About the death of Pope John Paul II, I have no personal thoughts to share, other than to extend sympathy to the millions around the world who are experiencing his death as a source of considerable sorrow. The wall-to-wall media coverage about the significance of John Paul II or the religious reactions of members of the Catholic faith are mostly over-the-top hagiography, good TV visuals, or simply remote to those of us who don't share that faith. Most of the non-religious commentary on the life of the Pope or the future of the Church has been just another excuse for the commentariat and puditocracy to trot out their favorite over-exercised hobby-horse.

Enlightenment of either the spiritual or intellectual variety has been equally rare in the blogosphere. I've come across two notable exceptions, that weren't simply stale rehashes of ancient debates seen through one predictable worldview or another. Taken together I found they implicitly challenge most of the narratives being imposed on the story of the Pope's death, and thereby challenge a number of assumptions, casually shared by many American and European commentators, about the political valence of religion in the culture of the "West" and in the rest of the world.

The first is a highly personal and entertaining tale by Kieran Healy of Crooked Timber on his family's excursion to see the Pope when he came to Ireland in 1979, and an extraordinary portion of the entire population of the country went to see him. Kieran follows with the unhappy story of what has happened to the Catholic Church in Ireland since the Pope's famous visit.

The Irish story contrasts sharply with Ed Kilgore's thoughtful assessment of John Paul II's significance for the Church in the Southern hemisphere, where the tensions perceived in the Northern hemisphere -- between the "liberal" and "conservative" Pope -- have certainly played out differently.

Yet nearly everything about the powerful and perhaps irreversible trajectory he set for the Church points South, to the Third World, and away from Europe and the United States. Many obituarists of this Pope have struggled to categorize him ideologically as "conservative" on faith and morals yet "liberal" or even "radical" on issues of globalization, poverty and war, even as they acknowledge the unity of his own thinking.

But these are Eurocentric ways of looking at his teachings, which may confuse and distress American Catholics and what's left of the faith in Europe, but make perfect sense to most Catholics in Africa, Latin America and Asia.

A deeply illiberal approach to issues involving sexuality and gender; a rejection of capitalism as a necessary counterpart to democracy; and an abiding hostility to U.S.-European political, military, economic and cultural hegemony: this is a consistent point of view with strong support in the global South, among Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Indeed, in many respects what John Paul II represented was a living link between the pre-modern traditions of European Catholicism and the post-modern realities of much of the rest of the world.
[...]
Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and irreligious, who are outdoing each other this week in viewing this pope's legacy through the lens of their own cultural and political obsessions. This pope's opposition to "American exceptionalism" invariably embraced opposition to the death penalty, to capitalist triumphalism, and to George W. Bush's unilateralist foreign policies, as well as to abortion or birth control or the removal of feeding tubes from the hopelessly dying.

Many conservatives accuse John Paul II's American flock of practicing a "Cafeteria Catholicism" of selective obedience to Rome. But the American Right, I would argue, is practicing "Cafeteria Conservatism"--an equally selective interpretation of this pope's teachings and legacy, which lead not Right or Left but South. [em. added]

To relate these observations to my most recent blog entry -- when those of us from developed liberal democracies embrace the prospect of promoting greater political freedoms and development across continents where genuine freedom is scarce and poverty is endemic, Kilgore's observations should remind us that that large portions of people in those worlds share the "mentality" of a Pope whose attitudes and core beliefs are often hard for us to integrate, reconcile or fully understand. That recognition should be reflected both in the actions we choose and in our expectations about the probable results of our actions.

This item, from a psychology prof at Univ of Toledo, showed up in Altercation's mailbag as part of an ongoing discussion of "how can creationists exclude scientific evidence" ? The full reference for the article is Niebauer, C., Christman, S., Reid, S., & Garvey, K. (2004). "Interhemispheric interaction and beliefs on our origin: Degree of handedness predicts beliefs in creationism versus evolution." Laterality, vol. 9, pp. 433-447 [sub reqd].

[O]ur work shows that strong right-handedness, relative to mixed- or inconsistent-handedness, is associated with an increased tendency to endorse literal creationist myths. In other words, our research indicates that the more strongly right-handed a person is, the more likely they are to endorse literal creationist accounts of the origin of species.

It turns out that a growing body of neurological evidence shows that, while the left hemisphere of our brain maintains our current beliefs about the world, the right hemisphere is responsible for playing "Devil's Advocate": detecting anomalies with those left hemisphere beliefs and forcing an updating of beliefs when appropriate. In order for this belief updating to occur, the right hemisphere has to interact with the left, and strong right-handedness is associated with decreased interaction between the two sides of the brain (hence, the lesser degree of belief updating in strong righties).

