National Public Radio this morning had a report that included interviews with doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center about Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the alleged shooter in yesterday’s Fort Hood massacre. That report came before employees at WR were put on lock down as far as talking to anyone, including the press, and, according to NPR, the FBI.

I can’t find the report on their Web site, although this story mentions briefly how Hasan was reprimanded for proselytizing about Islam when he was in training at the Uniformed Service University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md. Even though I’m lacking evidence that what I heard in the car this morning wasn’t a product of my imagination, I’m sticking my neck out with a big question: Why didn’t the folks at Walter Reed report this guy as crazy if what they recall happening indeed did happen?

I think it is because there is a fine line between racial/ethnic/religious profiling and pointing out the obvious and people are really afraid of crossing over to the wrong side. Since 9/11 people have been afraid of appearing racist where Muslims are concerned. There’s good reason for that, such as the case of the flying imams.

So, instead of appearing intolerant, people stay quiet, even – sometimes especially – other Muslims. They don’t want to be judged by their religion so they are reluctant to judge others by that rubric, even when they know that the person they are dealing with is dangerous.

A few months after 9/11, I was working on an analysis piece for the Texas Catholic, and I interviewed a Dallas imam about this very thing. I asked him why imams would keep quiet if they knew someone nefarious was in their congregations. He said that if a dangerous Muslim was at a mosque, the best thing was to hope that he – in hearing the moderate, educated teaching preached at the majority of American mosques – would either change his stripes or, “in most cases, we just hope he leaves.” The community wants the crazy guy out of their religious space because, the imam said, lunatics are just as likely to kill other Muslims as anyone else.

In other words, moderate Muslims are trying to protect themselves as much as the rest of us, but in so doing – in not directly going after the crazies among them – they are putting others at risk. Ditto for your average citizen, or the doctors who knew Hasan. Who wants to be called intolerant or a racist? According to the NPR story, Hasan was cold, horrible with patients and fanatical about his religion. Doctors would talk about him in the hallway, the report said, asking themselves if he could be a terrorist or if he was just a really bad doctor.

Who knows if that is what drew him to kill people at Fort Hood? We won’t know until the investigation is complete, or until he talks. (And once he gets a lawyer, fat chance of him talking). But what we do know is that he was not a very warm, caring doctor – even by military standards – and people noticed that early on. They noticed that he seemed more concerned with his religion than his schooling and treatment of soldiers. They noticed that he used  medical lecture slot to preach the Quran. And yet he continued at the medical school, worked at the hospital, moved on like low-achieving students who are socially promoted because the grade they are leaving just wants them out of their hair.

What happened at Fort Hood shows that common sense really needs a shot in the arm. We don’t necessarily have to go all Hannity on folks, but we need to stop being so afraid of speaking up when craziness is staring us in the face.

A number of press releases re: events in local religious communities have come my way in the past week, so I thought I’d pass them on. Mark your calendars, God Bloggettes!

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For folks interested in what one financial columnist called the “best analysis yet of the global economic crisis,” the Catholic Newman Center on UA’s campus is sponsoring two talks this week on Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict’s social encyclical examining modern capitalism from an ethical, spiritual and technical perspective.

The main message is about promoting human development in the context of social justice and the common good, and the only reason I can tell you that is I’ve read descriptions of the piece by journalists, priests and bloggers because when I tried to read it sans any interpretation, I threw up my hands in frustration. (”Plain English, Papa,” I wanted to scream, “Just put it in plain English!”)

Luckily for me and others of small brain, the Newman Center is bringing in Alejandro Crosthwaite, a Dominican friar from the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome, to unpack Caritas in Veritate for the common woman and man. The talks are free, open to the public, and start at 7 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday in the chapel of the Newman Center, which is on the corner of Cherry and Second streets at UA. Map is here.

