see Robert Warrior, “Palestine Without Smears: Why Israel and Natives Aren’t Natural Allies,” Indian Country Today Media Network (January 29, 2014); available at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/01/29/palestine-without-smears-why-israel-and-natives-arent-natural-allies.

***

Grant support for this research came from the Louisville (KY) Institute and Montclair (NJ) State University. My thanks go to Tim McCleary (Little Big Horn College, Crow Agency, MT) and Michael Kogan (Montclair State University) for offering helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this essay, and to Suzannah Leydenfrost and Kathryn Goldner for their excellent work as research assistants for this project.

***

Mark Clatterbuck has been an Assistant Professor of Religion at Montclair (NJ) State University since 2010, and will lecture at Lancaster (PA) Theological Seminary during the summer of 2015. His previous teaching positions have been at Lancaster (PA) Country Day School (including directing the Hague International Model U.N. program), 2008–10; York College of Pennsylvania, 2007–08; Moravian Academy, Bethlehem, PA (where he was also the interreligious chaplain), 2003–06; The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, 2000–03; Trinity Academy, Wichita, KS, 1998–2000; and Stone Child Tribal College, Rocky Boy’s Reservation, Chippewa/Cree, MT, 1997. He co-directed and coordinated the program for a Native American Youth Camp in Montana, during the summers of 1992–98. He holds a B.A. from Messiah College, Grantham, PA; an M.A. from Wheaton (IL) Graduate School; and a Ph.D. in religion and culture (2008) from The Catholic University of America. An Oblate of the Order of St. Benedict since 1995, his specialty is Native American Christianity. He has published Demons, Saints, and Patriots: Catholic Visions of Native America (1902–1962) (Marquette, 2009), and his peer-reviewed articles have appeared in Spiritus, U.S. Catholic Historian, Horizons, Missiology, and Latin American Indian Literatures Journal. He has presented at several national and regional academic conferences of the American Academy of Religion and the American Anthropological Association, as well as at numerous other academic and ecclesiastical gatherings in Montana, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. He has received several research grants, especially for his work with the Crow tribe.

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By Ann Neumann

The list of countries where aid in dying is legal expanded to include Canada on February 6 when the nation’s Supreme Court voted unanimously to strike down a more than twenty-year-old ban against aid in dying. Various media outlets have called the decision “groundbreaking” and “landmark” because it redefines the guarantee to the “security of the person” inscribed in Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The decision requires that legislators set in place regulations for use of aid in dying in the next twelve months. Eighty-four percent of Canadians support the right to aid in dying for terminally ill patients.

According to The Court, the prior ban “deprives some individuals of life, as it has the effect of forcing some individuals to take their own lives prematurely, for fear that they would be incapable of doing so when they reached the point where suffering was intolerable.” The justices cited statements from terminal patients who had considered suicide using a gun or other violent methods.

“What I fear is a death that negates, as opposed to concludes, my life. I do not want to die slowly, piece by piece. I do not want to waste away unconscious in a hospital bed. I do not want to die wracked with pain,” wrote one of two original plaintiffs, Gloria Taylor, who suffered from the degenerative disease ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease) and died before the court’s decision was announced.

As Jonathan Kay wrote at The Daily Beast, “The Court wrote that Taylor was left with the cruel choice “between killing herself while she was still physically capable of doing so, or giving up the ability to exercise any control over the manner and timing of her death.”

Taylor was a vocal and colorful person who captured Canada’s attention during her last years. She was a former trailer park manager who had raised two sons and was being cared for by her granddaughter, Gabby. Taylor was diagnosed with ALS in 2009. Immediately she began to plan how to end her life before losing what she considered an acceptable quality of living. She joined the B.C Civil Liberties Association’s case for aid in dying two years later. The court ruled in their favor and while the case was on appeal, Taylor was given an exemption to use aid in dying should she decide to. Although many opponents of aid in dying have pointed to palliative care (pain management) as a viable solution for terminal patients, Taylor never agreed.

“Palliative care to me is just doping me out of my mind. I don’t know what’s going on. You call that care? If you cared about me, put me out of my misery,” Taylor told Canadian journalist, Linden MacIntyre, in a documentary about her fight to end her life in 2012.

Taylor’s only knowledge of ALS before her own diagnosis was from a prior case to legalize aid in dying in Canada. Sue Rodriguez sought the right to aid in dying before the Canadian Supreme Court in 1993. The court found, in a 5-4 decision, that aid in dying was a criminal offense, and banned the act. The next year Rodriguez ended her life with the help of an anonymous doctor. Taylor never made use of her exemption. She died of an infection caused by a perforated colon.

Gloria Taylor

The movement to legalize aid in dying in Canada has looked a lot like the movement in the US over the past 25 years, with activists challenged by a similar set of opponents, predominantly religious groups (including the Catholic Church).

Archbishop Paul-André Durocher of Gatineau, Quebec, president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, noted after the Canadian ruling that “Catholics are called by their faith to assist all those in need, particularly the poor, the suffering and the dying. Helping someone commit suicide, however, is neither an act of justice or mercy, nor is it part of palliative care. The decision of the Supreme Court of Canada today does not change Catholic teaching.”

According to Catholic News Service, the Assembly of Quebec Bishops “reiterated its stance that ‘euthanasia, even legalized, goes against the dignity of life and people.’” Catholic leaders have focused on two ways to challenge the decision: increasing access to palliative care and encouraging doctors to “invoke their right to conscientious objection.”

“Today’s decision by the Canadian Supreme Court does not change anything to this conviction and encourages us to double our efforts to promote palliative care and to insist that it may become available for everyone, in every region. Our society will now have to answer the challenge of respect and liberty of conscience,” their statement read. (A list of media criticizing the decision can be found on the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops’ website).

US states have experienced a flurry of action since the highly publicized death of Brittany Maynard—a 29 year-old woman who had a brain tumor and moved to Oregon where aid in dying is legal—last fall. According to Compassion & Choices, the nation’s largest aid in dying advocacy group, legalization is actively being pushed in 25 states. On February 4 the Disability Rights Legal Center, doctors and several terminal patients brought a case against New York State to “clarify the ability of mentally competent, terminally ill New York patients to obtain aid in dying from their physician if they find their dying process unbearable.” Kathryn Tucker is the DRLC’s Executive Director; before taking this position she was legal counsel for Compassion & Choices. A similar lawsuit was brought against the state of California on February 11.

The disability rights movement in both Canada and the US has largely been split by the issue, with some groups aligning with religious organizations and others pursuing aid in dying as an autonomous right.

Canadian MP Steven Fletcher, who was paralyzed from the neck down in 1996 when his car hit a moose, introduced a bill to legalize aid in dying in spring last year. At the time, when reporters pointed out to him that various disability rights groups felt that aid in dying legislation would jeopardize their lives, he stated, “The disabled community is not monolithic in its thinking. The standards are very high. They will argue about the slippery slope. I don’t buy into that.”

Naysayers, like the typically hyperbolic Wesley J. Smith, have been wringing their hands with dire warnings about what the Canadian ruling means for the US. Euthanasia, he writes at The Weekly Standard, has now “invaded North American shores,” as if court rulings are battles in a geographic war. But hyperbole (and scare tactics) aside, the ruling means little for US law, which has preferred to allow such decisions to be made at the state level. Sure, Canada’s practices will be seen as a broadening acceptance of aid in dying, but the US public already predominantly approves of it. A 2014 poll shows that 69% think aid in dying should be legal. As the US population ages and greater attention is shined on end of life issues, elders and their caretakers will be waiting for the courts to catch up.

Meanwhile, Canadian legislators will spend the next months refining and regulating the new law. Thanks to Gloria Taylor. According to Canada’s CBC News, Taylor was cremated in her blue Tinkerbell pajamas. Her granddaughter was asked to spread her ashes at a location of her choosing.

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“The Patient Body” is a monthly column about the intersection of religion and medicine. Prior columns can be read here:

End-of-Life Books, 2014

The Great Organ Shortage

Tending to One Another

Moral Highs and Lows

Old Philosophical Certainties

On Suicide

Reading HuffPo’s “Hospice, Inc.”

The End of Eating

Wakeful Unawareness

Faith, a Chronic Condition

A Special Sustaining Power

Your Ethical and Religious Directives

Hospitals and the Pretense of Charity

A Closely Held Business

What’s a Kidney Worth

An Irresistible Force

***

Ann Neumann is a contributing editor at The Revealer and Guernica magazine and a visiting scholar at The Center for Religion and Media, NYU. Neumann‘s book, The Good Death, will be published by Beacon Press in January 2016.

