I’ve spoken elsewhere about the need to define and reaffirm the importance of citizenship for the sake of healing our political discourse. However, in doing so, I recognize that the original discussion barely outlined the concept of citizenship without really delving into the specifics.
In summarizing my writing so far on citizenship, I’ve defined the concept and focused largely on the communicative elements of that: How we could revamp our models of political conversation and reevaluate our use of language.
However, I also realize that there is a relational aspect to citizenship: How we relate to our fellow citizens, and noncitizens, in our local context is the most practicable outworking of our citizenship. If we cannot be good neighbors, we cannot build a healthy body politic.
So, I want to offer something of a case study in practicing citizenship through a classical virtue: friendship.
This virtue sheds light on a subject that is of particular importance to me: The place of Muslims in America.
Currently, American Muslims occupy an uneasy spot in the political landscape between intolerance and dismissal. Both responses demonstrate ignorance, but the Aristotelian virtue of friendship provides a way forward in building stronger local communities and a more robust citizenship.
Intolerance and fear
The intolerance directed at Muslims in America came home to me after September 11th. In the weeks after that tragic event, my Muslim neighbors were attacked outside of a movie theater. This wasn’t a one off, either. My local newspaper carried other stories of similar incidents in the surrounding area: a driver trying to run down a women in a head scarf; and a Sikh being attacked because his turban was mistaken for that of a Muslim.
(The Sikh example, in particular, provides an interesting anecdote in understanding intolerance of Muslims: the close relationship between disproportionate fear and ignorance.)
Intolerance towards Muslims is completely out of proportion to any perceived “threat.” Not only is Islamist-related terror less frequent than mass shootings, but the population of American Muslims remains very low. In fact, Pew Research found that while the population of Muslims in America will continue to grow for the foreseeable future, there is a consistent drain of Muslims away from the faith. In other words, this is dominantly a faith community in flux, not a faith community entrenched.
Ignorance and dismissal
And while we hear often of intolerance directed at Muslims, we hear much less of the ignorance of Islam and the dismissal of Muslims, even by other Muslims. This may be because many in America support causes believed to be part and parcel with Muslim interests: refugees, Palestinian rights and sovereignty, religious toleration, etc. But this is inaccurate. Marginalization of Muslims can occur without intolerance; a sin of omission rather than commission. I characterize this as a marginalization through ignorance and dismissal.
Ignorance. Research is pretty clear that Americans are increasingly religiously illiterate. Fundamentally, the truth claims of the world’s religions are seen as quaint at best and dangerous at worst. And while this dismissal of religion, often in favor of a loosely defined spirituality, is generally most visible vis a vis Christianity in secular media and academia, it’s not a stretch to extend that attitude to Islam.
Americans, on the whole, are not just less religious, they also haven’t read many of the world’s religious texts, including the Koran, and few have Muslim friends. Islam, for all practical purposes, is a little known abstraction.
Additionally, many of the humanitarian issues cited above are not Muslim-specific issues. Refugees from the Middle East are dominantly Muslim, but they’re not refugees because of their faith. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is more of an ethno-nationalist conflict than a religious one as even a cursory reading of the Palestinian Authority’s history will show.
Religious tolerance? Sure, in the name of multiculturalism. Even here, the fundamental value or principle being advocated is not the religion per se, but a more secular concept of culture that the religious form merely alludes to.
Engaging American Muslims with friendship
Fear and dismissal are two sides of the same coin in that they are vices, not virtues. Vice, not virtue, thus governs our public and private responses to Islam.
In other places on this site, I’ve written about the idea of virtue and the need to reenlist it as a powerful concept to understanding and elevating our political context. The Aristotelian concepts of vice and virtue are particularly helpful in analyzing this issue: Aristotle characterized virtue as the good, true, and beautiful reality reflecting balance and connection between entities.
Think of scales in perfect balance. Vice is what happens when we overload any one side of those scales and literally slant our response, proclivities and relationship towards one thing and away from another.
In the case of relating to Muslims, the virtue of friendship should govern our response – a willingness to be neighborly, respectful, and engaging.
However, according to Aristotle, too much friendliness gives place to the vice of obsequiousness – an over accommodating servility that is unwilling to correct and confront a friend when such is needed (as none of us are perfect).
Too little friendliness gives place to cantankerousness – a generally combative, argumentative meanness that does not seek the good of the other. Both are wrong and equally damaging to relationships. They are alike in that they are fundamentally unloving.
How should we engage?
We should not tolerate the ignorance that feeds intolerance and dismissal. That is, we should not tolerate it in ourselves.
It’s easy to point out the fear and/or dismissal in others, but the first step towards a more active engagement with America’s Muslims is by first addressing our own ignorance, then being willing to interact and engage with Muslims in our immediate vicinity.
Addressing your own ignorance doesn’t necessarily mean becoming an expert in Islam, or visiting a mosque, but it does mean you should probably be reading about the faith and its followers from sources that do not confirm any pre existing biases.
Second, it would help to grasp the stunning diversity of American Muslims. Indeed, it’s hard to make ‘Muslim’ a general category given the range of backgrounds and religious traditions American Muslims come from. Such diversity should eliminate any sense of generalization tempting us to oversimplification.
I count it a great blessing to regularly be interacting with Muslims in my academic program and my local community. What I have come to find among this diverse group is that we all share similar life concerns and aspirations. In other words, our differing backgrounds and religious beliefs actually help draw out our common humanity in a unique and beautiful way. But we can only experience that if we move towards friendship, rather than into the fearful silence bred by intolerance and dismissal.