Muslim is the new Catholic

Way back in the days when I was in school, I spent a semester once taking classes at a Catholic seminary.

This sounds somewhat weirder than it was. I don’t mean the classes, for those were weirder than they sound: Synoptics. The Desert Fathers. Theological Anthropology.

What I mean, rather, is that it might sound weird that I’d be there, in a Catholic seminary, at all. It wasn’t.

One course I remember was called The History of Catholicism in America. We learned about how, back in the 19th century, Catholic immigrants to America were often seen as swarthy, bearded, bomb-toting unionists who refused to learn English or to try and fit into American society. They were “papists” whose divided loyalties meant they would never be real Americans.

This all sounded a bit familiar to me, somehow.

We read a book called Catholicism and American Freedom: A History in which John T. McGreevy wrote:

 “The idea that American Catholics… threatened the foundations of the nation-state became a truism in some religious and intellectual circles. Either American Catholics must renounce the Vatican, one minister explained, or they must ‘renounce their allegiance as citizens.’ A writer for The Independent was more blunt: ‘The comprehensive lesson is that Romanism is incompatible with republican institutions. Like slavery, it is a hostile element lodged within the nation, gnawing and burning it like a caustic’.”

I think about this sometimes. I think about it when I’m told by people (mostly online and probably even Catholic, to boot) that I cannot be a good Muslim and a good American.

How we got here, vol. 2

By now, some of you perhaps have recognized “How we got here, vol. 1” as a history. A history of sorts, at any rate. A history lesson at best, which is not the same as to say that I know more history than the next person. I do not.

Depending on who the next person is, I do not.

I say only that it is a history lesson and that I am the one writing it, for good or ill.

When we last saw Steve and Bill, you’ll remember, they were back in their small town staring at the desert, having made a real balls of it.

How we got here, vol. 1

This could be how it happened. This is my understanding of how it happened:

Once upon a time, there was a small-time mayor named Muhammad ibn Saud.

Muhammad ibn Saud.

Now, for all my non-Middle Eastern readers, do not let the exotic name intimidate you. No. In fact, let’s just call him “Steve.”

Steve wasn’t really much of a leader. He didn’t have much power, but he wanted it. He sat around like small-timers do and schemed of ways to get more power. Much more.

Places I will go – part one

1. I will go to the Jamarat Pillars just outside of Mecca. I don’t know when but I will go someday.

I will go and I will throw seven tiny pebbles at the pillars. This represents the stoning of the devil. The stoning of the devil! Millions of people do it every year and I will, too.

The pillars used to be plain old pillars just standing out in the open like this:

But as you can imagine, with so very many people always throwing stones, people were hurt. People were trampled. The Saudis, a few years back, built this multi-level parking garage-looking thing around the pillars...

...making it safer now to stone the devil.

It sounds amazing and bizarre and I am going to go there someday.

2. I will go to Alamut Castle in Iran, where the legendary Hassan-i Sabbah once trained his assassins. It’s said they were feared by all, and they smoked drugs and saw Paradise and they were so loyal to Hassan-i Sabbah that they’d plunge off the top of the castle at his command.

They’re long gone now so far as we can tell, but I have to see the castle with my own eyes.

3. I will go to Howard Hughes’ grave. It’s like five blocks from my house. Sure, it’s not nearly so exotic and exciting as those other places I mentioned, but its locality makes the chances of a visit ever so much more likely, and soon.

I will go to all these places and more (Inshallah…).

Where will you go?  

"Muslim and American"

President Barack Obama, speaking at the Islamic Society of Baltimore, February 3, 2016:

“Today, there are voices in this world, particularly over the Internet, who are constantly claiming that you have to choose between your identities — as a Muslim, for example, or an American. Do not believe them. If you're ever wondering whether you fit in here, let me say it as clearly as I can, as President of the United States: You fit in here — right here. You're right where you belong. You're part of America, too. You're not Muslim or American. You're Muslim and American.”

Young Muslims waiting to fist-bump the President

Four hundred rupees

from Journey to the End of Islam, by Michael Muhammad Knight:

“Fast food in Lahore caters to the upper class: a foot-long sandwich at Subway costs four hundred rupees, the daily wage for our driver and much more expensive than the superior Pakistani food you can get on the street.

“The billboards, movies, and music videos all speak to the fantasy life of the Westernized upper class, which seems embarrassed by the rest of Pakistan. Clothing stores at the Fortress mall sell fashions that no woman could wear in public, only rich girls behind closed doors when they dance to American music and do coke and hook up at secret mansion parties. ‘Radical Islam’ or ‘Islamism’ or the best one, ‘Islamofascism,’ almost appear logical as a knee-jerk reaction to all of this, and extreme patriotism has risen from the confusion of kids who buy up culture from a country that they assume will someday bomb them.” 

Three weeks in America

America is a big place with lots of people where nobody cares what anybody else believes.

In saying this, I do not mean to say that we celebrate or encourage diversity. I mean that we simply do not care.

In America, I can walk up to a stranger on the street and say to him, “I believe that when you die, you and your loved ones will transform into giant cockroaches who will chew each other’s heads off for all eternity, over and over again. I believe that this will happen to you because you failed to hop on one foot for seven hours a day during your lifetime.”

This person on the street will say to me, “Why are you telling me this? I don’t care!” Then he will probably go off to worship at a Satanic Temple or at that one church that says the Garden of Eden was in Missouri.  

Nobody will care and though that might sound bad, it is actually good. After the last three weeks in America, I wish we would all go back to not caring again.