The post O Canada! appeared first on The Revealer.

This is the second in a series of articles that Laura McTighe will be writing for The Revealer over the next year about issues at the intersection of race and religion. She will be writing about incarceration, activism and organizing, reproductive justice, and more, with an eye to questions of history, violence, and justice.

“It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones – and South Africa treated its imprisoned African citizens like animals.” -Nelson Mandela (Photo by Laura McTighe)

“That’s because you live in the United States of Amnesia!” my friend chided as we descended into the bowels of Johannesburg’s notorious Number Four prison. “Indeed,” I laughed in agreement. Back home, I was far more accustomed to the “it wasn’t that bad” approach to our nation’s past, as if whitewashing our collective histories of violence would make them go away. For more than a century, the “Moonlight and Magnolias” myth of life in the antebellum South has dominated our national consciousness. Only one plantation in the United States – Louisiana’s Whitney Plantation – tells the story of slavery from the perspective of the enslaved, and it only just opened on December 8, 2014 after a long, embittered struggle led by local Black residents. Entering Number Four, I was unable to contain my shock at how meticulously the curators of this prison-turned-museum had documented the perversions of apartheid justice perpetrated within the carceral complex.

Number Four is a relic of apartheid governance: even in their confinement, people classified as native, coloured and Asian had to be kept separate from whites. In its heyday, Number Four held some of the most notable leaders of the liberation struggle. But the vast majority of those confined were the hordes of Black people arrested every day under the Pass Laws that controlled their movement in and out of the townships to which they had been forcibly relocated. Today, the hallowed walls and recesses of Number Four are filled with the oral and written testimonies of former political prisoners, creating a painful, if imperfect, archive of life inside.

Ekhulukhuthu (the deep hole) isolation cells extended along the furthest-most wall of Number Four. Each concrete box is fixed in time, stripped of bedding with only a small beam of natural light filtering through the peep hole guards used to spy on those confined. Now, only one cell door remains bolted shut. When I turned to my friend for explanation, his finger was already outstretched: “That cell is haunted.” I nodded slowly, as my gaze refocused on the closed isolation cell door: “I think this whole place is haunted.”

Photo by Laura McTighe

* * *

What do we do with our collective histories of violence?

It is a question that the entire complex now known as Constitution Hill is actively engaged in making sense of. Not only has Number Four been meticulously preserved and filled with testimonies of the abuses perpetrated therein; the trio of prisons it is a part of (the whites-only Old Fort, the non-white Number Four and the panoptic Women’s Gaol) serve as a sort of courtyard for the new South African Constitutional Court. The relationship between the past and the present here, however, is not merely one of proximity. The walls of the Constitutional Court are constructed entirely out of bricks from the demolished awaiting-trial cells that used to stand on the site.

Photo by Laura McTighe

There are many questions we could ask about why the designers of the Constitutional Court chose to “upcycle” the materials that enclosed thousands of South Africans arrested for no more than what we in the United States would call “walking while Black.” It seems more important, now, though, to reflect on the effects of that choice.

In religious studies we think a lot about the creation and protection of boundaries. How is the sacred delineated from the profane? How are they kept apart? What would happen if they were to mix? A tremendous amount of everyday ritual activity is dedicated to preserving boundaries, to ensuring that matter never falls out of place. As such, these boundaries not only teach us about what matters to communities; they also help us to understand what they are afraid of.

Back in the United States of Amnesia, we work hard to hermetically seal our histories of violence, thereby creating an impenetrable boundary between the past and the present. Constitution Hill’s flagrant disregard for this boundary was striking, if a bit disquieting. Bringing the bricks that had once muffled the cries of the detained into the new nation’s court was a powerful act. The space groaned.

And it also rejoiced. Outside the court, two awaiting-trial cells had been left standing. Their painted interior walls lay exposed. Large speakers adorned their unseemly facades, humming the melodies of struggle songs. It was as if the voices of those awaiting trial had demolished the cells themselves – brick by brick, wall by wall.

Photo by Laura McTighe

* * *

Inside Number Four, the groans that filled the Constitutional Court became recognizable as the voices of Molefe Makiti, political prisoner, 1963; Molefe Pheto, political prisoner 1975; Alex La Guma, political prisoner, 1956; Indres Naidoo, political prisoner, 1963; Henry Nxumalo, pass offender, 1954; Samuel Nthute, political prisoner, 1963; Prema Naidoo, political prisoner, 1982; and Godfrey Moloi, prisoner, 1956. Their oral histories recorded the horrors of life inside Number Four, starting with the meal area.

Apartheid law regulated prison meal rations by race, with gram per day allowances for rice, meat, fish, beans, vegetables, fat, sugar and salt. In practice, meals generally consisted of rotten boiled fish, which was served on trays as dirty as the pads and blankets that passed for prison bedding. The perimeter of the meal area was lined with stretches of “toilets” where guards would taunt political prisoners as they feebly tried to aim at holes in the ground and defecate the slime that passed for food.

The most ceremonious debasement came when the incarcerated returned from court appearances: the guards forced them to strip naked and undergo the infamous tauza “dance” in the prison courtyard as part of a rectal cavity search.

The perimeter of the courtyard was lined with group cells, each holding a different trace of the everyday violence of apartheid justice: soiled bedding, torture devices, broken games…

When I walked into the final group cell, I jumped back in shock at the sight of a perfectly positioned tank, constructed entirely out of prison-issued blankets. It was a piece of visionary fiction, to use Octavia’s Brood’s phrase: what was imagined had been brought to life. Those held captive at Number Four dared to envision a world that did not exist. They took on the might of the apartheid state armed only with woolen cloth and twine. And they won.

What do we do with our collective histories of violence?

Constitution Hill forces us to reckon with the fact that our histories of violence are not really past. Put differently, the point is not whether we are haunted (as if not being haunted is some sort of proof that we have officially overcome); the point is whether we are willing to be haunted.

Photo by Laura McTighe

* * *

In 1940, shortly after his release from a French prison camp, Walter Benjamin famously penned, “The only writer of history with the gift of setting alight the sparks of hope in the past, is the one who is convinced of this: that not even the dead will be safe from the enemy, if he is victorious. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious.” In late November of 2014, Rinaldo Walcott breathed new life into this imperative, asking about the physical, emotional and spiritual labor of defending the dead, of convincing the world that #BlackLivesMatter.

Constitution Hill inflects this sense of obligation somewhat differently: How do we live with the dead?

Being haunted might sound creepy, even scary. What ghosts might we encounter if we open ourselves to their presence? But perhaps in our haunting – in our willingness to be haunted – we might begin to understand why our collective histories of violence have such power to press upon our presents. And in so doing we might also begin to imagine new ways of moving forward… As Saidiya Hartman reminds us in her memoir of a journey along the Atlantic slave route, Lose Your Mother: “If the ghost of slavery still haunts our present, it is because we are still looking for an exit from the prison.

La Luta Continua (The Struggle Continues). (Photo by Laura McTighe)

 ***

All photographs by Laura McTighe.

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Laura McTighe is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Religion at Columbia University. Through her dissertation project, “Born In Flames,” she is working with leading Black feminist organizations in Louisiana to explore how reckoning with the richness of southern Black women’s intellectual and organizing traditions will help us to understand (and do) American religious history differently. Laura comes to her doctoral studies through more than seventeen years of direct work to challenge the punitive climate of criminalization in the United States and support communities’ everyday practices of transformation. Currently, she serves on the boards of Women With A Vision, Inc. in New Orleans, Men & Women In Prison Ministries in Chicago and Reconstruction Inc. in Philadelphia. Laura’s writings have been published in Beyond Walls and Cages: Bridging Immigrant Justice and Anti-Prison Organizing in the United States (2012), the International Journal for Law and Psychiatry (2011), Islam and AIDS: Between Scorn, Pity and Justice (2009), and a variety of community publications.

The post Haunted Passages: On Carrying the Past and Envisioning Justice appeared first on The Revealer.

Cover image for “Oh God Oh God Oh God: Essays on Sex and Religion: A Killing the Buddha E-Book”

Brook Wilensky-Lanford and Gordon Haber co-edited a fantastic collection of stories about religion and sex called Oh God Oh God Oh God: Essays on Sex and Religion available now an e-book from Killing the Buddha.

