I asked an old friend of mine, Andrew Stallybrass, who is an Anglo-Swiss working for an NGO in Geneva, and is Vice-President of the Geneva Inter-Faith Platform, for his take on the minaret ban. Stallybrass’s previous piece of writing for Tikkun was “For a True Islam,” a review of Caroline Fourest’s Brother Tariq: The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan. He concluded that review by writing of Ramadan, whom he knows, in stark contrast to Fourest, “I’m not alone in trusting the man and his motives.” He added, “democrats should have faith that European Muslims will recognize and embrace the best of Europe while also making valuable contributions to repairing the worst.”

[Addition 12/7/09: In an email Stallybrass just told me this information, which I had not seen in the press here: "P.S. There are four minarets in Switzerland today. There are zero requests for planning permission to build more. And there have never been any requests for calls to prayer from the four existing minarets."]

The Swiss vote to ban minarets

by Andrew Stallybrass

It’s not often that Switzerland makes the headlines around the world. But frankly, this is publicity that we could have done without! Last weekend, 57% of the Swiss who voted (53% turnout, which is high by Swiss standards) approved a constitutional amendment to bar the building of minarets. Opinion polls predicted only a 37% vote in favour of this measure, which will almost certainly now be contested in the courts, Swiss and European. The vote went against the recommendations of the Swiss government, the majority of the Swiss parliament, all the mainline Swiss churches and religious communities, and against the media, and revealed a gulf between the leaders and elites, and the people. In the blogosphere on the Internet, neighbouring countries’ media web sites are showing record levels of response, mainly showing even higher percentages of rejection of Islam. Bloggers in Britain, France and Germany wish they were able to have a referendum to impose their similar views.

I can try to console myself: Geneva, where I live, voted massively against the measure: we have many Muslims, a mosque with minaret, and some 30% of the population here are non-Swiss. Most of the cities where people actually know Muslims voted the same way.

This initially surprised me. Sarah Palin has been criticized on many grounds. (I would try to list them, but their number, like the demons that afflicted the Gerasene demoniac in the Gospel of Mark, are legion). Being insufficiently conservative on social policy is not one of them. Alan Keyes, however, never ceases to amaze even the most jaded political observer. He has attacked Sarah Palin for not being a genuine pro-life candidate. He charges that she has expressed her opposition to abortion only in personal terms, but has given no principled, ideological reasons for limiting or banning abortion. In doing so, she leaves herself room to waffle later on. Here’s a summary of his view:

The Financial Times has a story on the work and recent death of Jean-François Bergier, a Swiss economic historian who chaired an international commission that examined Switzerland’s policies in World War II. Calling himself a “conservative patriot,” Bergier apparently believed that the highest patriotic duty is to help one’s nation understand itself, looking at both lights and shadows.

The story of how he came to chair the commission is fairly dramatic:

Revelations about the dormant Swiss bank accounts of Holocaust victims and the stonewalling that greeted the efforts of relatives to gain access drew such stinging international criticism that in December 1996 Switzerland set up an international commission of experts to examine the country’s wartime role. Bergier was roused from his bed late at night by a call from officials in Bern and asked to take on the job of chairing it. He was given quarter of an hour to make up his mind — and agreed….

Backed by a staff of about 100, the commission, which reported in March 2002, went well beyond the initial question of relations with Nazi Germany. In 25 volumes and almost 11,500 pages, Bergier and his colleagues delved much deeper, encompassing the Swiss government’s approach to the thousands of Jews seeking entry to escape Nazi oppression.

Among other issues, the commission examined Switzerland’s wartime immigration policy — a topic relevant to the Swiss minaret ban controversy, since most Swiss Muslims are refugees from the former Yugoslavia:

Immigration was an acutely sensitive issue just before and during the war, with Bern intensely aware of the risks of provoking the Nazis. Some Allied countries, let alone nonbelligerents, hardly extended a warm welcome to Jewish refugees. But the commission concluded that Bern, tainted by anti-Semitism, could have done much more and was aware of the fate of those turned away — “needlessly” as Bergier stated.

Riane Eisler

I spent way too long blogging about Jared Diamond this morning and don’t have time to say much about our guest on tomorrow night’s Phone Forum, Riane Eisler, except that she has been at the megahistory business much longer than Diamond, and she is equally at ease with the corporate elite as he is, but she tells them in no uncertain terms that Capitalism isn’t going to cut it.

Left audiences like to hear her say that. But what she tells them is this: Socialism also won’t cut it.

