Muslims are the Jews of today
Veiled and under threat Photo: FotoRita
When US philosopher Martha Nussbaum discussed her new book, The New Religious Intolerance, with Rev Giles Fraser, she claimed that intolerance was inevitable among European patriots: their ”traditional conception of nationhood” was connected to “romanticism, which thinks religion and culture are ingredients of nationhood.” The victims of this toxic “romanticism” were traditionally the Jews — whose unfamiliar rituals and even clothing filled Europeans with fear, and then loathing. Nowadays, though, Muslims have taken the Jews’place as the new scapegoats of European intolerance. Their rituals, such as halal butchery, and their clothing, such as the veil, disturb the European (and, Nussbaum has argued elsewhere, American) psyche.
Nussbaum in her book emphasised the inconsistencies of Muslim-bashing.
Arguments were made about the burqa, she recently told The Diane Rehm Show (one of America’s most influential radio programmes) particularly in Europe, but also in the U.S., that they wouldn’t stand up for a minute if you turned and applied them to the majority religion. So I’ve already talked about covering, I mean, so we all are covered in various context and some of our most traditional trusted professionals like surgeons, dentists and so on are completely covered and we don’t think that’s a sign of bad intentions. But then the argument that this kind of dress objectifies women, turns women into mere objects and for male control. Now, as an old feminist, I wrote about objectification a long time ago. And what we were concerned about was the way women are treated as objects in pornography, in just many customs such as plastic surgery where women are forced by social norms to market themselves as a certain body type and therefore they go in for very dangerous and draconian surgeries. And so I think the problem is that if we really said, oh, let’s make illegal all practices in which women try to market themselves as objects for men, we would be banning a lot of modern society everywhere. But no one is proposing that. What they’re doing is they’re just saying, oh, this practice in this strange community, which I really don’t understand and I’m not going to bother to find out about, that is what’s objectifying women. But of course the plastic surgery that I see in my gym, the pornographic magazines that are all around and the pornography on the internet, no problem with that.
equal respect for conscience, the importance of self-critical vigilance, and the importance of a sympathetic imagination. The first of these, powerfully understood in the US constitution, enshrines legal protection of views that differ from those of the established majority. The state is obliged to adopt a position of neutrality with respect to matters of individual conscience. All human beings are to be afforded equal dignity – a dignity that extends to the ways in which individuals come to understand life’s ultimate purpose. Conscience and human dignity are inextricably conjoined.
But Nussbaum knows that good laws are not enough to promote tolerance. They fail to engage the emotional imagination; for this, “educational and cultural reinforcements” are necessary.
We need, then, to think harder about how rhetoric (as well as poetry, music, and art) can support pluralism and toleration. The leaders of the U.S. civil rights movement understood the need for this kind of support; the speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. illustrate how rhetoric can help people imagine equality and see difference as a source of richness rather than fear. During the recent electoral campaign in India, leaders of the Congress Party, especially Sonia Gandhi, effectively conveyed the image of an inherently pluralistic India. (The words of India’s national anthem, written by pluralist poet Rabindranath Tagore, also celebrate India’s regional and ethnic differences.) The current U.S. administration has made useful statements about the importance of not demonizing Islam, but the rhetoric of certain key officials has also highlighted Christian religion in ways that undermine tolerance. Attorney General John Ashcroft, for example, regularly asks his staff to sing Christian songs. And while he was a sitting U.S. senator, Ashcroft characterized America as “a culture that has no king but Jesus.”
For centuries, liberal thinkers have focused on legal and constitutional avenues to tolerance, neglecting the public cultivation of emotion and imagination. But liberals ignore public rhetoric at their peril.
The tolerance being demanded today is being demanded only of the host countries. There is always more sharia to accommodate.
