New America Media - Religion

The Tragedy of Self Immolation - No One Cares

2013-05-16T08:35:00Z

Self-immolation isn’t what it used to be.

This ultimate form of protest became global news in 1963 when the venerable monk Thich Quang Duc set himself ablaze in the middle of Saigon, Vietnam, protesting religious oppression. Doused in gasoline, the monk sat serenely in lotus position and lit a match. A bird of paradise thus blossomed and bloomed, and quickly charred his body.

The photographer Malcolm Browne captured Thich Quang Duc’s fiery renouncement of the mortal coil, the image quickly becoming an icon of the Vietnam War era. The term “self-immolation,” in fact, entered into common English usage after his death, which led to a coup d’etat that toppled the pro-Catholic Ngo Dinh Diem regime.

Half a century later, to die by fire in protest registers little more than a media blip.

As of this writing, 117 Tibetans have set themselves ablaze since 2009 in a series of protests against Chinese rule. The most recent incidents came in April, when two young Tibetan monks and a lay Tibetan woman set themselves on fire. There was little coverage of their deaths.

Indeed, with the exception of Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian fruit vendor who set himself on fire and thus sparked what became known as the Arab Spring, self-immolation has by all accounts become a failed form of protest as an agent of change. Since Bouazizi, in fact, 150 more Tunisians have set themselves on fire in protest against the new government that took over after the downfall of Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali's secular dictatorship.

Whether in Syria or Palestine, Greece, Italy or Vietnam, individuals continue to go up in flames as crowds look on.

“All the Tibetans who resort to self-immolation do so because they feel they have no other way to make China and the rest of the world listen to their country’s call for freedom,” Byrne-Rosengren, director of the London-based advocacy group Free Tibet, told Radio Free Asia last month.

Alas, China has turned a deaf ear to their cries, while the world media has averted its eyes.

Aristotle once observed that the plot of a tragedy should be so framed that, even without witnessing the events, simply hearing of them should fill one with “horror and pity” — even lead to insight and action. But the amphitheater of the 21st century has fallen into decay, scattered and fragmented into a multitude of media platforms. There are too many actors in too many theaters and their tragedies — overwhelming, lacking in context, incoherent, truncated or badly reported — have lost their grip on the human psyche.

Studies about desensitization of the modern mind are aplenty, but the general consensus is that over-saturation of images and narratives of violence have resulted in a collective numbness. A profound act of public death cannot hope to sway a world in which horror itself has lost its power.

What we want instead is entertainment, and what we gravitate toward and react to, more often than not, is profanity.

A year after Bouazizi went up in flames in Tunisia, an unknown amateur filmmaker named Nakoula Basseley Nakoula,” aka “Sam Bacile,” inflamed the Middle East with incendiary video clips ridiculing the prophet Muhammad. His film turned the Arab Spring of 2011 into the Autumn Rage of 2012, resulted in the death of an American ambassador in Libya, and continues to be a bone of contention in Washington.

The cynic observer can’t help but wonder: If self immolation no longer works as an agent for change, then is it still worth the price?

At its most profound the act stands as the highest form of human compassion, a confirmation of life by giving up one’s own. At its most incoherent self-immolation becomes more expressive of the frustration of the powerless. The individual, enamored by death, possessed by anger, elicits neither horror nor pity but cynicism. After all, to burn with passion is very much different than to be consumed by rage.

Fire — this gift and curse to humanity — is a terrifying beauty. Contained, it hints at elegance, cooks our food and propels our world. Out of control, it engulfs body and soul. It seduces. It overpowers. And it destroys.

In a world where individuals leverage more power online than in the public square, it may be that to live burning with desire for change — regardless of the oppression and humiliation — is the real challenge to becoming actual agents of change in the world. So why not live instead? And find new paths that call attention to the suffering of one’s cause. Find a way to force the world’s attention once more back onto the stage — and evoke pity and horror in us all.

To burn with that desire, to call our attention and hold our gaze until we weep — isn’t that worth living for?

Andrew Lam is editor and cofounder of New America Media. He is the author of Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora, East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres, and most recently, a collection of short stories, Birds of Paradise Lost.

Young American Muslims Coming of Age Post 9/11

2013-05-05T08:00:00Z

Pictured above: Alexandra Minter at the Tufts University student center
Photo by Nina Porzucki / PRI's The World

Alexandra Minter, a sophomore at Tufts University was working on a video for her Arabic class last Monday when her classmate checked Facebook and saw there was an attack on the Boston Marathon.

“And then once people started making accusations as to who it was, we were sitting there and I was telling the girl next me I really hope it wasn’t a Muslim,” says Minter.

Minter’s is not a typical story. She grew up in rural Wisconsin. Her mother converted to Islam after marrying her stepfather who was from Morocco. While Minter accepted her mother’s conversion, the teasing began at her school.

“I got called Arabian girl,” she says.

About a year ago Minter decided to convert too. When she first put on a hijab, things changed.

Minter’s only been a practicing Muslim for a little more than a year but already she’s experienced prejudice in Boston.

“I’ve had people ask me weird questions on buses before or just get uncomfortable and get up from seats on the train,” Minter says. “I wear a headscarf so for a lot of people that creates fear, but I’m worried that it’s going to happen more now.”

The second looks on the bus Minter gets, and her hope that the Boston bombers weren’t Muslim – none of these feelings surprises her classmate Chowdhury Shamsh who is the head of Tufts’ Muslim Student Association.

“It’s not going to stop unfortunately. That’s something that she’s going to have to live with,” says Shamsh.

Shamsh grew up in New York City. He was only 10-years-old when the Twin Towers were attacked. It was a turning point, not just in his life in the US but as an American Muslim.

“We were a model minority and nobody thought twice about having a Muslim sit next to them on the train,” says Shamsh.

All that changed post 9/11 says Shamsh. His mother warned him against becoming a Muslim leader on campus, practicing his faith so openly.

“She says why can’t you just practice and just keep it in your room and don’t be too open about it,” he says. That pressure to stay under the radar makes him feel like a part of a group that’s supposed to feel culpable somehow.

“I don’t know how much is in my head because of the media, and the portrayal, it may be internalized it may not be real but I do feel different because of the color of my skin or my religion,” he says.

When news broke about the bombings, the media went into overdrive hypothesizing about who could have done this including many reports about race and religion of the possible suspects.

“The way that even our justice system and media talk about incidences based on the identity, race and religion of the perpetrator is also something that feeds into why our community fears backlash,” says Linda Sarsour, head of the National Network for Arab American Communities in New York.

Minutes after the bombings, her 14-year-old son texted her asking, “Mom, who did it?”

“It’s hard to tell kids that it will be better because every time I say something really terrible happens and it gets kids back to the mindset but I didn’t do that,” says Sarsour. “It’s traumatizing as a adult to not be able to tell young people that everything is going to be okay.”

But Shereen Shafi, an undergraduate studying International Affairs at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore sees a silver lining.

“I had to respond to peoples’ attacks and that led me to look more into the faith itself and also the history surrounding it,” Tshafi says.

Shafi’s parents, both doctors, came to the US from Pakistan 20 years ago. She was born here and has only been to Pakistan once, when she was six. Growing up, her family observed the Muslim faith. She went to Sunday school, celebrated Eid, but being Muslim wasn’t a huge part of her identity, she says, until her faith got more and more scrutinized.

