While polite attention is fixed on Saudi women and the prohibitions against driving or competing in the Olympics, several disturbing articles have appeared this week which put the spotlight on women in Egypt, Iran, and Pakistan. In Why Do They Hate Us, Mona Eltahawy pulls no punches:

Name me an Arab country, and I’ll recite a litany of abuses fueled by a toxic mix of culture and religion that few seem willing or able to disentangle lest they blaspheme or offend. When more than 90 percent of ever-married women in Egypt — including my mother and all but one of her six sisters — have had their genitals cut in the name of modesty, then surely we must all blaspheme. When Egyptian women are subjected to humiliating “virginity tests” merely for speaking out, it’s no time for silence. When an article in the Egyptian criminal code says that if a woman has been beaten by her husband “with good intentions” no punitive damages can be obtained, then to hell with political correctness. And what, pray tell, are “good intentions”? They are legally deemed to include any beating that is “not severe” or “directed at the face.”

What all this means is that when it comes to the status of women in the Middle East, it’s not better than you think. It’s much, much worse. Even after these “revolutions,” all is more or less considered well with the world as long as women are covered up, anchored to the home, denied the simple mobility of getting into their own cars, forced to get permission from men to travel, and unable to marry without a male guardian’s blessing — or divorce either.

After this opening salvo, which presumably starts with Egypt because Eltahawy was born there and was recently raped by Egyptian police, she tours other Arab countries, all united to one degree of another in the abuse of women and use of Islam to justify it.

Photo by Aaron Goodman for Foreign Policy

As might have been expected given the incendiary nature of Eltahawy’s article (and provocative photos such as the one above), the blow-back has been substantial. Angry critics argue that Eltahawy painted with too broad a brush and has oversimplified the issues and causes. Undoubtedly she did oversimplify both the issues and the causes. If this ignited a debate, is it did, it seems a good thing.

As might also have been expected, some critics were quick to argue that the problem isn’t religious. Max Fisher, for instance, proclaims this in his title of his Atlantic post: “The Real Roots of Sexism in the Middle East (It’s Not Islam).” As a titular matter, this is correct. Because there is no essential “Islam” and “Islam” is not a reified thing, “Islam” can’t be a cause or root. But there are interpretations, constructions, and deployments of ideas that its practitioners call “Islam” which helped develop and maintain sexism, misogyny, and abuse. Despite declaring “Islam” innocent and blaming colonialism for sexism-abuse, even Fisher recognizes this:

The colonial rulers who conquered Muslim societies were skilled at pulling out the slightest justification for their “patriarchal bargain.” They promoted the religious leaders who were willing to take this bargain and suppressed those who objected. This is a big part of how misogynistic practices became especially common in the Muslim world (another reason is that, when the West later promoted secular rulers, anti-colonialists adopted extreme religious interpretations as a way to oppose them).

While there may be some or substantial truth to this, Fisher seems to be saying that colonial rulers promoted men who justified sexism-abuse with religion, and that anti-colonialists “opposed” this by adopting even more extreme religious interpretations. Under this strange scenario, women get colonial abuse coming and anti-colonial abuse going, all justified in the name of religion or “Islam.” By Fisher’s own account, these constructions and uses of “Islam” cannot be dismissed as a cause.

From the fire of the Middle East we go to the frying pan of Pakistan, where Zara Jamal reports things aren’t any better. In To Be a Woman in Pakistan: Six Stories of Abuse, Shame, and Survival, we glimpse a small world of suffering. Jamal prefaces the six stories with this odd observation:

Westerners usually associate the plight of Pakistani women with religious oppression, but the reality is far more complicated. A certain mentality is deeply ingrained in strictly patriarchal societies like Pakistan. Poor and uneducated women must struggle daily for basic rights, recognition, and respect. They must live in a culture that defines them by the male figures in their lives, even though these women are often the breadwinners for their families.

Is Jamal suggesting that the abuse of these women is a byproduct of free-floating or traditional patriarchy? If so, my questions to her would be how did this patriarchy develop and how is it maintained? It surely isn’t by vague obeisance to tradition or patriarchy. The “mentality” and “culture” that Jamal mentions are substantially anchored in and justified by a particular reading of Islam, even if she wants to minimize this or not mention it. While questioning and complicating standard narratives is good, complexity needn’t eclipse reality or truth.