Both are subject to the same kind of economism that fails to see that “the real wealth of nations–and the world–consists of the contributions of people and nature.” Both neglect the non-monetary segments of the economy: the contributions of natural systems and of unpaid work, most of it by women. Of course, they could both change: but then they would be partnership systems, which is something radically different.

Eisler is a visionary and a practical promoter of partnership politics and economics in public policy, the corporate world, and progressive movements. So I am thrilled that she is joining us on our Tikkun Phone Forum tomorrow evening.

You too can join the Phone Forum tomorrow, Monday December 7, at 6:00 p.m. Pacific Time (9:00 p.m. Eastern) when I will interview Riane Eisler, and you can ask her questions and make your own comments.
Just call 1 888 346 3950 and ENTER CODE 11978#.

The Call is FREE! No phone charge to you. BUT, these calls are our gift to the people who keep us going: the subscribers to Tikkun magazine, the members of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, and our donors. So please join us once on the Phone Forum, but please then sign up to support us in some way if you possibly can afford to do so. Go to www.tikkun.org and click on Subscribe, Donate or Join at top right.

Q: What’s the difference between cheap, clean, plentiful energy from nuclear fusion and the final and utter collapse of capitalism?

A: None. Both are always ten to twenty years in the future.

If we know anything about the Left it’s that it has always seen the failures and brutalities of capitalism clearly, and has always failed to appreciate its adaptability and powers of survival.

Jared Diamond

Now here comes Jared Diamond, the brilliant eco-historian (of Guns, Germs and Steel) whose last message to us was about how civilizations collapse, telling us in today’s NYTimes that big corporations may save us all. What gives? After all, Collapse was a book that nourished the imminent-end-of-capitalism theme in many a lefty’s heart.

You could dismiss this as what happens when a professor who has been immersed for decades in studying birds in New Guinea, and then in thinking big thoughts about how geography does (and does not) determine history, gets lionized in high society and bedazzled by the smooth talkers of the corporate elite with whom he now serves on various high level boards. They do their greenwash talk and hope rises in his chest. After all, the entire title of that book was Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed and which of us does not want ours to succeed?

Be my guest if that mode of dismissing Diamond works for you. But it doesn’t for me.

To be consistent, why don’t the Swiss just ban algebra?

I like this post from last summer that just came to my attention. The Israeli author, Ralph Dobrin, says of himself that “nationalistically I have views that place me more Right Wing than Avigdor Lieberman.” Still, he got into conversation with the Arab workmen whom he hired to renovate his bathroom. Having done a few of those myself I know how nicely the tea and lunch breaks can develop into deep talk with the client.

So Dobrin objects to the Arab workmen about Muslim jihadists attacking Israel, and the workmen explain the true spiritual meaning of jihad. This may not be news to most Tikkun Daily readers as it was not to me, but I really enjoyed the description of these lunchbreak conversations, and the way the author feels he has learned something so new he must blog about it.

That the workmen were doing such a good job is critical to the story. Their work had gained their client’s respect, and so he was more open to hearing their opinions. This is something social change activists don’t always appreciate about the ordinary interactions of trade: that they promote trust across the boundaries as people do mutually profitable things for each other. And so, starting with purely materialistic or monetary motives, people nonetheless are drawn into relationship. Ideology and mistrust so often overwhelm these fragile feelers that people put out to each other, that we become prone to expect that they always will. So I love stories like this, of people hearing each other in mundane situation like a bathroom renovation.

Our friend Noah Marcel Sudarsky, former New York correspondent for the largest circulation French newspaper, has written us his thoughts about the Swiss minaret ban. Sudarsky grew up in France, Switzerland, and New York. He is a freelance writer and correspondent now living in the Bay Area. His articles and reviews have appeared in The NY Press, The Village Voice, The Onion, New York magazine, Salon.com, Citimag, Publisher’s Weekly, The New York Times, and other publications.

While interpretations concerning the Swiss referendum banning the construction of minarets will occupy pundits for a while, the recent vote has already given an undeniable boost to the European far right. Cast as a decision to impede the further development of Islamic extremism, the ban actually accomplishes only one thing: to further marginalize Muslims in a conservative Western European bastion which, historically at least, was a center of Enlightenment thought. Christian reformers made Switzerland their home, but also progressive thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, when his universalist doctrines founded on the principle of inalienable human rights forced him to flee pre-revolutionary France or face execution.

[Tikkun Daily has an update on this story here].

The news about Switzerland’s ban on the construction of minarets has made the headlines, providing shocking evidence of the strength of increasing intolerance in Europe. I shall be writing more about the minaret ban and its implications later, God willing, but right now I wanted to share an interesting side note.

