Monthly Archives: May 2021

Recently, Gallup released polling data indicating that fewer than half of Americans are members of churches, mosques or synagogues. In 1937, 73 percent of Americans claimed some form of religious membership. Today that figure is 47 percent. This decline plays into what sociologists call the "secularization thesis," the presumption that as modernity barrels onward, religiosity slowly gives way to rationalism and technocratic ways of devising meaning.

But before secularism claims complete victory over religiosity, note that the Gallup poll reveals an almost even split between the two. Religiosity and secularism are not going anywhere, even as they interact in troubling ways via the "culture war." As the chasm that separates these worldviews seems only to widen, there is all the more reason to find ways to coexist peaceablyand a return to religious freedom will be a necessary ingredient for a more tranquil future.

Everyone, religious and non-religious alike, has an interest in defending religious liberty if we hope to have a public square that accurately reflects American demography. Even if you are not religious, consider that the First Amendment protections that all Americans enjoy emanate from a religious milieu. The Framers recognized that, before individuals are citizens of the state, they are persons attempting to make meaning and bring order to their lives. Everyone desires to live in accordance with what they believe to be true about the world.

The architect of our Constitution, James Madison, expressed this sentiment in his Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments. "Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society," he wrote, "he must be considered as a subject of the Governour of the Universe." Madison argues that religion recognizes realities that impress truths upon individuals prior to the authority of the state. Whether someone is expressly religious or not, every conscience must reckon with what is true or false, and then seek to live accordingly. The presumption of liberty means that we grant such freedoms insofar as they pose no unmistakable threat to society.

As a conservative evangelical Christian, I have a stake in protecting the right of expression of views I disagree withas much as I would hope to persuade you to protect mine, too. I use my religious liberty to proclaim the gospel and its implications for all of lifejust as a non-Christian possesses the right to proclaim his or her worldview, persuade others of its conclusions and live according to its implications. Our rights are reciprocally bound with one another's. The political philosopher Leo Strauss captured the political tension we must all balance if we hope to maintain a habitable system in which people disagree: "the political question par excellence is how to reconcile order which is not oppression with freedom that is not license." That, in summary, is the delicate balancing act of liberal democracy.

If religious freedom is going to work, it will require virtues that are in short supply, such as empathy and goodwill. Religious freedom requires me to believe that, despite what I may assume, others' moral and religious arguments are being made in good faith. It forces me to reckon with our common humanity and shared desires. Religious liberty channels our better angels in that it appeals to magnanimity as a form of cultural currency and moral grammar.

To be sure, as a conservative evangelical, I hold to convictions about the exclusivity of Jesus Christ and the nature of gender and sexuality that would cause many readers to recoil. I'm not contending for religious liberty just to be left alone, but to advocate for truths that benefit the common good and human flourishing. A robust understanding of religious liberty requires a humble understanding that cultural orthodoxies will ebb and flow, because today's victors can easily fall out of fashion. The back-and-forth of cultural exchange allows freedom to prosper, better ideas to gain traction and dictatorships that rely on stifling orthodoxies to be rejected.

The decline of religious liberty is a major reason our culture wars are so brutal. By looking to the government to adjudicate our divisions, we've outsourced debate on what is true or false. We ask a central authority to declare one side the victor and the other side the loser. Government cannot be agnostic about everything, but the great thing about religious liberty is that, rather than looking to the government to decide every important question, it allows each person freedom of conscience to decide how to act. Perhaps our political culture would be healthier if questions of ultimate meaning were not on the ballot every four years or divined by Supreme Court justices, and instead, were worked out in institutions, local communities and ultimately, in individual consciences.

Secularization is ascendent today. But the branch of religious conservatism I represent is not going anywhere, and we have to find ways to live together. Deliberation and persuasion must rise to the surface of our public discourse to settle conflicts. I'm going to continue to exercise my religious liberty to point to the truths that I believe are necessary for human beings and societies to flourish. If you think I'm wrong, convince medon't banish me.

