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Welcome to the Nishma Commentary Discussion Forum blog.
Commentary with Rabbi Benjamin Hecht is a regular column on the Nishma website in which Nishma's Founding Director analyzes contemporary issues, in the general as well as the Jewish world, from a Torah perspective.
If you have a comment on an article within this column, we invite you to place your comments here; then we invite everyone to join the discussion.
Evaluation and Definition: Comments on Wafa Sultan
Submitted to nishma.org in response to Ben Hecht's article ""Evaluation and Definition: Comments on Wafa Sultan" Critical Muslim voices are to be welcomed, as is selfless critique by any thinker within any intellectual school of thought. But are we not witnessing a deja-vu: the recent re-appearence of an old figure, namely the public display of self-hate by individual members of minorities who hope that by distancing themselves from their origins and acting as witnesses for the prosecution, they are likely to win advantages? Two centuries ago, it was the self-hating Jew, today it is the self-hating Muslim. The suspicion under which the Muslim communities are being placed enhances the likelyhood of self-haters emerging. Critique which is delivered by self-haters devalues their own stance, both because it is driven more by their own psychological response to the tensions with which they live than by intellectual rigour, and (especially) when it is public knowledge that they are being encouraged and funded by organisations which have a particular ideological axe to grind. Rather than feeling vindicated, should this not leave us feeling distinctly uncomfortable: about the ingratiation which they are prepared to suffer in order to achieve acceptance in the society they have joined, about the political manipulation to which such poor souls leave themselves open, about their abandonment of religion, and the consequential human and communal costs?
ReplyDeleteBoth Wafa Sultan in the USA, and also Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the Netherlands, could be said to fit into this category, since both have been picked up with alactrity and vaunted by certain interest groups in the USA and in Europe. This comparison between Jewish "emancipation" and the current "integration" of new muslim populations in the Western World has now been made explicitly in Europe both by a few Jewish writers and by secular muslim writers who have looked at the Jewish experience of emancipation and modernity for guidance for current realities facing the Muslim population. That could be read as a rhetorical allusion to gain acceptance for a position of Muslim victimhood, but also just might have more than a grain of truth in it. Simultaneously, Muslim thinkers such as Tariq Ramadan, who are clearly taking what we would recognise as something akin to a "modern orthodox" approach to the integration of Islamic and Western democratic thought, are refused entry to the USA and are castigated, often from the same quarters as embrace the secular muslim. Yet, his thought is rather similar to that which, at least for observant Jews, has been a relatively "successful" strategy, particuarly in the USA. The outcome of his thinking is interesting to read as a Jew and in my view also opens up prospects for cooperation on issues of religious freedom. Rabbi Hecht's discussion maybe does not adequately emphasise the question as to what the consequences for all religiously identifying people might be of such radical disavowals by some muslims: certainly in Europe this potentially makes it harder for observant Jews to avoid a negative re-assessment of Jewish practices which may well follow on from the current attention being paid as to whether Muslim practices are compatible with European (post-)modernity or not. For this reason alone, cooperation to protect religious practise might be desirable. Second, as Rabbi Hecht points out, in the euphoria over Muslims who recognise and seek Jewish allies, one may not notice that they reach their conclusions from a ontological perspective and via a methodology which is anti-ethical to one's own and therefore their conclusions may not be acceptable on other issues. Here one thinks particularly of their record on reducing anti-Semitism in their own communities, on publically examining the difficult parts of the Muslim heritage where most difficulties are to be expected with regard to democratic liberalism (such as the concept of Dhimmi) and the question as to what happens if concentrations of Muslim populations develop in certain geographic areas, which enables local state institutions to be democracally controlled by them: do they then have the right to introduce Muslim norms into governing those areas? These and other questions are left unraised by Tariq Ramadan in a strategy which is reminiscent of Rabbinical discourse: there are some questions which can wait. This is not necessarily disingeneous in intent. We have to give Muslim interlocators the benefit of the doubt. Are we not quilty of complicity in a lack of intellectual rigour were we to dismiss his and similar positions without consideration, and especially when we do not admit that we have a societal position to defend against newcomers on the block? Surely what is needed is to determine the terms on which a dialogue for mutual benefit can be conducted with the new Muslim populations in the Western World, and to conduct this in all candour. The issues raised above might provide a basis for deciding what those terms might be.
ReplyDeleteBoth Wafa Sultan in the USA, and also Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the Netherlands, could be said to fit into this category, since both have been picked up with alactrity and vaunted by certain interest groups in the USA and in Europe. This comparison between Jewish "emancipation" and the current "integration" of new muslim populations in the Western World has now been made explicitly in Europe both by a few Jewish writers and by secular muslim writers who have looked at the Jewish experience of emancipation and modernity for guidance for current realities facing the Muslim population. That could be read as a rhetorical allusion to gain acceptance for a position of Muslim victimhood, but also just might have more than a grain of truth in it. Simultaneously, Muslim thinkers such as Tariq Ramadan, who are clearly taking what we would recognise as something akin to a "modern orthodox" approach to the integration of Islamic and Western democratic thought, are refused entry to the USA and are castigated, often from the same quarters as embrace the secular muslim. Yet, his thought is rather similar to that which, at least for observant Jews, has been a relatively "successful" strategy, particuarly in the USA. The outcome of his thinking is interesting to read as a Jew and in my view also opens up prospects for cooperation on issues of religious freedom. Rabbi Hecht's discussion maybe does not adequately emphasise the question as to what the consequences for all religiously identifying people might be of such radical disavowals by some muslims: certainly in Europe this potentially makes it harder for observant Jews to avoid a negative re-assessment of Jewish practices which may well follow on from the current attention being paid as to whether Muslim practices are compatible with European (post-)modernity or not. For this reason alone, cooperation to protect religious practise might be desirable.
ReplyDeleteSecond, as Rabbi Hecht points out, in the euphoria over Muslims who recognise and seek Jewish allies, one may not notice that they reach their conclusions from a ontological perspective and via a methodology which is anti-ethical to one's own and therefore their conclusions may not be acceptable on other issues. Here one thinks particularly of their record on reducing anti-Semitism in their own communities, on publically examining the difficult parts of the Muslim heritage where most difficulties are to be expected with regard to democratic liberalism (such as the concept of Dhimmi) and the question as to what happens if concentrations of Muslim populations develop in certain geographic areas, which enables local state institutions to be democracally controlled by them: do they then have the right to introduce Muslim norms into governing those areas? These and other questions are left unraised by Tariq Ramadan in a strategy which is reminiscent of Rabbinical discourse: there are some questions which can wait. This is not necessarily disingeneous in intent. We have to give Muslim interlocators the benefit of the doubt. Are we not quilty of complicity in a lack of intellectual rigour were we to dismiss his and similar positions without consideration, and especially when we do not admit that we have a societal position to defend against newcomers on the block? Surely what is needed is to determine the terms on which a dialogue for mutual benefit can be conducted with the new Muslim populations in the Western World, and to conduct this in all candour. The issues raised above might provide a basis for deciding what those terms might be.
ReplyDelete