Is Religion On An Equal Footing With Race?

So asks Razib of Gene Expression.  (Razib has recently become my go to guy for shedding light on religious, cultural and anthropological esoterica. He knows "everything"! But he hadn't figured out that I am a woman.)

Like Razib, I say an emphatic "no."  Race is an immutable characteristic you are born with over which you have no control.  Religion is a philosophy you choose to believe. I do recognize that children have no choice over the  indoctrination within observant families and communities that begins soon after birth, often making religion a second nature - a deeply ingrained belief that is hard to shake off even in the face of evidence to the contrary. Nevertheless, it is something that can be changed and often does, for many among us. Atheists grow up in believing families, Catholics become Baptists, Hindus embrace Islam.  Blacks, whites or browns on the other hand, cannot choose to skip over to another race. 

Razib cites a moderate Muslim commentator who made the following point on NPR:

"... there is an understanding that there will not be any acceptable public mockery of black Americans, e.g., the use of the ,"N-word."  The commenter further implies that Muslims are now viewed as an "ethnic group" in America and as such should be above harsh criticism even if some of their conduct is less than exemplary.   

Nobody should mock anybody as far as I am concerned - for their race, physical handicaps, gender or beliefs.  But how about an honest debate?  There can be no debate about changing our physical attributes -they are what they are, plastic surgery notwithstanding.  But surely there is room for us to question each other's philosophies. Especially when that philosophy guides many among us in deciding how they conduct themselves in private and more importantly, in public.

Whenever an atrocity is perpetrated in the name of religion, the faithful are at pains to explain that true religious faith (Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, take your pick) does not prescribe or condone the outrage in question.  As a non-believer, I have become tired of listening to this litany of cop outs.  Believe me, I don't care what true religion says. If anyone kills, maims, injures, oppresses or otherwise does harm in the name of a religion, that religion is defined by that action for all practical purposes. Period. Unless, the co-religionists come out in force to condemn, control and punish the perverters of the faith instead of pointing fingers and finding scapegoats to explain away their actions. I have neither the time nor the inclination to pore over ancient tomes to determine the original pure intent of their faith.  Organized religion for me, is a human enterprise, created by humans to define (usually as better than others) and organize themselves in what they see as a chaotic world. It should remain a private activity for personal edification. In the light of rapidly gathering scientific knowledge and the resulting secular ethics, a vast majority of the world population still needs religion as a moral compass to guide them through life. Others such as myself, don't need that crutch and are unapologetic about it.

I have no wish to engage in theological debates with believers. I have figured out my life and they, theirs. As long as all of us abide by the laws of the land, we need not clash in any public arena. I have never gone into a church, mosque or a temple to demand that they teach atheism, agnosticism or skepticism in their institutions.  Yet I have to contend with religious bigots insisting that science be taught according to the Bible, Quran or the Vedas. I have never gone out of my way to argue with or insult those whose beliefs equal wilful fantasy in my own eyes. Yet I am lectured to by well meaning (and sometimes not so benign) do gooders who want to aggressively save my elusive soul. In a civil society, it is reasonable for me to expect that the freedom to believe or not believe is a choice we must have and a believer's dogmatic fist needs to stay clear of my secular nose.

I have on several occasions, criticised the hypocrisy of religious fundamentalists of different stripes.  My diatribes have for the most part targeted Hindus and Christians. I have until now not spoken out publicly against the unreasonableness of Islamic bigotry precisely for the reasons that the commentator cited in Razib's post expects us to do - that Muslims have been treated so badly by Israel and the west, that they should remain above criticism for reasons of political correctness. I have been an unrelenting critic of the Bush administration and the west's generally racist attitude towards the Muslims. In that group I would also include Hindu and Jewish nationalists. However, all that should not provide cover for the mindless and harmful obscurantism within the Islamic community either.  I decided to break my silence with "Jack Straw and the veil" and weigh in with some further thoughts. I left the following comment on Razib's post which I am copying  here with minor modifications:

"It is interesting that you bring up the issue of conflation of race and religion. For a religion such as Hinduism which has been historically confined to a geographic location in or around the Indian subcontinent, the assumption about the race of a Hindu is for the most part (if you leave aside the Hare Krishnas) accurate. I find it a bit confounding when similar assumptions are made about Judaism and Islam. Yet it is done frequently, sometimes by the adherents themselves.

