Rigid Boxes
As I mentioned, I’ve been reading a lot of good sense in Anthony Appiah’s book, and here’s some related good sense from Amartya Sen. The identity two-step.
What we ought to take very seriously is the way Islamic identity, in this sort of depiction, is assumed to drown, if only implicitly, all other affiliations, priorities, and pursuits that a Muslim person may have. A person belongs to many different groups, of which a religious affiliation is only one…[T]o give an automatic priority to the Islamic identity of a Muslim person in order to understand his or her role in the civil society, or in the literary world, or in creative work in arts and science, can result in profound misunderstanding.
Or to the Catholic identity of a Catholic person or the Hindu identity of a Hindu person, and so on. But it’s such a common move. We could call it the Bunting move. (But that would be unkind. Only she’s been so chatty lately.)
The increasing tendency to overlook the many identities that any human being has and to try to classify individuals according to a single allegedly pre-eminent religious identity is an intellectual confusion that can animate dangerous divisiveness. An Islamist instigator of violence against infidels may want Muslims to forget that they have any identity other than being Islamic. What is surprising is that those who would like to quell that violence promote, in effect, the same intellectual disorientation by seeing Muslims primarily as members of an Islamic world. The world is made much more incendiary by the advocacy and popularity of single-dimensional categorization of human beings, which combines haziness of vision with increased scope for the exploitation of that haze by the champions of violence.
Could not possibly agree more. So why is it such a common move, one wonders. Habit? Partly. People seem to be in the habit of thinking that’s a ‘progressive’ and kind and sympathetic way of looking at things. It’s time to break that habit, folks.
In fact, of course, the people of the world can be classified according to many other partitions, each of which has some—often far-reaching—relevance in our lives: nationalities, locations, classes, occupations, social status, languages, politics, and many others. While religious categories have received much airing in recent years, they cannot be presumed to obliterate other distinctions, and even less can they be seen as the only relevant system of classifying people across the globe. In partitioning the population of the world into those belonging to “the Islamic world,” “the Western world,” “the Hindu world,” “the Buddhist world,” the divisive power of classificatory priority is implicitly used to place people firmly inside a unique set of rigid boxes. Other divisions (say, between the rich and the poor, between members of different classes and occupations, between people of different politics, between distinct nationalities and residential locations, between language groups, etc.) are all submerged by this allegedly primal way of seeing the differences between people.
Those rigid boxes – how I hate those rigid boxes. How I hate the way we all keep being shoved into them.
To focus just on the grand religious classification is not only to miss other significant concerns and ideas that move people. It also has the effect of generally magnifying the voice of religious authority. The Muslim clerics, for example, are then treated as the ex officio spokesmen for the so-called Islamic world, even though a great many people who happen to be Muslim by religion have profound differences with what is proposed by one mullah or another.
Oh, just read the article. It’s one of those ones where I want to quote great chunks, and that’s copyright violation, and you can just read it anyway. It’s great stuff.
While agreeing on Sen’s critique of our habit of group-think, I am not quite sure I follow him (and a number of others) WRT to the Motoons.
Apparently the figure with the bomb/turban have been one of the most heavily critisized. And according to some critics, that particular picture alludes that all muslims are terrorists. I disagree. To me (at least) that carricature is not about muslims as such, but about M. himself. I must confess when reading the hadiths and looking at M.’s modus operandi some 1400 years ago, I would tend to believe the artist in fact has made a rather credible depiction of M. (What role he might have taken if living today). Some will then claim that this is gratuitously offensive, as M. is the “perfect” model for many muslims. To the latter I would answer yes indeed, but unfortunately it is ostensibly too many who seems to have found inspiration in the Quran and M.’s life to carry out actions most others will find revoltingly wrong.
A.Jelmert
“it is ostensibly too many who seems to have found inspiration in the Quran and M.’s life to carry out actions most others will find revoltingly wrong.”
And that’s another possible way to read the cartoon – as alluding to the way the people who carry out such actions justify them by citing the prophet; thus not an attack on all Muslims nor on the prophet.
But, to be fair, that’s probably not the most obvious reading.
OB writes, “So why is it such a common move, one wonders.”
It’s a common move for political and religious demagogues because it works. And it will continue to work as long as enough of the people who listen to them continue to believe that religion must be the overriding element in anyone’s identity.
Or, sadly, as long as enough of the people continue to be too frightened of what might happen to them if they say publicly that their religion is not the overriding element of their identity.
Results of a recent poll seem to show that in the US any religion is better than no religion. Researchers concluded: “Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in ‘sharing their vision of American society.’ Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.”
On rereading the third para above, I see I may have committed an ambiguity; it should read:
Or, sadly, as long as enough of the people who listen to them continue to be too frightened of what might happen to them if they say publicly that their religion is not the overriding element of their identity.
I have the deepest respect for Sen, especially because of his sustained insistence that reason and tolerance are not European inventions. I also agree that it is one dimensional to view the identitity of individuals entirely in terms of their religion. However…I cannot help but concede that when the religion in question involves claims and demands that trump all others, something weird happens to identity. When it is an allegedly supreme being who is worshipped and when the supposedly eternal destiny of the individual and the providentially guided history of the world is claimed to be at the mercy of this supreme being, it should not suprise us that being a Muslim or Christian or religious Jew overrides all other affiliations. An allegedly transcendent and eternal identity trumps all others. How could it be otherwise, even if we wish it were? Thus, the only thing we can hope for is that the “supreme being worshippers” either interpret their religion in a way that makes it relatively harmless (e.g., Anglicanism, reformed Judaism), or that they not take it seriously and enjoy putting on the personae of other identities once in a while.
Another bash at Godwin’s law…
JonJ writes:
“As much as some of us dislike religion, we must admit Muslims in general are no Nazis; most of them are common, ordinary people trying to lead their lives as best as possible in this sorrowful world, like the rest of us. They have a very legitimate complaint, it seems to me, that Western media are portraying all of them as fanatic bombers.”
“As much as some of us dislike totalitarianism, we must admit pre-war Germans in general were no Nazis; most of them were common, ordinary people trying to lead their lives as best as possible in this sorrowful world, like the rest of us. They had a very legitimate complaint, it seems to me, that Western media were portraying all of them as fanatic anti-semites.”
Interesting points, Juan. You capture some of what I was thinking earlier but was too lazy to post. Is Islam so all-cosuming and demanding system that liberal Islam is not really possible? How can an all encompassing, complete world view deal with contradictions, problems, or conflicts with other, equally sure world views?
Islamic Apologetics: a good summary here written by a “moderate” Muslim.
http://www.docstrangelove.com/
“There are two kinds of Muslims, Muslims, and fanatics”
Strong emphasis on voluntary religions, no mediation between Man and Allah, etc. Interesting respose to Sam Harris et al. Not sure about how convincing it is, given the real world results of Islamic states.