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Next week, also at the Newman Center, for anyone interested in the Israel-Palestine conundrum, Bartholomew Hutcherson, pastor of the Newman Center and also a Dominican friar, will give a talk called “The Geography of Hatred – Palestine in the Common Era.”

Hutcherson said this talk is his “personal reflection” on the two months he spent in study in Israel/Palestine over this past summer. He learned a lot (”Everybody has blood on their hands,” he said) and wants to share it with anyone who is interested. The presentation will be Tuesday, Sept. 22 at 7 p.m. in the main chapel and will focus on the story of disputed lands in the Common Era “with emphasis on the rise of Islam, the Crusader Era, the Ottoman period and the establishment of the modern state of Israel.”

The presentation will examine how conflicts in the current day have their origins in religious and cultural understandings from long ago, asking what history and faith could teach people about the future of the Middle East.

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A sukkah; image via http://tzvee.blogspot.com/

From the Old Testament side of the monotheistic aisle, members of the Southern Arizona Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life are offering their second annual sacred water celebration Monday, Oct. 5, from 7–9 pm, with “a new ritual based on ancient practices,” according to a press release from the Tucson Jewish Community Center.

The water celebration will coincide with Sukkot, is a way-cool Jewish holiday marked by Jews constructing outdoor  sukkah in their yards and eating outside in commemoration of the divine protection of Israelites during their 40-year wandering in the desert. Sukkot follows the two-day joyful observance of Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) and the one-day solemn observance of Yom Kippur (day of atonement), and lasts seven days.

The celebration will be at the TJCC, 3800 E. River Road, and it is free. Those attending should bring a flashlight and wear comfortable shoes. Everyone participating should bring a reusable pitcher or bowl for the water celebration, and if you want to stay for the potluck, bring a vegetarian snack to share and your own reusable place setting and utensils. For more info, contact: deborah@deborahmayaan.com or call Deborah at 881-2534.

Can you find your way to a hospital? When you get there, can you pay?

You can’t open any newspaper editorial page these days without seeing arguments for and against health care reform. You can’t turn on television coverage of Town Halls around the issue without seeing sometimes gun-toting – as was the case in Phoenix last week – and always sign-toting people protesting the public option as though giving health care to the most vulnerable among us (the very young, the very old, and the very poor) was akin to, well, acting like Hitler.

The comparison, of course, is specious, the crutch of those who cannot argue their case based on merits alone. It is also, as pundits on both the right and the left have explained, trivializing to the millions who suffered under Hilter’s cruel attempt to purify the human race.

But setting that craziness aside, we are still left with the problem of millions of Americans living without access to health care, and, for purposes of God Blogging, a question about people of faith and what they should do about it. According to the folks over at Faith For Health (and a couple of representatives of local Christian communities), believers should get pay attention to what radical discipleship calls one to when reflecting on health care reform. (continue reading…)

Here are two more example people could use to condemn religion or write it off as just a bunch of crazy people: Rampaging Muslims killed eight Christians in Pakistan this weekend after rumor spread that somewhere in a village

The Quran, Islam's Holy text

a Quran had been defaced; and Dale Neumann admitted to a jury that, while his daughter lay dying, he prayed instead of calling 911 or rushing the 11-year-old to the hospital.

Let’s start with the first one. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, you can’t convince people your religion is based on peace if everytime someone offends you, you resort to violence. Yes, the rioting Muslims – 20,000 at last estimate – might be non representative of Islam. If so, let’s hear that proclaimed loud and clear – and not in polite policy statements, but from the mosques where these Muslims attend services. That’s what is lacking in every condemnation from Muslim leaders against terrorism – it doesn’t come from the mosques. Bibles and other religious icons of Judaism and Christianity are defaced frequently. People burn Bibles, gangsters co-opt rosaries as neckwear, and weirdo artists make a chocolate Jesus. Those actions will elicit a letter from the Pope or a condemnation from Israel or a petition started by believers in a certain part of the country. They use their words to express their outrage or offense – not their fists. Muslims seriously need to get a clue on this.