I recently read Rebecca Goldstein's book, Betraying Spinoza. The fate of the Marranos in Spain and Portugal or the suspected crypto-Jews among them was very telling. The Iberian Christians continued to believe that the Jewish conversos remained "Jews at heart" even when they practised outward Christianity. Was this then a matter of belief or race? A case of "once a Jew, always a Jew," - something akin to race that you cannot "choose" to change? In the case of Judaism I have always suspected that Christians and Muslims find the Jews to be an enigma because as derivative faiths, they suffer from an inferiority complex before the adherents of the "original" wisdom. And also they cannot fathom why faced with "the ultimate, latter day" truth (and vicious persecution) the Jews elected to cling to their beliefs. The conclusion therefore is "They must know a secret that we do not know." The Indian / Pakistani poet, Iqbal asked a similar question about Hindus in a lengthy and plaintive verse addressed to Allah. Hindus too chose to remain Hindus in the face of punitive taxes and other  physical and psychological threats during 700 years of Islamic rule.

Regarding the ethnic identity of Muslims acquiring a monochromatic hue in the west, the Muslims are responsible for that to a large extent. While growing up in India, the Muslims I knew, unselfconsciously identified themselves as Indians first, Muslims next. The cultural identification with India was evident in their dress, eating habits and language. I have not lived in India for a long time. I do not know what the prevailing mood is among Indian Muslims regarding identity in the wake of increasing Islamic fundamentalism all over the world. I suspect that for educated, middle class Indian Muslims things haven't changed all that much.

However, among the Pakistanis and Bangladeshis that I know in the US, I have seen a sea change of behavior and expressions of religious identity, in the last fifteen years or so. Many of the women who had sported short hair, worn stylish western and Asian clothing when I first met them, have taken to wearing long sleeved coats over their outfits, covering their heads etc. Their language is much more self consciously sprinkled with Arabic and Persian than it was before. Their conversations include many references to "good Muslims." The social circle is divided into two camps deliberately kept apart - non-Muslims and Muslims (which include a large number of Arab friends). The Arabization of these non- Arab Muslim friends has occured before my eyes over the years. Mind you, I am speaking only of women who were not particularly religious, at least not overtly, when I first made their acquaintance. The far eastern nations of Indonesia and Malaysia too have undergone similar Arabization in recent years.

A few decades ago, it was very common for Indonesian Muslims to enact the Ramayan and Mahabharat in folk drama. Indonesian Muslims also had Sanskrit first names in conjunction with an Arabic last one. I don't know if they still do. Religion therefore used to be distinct from local culture. While "Arabia" was the holy land, one's own culture was home grown. I feel that some imaginary "Arabic culture" has now supplanted local customs and "Arabia" is now also the the fountainhead of "culture" in the minds of Muslims the world over. It is difficult then to criticize non-Muslims when they look at "all" Muslims and think Arab / middle eastern.

I will not go into the personal observations and anecdotes about the "revisionism" of my Pakistani and Bangladeshi friends. But let me relate something that happened openly and was reported in the Houston Chronicle five years ago. On September 10, 2001, Salman Rushdie was in Houston for a reading of his latest book. The Islamic Society of Greater Houston held a large rally of protest in front of the downtown hotel where Rushdie was reading. Among the signs they held, many read, "Death to Rushdie." Next day, after the planes flew into the World Trade Center, the very same people were all over Houston TV protesting that "Islam is a religion of peace!" Very ironic.

I have criticised Hindu, Christian and Jewish fundamentalists on my blog quite frequently - the first two, very often. However, I did not address the matter of Muslim fundamentalism and religious oppression until I chose to write about the "veil." I must confess that the restraint was partly due to a vague feeling of piling on an already beleagured community. George Bush's own religious fervor in defining foreign policy made criticising Islam a delicate subject - I felt that doing so would put me in the same camp as the "crusading" right wingers. However, I now feel that all right thinking, rational folks need to start calling a spade a "bloody shovel" when it comes to religion's infringement on basic decency and human rights. We should not be hampered by concerns of hurting the feelings of those who given half a chance, will hurt not just my feelings but my flesh and bones.

As for Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and other Islamic nations' discrimination against non-Muslims being distinct from racial apartheid because they base the discriminatory public policies on the generous philosophy, "one can always choose to be a Muslim," I consider that a modern day kinder, gentler equivalent of conversion by the sword. It is spurious logic. If I restrict your movements, choice of dress, education, employment and freedom of worship, scream from loudspeakers and national media about the despicable nature of your existence as an infidel, all the while claiming your "freedom" to become a Muslim, it is a laughable attempt at offering "choice." Somewhat on the same level of disingenuousness as the oft ridiculed civic ordinance which claims equal justice under the law in prosecuting the rich AND the poor for sleeping under a bridge! The hypocrisy is palpable."