“I think that’s the case with more and more believers having it made a big deal strengthened my connection to the faith and faith community,” she says.

Shafi feels angry at the brothers who attacked people, at the racial profiling of Muslims, at the fear she’s felt these past few days when heading outside alone but it’s more complicated than pure anger.”

“People get angry at Osama Bin Laden for making Muslims look bad and I think that’s generally how I felt when I was younger,” Shafi says. “At this point, because these kids were just your average teenagers … the older brother had some issues. I feel more sad that someone would be driven to do this. I do feel angry at the way they make Muslims look. I guess I’m upset that people are extrapolating from them to the broader community.”

There’s sadness but each student was also quick to point to a hopeful future. Shamsh, the Muslim student leader at Tufts, put it like this:

“America’s not perfect but the beautiful thing about America is that there’s room for improvement,” says Shamsh.

Boston Bombers -- The Denial of American Grandeur

2013-04-24T13:55:20Z

SAN FRANCISCO -- As the story of the Tsarnaev brothers unfolds – from asylum, to attempts at assimilation and finally to terrorism -- I hear echoes of another set of brothers from my own country, Vietnam.

On April 4, 1991 three Vietnamese brothers and a friend – all teenagers – took over an electronics store in Sacramento, California. The group held forty-one people hostage, garnering national attention as journalists flocked outside the store. Inside, the boys prowled about with their guns, the hostages tied up.

What did the Nguyen brothers want?

They wanted $4 million dollars, 1000-year-old ginseng roots (thought to make one invincible in battle), helicopters and bulletproof jackets. Their plan: To fly back to Vietnam and take on the Vietcong.

Negotiators on the scene were baffled, and when talks broke down the four began to wound hostages as a means of showing they were serious. The SWAT team ultimately stormed the grounds, killing three of the four hostage takers and critically wounding the oldest of the three brothers. Three hostages were killed before the siege ended.

Today, the eldest brother, Loi Nguyen, is serving three consecutive life sentences for the crime.

Tamarlan Tsarnaev, 26, and his younger brother, Dzhokhar, 19, are the alleged perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombings of last week, which claimed three lives and injured hundreds more.

Tamarlan was killed in a manhunt after the attack. His brother is now in custody and faces a possible death sentence.

Like the Tsarnaev’s, the Nguyen brothers were described by those who knew them as decent, even obedient children. They attended church regularly. There was little hint at the barbarism they would later commit. Their parents, too, in the aftermath of the bloodshed were left to wonder: Why?

Alas, not everyone who comes to America really manages to enter America. The late UC Berkeley sociologist Franz Schurmann once noted that the two paths for children of immigrants to become American once lay either through education or the military. But there’s no longer a draft, and the other institution, the American education system, is failing our kids.

The Tsarnaev brothers, though reportedly well-adjusted and well-liked, too, failed school. One of their uncles, when asked for an explanation of their actions, described them as “losers” who harbored a hatred of those who were able to settle into life in America. “These are the only reasons I can imagine. Anything else, anything else to do with religion, with Islam, it's a fraud, it's a fake," he said.

Often the successful border crosser will use language to overcome shame by refusing silence. He will find ways to articulate and redefine himself; his revenge over his ignominious past is his successful transition in America, his newfound status. But when access to America’s grandeur is blocked or denied, especially for children from war-torn lands, old memories have a way of reaching out. Inherited trauma, ever-present in refugee homes, becomes seductive, something to latch one’s identity to.

Unable to move forward, they reach back to the wars of their homeland. Lacking imagination, violence by default becomes their game.

Though I have moved far from my own refugee past -- I’ve become an American writer and journalist -- I never underestimate the speed with which an immigrant boy can go off track, and how his vision of America as a land of milk and honey can quickly shift to that of a bona fide Waste Land with something as simple as a failing grade.

For children from strife-torn lands, the Old World, though distant and forsaken by the years, sometimes calls out for blood. The war, the humiliation, the subsequent exodus, life in exile, poverty, the continual subjugation of our people back home, our invisible refugee life in America – all are compounded into a kind of unshaped angst.

The Tsarnaev brothers once again proved T.S. Eliot prophetic—in the bloody footsteps of the Nguyen brothers, the Virginia Tech Shooting, Oklahoma bombing, Columbine Massacre, and Waco – April seems indeed the cruelest month.

Andrew Lam is the author of two books of essays, "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora," and "East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres." His latest book, a collection of stories about Vietnamese immigrants struggling to remake in America's west coast, "Birds of Paradise Lost," was published in march of 2013.

The Indian Holocaust and the Hopi Nation

2013-04-11T08:35:00Z

Néret-Minet Tessier & Sarrou, a Parisian auction house that I’m sure perceives itself as catering to only the “best people,” is about to auction off cultural patrimony looted from the Hopi Nation.

Auctioneer Gilles Néret-Minet dismissed Hopi claims because “they rely on an article of the Hopi constitution which is not recognized in France because it is not a State." While the indecency of this sale is recognized by many less sophisticated than French art dealers, I am personally inflamed by the swell-headed arrogance of not recognizing the Hopi Nation combined with ignorance of the scientific consensus that the Hopi have inhabited what is now the Four Corners area of the United States since 500 B.C.E.

Plenty of American Indians have oral traditions that place them on their land from time immemorial, but I am talking about white people, archaeologists and historians, doing what they do by the standards of their academic trades.

The Hopi people have occupied their mesas though the entradas of the Spanish gold seekers. In the 17th Century, they joined with other peaceful farmers in the Pueblo Rebellion, which ran the Spaniards out of Pueblo lands over numerous instances of theft, homicide, rape, and kidnapping. Some call the Pueblo Rebellion a rejection of “civilization.” I’m a retired criminal justice professor, so I always saw it as a crackdown on crime.

Spanish jurisdiction, assuming it ever existed, ended with the Treaty of Córdoba in 1821, although Spain never ratified Córdoba and vainly asserted sovereignty until 1836. The US fought a war of conquest against Mexico that ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo in 1848, and these people who had never been Spanish and never been Mexican became not Americans. American Indians were not recognized as US citizens until 1924.

Even though the Hopis were not Americans, the US attempted to impose its culture in a manner not seen since the Spanish. Hopi Chief Lomahongyoma and 18 others served hard time in Alcatraz from January 3rd to August 7, 1895, because of their resistance to forced acculturation.

The Hopi Nation endured, the Hopi ceremonial cycle—which involves the use of the masks that the French barbarians claim the right to sell—endures, and the French ratification of the looting of Hopiland for “artwork” is a striking bit of ignorance in a people who claim sophistication far beyond the ken of Americans, let alone American Indians.

There is a similar and more recent looting that has disturbed the traditional customs of every art dealer in Europe. Not everybody knows that the word “genocide” is new to the human vocabulary, but most people know the events that led to it, the death of approximately six million Jews because Adolf Hitler, an ideological racist, conflated a religion with a race. Jewish people call it Shoah, related to the English words “calamity” or “catastrophe”; the rest of us refer to The Holocaust.

The horror of the mass killings somewhat trivializes the concomitant looting, a looting that was coextensive with Hitler’s racial fantasies. A scholar writing about Eastern Europe observed, “Because the Slavs were considered an inferior race, the Germans looted and pillaged private homes, state museums, and churches. They took all the ‘Germanic art’ that they could find and destroyed what they did not take.” The Nazis held bonfires of “degenerate art.”