Religion and sex, sex and religion — what happens when you put them together? In this case, you get 19 engaging essays on topics like:
• Sex ed in Catholic school!
• Soft-core Buddhism!
• Taoist foreplay!
• The neurotic erotics of Evangelicals!
• Shiksappeal!
• Scoping in church!
• And more!

Simran Jeet Singh offers a view of “The Future of the Sikh Tradition” in the Huffington Post.

Like every religious community, Sikhs have their fair share of challenges. Yet the future of the tradition appears bright. Sikhs continue to establish an equal footing in the global landscape, and the community remains devoted to fighting for equal rights and opportunities on behalf of all people. The future of Sikhism also seems bright because of the vast contributions it has to offer the world.

Peter Manseau has an excellent new book out, One Nation Under Gods. You can get a sense of the important work he does there in his recent New York Times op-ed on “The Muslims of Early America.” You can read an excerpt from his book, in Religion Dispatches, “A Church With a Hole in Its Heart.”

No matter how anxious people may be about Islam, the notion of a Muslim invasion of this majority Christian country has no basis in fact. Moreover, there is an inconvenient footnote to the assertion that Islam is anti-American: Muslims arrived here before the founding of the United States — not just a few, but thousands.

Colin Dickey asks “how do we live with our dead” in “Necropolis” for  Lapham’s Quarterly.

This attitude toward death changed sharply with the introduction of Christianity, which had far-reaching consequences for the topography of the city. Most cultures have venerated their dead heroes, but what made Christianity different was its veneration not just of saints but of their physical bodies. Romans found this aspect of Christianity particularly repugnant and complained of how Christians “collected the bones and skulls of criminals…made them out to be gods, and thought that they became better by defiling themselves at their graves.” 

And Mary Valle brings us “Vatican’s Conference on Women: Torso Tales.”

The Vatican’s  conference on women has yielded an embarrassment of embarrassments. Winning the Worst-Of Award, trouncing strong contenders such as the bizarre blond-lady video, the “burqa made of flesh,” the “statistics” which prove women don’t want ordination and the #lifeofwomen tag, is this image of a Man Ray sculpture, found on the Outline page for the Women’s Cultures Plenary Assembly.

ISLAM

Islam in France

“Do Muslims Belong in the West?“ Hasan Azad interviews one of our very favorite religion scholars, Talal Asad for Jadaliyya.

I do not think there is such a thing as a “clash of civilizations.” When I said that Muslims as Muslims cannot be represented in the West, I was being ironic, and also referring to the fact that ninety percent of the time when people talk about “the problem of Muslims” in the West, it is to complain about the fact that Muslims have not “integrated.” There is very little serious discussion about what it means to be “European,” what it means to be French, or British, or whatever, and what exactly “secularism” in Europe means for religion in general and Islam in particular. The problem is always seen as, either: We must try harder to integrate them, or: It is their fault they do not integrate, and it is because they are attached to an illiberal religion, and so to values that conflict profoundly with our secular, egalitarian society.

In “Values and Violence: Thoughts on Charlie Hebdo” the editors of the The Immanent Frame have convened an auspicious round-table of religious studies thinkers on the subject of religion, violence, and freedom.

The violence, and responses to it, have raised a slew of questions. Is it helpful, or even accurate, to characterize these killings as religiously motivated? How have the attack and responses to it helped to construct or entrench the identities said to be in conflict? Should the events be understood in the context of France’s history of satire or its history of colonialism? Can the two be separated in this case? What is the significance of the willingness of many not only to affirm free expression, but also to identify themselves with the magazine? Are there limits to the freedom of expression?

Mark Lilla, grapples further in “France on Fire” for the New York Review of Books.

On the questions of toleration and laicity, however, France is anything but united. For the past quarter-century a political and intellectual culture war over the place of Islam in French society has been bubbling along, and every few years some event—a student wears a burka to school, riots erupt in a poor neighborhood, a mosque is attacked, the National Front wins a local election—renews hostilities. Now, though, nearly one thousand French citizens are believed to have traveled to Syria to join other Islamist militants there, and heavily armed jihadists pledging allegiance to ISIS and al-Qaeda in Yemen have massacred seventeen people in Paris. Given the enormity of the crimes, it is hard to escape the feeling that a major battle is beginning and that it will overshadow economic and other issues here for months and years to come. And the battleground, as is typical in France, will be the schools.

And The Paris Review has an excellent interview of Michel Houellebecq by Sylvain Bourmeau, “Scare Tactics: Michel Houellebecq Defends His Controversial New Book.”

Q: That hypothesis is central to the book, but we know that it has been discredited for many years by numerous researchers, who have shown that we are actually witnessing a progressive secularization of Islam, and that violence and radicalism should be understood as the death throes of Islamism. That is the argument made by Olivier Roy, and many other people who have worked on this question for more than twenty years.

A: This is not what I have observed, although in North and South America, Islam has benefited less than the evangelicals. This is not a French phenomenon, it’s almost global. I don’t know about Asia, but the case of Africa is interesting because there you have the two great religious powers on the rise—evangelical Christianity and Islam. I remain in many ways a Comtean, and I don’t believe that a society can survive without religion.

James Estrin‘s story for The New York Times, “French Muslims, Never Fully at Home” gives us a look at the work of photographer Bharat Choudhary, whose work documents the lives of Muslims around the world, this time, in Marseille.

“In this moment of mourning and outpouring of emotions an important narrative is being sidelined; the narrative that reveals the innumerable challenges that the Muslim community itself faces in its attempts to settle, integrate and progress in the French society,” said Mr. Choudhary, who is Hindu. “I believe without knowing who the French Muslim community is and what are the issues that they face every day, the whole discussion or debate about rights and wrongs is incomplete.”

Paul Harvey questions Karen Armstrong‘s ability to deconstruct the concept of “religion” while also defending it in “Is Religion to Blame for Violence?” in Religion Dispatches. 

Sympathetic though I am to Armstrong’s project, and admiring though I am of the tremendous erudition on display in her survey of five thousand or more years of human history, there is a flaw in the argument that makes the book less than fully satisfying (even if I would consider assigning it for a “World History” survey course in college). On the one hand, as she rightly points out in the introduction, “religion” as we understand it usually comes loaded with a heavily Protestant connotation of assent to a particular set of beliefs which are held internally. But that is a form of “religion” uncommon in human history. And anyway, there is no such thing as “religion” per se, but only the varied, humanly constructed, and historically context-specific forms that come under that name.

Lastly, over at The Washington Post, Ishaan Tharoor lets us know about this new French political artifact: “Chart: Are you a Jihadist? The French government made this checklist.”

Islam in the United States

Dan Falcone interviews Richard Falk in Guernica, “Murder in North Carolina.”

I think there is every reason to believe that the identity of the perpetrator influences the media response and approach taken by the public. If the actors are Muslim, whether linked or not to a political network, there is an aura of suspicion surrounding the crimes committed. In contrast, if the perpetrator is white, and Christian, he will be considered a lone actor suffering a severe mental disorder even if he is shown to have links to wider extremist communities as was the case with Timothy McVeigh and Anders Breivik who engaged in terrorist acts in Oklahoma City (1995) and Norway (2011).

 German Lopez reports in Vox that “Chapel Hill shooting forces uncomfortable conversations among Reddit atheists.”

Yet there’s a very real tension between the community’s typical discussions, which often imply or state outright that Islam itself is to blame for the acts of individual Muslim extremists, and its discussion today articulating (correctly) that, even if the Chapel Hill shooter was motivated by an extreme hatred of religion, that does not mean all atheists are culpable.

We get a more uplifting story from Brie Leskota at Religion Dispatches who shares the news that “Muslim Women Create a Mosque of Their Own in Los Angeles.”

It was the policing of women’s bodies and limiting of their spaces within mosques that gave Maznavi the final push to transform what she called “her life-long desire to build a mosque” into a specialized religious congregation that made women feel comfortable. After a positive, welcoming experience growing up in the Garden Grove mosque in California, her childhood mosque was renovated and the women’s prayer space was moved upstairs. Maznavi was told not to pray downstairs.

Alas, there’s still Texas. “Rep to Staff: Ask Muslim Visitors to Pledge Allegiance” report Reeve Hamilton and Alexa Ura.

I did leave an Israeli flag on the reception desk in my office with instructions to staff to ask representatives from the Muslim community to renounce Islamic terrorist groups and publicly announce allegiance to America and our laws,” she posted on Facebook. “We will see how long they stay in my office.”

