Obama’s Temple Dilemma

I don’t know whether it says more about Obama’s fear of controversy or America’s ignorance that the president may actually skip visiting one of the biggest attractions in India– all because some people might mistakenly think he’s wearing Muslim clothing, and consequently might think he’s Muslim (again).

The place: India’s “Golden Temple” (Harmandir Sahib) in Amritsar.  It’s the holiest site for adherents of Sikhism, one of the largest organized religions in the world with about 20 million followers (and also one of India’s major religions).  The Golden Temple is widely acknowledged to be a masterpiece of architecture and design and is one of the top tourist attractions in India.

The controversy: to enter a Sikh temple (known as a gurdwara), visitors must cover their heads.  Reports say that the White House nixed a visit to Amritsar because of fears that pictures of Obama with his head covered would circulate and give fuel to the minority of Americans (and others) who still think Obama is a Muslim– even though Sikhism is a completely separate religion from Islam and even though the headcovering wouldn’t necessarily have resembled something a Muslim might wear into a mosque, anyway.

So, is Obama scared of appearing to be a Muslim?  No one is saying for certain.  But if the White House holds fast to its decision not to allow Obama to visit the temple, it will be a great opportunity missed.

After 9/11, Sikhs were targets of hate crimes and threats from those who thought they were Muslim or terrorists (or both).  The Sikh Coalition has been working for the last 9 years to educate and inform Americans about the beliefs and traditions of Sikhism.  It would have been a great event for such a prominent leader to visit the Golden Temple and show Sikhism for what it is (a peaceful and generally stable religion for millions of people).

There are always going to be people who think you’re a Muslim, Mr. Obama, no matter what you do.  Stop giving in to them (especially when the visit was going to be AFTER the midterm elections) and seize an opportunity to educate by making a gesture of peace toward a major religion.

Parallels with History

“Many New Yorkers were suspicious of the newcomers’ plans to build a house of worship in Manhattan. Some feared the project was being underwritten by foreigners. Others said the strangers’ beliefs were incompatible with democratic principles,” begins today’s New York Times article about the similarities between protests against the state’s oldest Catholic church at the time it was built, and the protests the past few months over the proposed Islamic Center downtown.

It’s worth remembering that every generation has its own “hated” group– and Catholics were the chosen group to be reviled, discriminated against and shunned for many years in the United States.  Now we’ve moved on to Muslims.

Read the entire article here.  The pastor of St. Peter’s Catholic Church in Manhattan, the target of scorn when it was built 225 years ago and now just a few blocks from the proposed Muslim center, should be applauded for promoting interfaith harmony.

Texas Textbook Redux

Texas has had its share of textbook controversies.  Last spring, the state board of education approved a set of resolutions emphasizing the superiority of the U.S. and its Judeo-Christian, democratic principles.  In recent years, perhaps the biggest debate has been over whether and how to include creationism and evolution in science textbooks.  As one of the largest consumers of educational textbooks in the country, the resolutions of the Texas board are influential, even though they’re not legally binding.

Now the board is at it again.  Last week, they passed a resolution encouraging history textbook publishers to be nicer to Christianity, and not as nice to Islam.  Seriously.

Some choice selections of the official resolution, approved just this past Friday:

WHEREAS pro-Islamic/anti-Christian bias has tainted some past Texas Social Studies textbooks….

WHEREAS pro-Islamic/anti-Christian half-truths, selective disinformation, and false editorial stereotypes still roil some Social Studies textbooks nationwide…

WHEREAS more such discriminatory treatment of religion may occur as Middle Easterners buy into the U.S. public textbook oligopoly…

RESOLVED by the SBOE, that diverse reviewers have repeatedly documented gross pro-Islamic/anti-Christian distortions in Social Studies texts….

What’s the proof does the board have for this anti-Christian bias supposedly so rampant and threatening in the textbook publishing industry?  For one, members of the board went through just two social studies texts and compared the exact number of lines devoted to each religion, and pointed out differences in discussion of Christian and Muslim massacres. To wit:

“…[in one instance] allotting 82 student text lines to Christian beliefs, practices and holy writings but 159 (almost twice as many) to those of Islam; describing Crusaders’ massacres of European Jews yet ignoring the Muslim Tamcriane’s massacre of perhaps 90,000 co-religionists at Baghdad in 1401, and of perhaps 100,000 Indian POWs at Delhi in 1398…”

I guess we’re back to tallying up who was worse back in the middle ages, because keeping score angrily is a truly fruitful exercise, no?

There’s also a thoughtful line accusing a textbook of “thrice charging medieval Christians with sexism; and saying the Church ‘laid the foundations for anti-Semitism’”…but that couldn’t possibly be true, right?

Never mind that the two textbooks the board used as evidence aren’t even used in Texas schools anymore.  Never mind that many foreign companies (of many religious affiliations, or none at all) have stakes in many American businesses.  Never mind that no other religions besides Islam and Christianity are mentioned in the analysis of the textbooks (after all, by the board’s logic, shouldn’t all religions get equal coverage?).

If it weren’t so disturbing, it would almost be funny.

See full text of the Texas board’s resolution here [PDF].