Calling The Kettle Black

Every day I awake and begin my morning ritual of brushing my teeth, making breakfast, etc; but the first thing I do before even crawling out from beneath the covers is reading the news. There are the same filler articles almost every day, a recycling of the previous day’s headlines with a minor variation in narrative. Inevitably, there is always a story regarding either Islam or a particular Muslim. There are only ever two stories being told in these articles, it is either the damnation of Islam, or the damnation of the damnation of Islam (with all of the racial and religious prejudice that each of these entails). The latter are the easier to read, as they are far less vitriolic, but they are also capable of inciting rage and hatred. Whether it is the bending of reality through portraying the ‘Boston Bombers’ as Arab rather than the Caucasians they are (or in the case of one of them, were)[1], the coverage of yet another right-wing bigot proclaiming that we should treat all Muslims as second-class citizens[2], or the reaction to organizations regulated by the former enforcing these kind of policies[3], the news is almost never good. Occasionally there will be a shining light, such as the hiring of bright and talented Muslims by the normally bigoted American right-wing; however, this light is almost always overrun by the darkness of the American politic[4]. It is no surprise that many of us fear Muslims and Islam when we are so constantly bombarded with the notion that they are coming for us, that they cannot be trusted, and that they are the root of all terrorism[5][6]. The root of this fear and mistrust is simple, most people are far too cordoned off in their own limited bubbles to have experienced the peace and love that can be offered by Muslims, and are far too ignorant of the roots and causes of terrorism (which by and large is an overwhelmingly Caucasian Christian activity).

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[1] Anon. "White privilege radically changes the appearance..." Brofiling. http://www.brofiling.com/post/49029017043/white-privilege-radically-changes-the-appearance.

[2] Frumin, Aliyah. "After Boston, we should put Muslims under surveillance, says Rep. King." MSNBC. http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/04/20/after-boston-we-should-put-muslims-under-surveillance-says-rep-king/.

[3] Markon, Jerry. "Tension grows between Calif. Muslims, FBI after informant infiltrates mosque." Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/04/AR2010120403710.html.

[4] Johnson, Drew. "Catching Hell for Hiring a Muslim." The Agitator. http://www.theagitator.com/2012/07/18/catching-hell-for-hiring-a-muslim/.

[5] Anon. "German poll indicates a widespread fear of Muslims and Islam." National Secular Society. n.d. http://www.secularism.org.uk/news/2012/12/german-poll-indicates-a-widespread-fear-of-muslims-and-islam.

[6] Csillag, Ron. "52% Of Canadians Distrust Muslims, According To Latest Poll." Huffington Post. n.d. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/26/canadians-distrust-muslims_n_1381239.html.

A New Friend

Towards the end of the nature and poetry tutorial today, I came upon a little thing, a lovely thing, a caterpillar. It had moved its miniscule body, millimeter by millimeter, up my leg and onto my lap, where it sat on the relative warmth and comfort of my shorts. After an entire hour surrounded by and immersed in nature, this was by far the most striking interaction I had experienced. It was in my initial glance at this caterpillar, the second that it took me to experience and know the caterpillar, that I felt love for it. I wanted it to be safe, to be free, to live as good of a life as a caterpillar can. The interaction with the caterpillar struck me with awe, and swayed me in a way reminiscent of Bouma's first mode of transcendence. Where had this caterpillar been, why was it here, and why had it chosen to take its furry little body and to crawl up my furry little leg? Interactions with nature can be many things, but for me, sitting near the beautiful lake with birds above us and the cast of leaves of trees below us, all became incidental once my new friend the caterpillar had arrived.












[1] Gary D. Bouma, Meaning, Transcendence and Community in Australia, (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1992) 68

Every Media is New Media

By Callum Dunphy

Although it’s difficult to take any academic treatise seriously when written by someone who describes Wicca as an ‘Ancient Religion’[1], since Wicca is actually a modern ‘religion’ (developed in 1952 by Gerald Gardner, a retired - and presumably under-employed British civil servant), Heidi Campbell’s book, “When Religion meets New Media”, is a semi- riveting account of her view that religious communities of every sort - use and interpret their use of the internet through the cultural constraints of their existing and respective religious framework.