While there is certainly more going on in determining people's beliefs about the origin of species than simply one's degree of handedness, I thought your readers might like to learn about a neurological, brain-based factor that is clearly related to whether one believes in evolution versus creationism.

- Stephen Christman, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology
University of Toledo

Do we now have a neurological explanation for how some people can maintain, seemingly forever, levels of cognitive dissonance that have other peoples' heads exploding? Thinking in evolutionary psychology terms, and considering some of the advantages Malcolm Gladwell outlines of being able to apply lightening-fast heuristics, one can see certain adaptive benefits to maintaining cognitive bias.

So maybe it's a left-right thing after all?

Actually, I imagine not. Conservatives and traditionalists aren't the only tenacious upholders of fundamental "truths" that fly in the face of reality.

But it does get one ruminating. Both GHW Bush and Clinton -- strong lefties. Hmmm....

Islam in Jail: Europe's Neglect Breeds Angry Radicals

By CRAIG S. SMITH (NYT)
New York Time, December 8, 2004

Abdullah, tall and muscular, with a shaved head and closely cropped goatee, sat on a metal bunk in the cramped cell here and described how he got religion.
''When I was in La Santé, I read books about the Prophet,'' he said, referring to a notorious Parisian detention center, the third of five jails where he has spent time during the past two years for dealing drugs and stealing cars.

When he arrived at the fourth, Fleury-Merogis, Europe's largest, another inmate gave him a DVD about the life of Muhammad and later, while enduring a three-week stint in solitary confinement, he vowed to devote himself to Islam.

''People here find God,'' he said.

In less than a decade, there has been a radical shift in France's prison population, a shift that officials and experts say poses a monumental challenge.

Despite making up only 10 percent of the population, Muslims account for most of the country's inmates and a growing percentage of the prison populations in many other European countries.

With radical strains of Islam percolating through Europe, authorities are unsure how to address the spiritual needs of the prisoners while guarding against the potentially toxic mix of extremist ideology and a criminal past. One result is often neglect, which officials say can be a still greater force for radicalization.

Prison populations have been expanding across Europe in recent years, partly because of stricteranticrime regimens influenced by the sort of zero tolerance on quality-of-life crimes that was epitomized by the former New York City mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.

France's prison population has risen by 20 percent in the past three years, largely because of aggressive pursuit of lower-level crimes.

The proportion of Muslims in prison has been growing even faster, reflecting the relative youth of Europe's largely Muslim immigrants.

While there are no official data on issues of race and ethnicity in much of Europe -- it is in fact illegal to keep such data in many places -- experts on prison populations agree on the new disproportion of Muslims.

Two months ago Pierre Raffin, the director of La Santé detention center, warned officials looking into the role of religion in France that extremist proselytizing in prisons was growing.

Other countries are facing the same problem. Spain's chief counterterrorism magistrate, Baltazar Garzón, said recently that the men accused of plotting to blow up the country's main counterterrorism court were recruited from among fellow inmates by an Islamic militant serving time for credit card fraud.

Those who are detained or convicted for terrorist-related crimes are not always separated from the larger prison population and are often ready to act as spiritual guides at a time when Muslim chaplains are in severely short supply.

Abdullah (prison rules prevented him from giving his last name) said that while he was at Fleury-Merogis, militants were active in the prison yard, preaching that Christians and Jews are enemy infidels. In May, the militants defied prison rules by organizing a prayer meeting during an exercise break. Several prisoners were disciplined as a result.

''Islam is becoming in Europe, especially France, the religion of the repressed, what Marxism was in Europe at one time,'' said Farhad Khosrokhavar, an Iranian-French scholar who has written a book on Islam in prisons. He says the growing Muslim prison population is evidence of an Islamic underclass that is developing across Europe and, at its margins, is increasingly sympathetic to the ideology of political Islam.

Europe has been slow to adjust to the changing ethnic and religious makeup of its prison inmates. France, in particular, has resisted approving Muslim prison chaplains, worried that inadequate screening could unleash potential militants into the system.

Missoum Abdelmadjid Chaoui, the imam responsible for the Nanterre institution here west of Paris, says there are only eight Muslim chaplains for the nearly 20,000 Muslim inmates in the Paris region. He handles 9 of the 25 prisons himself.