Andrew T. Walker is Associate Professor of Christian Ethics at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a Fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is author of Liberty for All: Defending Everyone's Religious Freedom in a Pluralistic Age.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

Read the rest here:

Could Religious Liberty Help End the Culture War? | Opinion - Newsweek

In a June 23, 2011 essay forThe New Republic, the American journalist Leon Wieseltier writes that the ability to reason has a long history of being hounded by the hegemony of passions.

According to Wieseltier, the general perception is that reason ever since it became one of the primary pillars of the Age of Enlightenmenthas been the dominant human faculty from the 19th century onwards. But to Wieseltier, reason has come under attack over and over again by those who find it to be cold, devoid of emotion and therefore amoral.

Political, economic and social modernity, of which the faculty of reason was a major contributor, has consistently faced an onslaught from various quarters.

The whole so-called post-modernist movement, which took off in certain influential European and American academic circles, attempted to prove that notions such as unreason, irrationalism and superstition should be treated as expressions of localised knowledge and not discarded just because they did not suit the ideas of reason and rationalism as defined by the philosophies of the European Enlightenment.

Post-modernism was an extension of 18th century romanticism that glorified subjectivity and emotion, and searched for wisdom and inspiration in mediaeval ethos. These were rejected by the Enlightenment and replaced with an emphasis on progress, driven by science, free enterprise and rational thought.

Those who believe they can continue to pragmatically pander to irrational passions in the country must keep in mind what happened to Z.A. Bhutto

Post-modernism which, ironically, used reason to critique the dominance of reason, generated detailed rationalisations for those who refused to let go of myths, rituals and mindsets rooted in an emotional and traditional understanding of society and faith. Many critics of post-modernism have blamed it for aiding the resurgence of irrational movements.

The American sociologist David Lyon, in his bookJesus in Disneyland, writes that postmodernism turned faith into a commodity, sold by religious outfits that are operated like companies selling spirituality. These can be the non-traditional New Age spiritualism movements or involve people and organisations running traditional institutions of faith as businesses.

For Lyon, the tradition of religious obligation has been turned into consumption. Modernity had pushed religious obligation into the personal/private sphere through secularism whereas, uncannily, postmodernism pushed it back into the public sphere, but by turning it into a commodity that can be advertised, bought and sold like a product or brand.

Wieseltiers idea of the hegemony of passions can also be understood as the proliferation of irrationalism as a creed designed by amoral operators exploiting religious emotions through variations of faith, to capture political power and economic influence. Their success in this context depends on retaining the hegemony of passions, within which they can most effectively operate, and with which they can disrupt or entirely eliminate reason, which is seen as an enemy.

In Pakistan, religious groups were quick to establish the hegemony of passions, especially after the acrimonious departure of East Pakistan in 1971. The departure was explained as a failure of modernity or of the rational interpretation of Islam advocated by the founders of the country. The modernist/rationalist project was criticised for being elitist and Westernised.

Indeed, the so-called Muslim modernists in the countrys pre-1971 state institutions and the intelligentsia were attempting to evolve an Islamic theology in the manner in which European Enlightenment philosophers had evolved Christian Protestantism into a rational creed, which complimented secularism and scientific progress. But it is also a fact that almost all Muslim modernists claimed to have been inspired by the 9th century Muslim rationalists called the Mutazila.

From the 19th century South Asian Muslim scholar and reformer Sir Syed Ahmad Khan to the 20th century Islamic scholar Fazlur Rahman Malik who was instrumental in aiding the states desire to institutionalise Islamic Modernism in the 1960s all referred to themselves as neo-Mutazila.

There is now very little available in the countrys textbooks about the Mutazila. This, despite the fact that Mutazila doctrines had become the dominant creed in the Islamic world in the 9th and 10th centuries, during what is known as the golden age of Islam. Patronised by the Abbasid rulers, the Mutazila advocated a rational understanding of Islams sacred texts. They encouraged open debate and the assimilation of Greek philosophies to enrich Islamic sciences, when European realms were plagued by superstition.

However, when the Abbasid Empire plunged into a cycle of succession crises, the caliphs began to distance themselves from the Mutazila, especially when the Mutazila doctrines were attacked by ulema who managed to gain popularity among the masses impacted by the crises.

