Minarets Don’t Frighten People. People Frighten People

A representative of the “rightist” Swiss political party that sponsored a ban on building new minarets in Switzerland recently said that the ban was motivated by a fear that Islamic fundamentalists had “the political will to take power.” He need not have worried, by passing this legislation, he handed that power over to them.

Switzerland has long had a reputation for tolerance, and for refuge for the persecuted of other nations. Radical Islam now evidently dictates Swiss public policy. And it is a policy of fear. Curbing the religious expression of just one faith does not say, “We abhor the violent extremism of a minority of the faith.” Rather it says, “We will let our fear drive us to curbing freedom of religious expression.”

The Swiss want to curb extremism in their midst but they have gone about it in exactly the wrong way. A recent study of violent extremism in the United States found that "Apocalyptic aggression is fueled by right-wing pundits who demonize scapegoated groups and individuals in our society, implying that it is urgent to stop them from wrecking the nation."

It is not by suppressing religious expression, buy by engaging it that extremism and radicalism is suppressed. Diversity is normative. The more varied we are, the less likely it is that any one extreme group or view point can dominate the public stage. The more communal our experience, the less extreme we tend to be. Religion and religious expression has a prominent place in that dialog.

Nor is the politics of fear a new story. In 2006, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, said, “The idea of a society where no visible public signs of religion would be seen- no crosses around necks, no sidelocks, turbans or veils - is a politically dangerous one.” A country’s government should not work as a “licensing authority” nor should it presume to dictate “public morality.” He argued that a government should not be the sole arbiter of a society’s identity.

That fact of the matter is that minarets don’t frighten people. People frighten people. If minarets are dangerous because they are used by fundamentalist Islam to perpetrate violence, then the Swiss had better take the crosses down from the church towers, lest we are reminded of the Klu Klux Klan. But that's extremist talk. The vast majority of Swiss Muslims are not fundamentalists: they don’t “adhere to the codes of dress and conduct” of fundamentalist Islam and they are mixed into the Swiss population as seamlessly as any other group. At least until now.

The iWidow and the Herion Addict

Have you ever looked around a restaurant and seen an iWidow? Look for the woman staring wistfully off into space while her husband stares unashamedly as his hand in his lap? She is an iWidow and he is Type A+Man. While this story has a modern spin, the fact of the matter is, its an old story. And I'll warn you now, there's no resolve at the end.

I have read that iPhone use creates actual addictive patterns in the brain. You send a text or a message and you await a response. That sort of “ping” back from another person releases a charge of dopamine – a little happy moment in your brain – and your behavior has been reinforced. Let’s call that iPavlov. But what the hell, right? Who cares if the guy is constantly checking the scores or updating his fantasy baseball stats. Big deal, right?

Yes, big deal. For many reasons.

The iPhone is the new Other Woman. The average working man takes his iPhone everywhere. He does not take his wife with him when he travels for work, he can’t. But even when he is home, he goes on runs, he goes out with friends, he goes shopping or to the movies and he may have to leave the wife at home, but he takes the phone. And it’s always on, he is always receiving information from it. Ask any iWidow if she’s ever been “waved off” in favor of a message on his hand-held device. That app is called the iDntHvTym4U. When she looks at her husband across the room, the average iWidow is thinking, “Gee, that used to be my hand in his hand.”

Where we used to wander, now we Mapquest. “How many times have we used it on family vacations to find a place when we were lost?” How many of those times would you have found it anyway? How many adventures have you missed by being precise and correct? He checks the weather and the train schedule, as if knowing them changes them in some way. He will or won’t be at the station before the 7:35.

Where we used to wonder, now we Wikki. We don’t say, “I wonder” anymore because we can Google. If we wonder, then we are asking and if we are asking, well, let me just look that up on the amazing internet which I happen to have surgically implanted on my palm right here… ahah! There is no more imagining an answer, there is no more debating various suggestions at an answer, there is only The Answer.

Where we used to have conversations, now we chat. I laughed one day to see this man listening to his buddy on the train. The buddy was talking about some frustration at work when the friend glanced down at his iPhone - his “I-Phone” in this case - and exclaimed, “I’ve got bars!” and never looked up at his buddy again. Bars indeed, bars erected between himself and his now seething buddy.

"We” has been reduced to” i.” Type A+ Man and his family are for a walk. The wife and the kids are talking, the kids are complaining about having to read Milton, about having to run in PE, and about the weather. They are all walking along, they are seeing and feeling and looking and while Type A+ Man is doing those things as well, he is also having another experience: he is getting sensory data that they are not. His experience of right now has more data points in it, his mind is fractured, the memory he takes from these moments will be different than any of his family, he will get home and have had a different afternoon. He is thinking, "I'll just do this one thing, answer this one email. I can do both things without anyone noticing." Well, he's wrong.