This would be a familiar scenario to American Indians. To this day, the best cultural artifacts of the Aztec Empire can be seen in the Prado and the Museum of the Americas, Madrid, Spain.

The Mayan Codices, which would have been the best evidence of a literate and scientifically based civilization, were destroyed by order of Bishop Diego de Landa, who wrote: "We found a large number of books in these (Mayan) characters and, as they contained nothing not to be seen as superstition and lies of the devil, we burned them all, which they (the Maya) regretted to an amazing degree, and which caused them much affliction." As this is written, the only Mayan books preserved to the present are named for their locations: the Madrid Codex, the Dresden Codex and the Paris Codex.

Paris brings us back to what the French should know about looting based on racism. About a fourth of French Jews went to the death camps, but many others turned their property over to the French government for safekeeping from the Nazis.

Michelle I. Turner, writing in the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, pointed out: “In the case of Nazi-looted art, there is, today at least, a great deal of information available about what happened during World War II, and there is a great awareness even among the general public of the danger that an artwork may have been looted. It is highly unlikely, therefore, that an art buyer who purchases a looted artwork today can later claim to have been completely innocent.”

The question becomes whether the urbane and sophisticated French can similarly understand the American Indian holocaust and the looting that accompanied it? Hiding behind non-recognition of the Hopi government ignores the French government’s ratification of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which provides in Article 11: “States shall provide redress through effective mechanisms, which may include restitution, developed in conjunction with indigenous peoples, with respect to their cultural, intellectual, religious and spiritual property taken without their free, prior and informed consent or in violation of their laws, traditions and customs.”

Failing to halt this convocation of thieves ignores a plea from the government that has ordered life on the Three Mesas for longer than white people have walked on this land. If this represents civilization, I’m content as a heathen.

Steve Russell, Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, is a Texas trial court judge by assignment and associate professor emeritus of criminal justice at Indiana University-Bloomington. He lives in Georgetown, Texas.

Tattoo Culture Along the Texas-Mexico Border

2013-04-10T20:37:19Z

Ol’ Skool Tattoos in Brownsville, Texas looks like pretty much any other tattoo shop in America. The walls are adorned with images you can choose from – skulls, snakes, hearts, and more than a few bare-breasted women. There’s also a lot of artwork representing Mexico.

David Delgado was going this direction. Delgado was born in Mexico City and was getting a tattoo that reads “Hecho en Mexico,” or Made in Mexico. It’s a popular tattoo down here these days.

“It’ the stamp that happens, or is put on items that get exported out of Mexico. I’m a direct export, so it’s a literal translation.”

I asked Delgado why he was choosing to express his cultural heritage in permanent ink on his skin.

“Why do people pay for art that you hang on the wall?” he answered. “I think tattoos end up being like walking art. So it becomes a gallery of a person. And pretty much I think if you ask somebody every tattoo has a story or has a meaning behind it.”

Daniel Aguilar, a graduate student at the University of Texas at Brownsville, has been researching the meanings of tattoos along this stretch of border called The Rio Grande Valley. While tattoos have become increasingly mainstream throughout the US, they’re also still associated with youth gang culture. Aguilar argues against this stereotype. He took me on a tour of some local tattoo shops in the area.

“I think that a lot of people here, if they’re not valued in the schools, if they’re not valued socially in their groups, they’re going to look for it through artwork, through tattoos,” said Aguilar. “They want to be socially relevant, everybody longs for that. And a lot of people find that through tattoos.”
If you’re wondering, Aguilar is one of those people.

“I’ve always struggled with my culture. I don’t look Hispanic, I give this white person impression, especially sometimes when I speak or mispronounce a word in Spanish. I’ve always struggled to find my identity, my cultural identity.”

Life along the border in early 21st century America is more complex than what most of us know. Not long ago, the border used to be one united place, with Mexicans and Americans easily flowing across back and forth.

No longer.

Today, US border patrol agents swarm the area. Towns on the Mexico side battle drug-related gang violence. People are afraid to go south, and it’s hard for people to come north. And families in Texas can include a complicated mix of US citizens, residents, and undocumented immigrants.

At Ol’ Skool Tattoos, I asked the artists about images they’ve done that reflect border life today.

“Yeah man, I tattooed this truck driver one time,” said Jake, a tattoo artist who didn’t provide a last name. “And he got this big semi-truck on his back, and there’s a grim reaper holding onto the cab and there was just like kilos of cocaine flying out the back of it. That’s what he got, I think that reflects border life pretty to the T.”

There are also a lot of requests for religious artwork in this area, which is deeply engrained in Catholicism. The Virgin Mary and the grim reaper are two popular choices.

Daniel Aguilar has an angel on his forearm. When we were visiting tattoo shops together, he got the bug for more ink; he decided to add the devil.

“As a former Catholic, I think I identify well with Lucifer, bringer of light. He has killed 10 people in the Bible, whereas God has killed 2 million-plus in the Bible. Lucifer never turns anybody away, he does what he’s told. God tells what him to do and he does it. I would consider him one of the most obedient angels.”

Some of religious tattoos also have a border twist. Christopher Daniel de Leon, a tattoo artist in the nearby city of Edinburg at Flaming Heart Tattoo, told me about a Border Patrol agent who once requested the archangel Michael on his chest.

“The traditional image is Michael standing over the devil, the fallen devil. But in this case, he wanted me to go ahead and draw it up where he was actually suited as a border patrol (agent). And that was a different twist on something, he was proud of it and all that, so I dug it.”

De Leon also gets a lot of requests for Aztec art and sugar skulls, the colorful icons associated with the Mexican holiday The Day of the Dead.

“So in a way, it kills two birds with one stone, like hey, I want to do something with the Mexican culture but at the same time want to look bad ass,” said de Leon.

De Leon said there are “a lot, a lot” of tattoo artists here in the Rio Grande Valley. He didn’t know exactly why there are so many, but from his perspective, it’s a way to make a living as an artist. He showed me a binder of some of tattoos he’s done; they were elaborate, unique, impressive drawings.

“But there are still some people that just see it as tattooing, they’re like, ‘Oh it’s just some punk with tattoos.’ But if they were to actually look further into it, like to see a passionate tattoo artist, it’s just the same thing as if you were to see a passionate painter,” said de Leon.

But in this case, the artist’s canvas feels pain. De Leon is well aware of this, and he appreciates the trust his clients give him to display his art.

“Because that’s like total commitment, once it’s on there, that’s it. Once you get it done, you have to live with it.”

Patients Teach Doctor How to Heal at the End of Life

2013-04-03T08:45:00Z

Photo: Dr. V.J. Periyakoil is shown with one of her patients, Daniel Shaine. (Courtesy of the VA Palo Alto Health Care System)

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- How does a doctor specializing in saving lives turn into one of the nation's leading experts -- and medical educators -- on end-of-life care?

Dr. Vyjeyanthi "V.J." Periyakoil says her 25-year journey from medical school in her native India to directing Stanford University's palliative-care fellowship program taught her that the art of healing lies in listening to her patients. What she heard wasn't always in the medical textbooks.

What they told her led Periyakoil to becoming a leading voice in the movement to reconceptualize end-of-life care from limited hospice treatment in the last six months of life to comprehensive treatment for profoundly ill people .

"Much of my work had been on the importance of dignity in health care," Periyakoil recalls.