In a piece which probes closer to the core of these issues, we have Karim Sadjadpour’s The Ayatollah Under the Bed(sheets). In the past, I’ve sometimes thought that these kinds of societies should be analyzed using a Freudian approach. As Sadjadpour shows, this can bear some fruit:

Ayatollah Khamenei contends that the health of the family unit is integral to the Islamic Republic’s well-being and is undermined by female beauty. Although to some this worldview is fundamentally misogynistic, Khamenei sees men, not women, as untrustworthy and incapable of resisting temptation:

In Islam, women have been prohibited from showing off their beauty in order to attract men or cause fitna [upheaval or sedition]. Showing off one’s physical attraction to men is a kind of fitna … [for] if this love for beauty and members of the opposite sex is found somewhere other than the framework of the family, the stability of the family will be undermined.

Interestingly, the word Khamenei employs against the potential unveiling of women — fitna — is the same word used to describe the opposition Green Movement that took to the streets in the summer of 2009 to protest President Ahmadinejad’s contested reelection. In other words, women’s hair is itself seen as seditious and counter-revolutionary. Even so-called liberal politicians in the Islamic Republic have long fixated on this issue. Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, Iran’s first post-revolutionary president, who has spent the past three decades exiled in France, reportedly once asserted that women’s hair has been scientifically proven to emit sexually enticing rays.

Against this backdrop of repression, temptation, and domination, other countries are attempting to gauge whether the Iranian government is fundamentally rational or irrational. Good luck with that.

Meanwhile, the ayatollahs continue wrangling with their other great fear — that Western sex will invade Iran and the revolution will eventually become limp:

Khamenei’s vast collection of writings and speeches makes clear that the weapons of mass destruction he fears most are cultural — more Kim Kardashian and Lady Gaga than bunker busters and aircraft carriers. In other words, Tehran is threatened not only by what America does, but by what America is: a depraved, postmodern colonial power bent on achieving global cultural hegemony. America’s “strategic policy,” Khamenei has said, “is seeking female promiscuity.”

All this leaves me wondering: What it is about some men in some countries that makes them so fearful of women? When personal weakness and insecurity marry themselves to domestic, religious, and political power, the results aren’t pretty.

But before Kadri gets to these issues, he takes us on colorful ride through the mystical backwaters of Sufi-inspired syncretic Islam. In doing so, he clearly destabilizes the notion that Islam is singular and there is some essential form of it. Here he sets the stage:

The North Indian city of Badaun is barely known beyond the subcontinent, but among the Muslims of India it has a great reputation. Seven ancient Islamic shrines encircle the town, collectively drawing visitors from miles around, and one spiritual specialty has always brought them immense local renown: they are said to facilitate the exorcism of jinns. That is a weighty claim among the poor, the credulous, and the desperate. Genies of the region are not popularly imagined to be the bountiful servants of lamp-rubbing legend. They are mercurial creatures, capable of wreaking havoc, who routinely seize control of people’s lives. Victims are suddenly plunged into depression or discontent, possessed of unusual ideas, and urged to speak, to lash out, even sometimes to kill. Entire families suffer as a consequence, and dozens are therefore to be found at the largest of the shrines, where they camp out in a shanty-filled cemetery pending miraculous interventions on behalf of their afflicted relatives. The scene is permanently alive, serviced by a nearby market, and it swells into something of a carnival as day-trippers arrive by the hundreds on the eve of Friday prayers. The spectacle had horrified and fascinated me in roughly equal measure ever since I first visited Badaun—my father’s birthplace—in 1979, at the age of fifteen. Elderly relations had warned me then to steer well clear of the place after dark on a Thursday night. In the spring of 2009, I finally got round to disobeying them.

I reached the shrine long after dusk, and its neem tree glades were pulsating to the drums and accordions of an ululating troupe of musicians. Picking my way through knots of pilgrims, past shadowy gures who babbled in the darkness or lunged from wooden posts to which they had been chained, I eventually reached the marble courtyard at the mausoleum’s center. The everyday bedlam of India looked to have merged with a scene from The Crucible. In a moonlight that was fluorescent, bright-eyed girls were whipping their hair into propellers while
 older folk, senile or despondent, chattered to tombstones. As I fidgeted with my camera settings, a teenage girl next to me stepped forward, assisted by anxious relatives, to quiver and collapse into the waiting arms of two shrine employees. Others strode forward to swoon in their turn, and were expertly scooped aside to make way for fresh fainters. Whooping children, barely able to believe their luck, cartwheeled around the hysterics and their helpers throughout. It was hours before the chaos gave way to chirrups and a semblance of peace returned to the sepulchers.