ISIS

Graeme Wood‘s “What ISIS Really Wants” in The Atlantic was probably the most talked about article in the religio-media sphere this month.

Muslims can reject the Islamic State; nearly all do. But pretending that it isn’t actually a religious, millenarian group, with theology that must be understood to be combatted, has already led the United States to underestimate it and back foolish schemes to counter it. We’ll need to get acquainted with the Islamic State’s intellectual genealogy if we are to react in a way that will not strengthen it, but instead help it self-immolate in its own excessive zeal.

Wood’s article prompted a lot of discussion, a well-deserved backlash. Here are a few of our favorite rebuttals:

Daniel Haqiqatjou and Dr. Yasir Oadhi ask “What is ‘Islamic’? A Muslim Response to ISIS and The Atlantic” on Muslim Matters.

By characterizing ISIS as Islamic, Wood and Haykel in effect, if not intent, attribute cruel beheadings, wanton massacre, and all other manner of savagery to Islam. In their minds, such an attribution is neither factually incorrect nor particularly damaging to “nearly all” Muslims who reject ISIS. But are Wood and Haykel too naïve to understand that by making such attributions to Islam, they ipso facto implicate and foment suspicion about all those who subscribe to Islam?

Jack Jenkins talks back in “What the Atlantic Gets Dangerously Wrong About ISIS and Islam” in Thing Progress

Wood’s article has encountered staunch criticism and derision from many Muslims and academics who study Islam. After the article was posted online, Islamic studies Facebook pages and listserves were reportedly awash with comments from intellectuals blasting the article as, among other things, “quite shocking.” The core issue, they say, is that Wood appears to have fallen prey to an inaccurate trope all too common in many Western circles: that ISIS is an inevitable product of Islam, mainly because the Qur’an and other Islamic texts contain passages that support its horrific acts.

Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig rightly scolds, “Is ISIS Authentically Islamic? Ask Better Questions” in The New Republic.

Judging by the gurgling over the genuineness of ISIS’ Muslim identity currently issuing from media, you’d think American journalism is replete with scholars of Islam. But the U.S. commentariat is not especially proficient in the study of Islam, and the American public sphere is exactly the wrong place to try to hold a conversation on the authenticity of a group’s religious bona fides.

Beyond the Wood/Atlantic debate, it’s also worth checking out Steve Niva‘s “The ISIS Schock Doctrine” on Immanent Frame. 

…when one considers what ISIS is actually doing in practice—waging a protracted and violent insurgency in various locations and phases that aims to undermine existing authorities and establish zones of control—it becomes clear that the ambitions and behavior of ISIS have less to do with doctrines derived from the Qur’an or the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad than with the strategic doctrines of Mao Zedong, Che Guevara and the tradition of revolutionary insurgent warfare in the twentieth century, dressed up for the information age. While ISIS may have a Salafist orientation, they are also a revolutionary insurgent organization.

As well as, Scott Shane‘s piece in The New York Times, “Faulted for Avoiding ‘Islamic’ Labels to Describe Terrorism, White House cites a Strategic Logic.”

Obama aides say there is a strategic logic to his vocabulary: Labeling noxious beliefs and mass murder as “Islamic” would play right into the hands of terrorists who claim that the United States is at war with Islam itself. The last thing the president should do, they say, is imply that the United States lumps the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims with vicious terrorist groups.

Max Fisher has “9 questions about the ‘Holy War’ that Bill O’Reilly just declared” over at Vox.

9) It sort of sounds like O’Reilly is endorsing ISIS’s narrative

It sure does!

Lastly, horrifying as the ISIS’ killing of a Jordanian fighter pilot no doubt was, Glenn Greenwald reminds us that, “Burning Victims to Death: Still a Common Practice.”

One could plausibly maintain that there is a different moral calculus involved in (a) burning a helpless captive to death as opposed to (b) recklessly or even deliberately burning civilians to death in areas that one is bombing with weapons purposely designed to incinerate human beings, often with the maximum possible pain. That’s the moral principle that makes torture specially heinous: sadistically inflicting pain and suffering on a helpless detainee is a unique form of barbarity.

But there is nonetheless something quite obfuscating about this beloved ritual of denouncing the unique barbarism of ISIS. It is true that ISIS seems to have embraced a goal – a strategy – of being incomparably savage, inhumane and morally repugnant. That the group is indescribably nihilistic and morally grotesque is beyond debate.

THE UNITED STATES

Rollo Romig writes “In Search of the Great American Bible,” about scripture as a literary genre and, specifically, Avi Steinberg‘s new book, The Lost Book of Mormon, in The New Yorker. 

Steinberg nominates the Mormon scripture as a Great American Novel, or, failing that, as a priceless artifact from the Old, Weird America—a uniquely American product, like jazz music and superhero comics, that deserves our attention.

Carrie Johnson reports for NPR that “Supporters Say Imprisoned Nun is Being Held in ‘Unfair’ Conditions.”

Megan Rice celebrated her 85th birthday last week — in a high-rise detention center in Brooklyn. The Catholic nun is serving nearly three years in prison for evading security and painting peace slogans on the walls of a nuclear facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

For more on prison and religion, check out “Throw the Book at Them” by Leon Neyfakh in Slate.

At a moment when criminal justice reform seems to be attracting allies from across the ideological spectrum—the likes of Rand Paul, Grover Norquist, Newt Gingrich, and the Koch brothers have come out in support of measures that would make the American prison system less punitive—Cardinal Dolan’s endorsement of so-called postsecondary correctional education could be the beginning of a shift in how politicians on the right think about the potential for correctional facilities to actually rehabilitate inmates.

Richard Fausset reminds us that “For Alabama Chief Justice, Soldiering in Name of God is Nothing New.”

The pockmarks and scratches are still visible in the rotunda floor of the Alabama Judicial System building — the permanent scars of Chief Justice Roy S. Moore’s last epic battle over God and the proper role of the federal government.

“Among young Christians, moral discomfort with birth control grows” according to Ruth Graham at Al Jazeera America. 

Among conservative Protestants, these are sprouts of doubt around a topic that hasn’t been debated seriously for decades. “Contraception has been an ingrained, unquestioned, binding reality on young evangelicals,” said Andrew Walker, director of policy studies at the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. Growing up in the evangelical community, “there was just the assumption that you get married, you use contraception, no doubt about it.”

Speaking of young Christians, “Hipster churches in Silicon Valley: evanglicalism’s unlikely new home.” Annie Guas of The Guardian writes,

How does one even start a church in the land of $3,000 studio apartments, transient tech workers and rationalist tendencies? The answer lies in a mix of organized efforts by large religious bodies, coupled with messaging that speaks to the tastes, needs and neuroses of ambitious young Bay Area residents.

Roy Scranton‘s “The Trauma Hero: From Wilfred Owen to ‘Redeployment’ and ‘American Sniper‘” in The Los Angeles Review of Books takes a deep and wide-ranging look at how we read and write our wars. In one stand out passage, he analyzes the religious imagery in “American Sniper.”

In this scene, Kyle draws on his years of training and warrior wisdom to make an “impossible” shot, killing the sniper “Mustafa.” As a gibbering horde of Iraqi insurgents descends upon our American heroes, Kyle calls his wife by satellite phone and tells her he’s ready to come home. A dust storm envelops the battle and the Americans fight their way out, barely escaping, in a visually striking chaos that serves as a symbolic baptism: Kyle is sucked into the whirlwind and only barely makes it out, leaving his weapon and his lucky Bible behind him. He has been reborn.

“‘Man can’t change climate,’ only God can, says Senate chair of Environment & Public Works.” Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing invites you to watch the video.

For some very depressing reasons, this video clip from a recent U.S. Senate hearing is going viral. Senator James Inhofe believes the climate may be changing but that it has absolutely nothing to do with human activity like burning fossil fuels, because The Lord.

“Florida police used mugshots of black men for target practice. Clergy responded: #UseMeInstead” reports Elahe Izadih

The idea originated on a closed Facebook group for Lutheran clergy, where pastors were discussing how North Miami Beach’s police department had been caught using mugshots of actual people for target practice. Let’s send in our own photos for target practice, the pastors decided.

The Prayer Breakfast

Ta-Nehisi Coates gets it just right in his piece for The Atlantic, “The Foolish, Historically Illiterate, Incredible Response to Obama’s Prayer Breakfast Speech.”

