On Being Blog

Shiraz Janjua, Associate Producer

We’ve just completed our program in which Krista interviews British activist Ed Husain. Ed Husain spent several years in the 1990s in ideologically radical Islamist groups in the UK, where he was born and grew up. He wrote a book about these experiences, The Islamist, which has generated some fierce debate in Britain. (Check out our Particulars page to find links to some of that criticism.)

In his book, he makes a case for banning radical groups that he was part of, and makes causal links between those ideological groups and other, more violent groups that encourage terror tactics and violence. All of this has come in the wake of the July 7, 2005, bombings in London that, like the terror attacks here in 2001, have been emblemized by two numbers: 7/7.

(Photo by Jan van der Crabben/Flickr)

Much of the debate has spun around whether or not such causal links do in fact exist, and whether or not his own experiences can speak to any sort of trend responsible for radicalizing youth in Britain’s Muslim communities.

It’s a sensitive topic, one that is difficult to remain objective about one way or the other. One thing I’ve experienced in reading the bubbling blogosphere is the cynicism the Muslim community feels toward the media. We’ve seen all sorts of talking heads and policy experts on the airwaves, telling us why terrorism has become a tactic used by Islamist revolutionaries. In fact, they rarely even frame it that way. The whole focus on terrorism — to the exclusion of positive developments — is problematic. Instead of opening up discussion, it paints people into corners, puts them in boxes, labels them as somehow different to “us.”

It’s this sense of “us” and “them” that Ed Husain talks much about in the show, particularly in the uncut interview. Having grown up in Britain, he has some quite pronounced views on social stratification and class segregation there.

But — and this is a big but — it seems to a cynical Muslim audience that it’s a short leap from calling something Islamism to stripping away that –ism, and just blaming Islam. The search for “moderate” Muslims by the media is held up proof of the media’s ignorance and complicity in framing how Muslims are portrayed. We’ve even had discussions here about what words we use to promote this show: do we catch the ear by offering insight into suicidal terrorism, or do we say that a radical has turned to a deeper spirituality?

In some sense, the whole usage of the term “moderate” reflects to what degree we view everything, in the US, through the lens of politics. Moderation is stressed repeatedly in the Qur’an as something to strive for, but no one within the Muslim community comes out and says, “Hey, world, I’m moderate!”

People do split into broad camps of conservatives, traditionalists, progressives, liberals, secularists, or what have you, but there’s a lot of debate over the terminology of these various shades of experience. Terms like conservative, moderate and progressive, having no real scriptural basis, seem borrowed from American media parlance. They can be useful shorthand, but sometimes obscure the nuance and complexity of today’s intellectual ferment. They can turn real people into distant intellectual constructs.

Some want to call this period of Islamic history the “Reformation,” borrowing again from an outside frame of reference. It honestly doesn’t matter what we call it. What matters is the substance, the story of our time in history, the opportunity, and the stakes we play for. People will criticize someone like Ed Husain for focusing on radicalism and calling for more discussion, for associating the Muslim experience with some problematic social malaise, or some violent ideology, when the daily lived reality is so far from that.

I myself find the issue of identity boring, because it doesn’t satisfy the real weighty questions that I wrestle with, things that are light-years away from the questions the media focuses on. I’m more concerned about purpose in my life, about goodness, about the music inside language, about if I should play PlayStation for another half-hour or start making dinner.

Nevertheless, it doesn’t mean that someone like Ed Husain doesn’t have a story to tell. One can be self-critical without being self-hating. And I can’t say firsthand what it’s like in the UK, because I haven’t lived there. But Ed Husain talks about the North American Muslim community as a source for direct inspiration for him — there’s a strong streak of civic and social engagement in the Muslim community here. Just look to Krista’s interview with Ingrid Mattson or a recent interview on Altmuslim with Zaid Shakir. A great, high-profile British blog, Pickled Politics, seems to have a good pulse on the same reality in Britain.

That’s why Ed Husain has not abandoned Islam nor found it to be somehow inherently broken. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have criticism to offer about people who preach violence “in our name.” And nor does it mean, because he stakes out a claim, that he has the final, definitive answer. He doesn’t claim to, either, but he is part of a larger conversation. And if you have stories that inspire you, why not share them, and keep us honest?