This is quite a picture, much at odds with those in the Western media which depict “Islam” through the minimalist lenses of militants and mosques. It is also a strange segue towards a discussion of sharia that somehow works. When Kadri finally gets round to sharia, there is delicious irony. After noting that conservatives have imagined Islamic law as foundational and eternal, Kadri compares this (false) vision with a similar conservative vision:

That claim raises issues similar to those I once encountered in a very different part of the world—the United States. As a law student at Harvard in the late 1980s, I had learned that many American conservatives consider the Founding Fathers of the United States to be possessed of incontestable wisdom. Some went further, arguing that God had manifested His will through their deeds. According to certain lawyers, that could oblige judges to interpret the federal Constitution according to its eighteenth-century meaning, or even require that they consider the Founders’ views when resolving contemporary legal controversies: limits to the death penalty, for example, or governmental restrictions on free speech.

Back then, I had felt that the deference to ancient vocabularies and dead people’s thoughts had the whiff of a séance about it. Pinning down a person’s meaning and motives is hard enough when he or she is alive. The collective intention of a large and diverse group of the deceased is difficult to conceptualize, let alone know. The traditionalist approach toward interpreting the shari‘a does not, on its face, look very different. It seems more akin to ancestor worship than any grave-venerating ritual could be—simply because holy wisdom does not automatically pass down through the generations.

There is indeed more than a bit of ancestor worship and civil religion in American constitutional originalism. It is no accident that most of those who worship at originalism’s altar also worship at other altars.

I’ll be getting Kadri’s book, which has been reviewed here (Guardian) and here (Telegraph), and reporting back on it.

The state-run Saudi news agency announced that a woman named Amina bint Abdulhalim Nassar was publicly beheaded because she claimed to be a healer who could cure ailments for a fee of $800. The religious police arrested her for practicing “witchcraft,” which in this case sounds like a euphemism for faith healing outside of Wahabbist orthodoxy. In Saudi Arabia it is perfectly acceptable to pray to Allah for healing but it is a death sentence to appeal to any other kinds of spirits or forces for healing.

In an interview with Bikya Masr, a Saudi activist complained: “It is wrong and disgusting to kill anyone in this way. Doing this just gets people thinking we live in the Dark Ages.” It apparently would be better if the unorthodox faith healer had been executed in some other less disgusting way. Saudis are living in a high-tech version of the Dark Ages, even if executions remain low-tech.

At the same time Science reports the Saudis are pumping billions of dollars into flagship universities “to help the country move from an oil-based to a knowledge economy.” It goes without saying that only certain kinds of narrow scientific and technological knowledge are acceptable.

This, however, hasn’t deterred at least 60 scientists from accepting yearly stipends of $72,000 for doing little more than naming Saudi universities as affiliate institutions on all their academic publications. Such listings result in higher rankings for Saudi universities.

Scientists can rationalize this however they want and when money is being offered, they will. Neil Robertson, a mathematics professor at Ohio State, commented:

It’s just capitalism. They have the capital and they want to build something out of it. Yes, visibility is very important to them, but they also want to start a Ph.D. program in mathematics. I’m thinking this might be a breath of fresh air in a closed society.

Robertson is “hopeful that outside influence” will help accelerate social reforms in the Kingdom. Unless Robertson can devise equations which prove that beheading a woman for unorthodox beliefs is wrong, I can’t see it happening. Scientists and other academics should think hard about selling their souls to the Saudis.

While Weber surely was right to argue that religion and economy influence one another dialectically, few scholars accept his argument that capitalism was made possible by Calvinism. Although the Protestant Ethic remains a classic, its reputation has dimmed. Few have been more scathing in their criticism than Rodney Stark, who takes Weber to the woodshed in “Putting an End to Ancestor Worship“:

[E]conomic historians long ago dismissed Weber’s monograph as anti-Catholic nonsense on the irrefutable grounds that the rise of capitalism in Europe preceded the Reformation by centuries. Weber was aware that economic historians rejected his thesis on the basis of time order. Consequently, he progressively made his definitions finer in an attempt to restrict capitalism to “modern” Reformation business organizations. Clearly, Weber inserted the adjective “modern” in order to confound those who argued that capitalism was far older than Protestantism.