There are several efforts in France and elsewhere in Europe to train moderate clerics who are sensitive to the Continent's secular ideals, but progress is slow and Mr. Chaoui said it would take years before there were enough chaplains to meet the needs of France's prison population, which he estimates is already 60 percent Muslim.

Many people warn that neglecting the needs of Muslim prisoners breeds resentment and leaves them open for more radical interpretations of Islam.

Muslim inmates in France, which has Europe's largest Islamic community, complain that they are ignored in a system devised for a Christian population. Few prisons provide halal meat, butchered according to Islamic dietary laws, and fewer still hold regular religious services for Muslims. Catholic inmates can attend Mass once a week.

''This feeds back into the community of Muslims outside the prisons, who hear what goes on and are disturbed by it,'' said James Beckford, a sociology professor at Warwick University in Britain, who has studied the problems of Muslims in jail. ''It feeds their sense of alienation.''

Abdullah said that since Sept. 11, 2001, many prisoners of his generation have grown interested in understanding the religion of their birth.

But he and one of his two cellmates, Bandjougou, complained that they got little spiritual guidance. Both men were born and raised in the working-class suburb of St. Denis, north of Paris. The neighborhood, once a village surrounding a 13th-century cathedral where France buried its kings, is a sprawl of public housing peopled largely by Arab and African immigrants.

''In 30 months, I've seen the chaplain twice,'' said Bandjougou, a tall, clear-eyed man of West African descent. ''Maybe it would go in one ear and out the other, but at least it would be an alternative vision of life.''

A Catholic priest visits the block almost daily, but Bandjougou says he provides little solace for the vast majority of inmates, who are Muslim.

In the absence of an official spiritual guide, he said, the prisoners counsel one another. Prison officials say they are quick to spot serious proselytizing and regularly move prisoners deemed too influential on their fellow inmates.

''Every time we see detainees grouping in the yards to pray or proselytize, the group is broken up,'' said Géraud Delorme, deputy director of the Nanterre detention center. ''Everything is organized to prevent extensive contacts and such exchanges of ideas.''

In France, many prisoners spend up to 21 hours a day locked behind windowless steel doors in their small cells. Meals are delivered to the cells and there is little opportunity to socialize with anyone but cellmates, except during the twice-daily exercise breaks in the small concrete prison yard.

Drugs are prevalent, passed from cell to cell by strings hung through holes cut in the mesh covering each cell's small window. The ''yo-yos'' are tolerated at some prisons but the mesh has recently been replaced in Nanterre.

The prisons' shifting demographics are engraved in the small brick- walled exercise yard in Fresnes, a hub in transferring inmates around the national system. Names carved into the bricks a century ago are all French. ''Maurice Barbes, 1909,'' reads one. But those carved by the young men filling the yard these days are predominantly North African names like Oulmana, Chebbabi and Karim.

Professor Beckford says many countries are making adjustments for their sizable Muslim prison populations. Britain now has more than 20 full-time, salaried chaplains and hundreds of volunteer imams who go into the prisons every week, while prisons in England and Wales hold regular Friday Prayer and provide halal food in the daily diet.

But at Nanterre, a model compared with many other French prisons, halal food is available only through the prison commissary. Bandjougou pointed to boxes of dates, halal ravioli and chicken sausage piled on a shelf in the cramped cell. ''We have family that gives us money so that we can buy food,'' he said in the fading light from the cell's small window, ''but if you have no money, you're out of luck.''

The men cook the food over homemade stoves, illegal but widely tolerated, that they cobble together from tin cans, tissue paper and cooking oil. Muslims have the option of ordering vegetarian meals from the regular food service, but they say that the diet, like the missing imams, leaves them hungry.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

MC MasterChef's post on modernity and terrorism spun off an entire tangent about comparative religion as an area of knowledge, and how part of solving some of our conflicts will involve being open to learning about the "other" or the "alien". The discussion has been asking why this is especially a challenge in the field of religion, and some of the areas where greater learning should be promoted.

The topic is getting increasingly long and complex, so I thought moving it to the front page might help. The main part of the conversation starts here between Oscar and me.

This post responds to ideas Bondra presented about the frequent tension between personal faith and knowledge about other religions.

It is also a very belated attempt to respond to some of the observations JC made last week, responding to MC MasterChef's Christianism post, about the tensions between the personal and political in religious experience and matters of faith.

