thabet
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06:08:33 pm on June 24, 2008 | # | |
Sometime ago, Aziz wrote in a comment:
Is this true? Should this be true?
Discuss.
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razib 8:31 pm on June 24, 2008 | #
it is true, but only if the community isn’t white
in any case, i think *right* is too strong a word insofar as it easily bleeds into a millet system whereby legal fiat shapes and preserves these boundaries. but fundamentally humans aren’t just atoms who have a social contract with the state; they’re embedded in social matrices. religion, politics, language, food, and yes, race, are all things that communities may use to to generate an identity, and it is normal and implicit that societies will be carved out on the joints of these segmented subcultures.
then is the role of government fiat in demarcating and enforcing these boundaries. the US and south africa had a policy banning interracial marriage. many muslim states have policies which regulate interreligious marriage, as do some other states such as greece and israel. in the past there were sometimes restrictions in interclass marriage. personally, i think this is the wrong way to. OTOH, i do think that states are free to regulate who immigrates and discriminate based on traits that they think are, or are not, assimilable. the nation-state is a community too.
aziz 8:47 pm on June 24, 2008 | #
just to clarify, i was not talking about legal rights. i was thinking things like internal social pressure (shy of actual compulsion or violence), threat of excommunication, etc. i am firmly against adding a legal dimension to that.
razib 9:24 pm on June 24, 2008 | #
the discrimination principle is in bad odor. OTOH, everyone does it more or less, some groups are more open and systematic.
Willow 10:25 pm on June 24, 2008 | #
The kinds of extreme pressure you’re endorsing, Aziz–social pressure and excommunication–wouldn’t be necessary if the community in question was made more viable/practical/appealing than the alternatives. If one has to resort to outright bullying and threats to keep people in a community, one wonders if the virtues of that community are really as glorious (or even as self-evident) as its policemen claim…
Willow 10:33 pm on June 24, 2008 | #
On that note, it’s worth observing: the Amish Church, which is as strict and community-oriented as they come, requires its adherents to formally enter the church upon reaching adulthood. (They hold that you can’t be baptized except by choice.) At 16 you get to go on Rumpspringa, in which you have full license to party until your head falls off.
The retention rate of the Amish Church is over 90%. The highest it’s ever had in its 450 year history. *Ninety percent* would rather go back to petticoats and cows (and obviously a really rich spiritual life) than keep partying.
Something to think about for the people who believe they can get more with vinegar than with sugar.
razib 11:38 pm on June 24, 2008 | #
wouldn’t be necessary if the community in question was made more viable/practical/appealing than the alternatives.
but we’re not talking about a level playing field here. there’s a tendency for those in minority communities to be “pulled” to majority dispensations because of the benefits which accrue toward assimilation and acculturation. so for those in minority communities they have to make sure that those who “opt-out” know very well that they’re making a choice and that they can’t have their cake and eat it too; so for medieval jews conversion to christianity generally entailed a total disconnection from one’s natal origins. your relatives would mourn you as if you died. your point is a correct one insofar as communities have to look to themselves if their children are defecting, but i also think that the context i allude to above matters.
The retention rate of the Amish Church is over 90%. The highest it’s ever had in its 450 year history. *Ninety percent* would rather go back to petticoats and cows (and obviously a really rich spiritual life) than keep partying.
did you hear the NPR program on that yesterday too? just wondering, since they used that 90% number. in any case, this is a case of the above. you leave the amish, you leave the amish. and as noted on the program the kids aren’t really prepared to take advantage of the outside world.
finally, i have to note that even 10% defection per generation in a small community like the amish would have a evolutionary effect over the 200 years or so they’ve lived in the united states. in some ways i am willing to bet that the people who are amish today have been self-selected for generations to be relatively positive about being amish because of what that consists of. the amish don’t really take converts from what i know, so there’d been constant flow of genes and ideas out of the community, but none in.