If Protestant ideals didn’t create capitalism, this doesn’t mean religion had no impact on the mercantilism and mindset that led to it. It simply means we should shift our temporal focus and look for earlier possible influences.

In “The Protestant Ethic and the Parsis,” Robert Kennedy does just this and suggests that Zoroastrianism — an ancestral monotheism — set the stage for Modernity, which encompasses not only capitalism but also science. Kennedy identifies five abstract values associated with Modernity: (1) an underlying order in nature, (2) sensory standard of verification, (3) material work is intrinsically good, (4) maximization of material prosperity, and (5) accumulation rather than consumption of material goods.

Zoroastrian and Parsi Symbol-Motif

Using historical data on the Parsis or Zoroastrian Persians who fled from Iran to India after the Islamic conquest in the 8th century AD, Kennedy examines their beliefs, culture, and society for correspondences. Finding many, Kennedy suggests that modern economy and science may have roots in Zoroastrian religion.

It is an unfortunate fact that we know less about Zoroastrianism than we would like. Although it was the official state religion of the Persian Empire for nearly seven centuries, the conquering Muslims attempted to eradicate every vestige of the faith. One thing is certain: Zoroastrian ideas and influences can be found in Judaism and Christianity. This raises an interesting possibility.

Nietzsche asserted that modern science arose in the West because the West was Christian. To make a long intellectual history short, Christianity’s obsessive search for sacred “Truth” turned on itself and (paradoxically) gave rise to a profane search for truth, which we now call science. If there is in fact a connection between Christianity and science, there may be an even deeper (or older) connection between Zoroastrianism and science.

References:

Stark, R. (2004). SSSR Presidential Address, 2004: Putting an End to Ancestor Worship Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 43 (4), 465-475 DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-5906.2004.00249.x

Kennedy, Jr., R. (1962). The Protestant Ethic and the Parsis American Journal of Sociology, 68 (1) DOI: 10.1086/223262

Brown then asks a series of nonsensical questions which imply that because Neanderthal brains were different from human brains (Neanderthals in fact had bigger brains than humans; the difference is in shape), a cloned Neanderthal would have different supernatural beliefs:

What religion would these creatures have? We know that Neanderthals had rituals, and presumably beliefs, around death. These are lost forever. Should they be replaced? If Neanderthals are enough like us to bury their dead, they will make mythologies with or without our help. What should those be? If two separate countries or cultures cloned two different Neanderthal cultures, would each regard the other as heretics?

While it is true that brains capable of symbolic thinking and language fluency will naturally generate supernatural concepts, the particulars of these ideas are not imprinted on the brain or dependent on it. Brains don’t have ritual or myth modules.

Religions are social constructions. Individuals do not spontaneously create particular kinds of belief. Brains may be naturally wired and primed for religion, but the content of such belief is never predetermined.

The cloned Neanderthal’s cultural environment will determine what s/he believes. If the cloned Neanderthal is raised in Oxford, s/he will probably have Anglican beliefs. If the cloned Neanderthal is raised in the bible belt of America, s/he will probably have Protestant evangelical beliefs. If the cloned Neanderthal is raised in Saudi Arabia, s/he will probably have Muslim beliefs. If the cloned Neanderthal is raised in India, s/he will probably have Hindu beliefs. If the cloned Neanderthal is raised in Thailand, s/he will probably have Buddhist beliefs.

And if Richard Dawkins raises our cloned Neanderthal, s/he will probably think all such beliefs are ridiculous.

As for one cloned Neanderthal regarding another cloned Neanderthal as a heretic, this kind of belief is mostly limited to exclusivist forms of monotheism. So if we had a cloned Neanderthal who was raised Catholic and another raised Sunni, they might regard one another as heretics.

If Neanderthals had anything like religion, it surely would have been similar to the shamanic practices of Upper Paleolithic humans. Because shamanic supernaturalism is pluralist and not exclusivist, the concept of heresy would not have existed.

