Trump 2016: The View from Islamic Studies

By Professor Ilyse Morgenstein-Fuerst 

It’s no secret that Donald Trump ran a campaign that stoked Islamophobic sentiments (in addition, of course, to anti-immigrantanti-Mexicanmisogynisticableist and homophobic rhetorics and staff picks). In the few weeks since the election, we have seen Trump name members of his cabinet who espouse patently and expressly anti-Muslim positions. What seems to have surprised many around the country, however, are the ways in which hate crimes—and Islamophobic or anti-Muslim hate crimes—have seemed to tick upward since the November 8 presidential election. The Southern Poverty Law Center, for example, reported on November 29 that they had tracked over 860 hate-related crimes since the election. Of these, roughly 6% (or ~54 incidents) were against Muslims or those perceived to be Muslims; additionally, Muslim women who choose to veil are at particular risk, given the public ways in which their religious identities are marked. Campuses—assumed to be both liberal havens and safe spaces by many—are not immune to post-Trump increases in harassment and violence against people of color, Muslims, Jews, LBGT+ and other minorities

These issues of violence and harassment, especially as part of campus, are tied up with white supremacy, racisms, and a now-longstanding process of labeling Muslims and Islam as a problem with which to be dealt. As far as how this effects Islamic studies, from conversations at international conferences, digitally, and in person, it is clear that many of us who study Islam have been called upon to talk with the media, offer sessions for students, join panels on our campuses, and write articles—scholarly and popular alike. In other words, as scholars of Islam, it is clear that in a moment of heightened Islamophobia, our expertise is in high demand. As teachers, it is similarly clear that we have been and will continue to be asked to tailor our syllabi to student interest (what *is* Islam, anyway?) as well as public need (let’s unlearn some of the stereotypes that contribute to Islamophobia). Personally, I’ll be on a panel in the spring for Blackboard Jungle and talking about Islamophobia; my REL30: Introducing Islam will specifically and methodically address anti-Muslim rhetoric in historic contexts and today, instead of just referencing it as we go. Moreover, as a scholar-teacher and as an advisor, I have seen the traffic in my office increase in manifold ways to students of color and of minority religious traditions, some hoping to talk through their experiences, others looking for scholarly resources, and others still seeking a safe space in which to talk about bias incidents or fears about racism and prejudice on campus.

Pan-Indigenous Pipeline Religion

By Professor Todne Thomas Chipumuro

In my introductory Religion and Globalization course, our final unit explores what anthropologist Thomas Csordas terms “pan-indigenous religion” or “the surprising juxtapositions…[that] take place at the initiative of those…whose agency and ability to give voice the dominant society is still reluctant to acknowledge” (2007, 263).[1] Our intellectual journey has included a discussion of how pan-indigenous religion and the (anti-globalization) protest religion of Rastafarianism facilitate the formation of ecumenical solidarities that are built upon shared experiences of colonialism, racialization, and ethnocide and similar struggles against impoverishment and marginalization that are precipitated by neocolonialism. In class on Thursday, December 1, in student group presentations about indigenous reggae, students made their own connections between our discussions of global indigenous struggles and the contemporary events surrounding the Dakota access pipeline. In particular, they noticed the paradoxical ways in which globalization fuels the global capitalism and inequalities that make the pipeline appear a feasible economic development strategy while simultaneously underlining the shared terrain in which pan-indigenous solidarities can be expressed and performed in and around the activist at Standing Rock. To provide a contemporary example of how pan-indigenous solidarities are being expressed, I screened a short video that depicts Kereame Te Ua and Maori women performing haka—a Maori life-cycle and war ritual—on the front lines of the Standing Rock camp on Thanksgiving Day. It is my hope that we will all continue to use the classroom, informal, and undercommons spaces to learn, teach, and converse about our contemporary moment and birth emergent solidarities for our collective liberation.

[1] Csordas, Thomas. Introduction: Modalities of Transnational Transcendence. Anthropological Theory (2007): 259-272.

What now? Scholarly Work in the Wake of Trump’s Election

By Professor Vicki L. Brennan

In the days following the election I felt as though I were in a fog, upset about what seemed to be a validation of the role that misogyny and racism had played in the election, anxious about what a Trump presidency would mean for the United States and the world more generally, and unsure about what I could or even should do to respond to and act on any of this. I joined the ranks of many who made donations to nonprofit organizations. I vowed to make my own political commitments more clear and also to avoid the insularity and negativity found on social media sites. But still, I wondered (and still do): What now? What role do we as scholars have to play in Trump’s America? These questions seem especially vital given both the nature of our expertise (see my colleagues comments above for evidence of that) but also due to the fact that our expertise seems less valued and respected than ever before in a supposedly “post-fact” world.

Scholars of religion are responding in a number of ways. What follows are links to statements, op-eds, and analyses that have appeared in the weeks since the election that provide some answers to the question: “What now?”