Willow 12:30 am on June 25, 2008 | #
but we’re not talking about a level playing field here. there’s a tendency for those in minority communities to be “pulled” to majority dispensations because of the benefits which accrue toward assimilation and acculturation. so for those in minority communities they have to make sure that those who “opt-out” know very well that they’re making a choice and that they can’t have their cake and eat it too
Definitely a point I hadn’t considered. Re: NPR: hadn’t heard that particular broadcast, but I did recently see The Devil’s Playground, which quotes the 90% figure as well.
razib 12:41 am on June 25, 2008 | #
Definitely a point I hadn’t considered. Re: NPR: hadn’t heard that particular broadcast, but I did recently see The Devil’s Playground, which quotes the 90% figure as well.
the NPR segment notes that ‘leaving’ the community isn’t really an optimal unless you REALLY hate being amish
1) they gotz no education to help ‘em in the real world (amish teens go through amish vocational oriented schooling)
2) they don’t have networks in the outside world to help them get jobs
3) they might not even now the basics of how to use monster.com or something
so there’s more than meets the eye to the 90%. i think a good analogy are hasidic jewish groups in the USA who don’t teach their kids english so that there are now 3rd generation americans who have speak the dominant language of this nation with really strong yiddish accents. these people are to some extent going to be immigrants to america if they leave the hasidic community.
aziz 4:57 am on June 25, 2008 | #
We may be talking about different things. There are issues of dress, language, social mores (regarding dating, marriage), etc that bind a community, and people who strongly identify with the community are going to be strongly inclined to follow these norms by default. Howevere there will always be a subset who insist on flouting the conventions. They are free to do so, but if the community does not react with some sort of negative comment to it, then obviously those norms will erode over time.
I am hardly saying that (for example) a muslim community shoudl takfir its members for insufficient beard length. However, the range of reactions to those who defy the conventions (literally, ties that bind) can range from simple frowns to outright excommunication, *depending on the severity of the transgression* (just like by analogy, in criminal law you can be let off with a warning by the cop all the way up to being executed, depending on your crime).
Excommunication would be a reasonable course of action for someone who outwardly professes membership yet also denies the fundamental tenets of the group. For example, a muslim who denied the divinity of the Qur’an or the divine origin of the Prophet’s SAW revelation. Such people are free to believe what they wish but when they try to force their beliefs on the mainstream, the mainstream must defend itself.
99% of time, however, its nothing so serious. Still, even on minor matters, a frown goes a long way in preserving your culture. I’m not a raving mullah about this but I also don’t want my daughters to think that any part of our heritage is optional. Salad-bar religion is simply not acceptable.
Willow 9:27 am on June 25, 2008 | #
Ah, but technology and the social changes it brings about will inevitably affect religious tradition. For example, thanks to the rise of aviation, I can be almost anywhere in the world in under 24 hours. Does that mean that I don’t need to bring a mahram on business trips, since the travel time is less than a day and a night? (That’s certainly the argument I’ve used, not having any mahrams disposed to go globe-trotting with me.) What does that mean for this particular law? Has it simply been outmoded, like the laws for treating the camels and horses we no longer ride?
It’s the march of history, not just a few rabble-rousers, that makes dramatic change necessary. Nobody’s community exactly resembles the community it was 100 years ago, let alone 500 or 1,000 years ago. There are now Muslims living close to the Arctic Circle, for whom special fasting laws–which previously existed nowhere–had to be made. And what does THAT mean? Does it mean Islam is really only a religion for inhabitants of lower latitudes? Or is that strange hadith in which the Prophet inexplicably combined his prayers, saying he didn’t wish to embarrass any part of his ummah, indicative that he knew one day there would be Muslims in regions without clearly demarcated night and day?
What will the rules be for the first Muslim in space?
If all aspects of a way of life are mandatory and non-negotiable, the way of life doesn’t need rebellious nay-sayers to be eroded. It’ll be eroded without any help by the realities of the world around it. I’d argue that a culture has to be flexible and evolve to survive.
thabet 10:12 am on June 25, 2008 | #
Aziz, you shouldn’t underestimate the psychological damage that exclusion can have on people who do not conform to their community’s ‘norms’.
aziz 10:36 am on June 25, 2008 | #
Ah, but technology and the social changes it brings about will inevitably affect religious tradition.
I can point to my own community as a counterexample. Cell phones, airplanes, etc have all changed our lives, and arguably enlarged our culture, but have not eroded teh fundamentals. If I were to travel to Ahmedabad circa 1680, I could blend into a Bohra majlis with no real problem, assuming no one looked askance at my cell phone. Assuming I evaded Aurangzeb’s minions, anyway.