Daniel Streich was a member of the Swiss People’s party (SVP), the political party that pushed the minaret ban initiative. Streich is a military instructor in the Swiss Army and a local politician in the commune of Bulle. Formerly a devout Christian, he converted to Islam–and kept it a secret for two years.

Outside Rep. Anna Eshoo's Office - Photo Courtesy Paul George, Peninsula Peace And Justice Center

It was really cold as we gathered outside Representative Anna Eshoo’s Palo Alto office. Suddenly the door to her office opened and my friend and colleague, Samina Sundas, came strolling out. “Were you meeting with the staff in there?” I asked. “No,” she said. “It was cold and I asked them if I could come in to say my evening prayers.” And so she had stayed in there, warm and cozy, and prayed. 15 minutes later, Eshoo’s staffers came outside with something for all of us…….

Many of the world’s religious leaders in attendance at the Parliament of World Religions taking place in Melbourne, Australia, are in partial mourning for the dream of a new world that President Obama promised, and decisively torpedoed in his announcement of major escalation of military forces in Afghanistan. While the conference sessions have officially ignored current political developments, the hallways are filled with heated discussions of the widespread disillusionment with Obama.

For political activists, the issue of Afghan escalation is primarily framed in terms of Obama’s failure to learn the lessons of Vietnam: one cannot win a war against a population that has been fighting for many decades for its own independence. No matter what America’s stated war aims, the people of Afghanistan perceive the American military presence as generating far more violence and destruction than they faced before the U.S. got involved.

“Fifteen years ago, I couldn’t convince people there was a water problem. Now things are different in a good way in that people are more aware that there is a problem, and in a bad way in that the problem is so much more dire.” — Jackie Brookner

Jackie Brookner is a revolutionary among revolutionaries.

All environmental art is inherently revolutionary in that it challenges viewers directly to rethink the ways they interact with nature and to take ownership, for better or worse, of the ways they affect and alter the ecosystem.

Brookner’s Biosculptures–living works of art whose porous surfaces are inhabited by carefully selected organisms whose job it is in nature to clean and filter the toxins out of aquatic ecosystems–raise the bar by presenting that challenge not only to viewers but to the environment itself.

(To see more of Jackie Brookner’s work, visit the Tikkun Daily Art Gallery.)

Biosculptures inhabit a community’s nature space, and often the built environment, becoming a living part of the larger ecosystem. They need no witness to establish their relevance. They are active members of their environment. Through their example they teach the simple, complimentary lessons of self-reliance and interdependence. They are inspirational not only because of their exquisite form but because of their transformational function.

President Obama on Afghanistan

After sending folks out to do all the morning shows, the White House held a national teleconference to discuss the President’s announced plans for Afghanistan and Pakistan. I attended representing Multifaith Voices for Peace and Justice, an organization with whom I spent last evening listening to the President’s address. Today’s teleconference didn’t help to overcome the disappointment our group experienced last night, or our deep concerns for the upcoming increase in military forces in Afghanistan, but it did provide me with some hope that there’s more going on than just the “surge.”

This week’s spiritual wisdom comes from Mary Oliver‘s New and Selected Poems (Beacon Press, 2005):

A friend sent me an article by Michael Shermer: Theism v. Atheism: I’m A Realist, Not An “Accommodationist.” Shermer is  the publisher of Skeptic magazine.

In the piece Shermer answers his atheist critics who say he is too accommodating to religious people. When he talks about how to make common cause with religious believers he sounds good:

… we need as many people as we can get on board with a common goal, whatever it may be (starvation in Africa, disease in India, poverty in South America, global warming everywhere … pick your battle). If you insist that people of faith renounce every last ounce of their beliefs before they are allowed to join the common fight against these scourges of humanity, you have just alienated the vast majority of the world’s population from your project.

But here are the lines leading up to that quote.

I felt an enormous sense of sadness watching Obama last night. To begin with, there was the moral disintegration of the United States, the enormous weight of the military it carries: 3,650,000 active armed forces, plus 850,000 men and women on reserve. 1000 bases, spread everywhere throughout the world, many of them secret. Think of all the steel, the barbed wire, the tanks, the aircraft carriers, the mines, the crippled children. Think of the secret services, the drones, the chemical warfare, moles, assassins, double agents. Then there is the network of businesses, corporate allies, privatized services, bought congressmen, government agencies, dependent communities. The cemeteries, the wounded, those with brain injuries, spinal injuries, paraplegics, the mentally ill, the drug-addicted.

