Organic Multireligiosity & Seriously (WARNING: COLOURED) Organic Scholarship
WARNING: these are free-flowing thoughts of mine that flow from the Starr King School for the Ministry SYMPOSIUM 2012: Living in the Differences: Counter-Oppressive/UU and Multireligious The()logical Education which i conceived and directed.
Although i am not given to spending a lot of time talking about myself, it is sometimes important, in the name of kujichagulia (self-definition/self-determination) to state what is going on, especially when other people take it upon themselves to define me in ways that i and others close to me don't even recognise. Often reluctant (out of adab) to do it, now i feel moved to clarify certain things.
i have been teaching for the last few days about what i have named "ORGANIC MULTIRELIGIOSITY". My focus has been on connecting the dots between organic multireligiosity and counter-oppressive work, to show how the two have to be and are deeply, organically interconnected. I realise that this is my life-work: this is my passion and my joy. I am more than deeply connected to ORGANIC MULTIRELIGIOSITY.
In the past few months, it has been said or implied by some that i am not a "real scholar", that i am not focused on 'real' scholarship like the 'real' scholars are, but rather have my focus on preparing people for Unitarian Universalist and multireligious religious leadership, as though that were a "less than" thing and a not-so-worthy thing. As though there were an either/or, a binary that opposes one to the other. is it ok for me to teach the study of islam in the context of the Starr King School for the Ministry, but am i not really qualified to teach the study of islam in an authentically 'scholarly' environment? some say or imply that, because of my ideas about certain things or because of my spiritual practices, i might not even be a real muslim.
as a person who has often been marginalised because of not fitting into the structures created by binary thinking, i have become acutely aware of the ways in which, in my experience (perhaps not for others), binaries destroy and shut down life in many areas, in many ways.
In response to hearing people say, "Oh, I'm a heart person, I'm not so much a brain person" or ""I'm a brain person and not really a heart person" i have often said, in the spirit of non-binary thinking, "well, the heart cannot function without the brain and the brain can't function without the heart".
when people say that i am not a "real scholar", are they sometimes using that terminology to say that what i do is not "serious", that the kinds of questions i address, like Islam in the prison industrial complex, are not serious? first off, i am a US-born scholar of colour, so how serious could i really be anyway, especially if i am not one of those considered to be a "serious scholar"????
Conceiving and bringing to fruition (with support and collaboration from others) a major Symposium (SKSM SYMPOSIUM 2012: Living in the DIfferences: Counter-Oppressive Multireligious The()logical Education for the 21st Century) that had 500+ people in attendance is not "serious"? It didn't take serious thought and creativity to do that? More importantly though, this recent Symposium challenged paradigms and opened up whole new areas of thought, masha'allah. That alone would perhaps qualify for making it "not serious"!
it doesn't take "serious scholarship" to have taught seminary students about HIV/AIDS and provided them with the opportunity to become HIV/AIDS test counselors and educators? Saving lives is not serious work for scholars?
Don't get me wrong: as someone who is multilingual and who loves doing translating work, i value and respect all forms of scholarly work. It so happens that , in addition to reading and writing critical theory (like this), translating texts, examining topics that others might not find all that interesting, there are parts of my scholarly work that are indeed connected to life-and-death matters. i came of age as a teaching scholar (1985/6) during the extremely severe years of the beginning of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. i felt that my teaching had to respond to the pandemic: people were dying and religious leaders could actually concretely help in this crisis, especially since so much resistance to HIV/AIDS was grounded in religious discourse. People felt that they were following the teachings of their religious traditions by being AIDSphobic, by practicing aparthAIDS. Religious leaders could educate people about HIV/AIDS, they could be HIV/AIDS test counsellors, educators; they could establish testing centres in their congregations, etc.. They could help people with HIV/AIDS and their families. They could keep people from being driven into the streets. And they could bury those who had died from HIV/AIDS-related complications. I know of one of these students, Rev. Anthony Lee of Washington, DC, who carried forward this legacy in his work in his congregation, which i am told is a place of radical inclusivity, masha'allah.
Using Frantz Fanon, the liberation the@logians, Audre Lorde, Ali Shariati, Philo of Alexandria, womanist/mujerista/feminist-of-colour theoreticians, etc., i had to move some students who were highly resistant to this whole thing to seeing the connections between racism, HIV/AIDSphobia, homophobia, economic structures, access to health care, women's health issues, reproductive justice, environmental justice (you cannot take your meds if you don't have water!), etc.. there was work of deep theoretical analysis, always coming back to the question of how this is connected to the prophetic traditions of justice, wholeness, peace, and life.
