Talking About the Talk

I think it's really interesting how anthropologists, via their online presence, are becoming engaged in debates with political figures and conservative activists over Islam (for example, Gabrielle Marranci, whose talk on Islam in Scottish prisons at the AAA conference last November was completely and totally fascinating). Usually these aren't very pretty debates, as most online message board type things tend to descend into chaotic name-calling pretty quickly (anonymity seems to bring out the worst in people), but knowing what I know about anthropology and about participant observation (even when the anthropologist him or herself is one of the participants), it seems to provide much fodder for commentary about the process alone.
Islam gets people very fired up! This can be great, or it can be awful. I got stuck in a message board debate with someone who was absolutely certain that what she knew was right and there was no other way to think about what we were discussing (even when what she was saying was wrong, and not just wrong as in I thought she was wrong, but wrong as in factually wrong). I realized that I had to get out of there before I started to lose it. It's easy to cut and paste decontextualized Qur'anic passages that "prove your point" or quote crazies (on both sides!) from websites that package an uncomplicated and simple message about Islam. It's much harder to engage in real debate by first educating yourself, which in itself should represent an attempt to understand all sides and then make a decision about where one stands. And get to know some Muslims! When I talk about Islam, I never speak on behalf of or defend extreme viewpoints. I always speak for the many, many friends that I've made in the United States, Egypt, Indonesia, India, Malaysia, Turkey, Cotes d'Ivoires, Morocco, and Israel. I've been studying Islam for four years, have lived in Muslim countries, and have traveled (as you can see) fairly extensively throughout the incredibly diverse Muslim world, with plans to do more in the future. I have a hard time with people who tell me that my perspective is wrong or invalid, particularly when I can understand why their perspective of Islam, informed solely by experiences of violence or exposure to the worst of Islam, is completely valid. All I ask is that people keep an open mind, and acknowledge that any religious culture, or any culture at all, is multifaceted, complex, and complicated.