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California State University, Dominguez Hills
Created: July 9, 2001
Latest update: July 12, 2001
 E-Mail jeannecurran@habermas.org.

Speaking Religion

Teaching Essay by Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata
Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors: July 2001. "Fair Use" encouraged.

Rahmat Tavakol Opens Thread

Rahmat Tavakol began a thread on religion on the Progressive Sociologists Net on July 7, 2001. jeanne requested that he share his views on religion with us at Dear Habermas.

On Monday, July 9, 2001, Rahmat Tavakol wrote:

"But please remember I don't want humanity for Marxism. I want Marxism for Humanity. If some part of humanity speaks religion, then I learn to speak religion . If Marx said something 150 years ago, and I see I disagree with him, then I think my own way."

On Monday, July 9, 2001, jeanne responded:

Rahmat, I think many of my students would express the same thoughts. Many of them do "speak religion," and many of them think in their own way. I consider such discourse essential to an understanding of the Other, and believe that such discourse is essential to peacemaking.

love and peace, jeanne

"I Think Marxism Is Critical Thinking

Later on Monday, July 9, 2001, Rahmat Tavakol wrote:

In giving me permissions to use his e-mail, Rahmat summarized his reading of Marxism.
"hello. many thanks for your reply message. i thank you for sharing some of my methodology of reading Marxism. I think Marxism is critical thinking. i think marxism teaches us how to be creative in the direction of making a fulfilling society. after all, what is the meaning of Praxis? I think if we stay with what Marx literally said for ever, we are indeed killing the purpose. please feel free to use the few sentences i said in your site. . . . R"

jeanne's rejected post to PSN

Note that in one of Rahmat's postings he speaks of PSN as being "too white, too upper class , too well shaven, the one which smells real nice." His comment resonated with me, and I tried to answer it from the perspective of what I felt. I hope that some of you will share your feelings on this. jeanne

On Tuesday, July 10, 2001, jeanne wrote:

I am posting here on Dear Habermas my response to Rahmat's comment on the exclusion of "fellow travelers" because PSN declined to post it as "a bit personal." A post to PSN must have "relevant soc aspects", and be "not of a personal nature." I thought my post did have relevant sociological aspects. Please note the range of interpretation for such qualifications, and think on the structural violence of rules. At any rate, here is my rejected post:
Rahmat, thank you for making me see through my own denial. When you wrote earlier to ask if you could answer me on the PSN list, I was rather surprised. And I answered you that I had just been embarrassed to ask you to join me and my students to talk about religion on our teaching site. Then your comment about our being white, middle class, and clean shaven, led me to realize that you just had more courage than I did.

Part of my reason for inviting you privately to share the discussions was that I do not have the expertise that many others at PSN do. I never studied Marx in school; I went to a college for debutantes, for goodness' sakes. But my teaching of law and social justice led me eventually to the PSN site, where I have found people who seem to share my perspective. Your mention of fellow travelers who speak religion says much more than class to me. It reminds me, as would Freire, that I need to hear all of those who have been excluded, and that they do not speak my academic language.

I know this is so with my students. And I have learned to respect their intelligence and listen to them in good faith, and to acknowledge that I do not "know" what they need, what is best for them. I know only how to encourage them to make their own validity claims. Here I draw on Jonathan Lear's Open-Minded, and his rejection of our "knowingness." And I draw on Habermas' faith that we must listen in good faith to all validity claims. But I would ask more, for I believe that the statement of validity claims requires skills that have presumed certain privileges that not all those I seek to include have had. So I have added that listening in good faith requires that I listen closely and well enough to lend my skills in making validity claims to those who have not had such privilege. I find that concept embodied in your phrase "if people speak religion, then I will learn to speak religion." I guess I'd add, "and if we speak academy, then I will help them translate to the academy." And I will stop denying the extent to which I have been harmed by an academy that excluded me from many of its alcoves.

It's intimidating for me to post this. For I haven't the leisure to ponder it. I have work to do, on helping my students with their validity claims. But I suspect it is in the interest of social justice and all I believe in that I remind all of us that the barriers to be being heard are there for many of us, and that we forget sometimes how difficult it is to make our voices clear in the dialog.

jeanne

How about just speaking truth or fairness?

On Wednesday, July 11, 2001, Malika Shakoor wrote:

Greetings Traveller, How wonderful to spend time in Africa. My sister was in Egypt earlier this year and last year she went to Senegal. Next year, prayerfully I will be blessed to go.

Jeanne, I would like to respond to "speaking religion".

How about just speaking truth or fairness? If the discourse is on religion then the dialogue is destined to be biased towards one's personal belief system (i.e. I'm Muslim, she's Jewish, they're Buddhist...etc.) Let's speak with the common thread that runs through all of the "religions". Better yet: live, love, communicate in the same vein as Muhammad, Christ, Buddha, et al. It seems simplistic and I am no 'pollyanna' but how can discourse proceed without truth or fairness?

On Wednesday, July 11, 2001, jeanne responded:

Hi, Malika. Good to hear from you. Maybe your sister will share some of her pictures with us? And may you find your way there next year.

I'm going to risk an answer to your suggestion, let us just speak truth and fairness. I think that is what many people think who have seen the ravages that can be wrought in the name of religion. The discussion on PSN has been raging, and I have certainly picked up some posts that would seem to share your thoughts.

But as one who has been pondering for a whole year now how we might transform discourse, I am reminded that the beliefs and values put forth in the name of the religion are part of our situatedness, of our communal culture. For me, that means that not speaking of religion, openly and often, in spite of the tension that provokes, we leave those unspoken assumptions right in the middle of our situatedness.

Maybe that's why I have been saying for a while now that silence and non-reaction easily become complicity. I think this represents one of the dangers of disciplinary power. It's easy to believe that "good behavior" means accepting the status quo. To raise a hullabaloo is to be "inappropriate." And each silence adds its force to the "circles of certainty" of which Freire spoke. I see us setting each other up, as John Hockenberry says in Moving Violations, and then playing "Gotcha" as we catch each other in our privileging.

I think it's Jonathan Lear I'm citing in reminding us all that awareness, that hearing in good faith all validity claims, including those garbed in formal religion, is integral to the public discourse we need to resolve these tensions. I need to put up links to all of these references for you, and I need to tell you the story of our discussion of religion in theory last semester. Inshallah (God willing), Bokra (tomorrow) . . .

Rahmat has written more, much of which I want to put up so that you can all share in the discussion. And there is much that has been posted on PSN for which I wish also to comment. But today, I was working on site indexing, and there is no more energy tonight for this. I'll do my best to take this up again tomorrow.

love and peace, jeanne