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When we deal with faith or religiosity at the individual level, rather than at the level of a religion's theology, institutions, history, etc. there are clearly a bunch of factors that come into play. Here are a few observations tossed out. Not as well organized as I'd like, but you'll get the drift.

One of the big problems we've had with this whole post-election brouhaha is that nobody pays attention to level-of-analysis. Here we're dealing with indvidual voting decisions and trying to claim causality from an institutional affiliation, where we keep focusing on personal attitudes on one topic (religion) being extended to other topics (abortion, gay marriage, etc) and we're paying less attention to the institutional affiliation aspects.

By that I mean that we don't know what the actual beliefs are of a voter who "belongs" to a specific denomination, who "regularly practices" the religion (which we measure by the proxy of church attendance), how strongly those beliefs are held, the degree to which the beliefs are internal (related to the experience of faith) or external (related to membership or loyalty to group), and so on and so on.   more »

This is a fascinating conceptualization of things, one that we've edged around at a few points in the course of my Political Islam in South Asia class but haven't yet tackled full-on. (One recommendation, made with qualifications, on the subject that Prof. Haqqani did make last week was a book by Tariq Ali called The Clash of Fundamentalisms which I gather elaborates more on the identities and goals of the major world fundamentalist ideologies.) Comparisons between Christian fundamentalism and Islamic fundamentalism often raise ire early on that prevents much further discussion, but I would really like to see this expanded upon. Unfortunately, I have a paper to be writing at the moment, so my thoughts will have to wait.

There are several closely related themes floating around the political ether:

1. the increasingly evident disconnect between fact-based reality and the policy decision-making and execution by the Bush Administration over the past three years, especially in relation to Iraq
2. the credibility gap, which is becoming a chasm, between fact-based reality and the claims of the Bush Administration regarding its policy and the results of its policy
3. the apparent continued credulousness regarding the Bush policies within a substantial portion of the pool of potential voters in November's presidential election, and
4. the failure of the US mainstream media to identify and communicate effectively these various disconnects.

Sunday's NY Times Magazine piece by Ron Suskind is the talk of the day, and both bondra and praktike have offered their personal takes on the tale of why a president, and the apparatus structured to serve him, have become so disconnected from a world view and an intellectual process that are the sine qua non of governance for the country's professional elites. Relying on the explanation of "faith" (not necessarily religious, but at least moral certainty) for the president's attitudes and behavior, Suskind extends this explanation to the portion of the public who not only continue to support Bush's re-election, but share his assessment of both the primary foreign policy goals of the US and how the US is and should be going about achieving those goals.

I also have a personal take, which is consistent with bondra's and praktike's views but comes at the conundrum of Bush and his supporters from a bit different angle than Suskind's. I began to sketch it out in an earlier response to bondra using a Viet Nam analogy as a sort of typology of politicians and opinion groups. I'll try to get to fleshing that out a bit further in the next few days after I finish some more of Charles Kupchan's The Vulnerability of Empire, which deals explicitly with the dynamic between elite decision-making and public opinion in foreign policy. But in the meantime, I want to go back to the issue of the "credibility gap" itself.
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bondra -- Responding to your "Bloody hell, can those Americans get any dumber?" I'm amazed that you managed to get through that tendentious gobbledygook from the Guardian. Jonathan Raban has concocted an exotic brew of American exceptionalism, anti-intellectualism, authoritarianism, nativism, and charismatic evangelicalism. Did he leave out millenialism? I got lost. And he lays this unholy mess at the feet of our Pilgrim heritage, the victor over our enlightened Virginia tradition in the eternal manichean conflict between "religion and reason." Whew!

I understand the impulse of Europeans (in this case I include Brits) to try to apprehend the value systems and belief structures that could produce a re-election victory for someone they view as demonstrably and odiously unqualified not only to be President of the United States but leader of the world. They don't get a vote, yet their futures are certainly affected by the resident of the White House. The objective of analysis, however, is to "demystify," not produce some incoherent kabbalistic theory to prove the inherent incomprehensibility of the "other". (One could make the same comment about most writing on followers of Islam.)

I must pick a quarrel with you a bit on the "merits" (not of Raban's piece but of why Bush retains a considerable base of support on foreign policy, even from people who have concluded that Iraq is going to hell in a handbasket). First, from polling data on specific beliefs**, it's clear that there indeed remains for at least a third of the population a considerable disconnect between perceptions of the entire Iraq saga, as narrated by the Bush Admin and the BC04 campaign (with constantly shifting details, to put it most charitably), and the accumulating evidence from official reports and credible information from the ground.

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