A note of caution:  To those readers who might read into this post an open invitation to trash Muslims, please don't bother. I have only addressed the Muslim question here because that is what Razib's article asked.   My complaint is against ALL bigots and obscurantists. I have nothing against those for whom religion is a joyful cultural observance or a personal spiritual quest for peace.   

Comments

[Anna]

This strikes me as a specious way to structure the question, since "race" is itself an arbitrary construction. The classic on this subject is, of course, Franz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks, first published in 1952. Elaborating on Sartre's argument that the Jew is a creation of non-Jews, Fanon (a man of African origin from Martinique) argued that blackness is a creation of whites. He contrasted the interior versus exterior enforcement of these masks in the case of Jews and Blacks. As with all else, a salient extract exists on the internet:

http://www.nathanielturner.com/factofblackness.htm

Another classic, Edward Said's Orientalism, a sort of Fanonian analysis of Middle Eastern identity, is more directly relevant to the question of projected perceptions of Islam.

The point I'd draw from these theorists is one that the law also recognizes: the question of discrimination involves an analysis less of the person discriminated against than of the person doing the discriminating.

I agree that criticism of the wearing of veils, or orthodox Jews who demand non-coed dormitories for female Jewish college students, or of the practice of widow burning is not inherently discriminatory. That it's not discriminatory, however, is not because religion is a choice, but because the criticism is directed toward the behavior or belief, rather than based on a priori assumptions about the people engaging in it. I would also say that it's not discriminatory to criticize say, an inner city resident who happens to be black, who loots a quickie mart during a riot, even though it is discriminatory to meet a black person and assume that he's from the inner city, or that he'd have any special inclination to loot.

Conversely, the hypothetical woman introduced to a man named Ishmael Salaam who assumes that he's a misogynist, or who argues against women wearing veils using essentializing rhetoric about "foreign elements" that equates the behavior with an Islamic background; the woman in my office a number of years ago who told me that she couldn't stand our boss's "Jewish management style" and that I was okay because I was only "half-Jewish" (though my mother, who converted to Judaism, would disagree and, on the other hand, though I am not religious) and who would also rail against Israel with a subtext of "this is what you get when you turn over power to a bunch of Jews"; or the hypothetical man who hears a woman tell a story about celebrating Diwali, and assumes that she plans someday to fling herself on a pyre, and thinks "barbaric"...all these people are engaging in discrimination, and it seems to me wholly irrelevant that their bigotry classifies by religion.

To use my own example, what is my "choice" to avoid the hatred of an Anti-Semite? I would definitely change my name from Levine (which as recently as a few weeks ago, elicited a snort of contempt from some hick out in the desert seeking my legal advice; other of my legal aid clients have made it clear that they're glad to have a Jew lawyer because, you know, we're "connected"), call myself "Russian" a la George Allen's "French and Spanish" ancestry, stop celebrating High Holy Days, Passover, and Hannukah (it's mostly force of habit and guilt that keep me going, anyway: like one of those chain emails that insists something bad will happen if you don't forward it, somehow my Hebrew school teachers and family got the message to me: through death and destruction we've been performing these rituals for thousands of years, and now you can't even eat a little apple and honey at Rosh Hashanah? For this, we suffered?). Then I just wait and hope that I don't come across a savvy bigot who "outs" me, which I'd put at decent, 75-25 odds in my favor-- I'm neither at the Fran Drescher nor the Alicia Silverstone end of the spectrum of "recognizably Jewish."

Frankly, this doesn't strike me as much of a "choice." My actions would convince the people who weren't prejudiced to begin with, but not the bigots. The comparison to racial prejudice also reminds me of the threadbare old argument between agenda-driven Jews and agenda-driven African Americans over which was worse, the 6 million estimated victims of the Holocaust, or the 40 million estimated victims of the African American slave trade (both figures are probably inflated, but that's neither here nor there). I've always felt the answer, both were horrible, should end this argument, and all related ideological justifications.