In the 11th century, when the first Christian crusade was successful in capturing Jerusalem, the theologian Al-Ghazali dealt the final blow to the Mutazila doctrine by upholding the orthodoxy of the ulema. To the state of Pakistan, the fall of Dhaka in 1971 was what the fall of Jerusalem was to Ghazali. Rational theology was criticised as the source of disunity. Open debate came to be seen as a threat.

In 1974, the so-called left-liberal government of Z.A. Bhutto tried to co-opt the increasing interest in religiosity in post-1971 Pakistan by agreeing to allow the parliament to oust the Ahmadiyya from the fold of Islam. But this only strengthened the hegemony of passions. It expanded two-fold, especially from the 1980s onwards. Politicians and the state have tried to use it for entirely political purposes, despite the fact that this hegemony is not bothered by the irrationalism of marginalising religious minorities as well as Muslims opposed to it.

The irrationalism in this context is about how many among those marginalised were/are highly talented in the fields of economics, science, sports, arts, etc., and important to the health of the state and polity.

But this hegemony has also become a quagmire for the state and politicians. They have to pragmatically mouth the emotive declarations of this hegemony, as they did recently during a parliamentary debate on whether to send the French ambassador back because of the French regimes refusal to curb Islamophobia. The debate thus became a contest between the treasury benches and the opposition, both claiming they were better Muslims than the other.

Ironically, reason, in this case at least, was only applied by the otherwise populist centre-right PM Imran Khan when he tried to explain that, in a globalised economy, Pakistan cannot afford to cut off ties with any of its trading partners.

The truth is, those who believe they can continue to pragmatically navigate the countrys hegemony of passions must keep in mind what happened to Z.A. Bhutto. In 1974, he congratulated himself for doing just this but, three years later, the very forces he had appeased overthrew him. This hegemony has no room for even the pragmatic dimensions of reason.

Published in Dawn, EOS, May 2nd, 2021

Excerpt from:

SMOKERS CORNER: THE HEGEMONY OF PASSIONS - DAWN.com

PROF.HAMID NSEEM RAFIABADI

Revelation is an English term for Wahy,which is often given by Allah (SWT) to His chosen servants known as prophets ormessengers (AS) through an archangel Gabriel (AS).This may sometimes change like in the case of prophetMoses (AS) to whom Allah (SWT) spokedirectly. Generally, the revelation bringsa drastic change either in the specific area of the world as in the case ofprophet Abraham (AS) or the overallsystem of the world, which can be seen in case of prophet Muhammad (SAW); the last and final prophet of Islam. Itbasically reforms the society by changing the internal as well as the externalactivities of the system.

In one line, revelation shifts the worldfrom the disobedience to the obedience of Allah (SWT), which further prospers the nations not only in this life butalso in the life hereafter. Through revelation,Allah (SWT) guides His creation how totake the world to its peak without compromising morality. In this sense, it wouldnt be wrong to say thatrevelation often brings revolution. The most modern example of this can be seenin the life of prophet Muhammad (SAW). With the assistance of the revelation, he (SAW)reformed the world within the 23years of his (SAW)reign, which was free from all sorts of impurityand immorality.It was complete in every pure sense and comprehensive inevery moral aspect.

His (SAW)revelation or revolution has gripped the world not only with the aestheticconcepts such as love, care, brotherhoodbut also with rational concepts like justice, equity, equality, etc. thatholistically promoted and highly supported the concept of humanity over theyears. Unlike other revolutions, which are based on finite ideas, therevolution of prophet Muhammad (SAW), which is completely based on the infiniteprinciples, teach humanity that the revolution without morality is paralysed and morality without revolution isincomplete, which means with the changing times and requirements, mankindshould look for different avenues, both from the rational as well as aestheticpoint of view that leads to the zenith of knowledge and wisdom, which will inturn not only benefit the present generation but also flourishes the futuregenerations.