Whether teaching about HIV/AIDS, heteronormativity, Organic multireligiosity, 'earthodoxy'-religion and care for the Earth, immigration policies, death penalty abolition, colonisation, gynephobia, or translating Frantz Fanon, Eva deVitray-Méyérovitch, Philo of Alexandria or the works of Pavel Florensky in order to teach on his the()logy of friendship, or studying the figure of Moses in Samaritan the@logy, i am always concerned about everyone having access to the fullness of life. I want to open up possibilities for people to show up in life in the fulness of their being. And i want them to be able to be recognise the discourse behind a question before they rush to answer it. i want them to be "thought-provoking" religious leaders in the public place. if i can help my students understand the rôle Philo played in the interpretation of the Sodom/Gomorrah narratives, and his particular reasons for interpreting these narratives in the ways he did, then they can read Philo and when they are called upon to engage in public conversation, conversation in the public place about so-called "sodomy" laws, they will have the scholarly background with which to do it.
This is the work of the organic intellectual, of those who strive to give life to counter-hegemonic ideas and actions, grounded in and responding to communities of accountability. i want my students to understand that this is possible way for them to understand their work as religious leaders. as religious leaders, they are called upon to respond to issues like reproductive justice, abolition of the death penalty, etc..
I want my students to understand the dynamics of race/class/gender/sexuality/embodiment/fictions of purity/disability in the academy: i want them to understand why it is possible for people with certain commitments/identities to be completely marginalised, dismissed and disappeared in the academy. i want them to know why many scholars in the united states struggle against apartheid in what my friend, film-maker and scholar-activist, Aishah Shahidah Simmons, calls the Academic Industrial Complex. i know that when i wrote about the intersections of white supremacy, religiously-based homophobia and erotophobia in the demonising and criminalising of Black /Brown men's bodies it wasn't going to be received by many of my colleagues in the same way as they might possibly have received something less "controversial". The fact that it discussed race and erotophobia made it seem like something less than real scholarship.
Yes, i am a trained performance artist; yes, i do new media art. To hold multiple identities is interpreted as meaning that one lacks focus, that one is a mere generalist, that one is not "serious". those of us who struggle to hold the space for scholar/artist/activist/mystic as a mixed-identity are often just dismissed as not being "real" enough.
I want people to understand that if you study and specialise in the history of Islam in the African American experience, or Russian Islam (how many can tell you why Kazan is important), or Islam in Senegal and West Africa, of Islam in Nusantara, you are not going to be on the A-list. In fact, you might end up not being on any list. Sometimes, these things have nothing to do with qualifications and/or skills and talents. sometimes it just has to do with the fact that some people just do not want you to show up at all. i sometimes think that if they could still just hang us or shoot us with impunity they would.
If my approach to the study of Islam, which includes all of the elements discussed here in these thoughts doesn't appear to have intellectual integrity or to be on par with "serious" scholarships, don't just try to disappear me and then take away my lands. don't just come for me and say that i am not a 'serious scholar' or a 'real scholar'. don't just "other" me and erase me.
As a person of colour scholar/artist/activist/religious practitioner of a mystical tradition, i know what it is like to not be taken seriously in certain areas. it is for that reason that i am fiercely defensive of Unitarian Universalism. Although i myself am not a Unitarian Universalist or UU, as we say, i have lived amongst Unitarian Universalists for the last 27 years. My child has grown up in that world and perhaps even been to more UU General Assemblies than some UU young people the same age as he! While we are not UUs, we are dwellers in the UU- land and live within UU cultures. For the last 27 years, i have prepared Unitarian Universalist religious leaders/scholars, etc.. The first 10 years were at Howard University where i taught history of religions/sociology of heteropatriarchy, etc. to the Unitarian Universalist seminarians from Wesley The@logical Seminary. It was at that time that i met Rev Meg Riley who held a space for me to connect my "scholarship" and activism in the public arena. So, i can happily say, without any shame, hesitation or reservation and with very profound gratitude, that Unitarian Universalism played a part in providing me a platform for my work as an organic intellectual. Soon, i was attending regional meetings and even General Assembly, doing work around intersecting oppressions, etc..
Because of my insider/outsider status in Unitarian Universalism, i have always taken upon myself the responsibility of not letting others minimise, caricature and ridicule Unitarian Universalism and Unitarian Universalists. When i am in a meeting of "scholars"/"academics" and someone makes a joke about "unitarians", i take it upon myself to stop it abruptly. People feel safe doing that because they know that i am not Unitarian Universalist and they don't expect me to say anything. They think that it is OK to do, since we are not intellectually "serious" and have no "intellectual integrity". They don't know 'our' history/herstory/zherstory/ourstory. Interestingly enough, when they want to dismiss the value of my work or perspective, they dismiss me as being "Unitarian" (which i am in islamic terms, but that is another dissertation, lol!: OOPS, "real scholars" don't laugh!).