(Photo by Chan’ad Bahraini/Flickr)

Anna Marsh, Intern

I started in November as the show’s first-ever production intern. My time here has been brief but wonderful. You all should know that the people who create this show are every bit as bright, funny, insightful, inquisitive, and warm as you hope they are.

Two things brought me here: First, I am an unabashed super-fan of the program. Second, I am a student in my last year at Luther Seminary. My program there asks that I do an internship after two years of study, and I heard through a friend that SOF had one available — quelle chance! (Maybe three things brought me here, if you count dumb luck!)

I’m working on a Master’s in Old Testament — not my intended course of study upon starting seminary, but it absolutely captured my imagination. And Krista’s conversations with Elie Wiesel and Sharon Brous are among the things that have kept me energized, searching, and grounded during the past few years. I think we who feel at home in a religious tradition can make a bad habit of treating an insight from another as a threat instead of good theological medicine.

My time has been filled with both typical “intern” tasks and experiences that made me want to pinch myself. Sure, I did mail runs and my alphabetizing skills are now second-to-none, but I also got to do much of the initial research into our guests and those we’re considering treating on the program (most recently, this meant that I got paid to think about Abraham Joshua Heschel — be still, my heart!), sit in on interviews and see, first hand, the dedication and talent that make this show what it is.

During my few months here, I saw three new shows produced from start to finish; Janna Levin, Robert Millet and this week’s program with Ed Husain. Levin will hold a special place in my heart because she was the first interview I sat in on. Her energy is infectious — and everyone was electric after talking to her. She’s especially exciting for me because she is a young professor — a brilliant scholar who still manages to be cool and fun. If/when I get my Ph.D., I hope to still be as in love with my subject matter as she is and to engage others as profoundly as she does.

I’m headed back to school for a few more months to rack up as many language classes as I can before starting the grueling process of applying for Ph.D. programs in Hebrew Bible. So much to do: finish my Master’s thesis, learn another ancient language (Akkadian), another modern language (German), take the GRE… not to mention getting in to a program (fingers crossed!) and likely moving across the country.

So while finishing up here is bittersweet, I’m excited to go back to school and I’m looking forward to being a listener again — anticipating each week’s program and the spiritual nourishment it brings.

(photo: Lyz Baranowski Lenz)

Krista Tippett, Host

I can’t afford — personally or production-wise — to be on the road much of the time. But Kate and I are on a thoroughly energizing, enjoyable trip right now. And there is something amazingly wonderful about getting out like this every once in a while and looking out, while I speak, at a room full of bodies and faces.

The radio program has grown so much in reach and carriage these past years, yet what we do doesn’t change much. We just keep trying to get better and better at our craft. We create these hours of radio and pages of web content, put them up on the Internet and satellite, and move on to the next topic.

We know from e-mails that people receive our work and use and apply it — those e-mails helps keep me going every day. But to actually be in a room full of listeners is a pleasure and affirmation at a different level. I love radio as an intimate and mysterious medium. Seeing our listeners, on the road, adds another layer of discovery and mystery for me.

Kate Moos, Managing Producer

A fabulous turn-out yesterday at the National Cathedral. It looked like six or seven hundred people in the pews, filling the nave of the Cathedral for the Sunday Forum, during which Dean Sam Lloyd interviewed Krista — always a treat, I think, for the listeners to hear Krista’s take on the sorts of questions she puts to others. Keep an eye on the Cathedral’s site for video. (We’ll be getting a copy as well for possible posting here.) Also very nice to meet and work with our friends at WAMU on this visit, especially Andrea Travis, who really helped make it a fine event.

We made a quick turnaround and headed for a Bikram yoga studio in Dupont Circle… just the thing to wring out any remaining adrenalin and balance the energy after a big event!

My phone is not cooperating in attempts to send pics, so I’ll try to figure out what the problem is. Later today a train to Princeton for the final event on this trip. More soon!

Colleen Scheck, Producer

I enjoy the reporting of Sylvia Poggioli, NPR’s veteran European correspondent. She was formerly known in my household as “The Pope Reporter” because I often had the radio on when her stories on Pope John Paul II aired. (She was a guest on our program on the religious legacy of the late pontiff).