This is a complex topic, which I could have easily spun off into a rant at my fellow Jews who charge Anti-Semitism whenever someone criticizes Israel (though, viz the race vs. religion question, I don't like the racially motivated activities of Mugabe's settlers better, notwithstanding their anti-colonial context). I could have rambled about the weirdness of the racial category of "Latino," and people who identify Salma Hayek, of Lebanese extraction, as a "woman of color" (a silly term), while at the same time identifying even Mizrahi Israeli's as white. I could compare increasing pan-Islamicism to the tragic loss of rich, regional Jewish identities (from Gaelician-Jewish to Uzbekhi-Jewish) following the Holocaust and the creation of the state of Israel. And I could tell my own troubling anecdotes ahout increasing Arab-islamic identification among friends from moderate Muslim (Pakistani, in this case) backgrounds. All these would be long tangents.

For a dynamic perspective on the last phenomenon, I recommend (as I have in the past) the Lebanese Catholic Amin Maalouf's "Identites Meurtrieres" available in English as "On Identity."

For an interesting, but quite tangential to this discussion, historic work on the mutability of "whiteness," another classic is Noel Ignatiev's "How The Irish Became White."

[Anna]

Not to belabor the point, but if the the moderate Muslim commentator had said, for example, that it's not acceptable in public discourse to mock someone who happens to be Muslim as a "towel head," I think most of us would have agreed, and shrugged. To again use my own group: "What kind of evil God keeps people away from lobster-- screw Judaism" is a far cry from "Screw the kikes."

The frightening peculiarity of the Muslim commentator's statement is in its equation of mocking a belief with mocking an essentialized category of people, and its implicit rationalization of violence and intolerance in the process. The minority of African American leaders who justified the Reginald Denny beating as "payback" for the Rodney King verdict were equally scurrilous. The disturbing difference in this situation, is the lack of a significant Muslim parallel to the African American leaders who condemned the violence of the 1992 riots.

[razib]

This strikes me as a specious way to structure the question, since "race" is itself an arbitrary construction.

it isn't arbitrary. see here for why it isn't arbitrary genetically. see the paper referenced above elucidated upon by the author here, question #4.

just because a concept is not a clear and distinct platonic ideal does not mean that it does not exhibit a statistical central tendency. just because zeno's paradox is of interesting does not mean that there is no difference between here and there just because the boundary between here and there is an arbitrary construction along the distance between here and there. if given 100 pieces of genetic information from person x, you can assign assign person x to population a, b or c with a 99 out of 100 probability of accuracy in correspondence to self-identification is it an 'arbitrary construct'? i say no, because 99 out of 100 implies that there is a tendency or bias, and that the construct isn't arbitrary.

[m]

This is why I am not down with the modern concept of "respect". When someone says they deserve "respect", what they are really saying is: "don't criticize me. Ignore the consequences of my beliefs." Every group, mob and idealogy attempts to innoculate itself from criticism by utilizing a victim mentality of this sort, a perfect example being the so-called "War on Christmas". That Christians can perceive a threat during a holiday where their religion is openly and widely celebrated is bizarre, to say the least, but it is an effective stance. It gives Christians a club with which to beat back a tiny, miniscule quantity of criticism. And certain Muslim commentators are doing that now as well. Like many groups, Muslims do face very real discrimination, but the idea that they should be free from tough questions and criticism is absurd. Not when their beliefs can entail treating women as property (women aren't even allowed to drive cars in Saudi Arabia!) and beheading homosexuals (a practice that occurrs regularly in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia).
Anyway. Respect can mean a lot of things, but it should never mean turning a blind eye to abuse and hypocrisy.

I suppose the big problem is that when you criticize an extremist (be they Christian or Muslim), non-extremists of the same religion feel threatened. My attitude is: tough; be thick-skinned enough to handle nuanced differentiations. When a religious group (or any group) responds to an extremist who shares their religion by circling the wagons and demanding "respect" (i.e. immunity from criticism), they only demean their own beliefs. Bush is the perfect example. Christians should have been the loudest voice oppossing him, not the left. Muslims, it seems, can be guilty of the same selective amnesia.

Anyway, I really appreciate your point of view on this Ruchira, it's a direction that too many people aren't willing to go. You rock.

[Ruchira Paul]

Anna:
I understand what you mean by race being a spectrum of racial characteristics. I also agree with Razib's point about a cluster of phenotypes defining race broadly and often accurately.

As an example, my husband is a Punjabi with ancestry in western Punjab. He could pass as a middle eastern. My family belongs to Bengal in the east. My physical features to some extent resemble the Burmese, Phillippino type. This difference is quickly picked up by other Indians. The questions and answers that follow are almost always something like this:
Q:"So, it was a love marriage?" (arranged marriages almost invariably occur within the same regional/linguistic group)
A:"yes."
Q:"How did you guys meet?"
A: "In college."
Q:"Was there family opposition to the match?"
A:"No."