Now, Christianity did not “cause” slavery, anymore than Christianity “caused” the civil-rights movement. The interest in power is almost always accompanied by the need to sanctify that power. That is what the Muslim terrorists in ISIS are seeking to do today, and that is what Christian enslavers and Christian terrorists did for the lion’s share of American history.

Elizabeth Bruenig smartly adds, “Conservatives Have Stooped to Defending the Horrific Crusades” in The New Republic.

When the Crusades are represented in American culture now, they are a symbol of Christian gusto, whether positive or negative. They resonate with the idea of a robust, aggressive Christianity, a faith with the masculine energy to face Islam head-on. This is why the Crusades occupy a special place in the conservative id, and it is why conservatives appear willing to defend them on general principle, with little regard for historicity. It is also why criticizing the Crusades is presented by some conservatives as an alternative to fighting ISIS, as though if Obama had simply omitted that remark from his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, the Islamic terror group would now be vanquished.

Religion & Vaccines

CATHOLICISM

Eamon Duffy asks, “Who is the Pope?” in The New York Review of Books.

And yet in doctrinal matters Francis is no radical, no reformer. On the central issues often taken as the litmus test of Catholic orthodoxy his views are entirely conventional. He is strongly “pro-life” and an ardent supporter of traditional family values. As archbishop of Buenos Aires he opposed the Argentinian government’s 2010 bill to legalize same-sex marriages, while supporting civil unions for gay couples, a moderate pragmatism that was rejected by the rest of the Argentinian bishops, who favored a more confrontational stance. 

Carol Pogash, writes that, “To Some in California, Founder of Church Missions is Far From Saint,” in the New York Times. 

Prominent Native Americans see Father Serra as far from saintly. Their reaction is as visceral as a dispute over occupied territory in the Middle East. Indian historians and authors blame Father Serra for the suppression of their culture and the premature deaths at the missions of thousands of their ancestors.

Kaya Oakes contemplates “The Pope and Selfishness: Contradictions and Fictions” over at Killing the Buddha. 

It was a record-scratching, “hold up, wait a minute” moment a few days ago when Pope Francis, who had just a couple of weeks back told Catholics that they don’t need to “breed like rabbits,” followed that up by stating that “the choice not to have children is selfish.”

In “Stories of Catholic Marriage and Divorce” Diantha Parker shares the stories of of New York Times readers own relationships.

A synod of Roman Catholic bishops met in Rome this fall to begin a broad discussion of the church’s teachings on the family, including those governing divorce. The New York Times asked readers if, and how, the church’s rules on divorce had affected them. Here is a selection of their stories.

Andrew Sullivan is retiring from blogging.  Eric Bugyis comments on “Sullivan’s Catholicism” in Commonweal.

A commitment to rational debate, a desire to experience the truth revealed in relationship, and a faith in the transformative power of charity extended in hope. These are the things that I see in Sullivan’s “passionate, tortured relationship with the Catholic Church” that resonate with my own as it has unfolded these past few years.

JUDAISM

Batya Ungar-Sargon writes about Orthodox Jewish “Undercover Atheists” for Aeon.

Solomon is one of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of men and women whose encounters with evolution, science, new atheism and biblical criticism have led them to the conclusion that there is no God, and yet whose social, economic and familial connections to the ultra-Orthodox and Hasidic communities prevent them from giving up the rituals of faith.

Michael Kaimner‘s interviews the director of “Félix and Meira,” Maxime Giroux in, “An Outsider Among Montreal’s Hasidim” for The Forward.

At first, in the script, that was a typical movie love scene where they’re probably making love for the first time. We realized it would be more sensual to remove the wig — it would probably be the first time someone had touched her hair. It was a really sensual thing to shoot. We realized it was probably the most interesting scene in film. Something happened with the actors, too. And I know people in the audience like the scene a lot.

Also in The Forward, Paul Berger asks “Is Controversial Circumcision Ritual Dangerous?“

For years, New York City health officials have cited scientific evidence that metzitzah b’peh, in which a mohel uses his mouth to suction blood from the circumcision wound, infects babies with the potentially fatal herpes virus. Now, the ultra-Orthodox community claims to have scientific evidence that mohels are not always the source of infection.

Nathan Shields takes a thoughtful look at “Wagner and the Jews” in Mosaic.

Approached this way, the Wagner question would seem to be one instance, if the most extreme and dramatic instance, of a more fundamental question: the question of the morality of art, and more specifically the morality of music, the most abstract of the arts. Is music pure, inhabiting a realm of transcendent form beyond the corruption of politics? Or does the taint of guilt—the guilt of the everyday world, with its struggles for power, its cruelty and barbarism—fall on music as well?

BUDDHISM

Asako Hanafusa reports that a “Pro-diversity monk in Kyoto offers temple for gays to say ‘I do’” in The Asahi Shimbun.

Wedding ceremonies for gays at Shunkoin are no different from those for heterosexual couples in that the pair exchange cups of sake and wedding rings.

Kawakami tells newly married couples the same message: “Everything in this world is transitory, including a person’s life. In order to achieve a lasting engagement to each other, each side must accept changes in the other as they are.”

Kate Baklitskaya reports in The Siberian Times (Editor’s Note: The Siberian Times wins the prize for my new favorite RSS feed of the year so far) that “Mummified monk is ‘not dead’ and in rare meditative state, says expert.”

A ‘meditating mummy’ found on 27th of January in Mongolia.
Picture: ‘Өглөөний сонин’

INDIA & HINDUISM

Andy Newman tells the story of a how “A Diety Made of Chocolate Spurs a Religious Debate“ in the New York Times.

As religious questions go, it is a relatively small one.

But, inevitably, it must be asked: Is it O.K. to eat a chocolate statuette of your favorite holy figure?

For more on The Chocolate Question, we go back to the inimitable Mary Valle at Killing the Buddha with “Chocolate Deities: Sacrilegious?“

Opinions vary as to whether eating chocolate immortals is proper. I think that having a chocolate self is a rare honor; indeed, having a chocolate self is a long-cherished dream of mine.

“Dark Chocolate Moses” from Bond St. Chocolates

MISCELLANEOUS 

Over at The Immanent Frame Jason Anthony has a thought provoking piece on “Religion: The Game.”

The future of religion is caught up in the future of stories. “Mediatization” is the new academic buzzword, but the idea that the medium very much affects a messiah’s message is an old one. We can watch the Greek gods shift shapes over five centuries as they romp through Homeric epic, the advent of cast-bronze sculpture, the rise of Attic pottery, and the birth of theater. The printing press impacted not only the practice of Christianity, but how its stories were popularly understood.

Bob Marley is one of the most misunderstood voices in this discussion. For many Americans the mention of Marley conjures the image of flashing dreadlocks, ganja smoke, and reggae’s hypnotic beat—all of which are pleasant enough. And yet, the politics of consumer capitalism and muckraking media have tainted the remembrance of a potent religious and social activist (as it has also threatened, albeit to a far lesser degree, the memory of MLK). Black Americans of Caribbean lineage, however, recognize this other Bob Marley who, through the Rastafari faith represented in reggae, led Jamaicans in their long postcolonial struggles—“Emancipate yourself from mental slavery / None but ourselves can free our mind.”

“Scientists pledge to increase interference with the church” reports Dean Burnett in The Guardian.

“I’ve already produced a new version of the Bible that leaves out anything that can’t be 100% confirmed by science. It’s much more streamlined now, which is handy as you can fit it all on a postcard and mail it to people, rather than going door-to-door”.

An Amish romance Fifty Shades spin-off? Yes, please! The Amish Painter – 50 Shades of Amish Love by Rebecca Byler.

Mary has a secret from her family. On top of that she has fallen in Love with an Englisher. When her family discovers her secrets she runs away and by doing so she almost gets herself killed. Will Mary be able to follow all the desires of her heart or will she choose to turn her back to everything she loves just to obey the rules?

MALLORY ORTBERG

Yes, that’s right, Mallory Ortberg gets her own category this month. Her series of “Two Monks” dialogues on The Toast is always an Internet highlight, but the most recent installment reached a whole new level of amazing. “Two Medieveal Monks Invent Dinner Parties.”

MONK #1: should we have a cup of horror do you think
MONK #2: yes definitely

-Kali Handelman, Editor, The Revealer

The post In the News: The Crusades, Anti-Vaxxers, Chocolate Gods, and more! appeared first on The Revealer.

Perhaps the only thing more extraordinary than Muhammad Asad’s life is the fact that he is not better known. After all, how many Jewish converts to Islam who befriended Ibn Saud, helped draft the Pakistani constitution, and became renowned religious scholars do you know?