Likewise, Christians who believe in God but somehow don’t believe God gave people medicine or doctors, need to get a clue – and perhaps some jail time and psychiatric care. I come from Texas; I’ve been plenty exposed to people who claim direct communication with the Almighty. I’ve also seen, from people who would never bring attention to themselves or stand up on a stage screaming that God will heal your lame leg, actual physical healing in response to prayer. So it isn’t that I doubt there is sometimes healing that can’t be explained by medicine or science. But it is rare, and it is unpredictable. Medicine, too, can be unpredictable, and the cure is sometimes worse than the symptoms of the disease – just ask anyone who’s endured chemotherapy. But medicine has a far better track record of healing than prayer, and believing so does not mean you’ve turned your back on God, as Neumann seemed to think.

M. Zuhdi Jasser speaking to the Center for Inquiry Sunday about the politicalization of Islam

M. Zuhdi Jasser is a man on a mission. He identifies himself as a devout and practicing Muslim, and no one, including those Muslims who disagree with him, can dispute that. He’s a medical doctor in Phoenix, but his passion for the past six years has been to spread the word that the politicalization of Islam and those who believe in that politicalization, is a grave danger to the United States and the rest of the world. He does that as the founder and president the Pheonix-based American Islamic Forum for Democracy. He writes prolifically (see his recent Huff-Po post on Shari’a law here) and gives talks across the country.

It isn’t a popular message and even speaking before a fairly friendly crowd in Tucson Sunday, Jasser was questioned roundly. Appearing before about 100 mostly 60-somethings at a Center for Inquiry group meeting, Jasser preached his gospel of separation of mosque and state, saying that’s the only way religious Islam can be practiced in freedom. This separation, he said, is threatened by the Muslim Brotherhood, whom he contends has a strong toe-hold in the U.S. (The MB’s official site is here, and some history about the group from other sources is here.) Jasser says the MB lays in wait until Muslims are a majority of the country and then, according to Jasser, the rules of engagement will shift, and the MB’s goal of establishing an Islamic nation-state will crank into high gear.

It may be all fear-mongering, and some of those in attendence said it was. But I’d just finished reading “Infidel” by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and some of what Jasser was saying rang true for me. There is a radical fringe group of Muslims who want nothing more than to take over the world and have us all move back to a third century reading of the Quran. They want a theocracy, and they are willing – Jasser says – to work patiently until that is brought to pass. Or, as 9-11 appeared to teach us, they will work violently to bring it to pass. (Best quote of the talk: “You’re helping the Muslim Brotherhood every time you fill up with gas … remember 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia.”)

By all estimates, only about 1 percent of Muslims are radical, but as one Imam told me a few years ago, “That’s still about a million people who are really angry at the West.” Radical Islamists read the Quran literally and believe this world is nothing compared to the world to come, so they have no problem hastening this world’s end.

Jasser is a reformist Muslim, one who believes much of the Quran was written for a specific people at a specific time. He think Muslim women need equal rights, that Sharia law is “horrific” and that the government really, really needs to stay out of our life. One would think he’d be in good company with groups like the  Council on American-Islamic Relations, but he’s not. He doesn’t like them, and they don’t much care for him, according to Ahmed Rehab,  the executive director of CAIR-Chicago and a spokesperson from the group’s national office.

“The problem with Zuhdi is this conspiracy of Muslims laying low ready to take over the country,” Rehab said in a phone interview from Chicago. “Its an extremely irresponsible reading of Islam. To say so runs against logic – there are all these families here organized, laying low. It makes no sense. We’re here just like everyone else, and we’re working like other minority groups to attain our rights. … Our position is that there is a minority of radical Muslims who are adverse to democracy and our freedoms here and we are working to educate against that position.”

Rehab, who said he debated Jasser in a PBS special a number of years ago regarding a film AIFD made, said CAIR doesn’t want a theocracy and that “our only struggle is for equal opportunity, like any minority…. We make the same observation (as Jasser) that there is a radical group out there, but the problem is he extrapolates that minority radical onto the mainstream.”

