In Deo Speramus

Yesterday I had a parent-teacher conference in the afternoon, and I arrived a few minutes early, so I sat in the reception area blithely looking at the magazines out for waiting people. As I casually leafed through old magazines, a bold cover story from Time magazine caught my eye: “Islamophobia” screamed the cover. I sighed, wondering why someone would leave this 2010 magazine out for the KA public to read. What an ironic twist to have this available at a school that has 80% Muslim students with about 40% of the faculty American ex-pats. I paged through the article, and of course, it was about why so many Americans are fearful of Islam. It is not that the exploration of fears bothers me, but the article probably stoked more fears than it allayed. Of course, I sat there in that lovely waiting area the day after I read about Newt Gingrich’s comments this week about Palestinians (again with the “they’re all terrorists” mania).

As I waited for the family to appear, I thought about not so much what Newt Gingrich had said, but instead the many ways that our worlds are more in common than what we first think. “Allah” in Arabic is “God,” and we share that same God of Abraham. That part is obvious, but I thought about how both the Arab world and western world share some other “gods.” After four years of commuting between both worlds, here are some other gods I have determined that we share:
• Our god is money
• Our god is power
• Our god is fame
• Our god is ending suffering
• Our god is truth

I could add more—what about our obsession with Ivy League schools? And of course, the obsession with landing a highly-paid job? Aren’t those gods as well? I suppose the thing my years in Jordan has taught me more than anything is that there are new faces of old religions, there are many sides of what religion means.

KA teaches a World Religions course, and I have long treasured that we help students better understand the concepts behind these disparate world faiths, help students develop an open mind about what and how and why other religions practice as they do. In my youth and early adult years, these were all just lumped as “The Other” in my mind, and it was easy to develop a discomfort or distaste for strange practices and beliefs.

Let’s look a little more closely at Islam—especially if we do harbor such a “phobia” against it. Each chapter in the Koran—as well as each Muslim prayer—begins with these words: “In the name of God, the beneficent and the merciful.” I learned that the Islamic prophet Muhammad was known as Al-Amin—the trustworthy—and was revered for his honesty, humility, desire for justice, and disdain for greed. And I read passages in the Koran that struck the same ideals as all the world’s great faiths: repentance, forgiveness, and tolerance. Here are examples:

From the Koran: “O Mankind! Lo! We have created you male and female, and have made you nations and tribes that ye may know one another. Lo! The noblest of you, in the sight of Allah, is the best in conduct. Lo! Allah is knower, aware.”

From Hinduism’s Hitopadesa: “One should always treat others as they themselves wish to be treated.”

From Buddhism’s Dhammapada: “Hatreds do not ever cease in this world by hating, but by not hating; this is an eternal truth.”

From Judaism’s Book of Leviticus: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”

And from Christianity’s Gospel of Luke: “And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.”

I am not suggesting that we are all exactly alike under the skin, but treasure these beautiful thoughts and aims! Have mistakes been made in the name of religion? Sure! No doubt, horrible, unjust, heinous things have been done through the corridors history in the name of gods—but is it because of the religions, or because of naivete and ignorance? For me the greatest flaw we have as humans is our ability to lose our compassion. To delude ourselves into thinking we are right and others are wrong. To turn members of different groups only into that dangerous “other.”

A student asked me today if I had heard what Newt Gingrich had said, and wondered if I thought Candidate Gingrich actually believed his words. I replied that I had no way of knowing if he truly believed the scurrilous things he had said about Palestinians and Palestine, but he has certainly figured out that it gets him exposure and support. It doesn’t bring a lot of shame to his words, evidently, and doesn’t that tell us so much! Islamophobia sells magazines and wins hearts and minds of voters.

Religion can bring out the better angels of our nature; however, religious extremists can bring out our worst. In my students’ lifetimes, in Bosnia, Christian extremists slaughtered 8,000 Muslims around the town of Srebrenica. In the Palestinian territories Jewish settlers dismissed Muslims as animalistic. In India, Hindu nationalists raped and slaughtered Muslims, in Sri Lanka, Buddhist extremists abused Hindus. In the United States, Muslims slammed planes into the World Trade Towers.

As we so often tout in a fairly smug way, ours is a globalized world. But indeed it is a polarized world. We are more interconnected economically and culturally and politically, yet in terms of issues of faith, we also seem to be more territorial, suspicious and reactive. Becoming more interdependent almost seems to be making us less tolerant.

But as a teacher I get the chance to talk with students about these media reports. Here at KA I get to meet and know Palestinians and realize how wearying that steady diet of anti-Palestinian rhetoric is, and I get to wonder how we might overcome all these phobias.

I look back at the list of gods that many in both of these worlds share. I teach the same here as I did in the United States, but I think I have become even more deliberate in my aims for my classroom and my students. I exhort all the more for students to be open to the mysteries around them, be compassionate as we learn about The Other, and challenge ourselves in terms of our beliefs and perceptions about The Others.

I had a nice conference with the parents, and in just a few days I get on a plane to go celebrate Christmas with my family and American friends.

SPOILER ALERT: THIS ENDING MAY SEEM SENTIMENTAL AND OBVIOUSLY IDEALISTIC, BUT IF NOT AT THIS TIME OF YEAR, THEN WHEN, I ASK YOU???????

Of all those things that might indeed be tertiary gods, or subsidiary gods, wouldn’t it be nice if we all added to our wish-lists that each group around the world makes hope their god.