From The Huffington Post

Take one comedian, mix in a beauty queen, throw in some bigots and an exploding crow and you’ll open an unorthodox window into the past year for Muslims in America.

It’s been a tough year, so let’s start with the crow.

One of the stupendously stupid protagonists of the British film Four Lions wires a crow to explode by remote control as part of the wannabe-jihadi schemes dreamed up by the film’s eponymous four British Muslims. The smartest one of them uses The Lion Kingto explain to his young son the concept of holy war in the name of Islam, hence the “Lions” of the title.

I watched the film in New York City. And I knew the people laughing the loudest in the theater were Muslims: they got all the references to “Shaytan” (Satan), they got turns of phrases lifted verbatim from radical Islamic rhetoric masquerading as “authentic” Islam and they got the Arabic and Urdu curse words.

You almost expected a cameo from Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-Yemeni radical cleric dubbed a “Jihadi all-star” by a right-wing blog. Awlaki, who issued a call for the murder of American “devils,” has been linked to last year’s Ft. Hood shootings and the failed Christmas Day “underwear” bombing. Not many leaps of the imagination from exploding underwear to exploding crows.

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From State of Formation

I thought I would burst! I stared with wide eyes as her hands came toward my mouth with a piece of bread the size of my fist, soaked in a honey-peanut butter mixture. As I opened my mouth to beg – “please, I can’t eat another bi-ghrrr…” – her small hand found its target and I did burst…with laughter.

Looking back I’m surprised that peanut butter didn’t come out of my nose. Watching her veiled head, and those of her co-conspirators, shaking with laughter, I wiped the sticky honey-peanut butter paste from my chin and grinned with shared delight.

In this small town not far from Kutahya Turkey generosity is measured in calories and our hosts insisted that we eat our fill – then eat another plate. Moments like this one, often revolving around a communal meal have more to do with faith than any proclamation of belief.

As I read, watch and listen to the growing number of reports about the ‘war on Christmas’ I am reminded of this experience. At the table together, I, my fellow American guests and our Turkish hosts were not Muslims, Christians or Atheists – we were fellow eaters, breathers, laughers, lovers, siblings, parents, spouses, etc…we were fellow humans. All this concern for labels and public recognition, from Atheists and Christians alike, obscures the cultural significance of the holiday season.

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From State of Formation

Last December, I had the opportunity to attend the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Melbourne, Australia. The Parliament seeks to promote harmony, reconciliation, and understanding in the world through both intra-religious and interreligious dialogue. In short, it sustains a collective hope that religion will truly be a purveyor of peace and not a conduit for violence and fundamental extremism in its various forms. Yet hope, at times, seems lost in the fog of recent wars, namely the “war on terrorism” that was unabashedlylikened to a “crusade” by former President George Bush on the South Lawn of the White House in 2001.

Having been raised in a religious military family, I’m naturally drawn to academic discussions about violence, militarization, and religious ethics. So I attended a Parliament session entitled “Religion and the Future of Torture” facilitated by George Hunsinger, professor at Princeton and founder of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT). During the allotted two hours, Hunsinger shared sobering facts about the United States’ government’s complicity in torture during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. He especially highlighted the revisions the US Army Field Manual for Interrogations in 2006 as a response to political discourse about the definition of torture after the Abu Ghraib scandal. In case you’re wondering, one positive revision in the field manual was the named prohibition of waterboarding as an interrogation technique. However, several concerns remain, such as the addition of Appendix “M” and the semantic separation of the term “torture” from what constitutes “cruel, unusual, and inhuman treatment.”  Another concern is that even though sensory deprivation is banned, it is also cleverly redefined as deprivation of all the senses simultaneously, which still leaves room for interrogators to obstruct one or two of a detainee’s senses at a time.

