The New Religious Intolerance

Martha C. Nussbaum

• Verlag: Belknap Press
• Jahr: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780674069640
• Thema: Théologie et religion
• Thema: Intolérance religieuse, persécution et conflits

What impulse prompted some newspapers to attribute the murder of 77 Norwegians to Islamic extremists, until it became evident that a right-wing Norwegian terrorist was the perpetrator? Why did Switzerland, a country of four minarets, vote to ban those structures? How did a proposed Muslim cultural center in lower Manhattan ignite a fevered political debate across the United States? In The New Religious Intolerance, Martha C. Nussbaum surveys such developments and identifies the fear behind these reactions. Drawing inspiration from philosophy, history, and literature, she suggests a route past this limiting response and toward a more equitable, imaginative, and free society.Fear, Nussbaum writes, is "more narcissistic than other emotions." Legitimate anxieties become distorted and displaced, driving laws and policies biased against those different from us. Overcoming intolerance requires consistent application of universal principles of respect for conscience. Just as important, it requires greater understanding. Nussbaum challenges us to embrace freedom of religious observance for all, extending to others what we demand for ourselves. She encourages us to expand our capacity for empathetic imagination by cultivating our curiosity, seeking friendship across religious lines, and establishing a consistent ethic of decency and civility. With this greater understanding and respect, Nussbaum argues, we can rise above the politics of fear and toward a more open and inclusive future.

1

RELIGION:
A TIME OF ANXIETY AND SUSPICION

Once, not very long ago, Americans and Europeans prided themselves on their enlightened attitudes of religious toleration and understanding. Although everyone knew that the history of the West had been characterized by intense religious animosity and violence—including such bloody episodes as the Crusades and the Wars of Religion, but including, as well, the quieter violence of colonial religious domination by Europeans in many parts of the world, domestic anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism, and culminating in the horrors of Nazism, which implicated not only Germany but also many other nations—Europe until very recently liked to think that these dark times were in the past. Religious violence was somewhere else—in societies more “primitive,” less characterized by a heritage of Christian values than were the modern social democracies of Europe.

The United States has had a somewhat better record than the “Old World” from which its original settlers fled, many of them in search of religious liberty and equality. Outright violence in the name of religion was always a relatively rare phenomenon—endured by the allegedly “primitive” Native Americans and, more recently, by Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, dissident groups that the majority perceived as strange and threatening, but not by members of mainstream religious bodies. And the United States has always been somewhat more hospitable than Europe to nonhomogeneity in dress and lifestyle, which has proven helpful to religious minorities who want to pursue their own conscientious commitments without assimilating to the culture of the majority. Still, no reasonable person could deny that religious prejudice and fear, in the form of anti-Catholicism and “nativism,” anti-Semitism, and a host of other prejudices against “strange” minorities, have been a persistent blot on our society. We need only remember, for example, that not until the 1970s did “white-shoe” law firms begin to hire Jews in any significant numbers, and that only in very recent times could a majority of the Supreme Court be composed of Roman Catholics without public outrage, in order to feel humility about our own record as an allegedly tolerant and respectful culture. Still, the self-image of U.S. citizens in recent years has been that we are a welcoming and diversity-friendly society that has outgrown the prejudices of the past.

Today we have many reasons to doubt this complacent self-assessment. Our situation calls urgently for searching critical self-examination, as we try to uncover the roots of ugly fears and suspicions that currently disfigure all Western societies. At this time we badly need an approach inspired by ethical philosophy in the spirit of Socrates, an approach that combines three ingredients:

•Political principles expressing equal respect for all citizens, and an understanding of what these principles entail for today’s confrontations with religious difference. (These principles already inhere in the political traditions of both Europe and, especially, the United States.)

•Rigorous critical thinking that ferrets out and criticizes inconsistencies, particularly those that take the form of making an exception for oneself, noting the “mote” in someone else’s eye while failing to note the large plank in one’s own eye.

•A systematic cultivation of the “inner eyes,” the imaginative capacity that makes it possible for us to see how the world looks from the point of view of a person different in religion or ethnicity.

These ethical virtues are always helpful in a complicated world. Why, however, are they needed with particular urgency at the present time? Let’s take stock of some recent developments, focusing first on Europe and then on the United States.