The Sanity Inspector
July 3, 2012 at 03:46
There is another variety of religious persecution and discrimination which Professor Nussbaum seems to have neglected to mention. Perhaps the reason for this oversight is that the persecutors are no other than her co-religionists who would tolerate those among them who have chosen to come to Christ and be baptised in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. In the UK the Jewish academic community can be notoriously unforgiving and vehemently vindictive in responding to conversion to Christianity of those who use to hold a double membership of the guild as well as the tribe. Perhaps Prof. Nussbaum would care to follow the link below and learn something about her Jewish colleagues and their adjutants in an ancient seat of learning such as Oxford:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/7914408/Oxford-University-lecturer-discriminated-against-after-converting-to-Christianity.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/7952009/Oxford-University-lecturer-loses-Christian-discrimination-claim.html
Eran Argov
July 10, 2012 at 19:13
I invite Professor Nussbaum to see for herself that the persecuted of yesteryear can easily become the persecuted of to-day. Prof. Nussbaum might wish to consider to classify as ‘New Jews’ also those Jews who have chosen to come to Christ in a supposedly Christian country – only to find out that they have been baptised at their peril. It should be noted that among the national press only The Telegraph had the guts to print the following report:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/7914408/Oxford-University-lecturer-discriminated-against-after-converting-to-Christianity.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/7952009/Oxford-University-lecturer-loses-Christian-discrimination-claim.html
Eran Argov
July 11, 2012 at 21:30
I would respectfully suggest that anti-Muslim intolerance is overstated. Just considering Iran, whose leaders openly deny the Holocaust and euphemistically call for annihilating Zionists, another conclusion is unfortunately truer: the most-frequent victims of intolerance are Jews. The Jews of today are the Jews.
Steven in NY
August 5, 2012 at 16:36
No, the Muslims are not the Jews of today. The Jews of today are the Jews of yesterday, despite the Muslim desire to occupy the position of the downtrodden whilst in fact agitating for special treatment (usually successfully) at every opportunity and also having been found to have actually fabricated “hate crimes” against themselves on various occasions. The FBI figures in the United States illustrate this very well. Although Muslims claim loudly that they are discriminated against, the real numbers from the FBI records for 2010 belie their claims.
From the Dearborn Free Press:
Incidents of anti-Islamic hate crime in 2010 accounted for only 12.1% of those motivated by religion and just 2.4% overall.
Jews remain the faith group most likely to be targeted in hate crimes. There were 887 anti-Jewish incidents in 2010, comprising 67.1% of those linked to religion. This is 5.5 times the number of anti-Islamic incidents, despite the fact that the Jewish population is no more than two and a half times as large as the Muslim population in the U.S.
Last year saw more anti-black (2,201), anti-white (575), anti-Hispanic (534), and anti-homosexual (1,230) incidents than anti-Islamic ones. Based on population data, the per-capita rate for blacks was similar to that for Muslims; the rate for gays was higher.
Once again, no Muslim was killed for being Muslim. Fifteen years (1996-2010) of online FBI reports tabulate 149 deaths (“murder and non negligent manslaughter”) due to hate crimes, but the records show zero anti-Islamic fatalities during this period.
Hate crimes against Muslims in 2010 returned to the 2002-2006 level. Such incidents totaled between 149 and 156 in four of those five years, so the 2010 figure of 160 is hardly inconsistent with values often witnessed in the decade since 9/11.