Born Leopold Weiss to a family of Galician Jews in 1900, Asad converted to Islam in 1926 following years of living in the Middle East as a foreign correspondent for the Frankfurter Zeitung. He went on to become an avid proponent of Islamic modernism, publishing numerous studies and a translation of the Qur’an that stressed the rationalistic foundation of Islam. He traveled across the interwar Middle East before landing in India, where the British detained him as an “enemy alien” during the Second World War, in which he lost his father and sister to the Holocaust. He later served the Pakistani government in official roles within the Department of Islamic Reconstruction and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs before becoming a diplomatic representative to the United Nations in 1952.

This extraordinary—there is no other term for it—biography is intertwined with a formidable intellectual legacy, though the latter has at times been overshadowed by the man himself. Details from his 1954 autobiography, The Road to Mecca—in which Asad describes his embrace of Islam alongside depictions of contemporary political leaders, Bedouin life and espionage missions—have often found their way into popular writing. Yet the text has rarely been the subject of scholarly analysis, nor has there been much engagement with the theoretical substance that Asad brings to the foreground in recounting his transformation.

In this article, I would like to shift the focus slightly away from the man and his adventures and toward the intellectual disquiet that figures so prominently in his conversion narrative. Asad’s decision to embrace Islam has often been spoken of as a rejection of Western materialism in favor of Eastern spirituality, or contextualized within the intellectual malaise and moral uncertainty that followed World War I. I would like to suggest that both readings are partially correct, but nonetheless miss the broader theme in Asad’s work: his sustained critique of liberalism and the secular self on which it relies.

To begin, it is helpful here to broaden the scope of our analysis slightly. Let us consider, for instance, Asad’s depiction of Central Europe following the First World War:

“They had been strange years, those early Twenties in Central Europe. The general atmosphere of social and moral insecurity had given rise to a desperate hopefulness which expressed itself in daring experiments in music, painting and the theatre, as well as in groping, often revolutionary enquiries into the morphology of culture; but hand-in-hand with this forced optimism went a spiritual emptiness, a vague, cynical relativism born out of increasing hopelessness with regard to the future of man.”

He recalls feeling that, despite differences in their political orientation, “the average European” seemed to have lost faith in everything other than material progress, leading to both ethical frustration regarding the instability of moral values and “the submission of all social and economic issues to the rule of ‘expediency’.”

Not that he was unhappy, Asad claims, as he became a fixture in the cafes of Berlin alongside “the most outstanding writers, artists, journalists, actors,  [and] producers of the day.” Still he felt dissatisfied with his lot, and welcomed an invitation from his uncle Dorian to join him in Jerusalem. It was there that he first encountered the Islamic East and felt a strong attraction toward its people, particularly the Arabs. In them, Asad saw a being for whom “the Outer and the Inner, the I and the World, are to him not opposite – and mutually opposed – entities, but only different aspects of an unchanging present.” He would eventually attribute this wholeness to Muslims in general, recognizing in them “that organic coherence of the mind and the senses which we Europeans had lost.”

After four years of traveling throughout the Middle East, Asad began to grasp that the solution for his European malaise might come from the outside. Back in Germany in 1926, with the woman who would become his first wife, Asad recounts his moment of epiphany. In the text’s well-known conversion scene, Leopold Weiss becomes convinced of the veracity of Islam following a Berlin subway ride with an assortment of well-fed and well-dressed passengers. Though seemingly well off, he nevertheless detected “an expression of hidden suffering” among his fellow riders that he linked to their living “without any faith in binding truths, without any goal beyond the desire to raise their own ‘standard of living’, without any hopes other than having more material amenities, more gadgets, and perhaps more power…” Upon returning to his home, he glanced at an open copy of the Qur’an that he had been reading, and his eye fell upon the following passage:

“You are obsessed by greed for more and more

Until you go down to your graves.

Nay, but you will come to know!

Nay, but you will come to know!

Nay, if you but knew it with the knowledge of certainty,

You would indeed see the hell you are in.

In time, indeed, you shall see it with the eye of certainty:

And on that Day you will be asked what you have done with the boon of life.”

It seemed to Asad that these verses offered an answer to the hidden suffering he encountered earlier on the subway, “an answer so decisive that all doubt was suddenly at an end. I knew now, beyond any doubt, that it was a God-inspired book I was holding in my hand.”

One scholar who has written on The Road to Mecca, Martin Kramer, understands this passage and Asad’s subsequent conversion within a broader trend to regard “Islam as a spiritual antidote to Western materialism,” positing that Islam provided those who came of age in the early twentieth century with an alternative to European progress. And while Asad went further in this regard than most, Kramer also locates his conversion along a continuum of “Jewish seekers who felt that their own faith failed to strike a balance in its encounter with capitalism.”

While there is something to be said for pointing to the hollowness of materialism as a factor that drives Asad toward Islam, this interpretation nevertheless seems to miss the larger critical project. It is not merely Asad’s rejection of capitalist greed that leads him to Islam. It is rather a longing for wholeness, a desperate hope to reunite “man’s inner and outer beings,” his spiritual and material selves, to discover “a life in which man could become one with his destiny and so with himself.” In short, his rejection of materialism is part and parcel of his critique of secular citizenship as a model that severs the public from the private, the material from the ethical, and the body from the spirit.

There are many hints of this broader critical project throughout the text, and – given secularism’s own “religious” history – it is perhaps fitting that one of them appears during a conversation with a Jesuit priest. It is on the ship bound for Alexandria that the author encounters Father Felix, “a brilliant, serious and at the same time humorous mind at work.” Soon finding themselves deep in conversation, Father Felix posits that the true meaning of Paradise, “the deepest symbol of longing,” is always a desire “to be free from destiny.” As he continues:

“The people of Paradise had no destiny; they acquired it only after they succumbed to the temptation of the flesh and thus fell into what we call Original Sin: the stumbling of the spirit over the hindering urges of the body, which are indeed only the animal remnants within man’s nature. The essential, the human, the humanly-divine part of man is his soul alone…What the Christian teaching aims at is, therefore, man’s freeing himself from the non-essential, ephemeral, carnal aspects of his life and returning to his spiritual heritage.”

It was at this point when Leopold interjects and argues that he cannot accept this “division between the ‘essential’ and the ‘non-essential’ in the structure of man, and in separating spirit and flesh.” As he continues, he “cannot agree with your denying all righteousness to physical urges, to the flesh, to earthbound destiny.” Rather, he states:

“I dream of a form of life – though I must confess I do not see it clearly as yet – in which the entire man, spirit and flesh, would strive after a deeper and deeper fulfillment of his Self – in which the spirit and the senses would not be enemies to one another, and in which man could achieve unity within himself and with the meaning of his destiny, so that on the summit of his days he could say, ‘I am my destiny.’”

What Islam came to offer Leopold Weiss was precisely this coherence of the self, the opportunity to unite his public actions with his inner ethical strivings. This was, he makes clear, made possible only because Islam offered guidance on mundane issues that resided far outside the boundaries of the modern concept of religion. In fact, Asad finds “Islam did not seem to be so much a religion in the popular sense of the word as, rather, a way of life; not so much a system of theology as a programme of personal and social behavior based on the consciousness of God.” Similarly, Islam gave no meaningful place to concepts like salvation or inherited sin, nor was asceticism “required to open a hidden gate to purity.” Rather, “there was no trace of any dualism in the consideration of man’s nature: body and soul seemed to be taken as one integral whole.”

It is worth noting here that Muhammad Asad actually did come from a tradition that poorly corresponds to the modern definition of “religion,” and wasn’t thought of in such terms until recent centuries. One could engage in a whole series of counterfactuals as to whether Asad could have issued this critique of European secularism had he lived in the Russian shtetl rather than assimilated Vienna. After all, Judaism is also a “religion” of law that rejects both asceticism and the form of mind-body dualism which is so central to Christian thought, and whose reverberations continue to pulse through the political construct of the secular self.

Perhaps exploring this element of Muhammad Asad’s work might also lead us back to a question to which Martin Kramer only begins to answer: Why were so many Jewish “seekers” drawn to Islam, in varying degrees, during the height of European progress and its emancipatory project? Can Asad’s critique of secularism teach us something about the peculiar position of the Jew within the liberal state on one hand, and the types of politics available to “religious minorities” on the other? This question is all the more crucial in light of Aamir Mufti’s insistence that “the crisis of secularism be examined from the point of view, and at the site, of minority existence.” And is there a constructive way to engage the “Jewish Question” alongside that of Asad’s critique of secularism without falling into crude assessments of how Jewish Asad “really” was or why he didn’t talk more about anti-Semitism?