Last week NPR aired Poggioli’s six-part series exploring the evolving identities of Muslim women in Europe. Her stories focused on women in Germany, France, and Britain, the three European countries with the largest Muslim populations. I always like reading reporter notebooks - here’s an excerpt from her notebook for this series:

As I traveled through Europe this fall to report for this series, I remembered the words of filmmaker Yamina Benguigui, my first guide into the world of what she called “ghost women.” French-born to Algerian parents, she broke with her strict patriarchal family and married a non-Muslim Frenchman.

In her documentaries, Benguigui explored the phenomenon of some young French Muslim women who, in the early 1990s, had taken to wearing the headscarf even when their mothers did not. While many of these young women said the headscarf was a mark of their cultural identity in a society where they felt discriminated, Benguigui said it was also something else: a way of getting around the dilemma of living a double life in two different cultures. Instead of breaking with their families, “they decide to take the Koran as a weapon against their families, by submerging themselves completely in religion, brandishing the veil and the Koran, they become the leader in the family … (the Muslim girl) will not be forced to marry and she can come home when she wants. She can drive a car and she’s completely free,” Benguigui told me in 1995.

Twelve years later, I met many Muslim women who still have not found their places and are still torn by two cultures. But I also met many Muslim women who are asserting themselves much more forcefully — either in identifying with European secular culture and demanding the same rights as their Western sisters, or by appropriating Islam for themselves, through a new female perspective. Or in a combination of the two.

While there is no distinct Europe-wide pattern, in many places a quiet revolution among Muslim women is under way.

Next week we broadcast Krista’s conversation with Ed Husain, author of The Islamist: Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain, What I Saw Inside, and Why I Left. Poggioli’s series is a good compliment to this show, and to the other programs we’ve done on Muslim women with Leila Ahmed and Ingrid Mattson, that help broaden my understanding of Islam worldwide.

(photo: [name removed at photographer’s request])

Kate Moos, Managing Producer

Krista and I head out tomorrow for D.C. where we have another event in our 2008 World Tour, at the National Cathedral’s Sunday Forum. Our travels are exciting, and by far and away the best thing about them is meeting our listeners. It’s just an amazing gift. The event is at 10 am Sunday February 3rd, and is free and open. See you there!

Rob McGinley Myers, Associate Producer

A few weeks ago, Mr. Rogers came up at one of our production meetings, and Krista mentioned that she would have loved to interview him if he were still alive. I remember reading somewhere that Fred Rogers’s original intention in creating a television show was to try to find a space in TV broadcasting for grace.

Not a few days had passed when an episode of Mr. Rogers appeared on my family’s Tivo as a suggestion. I don’t know if PBS has just recently begun rebroadcasting the show, but I decided to see if my kids could connect with him, considering that they watch almost nothing but cartoons.

Having not watched the show myself in almost 30 years, I was surprised to realize how much I actually enjoyed it, especially the mini-documentaries about various factories (in this case, a sleeping bag factory). There’s something extraordinarily reassuring about watching one of the ordinary objects of our lives being constructed piece by piece.

My children were equally captivated, and within minutes my 3 year old was talking

back to the screen when Mr. Rogers asked her a question. Somehow, through the medium of television, he was able to make a genuine emotional connection to a girl that had been born a year after his death. In a CNN profile, Rogers said, “The whole idea is to look into the television camera and present as much love as you possibly could to a person who might feel that he or she needs it.”

Fred Rogers would have been 80 next month.

Kate Moos, Managing Producer

Tom Stoppard’s new play “Rock-n-Roll” is getting mixed reviews here, but tickets are scarce, so I was thrilled when my friend Chris scored some for us. This is Stoppard’s chronicle of the intersection of pop culture and politics in then-Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution.

Stoppard, I learned from the program notes, was born in the Czech town of Zlin, where I — highly coincidentally — have a close friend, Hannah, who grew up there. Hannah, much younger than Stoppard, is a devout Catholic, for theological and political reasons (the Catholic Church was a staunch form of dissidence in parts of the East bloc).