Europe: Burqas, Minarets, Murder

Three European nations—France, Belgium, and Italy—have now passed laws banning the wearing of the Muslim burqa and niqab (both of which cover the face apart from the eyes) in any public place.¹ (In Italy, the law has only passed in the Chamber of Deputies; it is now being considered by the Senate.) Despite the acknowledged fact that only a tiny minority of Muslims in these countries actually wear these garments (in Italy, for example, one reliable estimate is 100, and even the most inflated estimate is only 3,000), these laws—which certainly impose a heavy burden on people’s conscientious exercise of religious freedom—have been treated as of the utmost urgency, and as addressing a public crisis of profound significance.²

Such developments did not go unchallenged, even by experts in women’s dress. In Italy, a capital of women’s fashion, no less an authority than Giorgio Armani came to the defense of the burqa, saying (several years before the national ban, when prohibitions were still local) that women should wear what they like. “It’s a question of respect for the convictions and cultures of others,” he stated. “We need to live with these ideas.”³ Still, Italians in this case ignored the voice of fashion, following concerns imagined to be even more urgent.

Meanwhile, many communities in Europe have even imposed regulations on the Muslim headscarf, which covers the hair only. In France, girls may not wear the headscarf in schools.⁴ Kosovo, with its large Muslim population, has imposed a similar ban.⁵ In parts of Germany, Holland, Spain, and Belgium, the headscarf may not be worn by public employees, including teachers on the job—even though nuns and priests are permitted to teach in full habit.⁶ Girls in Switzerland may not wear the headscarf while playing basketball.⁷ In Russia, Muslim women won the right to retain their headscarves in passport photos, but a teenage girl was recently expelled from school for wearing her headscarf, and one university in the North Caucasus has banned all headscarves.⁸

In Switzerland, after a campaign designed to appeal to fears of a Muslim takeover, a popular referendum voted by 57 percent to ban the construction of minarets associated with mosques—despite the fact that few mosques actually have minarets (only 4 in Switzerland at present, out of 150 mosques), and that in consequence the architectural issue appears to be purely symbolic.⁹

Even in small and sometimes bizarre ways, the fear of Muslims shows its ugly head. The mayor of the Italian city of Capriate in Bergamo banned kebab shops in the city in 2009.¹⁰ A white-supremacist website (www.stormfront.org) has made much of this “victory,” exulting triumphantly and trying to stir up disgust by describing allegedly filthy and roach-ridden conditions in those restaurants (conditions that are pretty common the world over, but that can still be used to inspire disgust). As the year went on, quite a few more towns in the region of Genoa and Bergamo joined the ban. In Lucca, a kebab shop was firebombed, and a member of parliament from the anti-immigration Northern League called for a ban on all foreign foods. Italy’s agriculture minister, who is from that party, defended the ban, appealing both to tradition and to concerns about health.¹¹

Northern Europe is usually imagined as a quiet zone of ideal toleration and amity, and so it is, much of the time. And yet even that region has experienced waves of anti-Muslim sentiment. Finland, a country I know well, has not adopted any legislative restrictions against religious dress of any sort, and there is little political support for such a move, but discrimination in employment against women who wear the Muslim headscarf is a common complaint.¹² Some employers (the police and certain food stores) say openly that they will not employ a woman wearing a headscarf.¹³ Schools in Raasepori forbade headscarves for female students but withdrew the ban in the face of public pressure.¹⁴ In two cases, however, Muslim-friendly policies have themselves been dropped as a result of public pressure. Helsinki and Espoo municipal playgrounds recently stopped serving special meals for Muslim children.¹⁵ And the controversial Helsinki policy of reserving certain hours for Muslim women to use the public swimming pool at Janomaki has been canceled, although a new women-only slot has been created in the evening.¹⁶ Finland displays characteristic toleration and forbearance, but tensions still exist, and the tendency of Finns to identify nonhomogeneity as foreignness is a troubling thread running through the news treatments of this issue (which typically speak of “Finns” and “Finnish culture” by contrast to Muslims and Islam, without inquiring how many of the Muslims in question are residents or even citizens of Finland).