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From Patheos

I was invited to participate in Patheos’ Blogger Roundtable on Brent Landau’s Revelation of the Magi, a translation of an ancient Syriac document that recounts the legend of the magi who visit the baby Jesus. I finished the book with two thoughts. One, I was more interested in Landau’s scholarship about the story than I was in reading the story itself. Landau’s Introduction and Conclusion place the text in its historical, literary, and theological context, and I appreciated the thoroughness and accessibility of his explanations. Very few modern scholars have noticed this ancient tale until Landau took it upon himself to translate it from the Syriac. He does a good job explaining how it was influential for centuries before it fell out of use within the Christian community.

The story itself begins with the origin of the magi, tracing their lineage back to Adam. It describes the star of Bethlehem as visible only to those who have eyes to see. In some ways, it is akin to a modern day gloss on the Christmas story—taking a kernel of Luke or Matthew’s account and imagining before and after and behind-the-scenes. I prefer the canonical Gospels as my source for the story of Jesus’ birth, but the imaginative work of later followers of Jesus certainly can enhance our own theological reflections upon the meaning of this story. If Imogene from The Best Christmas Pageant Ever and Charlie Brown can help unfold the “true meaning” of Christmas, so can this tale.

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From The Huffington Post

Wearied by the decline and fall of trust relations in most sectors of society, many have had to seek energy from beyond the headlines. Politics, economics, religion, commerce and family life are zones where trust is so broken that for many the temptation to feel defeatist or to grow cynical is almost overwhelming. From “beyond the headlines,” then, can one find some alternatives to denial, indifference or despair?

Religion and religions ought to have something to say, both about the sad situation and possible ways to transcend it as steps toward recovering trust. Religions advertise these as a specialty. Thus in most versions of the Christian faith “trust” is central, right next to its kin, “faith,” along with hope and love, yet that centrality often gets obscured. I was brought up on a catechism which explained the First Commandment simply: “We are to fear, love, and trust God above all things.” That’s fine for catechism class, Sunday or Sabbath school, or parochial settings. But it’s hard to sell that within a pluralist, multi-religion, multi-Commandment culture. So, “forget it!?” Millions did.

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Polarized debates around migration, national identities and integration of Muslims in today’s society are increasing in Europe and North America.
The UN Alliance of Civilizations has invited two prominent personalities for a conversation on these issues: the New York Times journalist Roger Cohen, and the Philosopher and Muslim Scholar Tariq Ramadan.

The discussion will focus on the reasons immigration is perceived as negatively affecting coexistence in Europe, and why Islam is often depicted as incompatible with Western values. Together with the in-house and online audience, discussants will explore ways to better acknowledge European and American Muslims’ contributions to their societies, and examine what role these groups can have in supporting the integration of recent Muslim immigrants.

The conversation will be held on Monday, December 20th in London, UK, from 2h to 3h30pm, at the St Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation and Peace (78 Bishopsgate).

The in-house and online audience will be invited to put forward questions to the speakers in real time, by email or facebook.

Click here to learn more and view the event online

From State of Formation

I have been studying intercultural communication now for several years, ever since I recovered from a traumatic immersion experience that left me yearning for answers. I have discovered that in many ways, intercultural practice is a constant struggle to navigate the tension between human commonality and cultural difference; between human distinctness and the possibility for union despite this distinctness. The ambiguity of this struggle is at times overbearing, as we find we can never definitively draw the line between what we have in common and what we do not. Where we draw the line, however, has profound implications for the success or failure of intercultural dialogue.

One of the first lessons of intercultural psychology is that humans show an inherent bias toward viewing others through the lens of their own assumptions. A common-sense assessment of what provokes intercultural conflict and inhibits dialogue is that it has to do with each group being unable to realize how much they have in common. Intercultural communication teaches us to turn this assumption on its head in a seemingly counter-intuitive way: it is not a failure to perceive similarity that leads to conflict and miscommunication, but rather the failure to perceive the radical difference present in the situation. Assumption of similarity, or what is often called ‘minimization’ in intercultural lingo, serves as the primary defense mechanism to armor ourselves against difference and protect our own worldviews from scrutiny.