I was reminded of this effect while reading an article about the “religious” beliefs and practices of a Scandinavian hunter-gatherer society, the Sami. The authors discuss these beliefs and practices using terms and concepts developed primarily in the context of Abrahamic religions. We are told that Sami “Religious practices included a variety of rituals and gestures connected to sacrifices. Offerings expressed veneration of the divine powers and established a relationship with the gods.” We also learn that the Sami worshiped a “sacred wooden idol,” which is considered to be a “deity” and tree carvings are “images of gods.” Elsewhere the authors talk about Sami “holy places.”

Sacrifice, divinity, god, holiness, idols, and deity sound suspiciously like Western rather than Sami constructs. Although we can trace these ideas back to the many polytheisms that first arose in Mesopotamia and then spread throughout the Mediterranean, they were systematically elaborated by the monotheistic traditions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. While it is possible that the Sami did in fact think and talk in these terms, there are several reasons for doubt.

The first comes from what might be considered naive or non-professional chronicling of native traditions. In most cases, our earliest knowledge of indigenous peoples comes from writings produced by explorers, traders, colonizers, and missionaries. They were not trained in ethnographic methods and inevitably recorded what they saw using concepts and language with which they were familiar. Our earliest accounts of indigenous people must be read with this in mind. The second doubt springs from the straightforward difficulties of language. Few of the earliest chroniclers were linguists and much was lost in translation. The third difficulty is the product of contact and diffusion. Ecumenical in their supernatural outlook, many indigenous peoples picked up on new ideas and incorporated them into their beliefs. Early chroniclers were often astonished to hear them talk about things that sounded suspiciously Christian, apparently without realizing that Christian ideas had long been in circulation.

Elsewhere in the article, we are told that Sami “religious beliefs were animistic, centered on animal ceremonialism.” While this seems simple enough, what does “animism” actually mean? I will confess to not having given this much thought until reading Nurit Bird-David’s superb history and analysis of the term. In “Animism Revisited: Personhood, Environment, and Relational Epistemology” (open access), she locates the origin of “animism” in E.B. Tylor’s Primitive Culture (1871) and sketches a genealogy of its deployment since that time.

For Tylor, animism was the attribution of life and personality to plants, animals, weather, and landscapes. He considered it to be a “primitive” trait that originated in dreams and thus was a form of error. Although most of Tylor’s ideas have been abandoned or substantially modified, Bird-David demonstrates that his thoughts on animism have been uncritically accepted and incorporated into the anthropological and historical mainstream. She convincingly shows that animism is an ossified and untroubled category that needs substantial revision.

For Bird-David, the anthropomorphism that characterizes animism is a form of relational epistemology and when viewed this way, it makes considerable sense. Because hunter-gatherers are profoundly and daily affected by plants, animals, weather, and landscapes, putting them into a personal or social relationship — one that is some ways negotiable — is a valid way of understanding and knowing the world.

Having intimate and life altering contact with plants, animals, weather, landscapes, and most importantly other people, hunter-gatherer epistemology does not begin with the individualistic and detached statement “I think, therefore I am.” This Cartesian construct, so deeply embedded (and essentialized) in Western thought, makes little sense to hunter-gatherers who consider relationships to be of paramount importance. Their first principle might thus be stated: “I relate, therefore I am.”

Animism is not, when considered this way, a simplistic or “primitive” way of knowing the world. It is a much richer (and more complex) idea that requires the careful use of concepts which differ from those used to construct the Western world.

References:

Bird-David, Nurit (1999). “Animism” Revisited: Personhood, Environment, and Relational Epistemology. Current Anthropology, 40 DOI: 10.1086/200061

Bergman, I., Ostlund, L., Zackrisson, O., & Liedgren, L. (2008). Varro Muorra: The Landscape Significance of Sami Sacred Wooden Objects and Sacrificial Altars. Ethnohistory, 55 (1), 1-28 DOI: 10.1215/00141801-2007-044

Heaven is for Real currently occupies the number one slot on the New York Times bestseller list and is Amazon’s number one seller. As of today, 1.5 million copies are in print but with a heavy promotional tour underway, expect that figure to go much higher. The book retails for $16.99.

Covering the story for the New York Times, Julie Bosman interviewed Colton’s father, who attempted to deflect any suspicions that money was the motive: “People say we just did this to make money, and it’s not the truth,” Mr. Burpo said, referring to anonymous online comments about the book. “We were expecting nothing. We were just hoping the publisher would break even.”