In the end, of course, Asad rejects the Judaism of his parents as being both lifeless and chauvinistic, focused on the chosen-ness of the Jews rather than what God chose them to do. It was rather the Arabs of his day, those tribes who still wandered under the same desert sky that first inspired the monotheistic idea, who were the true heirs to ancient Hebrews. All this while the Zionists “threatened to transfer all the complications and insoluble problems of European life” into the Islamic heartland. In explaining his opposition to the Zionist project, Asad argues that the Jews were not truly returning to a homeland, but rather “making it into a homeland conceived on European patters and with European aims.” It is perhaps in Asad’s rejection of Zionism that we can best approach the complex relationship that bound his Jewish past to his critique of European liberalism. The Jews were not returning as Jews, but as Europeans.

Though he is frequently referred to as  “Europe’s gift to Islam,” a careful reading of The Road to Mecca should push us to reconsider this formulation and the implications it mobilizes in painting Asad as a European reformer of a backward tradition. Even when deployed in the context of more nuanced studies, such as that by Murad Hofmann, this depiction is clearly suggestive of some inadequacy within Islam itself that can be best ameliorated by a “gift” from the enlightened West. And yet, the text seems to suggest quite the opposite: it seems that Europe, in Asad’s final assessment, could use a gift or two of its own.

***

Suzanne Schneider is currently working on a book about religious education and mass politics in Mandate Palestine. Her research concerns the development of religious modernism in both Islamic and Jewish contexts, the “reform” projects forwarded by these movements, and their relationship to the material and epistemic dimensions of European colonialism. Suzanne received her Ph.D. in 2014 from the Department of Middle East, South Asian and African Studies and the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University.

The post Seeking a Whole Life: Muhammad Asad’s Critique of the Secular Self appeared first on The Revealer.

“Every one of us, therefore, even the least of the human race, knows a thousand times more about reality today than the wisest of our forebears. But nothing was given to us freely; we paid the price in full.”

– Stefan Zweig,  1942

My friend called before sunrise. “You gotta do me a favor,” he said.

“Take the spare key I gave you and walk the six blocks to my apartment. Enter by the backyard steps to get to the laundry room. There, on the shelf next to dog food and spare diapers, there’s a metal bowl full of change and cigarette lighters. That’s where I keep my spare key. I need you to bring it to me —I’m in midtown, and illegally parked. If I don’t move the car, they’re going to tow it. Don’t worry about waking anyone.”

“What happened?”

“They picked my pocket. I’ll explain when you get here. Thanks, man.”

Outside, the sky was lightening grey. The snow had turned to freezing rain just after midnight, hiding the steps and streets of Brooklyn beneath inches of white crust.

I did as I was told.

***

“This book is intended for people who have become paralyzed by a fear of sin,” I read.

It was seven a.m., and the worst crowds of the morning commute had not yet arrived. With my friend’s car key bulging in my coat pocket, I sat on the end seat of an empty row of an uptown train, thumbing through a small, green paperback. Helps for the Scrupulous, by Russel M. Abata — c.ss.r, s.t.d. It was a Catholic book, its author a Redemptionist priest.

Certain people “react excessively to all sin, and even to what might look like sin,” he wrote. Such people are called “scrupulous,” Abata explained. “Sin haunts them.”

“They are haunted by past sins. They are haunted with present temptations and decisions. They are haunted about their future and what is to become of them. No amount of reassurance seems capable of setting them at ease.”

I stopped reading, holding my place with a cold thumb. 34th street had arrived outside  the window. Yawning, I watched the growing throngs exchange, and felt my mind lope, unbalanced, into some version of its daytime consciousness.

My eye rested on a girl in a green scarf, fidgeting across the platform. I winced, recalling the life of a tenth-grade cuckold. Beside her, a man in a brown-banded hat held me in a serious gaze — aware, somehow, of my looming deadlines. A sour pile of derelicts boarded the train, cackling about my student loans. I shifted uncomfortably, feeling lousy and found-out.

The doors closed with a chirping “ding.” As we pulled into the unlit tunnel, I returned to the book.

“Somewhere inside of the [scrupulous man] are the screams and warnings of teachers and parents about fire and burning, snakes and rats, thirst and hunger,” Abata continued. For the scrupulous, the fears of childhood had congealed into unending anxiety. Those afflicted constantly check and re-check their actions for spiritual error until, inevitably, it is found. “After a while,” the priest continued, the sufferer of scruples “has accused himself of so many serious sins that he has backed himself into a corner. He can hardly make a move until he has been assured many times over that it is alright.” This constant need for validation makes the scrupulous person into a difficulty for their friends, a trial for their family and terror for their confessors.

Helps offers no cure. “It is hoped that this book will be like a first aid kit,” wrote Abata, at the close of this introduction. “It should be kept handy and consulted as needed.”

The scrupulous, he observes, are prone to crisis.

***

I arrived at the skyscraper on Madison Avenue at just past eight o’clock. My friend met me in the lobby.

“Thank you so much,” he said. “C’mon, let’s move the car.”

“My wife is gone, right now. She’s out at a teacher’s convention in Orlando with the kids and I would’ve gone too, except the office has me rewiring pretty much all the electronics on the fifth floor. I’ve been staying up late, banging it out, getting by on that  Indian speed I told you about. Most nights I don’t go home.

“Yesterday, I decided to try my luck at a tourist bar a few blocks away. I do good there — maybe 60/40 — and last night was going really well. I met this group of nurses — not student nurses but, like, established. They were from Philadelphia. We started dancing or whatever, and there was this one girl — this woman — like forty, blonde hair — total MILF. We start making out and she’s — she’s into it. Just, crazy. Wanna see a picture?”

He handed me his phone as we trudged along the avenue. She was attractive.

“Her husband’s been fired from his job four times in last five years,” he said.

I handed back the phone.

“Anyway, we’re making out and her friends start getting mad — they want her to leave. And one of them is real difficult — she keeps saying, like, ‘oh you have kids! you’re married! What are you doing?’ So we have to get away from her.

“By then — it must have been three or four in the morning — everybody was drunk. I suggested that we go outside and get some air. We did — and we tried to get back to her hotel, but she was so drunk we couldn’t find it. We must have stopped in at three, maybe four. I don’t really remember.

“It was around then that I noticed my car key was missing. I’d left my jacket on a stool at the bar, back when we were dancing, but I always keep my key in a special pocket under the lining — behind a zipper and everything. Somebody just opened it right up.

“I thought about going back to the bar to look for it, but somehow we meet back up with her friends — and the negative girl is asleep. The rest  of us, two girls and two guys, go up to one of their rooms and — start.”

By this time, we had arrived at the car. It had already accrued a ticket, costing my friend one-hundred and twenty dollars. He groused about this as we drove to a parking garage.

“What happened then?” I asked.

“I dunno,” he said. “Nothing. We all just kinda — yeah. We were all pretty tired.”

It was not the answer I was expecting.

“That’s the nice thing about it,” he explained. “With twenty year-olds its all bullshit — you lie to them, they lie to you. Last night, it was all people with kids and jobs. We just went to bed.”

My friend and I dropped off the car. On the way back to his office, he again handed me his telephone. “She keeps texting me,” he added, sunnily. “Check it out.”

“I need to feel you again,” said the phone.

***

His work was highly technical, his office a maze of server racks and switcher boxes and thick, rainbow cords of wire. I was given the tour.

The place was undergoing an overhaul. Whole floors of my friend’s building were empty save for chairs and cubicles — most purchased a year ago, under old management, and made redundant by the new regime. “Sales just got moved to Jersey City entirely,” he told me, as we walked through a large, dim chamber of bare desks. “It took over a million to outfit the conference rooms on the next floor.”

My friend was unsentimental about the change. “It is what it is,” he said. “Plus, now that we’re redoing everything I have a chance to fix some systems I’ve been putting off for years. It’s amazing what we can do with automation now.”

“See this?” he asked me, holding up a square plastic doodad crawling with blue lights and empty sockets. “This can do all the same work as one of those big switcher racks I showed you on the fourth floor. All you have to do is get it up on the Ethernet and — BAM! — six-hundred connections are now one. Much easier to trouble shoot.”

