Why do Republican candidates always say Allahu Akbar?

Last week, after the show ended at the Iowa political theatre, I watched, thanks to my favorite television channel, Marco Rubio's "victory" speech after he came third.  Towards the end of that speech, Rubio said:

I thank my lord and savior Jesus Christ, I thank God for allowing me the opportunity to come this far with each of you

I find "God bless America" and "In god we trust" difficult to handle, and Rubio went far above and beyond those.

Which is when I got to thinking, what Rubio says so publicly is no different from saying "Allahu Akbar" when all that phrase means is "god is great."  If at all, Allahu Akbar is a lot more succinct than the lengthy manner in which Rubio phrased it.

The winner of the Iowa circus, Ted Cruz, opened his speech with, "Let me first of all say, to God be the glory."  There, isn't that also nothing but his version of "Allahu Akbar"?

Why is it ok for the GOP presidential contenders to walk around saying god is great, but then they want to hassle Muslims who want to come here as refugees fleeing dictators and chaos, and the Muslims who are here, only because they say "god is great" but in Arabic?

Can't we all agree to keep god out of the public square and refer to whatever gods in private spaces?  I am with Susan Jacoby when she writes about being Sick and Tired of ‘God Bless America':

our political campaigns are still conducted as if all potential voters were among the faithful. The presumption is that candidates have everything to gain and nothing to lose by continuing their obsequious attitude toward orthodox religion and ignoring the growing population of those who make up a more secular America.

How significant is the secular population?

Americans who say religion is not important in their lives and who do not belong to a religious group, according to the Pew Research Center, have risen in numbers from an estimated 21 million in 2008 to more than 36 million now.

Which means

At 22.8 percent, according to Pew, the unchurched make up a larger group than Catholics, any single Protestant denomination and small minorities of Jews, Muslims and Hindus.

The god (or the son of god) references by politicians means that "“religious freedom is in danger of becoming code for accepting public money while imposing faith-based values on others."

Jacoby ends with this:

Just once in my life, I would like the chance to vote for a presidential candidate who ends his or her appeals with Thomas Paine’s observation that “the most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is Reason.”

We can dream, right?

The emptiness of a secular society ... and education

A couple of years into my teaching, I began to wonder if there was a simple reason why students didn't think of me as an awesome one in the classroom.  Well, assuming they can't ever figure out that I am an intellectual facade covering an idiot!

I wondered if I am not making an emotional connection with them.

I laugh, I kid around, I empathize with the poor and the suffering, I criticize the privileged.  Students know all that.  But, I figured I was not stirring their emotions.

On the other hand, students flocked towards faculty who whip them up into a frenzy with their personal emotions-laded lectures on topics like the messed up environment, the evil corporations, the dirty politicians, the abused women, and more.

Even when I address those issues, I calmly point out to students that the world is a much better place than it ever was on pretty much every one of those issues.  I point to how dirty Los Angeles was, for instance, and how it is cleaner now.  If it were not for corporations, they would not have the smartphones they love.  Politicians have always been dirty--at least they operate in the open now, in contrast to the smoke-filled backrooms.  Women have immensely more opportunities and freedom now compared to even a couple of generations ago.  Yes, there is lots of work to be done on every one of those issues and more, but ...

I fail to stir the emotions within them.  And worse, I point out the bullshit in the claims made by faculty and students.

I have always wondered if my experience in the classroom and the academic environment is no different from the world outside.  Two essays tell me that I am not in the wrong to think that way.

In this essay, in which the author reviews a " short book, adopted from the Henry L. Stimson Lectures that [Michael] Walzer delivered at Yale University in 2013" is this line:

Secular revolutions unwittingly give rise to religious zealotry.  

An interesting hypothesis to work on, right?  The religious fanaticism that we see all around across various countries was borne out of the secular revolutions.

Looking at what began in Israel, India, and (to a lesser extent) Algeria in the middle of the 20th century, Walzer does not ask, "What is to be done?," Lenin’s famous question, but "Why did they do it?" David Ben-Gurion, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Ahmed Ben Bella may have believed that the anticolonial movements they led would help usher in a new society. Instead they prepared the groundwork for clerical authority, unbending dogmatism, and second-class status for women.

 Israel's politics has shifted so much to the religious right that one has to search for remnants of a secular society anymore.  India's religious tensions seem to be reaching newer and newer depths.