Before you begin thinking this was a homespun effort, with Colton patiently telling his dad all about heaven while the pastor faithfully transcribed, think again. The book’s “co-author” is the high-powered Lynn Vincent, author of Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue. Vincent does not sign on for just any book and does not work for charity. She is a writer of great skill who knows how to push all the right buttons for a Christian audience. This one appears to be a home run.

What are to make of all this? Besides the obvious (American Christians are a credulous lot), we have to wonder about Colton and his father. They seem like good people and I will give them the benefit of the doubt: they probably believe what they are saying. The question then becomes: How can this be? It would be a mistake to underestimate our evolved powers of self-deception, especially when coupled with a brain-mind that naturally generates beliefs in the supernatural and strong cultural support for such beliefs.

We can find some additional clues by watching this astonishing interview:

“Wow!” That is Gretchen Carlson, a Stanford degree holder who is clearly smitten by Colton’s story. Because Colton’s parents are both pastors, we know that in the seven years since his surgery he has been hearing stories about God, Jesus, John the Baptist, and Heaven. Some of these sound a bit familiar.

What is God like? He’s really big and can “fit the entire world in his hands.” I wonder where Colton got this idea? What about Jesus? Despite his non-European heritage, he has “sea blue eyes.” Hopefully, Razib over at Gene Expression will give us a rundown on this remote possibility. What about people? Everyone is “young again” and can fly — wings are apparently given out on arrival. Angel races anyone?

Here is the rub in all this: Why is it that when Hindus have near death experiences (NDE), they meet Krishna or Vishnu in an ornate temple? Why is it that when Buddhists have an NDE, they meet Buddha under a tree? Why is it that when Muslims have an NDE, they meet Mohammad in the garden of virgins? Why is it that when Crow Indians had one, they visited the happy hunting grounds?

There must be different kinds of afterlives and heavens for different kinds of faiths.

The Romans were justly known as wise administrators of conquered provinces, allowing native peoples to continue worshiping their own gods, while the Roman administrators and garrisons would build temples for Roman deities.  This pagan tolerance often had syncretic effects so that over time the result would be something like what was found near Le Mans: a temple complex where Gallic-Celtic deities were worshiped alongside Roman gods and goddesses.  It is highly likely that locals adopted some Roman beliefs and practices while the occupying Romans adopted some local beliefs and practices.  Indeed, this is what the archaeologists have found:

“Given the size of the site, hundreds of pilgrims, possibly thousands, would have come here to honour the gods,” said Guillier. “They probably held other mass events here too.”

[The archaeologists] uncovered a marvelous selection of objects placed as offerings. They include Gallic, Celtic and Roman silver coins, bronze and silver-plated bronze fibulae (broaches), some jewelery including a gold ring with a green quartz representing a deity, as well as bronze keys, pottery and knives. They also found a dagger, sledgehammers and hammers, possibly offerings from soldiers and ironmongers, who held high-risk occupations requiring more divine protection than others.

But what gods were worshipped there? No statues or inscriptions have been found as clues, and the Gallic pantheon was as plentiful as the Roman one.

It appears that all kinds of deities were worshiped at the site, including one god — Mars Mullo — who had his own temple and was a synthesis of the Roman god Mars and the Celtic-Gallic god Mullo.  The offerings of Roman soldiers, including daggers and hammers, were mostly likely made to Mithras, the imported Persian deity and mystery cult (often symbolized by a bull) that was Latinized and a long-time favorite of the Legions.

Unfortunately, archaeologists will not be able to work at this site for long, as the area is slated for urban development.  It is a shame that this massive and informative complex will be subject to salvage operations only.

There is one lesson we can learn from this highly civilized and cosmopolitan “pagan” site right now: religious beliefs need not be exclusive and tolerance can be a virtue.  This is an especially poignant point at a time when 60 million Americans schizophrenically believe their president is a closet Muslim and political discourse is dominated by fear mongering.

• American Christianity is not well, and there’s evidence to indicate that its condition is more critical than most realize — or at least want to admit.
• Culturally, America is still a Christian nation.

Vampire writer and gothicist Anne Rice may be many things, but bellwether of American Christianity she is not — this probably accounts for Lobdell’s confusion.

While it may be true that more Americans are distancing themselves from organized Christianity, the majority of Americans — 78.5% to be exact — claim affiliation with Christian denominations.  The statistic that has Lobdell concerned about Christianity in America is the growing number of people who say they are “Unaffiliated” (16% of Americans) with any particular faith or denomination.