The capacity in certain circles to ridicule Unitarian Universalism is connected to some people's thinking that Unitarian Universalism is itself not "serious", whatever that means. For those people, It goes without saying that a Unitarian Universalist seminary would not and could not have "serious scholars" on its faculty. Also, to joke about Unitarian Universalism and/or Starr King School for the Ministry is also to ridicule our liberatory, counter-oppressive, multireligious educational practices. Oh, but wait a minute? People can joke about us, but at the same time try to "bite our style"/ copy what we do without ever acknowledging that we are the source of what they want to do? Holy Paradox! If we do big public work on Organic Multireligiosity it is not serious, but then when someone else comes along and tries to do it, it is all of a sudden serious and cutting-edge!
For the record, It was the Starr King School for the Ministry, the school that prepares people for Unitarian Universalist, multireligious counter-oppressive religious leadership, that produced the SKSM SYMPOSIUM: "Living in the DIfferences: Counter-Oppressive/Multireligious The()logical Education in the 21st Century". It was Starr King that engaged 500+ people for three days in reflecting on this theme, connecting these dots, weaving this tapestry. 500+ people grappling intellectually, spiritually, emotionally, aesthetically, ritually with the connections between counter-oppressive work and multireligious practice. This cannot be erased; this cannot be disappeared. And we did this because this is what we do, this is what we have been doing for the 17 years that i have been at SKSM. And, as i dreamed of this SYMPOSIUM over the past few years, I was sure that this was clearly to be a moment in which SKSM would clearly place itself in the MEYDAN/in the centre of public space, to announce that we are here and we are doing this work of counter-oppressive/UU and multireligious the()logical education. And we are doing it very publicly. This is our work of engaged scholarship. If others think that it is not "serious" scholarship, then tant mieux.
i don't want to be that kind of "serious" anyway............
Fictions of purity......... the kind of counter-oppressive multi-religious the@logical education on which i have been working for the past 27 years challenges those fictions. it interrupts practices of considering religions as monolithic, rigidly-separated traditions in conflict with one another (as though they could only exist in relations of conflict, but rather understands them as having complex and constantly-morphing relationships in successive generations and in ever-widening geographical and cultural contexts. sounds kind of 'serious' and 'real' to me, no?
People are bashed and killed everyday in places not far from here because of their perceived sexualities and or gender expressions, again often based in religious interpretation. Kind of "real" and "serious", n'est-ce pas?
Multi-religious education calls all of us beyond the borders of the school house and into engagement with the world in liberatory ways which allow for greater wholeness and greater global justice.
Whether we are doing this work with Sufi mystics in Turkey or on the trail of the Waldensian tradition in Italy, whether we are in Yuba County learning more about some of California’s Spanish and Punjabi-speaking Sikhs with names like Dolores Singh, Jose Akbar Khan, Armando Chand, Maria Jesusita Singh, or in Amazônia deepening our experience of shamanism, we are working towards the healing of the earth, the healing of the universe; we are weaving the tapestry of the counter-oppressive and the multi-religious; we are diving deeply into the Cave of the Heart, we are witnessing the intelligence of the Heart, the intelligence descending into the Cave of the Heart.
And what does it mean to do this work on the very land where indigenous people were disappeared by various means and in various ways? what does it mean that while we do this work, we live on their lands, desecrate their burial mounds over which we build malls? are these not 'serious' questions?
my lineage goes back to the battlefields of Kerbela, for 'Everyday is Ashura, every place is Kerbela'.
we are of THOSE WHO FEEL THE HURT OF OTHER HUMAN BEINGS AND CREATURES AS IF IT WERE THEIR OWN, THE ONES WHO REACH OUT WITH THEIR HEART AND THEIR POSSESSIONS IN TIMES OF NEED, THE ONES WHO ARE STRONG IN THE FACE OF INJUSTICE AND UNTRUTH, THE ONES WHO REMAIN ANCHORED IN THE DIVINE IN TIMES OF DISTRESS, THE ONES WHO ARE AWARE OF THEIR BREATH, THE ONES WHO ARE ALWAYS TURNING TOWARDS ARAHMAN AR-RAHIMIN,
THOSE WHO LOVE THE POOR AND THE MARGINALIZED AND THE ALIENATED, THE OVERLOOKED AND THE REJECTED,
THOSE WHO REJECT ARROGANCE, TYRANNY AND OPPRESSION......................
interestingly enough, in my life, i have been defined both as too scholarly and not scholarly enough: how's that for both/and?
Stopping here for now, à SUIVRE/to be continued, insha'allah................