Some key terms: "pluralism," "public," "respect"--what do they "really" mean, if anything?

Here's an editorial by Flemming Rose in which he reiterates his non-apology for publishing the Muhammad cartoons. Mohsin linked to an interview with him from some time back; he expresses basically the same ideas here, but they are a little more thought out. For the purposes of this course, it seems to me that the following is the most important part:

On occasion, Jyllands-Posten has refused to print satirical cartoons of Jesus, but not because it applies a double standard. In fact, the same cartoonist who drew the image of Muhammed with a bomb in his turban drew a cartoon with Jesus on the cross having dollar notes in his eyes and another with the star of David attached to a bomb fuse. There were, however, no embassy burnings or death threats when we published those.

Has Jyllands-Posten insulted and disrespected Islam? It certainly didn't intend to. But what does respect mean? When I visit a mosque, I show my respect by taking off my shoes. I follow the customs, just as I do in a church, synagogue or other holy place. But if a believer demands that I, as a nonbeliever, observe his taboos in the public domain, he is not asking for my respect, but for my submission. And that is incompatible with a secular democracy.

The two key terms here are "respect" and "public," in my opinion. An awful lot turns on how you define those things. What's particularly interesting here is the assimiliation of a spatial metaphor to questions of intellectual discourse. Notice how Rose says he would respect the interior of a mosque, but outside the mosque, he would not consider it reasonable to be bound by the mosque's rules of conduct. Fair enough. But does this way of thinking extend well to non-spatially bound "public spaces" like the press? How? Why or why not? Does "secular democracy" translate into "willingness to stand by and not react angrily when your religion is insulted"? And what's the role of the idea of "self-censorship" in Rose's piece (you have to read the article for this one)? Why should self-censorship matter for thinking about this issue?

Sarah also just posted a short piece on some recent concrete, clear evidence of why "pluralism works." According to her post, she just attended an interfaith conference at Johns Hopkins, as a delegate of UC, where she had at least one serious, lengthy interactoin with a peer of a different religious tradition (Hinduism). The experience convinced her, in her words, that pluralism "works." Here, again, I'd say: define working. If "working" means that you could get two young, female American college students together, both of whom were attending a national conference of college students committed to interfaith work, and they would not find themselves uncomfortable or unable to have a conversation because of religious differences, then, sure, it works. But what conclusions can we draw from that? This is not to diminish the importance of Sarah's individual experience. I'm not suggesting that we can't conclude anything from it. However, we need to recognize that this is a complex issue that can be tested in very different ways in a wide range of different situations. Sarah's post is interesting; read it. If you want more information about the conference she attended, it's here. Just to give you the flavor, I've also posted a reproduction of the invitation letter sent out to chaplains (click on the thumbnail for a larger view).

Speaking of recent posts, also check out Erica's most recent one. I'd be really interested to hear people's reactions to it.

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Okay, so I also sent out this email last night. In case it wasn't obvious, I'm continually improvising with this course, just like I said I would in the first few sessions. For me at least, it's almost impossible to predict how people are gaoing to react to a new set of readings, and as I teach a new subject like this, I start to see connections that never jumped out at me as I was sitting by myself in my office planning things out.

Here's part of what I said:

Beyond preparing for discussion, it seems to me that there are several ways to approach this problem. I'd like to suggest that we try doing a sort of "mini-project" over the next few sessions. This could take one of several forms. You could try observing and interpreting an ostensibly secular practice -- say, a "ritual" or holiday -- and interpreting it in the manner of Wallendorf and Arnauld. You could do the same with a site or location, as Kiely and Ketchell do. Or you could design a rough "interview protocol" or set of guidelines for investigating another person's religious beliefs face-to-face. Another possibility might be to simply write a brief reflective essay on the way you would apply ideas from the texts to a real, "live" encounter with unfamiliar religious practices, or even giving a sense of how your own thinking on these issues has changed over the past few weeks, if that interests you.

The point is, I want everyone to be able to do something that both (1) ties together the themes we've been looking at and shows how they might be applicable or inapplicable to understanding real-life situations, and (2) is interesting for you. So, the other thing I'd like you to think about for tomorrow's class is what sort of interim project you might like to do. We'll figure something out that works for everyone.

I mean this seriously. I am going to need your help in figuring out what would be the most useful kind of exercise at this point to crystallize and consolidate the stuff we've been discussing recently. I know that some of you have found some of the more theoretical readings either boring (e.g. Gabrielle) or just stupid (e.g. Tommy in two separate posts). Still and all, these are pretty fundamental problems for understanding religion in the U.S. today and I want to see if we can try and pull some of this together into a useful critical framework for thinking about the texts we're going to read and the sites we're going to observe. Hoo, boy, that was a long, convoluted, German-style sentence, even for me.