What People Want
at Life’s End

Stanford University palliative care expert, Dr. Vyjeyanthi “V.J.” Periyakoil believes that contrary to conventional wisdom, most patients don’t simply want every medical intervention that may or may not prolong their lives.

Overall people want appropriate care sensitive to their quality of life and, enabling them to experience their final days as fully as possible with minimal stress for their families.

In fact, a 2012 report by the California Health Care Foundation affirmed Periyakoil’s understanding of what patients hope for. First and foremost, Californians in the study said they didn’t want their families burdened by the cost of their care, or by having to struggle with troubling decisions about their treatment.

Also, participants in the poll said they wanted to be comfortable without pain and hoped to be “at peace spiritually.” On the survey’s list of 12 “Most Important Factors at End of Life,” people placed the desire “to live as long as possible” down at number 10.

The survey does show difference among ethnic groups. Although more than half of Latinos (56 percent) rated prolonging life as their top choice, only 18 percent of Asians did so, followed by 25 percent of whites and 43 percent of African Americans.

Palliative care is such a growing national concern that the federal Institute of Medicine launched its new Committee on Transforming End-of-Life Care in February.

--Paul Kleyman

She found that patients "cared more about concrete things -- 'Treat my pain first, take care of me first -- then you can treat me with respect.' For patients, that meant good pain care and symptom management, which is good palliative care."

Periyakoil began her practice in the United States as a resident in the crowded wards of Stockton's San Joaquin General Hospital. Her patients were mainly "migrant farmworkers, people with no insurance, people who didn't want to give you too much information" because of their immigration status or their fear they couldn't afford the treatment being prescribed.

She felt especially awkward when the medical advice she offered proved irrelevant to her patients' lives. "There was a mother of young children who had two jobs. I would tell her, 'Why don't you put your feet up? Why don't you eat more protein?' She'd try to answer, 'Well, I have to get back to work,' and I'd just continue to give the same silly advice."

Sensing her frustration, it was the patients who tried to reassure her. "'Oh, yes, I'll do that, doctor...Don't worry about me,' they'd say."

Struck by how many of her Stockton patients were immigrants, like herself, Periyakoil worked hard to make herself understood while also sensitizing herself to cross-cultural issues.

"When I first came to the U.S., I could read and write English very well, but because of my accent, my patients couldn't understand what I was saying," she recalls. She focused on enunciating every English word clearly, and came to appreciate nonverbal forms of expression -- like a worried look that exposed a patient's unspoken concern. The better she was able to communicate, the more likely her patients were to follow her medical recommendations.

Later at Stanford Medical School, where Periyakoil studied geriatric medicine, shediscovered another gap in her knowledge from patients who were deemed to have only six months or less left to live. Admitted to hospice care, their cure-oriented medical treatment would often be stopped in favor of "comfort" care.

"I had a hard time giving up on these patients," she admits.

Her determination to improve the quality of their lives, no matter how much time they had left, led her to realize that palliative treatment should begin as soon as a patient is diagnosed with a life-threatening disease. Care provided only when someone becomes eligible for terminal hospice coverage comes too late to fully help them.

So, for example, the average hospice stay in the United States is now only 19 days. But palliative medicine begun much earlier reduces the agony and stress of disease so well that many patients actually survive longer. And family caregivers, relieved of constant stress, have been shown to live longer following a loved one's death.

"Palliative care should be woven seamlessly into treatment," noted Periyakoil, who is also associate director of Palliative Care Services at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System. "Patients shouldn't have to know the word 'palliative care.' It should be something that is given to you when and where you need it because it is the standard practice."

Periyakoil also discovered that patients who come from cultures that discourage, even prohibit, open acknowledgement of death and dying typically wind up having their referrals to hospice treatment delayed until it's too late for them to benefit from broader palliative care.

At Cultural Boundaries of Death

She learned that cultural boundaries around death could be violated in other ways. She recalls a home visit she made to see a young Chinese woman with late-stage cancer. "The husband opened the door silently, did not respond to my greeting and went into his wife's bedroom. She must have died moments earlier. When I squatted down next to her body to check her pulse and prepare an official death pronouncement, her husband gently shook his head."

Sensing she was intruding in a sacred moment, Periyakoil withdrew. At the door she wanted to offer her condolences but the husband once again shook his head and her words froze in her mouth.

"Later I learned that Chinese Buddhists believe the soul lingers in the body for some time after death. So they do not touch the body nor vocally express grief as this might disrupt the passage of the dying person's soul and prevent them from being reborn into a better life."

To help doctors become culturally fluent, Periyakoil is producing a free, online text series addressing the sensitivities of 13 distinct ethnic groups, among them African Americans, American Indians, South Asians and East Asians.

Also she is developing videos for an online series on the need for doctors and the public to share decision making, titled "Can We Talk: Conversations with multi-cultural Americans about end-of-life care." In the segments, professional actors depict scenes from common patient situations drawn from doctors' real-life experiences.

At Stanford's Palliative Care Education and Training Program, Periyakoil's fellows embrace her holistic approach. "Palliative care is one of the few fields of medicine where you deal with the whole person," says Thui Pham, an internist. "There are so many factors that impact life, not just the medical issues."

"Palliative care is not about the end of life," Periyakoil concurs. "It's about how a patient can get the most out of every day."

The Messiah Will Come From the South

2013-03-16T12:05:00Z

We Americans have long told ourselves that we are a God-favored people, a churchgoing, moral people. But last week when the old cardinals of Roman Catholicism looked for the future of their church, they looked south. And what we Americans heard, as if for the first time, is that the spiritual center of Christianity is in the Southern Hemisphere, not with us in the north.

How could that be?

Despite the drug addiction of Americans — an addiction second to none that has destabilized Latin America from Bolivia to Colombia to Mexico — we assume the moral high ground in the Americas. We long have regarded Latin Americans as a morally lazy race, corrupt in their civic life, tolerant of Marxism one day, fascism the next. Now we learn that the beating heart of Christianity is in the south. World Catholicism is centered there. And Protestantism, too, surges throughout Latin America.

We Americans built a wall to separate ourselves from Latin Americans and their disrespect regarding our laws. A number of us tell pollsters or listeners of talk radio that we would deport the millions of Latin Americans who are illegally here, and their children bleating about their “dreams.” Many Americans declare they do not want illegality rewarded in any way.

In the long political debate over illegal immigration, religion and morality have rarely been mentioned by those in power, except by disgraced Cardinal Roger Mahony in Los Angeles. In immigrant rights parades, it's true, one did see nuns and people carrying crosses, as in a religious procession. But right-wing commentator Pat Buchanan, famously a Catholic, described illegal immigrants from Latin America as a greater threat to our union than Al Qaeda. There was something evil coming from the south.

What went unsaid on talk radio and on the floor of Congress was that were it not for Latin American immigrants, here legally and illegally, many churches in the U.S. would be as empty as Notre Dame cathedral in Paris. And not just Catholic churches.

Increasingly, as young, white Americans abandon organized religion, Latin Americans in the United States have been flocking to evangelical Protestantism. Already, in Central America and Brazil, the rate of conversion to evangelical Protestantism is such that by century's end, Latin America may be in its majority, evangelical Protestant. Already, Protestant churches are sending missionaries from Latin America north to attend to our barren souls.