Roger Cole
August 5, 2012 at 18:12
I found it slightly sad when a Jewish man ‘marries out’ — not for dphrgoaemic reasons, like those of Jews who believe intermarriage dooms the Jewish people to extinction, but for utterly selfish ones. It means that there’s one less Jewish man in my dating pool.” I’m sorry but that still offends me. First of all, even though you put quotes around it, I did not “marry out.” I’m still here. My wife “married in.” Second, I didn’t marry some who’s not Jewish to strike a dagger through your heart. And besides, your argument is flawed: a Jewish man who marries a Jewish woman is equally removed from your dating pool, and yet you don’t claim to feel “slightly sad” about their in-marriage, do you? So obviously it is at least a little about the dphrgoaemic thing, isn’t it?The fact that you find my marriage “slightly sad” is too bad for you because I feel great about it and so does my family. (I know you’re writing in general here, and not about me personally, but the bottom line is that you’re talking about me whether you want to or not, and I have a reaction. Like if someone was writing in general about Jewish dating columnists.) I’d feel happy for your marriage, whomever you marry.MOST IMPORTANTLY, even though you claim it’s not about this, you still seem to be operating on the assumption that intermarried couples don’t create Jewish households, when there are literally hundreds of thousands of us who do. For example, you write, “I want to marry a Jew…because having a Jewish life is important to me.” Having a Jewish life is important to countless intermarried Jews as well – myself included, and others in that room at PLP – and who you marry is neither cause nor effect of doing so. You’ve set up a clear corollary that you must in-married in order to have a Jewish life, implying that those who intermarry no longer have a Jewish life. It’s just not true. And I think that was the major cause of the reaction you felt in the room that day.Finally, as someone else who’s every paycheck is from an organization with the word “Jewish” in its name, I’m really dismayed to read this line: “But in concentrating energies on re-engaging the intermarried, we also should keep in mind those who haven’t taken that road and are still hoping to find someone of the faith.”What are you suggesting here, that there’s not enough emphasis on assisting Jews to marry other Jews? The reality is that almost every major initiative in the Jewish community since 1990 – including birthright israel, Makor, the push for day schools, camping, BBYO, Leading Up North, JDate, the UJC forum you just spoke at, whatever – is fully or in-part about finding ways to hook up young Jews with other young Jews. BILLIONS of dollars have been poured into it. Efforts to engaging the intermarried represent less than a quarter of one percent of all the monies spent on Jewish programming by the US Jewish community, even though there are currently more intermarried than in-married households! Are you really concerned that concentrating (really, beginning) to focus energies on the intermarried will mean less programming for you? From what you yourself describe, you live in a nearly-enclosed Jewish system. As you go from one event to the next, many underwritten by donors and Jewish federations, ask yourself, “is this about re-engaging the intermarried, or is it about ‘those who haven’t taken that road and are still hoping to find someone of the faith’?” I think you’ll be hard-pressed to find the former whereas almost everything is geared toward the latter. The next question to ask yourself is, “how comfortable and welcomed would those intermarried people or children of intermarriage in the room at PLP feel at this event”?I’m glad that the PLP session served to challenge you and get you out of that closed system momentarily, and I appreciate that you wrote “intermarriage happens; we need to figure out how to deal with it, artfully and more artistically than I was apparently able to.” If you’re genuinely committed to doing so I’m happy to continue the conversation. Thanks,Paul
Calen
December 19, 2012 at 20:31
This is an excellent idea, Marc. I was just sikpeang with a Muslim colleague about the need for something like this. Peter Sanders has a beautiful exhibit documenting British Muslims (artists, musicians, scholars, doctors, scientists, activists, police officers, etc.), pointing out the Muslim threads in the fabric of British society. I think it would be worthwhile for an American Muslim photographer to do the same and disseminate some positive images of Muslims in the US.
Tito
August 30, 2012 at 13:11
Ameen.. may God guide them all to the straight path..(( إ ن ك ل ا ت ه د ي م ن أ ح ب ب ت و ل ك ن الل ه ي ه د ي م ن ي ش اء و ه و أ ع ل م ب ال م ه ت د ين )){Surely you do not guide whevomer you love, but Allah guides whevomer He decides, and He knows best the ones (who are) rightly-guided} 28:56
Adela
September 2, 2012 at 04:10
Get a life Adela. Allah doesn’t exist (no evidence whatsoever — just a psychological state) and he doesn’t guide anybody. You are just parroting myths and stories handed down. Get some self-respect and dignity and stop with this mambojambo Koran. I say this as an ex-Muslim to a Muslim. I am trying to lead you to the straight path. Break all the idols, including Allah, a meaningless fiction, and come back to humanity.
If you don’t respect yourself, nobody is going to respect you.
Mohammad Shadan
January 22, 2013 at 06:23