Mount Cyanide

I am sure you have delighted from to time to time in those articles that appear in the Sunday newspaper magazines like Parade about the bloopers that students write on exams. These bloopers supposedly are drawn from actual student papers and exams, and here is one I remember about Bible history:

"The Egyptians were all drowned in the desert. Afterwards, Moses went up to Mount Cyanide to get the Ten Commandments."

There were many other examples in this article as I recall (oh one other one that is short and sweet: “The epistles were the wives of the Apostles.”), but last week that little gem about Mount Cyanide popped into my head as I watched the news stories about the protests in Cairo in front of the American Embassy. I mentioned to my father on the telephone that just as he would never be one to defame another religion or turn violent, not every Muslim would march and protest and kill an innocent diplomat as well. But the news stories suggest—well, we know what the news suggests. I thought of the Gallup polls in the US over the last 60 years and thought of the overwhelming evidence that Americans admit they do not have broad religious literacy. Most Americans are not familiar with the basic teachings of Islam, Buddhism, or Hinduism. (One may argue that the writers of the above bloopers have but a tenuous grasp on Judeo-Christianity as well!) One important reason for this lack of familiarity is that most Americans do not know a Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu.

When I looked at the commentators discussing the angry protests and the ugly anti-Islamic YouTube video, it went a little back and forth, “It IS about the video,” and “No, it’s NOT about the video.” Many felt this was the backlash of the Arab Awakening of the last 18 months, although these situations have occurred in the last 10 years before the so-called Arab Spring.

I read earlier in the week about one of the demonstrators in Cairo who declared, “We never insult any prophet — not Moses, not Jesus — so why can’t we demand that Muhammad be respected?” But that isn’t entirely true, either. Editorialist Thomas Friedman wrote in a column the other day about the Middle East Media Research Institute, or "MEMRI" as it is known, and how it tracks positive and negative media, schoolbooks and sermons throughout the Middle East. Friedman uses MEMRI to cite many examples of how there are hate-filled videos, sermons, etc. about Christians, Jews, Shi’ites, and Sufis and anyone else who is not a Sunni, or fundamentalist Muslim throughout the Middle East. So there—hate and bile spew from both sides. Now, don’t we feel better…

I don’t like to see anyone’s faith insulted, but there is a whole lot of that happening. What I wish is that everyone could come to KA and take the term-long World Religions course that is required of every student here. I wish that my Facebook friends who lean dangerously to the right and wish to bomb all Muslims could take this course, and I wish the young Egyptians, Tunisians, Libyans, Yemenis, Pakistanis, Afghans and Sudanese who have been taking to the streets might take the course as well.

I didn’t design the course so I am not tooting my own horn. But my friend and colleague Julianne has taught the course for the last three years (among others—I just talk to Julianne an awful lot) and now I visit the course once a week to observe and offer feedback to one of our star teaching fellows named Peter.

While the protests in Cairo raged only an hour-flight away last weekend, Peter asked me if I recommended he discuss the current brouhaha in his course. I suggested that it was important, however, I offered the advice, “This might be the most challenging lesson of your first year teaching.” Peter took up the challenge and last week when I visited his class, his discussion impressed and astounded me. Peter opened the discussion by asking, “Using the skills we worked on last week, what is the tone of the YouTube video everyone is talking about?” Peter helped them navigate between the tricky waters of “satire” and “mockery.” Peter asked “Why does it provoke the reactions that it does?”

The two facets of Peter’s lesson that most impressed me with his handling of the video and the protests were (1) he did not just open class and say, “Boys and girls, we are going to discuss current events today.” When you do that, students just tune you out, and they know it will not be on a test! That is their assumption, at least. Peter also did not ask them, “What are your feelings about what is going on?” Tooooo facile of a question. and (2) Peter did not abandon his lesson plan for the day that had been in place. Instead he wove a discussion about the video and the protests into a discussion about the depiction of Hindu gods and the realities in front of American embassies. Now that takes some skill and planning…

Peter helped his students see that in Hinduism there is a genuine craving to imagine what the divine looks like—Hindus find it helpful and advantageous to depict the gods in visual form. Students offered reasons why the faithful would find it helpful to explore the nature of divinity. Peter taught the class (and me as well!) the word “Henotheistic,” which means how a God takes many forms. That was so easy to see in Hinduism where there are so many facets to so many gods in Hinduism.

Peter contrasted that discussion with a reminder that in Islam the depiction of the sacred is prohibited. Just as he had canvassed the class about the advantages of visual depictions in Hinduism, he likewise helped the class see how the Islamic faithful revel in the mystery of not depicting—much like Jews have always believed in terms of images of YHWH. Peter never allowed it to tread into an “us against them” mentality, nor did he nudge too much that it was a poor decision not to imagine the sacred personages of God and Muhammed. But Peter did return to “Henotheism,” and asked, “Does Islam have anything henotheistic?” He allowed students to think, offer some answers, and asked about the well-known “99 names of God in Islam.” The class looked at the parallels, some surprising, between these two faiths. But Peter’s goal was hardly, “Wow—look at this, we are just exactly alike!!!!”

One student asked about Hinduism and those depictions of gods, “But don’t those depictions limit them in understanding the divine forces?” Just like an expert teacher, Peter had a beautifully planned response. Peter asked them to turn to a Hindu prayer in their readers and in that prayer we read about asking for divine guidance to overcome our “human limitations.”

When my father visited KA in the fall of 2008, he came right in the arc of the course of AP World History that offers a week-long overview of the five major religions of the world. He couldn’t believe how much he didn’t know about them, never had learned or been exposed to the three religions we just didn’t know much about. He realized that these religions all have such similar “human needs.” Hmmmm….such similar human needs and such similar human limitations.

The expressions of intolerance—on both sides of the world—exist, but also are only one side of the story and there are deeply tolerant views on both sides of the world. Both sides of the world have complex societies and those news stories really only look at one facet of the situation. Sadly, both sides echo some of the same rhetoric: They have a problem with us and they should clean up their act. It runs both ways. Both sides espouse so many of the same human needs and both sides have so many of the same human limitations. Thomas Friedman asked the other day in his column, “Our president and major newspapers consistently condemn hate speech against other religions. How about yours?”

The World Religions class explored how the video was a fuse that broader issues lit—the class understood, once again, how the role of religion is so key in our 21st century. Generally secular countries around the world seem to forget that, and generally less secular countries want to remind us—we haven’t yet come to the understanding about human needs and human limitations that might help us imagine a world with greater understanding. Policing speech will probably not make the problems go away, but let’s see if we can increase the capacity for the World Religions class at KA by a few more billion.