It is, I guess, an essential characteristic of high powered type A+ Man that he would like to have access to information all the time. If a question occurs to him, he wants to know the answer, he wants it now, he opens his palm and his palm tells him. There is no walking without knowing how far or how fast. “I’m higher than I was” or “I’m warmer than I was” becomes, “We’ve gone up forty feet from the trail head and its ten degrees warmer.” His senses don’t have bars here, I guess.

Type A+ Man has to know for sure right now and he has to compare to last time. He keeps track of how far and how fast. He has an app for accumulated miles that calculates the times, the distances, tells you how many calories you burned, and the weather. It knows how much vitamin D you absorbed, it keeps a record of pounds per square inch on your right knee since the injury and it has a nifty little chart to show you that, based just on the miles you’ve walked since you loaded the app, you are this much closer to walking all the way to the moon. And you know what? It does that automatically just by being on.

Well, now he knows how far he’s come, how fast, how long, how many books he’s read and how many classes he’s taken that might add up to a PhD in literature in which institutions in the United States. But for your average type A+ iPhone carrying executive, that is just not gonna be enough. No, he has to share it now. He has to Twitter and to Facebook, he has to email it to his buddy who is also virtually walking to the moon. And then, after he’s checked the facts, established his prowess, posted and emailed his conclusions and received the comments and return email, he chuckles and shares it with his family.

Only they don’t laugh.

Because none of this has actually happened. To them. They are still on the walk.

Remember the walk?

The iPhone saves, sorts and compares every little thing he has asks it to and gives him a nifty interface. And all that time the experience his family was having on the walk? He missed it. And what did his family learn? He brought along his personal ego boost, his handheld affirmation. His family was simply the jumping off point for a solipsistic tour of cyber credibility that ended with them feeling inadequate and, finally, disconnected. The message is subtle and possibly unintentional: what satisfies the family, what contents them, what they settle for, is just not enough for him. Their conversation doesn’t hold his attention. Their experience of the world is too one-dimensional, their world is too easy, he needs more of a challenge. Not only is he not sharing in their experience, he is not sharing in it because it is inadequate. How can they help but wonder if they are also inadequate in his sight? The app for that is called iSolation.

And iSolation leads into dangerous territory: we can easily go from "my only friends are virtual" to "I have no friends." Feelings of isolation are always among the list of characteristics in the case of a suicide... or of a Fort Hood type shooting. Isolation need not be imposed from the outside, we can choose it ourselves, we can opt into it.

There is much that is wonderful about this new handheld technology. It is indeed delightful to have a phone/radio/television/DVDplayer/Camera/Personal Computer/GPS at your fingertips. It enables us to use our time SO much more efficiently: we get work done faster, we respond sooner, we know now and we are through finished and done. But then what?

We have to be able to go from interface to face-to-face. We have to look up. This is different from "look it up:" we don't "Google it" we "make eye contact with it;" we don't "chat" with IM language, we chat, as in over coffee; we don't use a browser, we browse a bookshelf. Society requires socializing, if you doubt me, ask yourself why emoticons were invented: we can't communicate without facial expression.

This is the age old quandary of who to feel sorry for: for the family that experiences the absent/present member, or for the person who voluntarily isolates himself with an addiction he can't see and can't control. It's cool, its in, you're so lame if you don't, but its not heroin, its not crack. In an odd way, it is a more honest representation of the fact: it is your pilot. Ask yourself, when did you surrender the wheel?

Entering the Fold through the Lobby.

U.S. Catholic bishops are defending their direct involvement in congressional deliberations over health-care reform, saying that church leaders have a duty to raise moral concerns on any issue, including abortion rights and health care for the poor. Do you agree? What role should religious leaders have -- or not have -- in government policymaking?

It is horrifying to see the Catholic Church attempting to influence the outcome of legislation being formulated in Democratic government. Not because it violates the separation of Church and State, but because it reduces the church to a special interest group. The Catholic Church represents hope to its members, faith in the goodness and rightness of God's creation and the power to bring about that Kingdom through action. Lobbyists obviate the representative structure of our Democratic system to privilege a special interest for which the voters could not get sufficiently excited to vote. The Church says, "You can, indeed you must be proactive in making the change you seek to see in the world." The Lobbyists tell us, "Elect whoever you want, we can change their minds once they get here." By lobbying congress on behalf of their concerns, U.S. Catholic Bishops have said, "pay no attention to the actions of Catholic voters, we are the voice of the Church." They have demonstrated a lack of faith in the Democratic system, in the transformative power of faith, and in their congregations.

