May 27, 2010
Religion Gone Global
NS: Last April in Pasadena, California, I heard you announce, for the first time, your support for a one-state solution to the Israel-Palestine situation. What convinced you of that position?
RA: What has brought me to the bi-national state, instead of the two-state solution, are the enormous obstacles, both political and religious, in the way of implementing the peace process as it was defined in UN Security Council Resolution 242. To be as frank as I can possibly be, there’s not much left of a Palestinian state. Every single day, more Palestinian land is being irretrievably lost to Israeli settlements, so time is running out. These are the realities on the ground in the region.
I also have to say that, for years now, the two-state solution that I’ve been championing in my writings, speeches, and discussions with political leaders has not been exactly aligned with my political and philosophical outlook. I am a globalist. I believe fully in the promise of globalization. We are fast approaching a world without borders, without boundaries, and the ethno-nationalist conception of nationhood that was so much a part of the twentieth-century way of thinking, especially when it came to the establishment of the state of Israel, is no longer feasible in the twenty-first. A two-state solution is anachronistic. The rest of the world is starting to look like the EU, so why are we trying to create something that would be anathema to that in Israel-Palestine?
NS: In this and other questions of geopolitics, how does your training as a scholar of religion affect your thinking?
RA: When I say that I’m a scholar of religions, people sometimes think that what I do is textual exegesis. My job is to talk about the role that religion plays in human societies. We have to understand that all religions, in all parts of the world, are always more a matter of identity than they are a matter of belief. We in the United States, a quintessentially Protestant country, have been lulled into the false idea that religion is about one’s private, confessional experience. It’s not, not even here in the United States. When one says “I am a Muslim,” “I am a Jew,” or “I am a Christian” that person is making an identity statement. Religion is about who you are in an indeterminate world. It’s about your worldview. It encompasses every aspect of your identity, from where you live to how you vote. To think that we can have a full and complete conception of the world, and of international relations, without literacy in religion is, in the twenty-first century, absurd.
Posted by Robin Varghese at 06:37 PM | Permalink
Comments
I always have a problem with this kind of argument (from the Immanent Frame article):
"People are always complaining that the problem with the Internet is that there’s no journalistic integrity. Bloggers aren’t bound by the same rules that traditional journalists are—that’s absolutely true. But the benefit of the Internet is that it’s self-policing. People know who is worth reading and who is not. If you’re not worth reading, if you can’t be trusted, you very quickly go away."
My problem is: who are these "people," and who is this "you"? What about Internet communities that form around ideas like "Obama was born in Kenya" and "global warming is a hoax"? They decide what is worth reading and trustworthy, and police themselves, according to very different standards from the rest of us. And frankly, those standards aren't a respect for reality. But I'm afraid those folks aren't going away quickly. On the contrary, they're increasing.
Posted by: JonJ | May 28, 2010 8:22:53 PM
You raise valid questions, however, look at all of the media that is not online, and the same things are true. Without keeping an inquiring mind, and cross-checking with your conscience, observation, and common sense, you are lost. A rigorous sense of skepticism is required of all. The point is to search for knowledge, always, not to search for authority.
Posted by: Alice de Tocqueville | May 28, 2010 11:06:20 PM
Alice-
The thing I worry about is that the inquiring minds, rigorous skepticism, etc., are almost all on the side of the political fence we commonly call "left" (not that everyone on that side has a pure intellectual conscience, by a long shot, of course). And that side has not gotten very far in mastering the use of modern communications media, like the Internet, which are very powerful in shaping the opinions of the general public.
The right has so far proven itself much more skillful at swaying public opinion, largely because, having no intellectual conscience, they can go in the most entertaining directions (e.g., Beck, Limbaugh, and Palin), reality be damned. And for most people, the desire for entertainment, and reinforcement of their prejudices, are much stronger motives that the pursuit of truth.
True, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are also entertaining, but I doubt that they have as much political influence. We'll see what story the elections tell this year and in 2012, but I'm not optimistic at this point.
Posted by: JonJ | May 29, 2010 5:52:26 PM
The MSM, and not just Fox News and AM radi, it's true, mostly serve the corporate beast. Until the last year, CNN and MSNBC seemed to be trying to be more right-wing than Fox. But Obama won. Now, I know he fooled everyone, and he's really working for Goldman Sachs, but I take great encouragement from what a majority of Americans wanted; an end to the wars, transparent government, single payer health care (not insurance) and the rest of an implied peace dividend.
A survey I read about over at Crooked Timber verified that left-wing websites were more interactive by a wide margin, and my experience bears that out; they almost always allow comments, and therefore, dialogue. Many advocacy groups utilize the net to circulate petitions and letters to Congress, etc., and I find they are also more likely to include citations and links to information sources.
Do you listen to Pacifica radio stations? If there isn't one near you, you can listen online to a world-wide network of completely listener-supported coverage, always years ahead of the MSM. I highly recommend especially KPFA, the first such station in the world, started by pacifists in 1948.
The tea party rank and file are not political activists by habit, but have been stirred up by GOP hacks to think they can't lose. They are wrong, and when they see that, they'll peter out; they live in a Disneyland of the mind, and don't have the smarts or conviction to stay in the fight.
Posted by: Alice de Tocqueville | May 29, 2010 6:30:14 PM
Boy-howdy, I hope the tea partiers peter out, but I don't see signs of it yet.
I may be wrong, but I think most Americans still get their political direction from TV and talk radio, not the Internet, and therefore Beck, Limbaugh, and their acolytes rule the roost. Air America collapsed, and Pacifica stations have very little penetration into the American mind (if that's not an oxymoron).
I use Internet radio a lot, but how many Americans do? How many even know there is such a thing, much less how to access it?
The big problem, as far as I can see, is that there is basically no real left organizing going on, compared to what was happening in the '60s and '70s, aside from the Hispanic community. I doubt there will be, unless and until the economy runs into really bad trouble. And when that happens, fascist organizing might well overwhelm left organizing, the way things are going. (All these dates refer to the previous century, of course, which is where people my age mostly live these days.)
Posted by: JonJ | May 30, 2010 1:09:03 PM
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