Jasser did do that Sunday, roundly saying that CAIR and other Muslim American groups are “in the dark” or “blind” about how the Muslim Brotherhood is infiltrating mosques in the U.S. He even claimed that the Muslim American Society is “the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S.” So, I guess the question is, who to believe? A lone voice crying in the wilderness who believes his religion is wonderful but “political Islam” is a major problem, or the spokespersons for the Muslim civil rights organizations in the U.S. who say Jasser is playing to neo-cons? What do you think?

Here are five interesting things going on in the world of religion that might give you food for thought for the weekend … or maybe something to do if you can bear getting out in 110 degree weather.

1. Starting locally, M. Zuhdi Jasser, founder AIFD and a Muslim, will be participating in a discussion Sunday (July 19) on “A Strategy to Defeat Radical Islam: A Muslim Perspective on the Only Way to Eradicate the Threat of Terrorism.” The talk, sponsored by the Center for Inquiry, will be from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. in the DuVal Auditorium on the University of Arizona campus. If you aren’t in church on Sunday morning, join the Center for Inquiry at 10 a.m. for a showing of the film The Third Jihad at 10 a.m., also in the DuVal Auditorium. Jassar founded AIFD in Phoenix in 2003, according to the organization’s Web site, “as an unmistakable expression of American liberty and freedom in an attempt to take back the faith of Islam from the demagoguery of the Islamo-fascists.”

2. Following along the skeptics-are-us theme, uber-atheist Richard Dawkins is funding an atheist children’s summer camp in Somerset, England right now. According to this story, “Alongside the more traditional activities of tug-of-war, swimming and canoeing, children at the five-day camp in Somerset will learn about rational scepticism, moral philosophy, ethics and evolution.” Dawkins isn’t personally involved in Camp Quest, which started in the mid-1990s in Kentucy, but he’s funding England’s version through his Richard Dawkins Foundation.

3. Saudi Arabia, after pressure from clerics and some of the public, has decided to ban public cinemas. The problem here is not the government, according to reports in the Jerusalem post, but clerics and followers of the Wahhabist interpretation of Islam. You’ll recall that Wahhabis reject any religious innovation coming after the third century of Islam. This orthodox branch of the Sunni sect of Islam believe that films have the potential to ruin the Islamic fabric of Saudi society. You know, Harry Potter could lead all the young folk to become witches or something. Odd that they think its ok to cut off hands and that that atrocity doesn’t ruin the fabric of society but a little Proposal might.

4. And speaking of Harry Potter, the Vatican’s newspaper this week sponsored a face-off with two writers, one who argued the HP books teach lessons about love and self-giving and another who argued that the books teach that “with secret knowledge, one can control others and the forces of nature.” Interestingly enough, all the quad-rillions of HP readers over the past decade have yet to produce a giant increase in witches, warlocks or teenagers controlling the forces of nature, so I don’t think the books or movies are near the threat people think they are. And the movies are especially fun to watch if you’re playing “Who is the Jesus figure?” while watching them.

5. Finally, God is being asked to solve the financial crisis – at least in Washington State. Several hundred people showed up on the Capitol lawn in Olympia yesterday to pray for financial relief and were encouraged by pastors to act on their faiths and volunteer help for those struggling to get a job, put food on the table or keep a family together. This is an example of good religion – in that it calls on humans to do something for each other. It will be interesting to see if this brings the community together.

Have a great weekend and remember to love your neighbor.

One of the things that religious people do, IMHO, is take themselves too seriously. Not all religious folk, mind you, but definitely the extremist kinds. I recognize that to them – be they Fundamentalist Christian, Orthodox Jew or the Saudi Arabian form of Muslim – religion is literally life and death. But to me, a God who could crank up the evolutionary cauldron that resulted in aardvarks and giraffes has to have a sense of humor. It isn’t God who has caused all the problems in, say, the Middle East, it is people’s interpretations of God. And these are folks who seriously need to lighten up.