The Church has the power to work the system for change, it always has had, and on a scale that any lobbyist would kill for. Where a lobbyist can influence one legislator on one vote on one issue, the Church empowers its masses to make Christian choices with every step they take, every dime they spend and with every vote they cast on every issue and in every election.Where the Church is able to effect a groundswell of public action that transforms the face of politics and policy to reflect the constituents' beliefs...that is both a Christian and a Democratic dream. And a lobbyist's nightmare.

Catholic voters, in theory, know what to do. They know where the Church stands on issues of abortion and end-of-life counseling. In theory they have heard the Church's position from the lips of their Priests, they see evidence of it in their scripture, and they cleave to it as the foundation for their decision making. In theory they have voted into office representatives who will speak for them in this as well as all other issues. But even if they don't, in theory it won't matter because the template that guides these Catholics will keep them from needing abortion services and have a position on end-of-life care.

But the fact that there are Catholic Bishops lobbying the Congress over this bill tells us that theory is not proving out in practice. Possibly, Catholic voters didn't get out in big enough numbers to elect representatives who will reflect their beliefs. Possibly they didn't vote for people who reflect their beliefs. Possibly they aren't involved enough in church to know what position to vote for in the first place. In any case, the Catholic church has failed in its calling: its has not brought the faithful into the fold, it has not motivated them to live and vote to bring about the Kingdom, and it has not created in them a moral code that makes the health care reform debate irrelevant to them. That is the problem. The solution is not to by-pass the people. The solution is not to impose the moral code from the top down. Jesus did not throw in with Rome in order to change the ills of the society he preached to.

Where Jesus saw corruption, he preached righteousness. Where he saw iniquity, he preached justice. But he had faith in the Gospel and int he power of his flock to effect the change not by obviating the law but by fulfilling it. Therefore, I say to the well meaning but errant Bishops on Capital Hill: go back to your churches, back to your Scripture and back to your congregations because they are the Church. "Very truly I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit." (John 10:1)

A Detainee by Any Other Name

The New York Times reports that the governor of Illinois has offered up an empty prison outside of Illinois' Quad Cities as a possible alternative location for the prisoners at Guantanamo. Currently, the prisoners Guantanamo reside in inferior temporary housing. Meanwhile, in the heartland of America, a high security prison sits virtually empty. Oh, I beg your pardon, they are "terrorism suspects." And they are "housed" not imprisoned. The argument made by the Governor is that it would be an economic boost to the town in tough times. But there is a great deal more at stake here, and a great deal more to be gained from the move, for all of us.

While we hold these individuals in custody on an island thousands of miles from our homes, it is easy to vilify them, to dehumanize them and ultimately to forget about them completely. If they were here, even behind the seemingly impenetrable walls of a super max prison, we would be taking a small step back toward the humanity we so profoundly believe in, that we hope for on the part of our own soldiers at war and of which, I am afraid, we have completely lost sight in this case.

But we have a tendency to loose sight of things in a cloud of language and spin. When we went into Korea, it was a "police action" but the soldiers who were boots on the ground knew knew it was a War. When the pink slip arrives on your desk your company may be "right sizing" but you know you're out of a job. So we call these people "detainees." We don't want to call them prisoners because prisoners enjoy the privilege of at least a framework of rights and protections. Detainees do not. And in fact we can't call them prisoners because they haven't been tried, found guilty and sentenced. So we use the word "detainee" rather than "prisoner" because it sounds temporary, it sounds like an inconvenience. One is "detained" while the flight attendant retrieves the bag you left under your seat. One is "held prisoner" when one's spouse and children thousands of miles away, wait endlessly with no communication or promise of release .

Certainly, being "housed" in a "facility" that is designed for that purpose is a step in the right direction for the "guests of Uncle Sam" formerly "boarded" in ramshackle cells on Gitmo. But there would be a significant advantage to their captors, as well, that extends far beyond the boundaries of Thomson, Illinois. Prison guards, cooks and sanitation workers, construction workers, drivers and everyone else who comes in contact with the prisoners will be touched by them. These are no longer out of focus faces in the background of the news. They are men who look like men you know. Once you've made eye contact with a person, it is more difficult to imagine endorsing his simulated drowning. If your spouse comes home and tells you about one or to of the guys behind bars, its harder to stomach the fact that he has untreated TB. And if we see them as humans, and as humans under our care, then are we not more likely to treat them as humans? And if we treat them as humans, and they ultimately get out and report on the treatment, is it not better than tales of torture and deprivation? And if they take those better stories back to their families and their countries, then when a U.S. soldier is "detained" by a foreign government, have we not increased the likelihood that she will come home safe and sound and not the worse for her "detention"?