One also must remember the lies that have put this military in place: the lies of the German and Japanese Occupations, the lies of the cold war, the lies aimed at Arbenz and Mossadegh and Nasser and Castro, the Gulf of Tonkin lie, the Granada lie, the Panama lie, the 9/11 lie, the WMD lie, the other Iraq lie. And this does not even get us to the very big lies, the lie for example, that the world is a dangerous place, a lie that is only true when one considers how dangerous the US is, and how small and local and containable the strictly military problems of the globe would be, if only the United States breathed a little bit more softly down everyone’s backs.

When one considers the enormous guilt and worry that Obama must have it is impossible not to feel compassion for his situation. At the same time, it is also impossible not to despise the decision he came to. Just as with the economic crisis, in which he gave a completely free hand to the top banks, insurance companies and corporations — handing them the checkbook of the United States people and having them fill it out as they want — so in regard to Afghanistan he has submitted completely to the military recommendations, in both cases a few pr details notwithstanding.

More important, even, than the details of his decision is his reaffirmation of the myths — the myth of American goodness and innocence, the myth of the bad guys, the denial that only a few years ago we created them, and the myth which makes it impossible for Americans to see the negative results of their own actions, the inability to grasp that the US’s world is not Afghanistan’s world, or Pakistan’s world, or Russia’s world, or France’s world. Truly, this is a time to feel sad for our country, which has squandered so much of its great legacy and potential, including now its remarkable but unhappy President.

Red-and-white striped poles spring up in the vacant lot on my block every year, even before I’ve fully digested Thanksgiving dinner. Topped by floodlights, these oversized candy canes tower over the neighborhood, a blinding reminder that Christmas is coming. Next time I check, the tree sellers will have finished setting up shop there, erecting their bristling forest of dead pines under the dazzling lights.

Paired with the blitz of “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday” ads that tend to flood my inbox and mailbox, this surreal invasion of my neighborhood always makes me feel like Christmas is breathing down my neck.

How did the commemoration of a homeless baby’s birth turn into this garish and materialistic extravaganza? And how can we start to reel the consumerism back?

Congressman Alexander Pirnie (R-NY) drawing the first capsule for the Selective Service draft, Dec 1, 1969. (Govt. photo).

Pete Cattrell, our Operations Manager here at Tikkun, was looking especially pensive this morning and I asked him why. He was thinking about the cataclysmic day when he was nineteen and all young men and their families across America turned on the TV to find out if they had a potential sentence to go to war, or not. (I was oblivious to this, a twenty-year old student in England.) It was a citizen draft then — believe it or not everyone was eligible in theory, even rich kids — and they held the lottery on TV. It was the first draft lottery since the second world war.

For all its life-changing, big-moment drama, as theater the drawing for the 1970 draft was a low-budget affair, staged on a nondescript set with an odd assortment of office furnishings pushed to­gether. All 366 blue plastic lottery “capsules” had been unceremoniously dumped into a large glass container perched precariously atop a plain library step stool. A somber-looking official sat at a small table cloaked with black fabric, ready for the lottery ceremony to begin. To pick each lottery number, someone would simply reach into the water cooler-sized jar to pull out a capsule. Tucked inside was a birth date that would be read aloud and assigned its lottery number, starting with No. 001. [From here].

Inconceivable today. It sounds so amateurish. Like some old time citizen republic where the government serves the people in very basic ways and everyone knuckles down to wars that have to be fought.

Imagine if the government then had already had a professional and in many ways mercenary army, like today: an army of career warriors and the poor. Would a generation of young middle class people have been energized to oppose the war, if their own lives had not been on the line? Likely not. The middle class young are not protesting in any comparable way today. But of course the army we have today is a response to that 60s/70s revolt. The draftees discovered that this was not, after all, a war that had to fought, unlike WWII. And today our ruling class knows better than to put wars to the test of popular opinion in that fashion.

P.S. If you want to know how you would have done in the lottery scroll down on this site: http://www.landscaper.net/draft.htm. You would have ‘won’ the lottery if you were born on September 14: off to the war with you for sure.

During the health care debates many religious organizations chose to speak out not by endorsing any specific piece of legislation, but by endorsing some basic ethical principles that should be addressed by any legislation up for consideration. Typically, such principles included the goal of making affordable health care available to everyone, and making sure that such health care was not denied because of previously existing medical conditions. I think this was a very good and effective approach.

We have not yet had a similar major debate about economic reform in our country despite the recent economic crisis. Many people are starting to suspect that it won’t happen unless there is a grass roots movement to push for it. I believe that religious organizations should speak out on this issue too in a manner similar to their participation in the health care discussions. But what are the basic ethical principles of economic reform that should get wide support in the religious community? We’ve been having some discussions about this within my congregation and came up with some suggestions to get this started.