I remember Hannah telling me about the day her father called her into the kitchen for an earnest, whispered confession. He apologized to her for not joining the Communist Party because he knew it would limit her chances, and he pleaded with her to stop going to Mass. Her teachers, the secret police, the Party, knew of it, and if she persisted, she would be sent to work at the shoe factory, and never be allowed an education.

Stoppard’s play is a history of the world many people alive today have never heard of. The Plastic People of the Universe, one of the world’s most obscure rock and roll bands, and Western rock, carry the zeitgeist of revolution and resistance, and their consequent cynicism and despair, in the final years of the Soviet Union. It’s a story that matters.

Kate Moos, Managing Producer

One of our several stops today was Beliefnet, perhaps the largest website devoted to topics of religion and spirituality, where we experimented with some video shooting for one of their features. That’s a “stay tuned” for now, but we enjoyed working with their crew, and while there we stopped by the office of Steve Waldman, the co-founder and CEO, who has known Krista for some time. His book, Founding Faith, will be out in March. Waldman was our guest for a couple of election year shows four years ago, notably, Beyond the God Gap, and he has an unusually balanced and insightful view of religion in the political scene.

Beliefnet recently published a poll of its Evangelical users that shows some interesting drift. Among other things, a larger percentage (38.7%) of self-described Evangelical participants named “reducing poverty” as their most important issue rather than those who said “ending abortion” (31.8%) was.

While it wasn’t a scientific poll, it was a large participating sample, and some interesting nuggets are found therein.

Kate Moos, Managing Producer

As Krista and I hop from meeting to meeting here in New York, we’re overwhelmed by the tremendous amount of listener response to our program on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We’re receiving very positive responses from non-Mormons and Mormons alike, from those who know and have studied the church as well as those for whom this was an introduction; at the same time, some listeners have expressed concern that this program was not critical enough to be journalistically valid.

Speaking of Faith models a distinctive approach to journalism about religion. The ethic of the interview is informed by deep listening and informed questioning. That is purposeful, based on her sense that adversarial questioning simply puts the interviewer on the defensive and shuts down the possibility of authentic and genuinely revealing answers. There are many legitimate ways to approach the multitudes of subjects in the news. This approach works for matters as deep and sensitive as religion and what we believe.

In the case of this show, her questions drew out a great deal of information that was new to many listeners. Some drove to the substantive core of distinctions between Mormon thought and traditional orthodox Christianity. As we also stated throughout the script, there are numerous controversies surrounding this faith in historical, cultural, theological, and social terms.

We didn’t omit to mention these “hot button” topics, nor did we dismiss them. But we did and do feel they have been often reported and examined in the mainstream media. We wanted to cover some new ground. We wanted to explore the basic parts of this faith that make it distinctive, and that are little understood.

We had a journalistic goal — to provide a more basic theological and human context for non-Mormons to understand this faith of 13 million human beings globally — and a broad and basic human foundation on which they might navigate the controversies for themselves.

We tried to determine where to post a response like this — on the show’s reflection page, to each individual, in next week’s newsletter? — and then we had to check ourselves and ask: “Are we too defensive?” “Are we overreacting and should we just allow our listeners to air their grievances?”

What do you think?

Krista Tippett, Host/Producer

I am a “faithful” reader of The New Yorker - for all the kinds of writing and reporting they do. They’ve also by the way had some brilliant pieces on religion in recent years, as the whole field of journalism catches up with this subject, its importance in human life, and the intellectual and spiritual content that has been missed by traditional journalism for too long. But this kind of list still puzzles and throws me - an announcement of a New Yorker conference on “the near future”, with:

“theorists, designers, economists, philosophers, ethicists, animators, inventors, musicians, entrepreneurs, philanthropists, scientists, artists, politicians, engineers, financiers.”

Where are the theologians? Why this assumption that philosophers and ethicists can hold their own in pressing, intellectual conversation - and have relevant and essential insight to add to the mix - and not religious thinkers?

On a lighter note, I love this spiritually profound and true cartoon.

Shiraz Janjua, Associate Producer

I spent many years absorbed in the world of comic books. Then, after a while, I got sick of the futility of the superhero genre, where nothing of significance ever happened to these heroes. We know that Superman is invulnerable, but most other characters have “character shields” too. You know this from Star Trek (which I also can’t stand): Kirk, Spock, Bones, and Ensign Smith descend onto a planet (you know what happens next). Nothing ever happened to Kirk or the others because they’re commercial properties, not dramatic ones. Commercial properties can’t die.