I confess that this is uncharacteristically inflamed rhetoric for me. I apologize, I am just frustrated by what seems to me to be the trampling of a very basic principle of what it means to be a nation based on inalienable rights, a signatory to the Geneva Convention, and a person made in the image of God. It comes down to an issue of "Us or Them." When we ask ourselves, how should we proceed, the answer is often so simple, and yet so very difficult to achieve. We should do unto Them as we would have Them do unto Us.

..and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ He said to him, ‘ “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” (Matt 22:35-39)

You are What You Do... but not for a living.

This week the New York Times ran a front page story about the adverse effects on family life when a parent loses his job or remains unemployed for a substantial length of time. Several studies cited in the article found that in these cases the out of work parent takes a severe hit to his self-esteem, becomes emotionally remote from his family and his family relationships are strained to the breaking point. Children growing up in this environment, it seems, suffer from the stress over the course of their whole lives in both academic and professional performance. Significantly, it is the parent’s stress and emotional distance that affects the children in this way, not the financial impact. In short, we fail our children not when we unexpectedly lose our jobs but when we intentionally turn away from our families with a false smile and assurance.

The tragedy is that there is no reason to do that. Families existed long before job markets, depressions and unemployment. In fact, I would argue, families exist because of the stresses and demands of the world. And families are, at the end of the day, the only antidote, as well.

When we are stressed, when we are insecure or feel out of control of our environment, it is a basic human need to turn to a trusted friend or loved one for support. As children we climb into our parents’ laps when we are hurt. As adults we may get a hug from a friend or a lover. We shake hands and pat shoulders and say with a shake of our head, “That sucks.” We take comfort from these gestures, but we aren’t fixed. Our knee is still skinned, our heart is still broken or we are still out of a job. We are still loved, we are still valued. No part of who we are as people has been damaged beyond repair. But we feel better.

And there is something in it for the family member who consoles us as well. At a time when there is awfully, painfully and profoundly nothing to be done, they can take an action. They can say the words and make the gestures that help alleviate their own stress as well as ours. They get a chance to say aloud that these things don’t change how they feel about you; they don’t alter who you are in their eyes. And they are themselves comforted in knowing that if their positions were reversed, the same would be true of them.

It is when we internalize our stress that we damage ourselves and our families. We fear that they will think less of us for losing our position, while at the same time preventing them from allaying our insecurities. We fear that they think of us only or primarily as a breadwinner, but by closing them off from the realities of our lives, we give them very little more information to go on. When job loss makes it seem as though everything is crumbling down, the supportive arms of our families and friends can prevent us from being crushed.

The research cited in the New York Times piece indicated that children felt stress when their family dynamics were altered. They could plainly see their Dad at home and their Mom going off to work. They are not unaware of the cancelled family vacation. They feel, as do their parents, powerless and insecure. When we repress our stress and don’t talk about it with them, we deprive them of a chance to do something, even if it’s just giving a hug. When we withhold the truth from them, we deprive them of that little fraction of control that comes from being informed. We are telling them we have no faith in them; that they have failed in their jobs as our cheering section.

However, when we are honest about our feelings and our fears, we teach them something else entirely. We are telling them that we are not defined by our job or our income and we give them permission to be defined not by their test scores or the spiffiness of their cell phones. Most importantly, however, we are teaching them confidence. We trust them with our own insecurities; we cleave together when times are tough. Our membership in this family is more important, more resilient, and ultimately, more enduring than anything the outside world can bring on. We are telling them that love trumps fear.

All of the world’s great faiths are communal. We are not meant to bravely soldier on in isolation. Judaism and Islam originated in tribal families. Christ tells us that wherever two or more of us are gathered, there is love. And while we know what Christ, Moses, and Mohammed were trained to do for a living, it is for the way they loved their communities that we remember them.

Can you Be All You Can Be and be Muslim?

The Fort Hood shootings have raised questions again about how the military should handle the personal religious beliefs of its soldiers, whether they are evangelical Christians, Muslims, Wiccans, and so on. What is the proper role of religion -- and personal religious belief -- in the U.S. armed forces? Should a particular religious affiliation disqualify someone from active military service? How far should the military go to accommodate personal religious beliefs and practices?

The heart of this question is “can I trust a person of another faith to cover my back in battle”? Is there something in their religious text, in their beliefs or their practice that will prevent them from doing their job in battle? Or, in the reverse, if I know the soldier goes to the same church as me can I trust him more? In short, is he loyal first to his faith or to his country?