The American left doesn't talk about such things because it is largely uninterested in religion, having ceded it to the American right. (Pope Francis is troubling for many in the cultural left because of his sexual conservatism; the new pope's passion for the poor will not be consoling to them.)

The American right, by contrast, ought to be interested. But the Republican Party has sought political advantage by playing to the nativists in its ranks, taking the hard line on illegal immigration. In his campaign for the presidency, did Mitt Romney, once a Mormon bishop, even know that the world population of his church is already Spanish-speaking? He never mentioned it.

Suddenly a new moral map of the world is unfurled in front of our eyes. Africa? We Americans have been inclined to regard Africa as a hellish place of AIDS, tribalism, cartoon dictators — backwardness of every sort. Now the news from Rome is that Catholicism is growing most rapidly in Africa even as Christianity shrinks in Northern and Southern Europe and once-beloved churches there become tourist attractions.

Europe is the political right's obsession — but only economically. Republican fiscal conservatives warn that overspending in Washington could doom our country to become like the bankrupt economies of Europe. In Europe, however, the problem is not only depleted economies but also a depleted biological energy. As Christianity has receded in Europe, many of its countries are showing negative birthrates. Germany, Spain, France — all show negative birthrates. And isn't that curious? As religious belief declines, so does the biological dynamism of a nation.

For the last half-century, Muslim immigrants have moved into the biological vacuum of Europe. Muslim families choose to have children while the white European vacillates between a Volvo and a Saab. There are predictions by some European Muslims of a numerical “re-conquest” of Europe not on the battlefield but in the maternity wards, a Muslim Europe by virtue of numbers: Muslim Paris, Muslim Amsterdam, Muslim Madrid.

In the United States, there are signs of a decreasing birthrate among the native-born. America could be headed toward the European pattern of shrinkage were it not for the fact that immigrants from Asia and Latin America are moving into the biological vacuum of America.

Christians from Latin America are moving into the spiritual vacuum of post-Christian America. Priests from Latin America and Protestant ministers from Latin America are tending to growing congregations.

None of this seemed to register until the Argentine cardinal made his appearance as Pope Francis on the loggia at the Vatican.

Now we hear a pope, a European immigrant's son, who is speaking to the world in Spanish. We hear there is much praying and singing — much joy — in the churches of Latin America and that, indeed, the future of Christianity is there, not here. And we are left peering at the future over the wall we ourselves constructed.

Richard Rodriguez, the author of “Brown” and “Hunger of Memory,” is an editor at New America Media in San Francisco. “Darling,” his spiritual biography, will be published in the fall by Viking.

This op-ed also ran in the Los Angeles Times.

Who Is the New Argentine Pope?

2013-03-13T20:11:31Z

Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio has been elected the 266th pope, to be known as Pope Francis I. He is the first Latin American and first Jesuit elected leader of the Catholic Church. Bergoglio clashed with the Argentine government over his opposition to same-sex marriage. Critics accuse him of failing to take a public stance against the military dictatorship of Argentina, which "disappeared" tens of thousands of people during the country's so-called Dirty War (1976-1983).

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City of Doubts: Kolkata’s Uneasy Love for Mother Teresa

2013-03-13T08:25:00Z

When Mamata Banerjee, Chief Minister of West Bengal, decided to paint Kolkata blue and white, local wags quipped that Didi wanted to become Mother. The blue and white paintjob unleashed on the city's railings and bridges, public toilets and police stations, have indeed left the city looking like it is haunted by the ghost of Mother Teresa. She died in 1997. That year I remember visiting Durga puja pandals in the city. Outside some of them were little hunched and wrinkled images of the old Catholic nun - co-existing peacefully with "heathen" idols for a few days but at arms length. 

That measured distance was symbolic of Kolkata's wary embrace of its Nobel laureate. While the intelligenstia cringed somewhat about the permanent pall of decay, death and poverty she cast over the city, they also could not turn their backs on her.

The dark side of the Holy Mother

That's why Outlook says media in the city have largely ignored a new report in the academic journal Studies in Religion that professes to explore “the dark side of Mother Teresa”. (Please read the entire story here.) "It's the work of mischief makers out to seek publicity for themselves," says one unnamed editor of an English daily. The report's findings, while not as scurrilous as Christopher Hitchens' diatribe about the woman he called “a leathery old bat”, aren't that explosive or new - secret accounts, taking money from dictators, being treated in private hospitals in the US while the patients at her home died without painkillers.

Mother Teresa had raised almost $100 million before 1980. The report laments that with all that money she could have easily built the most technologically advanced hospital in India at that time. “(But) they didn't really treat sick people,” says Genevive Chenard, one of the authors of the report. “She was just having them over there, because, for her, suffering makes you feel like Jesus was feeling on the cross.”

The report admits she did a lot for the Church. How much she actually did for the poor of Kolkata is another question.

However Outlook finds few in Kolkata willing to openly embrace the report either. Mother House spokesperson Sunita Kumar dismisses it by saying, “There are always people who try to bring down someone who is doing good work, someone who is great.” It does not help their case that the writers of the report have not visited Kolkata.

The doubts of Teresa

That's not to say all Kolkatans have bought into the sainthood of Mother Teresa. Kolkata-born doctor Aroup Chatterjee wrote an entire book trying to puncture her halo. His The Final Verdict is full of his sting operations and he painstakingly tries to prove that her statistics of service are overblown. His book tries to debunk her claims that the Sisters cooked for 7,000 people a day. It claims it's more like 500.

Contrary to popular belief, her ambulances don't roam the streets of Kolkata to pick up the dying. They rely on the Kolkata corporation ambulances for that. The order does have donated ambulances but Chatterjee writes they are used as a taxi service for the nuns. Other religious-social orders like the Ramakrishna Mission and Bharat Sevashram have far more impact on the ground, especially in times of natural disaster, than the Missionaries of Charity.

But the Mother Teresa that is the most interesting is neither infallible Holy Saint nor the jetsetting Dark Mother. Another aspect of Teresa came out in her letters that were released by the Vatican though she had wanted them burned. Those show a woman afflicted with great doubt and misgivings. “It seems to me what Teresa was looking for in the face of suffering was the face of God,” said essayist Richard Rodriguez in an interview with New America Media when those letters were published.

“It's very moving to me that she did not find it but kept on doing it. It's an example of great heroism.” In a world where people are killing each other in the name of their God all the time, that doubt-ridden image of Mother Teresa is a more important saint than the cancer-curing one. “The world of religion is in chaos, not because there is too little faith in the world, but because there is too much faith… It seems to me the world is afflicted with people who have no doubt,” said Rodriguez who has a forthcoming book on religion. “I think the value of these documents is that they teach us that certitude is not what we want in the world.”

Bound to each other

Kolkata has two bona fide Nobel laureates and while it's proud of both, Tagore puja is far more uncomplicated than Teresa puja though the latter is the one really on the fast track to sainthood.

Kolkatans understand Mother Teresa is not the best brand ambassador for the city yet they cannot let go of her either. A promotional video of the city showing its landmarks through hand shadows included the Howrah Bridge, Durga, Tagore and Mother Teresa. While Tagore is a local, and national icon, Mother Teresa is an international one. Tagore's allure outside the Bengali-speakers of the world is limited. Mother Teresa, who barely spoke any Bengali in her seventy-plus years in the city, has a fan following that knows no linguistic boundaries.