In July 2011, terror struck a neighboring Northern European nation with a heavy hand. Norwegian zealot Anders Behring Breivik murdered approximately 76 people in twin attacks, bombing government buildings in Oslo and shooting young representatives of the Labour Party who had gathered on the island of Utoya for a youth camp.¹⁷ Breivik, who has confessed to the crimes but denied fault, released, on the day of the attacks, a 1,500-page manifesto in which he outlines a theory supporting his actions, based on the idea that Europe must fight against the scourge of Islamicization.¹⁸ He evidently has ties with a variety of anti-Islamic groups in both Europe and the United States.¹⁹ His actions, though widely condemned, have been met with celebration by some right-wing politicians in other countries. Jacques Coutela, of France’s National Front (FN), has described him as an “icon” and “the main defender of the West.” He sees him as “fighting the Muslim invasion” and compares him to the French hero Charles Martel.²⁰ Coutela was suspended by the party, pending an investigation. Another FN member who said similar things in less graphic terms has not been suspended, however. Italian member of parliament Mario Borghezio, of the Northern League (a partner in Silvio Berlusconi’s government), condemned Breivik’s violence but backed his ideas, especially his “opposition to Islam and his explicit accusation that Europe has surrendered before putting up a fight against its Islamicization.”²¹

The United States: Headscarves, Mosques, “Sharia Law”

The United States has not encountered mass religious violence in recent years (unless we count the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995, perpetrated by vaguely Christian members of the militia movement, whose motives were antigovernment, rather than directed at immigrants or religious minorities). Despite conditions that emphasize heterogeneity and religious pluralism, however, prejudice and occasional violence against new religious groups have never been absent from the U.S. scene. The early settlers at times exiled people whose religious views were deemed heretical (for example, Roger Williams, forced to flee from Massachusetts to Rhode Island).²² Jews, Quakers, Baptists, and Mennonites were welcome in some colonies, but not in all.²³ In the nineteenth century, a surge of Roman Catholic immigration from Ireland and Southern Europe prompted an upsurge of virulent prejudice, as “nativism” became a popular political cause.²⁴ In one or another form, anti-Catholic prejudice has remained a major factor in American political life until extremely recently: during the Cold War, for example, liberal journalist Paul Blanshard, in his best-selling book American Freedom and Catholic Power (1947), warned Americans that Catholicism was as big a danger to American democracy as global communism. Meanwhile, smaller groups such as Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses suffered not only prejudice but also outright violence.²⁵ Anti-Semitism was extremely common until the 1970s, and has still not disappeared.²⁶ How, then, are Americans responding to the current upsurge of religious anxiety?

The U.S. response is more varied than that in Europe, involving more religions. Jews are not exempt from suspicion—particularly if they are foreigners. Three Mexican Jews attempting to pray aboard an Alaska Airlines flight bound from Mexico City to Los Angeles were required to leave the flight and questioned by the FBI.²⁷ After 9/11, the Sikh turban was commonly confused with Muslim dress, and Sikhs suffered at airports, and in some cases were violently attacked.²⁸ Sikhs continue to complain of airline searches of turbans, although the TSA has devised alternatives, such as a pat down of the turban, or even a self-pat down, after which the person’s hands are screened for chemicals.²⁹ Recently, the U.S. army has allowed Sikh recruits to retain their turbans.³⁰ Sikhs have a long tradition of distinguished military service and have been passionate advocates of change. An army spokesman, George Wright, said, “It is the Army’s policy to accommodate religious practices as long as the practice will not have an adverse impact on military necessity.” Hinduism, too, has encountered difficulty: the first Hindu prayer offered in the U.S. Senate was disrupted by organized protesters who described themselves as “Christians and patriots.” The protest, however, did not achieve its aim of stopping the Hindu prayer: the protesters were arrested in the visitors’ gallery for “disruption of Congress,” and their acts were condemned on the Senate floor by Majority Leader Harry Reid.³¹

Still, in the United States as in Europe, by far the largest number of troubling incidents concern Islam. No proposal to ban the burqa is known to me, but the headscarf has caused isolated incidents. A thirty-one-year-old Muslim woman wearing a headscarf was asked to leave a Southwest Airlines flight after a flight attendant overheard a cell phone conversation in which she allegedly said, “It’s a go”—although she reports that she really said, “I’ve got to go,” because the flight was preparing for takeoff. After patting down her headscarf and talking to her the TSA quickly recognized that a mistake had been made and did not require an inspection of her cell phone or purse, but she was not permitted to get back on the flight, because the crew was uncomfortable with her. She received two oral apologies from the airline and a voucher that she intends to give away, because she does not want to fly on Southwest again. Finally, she has received an official public apology.³² Meanwhile, Imane Boudlal, a female Disneyland employee from Morocco, is suing Disney for the right to wear her headscarf during her job as a hostess at Disneyland’s Grand Californian hotel. Her supervisors told her it was not the “Disney look,” and that if she wanted to continue to wear it she would have to take a job out of sight of customers. She was then offered a compromise: a large, masculine-looking hat that she could wear over the hijab, which, in a photo,...