The withdrawal of Lowe’s advertising support for a TV show out of Dearborn Michigan called American Muslim sounds an alarm not enough of us are heeding. Aside from the tactical stupidity of withdrawing advertising in a heavily Muslim area that is supportive of showing American Muslims as ordinary human beings much like Americans of any other ethnicity, it shows how cravenly economic forces crumble before the scare tactics of the vocal ignorant.
Lowe’s questionable decision was allegedly fueled by a right wing organization in Florida with only one paid employee- it’s “Executive Director”- who was fulminating about the threat of Shari’a law overtaking America. He implies that the ordinary people shown to be Muslims in the show are not really representative of the “real” Muslims (who presumably are all terrorists and cruel). There is, of course, absolutely no evidence to support his paranoid claim, but this is a popular boogey-man among the Christian right. Like the monster that we knew as children lurked in our closet or under our bed, it vanishes when exposed to the light of reason and objectivity.
Aside from the fact that no American politician has ever proposed imposing Shari’a law on the American populace, nor, to my knowledge, has any American constituency voted to do so- rendering the issue entirely moot- the more troubling issue is the assumption that such ideologues even know the content of the greatly feared Shari’a.
Like the legal precepts enshrined in the religious traditions of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and others, there are details in Shari’a that are specific to the context of the time, place, and culture in which they were first written, and others that are more easily seen as having a universal applicability toward the common good. This becomes an ongoing interpretive challenge to the faithful of each tradition today, trying to reconcile a belief in the sanctity of scripture with the experiential reality that parts of scripture seem so arcane or removed from modern reality as to become irrelevant.
The Christian who ignorantly rages about the brutality of Islamic law easily overlooks or ignores equally brutal passages in the Bible. Those Christians eager to label things as an abomination to God to sanctify their opinions, often indulge in the hypocrisy of convenience in their selective reading of scripture. That selective reading is used to validate homophobia, anti-abortionism and a host of other social issues, as well as the generic hatred of other religions. Their cohorts hoot their agreement and approval even in the public arena of presidential debates, but would willingly celebrate the self-congratulatory rightness of their views and their success in voicing them by going off to a buffet of ham, shrimp, pork ribs barbecue, or veal in cream sauce- all of which are “abominations before God” from a Biblical perspective.
The issue here- in epic terms- is the struggle between the forces of good and evil, and the misguided desire to be able to live life by absolutes. We mistakenly think that security is found only in absolutes, such as good and evil, and that’s how fear creeps in. If we are unable to attain absolute good, the corollary inevitably makes us potential victims of absolute evil. It is emotionally tempting and politically poplar to then isolate and externalize that threatening possibility by demonizing a particular group of people who are sufficiently “different” from the majority, facilely ignoring their underlying similarities with or own human needs and desires. Evil thereby may gain the upper hand, disguised for a time as righteousness. The Civil Rights Movement proved that fear is undermined when the “other” is given a name and a face we can relate to.
Our human susceptibility to manipulation by the fear of evil is, ironically, an evil in itself. It allows truth to be veiled or distorted in the quest for solidarity and agreement under the rubric of “united we stand”, or there is “strength in numbers”. The human ego’s lust for power easily blinds us to the greater power espoused by the wise of all religious traditions- “Love casts out fear”. That wisdom is the antidote to the ruse of our fear-driven self-righteousness.
This is not about a “feel good” approach, it is about looking more deeply into the heart of traditions to understand their driving principles espousing unity (as understood in their respective times and places). The politician who claims to “love America” but encourages the hatred of certain Americans cannot be trusted to rule wisely, and does not deserve to be elected to office. How often is there an intelligent political discussion about how to best demonstrate real love of our people? We need a paradigm shift.
Of course, no paradigm encapsulates all truth, yet each has its merits. The key to understanding any of our traditions or paradigms- whether political, religious, economic or other- is having the discernment to sift the grain of truth from the chaff of cultural and personal preference, bias, or bigotry and find its applicability to our life. Non-judgmental examination of facts would be a good place to start. If enough of the electorate manages to do that, society as a whole will be safeguarded from the evils of fanaticism and fear mongering that threatens civil society politically, economically, and morally, both here and abroad.