Mother Teresa and Kolkata are inexorably bound to each other. “No other city of India would be as suitable for her teleology: that Calcutta's abject poverty was divinely ordained to prove the spiritual value of her mission,” writes Krishna Dutta. “She knew that horrendous images from a city of bygone colonial wealth and power would make a strong impact on a guilty western psyche."

But while one might quibble about the quality of care her order provided, Kolkata cannot deny the fact that she did care about a vast mass of wretchedly poor people most of the city ignored. She might not have been the miracle-working saint her hagiographers want her to be. But there is no evidence she led a secret hedonistic lifestyle dripping with gold, diamonds, Rolex watches and sex scandals like some of our other famous godmen. So Kolkata tends to forgive her for her failings like the ones alleged by this new report.

Ultimately Mother Teresa transcended the one barrier that we are terribly squeamish about - touch. Bengal IPS officer B.D. Sharma tells Outlook he was a skeptic who thought she was overrated. But when he saw her at a leprosy home, it completely changed his view. “She was embracing the lepers, whom I couldn't imagine even touching, as much as I am ashamed to admit it,” he said.

It does not matter to her believers whether or not she made optimal use of the donations she raised. She was true to her calling which was being a nun, not a philanthropist. “She was an example of something that is all too rare: someone who devotes their life to the care of others,” said Richard Rodriguez. “She washed the sick. She touched the untouchable. She sat with the dying. That is not what most people do with their lives.”

Poor box saint on a pedestal

As a boy going to a Jesuit school in Kolkata, I grew up both close to her order, but in no particular awe of it. Instead of trips to museums and zoos, we would be taken to her orphanages and homes for the aged to distribute biscuits and powdered milk. We saw her occasionally but were much more transfixed by the story of the wild woman who older boys said had been raised by wolves (or was it bears?) before Mother Teresa found her.

The “wild woman” never spoke though I think she tried to cadge cigarettes off the priests who accompanied us. I cannot say Mother Teresa glowed with any special radiance, like the saints in school with their perfectly circular haloes. If there was any miracle, it was that her homes were our only exposure to the poverty and disease that swirled around our very insulated middle class lives. Our 25 paisa weekly contribution to the “Poor Box” probably did not make that much of a difference in our lives or the lives of the poor. But I am thankful that in the middle of our dogged pursuit of medals and marks, at least we paused every week to acknowledge those who had nothing.

Now 15 years after her death, a new report might try to puncture her halo. But she has already receded from public consciousness in many ways. The new head of her order does not show up in newspaper photographs the way Mother Teresa did. Teresa herself has been put on a pedestal and turned into statue. Pigeons perch on her shoulders. During the recent anti-rape protests I came upon a group of young people protesting in front of Mother Teresa's statue on the street named after her in the middle of Kolkata.

It was almost Christmas and a carol festival was in full swing at the park next door. The street was festooned with twinkling lights and electrical Santa displays with reindeer and sleds. In the middle of it stood the statue of the old nun looking down on posters, as if blessing their demands for “Crime like Rape… Punish by Death!!!” and “Hanging too less a punishment.” The passionate protesters had chosen the spot because of the aura of her goodness. But that they had in the process turned the fiercely dogmatic Catholic nun into a patron saint for capital punishment was an irony that was completely lost on them.

Report: NYPD Spy Program Traumatized Muslim Communities

2013-03-12T18:22:32Z

A year and a half after the Associated Press exposed the New York Police Department’s sprawling surveillance program targeting Muslims, three civil liberties groups have detailed the corrosive impact the program had on the students, families and worshippers who were watched.

The report, “Mapping Muslims: NYPD Spying and its Impact on American Muslims,” documents a pervasive sense of anxiety and self-censorship in area Muslim communities. The 57 students, business owners, educators and community leaders quoted in the report also expressed a fear of police and city officials that permeated nearly every aspect of their daily lives.

“We’ve been talking about [NYPD spying] as a civil rights issue and as a constitutional issue without understanding that this is [also] about human beings, their religious institutions, and about students chilled on their campuses,” Linda Sarsour, the coordinator of the Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition, told Colorlines.com yesterday after a press conference at One Police Plaza.

Sarsour’s group collaborated with the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund and a City University of New York project called Creating Law Enforcement Accountability and Responsibility (CLEAR) to produce the report, which they sought to deliver to Police Commissioner Ray Kelly after the press rollout.

Police officials have denied the human impact of the surveillance, claiming that because it was conducted in secret, it didn’t affect people’s day-to-day activities. But many of the Muslims quoted in the report—often on condition of anonymity—note that even before the Associated Press revealed the scale of the surveillance program, community members knew they were being watched. The AP’s Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation simply confirmed their worst fears: that there were undercover agents and a web of closed-circuit cameras capturing their every move, and that some of their fellow mosque-goers and classmates were actually informants. Read more here on Colorlines.

In Pope's Resignation, a Media 'Inquisition'

2013-03-01T04:45:22Z

The Catholic Church is not in crisis. The haste with which most commentators are stumbling over their casuistical feet to explain the sudden abdication of Pope Benedict XVI as the beginning of the end of the Catholic Church is an inexcusable screed.

The 85-year-old Pope’s decision to step down for reasons of human, bodily frailty cannot be overemphasized. Perhaps he is tired; perhaps he wants to try to get closer to his God; perhaps he wants to turn the job over to someone with more energy and vision. It is a very personal decision and should be respected.

In truth, acknowledging one’s inability to fulfill divine mandates seems more like an old-fashioned Biblical virtue. So it is unfortunate that the horse has already left the barn: The world at large (non-Catholics) already judge the Church, at least in part, on the Pope’s human qualities. The Pope is both a theological arbiter and the leader of the church. These commentators tend to string together a series of in-the-news memes and then draw a conclusion based on nothing more than vapor. Excuse me for saying so. Having your own opinion is fine, having your own version of history makes you nutty.

I am puzzled how most commentators holding brief for Catholicism do not understand the church, and that they condemn what they do not understand … condemnant quod non intellegunt. It reminds me of the years, as a student in Europe, of the endless reading of what people thought was going on behind Kremlin walls during the Cold War.

Yes, as is true with any large organization, the Catholic Church has its problems, but how many more decades have to pass before the sexual abuse scandals are placed in perspective? The Catholic Church is arguably one of the greatest sources of good in the world today; its charities give more to the poor and hungry than any single organization, including the US government. Catholic schools educate children worldwide, not only in religion, but also in reading, writing and arithmetic.

Journalists depict the Catholic Church as an oligarchy ruled by a bunch of domineering old men who are obsessed with control of their congregation’s behavior, but that story line doesn’t fit the truth. There is a huge difference between advising and controlling. Catholics are free to make their own choices. Moreover, the Church is the people of God, not the hierarchy. It is the people of God who continue to labor, pray, love and hope despite all. The people of God read, think, consider and make intelligent decisions. They are not sheep blindly following an errant shepherd.

We know what we are doing because we know in whom we believe. Indeed, crux spes unica. The cross is the only hope.

I remain a practicing Catholic because the Church has sustained the centrality of the teachings of Jesus Christ over the past 2000 years. The call to Love One Another as He Loved animates the personal lives of all Catholics. Such virtues are to be found in the cornerstone of most modern democracies. The church is also where I feel at home when I worship God.