Disciplinary Resolutions and Statements: The annual meetings of scholarly organizations most relevant to my own research and teaching interests took place soon after the election; the American Anthropological Association meeting from November 16-20; the American Academy of Religion from November 19-22; and the African Studies Association from December 1-3. I decided to stay home this year, so I viewed the meetings from a distance, via text messages from friends, live-tweeting feeds, and blog posts made by those in attendance. Based on these observations, it seems that for many these meetings were sites for the building of solidarity and plans for action.

A number of the scholarly associations with which members of our department are associated issued resolutions or statements in response to the election:

Op-Eds, Blog posts, and other Analyses: Scholars of religion have also been publishing their takes on the election in a variety of venues. These are just a few of the things I have found useful for understanding the role that religion played in the election, the impact that a Trump presidency might have on religious communities in the United States, as well as possible answers to the question: What do we do now?

Omid Safi writes about how to respond to hatred with love at On Being, and uses the iconic film Star Wars as a potential guide to our action:

Somehow our means and our ends have to be consistent. We can’t hate our way out of Trump. There is still the need for love, for love to move into the public spaces. There is still the need for that love to be called justice when it is public, and for that same love to be tenderness when it moves inward. In confronting the Dark Side, let us never turn to the Dark Side. Let us not become the very quality we so despise.

In the days since the election, various lines from Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon have been echoing in my mind–certainly his observation that history repeats itself “first as tragedy, the second time as farce”–but more crucially his reminder that we live in a world that has already been shaped by historical forces:

Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.

Historians have much to offer to our understanding of our own time, how we got here, and how we might move forward. For an example of how historians of religion are responding to Trump’s election see: Kelly J. Baker in the NY Times on the alt-right, the KKK, and white-collar Supremacy. The bloggers at Religion in American History have also made a number of posts on the election, including one by Elesha Coffman on conservatism in the 1980s and how it relates (or doesn’t) to the current moment and another by Janine Giordano Drake on the Federalist papers and the electoral college.

With the nod to Marx we might also note the need to fully comprehend the role that economics–and particularly the rise of inequality globally–played in the US election. Cornel West writes on the end of American neoliberalism:

What is to be done? First we must try to tell the truth and a condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak. For 40 years, neoliberals lived in a world of denial and indifference to the suffering of poor and working people and obsessed with the spectacle of success. Second we must bear witness to justice. We must ground our truth-telling in a willingness to suffer and sacrifice as we resist domination. Third we must remember courageous exemplars like Martin Luther King Jr, who provide moral and spiritual inspiration as we build multiracial alliances to combat poverty and xenophobia, Wall Street crimes and war crimes, global warming and police abuse – and to protect precious rights and liberties.

For those of us who want to integrate these historical lessons into our classes, Savage Minds includes a link to the Trump 2.0 syllabus in their round-up of materials on how to teach the current moment.

As scholars we need to be able to speak to the questions of truth, facts, and reason that have emerged in the wake of Trump’s rise. I hope to write about this issue in more depth in the future, since questions of religious “truth” and cultural forms of knowledge lie at the center of my research and teaching. For now, here are links to two articles that I find thought-provoking at this time: First, Biella Coleman discusses politics, performativity, truth, and lies in a post that offers a possible role that scholars who analyze religion might play in addressing our current crisis

Fake is only fake if you’ve bought into a notion of the real. And the question of what is real is even more urgent and vexed today. But theory and scholarship won’t get us out of this predicament. What we need is a pragmatic practice that recognizes the centrality of fantasy, emotions, fiction, performance, and myth for politics and political messaging.

And finally, Chimamanda Adichie reminds us that “Now is the time to talk about what we are actually talking about” on the website for the New Yorker:

Now is the time to counter lies with facts, repeatedly and unflaggingly, while also proclaiming the greater truths: of our equal humanity, of decency, of compassion. Every precious ideal must be reiterated, every obvious argument made, because an ugly idea left unchallenged begins to turn the color of normal. It does not have to be like this.

Reblog: Prof. Todne Thomas (Chipumuro) in the September issue of Anthropology News

New newspaper column written by Professor Todne Thomas (Chipumuro) on a black church burning in Knoxville, TN for the online September issue of Anthropology News. 

Read it here: When a Black Church Burns (But not to the Ground) by Prof. Todne Thomas (Chipumuro) Screen Shot 2015-09-18 at 4.48.57 PM

Primary Sources: Reading President Carter’s talk at the AAR

Every year, over the weekend before Thanksgiving, scholars of religion gather for the annual American Academy of Religion (and concurrent Society of Biblical Literature) meetings. It is usually a zoo: networking, papers, panels, interviews, plenary sessions, reunions, and more for nearly 10,000 scholars, whose expertise varies from Biblical hermeneutics to critical theories to Islam to post-secular ritual and more. Despite a long history, and many important moments in scholarly production, this year marked a true first: a former president of the United States addressed the conference attendees. As a historian who deals, in bulk, with archives and documents, President Jimmy Carter’s talk turned out to be a fascinating, rich, and valuable primary source.

