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[6 posts]Why We've Got to Understand— Or Try To
Throughout this course, especially following our module’s discussion with Fatima Seedat and after reading Charles Taylor’s “Conditions of an Unforced Consensus on Human Rights,” one thing has become quite clear to me: no matter how foreign a practice, or how blatantly it conflicts with one's own ideas of human rights and justice, we must not condemn and alienate religious traditions themselves.
This is not to say that vulgar human rights violations should go unchallenged — by all means, abusive practices that defy universal norms and violate individual dignity and security must be stopped — but rather, that pointing the finger at entire religious traditions and cultures as the culprits is a grave mistake. As Charles Taylor emphasizes, the search for a consensus on human rights “gets maximally difficult when it comes across as a brutal break with the past involving a condemnation and rejection of it” (140). The “reciprocal shaming” that results from such contempt, so called by Taylor in his lecture on November 7, results in the alienation of other cultures. It is the antithesis of the sympathetic understanding that we seek.
In the spirit of this polyvalent approach, Fatima described how cultural relativism can be beneficial “when credence is given to different ways of doing things.” This is an incredibly important point to make, especially when discussing practices that may seem so foreign to us, such as hijab. I may not have a full understanding of it—nor may I ever—but even recognizing that there is another way of looking at it, and that, for many, it symbolizes something deeply personal and identity-based that I may never understand, is a step in the right direction.
Christian Watkins summarized my view on this issue quite well in his blog post on the Faith & Globalisation Initiative website:
It is not “understanding” as a pure absolute ideal that is important, but the attempt to listen to others, and gain understanding…. One never “understands” anything fully, it is a lifelong process. Therefore, it is not the end point, but the journey, cultivated through relationships, having an open mind, and listening to various voices and traditions that constitutes understanding.
It is for these reasons that dialogue is so utterly important. It is why having Fatima join us on Friday was invaluable; why South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, with all its discussion and truth-seeking mission, was arguably more successful than the Nuremberg Trials in revealing the roots of gross systematic human rights violations and establishing a human rights culture; why, on our very own campus, an open forum on the events of November 10th and underlying student concerns proved so much more productive—and respected by members of administration and faculty—than the chaotic and ultimately violent events of the days before.
As Taylor points out, “perceived external condemnation helps to feed extreme reaction, which calls down further condemnation, and hence further reaction, in a vicious spiral.” Indeed, if the liberation of the oppressed is our goal, antagonizing and further alienating their cultures (by explicitly associating terrorism and oppression with Islam, for example) is certainly no help to these people.
A culture of human rights, in my opinion, depends on two things: a striving for the sort of sympathetic understanding described above, and the participation of the oppressed themselves. The two go hand in hand. After all, if I have come to the conclusion that I will likely never fully understand the meaning of hijab, for example, how can I expect to dictate the meaning of freedom to its wearers? To agree with John Witte Jr., “religious traditions cannot allow secular human rights norms to be imposed on them from without; they must rediscover them from within” (69).
Fatima challenged us with a similar problem: if the goal is to uphold the dignity of individuals, what do you do when a woman says that removing the veil thus removes her dignity? The question was clearly rhetorical; if the veil is a source of dignity, she must be allowed to keep it. To act otherwise would send a clear message: “we know better, and you don’t. We’ll help you to know better.” Now where is the dignity in that?
Comments
Annie states that religious traditions should not be condemned and their adherents alienated, despite how culturally foreign or conflicting with our morality it is. This does not mean human rights violations should be embraced in her opinion, but rather rightfully condemned while not condemning the entire religious tradition and culture. She cites Fatima’s idea of cultural relativism being helpful when we recognize that there are different ways of living over what we consider our own. Understanding is a lifelong process that is done through living and interacting with other people of different cultures and traditions.
Dialogue is essential project rather than condemnation. Condemning the other alienates them and leads to further oppression and violations. To uphold the dignity of the individual, we must be able to keep the dignity of our dialogue partner. To do otherwise is to feed into the cycle of violence and condemnation we seek to end. Annie cites that the dialogue found in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was much more efficacious in revealing human rights violation and promoting human rights culture than the Nuremburg Trials. Rather than immediately condemning the cultural practice, in Annie’s case, the wearing of the hijab, we should allow it to be intact. This would be the best method for retaining dignity while engaging in dialogue to understand and find common points of understanding, as it relates to the overarching project of human rights.