Yes, I am horrified by the sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church, where figures as inspiring as Mother Teresa and Dorothy Day stand side by side with sexual predators. But for me, and I think many serious Catholics, coming to grips with these forces within the church is a trial, like balancing my own humanity and my quest to follow Jesus’ teachings.

As for a successor, the vast majority of believers today are from the so-called global South. These Catholics subscribe readily to the church’s doctrines and see no reason to hit a system upgrade just because Americans and Europeans are headed for the exit doors.

In that respect, the church may well consider electing a leader who looks like the vast majority of its adherents. Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze … well-read, very outgoing and charismatic, or Ghana’s Cardinal Peter Turkson come to mind.

Whatever happens … fiat voluntas Dei … May God’s will be done.

Outcast Gay Arabs Struggle with Backlash in Dearborn

2013-02-19T08:05:00Z

DEARBORN, Mich. — “I’m not afraid. Somebody has to start the conversation,” said Chris Ramazzotti, who’s Lebanese and agreed to reveal his name while discussing homosexuality among Arabs here.

Other gay Arabs didn’t disclose their identities citing safety risks as a reason, and to prevent their families from being criticized by Dearborn’s close-knit Arab community.

Ramazzotti is the executive director of Al-Gamea, a group formed in 2006 to address the growing needs of local gay Middle Eastern Americans. In 2009 it became a 501c3 nonprofit organization.

Ramazzotti says the Arab community’s progress towards having more tolerant attitudes about lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender (LBGT) people has been slow.

Arab Americans comprise more than 40 percent of Dearborn’s population, which according to a 2010 U.S. Census report was 98,153.

Two Arabs from Dearborn said in parts of Beirut, Lebanon it can be less difficult for an Arab to be openly gay than it’s here. Lebanon is one of the few Arab countries on the forefront of organizing for LBGT rights.

Ryan, a 23-year-old gay Arab from Dearborn who was kicked out of his house after coming out to his family, says there haven’t been any real conversations among community leaders about gay Arabs.

“People are afraid to step up, and then there’s people like me who are out and ready to start the conversation, but the question is where do we start? We don’t know who supports gay Arabs, and sometimes I am afraid for my safety,” Ryan said.

Ramazzotti says a lot of people living in Dearborn follow conservative customs and beliefs they brought with them when emigrating from Arab countries to the United States, making it more difficult for second generation Arab Americans to come out.

He says Dearborn’s religious Arab community has got in the way of progressive attitudes about the LBGT community moving forward.

It’s hard for Arabs here to be openly gay because they’re afraid of being judged, and disowned by their families, neighbors and friends in the community.

Ryan says people who support gay Arabs often fear speaking in support of them publicly because conservative Arabs and Muslims will commit hate crimes, or incite riots against them.

Faisal Alam, a nationally known Muslim gay rights activist spoke at the University of Michigan Dearborn last month where he presented the program, Hidden Voices: The Lives of LBGT Muslims.

The lecture was interrupted by a false alarm, and Alam along with other activists were escorted to their cars by security after their views were challenged.

The program attracted more than 200 people, including several Arab Muslims.

Ramazzotti has been threatened because of his sexual orientation. He says one gay Arab woman from Dearborn had to move out of her house after her brother went through text messages and emails and learned she had a girlfriend. He threatened to kill her. She’s in college, and now on her own struggling to make ends meet.

The founders of Al-Gamea also wanted to reach out to Chaldeans, who’re Iraqi Catholics, but don’t identify as Arabs. Several gay Chaldeans have found refuge in Al-Gamea.

There are more than 120,000 Chaldeans in metro Detroit. The community is very close knit and conservative as well, making the challenges of gay Arabs and Chaldeans parallel.

Al-Gamea hosts weekly gatherings, and every month has an Arabian Night social event where gay Middle Eastern Americans gather.

In 2011 Al-Gamea raised money for eight Arab men and women who were disowned by their families after coming out.

The group provided money, food and shelter to all eight who were from Dearborn except one.

In 2010 the group helped two Arabs who were kicked out of their homes. Ramazzotti says Al-Gamea was able to help more people last year, because the fundraising was more publicized.

Many gay Arabs involved in intimate relationships with their partners live double lives.

“They have to sneak a kiss here and there, or a card. They have to even be cautious about accepting a flower from their lover,” Ramazzotti said.

He says people who’re secretly gay have to constantly make up stories and lies to their families, and friends.

“A lot of gay Arabs live a double life,” said James, a Lebanese college student from Dearborn who’s openly gay. “It makes me sad. It’s not easy to live a double life. I never wanted to live a double life.”

He was never thrown out of his house, and says his family accepts his sexuality.

Although he’s openly gay, James didn’t use his real name, saying he wanted to protect his mother from becoming the subject of ridicule in the community. “There’s a lot of pressure,” he said.

He says a lot of gay Arabs date outsidetheir race including him, and he knows two Dearborn Arab women who’re romantically involved.

Both James and Ramazzotti say it’s much more difficult for women to come out than men. Women face greater challenges because Arab families are more strict on them, and they’re expected to remain very conservative.

During the program, Alam discussed what led him to become a prominent voice for LBGT Muslims.

While attending an Islamic school at age 14, he had a two-week course about how Islam condemned homosexuality, with no exceptions.

“It didn’t make sense why God would give me these feelings only to send me to hell, it just didn’t make sense logically,” Alam said.

By 16, Alam had already won several awards from Muslim organizations, and was a youth leader in the community, all while struggling with his sexuality.

“So every aunty and uncle wants his or her child to grow up and become like Faisal,” he said. He thought that if he prayed and fasted enough it would go away, but it didn’t, and he started living a double life, but not for long.

The pressure of hiding his sexuality gained control of him, he lost 30 pounds in six months and was hospitalized for two weeks.

“I couldn’t live like that anymore. I had to figure out how I could be gay and be Muslim. The two have to somehow come together. I didn’t want to leave my faith, and I couldn’t change my sexuality. I knew I couldn’t be the only gay Muslim because I literally thought I was the only gay Muslim on the entire planet,” Alam said.

After being hospitalized he vowed to make helping other struggling gay Muslims his life’s mission. “I made a promise to God that I would never let what happened to me happen to other young people especially in my community,” he said. Alam now tours the country speaking about Islam and homosexuality.

After coming out his mother initially stopped speaking to him, saying she had to pick Allah (God) over her son.

In college Alam started an email list to help and find other gay Muslims. “Several thousand people started to join in minutes, because that’s how much silence there is about this issue in the community. That’s the level of fear that existed and continues to exist,” he said.

Within the last 15 years there’s a growing movement of LBGT Muslims who are coming to the forefront and acknowledging their sexuality and saying they can be LBGT and Muslim, with no contradiction between the two identities.

Alam says Islam is going through a reformation, and in five to 10 years a major shift in it towards greater tolerance for LBGT Muslims around the world; Muslim women being allowed to lead prayer at mosques and openly gay Imams being more welcomed is expected.

Alam says there are already several mosques in the United States that are safe and accepting of the LBGT community.

The organization, Muslims for Progressive Values believes women should be allowed to lead prayer. Alam says the first few public prayers led by Muslim women at mosques in the country were controversial.

Gay Imams have also emerged as leading voices for LBGT Muslims, such as Imam Daayiee Abdullah of the Masjid An-Nur Al-Isslah in Washington D.C. Abdullah has been counseling gay Muslims for more than 12 years.