President Carter has a new book out–A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power–and ostensibly, found the AAR/SBL annual meetings a good place to talk about (and sell the results of) his findings. He presented a talk entitled “The Role of Religion in Mediating Conflicts and Imagining Futures: The Cases of Climate Change and Equality for Women.”

As a scholar of Islam, I was suspicious of this talk, to be honest; I wanted to see a former president speak, but I wasn’t sure what, if anything, would come of it. After all, a Sunday school teacher, an active and evangelical Christian, and, yes, former POTUS talking about religion and violence against women (with an addendum of climate change) reeked of a certain paternalism, perhaps even a lurking Orientalist set of assumptions–we Americans know about the appropriate treatment of women; those (Muslim?) foreign folks, in far-flung lands, do not.

photo 1

POTUS Carter, as seen on screen from the crowd.

My suspicions weren’t entirely grounded, it turned out. Carter did espouse a particular set of paternalist and patriarchal assumptions–i.e., he called for the protection of women by men, and called for men to step up to this specific challenge, without citing women or girls who already do this work or whose movements we might look to for models.  And, yes, he opened his talk by discussing violence against women “over there,” by an assumed Muslim population: genital mutilation, the Taliban’s ban on girls attending school, child marriage. But then, bluntly, he addressed this crowd of scholars by saying: “If you think these aren’t our problems, you’re wrong.”

With that and what immediately followed, he proved that I was wrong to have assumed a monolithic dismissal of non-American or non-Western cultural practices or an abundantly rosy view of America or the West. He listed statistics about sexual assaults on university campuses and in the military. He cited women’s unequal pay for equal work. He blasted Atlanta, where his own center is located, as the nation’s largest hub for human trafficking. He lingered on human trafficking, though Carter refused to call it by its “euphemistic label,” and instead called it slavery. And then, President Carter claimed that there are more slaves–more trafficked humans–in today’s America than at the height of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. With oratory aplomb, he let that sit; and then, he continued on to link what he called the degradation of women and girls to issues of race and racism, briefly mentioning the then-unfolding decision in Ferguson.

While Carter did not address climate change or the environment at length in his prepared (though, for the record, extemporaneously delivered) remarks, the Q&A that followed focused on his (religious) sense of environmentalism, highlighting policies he created in office and asking him to reflect on the relationships between violence against women and nature. He suggested that women and girls would be hardest hit by climate change, as they tend to be in most natural or man-made crises.

Women, girls and the environment. But, what about religion, you ask? That’s the most fascinating part of all. President Carter asked for action not on the basis of American superiority, though that was part of it. He asked, in this talk anyway, for action on the basis of reading scripture correctly. His talk was a primary source document: it demonstrated world problems, to be sure, but then asked the audience to solve those problems using appropriately read and meaningfully interpreted theology. It was a lived exercise in progressive evangelism and liberal theology. To use the language of pedagogy, President Carter described problems but prescribed (generally) a solution: rereading scripture and correcting misinterpretation.

To his eye, misinterpretation of holy scriptures–Christian, Jewish, or Islamic, here–was at fault for systems that support violence against women, girls and the environment. Carter was asked if religion might be an obstacle to achieving his stated goals; couldn’t religion and religious texts be used to prop up the systems he critiques? And in reply, he offered classic theological interpretation, saying, “They [opponents] can find some verse in the Bible to support their misinterpretation.”

Of course, he doesn’t see his own interpretations–that women and girls are equal, that the environment is entrusted to humanity by God–as misinterpretation. He sees them as accurate, based upon deep reading, deep commitment, and, as he put it, his sense that he “serves the Prince of peace.”

His talk begs countless questions. What Christianity or textual interpretation does he envision as especially correct–is it just his, is it his community’s, or something else altogether? Does he envision limitations in non-male, non-white, non-Christian settings to an approach that values (Christian) liberal theology? If climate, gender, sex, race, class, and religion are so imbricated–as he suggested at various points–how might his solution(s) address these both various and intersecting sets of issues? How might his suggestion of “reading better” work against his calls for peace, environmentalism, equality, and justice?

It was a scholarly treasure trove, as primary source texts often are, which is why his talk was exciting: as a scholar of religion, I had the opportunity to listen to the former leader of the United States actively offer biblical exegesis in light of current issues, and do so in such a way that critiqued various (American) political administrations, (largely Christian) textual interpretations, and ethical and moral commitments (of political and religious institutions and persons). And reading his talk as a primary source is crucial. By doing so, analyzing what he says in its contexts leaves room to critique issues in his comments like paternalism, heavy-handed prescriptive Christian religion, and privilege of various stripes, while also preserving his talk as an example of a set of discourses.