Ergo, I offer you the GodLovesMEBest videos from the YouTube Channel, a series that bills itself as a “new television satire” examining the craziness of extremist religious views. I watched two of the videos and found them really funny, but then again, I also liked God, Inc. , which some of my friends found really offensive. (continue reading…)

Legislation signed by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer last week will prohibit schools from enacting or enforcing policies that single out religious expression for different treatment than that for “similar activities,” according to reporting from Capital Media Services. It is odd legislation that will probably lead to more trouble for schools than they need.

According to the new law, a student can’t be marked down on an assignment if she expresses a religious viewpoint if the assignment required a viewpoint be expressed. Ok, fine, except that will open the door for kids – and their already too-involved parents – to cry “religious discrimination” if the student’s paper gets a bad grade. The teacher may argue that the student’s work is shoddy, but the parents could easily contend that said teacher is biased against the student because there was religious expression in the work. How will one be able to prove that it is the student’s faulty reasoning or poor spelling that resulted in the ‘C’ and not the fact that he claims Islam is the only true religion? (continue reading…)

Like people born with an innate interest in athletics, animals or alcohol, I was born with an innate interest in God and the billions of people who claim to know him (or her). Exhibit A: My first memory is as a 4-year-old praying with my elder cousin, the one who later became a nun. Exhibit B: My bedside table currently holds 15 books. Nine of them have to do with religion or spirituality. Exhibit C: My cell phone has a section for clergy.

You can find my religion reporter street cred on the “About” page, but here is full disclosure: I was born and raised Catholic, although for years I’ve been what one might call “Catholic under protest.” That means I strongly disagree with some Church teaching, yet cannot leave the faith. This no doubt bugs any number of too-young-to-know-better priests and a couple of should-know-better bishops I’m acquainted with, but after many a vocal battle with the Almighty, I’ve accepted that I’m Catholic for good.

Things I love: The Church, usually through the Pope, holds up a high moral standard in a world that all too often lacks any standards whatsoever. She frequently and fervently offers a voice to the voiceless in a world that would prefer to marginalize the poor, the immigrant, the uneducated, the unborn. (Not only that, but according to some pundits, Pope B-16 is the only person who truly gets what’s up with the economic crisis.)

And … things that grate: The Church forbids former priests to return to active ministry after they left the priesthood to marry – while allowing married Episcopal priests to convert to Catholicism and pastor parishes with their wives and children in tow. (Feel free to shout out, “What??? That makes no sense!”) And don’t even get me started on the bans on outdoor weddings or lay preachers.

All that said, God Blogging (and more) is not solely a Catholic blog, although with 25 percent of Arizona’s population claiming that faith as their own, news of the Church is of interest and will be discussed. (continue reading…)

James Kirchick has an impassioned and interesting argument about why the religious right can’t be blamed for the murder of abortion doctor George Tiller. Impassioned because Kirchick appears exhausted by the comparison of fundamentalist Christians to Islamic militants, and interesting because Kirchick supports gay rights, abortion that is “safe, legal and rare,” and isn’t a member of the Religious Right.

Kirchick calls out liberals on any number of statements, including editorial writers who argue that anyone who called Tiller a murderer was an accomplice to his death, but especially focuses on the too-easy (and completely specious) canard that fundamentalist Christians are equal to Islamic jihadists. Not only that, his writing is poetic and well-reasoned:

“I hold no brief for the religious right, and its views on homosexuality in particular offend (and affect) me personally. But it’s precisely because of my identity that I consider comparisons between so-called Christianists (who seek to limit my rights via the ballot box) and Islamic fundamentalists (who seek to limit my rights via decapitation) to be fatuous.”

See the whole piece here, and have your mind stretched a little. And pray for the families of the Air France crash.