The Eclectic Mix

Time to dust off the ol’ soapbox…

Religion used to be the great untouchable in the world, even when it was the cause for so much hatred and pain. Now let me back up and explain this, because it’s important to hold on to going forward.

Politically, religion was historically avoided–not ignored, but also consciously not made a topic in a campaign. The religion of a political candidate in this country was irrelevant, even though some, if not most of the voters knew what religion their candidate belonged to. It was their message and views and beliefs that were important, even though those messages, views and beliefs were rooted in the candidates religion, but still not trumpeted or held up as a sign of superiority over others.

But keep in mind that religious beliefs have always been the root cause for so many conflicts throughout history.

So with that as a framework, let’s take a look just at the last week in this country.

I am incredulous not only that there are an alarmingly large number of people in the nation who believe that President Obama is a Muslim, but also that people don’t know enough about our president to even believe such a thing. And I wonder how those same people would have answered incorrectly whether Bush was a Baptist, Methodist, or Jew. (He’s a Methodist, by the way).

That the question has been given any importance at all is unsettling, because in a democracy like ours, does it really make a difference? Should anyone even care or be concerned? Does it make Obama a better or worse president because of it? Certainly not. Because in a system of checks and balances, other thoughts and beliefs all represented equally in the institutions of our government, the religion of one man, regardless of where he sits in the power structure, is irrelevant because no one single person can control this government and society and economy. Besides, when you look at the “major” religions of the world, does anyone in this country realize that Islam is the most populous of all?

Sure, there’s fear of “them” and the unknown they bring to the table, and some of it is well founded: in our media age, it was hard to live through the attacks on September 11, 2001 without feeling some emotion, and when you realize it was a deliberate attack, those emotions just grow. But just as the Spanish Inquisition doesn’t represent the whole of Catholicism, and Isreali military attacks on innocent Palestinians don’t represent the whole of Judaism, those attacks on a couple of our country’s landmarks don’t represent the whole of Islam.

There’s been a paranoia fostered here, and I fear it’s the kind of paranoia that leads to dark times and unreasoned actions. For a society that has always viewed wars it’s involved in as a “we versus them” affair, when we’re fighting a relatively small group of Muslims, the “them” in the conflict unfortunately becomes all Muslims. And fighting an entire group of people and wanting to wipe them out or at least confine them and forcibly retrain their thinking becomes frighteningly close to genocide. Which, supposedly, our society has always been against (see: World War II, Chechnya, and Darfur).

So then, doesn’t that kind of thinking cast us in a light that makes us look as evil as the group we’re fighting against? After all, wasn’t the reason we were attacked in the first place in 2001 because those radicals found our religious beliefs and freedoms to be contrary to their beliefs?

The proposal for the mosque (we’ll address the semantics there in a moment) “at ground zero” is not new. That was proposed about a year ago, and was widely supported (including by many conservatives). Yet it too has become a political issue. Sure it’s a couple of blocks away, which means the definition of “ground zero” is deliberately fuzzy. But so too is the American definition of a mosque. A mosque, as defined in any dictionary you care to research (and I’ve looked through several online before writing this) is a Muslim house of worship. It is, for lack of a better term, a Muslim church. What has been proposed is a community center. Christians have separate churches and community centers. Heck, we even have separate schools. By the same definition, those are all churches. And I don’t think most Christians would define them as such, because they serve different roles: the church is for worship, the other physical buildings are all about outreach.

So, we’ve got to tighten our definitions quite a bit. And we need to stop being so paranoid. I mean honestly, would any criminal come back to the scene of the crime to plan his next crime? Terrorists might not be the most clear-thinking group of people on the planet, but they still have basic smarts enough to work to keep from getting caught. Planning your next move in a cave is vastly safer than from a building in the heart of hallowed ground where everyone knows what it’s for.

That said, is the imam a bit short-sighted to think this proposal was smart? Absolutely. But by now, backing out doesn’t save any face because it just looks like you’re giving up because of the outcry, not because you think it’s the right thing to do. But I’d hope there was that moment when someone looked across the table and said “Hmm…you think we really should put the community center there?

Humans are incredible creatures: we can do incredibly stupid things to ourselves and others, and incredibly painful things to each other. We can be unbelievably loving and also amazingly hateful and hurtful. We can be understanding and we can be simply ignorant. The human goal of being the best person you can be has fallen by the wayside, to a point where being the best person you can be is a definition made by someone else in your society and not by yourself as an intelligent, well-reasoned person. Contributing to society has become defined in terms of meaningless actions that are purely self-serving (making money and distributing it to others, becoming famous, and advancing in a career field). And this is the problem: we have always been meant to be a community, and for other communities to exist around us, and for all communities to exist if not in harmony, at least in peace and respect. And right now, even the community is starting to crumble.

Nothing seems to be sacred anymore: religious beliefs, people’s feelings, or even community. And for that, we all suffer, regardless of which side of the political or religious fences we find ourselves on.

See you tomorrow.