It doesn’t seem an enormous leap of imagination to think that Hassidic Jews may have a slightly different tolerance for their members interacting with the clamoring world of the Internet than an Evangelical Christian – brought up to extol the virtues of the printing press and the loudhailer – but Campbell is at her most interesting when discussing the various accommodations made by each group to incorporate elements of the internet that ‘fit’ their forms of religious traditions and experiences. Hasidic Jews for example – whilst deriding new media for most forms of communication - have apparently welcomed it as a tool to enable women to work from home– or to be kept indoors like battery hens – depending on your perspective.

Campbell’s second main point is that it is fostering new and innovative forms of religious practice and thought – a point not lost on the more reactionary elements of traditional religions who do not necessarily welcome the rewriting and reinterpretation of their religious tenets by the same people who edit Wikipedia-.

But Campbell’s main failing is her lack of analysis about the impact of the internet. A feminist critique would surely see the oppression in having yet another excuse to subjugate and isolate women in the home. Surely any rudimentary critique would see a complete evasion of the way in which religious groups have exploited the internet to solicit funds, build followers, demean opposing groups and heighten religious tensions. Al Qaeda has built a wave of global terrorism on the internet. Their traditional audience of three rural sheep farmers has been transformed by their understanding of the power of the internet to visualize, to proselytize and to capture disaffected youth. Campbell’s work is interesting, but unforgiving narrow.

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[1] Campbell, Heidi. ‘When Religion Meets New Media’. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis, 2010.  Pp 23

The Church of Irony

In Chapter 9 of ‘Pop Cult’, Rupert Till’s points, while occasionally compelling, completely fall apart due to his ill-conceived choice of resources used to substantiate his positions. While these range from the trivial, such as his dependence on lyrics from song writers such as John Lennon[1] who admitted that some of his songs were written with the intention of confusing and irritating music critics (such as ‘I am the Walrus’), to the absurd when Till while discusses the divergence of formal Religious ceremonies and occasions such as Funerals and Weddings. While Till is discussing the gradual divergence between formal religious ceremonies and the occasions of weddings and funerals that-

“many of the functions traditionally served in the traditional cultures by religions, as those traditions religious cultures have become increasing culturally irrelevant, refusing to discard outdated traditions that have little to do with the literature or teachings of the faith itself, but rather are often accumulations of cultural habits that have become associated and intertwined with the belief system itself”[2]

Till entirely misses the point, with no sense of irony. Till states before and after this passage that the clergy’s refusal to play ‘pop music’ is a serious reason for people performing ceremonies elsewhere, as though the modern wedding ceremony has any resemblance to that which is metered out so delicately in arcane religious texts. To be fair, Till also attributes some of the gradual decline in ‘traditional’ ceremonies to a difference of faith, saying that the decline might “be simply because they do not believe in Christianity, being an agnostic or atheist”, as though those were the only two alternatives despite non-Christian religions making up fully 8.7% of the English population in the last census.

In short, while Till's assertions are not wholly wrong, his choices of evidence and support are woefully inadequate, and so his arguments fail before they have had a chance to convince the reader. Within his closing statements, Till asserts that “popular music is a vital and significant social force that we must investigate further if we are to understand how meaning is developing in Western culture”[3], preferring to study the art to derive how meaning arises, rather than concentrating on what the artists themselves intend to portray. This neglect to acknowledge that music is a reflection rather than the cause of a changing social zeitgeist no doubt allows us to surmise that Till will be searching at length and in vain for the meaning he seeks.

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[1] Till, Rupert. Pop Cult : Religion and Popular Music. London: Continuum International Publishing, 2010. 167-169

[2] Ibid. 169

[3] Ibid. 192.