What Lobdell seems to misunderstand is that the majority of these unaffiliated remain Christian; they simply do not identify with any particular Christian denomination or church.  This in fact is what Anne Rice said she was doing — leaving the Catholic Church but retaining her Christian faith in the gospels.  An astonishing 98% of Americans believe in God, and most of these believe in a Christian God.

This churched and unchurched Christianity, in turn, accounts for the widespread hostility to the construction of an Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero, and a more generalized hostility toward Islam.  In “Why Has Islam Become So Controversial in America,” Max Fisher puzzles over this hostility and surveys seven attempts to explain it.

While there is some truth to each of these explanations, none address the fundamental issue: most Americans are Christians and American Christianity has long been — and remains today — exclusivist and intolerant.

This is not simply my perception or sense of the situation after too many trips to Wal-Mart.  It is a fact confirmed by sociologist Stephen Merino in his recently published article — Religious Diversity in a “Christian Nation”: The Effects of Theological Exclusivity on the Acceptance of Religious Diversity.

Merino’s findings are hardly surprising:

• 66% of Americans believe it is “important” to be Christian in order to be “truly American”;
• 65% of Americans believe that the founders intended for America to be a “Christian nation”;
• 55% of Americans believe that the US Constitution actually establishes a “Christian nation”; and
• 80% of Americans believe that the nation was founded on “Christian principles.”

Of these Americans, a large majority also profess belief in the principle of “religious freedom.”  But the freedom they have in mind is the freedom to practice a Christian faith — they are quite intolerant and unwelcoming of “other faiths.”  As Merino suggests, “when many Americans think of religious diversity, the have only Christian diversity in mind.”

Among evangelical protestants (and especially those in the south), Merino found that special enmity is reserved for two groups: Muslims and atheists.  This fact may explain Christopher Hitchens’ surprising article defending the construction of a mosque near Ground Zero.  The atheist Hitchens may have concluded that the enemy (Islam) of his enemy (evangelicals) is a friend.

As I have emphasized again and again in this blog, there is no singular Islam or Christianity or Judaism or Buddhism or Hinduism.  No faith tradition is unified and there is no “correct” or “authentic” version.

One of the falsehoods about “Islam” (which is an empty category) that Boaz attempted to correct was this:  “Misconception 2: Islam calls for the oppression of women.”

While in Boaz’ version of Islam this may be a misconception, it is not so in others.  While I pointed out the problems with Boaz’ argument using words, this picture is a more powerful rebuttal:

This woman’s name is Aisha and she lives in Afghanistan.  She recently appeared on the cover of Time Magazine and this additional photo was taken by a Time photographer.

Her marriage was arranged according to Islamic custom, and after being abused by her husband and in laws, she ran away.  She was, in her words, “treated like a slave.”  Upon being re-captured, she was punished by the Taliban, her husband, and in-laws according to their reading of Islam and sharia law.

This gruesome punishment consisted of having her ears and nose cut-off.  She was left for dead (which would have occurred slowly through loss of blood) but found by US soldiers, treated, and now lives in a safehouse.

Again, this is not the sort of thing I enjoy pointing out because it adds to the mass hysteria and ignorance that most Americans have regarding the imaginary thing they call “Islam.”  But I feel compelled to point this out because the educated and progressive left, in their efforts to minimize the hysteria and ameliorate the ignorance, often go too far: they fail to see that Islam is many different things to many different people.

Like all religious traditions, Islam is hydra headed.   In some versions, the religiously inspired practices are positively heinous and the oppression of women — which may include torture or murder — is perfectly acceptable.  Several versions of Vedic faiths sanction similar treatments of women.

Would Boaz look at this picture, consider Aisha’s story, and conclude that the Taliban’s version of Islam is wrong, false, incorrect, or inauthentic?  If so, I suggest that she read Terry Eagleton’s Literary Theory or Stanley Fish’s Is There a Text in This Class?, and then get back to us with a revised essay on the many faces of Islam.

Postscript — I just visited Missives from Marx and one of my favorite bloggers has a different and important take on Aisha’s picture and the accompanying cover story.  I completely agree with his comments, and my blog post in no way addresses Time’s article or the political-power interests that story may serve.  In addition, all this interest in a photograph attests to the power of images.