I agree with Annie that dialogue rather than condemnation is necessary for effective understanding between cultures and religion, and for the promotion of the project of promoting human rights and curbing violence. Volf states in Exclusion and Embrace that seeking to get even with the oppressor when oppressed only continues the cycle of violence and hatred. Dialogue as a common project for understanding and eliminating violence seeks to break from the mentality of getting back at the other. Understanding involves seeking justice, but not a flat out condemnation or animosity towards the other as we would find in revenge mentalities.
I would like to extend Annie’s idea beyond merely understanding between religions in the context of violence. Dialogue should be done on even plane between the conversation powers. There should not be one side dominating the conversation. This mistake could be made in the context of Western research of indigenous populations on the Pacific Islands in the 19th Century. By only engaging in dialogue from the Western lens only, the encounter became a mere monologue dominated by cultural norms. This, in some sense, did violence to the cultural and religious traditions of the indigenous islanders. We must avoid having an overly Western or Continental European outlook when we are engaging in dialogue, particularly when speaking of human rights and cultural norms. Otherwise, just as the intellectuals of the 19th Century, we are exacting violence on non-Western traditions by scrutinizing them under a microscope evaluated by Western norms. This would be cultural imperialism. This should not come into play in a truly authentic dialogue, a free exchange of values and ideas.
Annie envisions dialogue as the catalyst for understanding. While this idea should be applauded and will certainly improve the culture of respect among people of different beliefs, I think who engages in the dialogue will be most important in determining the extent of its success. To fill a room in academia with mild-mannered, religiously liberal people will do little. Instead, the people we most need to target are those who will probably be least willing to engage in such a dialogue. Therefore, we need a way to interest the people with whom the discussion might reveal the fundamental chasms among religions and beliefs about human dignity. To be effective in achieving understanding, I also think it necessary to silence the extreme voices within one’s own culture. An insider will have a much better chance of persuading one of their own to be tolerant of an outsider than that outsider will be in convincing that same person.
Often, our prejudices stem from ignorance. When all we know about a religion comes from the extreme actors who, while not representing the majority, still dominate the dialogue, the voices of rationality are drowned out. This just makes more hostile one’s perceptions of the other. And this affects not just society’s most bigoted, but also, even if it’s just subconsciously, nearly all members of society.
Thus, while I agree with Annie, I encourage the dialogue to center not just on those most eager to understand the other, but also those most unwilling to understand the other. And secondly, the dialogue needs to be both inter- and intrareligious in order to achieve real and lasting results.
Annie’s post, which draws on Seedat’s claim to cultural relativism as a key for working towards the expansion of human rights, quite rightly maintains that diverse religions, no matter how foreign of inexplicable they may seem to the outsider, must never be rejected in their totality, even should they allow for some practices which may seem to an observer located within a different cultural context to be unjust. That an outside culture should criticize that which it has not taken the time to understand is, to put it diplomatically, condescending at best. While blatant abuses of human rights should be named as such and confronted by society as a whole, the actual groundwork of fostering a culture of rights in a particular culture and tradition must come from within that context itself.
I agree wholeheartedly with her emphasis on the need to balance the confrontation of injustice with a respect for the culture in question. The reference to the reconciliation project in South Africa is here particularly apt. Indeed, Miroslav Volf highlights this particular example to illustrate the model he puts forth in Exclusion and Embrace. One must, while condemning the wrong committed, make space for the other within oneself to achieve a true reconciliation that does not further fan the flames of animosity, further perpetuating the cycle of violence or oppression.
I agree with the above commenter that dialogue should seek to engage those least inclined to look beyond their own context-those whom Blair would describe as being “closed” rather than “open” in their fundamental orientation to the world. I wonder, however, how one might go about that task, insofar as any engagement on the part of an outsider would often be perceived as an attack on the values of that culture which, as noted by Witte, “cannot allow secular human rights norms to be imposed on them from without.”
Each argument above does seem to have the validity in order to begin to “understand” the world that we live in. Conversations usually begin with discussion about cultures different than our own, but wouldn’t it seem mandatory to understand ours first and foremost. How we respond to cultures other than our own directly relates to how we cooperate and function within a culture completely familiar to us. Some may hold the belief that, as American Christians, we view the world as God has created us too and that should be enough. And I am guiltier of that than most, but we have been given the opportunity to think creatively and expand the view that comes easiest to us. Anthony Weston uses an example to demonstrate a deductive argument but thematically, it is similar to how I believe we should approach culture. He simply states, “If you study other cultures, then you start to realize the variety of human customs. If you start to realize the variety of human customs, then you become more tolerant. Therefore, if you study other cultures, then you become more tolerant.” Through Weston’s reasoning, we see that although it may be over simplified, understanding of culture blossoms into tolerance, not relativity.