As it is not possible to get acomprehensive view of human beings by separating them with spirit, soul, heart,intellect, or body. In the same way, the concept of revelation wholly andsolely cannot be understood by the principle of rationality. However, there area group of philosophers, psychologists, or scientists who with their worms eyeview claim that whether revelation or anything else, whatever is proven by thereason, mathematics, or statistics is true and acceptable the remaining isuntrue and unacceptable.

This view,however, took its roots in the 18th century where all thenatural sciences, social sciences, as well as historiography were deeplyinfluenced by Eurocentric and scientificlearning. These two terms have directly affectedthe unfortified human intellect and broadly changed its thinking patterns,which today is popularly known as scientific rationalism. Thescientific rationalism purely regards reason as a primary source of trueknowledge, which dominantly impresses the assumption that things which cannotbe perceived or experienced through the senses or is not measurable either quantitativelyor statistically are certainly unreliable.

Cartesian epistemology,the philosophicalandscientificmethod, which isoften associated with Ren Descartes who was a French philosopher,mathematician, and scientist. He identified reasons exclusively with scientificrationality and introduced experiences into sensory data. Based on thisprinciple, the Cartesianepistemology considers other modes and sources ofknowledge such as introspection, insight, empathy, intuition as an illusion. This epistemology has basically dichotomised categories of knowledge. It hasdrawn a sharp line of separation between subject and object, fact and value,reason and morality. However, there is a fundamental incompatibility betweenCartesian epistemology and Islamic epistemology.

Islamic epistemology eschews therationalistic fallacies and pitfalls of Cartesian epistemology and escortsintegration of knowledge, unitary, where all the sources of knowledge arecombined together. Islamic epistemology takes two cognisance of multiplicity modes or sources of knowledge andexperiences including sense perception, imagination, introspection, intuition,empathy, and revelation. This epistemology holds the opinion that even thoughthere is a disjunction between fact andvalue, or reason and revelation, they still are closely intertwined with eachother.

(Author is Head,Department of Religious Studies, Central University of Kashmir. Former Director, Shah-i-Hamadan Institute of Islamic Studies, Universityof Kashmir Srinagar. He can be reached on hamidnaseem@gmail.com)

See the article here:

Dimensions of Revelation with special reference to Islam - Rising Kashmir

Critical Race Theory (CRT) indoctrination is already largely illegal under federal law. But states must now go further and protect all students from racial discrimination by asserting the power to enforce the principles of the Civil Rights Act.

Many parents might not yet understand what CRT is. The ideology has gone by a number of names in recent years: identity politics, intersectionality, wokeness. Academics have generated convoluted justifications and rationalizations for it; journalists have crafted stilted narratives to promote it. But at its core and in practice, CRT amounts to institutionalized racial hatred.

When Paul Rossi, a high school teacher at Manhattan's Grace Church School, objected to CRT at his school, the lead teacher admitted: "We're demonizing white people for being born." Robin DiAngelo, author of the bestselling White Fragility, argues that all whites are inherently racist. Bettina Love, an education professor, has written in Education Week that "white teachers need a particular type of therapy" to address their "white emotionalities" and to undo "whiteness" in education. Nikole Hannah-Jones, author of The New York Times' CRT-infused "1619 Project," has plainly stated that her project's deepest ambition is "to get white Americans to stop being white."

Anyone who doesn't immediately understand how morally abhorrent this all is need only swap the races and/or epithets used in these statements. Can you imagine if school leaders admitted that they were demonizing children for being born black? If bestselling authors insisted that all blacks are inherently vicious and must work on their Black Instability? If teacher magazines suggested that black teachers need therapy to address "black emotionalities?" If curriculum designers explained that their goal was to get black kids to stop being black?

There would be a nationwide moral outcry that there must be laws to bring these bigots to heel and protect our nation's children from their morally demented ideology. Indeed, there already has been such an outcry and such a law passed: the civil rights movement and the Civil Rights Act.

CRT, however, defines itself explicitly against traditional civil rights. According to Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, CRT is "unlike traditional civil rights discourse" in that it "questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism and neutral principles of constitutional law."