But when non-Indians see the two of us, they see an Indian couple and they may or may not assume one or more of the following.

1.Hindu or Muslim
2.Do not eat beef and / or pork
3.May have had an arranged marriage involving dowry.

Except for tenuous Hindu roots, none of the above is true for either one of us. But I don't feel any urgent need to disabuse the person of these assumptions until the specific question comes up or I find them acting upon those pre-conceived notions.

Indeed our racial identity is both how we see ourselves and how others see us.

When we were in Omaha, my husband and other near and middle eastern employees of the University of Nebraska Medical Center were classified as "white" by the state of Nebraska. As implausible as it sounds, it was so - probably for affirmative action purposes. They just did not want to create new groups of minorities to deal with. Did that convince us to call ourselves "white?" No, we unfailingly entered "Asian" in the US census beureau's questionnaire and see ourselves as brown.

Our identity surely goes beyond race. Religion, gender, sexual orientation, physical and mental handicaps, political conviction and religious beliefs, all contribute to that identity. Some of these are indeed "chosen" while others we have no control over.

My point though was a simpler one, like Matt's. I don't think that we can hide behind any of those identities to make mischief or break the law.

The reason why Akbar Ahmed'd comment irritated me was precisely that he was trying to create a race based Muslim identity which is false in order to ward off legitimate criticism.

BTW, I don't believe that race should be a cover for bad behavior either as both Matt and Anna pointed out.

The pernicious aspect of identity politics is that it infantilizes the very group whose pride is presumably being protected. What does that mean? That I am Hindu so don't criticize me for extorting dowry from my bride's parents or acting on caste prejudices. I am Christian; I can't help being against Darwin and superciliously thanking Jesus in public meetings with non-Christians. And, I am Muslim; please don't hold it against me if I blow up a few airplanes.

Ridiculous. There is no doubt in my mind that G.W Bush has kicked open the door for this kind of muddled discourse by his own thinly veiled Christian partisanship. The so called "Uniter" has divided the world like no one else before.

[Joe]

Fun conversation here. (Incidentally, I really enjoyed reading Anna's comments.)

Ruchira, if I object to anything here, it's how you frame the issue (see: title, first two paragraphs).

I believe that religion SHOULD be considered on an equal footing with race.

That said, race itself is not a legitimate shield from criticism. I think we're all in agreement on this point, which is probably what's most important/relevant here.

[Ruchira Paul]

Joe:
I should have made myself clearer in framing the question.

Perhaps the first two paragraphs of my post came across as my saying that I make a distinction between certain types of behavior that can be explained by our race and others by our religion / culture. I DON'T. Let me explain.

Race, however one defines it, is a part of our identity which is wholly physical in nature, over which we have no control. We can in some rare cases, find correlation between race and certain physical conditions (heritable diseases for example) -- and that's it. We can predict NOTHING about a person's abilities, proclivities or preferences based on race.
Those are all determined by our cultural milieu, of which religion is a big part.

The specious nature of the question in this case was framed by Mr. Akbar Ahmed. One, he implies that race indeed determines how people may behave in certain cases and since that behavior is based in the perpetrator's genetic make up, he or she cannot "help it." Wrong. Secondly, he suggests that because Muslims now are a distinct "ethnic group," certain behavior and beliefs can be attributed to their ethnicity and therefore must remain above reproach. That too is patently false.

Whatever uniformity is seen today in Islamic thought and practise, is due to the recent global phenomenon of pan-Islamic group think. It has NOTHING to do with their ethnicity which is as diverse as the ethnicities of Christians.

What I am saying is that one's race is the part of one's identity which most emphatically should remain above criticism. I cannot and should not judge another person based on it - their character and abilities are NOT determined by their race.(which by the way, is distinct from individual genetic make up) To assume that it does, is the basis of all forms of racism.

However, our behavior (which is not related to race) is shaped by our philosophy - religious, cultural and political - all of them "choices" in some sense and therefore not inherently unmodifiable. They are therefore open to questioning and debate.

Religion is therefore not on an equal footing with race because race DOES NOT determine behavior.

And yes, none of the above, including race, is an excuse for bad behavior.

I too enjoyed Anna's colorful comment. Anna should weigh in with her wisdom more often, don't you think? Perhaps she will post the review Amin Maalouf's book "In the Name of Identity. (I have the book in my Amazon cart along with Maalouf's Samarkand which seems very interesting also.)