What We Should Say about Jihād

What should academic Islamicists say about jihād? That question is a specific form of the general question about the religion and violence question for academic religionists.

Recently, the media have focused on activist Linda Sarsour's invocation of the idea at a conference of the Islamic Society of North America.

In addition to the predictable conservative response, liberals have conveniently explained for her that jihād is a poetic abstraction for inner turmoils, akin to resisting the urge to tear up a parking ticket or eat lots of carbs.  

But the thing is, jihād isn't the above things. It really does mean something like a meaningfully forceful confrontation of others in religious terms. The mystical/care of the self use is, however important, derivative of the embattled meaning.

Islamicists shouldn't say this use argues against Islam or Muslims in any way- imagine every Christian's use of "crusade" submitted to similar interrogation; imagine every lefty's use of "revolution".

What inspires passionate loyalties and commitments is seldom nice and accommodating. Imagine the "Marseillaise" or "Battle Hymn of the Republic" as admitting the points of aristocrats and slaveholders and agreeing to reflect further on our shared situation.

In this, we need to confront the historically false and insidious ways liberals apologize for Islam and Muslims by dismissing an unsettling call to action as a banal hope for a better world.

Speaking for, and speaking over, Muslims in distinctive idioms might do some temporary favors, but it limits the terms of recognition to those of docility and triviality. For the left and for many others, the way things are merit a committed struggle against, and that comes in many forms that need listening.

Academic Islamicists should have more here.

Politics of Muslim Visibility

My article in Religion Dispatches on the "Religion" episode of Master of None.

Moose and Squirrel

I had been working at school. It had been somewhat productive. 

But then, there was the Comey testimony, and the Sessions testimony- distractions to anyone and everyone who has any contact with the news. To maintain my focus on what it is I need to be doing right now, I am going to put out an argument and stick to it unless something changes: investigating Trump's Russia connections isn't going to make much difference.

The issue has gotten the amount of media attention it has because of its spy-movie quality, its guarantee to irritate the older liberals who subscribe to papers like the Washington Post and the New York Times, and its focus on Trump's transgressing of norms.

But the story doesn't deserve the coverage it's gotten. That means journalistic work and screen space that could have been spent on other issues if we as media consumers had clicked differently.

It might seem like a hot-take to suggest that the biggest news issue in the country doesn't matter that much, but I'm interpreting "much" in terms of real legal, political, and electoral consequences. So, to triage:

First, I'm not a lawyer, but I haven't heard publicly any evidence of Trump was a party to crimes related to Russia. Clearly, Comey thought something was amiss, and perhaps the FBI or some other investigator is carrying on gathering information under what has to be immense pressure. Colluding with a power like Russia is always suspicious in the Great Game, but it isn't illegal. The only concrete collusion the public has is that Putin supported pro-Trump news. Election laws don't cover what Russian-state propaganda outlets can say.

Perhaps that pro-Trump propaganda counts as a campaign contribution in some sense, and perhaps so does Jeff Zucker's devotion to Trump coverage in another sense. During the French election, we heard that their election laws shape media very differently over there, but ours don't. The public hasn't concretely heard any evidence that Trump and Putin's obvious mutual affinities broke a legal boundary, that they worked together in a way the law can punish. It would really need to be something definitive to break through because of the particular political environment we live in.

Secondly, though Washington is buzzing with Russia interest, its real political impact will be negligible because of the strong Republican majority and its ability to do business without the president's undivided attention or support. That's not to say there's not a symbiosis on the right. Far from it. The Republican majority works because it's insulated from the personal scandals that affect the president to varying degrees.

Reversing Obamacare-or merely making it unworkable-cutting taxes, and scrapping environmental rules don't depend on the president's moral or intellectual stimulus. These are the goals of well-funded and deeply committed movement conservatives, whose effectiveness is not limited by Trump's dissipation or the feckless and divided opposition. This form of government is not likely to change because of the president's inchoate scandals that interest few of the voters who could change it.

Finally, the scandal is unlikely to be the thing that moves voters to change the political settlement as it is. Doing that would require either changing the minds of Republicans or non-voters. Changing Republicans' minds by appealing to a sense of shame at Trump's personal conduct is hard to imagine, both because Republicans are very satisfied with him, and that this was the central strategy of Hillary Clinton's unsuccessful campaign.

Comparisons to Watergate are misbegotten for a number of reasons, but chiefly, Trump is unlikely to become a psychological victim of the liberalconsensus of the press, or presumably his own conscience, as perhaps Nixon did. His media support is much stronger, shaped by people committed that what happened to Nixon will not happen to another Republican.

To the more difficult question of non-voters, all the Cold War intrigue in the mainstream press speaks little to the concerns of people who do not feel addressed by conventional politics, and the scandals represent politics at its most conventional. Democrats and the liberal media are appealing to the security of the nation and the sanctity of its institutions. However classical these appeals are, they do not address people not embraced by the nation and its institutions.

People my age and younger, who vote at lower rates than older people, are unlikely to change that pattern because of an appeal to Russian villainy. We did not grow up seeing the US as an uncomplicated champion of liberal values against authoritarian empires, and the view of America's moral superiority has only darkened in recent years. And furthermore, inclusion of nonwhite people in nation, with its freedoms, aspirations, and institutions,  has always been tentative, with some of the most important popular nonfiction of recent years exploring just how tentative.

So what then? Where should our political focus be?

 If I'm repeating  that I'm not a Washington-watcher and have no idea how the Democrats will right themselves or some other alternative will emerge, and I am, what's the point of listening to how crazy this has made me?

My frustration comes from the disproportion between the attention directed at the badly-acted noir film in DC and its potential consequences in our current politics. There is drama to watch, but consider the stage and the likelihood that the audience will leave with any sense of resolution.

Politics that addresses the world outside the Washington theater will need a different script and a very different cast of people with speaking roles.