Secularists, he argues, lack a thick sense of culture. They are, and for some time will be, unable to provide the sense of belonging and "appeal to history" that Orthodoxy possesses. They have lost whatever hegemony they had.

An op-ed at Project Syndicate is, to a large extent, about these very issues:

The decision to abandon relative peace and prosperity for brutal war and instability may seem irrational. But young people, born and raised in democratic societies, have increasingly been yielding to the appeal of death-dealing groups like the Islamic State, leaving their homes and families to wage jihad in faraway places.Why has democracy lost the allegiance of these restless spirits, and how can it recapture the hearts and minds of others who would follow suit?

I find the answer to be compelling:

democratic ideals and institutions are failing to provide a palpable enough sense of community and purpose – people seek a sense of meaning elsewhere, which in some cases leads them to malevolent causes.

It is easy to get to students' emotions by showing them photos of the polar bear and sweatshops, and it is just as easy to get the youth to get worked up about malevolent causes.  

Defenders of democracy must now determine not only how to create jobs and ensure material prosperity for today’s young people, but also how to feed their souls on the way. If they fail, as we have seen, others will fill the void, potentially with a call for mayhem in the name of messianic futurity.

Interesting, right?  Especially when he writes about feeding their souls?  Deep down, we humans crave for that something that no amount of material comfort can provide us.  A secular, liberal, democracy is failing to address this.  The void that the youth feel is being addressed by those who are devoutly passionate about their causes.  The causes could be as varied as the "secular" fight to save the polar bear, the "religious" fight to save the unborn, or the jihad to defend the honor of a prophet. 

All these do not mean that I am going to change my approach in the classroom, or with my faculty colleagues.  But, I now know all the more that I have set myself up to fail in any popularity contest.

Oh well ... I will comfort my soul by listening to BB King, who died yesterday.

Is India secular? Hint: No!

As long as I am outside India, I suppose I can dare to be critical, without worrying about the nationalist goondas coming after me?

In the civics portion of the curriculum, back when I was in grade IX or sometime then, the textbook presented a wonderful portrait of a secular India.  A secular public space despite all the gazillion religions and the tensions amongst them.  A convenient narrative that overlooked one thing: it was not the reality.

Over the years, I have only witnessed India's politics and society become increasingly colored by religion(s) and less and less secular:

the use of religion for political ends has substantially increased during the last few decades. Such a development has serious implications for a secular state and society. Retrieving the secular character of the public sphere is therefore imperative; otherwise its religious character is likely to impinge upon the functions of the state.

But, that was from a post back in 2009.  How are things now? 

Not better by any means, opines this op-ed writer in the NY Times, in the context of the twentieth anniversary of a shameful display of anything but secularism when a mob of Hindu fanatics demolished a mosque:

The movement eventually hoisted the Bharatiya Janata Party as a major national party, which led India through two short spells, then for a full five-year term, starting in 1999. It was a period of economic growth, and the confident party went back to the polls in 2004 with the joyous slogan “India Shining.” But it was defeated because there were apparently still too many poor people in the country who did not see the shine.

Now the party hopes it will triumph in the 2014 general elections, chiefly riding on the back of a man linked to the 2002 riots in Gujarat, which claimed the lives of more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims. Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat and now a possible prime ministerial candidate, was accused of discouraging the police from protecting Muslims, accusations he has denied. But he understood very early in his political career that any nation that has to declare that it is “secular” probably is not. 

Narendra Modi, who has never tried to hide his ambitions to become India's prime minister, is resorting to that old election strategy all over again: targeting Muslims:

At one public meeting after another, as the campaign hots up, Mr. Modi says the Congress has a secret plan to pitchfork Ahmed Patel, political secretary of party chief Sonia Gandhi, into the job of Chief Minister. To ensure that the message reaches home, Mr. Modi now refers to Mr. Patel as “Ahmed-miyan,” a suffix he used in the run-up to the 2002 poll campaign to call the former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf Miyan-Musharraf, to refer to the larger Muslim population in Gujarat — something that worked well in the State. This was in reference to the attack on the Sabarmati Express train in Godhra in 2002 that left 58 people dead

It is such a tragic irony that this maniacal nationalist comes from the same part of India that produced that ultimate champion of tolerance and coexistence: Gandhi.