Above, Jacob states, “Often, our prejudices stem from ignorance.” I believe wholeheartedly that this is a major source of our misunderstanding of culture and all that that term entails. When we begin to study and comprehend differences in cultures other than our own, we may begin to see the beauty God has designed for all nations. Matthew 28:16-20, the Great Commission, portrays the life of a disciple of Christ: we are to go and make disciples of all nations. Yes, we are to know the Word. Yes, we are to love the Lord with everything we are. But we are called to go, to take action, to begin to learn and to share. Complete understanding of God’s creation is not promised and not explained but we are given the ability to control our thoughts and our actions, our prejudices and our ignorance, in order to glorify God through our weakness (2 Corinthians 2:9).
Shiel states that we must use cultural relativism in striving to understand another culture and that is necessary in order to not strip away the dignity of the very people we are trying to give our own version of dignity. Above, Hannah makes a very valid point that we need to understand our own culture before we can understand another culture. We must recognize our own biases in examining these other cultures so as to be able to appreciate their values. As Basil Mitchell states in Faith and Criticism, we are not neutral beings, we go into every situation with our own preconceived notions and opinions; however, we can still be impartial and listen to the opinions of others and give that argument full consideration. Just because we look to understand a culture from its own perspective does not mean that what is good or what is evil changes. As Shiel notes, we cannot ignore “vulgar human rights violations.” We must be sure though, that we do so in such a way that still grants the culture dignity, for the culture is not evil. Being an American Christian, I hold the belief that Jesus Christ is Lord of all and that includes culture. I also believe though, that culture along with everything else in all creation has fallen from its original purpose to glorify God, but that through Christ it is being redeemed (Colossians 1:15-20). If this is so, we certainly not (as American Christians are especially apt to do) mistake our culture with good and that which is different from what we value as evil. Instead, we must abandon this egocentric view and look for the good and dignity in each culture and recognize the faults in our own.
The imperative Annie Shiel puts before us here is certainly one that I am on board with: a radical embrace of genuinely listening to others. Specifically, I am challenged by the particular direction that Shiel took this imperative. She noted that, "A culture of human rights, in my opinion, depends on two things: a striving for the sort of sympathetic understanding described above, and the participation of the oppressed themselves. The two go hand in hand." I would like to focus in on each of these points.
The first condition outlined here I highlighted above: a renewed sense of humility and openness to genuinely hear the other. One work that I was inspired by in this area was Uday Singh Mehta's Liberalism and Empire, in which he argues that Enlightenment thinking (of the kind that Shiel is advocating against) is too quick to generalize, to draw clear lines and be authoritarian in conceptualizing. Mehta illustrates this through the concept of experience, which he is writing about concerning the British Empire in the 19th century. These liberals, he argued, had an “impoverished conception of experience.” Mehta calls for a fuller understanding of experience, one that rightly captures intersecting segments of reality, as “conversational because it does not presume on the transparency of the unfamiliar nor on a teleology of which it must be a part.” This ‘conversational’ understanding of experience allows for a much richer understanding of the unfamiliar because it presumes that it is just that: unfamiliar. It thus permits the unfamiliar to speak for itself, to define itself and determine its own identity. Because of this incomplete understanding of experience, Mehta goes on to argue that much liberal Enlightenment thinking loses touch with reality. Referencing such ideas as Kant’s construction and Nietzsche’s science or drives, Mehta argues how the Enlightened mind seeks to know the external world by filling in all missing gaps. In doing this, inward thoughts and feelings begin to replace external tension and experience. In this paradigm, “The World is itself nothing: neither does it serve as the soil in which these fictions, interpretations, constructions are anchored; nor does it constitute a model, or an original, that they attempt to mirror.” In doing this, a conversational, complex understanding of experience is replaced by clear, definable abstractions. The ambiguity and tension give way to definition and distinction.