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From The Huffington Post

A figure stands alone in the desert, cradling his infant son. His followers, his brother, and his sons are now dead, except for his eldest who lies in their ragged tent, deathly ill. He has not had a sip of water in three days, since the tyrant Yazid ordered his family to be starved or slain.

He cries out, holding his son aloft, “Do none of you have children of your own? If you show mercy to my son, and give him but one sip of water, I will guarantee your place in Paradise!” The response is an arrow that pierces the infant’s neck.

Ashura is the story of Imam Hussain AS, who was martyred by the forces of Yazid on the plains of Karbala in what is modern-day Iraq. The word “Ashura” literally means “10th” since it falls on the 10th of Muharram in the Islamic calendar. The story of Imam Hussain AS is one of sacrifice, and inspiration, in order to defy tyranny and preserve the ethos and values of the Islamic faith from corruption. The hedonistic caliph Yazid, ruling from Damascus, sought to force Hussain AS to swear fealty to him, in order to gain legitimacy for his claim of spiritual and political authority.

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From The Huffington Post

It is fashionable in interfaith discussions to advocate “tolerance” for other faiths. But we would find it patronizing, even downright insulting, to be “tolerated” at someone’s dinner table. No spouse would appreciate being told that his or her presence at home was being “tolerated.” No self-respecting worker accepts mere tolerance from colleagues. We tolerate those we consider inferior. In religious circles, tolerance, at best, is what the pious extend toward people they regard as heathens, idol worshippers or infidels. It is time we did away with tolerance and replaced it with “mutual respect.”

Religious tolerance was advocated in Europe after centuries of wars between opposing denominations of Christianity, each claiming to be “the one true church” and persecuting followers of “false religions.” Tolerance was a political “deal” arranged between enemies to quell the violence (a kind of cease-fire) without yielding any ground. Since it was not based on genuine respect for difference, it inevitably broke down.

My campaign against mere tolerance started in the late 1990s when I was invited to speak at a major interfaith initiative at Claremont Graduate University.

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by Seth Wax
from State of Formation

Over the past week, the recovery and clean-up of the forest fire in the Carmel region of Northern Israel that charred acres, burned property, and killed 42 people has gotten underway. It’s been particularly interesting for me, having just visited Tel Aviv for the weekend, to witness the ways in which Israelis are organizing en masse to volunteer with helping out. In particular, I visited two synagogues, each of which talked about ways to support the Yemin Orde Youth Village, a center that’s home to more than 500 children, that suffered a loss of over 40% of their buildings during the fire.

Yet alongside the public response to rebuild the affected areas, there has also been a strong drive to find answers for the fire, and in particular, to understand who is responsible for allowing this tragedy to unfold in the way it did.  While police believe they may have identified the person who started the fire, much of the vitriol is being leveled against the government, in particular the ministries of interior and finance, for underfunding and mismanaging the fire and rescue services and not equipping them with the supplies – like the tanker planes that governments across Europe and the US provided – that would have ended the forest fire before it became too big.

But while it may be appropriate to blame the government for negligence, I think that this narrow focus may be a bit short-sighted.

About a week ago, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the former Chief Sephardic Rabbi of Israel, attributed the forest fire to Jews’ failure to observe Shabbat properly. While his remarks have an eerie resonance with what Rev. John Hagee said about New Orleans’ permissive attitude toward gay pride causing Hurricane Katrina, reading Rabbi Yosef’s comments got me thinking about what it means to cast a broad net of responsibility when government readiness cannot meet the scale of a natural disaster (even if I think his specific argument is insane). For Ovadia Yosef, the reason why the fire burned in the North was because of Jews’ failure to follow religious commandments, meaning (in the most charitable way I can see it), that the scope of responsibility for the loss of property and life does not lie with just the individuals who set the fire, the government, or the politicians. Many more people share responsibility for this.

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