In any case, I do think the superhero genre — one slice of the medium but by far the most commercially successful — can have moments of superb storytelling, like the mythic Kingdom Come, or the postmodern Astro City, that take on comic books that was grounded in the stories of everyday people. The “Confession” storyline was a favorite of mine. I’m also immersed in the first season of Heroes on DVD (now don’t tell me what happens!).

© DC Comics

Comic books are also a global phenomenon, huge in Japan for example as a serious art form. Now there’s even this apparently wildly popular Muslim comic (if I can call it that) called The 99. It’s a secular adventure/superhero comic about a group of 99 individuals who gain special powers through these special stones, each one of which reflects on the the Divine Names of God as found in Islamic theology.

As it turns out, Forbes recently mentioned The 99 as one of the biggest trends of 2008.

© Teshkeel Media Group

I personally find enjoyment from art that starts out in a neutral place and ends up having this beautiful undertone to it that gives me something more to think about, whether it’s religious, spiritual, scientific, philosophical, sociological — the list goes on and on. The archetypal X-Men storyline, for example, is about minority rights, identity and engagement. Chris Claremont, the legendary X-Men writer, said:

The X-Men are hated, feared and despised collectively by humanity for no other reason than that they are mutants. So what we have here, intended or not, is a book that is about racism, bigotry and prejudice.

The everyday X-Men storyline, on the other hand, is often a bit more along the lines of a superpowered soap opera, or even Star Trek.

I’m not saying I’m going back to the superhero genre, because I think graphic novels are far more interesting (though I have no time to read them). Watchmen said all that can be said, I think, about the superhero genre, and is in my opinion the finest superhero comic (and possible comic, period) ever written. It plays with the genre and injects the kind of mise en scène we expect from high cinema like Citizen Kane or 2001: A Space Odyssey. I’m much more interested in work that is visual art proper, like Joe Sacco’s Palestine or Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis.

© Fantagraphics Books

Still, I’ve downloaded the preview of The 99 off the website and plan to read it. It’s a case of popular art drawing from an Islamic base, as opposed to, say, something like Indiana Jones or The Da Vinci Code, or what have you, that draw from exclusively Judeo-Christian bases.

Krista Tippett, Host/Producer

I traveled this past weekend to the Guest House of St. John’s Abbey in central Minnesota. I’m about to head off on some travel for my book tour — part of me looks forward to this, part of me does not. It will be exciting and exhausting, and I have a speech to write. But really all that was an excuse to get back up to St. John’s, a place I visit periodically to get quiet inside. I did get a bit done on the speech, but more important than that I slept and read, prayed with the monks, and collected my thoughts.

Before I left Kate handed me a tiny book of poems by Freya Manfred. I’m nourished and kept alive by reading, and always have been. I came upon a couple of lines from Manfred that I’ll keep. The first is just half a line that puts fresh words to an underlying energy and tension of life that fascinates me — the concomitant separation and twining of what is personal and what is communal. Manfred refers to this as “our braided paths and solitary ways.”

I like this language. She also has a poem about fear, which I think about alot as a factor in our common life, religious and otherwise. Fear is the very human very powerful emotion that lashes out as anger, hatred, bigotry, violence. I try to hang on to this knowledge — difficult as it is in the face of real anger, hatred, bigotry, and violence — as a way to cultivate compassion as a primary virtue for moving through the world. Freya Manfred adds some poetic images to my cumulative store of intelligence:

Fear is a thirst for solid ground,
a cave and a fire,
with a way in, and a way out.

Fear is not always old,
but it’s always new.
When old, it can be ignored,

like the midnight keening in the houses of the sane.
When new, it’s nameless
something about to happen —

not death,
but all I can imagine.
Fear leaves and returns.

There are no words to keep it away.
If only there were words.

And yet, and yet — I persist in my faith that if we can at least name something — even the powerlessness of words in the face of the fearfulness in our world, we can begin to discern other ways together to approach and calm it.