When most Americans think about the civil rights movement, they think of Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream that his children "will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

But Robin DiAngelo has declared that it is "dangerous" to say that you try to treat people equally, regardless of race. Teacher magazines like Educational Leadership insist that teachers must "challenge racial 'colorblindness.'" Teacher support books recommended by the Department of Education declare that when teachers try to be color-blind, they are actually creating an "unsafe environment" for students.

Indeed, Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist and arguably the most influential CRT public intellectual, has issued a clarion call on behalf of racial discrimination: "The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."

In the context of education, this is a call for teachers to racially discriminate against white children as a supposed remedy for past racial discrimination against black children.

It's no wonder, then, that CRT practices are the mirror images of some historic practices that horrified us when we learned about them in school (or, for many older Americans, witnessed them firsthand).

For instance, in Evanston, Illinois, a school separated staff by race for training, offered racially segregated "affinity groups" for students and parents, told teachers to treat students differently based on race and publicly shamed white students based on their race.

This is all obviously illegal, and the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights had declared it, properly, to be sothat is, until the Biden administration officially suspended that decision, suggesting that all of this might be totally acceptable.

No one could possibly doubt that if a school district shamed black students based on their race, told teachers in writing to discipline black students more severely or offered "whites-only" professional development opportunities, that Biden's Office for Civil Rights would force them to stop.

Unfortunately, the Biden Department of Education has clearly gone "woke." When Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona was Connecticut's commissioner of education, he declared, "We need teachers behind this wave of our curriculum becoming more 'woke.'" When Deputy Education Secretary-nominee Cindy Marten was superintendent of the San Diego Unified School District, she oversaw training that told white teachers that they were "spirit murdering" black students. And last month, the Department of Education issued a proposed regulation for federal civics grants that name-checked the "1619 Project," Ibram X. Kendi and a book by education professors advocating against "colorblindness."

State-sanctioned racism is, of course, not a new phenomenon in America. It is only the group being intentionally victimized and the institutions endorsing (or even enforcing) racism that have changed.

By the 1960s, it had become undeniably clear that some states would not apply the protections of the 14th Amendment to all of their citizens. Because of that, Congress gave the federal government express authority to enforce the principle of equal protection. But today, it is becoming clear that, when it comes to education, the federal government is not exercising its authority to protect all students. Therefore, it is time for state legislatures to step forward and ensure that the Civil Rights Act is vigorously enforced.

Critics of proposed state laws addressing CRT in schools contend that these proposals constitute "censorship." While the details of these proposed laws varyand matter greatlythis charge is, by and large, bogus.

No teacher today is free to say things like "black students are ignorant and therefore I decenter, disrupt and dismantle blackness in the classroom." Such rank bigotry is (properly) illegal under the Civil Rights Act. Only by abandoning Enlightenment rationalism and the avowed neutral principles of the rule of lawas CRT affirmatively encourages its adherents to docould one argue that stopping what is obviously "illegal discrimination" when applied to one race becomes "un-American censorship" when another race is the target instead.

Anyone arguing in good faith against state laws addressing CRT in schools must argue against what these proposed laws actually say. For example, Idaho's recently passed bill to ban CRT in the classroom declares that no educational institution "shall direct or otherwise compel students to personally affirm" that "any sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color or national origin is inherently superior or inferior [and/or] that individuals should be adversely treated on the basis of their sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color or national origin." Therefore, the Idaho law's critics must argue that schools actually should tell students that certain races are inherently superior or inferior, and that individuals should be treated differently based on their race.

This, as we have seen, may well be what leading CRT activists actually believe. But it is not what everyday critics of such laws typically contend. They'll make arguments about censorship or the First Amendment, or claim that these laws will hurt efforts "intended" to address racism.

But we, as a nation, must not address the legacy of institutional racism by institutionalizing a new form of racism in our schools. As the federal government appears to have abandoned its duty to protect all students from racial discrimination, state legislatures must step forward and accept the responsibility of enforcing the Civil Rights Act by banning CRT indoctrination in public schools.

Max Eden is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

Read the rest here:

Ban Critical Race Theory Now | Opinion - Newsweek