The answer is: neither, he’s loyal to his buddy.

Snappy recruiting slogans aside, long standing research has proven that in the heat of a firefight there is no such thing as an Army of One and that is intentional. From the day they are recruited, soldiers are trained to be part of a team. Over the course of their training they are subjected to rigors and abuses, sacrifice and exhaustion, and they emerge as a cohesive unit bonded by that transformational experience. They are “brothers in arms.” When this team is deployed, when they are under fire, they see not “a Jewish person” or “a Republican” being fired on, but a guy they’ve bled and sweat with, a guy they are committed to, a guy they can count on and who is counting on them.

And that’s a good thing because in that moment, they are no longer soldiers whose individuality has been sublimated to the needs of the unit and who are meticulously machined into interchangeable uniformity. In that moment, they are Human.

There’s nothing new in this. We all know that the path to tolerance and acceptance is paved one friendship at a time. When we move from generalizations to personal relationships, we recover our humanity. My children recently saw television footage of a raid on what the voice-over said was “the house of a Muslim.” The mother and children in that home were terrified and crying and my own children responded in kind. “That could be Fakhra,” they said referring to a family friend of ours, “those could be her sons.”

We ask ourselves to what degree we should make accommodations for religious freedom in our military. The answer is “as far as possible.” This is our military, after all. It goes into foreign countries under our flag, it should represent our beliefs, including, literally at the top of the list, religious freedom. Because it is right, because it is humane, because an awful lot of the time it is what these brave men and women are fighting for.

There is a responsibility that comes with being created in “the image of God.” It is a responsibility to be righteous and go to war to protect the weak and preserve the good. It is a responsibility to be faithful, to look deeply at our motivation to be sure it stems from our beliefs. But most critically of all, it requires compassion: love for our fellow man and sacrifice for him if need be. It is in that sacrifice that we can finally “be all we can be.”

“What can I expect?”

Proposed health-care reform legislation includes a provision that allows Medicare to pay for "end-of-life" counseling for seniors and their families who request it. The provision -- which Sarah Palin erroneously described as "death panels" for seniors -- nearly derailed President Obama's health-care initiative. Some Republicans still argue that the provision would ration health care for the elderly.

Does end-of-life care prolong life or does it prolong suffering? Should it be a part of health-care reform?

“What can I expect?”

The critical issues at the end of a person’s life are dignity, compassion and respect. “End-of-Life” counseling is no more or less than a treatment option. To withhold information about a treatment option is disrespectful, demonstrates an appalling lack of compassion and ultimately deprives her of her dignity.

When any one of us goes to the doctor for almost any reason, the question we are asking is: “What can I expect?” If the answer is that we will get better over time or that we need treatment to get better, we ask again: “Then what can I expect?” And if the answer to that first question is, “You won’t get better” even then we find ourselves asking: “Then what can I expect?” Because it is our treatment path, we believe that our question should be dignified with an answer and that our wishes should be respected. We call this informed decision making and it is based on the elemental principle of respect.

Everyone has a right to know what their doctor knows about their condition. Say your doctor knows you have cancer. She must tell you, even if she thinks it will upset you, even if she is sure you won’t treat it, even if she knows you can’t afford treatment, she is duty bound to tell you what your options are. But let’s say your doctor knows the gender of the baby you’re carrying. You can instruct her to keep that information from you. That, again, is a decision she must respect.

If this all seems obvious to you, that’s because it has been public policy for years. Medicare already pays for Hospice care when families and patients request it. Medical professionals, clergy and social workers are paid by Federal funds in those cases. Hospice care, like any other medical procedure, can be declined by the patient or those speaking on her behalf. And we don’t call it a death panel, we call it compassion.

The essential element of end-of-life treatment is that, to the highest degree possible, it adhere to the patient’s individual desires. Our government, our insurance companies, our employers, our clergy and sometimes even our family may think they know what is best for us, they may be motivated by the most genuine desire to do what is right. But, as a 94 year old Rabbi recently told me, “In such a case, I do not want you to do what’s right. I want you to do what I tell you.”

This same Rabbi told me a story which is worth telling here. An ancient and well respected Rabbi of the second century was ill and close to dying. In keeping with the belief that only God decides when life should end, his students stood around his bed day and night and prayed for him and their prayers kept him alive. Day and night he lingered on and on. Then one day his dearly beloved nurse, who was not Jewish but who had served him faithfully for years, walked into the Rabbi’s bedroom, picked up a very expensive lamp and smashed it to the ground. The praying men were startled into silence and the Rabbi was permitted to slip away… with dignity, compassion and respect.