Some Musings on Minarets and Xenophobia
It seems all countries have a xenophobic, fear driven, nationalistic right-wing. At least in Switzerland, they are more overt, identifying themselves for what they are, an unapologetic anti-immigrant party that seeks to preserve what it sees as a quintessential Swiss culture that it fears will be diluted.
The thing that most upsets me about American politics is that we really have no viable left-wing (president Obama is a centrist, but our country is so far to the right that he is labeled a socialist by his detractors) and the right wing does not admit it is an extremist fringe. Instead, it calls itself Christian, pro-life, pro-family, pro-military, pro-freedom, etc. They are convinced that they represent the mainstream of America, the heartland, that they are even populists while denying healthcare to poor children and promoting tax cuts to the wealthiest 1%.
I find this Orwellian twisting of language to be highly deceptive and makes it much harder to attack the deep-pocketed corporate backers, fundamentalists, and just plain wackos who make this movement what it is. It should be marginalized, and probably would be if we had a decent education system, forced radio stations to impose the old regulations regarding political balance (in other words, finding something reasonable and educational to replace or counter-balance four hours a day of fascist idiots like Rush Limbaugh), and somehow got Fox news to either turn down its rhetoric or be marginalized for its extraordinary bias and distortions.
I really believe that the last two factors, perhaps along with the Internet and the proliferation of blogs appealing to narrower and more extreme slices of the political spectrum, are doing more to destroy our country and make it almost impossible to get anything meaningful done. I was absolutely shocked to see what the Republicans did in the town hall meetings with their pictures of Obama with a Hitler or a Stalin mustache ( depending on their mood I suppose), equating insuring our children with Nazi concentration camps. the fact that this nonsense along with a misinformation campaign regarding the president's citizenship is actually getting traction is what I find most upsetting.
At any rate, I think that most people fall somewhere on the spectrum between Dick Cheney and Martin Luther King. Cheney sees the world is a dark and Hobbesian place where resources are limited and there is not enough food or fuel or real estate to go around, so only by seizing resources and throwing up walls and threatening violence against those who try to cross them can we keep our comfortable position in the lifeboat. There is probably some survival value in this extreme distrust of otherness but in a world of instant communications, jet flight, and nuclear weapons, such an attitude is dangerous and ugly.
King of course envisioned an America that could live up to its promises, that could treat all Americans as God's children, as he put it, in a decent, just society that judged a man by the content of his character, not the color of his skin. He did not believe that feeding poor black children in Georgia would bankrupt the United States and felt that white racists were as harmed by their vitriol as their victims.
I think the only way to win against fundamentalists and nationalists is to constantly challenge their nonsense and to use their metaphors against them. They worship physical strength and the threat of violence, so point out repeatedly that their world view is actually one of weakness and fear, a desperate and ultimately unsuccessfully attempt to remain static in a fluid dynamic multi-cultural world.
Calling a nationalist cruel or mean spirited will only encourage them since they will see this as a compliment. Calling them scared, defeatist, or even anti-American ( since they are so convinced that we must fail where the French, Germans, Swiss, Japanese, Australians, British, etc. all succeeded to various degrees ( at least in the case of healthcare)) seems to get their attention.
Religious metaphors, which after all mostly reflect remarkably concordant ethical injunctions of the Axial Age philosophers and belief systems, held up as a moral mirror is helpful, speaking for example of our duty to provide for the least among us. Christians don't have to be told who said this, so without ever explicity bringing up religion or metaphysics, you can state a universal truth in a language instantly accessible to them. It becomes very hard for them to take the moral high ground when universal healthcare is framed in Christian ethical terms. They may then revert to the hard-nosed, clear-eyed, even cruel realists they like to see themselves as ("well who is going to pay for it?" etc.), but that forced shift might plant seeds that later allow them to adopt more progressive views in traditional religious garb.
I think that nationalists and fundamentalists, as Karen Armstrong points out, are deeply afraid and threatened by change and modernism. Ignoring their bluster and challenging their fear is probably what is going to get them to see that building walls enclosing borders will only delay the inevitable and to deprive their country or society of a rich influx of new ideas and points of view.
The recent Swiss anti-minaret ban was embarrassing, but I feel a little hesitant to be too critical of the country where I am a host. I do not believe that a ban that discriminates against one religion and one religion only so blatantly will stand muster in the EU, where Switzerland is not a member, but wants to do business with them.
I kind of like France's approach, where all overt religious religious displays in the public school system are prohibited. I suppose that we have a similar approach in the United States, although it has had the unfortunate side effect of watering down local traditions such as Christmas plays or musicals to generic holiday specials.
In response to the anti-minaret ban (which passed by a plurality but not a majority of the 20% of people who cast votes, many of whom were mobilized by the right wing who launched an incredibly dishonest campaign playing on people's fears and prejudices of Islam), a group here has filed a petition to make the 4 Switzerland mosques UNESCO world heritage sites. Better to light a candle than curse the darkness. This would cement Islam, representing 4.6% of the Swiss population and growing, as part of Switzerland's cultural legacy.
It wasn't so long ago that people were saying the same thing about Catholics or Protestants, French speakers or German speakers, but I really don't think many intelligent people care that much if at all about such silly differences. The problem with Islam is that it has done a poor job of emphasizing itself as a sister religion to Judaism and Christianity; the prophet Mohammed had his followers pray to Jerusalem until he felt that he had been betrayed at the battle of the ditch at which point he had them instead pray in the direction of Mecca. He saw himself as continuing the Abraham a tradition, not starting a new religion per se, just as the Jews who later came to be called Christians saw themselves as Jews with their latest prophet or Messiah in the tradition of Isaiah and Amos.
The other problem with Islam I suppose is that some cultures based on sharia law engage in practices that are much closer to those of the brutal, superstitious, misogynistic, sexually tormented society of biblical times. Modern Christians do not realize how recently they have been secularized, shedding biblically condoned and encouraged practices we now consider barbaric, such as stoning of adulteresses or slavery. The contempt for women, the quickness to murder them, and the superstitious dread of certain illnesses such as epilepsy or leprosy has only very recently been replaced by modern humanism and scientific rationalism, although few Western European and American Christians will acknowledge, understand, or admit this.
Therefore, they look at the more extremist Moslems, such as those who force their women to cover completely before going out in public, shaking their heads at the backwardness of such people without realizing that they are not really looking across a religious divide as much as a time divide; there were all Mediterranean monotheistic faiths only a century or two ago in some cases. People were burned alive in Geneva by John Calvin and his followers who had a version of rigid compulsory theocracy that would have made modern Iran looked incredibly progressive and liberal by comparison.
The fundamentalists in the Arab world like those in ours are also deeply afraid of change and modern concepts such as equal rights for women and a healthier less reproductive centered view of sexuality, but of course they will lose. I think they know that at some level; if they truly had faith that God was on their side and all that, what need would there be to invade and occupy other countries on one hand or to fly airplanes into buildings on the other?
I hope in 50 or 100 years we will look back at all this is so much silliness. No doubt by then we will have moved on to a whole new set of petty prejudices and things to be afraid of.
