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| Saturday, December 06, 2008 |
| Quiet Politics |
Ben Smith has been on the ball about Obama's promises about a Muslim-Western summit promised in Obama's first 100 days of office. This promise's importance was eventually elevated onto the campaign website. The NYT says Cairo is a possibility, though a donor has said that Obama pointed to Jakarta privately among donors:
"Obama told the 20 or so of us at breakfast that 'his first trip as President would be to Indonesia - the world's most populous Muslim country,'" Leary recalled. "He then said when he got off [Air Force One], he would say 'xxxxxxxx' - which we, of course, didn't understand," Leary emailed. "He said that it was Indonesian (which he speaks) for, 'I am back, dudes.'"
I've been particularly interested in Obama's interaction with the Muslim world as President, for two reasons:
Firstly, I don't think there's any doubt that he can do a world of good on the hearts-and-minds front in the War on Terror. Simply being who he is - the American son of a relapsed African Muslim - he has more credibility than Another Old White Guy. There are 1.5 billion Muslims living in the world today (compared to 2.1B Christians and 1B non-religious), and the fact is that a tiny, tiny fraction of them can be called 'militant.' However, any respite fringe lunatic Muslims will receive outside their group will come from other Muslims; It doesn't seem realistic to me that al-Qaeda operatives would ask a Christian for a place to stay. So America - through Obama - must appeal to those billions of Muslims to quietly report, try, and convict the disturbed members of their own population.
We've made some progress. I think this described a lot of international Muslims' attitudes in 2005:
"A few weeks ago an American I met at a friends house asked a much repeated query, 'Why do you the Muslims hate the Americans?' To which I answered in the same way as all the preceding instances in which this question was posed to me: 'We don’t hate the Americans, we might disagree with a certain US policy and dislike recent American actions in the Muslim world but we surely don’t hate the American people.' The American who interrogated me was clearly not convinced with my answer and secretly I wasn't either. The truth is that at present the Muslims hate America and now, they hate not only its policymakers but most of the American people since they have proven recently without a shadow of doubt that they agree with their elite by voting back into office. [...]"
The second thing that both saddens and interests me is that he had to keep these promises relatively quiet during the campaign, lest the emails that railed about his religion become even more fervent in their conviction that he was going to somehow turn the U.S. into Iran, or that his parents had the foresight in 1961 to conclude their half-black almost-bastard son was going to be president and fake birth documentation (both are actually believed by some people, who are very stupid).
This is the hearts-and-minds front that isn't talked about a lot. In addition to the work Obama has to do abroad to convince that America doesn't hate Muslims, he has to get loud parts of America to stop hating Muslims. The last part of the article above says:
"What were you thinking when you threw the Qur'an in the toilet or when you used religion as a means of torture? I fail to see the efficacy of such actions in the so-called war on terror. These methods only point to a deep sickness in your society to which it will take decades for us and the rest of the world to understand its cause and to measure its destructive results. No, the question which someday will have to be answered is why, why do you the Americans hate us the Muslims so much?" International diplomacy will be slowed or stopped as long as being called a Muslim is a slur in American politics. This is yet another reason for the separation of Church & State: The instant a nation's percieves itself to be for or against any particular religion, you have a Holy War. Holy Wars never, ever, ever, ever work out well for anybody. It's the third classic blunder.
This will not be as hard as it looks. We don't need to have everybody in the streets singing Kumbayah. No amount of work will dispel stereotype - after all there are lots of associations good and bad about Mormons, Jews, and Catholics. (Where would we be without Rabbi/Priest/Minister/Nun jokes?) But most Muslims are just normal people who do weird religious things that aren't much weirder than what other, 'mainstream' religions do: Magic Underpants, insanely long sideburns and beards, quasi-cannibalism, etc.
This will be Obama's toughest job, and frankly I'm not sure how it can best be done.Labels: America, Catholics, diplomacy, idiots, movies, Obama, politics, religion |
posted by Steve @ 11:45 AM  |
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| Friday, May 16, 2008 |
| This is my body; take this all of you - except that guy. |
I'm a Catholic. I have to find Church in myself, because I have trouble finding a church that actually espouses the kind of Gospel that Jesus taught. Instead, I find judgment and, frankly, low-level hatred. I hear so much of it in the news: whom to hate. In particular, I hear a lot about how gays and lesbians are an abomination before God, and about how the Sacrament of Marriage is so, so sacred.
There are Seven Sacraments: Baptism, Eucharist, Reconciliation, Confirmation, Marriage, Holy Orders, and Anointing of the Sick. Baptism is a sort of initiation rite, as is Confirmation. Marriage is an understanding of the spiritual joining of a man and woman (as opposed to marriage, the legal term). Holy Orders is the process of becoming a priest, and Anointing of the Sick is a ritual of healing appropriate not only for physical but also for mental and spiritual sickness.
I'd say that Reconciliation and the Eucharist are the most important in normal Catholic's lives. The Eucharist is (basically) Communion (which is all about Jesus' resurrection), and Reconciliation is the forgiveness of sins. Without those two, you don't really have Christianity.
One of the Sacraments is under attack and it isn't Marriage. It's the Eucharist.
As an Obama supporter, long-time pro-life advocate and all-around Mega-Catholic Doug Kmiec had this happen to him in church:
I have been declared “self-excommunicated,” and recently at a Mass before a dinner speech to Catholic business leaders, a very angry college chaplain excoriated my Obama-heresy from the pulpit at length and then denied my receipt of communion. You gotta understand - this heretic of a chaplain judged a man unfit for one of the Sacraments, which are a Catholic's lifeline to God.
This country wasn't founded on religion. Quite the opposite. The Founding Fathers understood the poison that religion can bring into people's lives when it's politicized. They took great lengths to ensure it didn't become part of government, and explicitly said so. Here, for example, is the text of the Treaty of Tripoli (1797), which was signed unanimously by the Senate:
"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries." This makes the ravings of abominations like Rod Parsley even more offensive to their religion, and the conscience, as well as to the United States.
One of these days, I hope, Christians are going to figure out that leading by example, and actually helping people, is far more useful and in-line with God's teachings than picket lines and excoriating people with whom they don't agree. Imagine if the Church had spent the time and trouble that they had spent condemning abortion, and used it instead to actually help the young women considering abortion.
One can hope.Labels: Catholics, God, politics |
| posted by Steve @ 2:48 PM |
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| Monday, December 03, 2007 |
| Catholic guilt |
I'm coming to terms, more and more, with being Catholic. Catholic and Loving It has helped some, but mostly because I've had enough time to think about it. Catholicism has a lot of pretty good stuff going for it, not least when practiced by a truly religious Catholic, not some Bible-thumping myopic Christianist idiot. Most of the really good stuff comes from the self-deprecation, and the absolutely endless self-scrutiny.
Fr. Sharpe, my old Catholic pasto, once said this:
"The Jews, you see, invented guilt. But us Catholics? We perfected it."Labels: Catholics, religion |
| posted by Steve @ 1:03 PM |
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Name: Steve
Home: Tucson, Arizona, United States
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