Of course, technological change does have an impact, but culture shoudl expand to fill that need, not contract. Take an analogy to science; the discovery of relativity superceded Newtonian mechanics, but by expanding it to special cases. For the vast majority of problems however Newtonian mechanics serves quite well.
Take teh arctic circle issue. My own father in law was a pipeline engineer in Alaska. How did he solve the issue of prayer time, fasting, etc? He simply consulted his religious authority and asked for a ruling. They gave him one. What it was, I dont even remember offhand, but that process shoudl not be unfamiliar to anyone here. We *do* have a system for dealing with new cases, and it relies on judgement and reason (of those we deem authoritative and to wom we entrust the responsibility of making these judgement calls). There already was a muslim (Indonesian, I think) in space aboard the space station and he handled his salaat timing in a similar fashion.
I fully agree, Willow, that no one’s community (including mine) *exaclty* resembles what it was 100 years ago, but as long as the fundamentals are kept constant, then the forces of change can expend themselves on teh superficial adaptations which are healthy and normal. I don’t want my community to be stuck in stasis, like the Amish. I do want evolution, but that evolution must be compatibel with pre-existing norms, and must not sacrifice the essentials which are inviolate.
I certainly do NOT advocate that “all aspects of life” be “mandatory and non-negotiable” - but a community as a whole does have a common sense in a collective way, and I think it will act to preserve the things that shoudl be preserved and let itself evolve in the ways that do not threaten those fundamentals. Which is why on my masallah at masjid I dutifully set my cell phone to vibrate.
thabet, I don’t underestimate the damage of exclusion at all. Its a terrible thing. And it has definitely been applied unjustly in the past. I also agree that sometimes a community’s “norms” are overly onerous. But in these cases the individual is the one who has to make the decision as to whether it is more important to them to suffer under those restrictive norms or face exclusion, if those two extreme cases really are the only alternatives (which usually isn’t so).
aziz 10:38 am on June 25, 2008 | #
There are now Muslims living close to the Arctic Circle, for whom special fasting laws–which previously existed nowhere–had to be made. And what does THAT mean? Does it mean Islam is really only a religion for inhabitants of lower latitudes?
I think it means that Islam is a dynamic faith which can adapt as need be to serve the needs of its ummah. However, special rules for arctic latitudes don’t mean you get to sleep in and skip fajr if you’re just a normal midlatitude dweller like most of the human race
razib 2:31 pm on June 25, 2008 | #
well, i’m looking at this from the outside, re: islam. but i think the critical point is that *community norms* are important, and the *community* must make decisions as to what is beyond the boundary conditions of acceptability, whether formally or informally. i actually don’t necessarily agree that there’s anything *fundamental* about any religion as you all know, but i think to have a communal religion have any meaning you have to agree on and enforce fundamentals at least contemporaneously. if you don’t like the mainstream, form *your own community*
let’s move to an extra-islamic context; over the past generation there have been repeated debates within the anglican communion over issues such as female clergy and now homosexual clergy. some anglican priests left their church and converted to roman catholicism over the female clergy issue. some remained within the communion but formed their own associations to speak up for their dissenting perspective. each of these individuals with a minority perspective had to make a choice in terms of what were their fundamental values and what trade offs they would accept. choices are finite, not infinite, when it comes to community because there are a much smaller number of these than individuals by definition. today the anglican communion is roiling with debate about homosexuality. in the western/advanced congregations there has been a sharp shift left by the majority, while a minority are now aligning with third world bishops who object to what they see as an overturning of fundamental principles. there is serious talk of schism now because neither group will compromise and have different visions for the boundaries of the community (the fact that western churches strongly subsidize third world churches in terms of transfers of cash by the way is probably one factor why the latter have not totally broken away from any association with the former).
as an example of what i believe is a sort of rather selfish and narcissistic behavior, consider socially liberal roman catholics who reject birth control, accept abortion, and reject papal infallibility, etc., but, *demand* to be accepted as catholics in good standing. why do they want to remain catholics? generally they give reasons rooted in the fact that catholicism, the parish, was the *community* that they were raised in, that it is part of *their* history, and that they have strong emotional attachments to the religion. i would argue that these sorts of individuals want all the communal benefits of fellowship without accepting the norms which that fellowship might demand.
(this is not to say that all roman catholics have to be pro-life, etc., in the details, but there are some individuals are vocal about criticizing church positions to force change while at the same time asserting that they are loyal catholics)