The tour ended with a cup of coffee, which we brought up to one of my friend’s costly but abandoned conference rooms. “There it is,” he said. “That’s what I do all day.”

Our talks were often concerned with the professional differences between us.  For my friend, the idea of writing for a living was misty and inexact. It relied too much on language, and language, he thought, could never be reliable.

For my part, I was mystified by the practical realities of engineering — and in awe of my friend’s capacity to master and construct complex networks of devices. “It just has to work,” he said, but I never quite believed him. Failure, I still believe, is analogue.

“How about you?” my friend inquired, after a long pause.

“What do you mean?”

“What do you do?”

***

Helps For The Scrupulous falls, roughly, into the genre of “self-help.” In it, Abata details several (presumably fictionalized) case histories of scruples — asking the reader to identify with the biography that suits them best. “Bruce,” we are told, “is preoccupied with the sins he has committed and those he might commit.” He “was his mother’s favorite […] in front of her, he was an angel.” But “away from her, he was someone else.”

“Jean,” Abata wrote, “is over-worried about harming and even killing people.” She   “continually washes her hands while cooking,” compulsively “rechecks the gas” before leaving the house and cleans her dishes with nervous exactitude. “Jean,” the priest explained, “is a lady.” Her concern for propriety has become a painful repression.

“Timothy” is eaten alive by the guilt of acquiring money unlawfully. Now retired, he sanctions himself for not working harder — and for committing a minor variety of insurance fraud. “Ann” is haunted by “the first time [she] touched herself impurely,” when she was fifteen. Her fear kept her from confessing the problem properly, and the secret has become painful and ingrown. “Michael” has begun to doubt God’s capacity to forgive.

The essential problem shared by all these personalities, according to Abata, is an extreme form of moral inflexibility. To err is human, he says, and as such humans are “accountable only for what [they] know and are able to accomplish.” Living a life entirely free from sin is impossible. Some feelings — especially sexual ones — are simply beyond an individual’s capacity to control. “Denial of sex only makes matters worse,” wrote the priest. It compels the scrupulous person to see a part of him or her self as “bad.”

“Obviously, that cannot be healthy,” he concludes.

Abata’s analysis has a decidedly psychological bent. Scruples, in his construction, are largely a mental disease dressed up in a religious aesthetic. Still, he notes, the torments of the scrupulous are not beyond the sight of God. “No one is scraping the bottom of the barrel more than you,” he wrote, to his suffering audience, in Helps’  final chapter. “You are being crucified by your guilt and excessive need to make everything perfect. [In] trying to love and trust under those conditions — even if only out of fear — you are actually being heroic.”

His advice in a crisis? Assure yourself you are “NOT GUILTY,” and “DO NOT ARGUE” with the resultant compulsion to examine and reexamine the situation. Accept yourself without examination. That, he says, will win some degree of peace.

Additional assistance may be found, the priest continued,in “a doctor’s prescription of some calming tranquilizers.”

***

“Scruples may be from God,” wrote the theologian Fredrick William Faber, in his Growth in Holiness, Or, The Progress of the Spiritual Life, first published in 1855. “God may permit us to fall into them for various reasons. Sometimes it is to prepare us for the office of directing souls […] sometimes it is an exterior trial, or what mystics call a purgation of the spirit; and their use is one while to wean us from an excessive attachment to spiritual sweetness and the extraordinary favors of God.”

Scruples, he continued, “let us have our purgatory on earth.” They are a tactical denial of the “the gratuitous light” that comes from God’s approval. “It was under this subtraction that St. Bonaventure would not say mass, and [that] St. Ignatius refused to eat,” Faber points out. It was for this reason that “St. Augustine, as he tells us in his Confessions, was so teased with scruples about his natural pleasure in eating and drinking.”

Scruples were not always holy, Faber acknowledged. More often than not they could be traced to the trickery of the Devil, or some defect of the body or soul. Confirmed cases of divine scruples were, the priest admitted, exceedingly rare. Still, scruples were not to be taken lightly. Their soil could bear the seeds of sainthood.

As the nineteenth century advanced into the twentieth, Catholicism’s theological authorities began backing away from this noble model of scrupulosity. God, as dictated the fashion of the day, was more of a kind redeemer than a punishing judge, and the willful withholding of Love began to be viewed as unnecessarily cruel.

What’s more, psychology had begun sniffing around the obsessive behaviors of the scrupulous — claiming more and more of their suffering for the unconscious mind. Bit by bit, potential sainthood became a nervous disorder. The Second Vatican Council (which lasted from 1962 to 1965) served as a final tipping point. Afterwards, scruples became, at their most respectable, a deformation of pride. Their treatment was surrendered, bloodlessly, to medical science.

In 1972, four years before the publication of Helps For the Scrupulous, an edition of writings by the neurosurgeon John F. Fulton was issued, under the title The Frontal Lobes and Human Behavior. One case it detailed centered on a woman wracked with doubts about her grievous sins and the anger they had inspired in the Holy Ghost. Fulton supplied her with only a local anesthetic, and asked that she made careful report of her condition as he cut into her brain. She remained conscious, and talkative.

“The obsession persisted after a radical cut on one side,” wrote Fulton. “It continued as cuts were gradually made on the opposite side until finally when they reached […] the fibres of the medial ventral quadrant.”  At this point, something extraordinary occurred:

“The patient’s obsession dramatically disappeared. When once again interrogated about her worries concerning the Holy Ghost, she responded euphorically, “Oh, I don’t believe in the Holy Ghost any more.’”

Helps For The Scrupulous is a point on a continuum of decline. In it, Abata does not debate the findings of the psychologists and agrees with them that the origin of scruples is, for the most part, defects in the unconscious emanating from childhood.  Still, in a small way, Helps seeks to imbue the struggles of its scrupulous readership with spiritual weight and small measure of dignity. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, even this was out of fashion.

***

I sat with my friend, in the empty room, and explained all of this as best I could, illustrating my points by referring to Abata’s paperback, which I had, by that time, extensively annotated and underlined.

He paused when I was finished.

“That is — without a doubt — the dumbest problem I have ever heard,” he said.

We walked together to the lobby, and he thanked me for delivering his key.

***

After leaving the office, I went for a long and aimless walk. Eventually, I arrived before the side entrance of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Work on the old hall’s restoration, still ongoing as of this writing, had surrounded its facade with a maze of plywood and dense lattices of black aluminum. I stepped between them, climbed the steps, and went inside.

It was a quiet. The cathedral’s floors were polished to a mirror-shine and its pews were lacquered crimson, shady and unoccupied. Overhead, stone shot from stone — a riot of dark solidity. Stained glass gleamed above the organ.

My fellow congregants were, for the most part, workman. Their rubber soles squeaked on the stone as they hauled materials around the Sanctuary, dodging their bright orange machines and ducking in and out of their curtains of plastic. The few unpaid visitors to the place moved like ghosts from shrine to shrine, tracing the walls that ran out from the Bronze Door.

I sat for while at the end of an empty pew, facing a facsimile of the Black Madonna of Częstochowa. St. Luke supposedly painted its original, still in Poland, on a hunk of table borrowed from the house of Christ and Mary.

I tried to write, and failed. I dove into my phone instead, sending pictures of the shrine to a girl in Boston.

She did not “need to feel me again.” In fact, she did not seem to “feel me” at all. Despondent, I stood up, and tried to wring some meaning from the icon.

Around the Madonna, portraits of its patrons, champions and stewards had been arranged. They were fat and bearded and bald to a man. Their clear eyes, earnest and comical, stared out of a timeline of successive costumes. I longed to be counted among those holy dorks, to see my name etched into an identifying plaque of gold. I wished to find, within the lonely accident of living, some shards of a superior world. I’d trade in pain and terror for that, I thought.

By then, it was early afternoon, and I was hungry. I left the cathedral and returned to my neighborhood by subway, where I stopped for corn beef sandwich on rye with extra mustard.

***

Religion in H.P. Lovecraft

Orson Welles’ The Life of Christ

Dark Dungeons (Dungeons & Dragons, Part II)

Deities and Demigods (Dungeons & Dragons, Part 1)

Sulamith Ish-Kishor

Salem Kirban, Part 2

Guide to Survival (Salem Kirban, Part 1)

Monster in My Pocket

The Power of Source 

Carman, Part 2

Carman

Speak Out!

Fear of Death Removed

Good Ol’ Job

***

Don Jolly looks human but isn’t. His work has appeared on Boing Boing, the Los Angeles Review of Books and The Ampersand Review.

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