The second point of Shiel's that I would like to focus on is that of "the participation of the oppressed themselves." While I certainly share Shiel's vision in this regard, I perhaps do not share her optimism that this is the most viable possibility to incorporate their interests. Rather, I would nuance her arguement by advocating an in-depth listening to the marginalized, with the intent of being their voice. So, instead of seeing the participation of the oppressed themselves, I would advocate for a participation in the oppression itself by the elites, so that they may better represent the oppressed. As a model for this idea, I am thinking of various Christian organizations that seek to live "incarnationally" among the poor (for more on these kinds of organizations, see Brian Bessenecker's The New Friars). The group need not be religious, but the idea remains the same: through both walking in the shoes of the oppressed as well as establishing genuine solidarity with them, those with a voice will better represent the voiceless. For example, take support of welfare programs in the United States. In his Why Americans Hate Welfare, Martin Gilens demonstrates that - over and above all other factors - the personal experience one has with actually being in poverty will correlate with their support of welfare programs. It is through walking in the shoes of the oppressed - and truly identifying with them - that we will take up their cause.
In taking up Shiel's challenging imperative to genuinely listen to others, I feel that those on top in society must also consider the potential implications of identifying with the oppressed in practice.
I admire Annie's recognition of the complexity that human rights poses for religiously-based dignity. In Toft, Philpott, and Shah's God's Century, the authors propose that rather than proving the "secularization thesis" posed in the past few decades - claiming that the world would trade in religion for modernist thinking and reasoning - the world has actually increased in religiosity, all around. Populations have chosen to unite around various religions in order to seek freedom. That is, people are not just seeking "religious" or "political" freedom, but a sence of "freedom" itself - in religion. This relates to Annie's concern that that the women are demanded to neglect the hajib are robbed of the freedom, and the dignity, granted them by the beauty of belief.
Considering further the effects of globalization, dignity as granted by faith is further complicated. Through globalization, expressions of faith that are unfamiliar to a given region become familiar through access and exposure to international culture flows, or what Appadurai would consider expanding and colliding of ethnoscapes, ideoscapes, and mediascapes (etc.). In this layering process, one may come to find dignity and identity in forms that were hitherto unknown in a region, unsurprisingly causing local conflict. The example of the Muslim woman in France is perfect. The expanding population scapes via globalization landed a belief and culture in a foreign land that was not ready to welcome it: secular France. What this may lead one to ask is: how can we be in touch with the timing of globalization? Are we victim to these seemingly random occurances or random trends of culture flows, or can we be accustomed and promoting of what they bring?
I affirm with Annie Shiel and the above commenters that respect for culture and the pursuit of understanding through dialogue should be embraced and practiced, but now we must expand this conversation to discuss how culturally-rooted human rights violations should be confronted. While there may be no harm in permitting women to wear veils, some cultural practices are clearly damaging. Elizabeth Heger Boyle writes in her article “The Evolution of Debates over Female Genital Cutting” that women in Sudan ‘circumcise’ their daughters to protect them, because uncircumcised girls are unmarriageable and bring shame to their families because of their impurity. It is my opinion, however, that these good intentions do not discount the fact that female genital cutting is an extremely harmful practice and a violation of human rights. What do we do when the goal of upholding the dignity of individuals within their communities comes in conflict with the commitment to abolish harmful practices? As Boyle argues, it is the core beliefs within a culture that need to be challenged—the beliefs which associate an abusive practice such as female genital cutting with honor, purity, and cleanliness. It is our responsibility to carefully consider how we can develop a platform to discuss these issues with members of these cultures in which human rights violations are occurring. We should attempt to spur dialogue within a community about how a people group can retain its culture or religion while cleansing itself of those practices considered to be abusive.
In light of this conversation, I want to put forth pieces of a more recent New York Time Article, "Muslims skip NYC mayors event to protest spying." At the end of 2011, Mayor Bloomberg hosted a solidarity event with Muslim leaders in order to provide a space for tolerance and dialogue. However, this event raised questions on the spying believed to have gone on within various Muslim communities by the NYPD. Although the Mayor and the police denied targeting Islamic culture, there was concrete evidence found attesting to such operations. One professor attending the event sported a shirt reading, "I am not a terrorist." He claimed it was a point through which he, "was able to talk... about the fact that if I'm a potential suspect, by being next to me, you're a potential suspect as well... So this isn't a Muslim issue. This is a civil rights issue." Sadly, I wonder at instances like this, what sympathetic understanding truly is. Far to often "tolerance" and "dialogues" are fronts in which biases remain hidden in order to further a certain agenda. This is not right or fair, and is in essence exploiting the oppressed individual in order to further personal motives. Where is the dignity in attending a solidarity event while your people are being spied upon? Nowhere. It is a civil rights issue, and therein lies the difficulty. We as fallen humans find it difficult to acknowledge issues regarding civil rights and work together in pursuing a better way. However, conversation is where it needs to begin. Dialogue must first begin from a place of humility and honesty, and through that respect and love will be fostered for your brother and dignity restored.