Ramazzotti says people are afraid of being affiliated with Al-Gamea because the community could find out they’re gay, and a lot of its board members and volunteers have distanced themselves from the group for that reason.

Ramazzotti was living in Dearborn when he first came out to his family. His brother chased him three blocks after finding out, and tried to attack him. He didn’t return home until eight years later.

“Being gay was the last thing I wanted to be, I tried to suppress my feelings and make them go away, but they wouldn’t,” he said.

Ramazzotti says he’s witnessed gay Arab men and women marry the opposite sex, and still struggle with their sexuality.

He’s never regretted coming out, or met anyone who has. Over the last decade Ramazzotti says there’s been a major shift towards gay Arabs coming out and being more accepted, but there’s still a great deal of progress that needs to be made. “It doesn’t happen over night, but it’s getting there," Ramazzotti said.

'God's Facebook' -- Author Promotes Harmony

2013-02-18T09:00:00Z

Editor's Note: A book by a Bangladeshi-American author from El Dorado Hills, Calif., is adding to the dialog amongst religions without ignoring atheists in the conversation. Siliconeer correspondent Ras Siddiqui (RS) speaks to Dr. Najmus Saquib (NS), author of 'God’s Facebook.'

RS: How long did it take you to compile and write “God’s Facebook: Creating a Friendship of Civilizations in a Terror-ridden World”?

NS: Thirteen years – on and off. The last two years were intense.

RS: Why did you, a PhD in Engineering, embark on such a detailed project on religions?

NS: Religion is everybody’s business – isn’t it? Actually, the topic of religion has always fascinated me because of its significance in our personal, social, and political lives. Also, religion has recently taken the center stage in global politics and a large part of our foreign policy is targeted to fight religious extremism across the globe. World peace seems to be more and more dependent on religion these days. I feel that unfamiliarity with other religions is a barrier to progress towards peace. I embarked on this project with the hope that my book would help remove that unfamiliarity and open our minds to the central message of compassion dominant in all religious scriptures.

RS: Some major scholarly interfaith work has been done recently on the Abrahamic Faiths (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), but your work has expanded it to encompass Buddhist, Hindu, Bahai and Sikh beliefs amongst others and even incorporates Atheists. Why did you choose such a large and ambitious canvas?

NS: As an engineer, I received training to be comprehensive when solving a problem. The problem of world peace doesn’t only involve Abrahamic faiths, but all other faiths. Hindus constitute the third largest religious group in the world, yet they are ignored in western interfaith literature because the West is only involved with a fight amongst adherents of Abrahamic faiths. There are many conflicts, of different scales, around the globe, some involving Hindus and Buddhists. If we are serious about world peace, we have to address all faiths, not only those that are of immediate concern to us. However, I must say that the inclusion of atheism is probably unique in my book. Atheism is a growing belief and we need to include atheists in the interfaith dialogue so that they form a tolerant view of other religions and vice versa. Interfaith dialogues will fail if we remain oblivious to a certain faith group.

RS: I enjoyed the way the book is structured. What made you decide to use Facebook formats like status updates as part of the layout for this book?

NS: I wanted to make the book entertaining and approachable. Since I decided to arrange the book chronologically, like in a timeline, I felt that Facebook format would make sense. I thought “Status Update” would give a quick review of what happened in a corresponding historical period and “Like” features would allow me to draw attention to some important quotes. So, I chose the Facebook formats and added few new things, such as “Coffee Breaks” to break the monotony of a series of quotes.

RS: You have pursued the development of religious thought in human history. Why do you think that religious differences have caused so much suffering while the ultimate aim of all religions is to find inner peace?

NS: We have seen so much suffering because we took pride in our religion (although pride is considered a negative trait in all religious scriptures) and have judged other religions, primarily due to our unfamiliarity, as savage religions. Politics, imperialism, and competition for land and resources complicated matters further and the power-hungry people among us quickly discovered that religious fervor is the strongest emotion that we can use to gain more power. It is ironic that the common masses who were either perpetrators or victims of religious violence are often ignorant about the differences over which they were fighting each other. I have tried to show those differences and similarities in my book and hope that it will be difficult for us to continue this fight if we are fully aware of the differences and similarities among our religions.

RS: Would we be wrong to assume that you appear to be greatly inspired by the Sufism?

NS: No. Frankly, I owe a lot to Sufism, which has forever shaped my thinking. I was introduced to Sufism at a very early age. I read Rumi, Hafiz, Iqbal, Attar and Sanai during my teenage years and had even translated some of their poems into my native Bengali language. I am also greatly inspired by Rabindranath Tagore, the great Bengali poet, who is perhaps the one of the greatest Sufi poets of the Indian subcontinent.

RS: What can you briefly tell us about your own religious upbringing and your early life in Bangladesh?

NS: I grew up in a very liberal Muslim family. My grandfather was a reputed Islamic scholar who was very liberal in his outlook. He would accept invitations from Hindus to attend Gita (Hindu scripture) recitation events. My father was very knowledgeable about western philosophy and he introduced me to the works of Plato, Aristotle, Bertrand Russell, Bernard Shaw, Shakespeare, John Stuart Mill, Hegel, and Kant at a very early age. I was allowed to read anything and everything, including religious scriptures of other religions. At the same time, I was following the daily duties of a practicing Muslim. In our household, we used to have after-dinner conversations with our father about philosophy, religion, and politics almost on a regular basis; those were no bars hold discussions – anyone can ask any questions and say anything or challenge anyone. From time to time, we would have our uncles and grandparents as houseguests and they too would join those family discussions led by my father. Those discussions left an indelible mark in my mind and I grew up to be an open-minded person in my religious, philosophical, and political outlook. My parents never imposed any religious rules on us; they left it to us to choose the limits of our religious practices.

RS: You are going against the grain of Samuel P. Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” work in your book. Did you find his thought process a challenge to overcome in “God’s Facebook”?

NS: Not really. I am an optimist and was never persuaded by the prediction of an imminent and inevitable clash of civilizations. I felt that we have to create an alternative that would avoid the clash, which is based on the hypothesis that that we will always remain unfamiliar about each other’s religion. However, in a globalized world, ruled by Facebook and other social networking tools, I saw that a breakthrough is possible due to the cheap cost of communication and interconnection. That’s how I came up with the new paradigm of “Friendship of Civilizations.”

RS: About life here in the United States, we know that the separation of church and state has been a successful model. But people in this country also spend an enormous amount of time staying connected to some kind of spirituality. Do you think that religion should remain a personal rather than a collective journey?

NS: I am a fervent supporter of separation of church and state because history teaches us that the two are a dangerous mix. The human need for spirituality is eternal and the separation of church and state hasn’t hindered anyone from fulfilling that need. However, the question whether religion should be a personal or collective journey is a difficult one. Because, religion, or for that matter, any other ideology, is by its very nature both a personal and a collective journey. When we internalize an ideology to call it our own – it is often a personal journey of soul searching. Since humans are social animals, we typically like to share our discovery or ideology with others; that’s when our collective journey begins.

We must also find creative solutions to the problem of public religiosity becoming a dangerous weapon against human rational quest; removing religion from public life is not the solution. Rather, we should create a friendship of religions as we have created a friendship of people of different countries, colors, and races in USA.

“GOD’s Facebook” is available at Amazon.com.
Publisher: Innovation & Integration, Inc. (December 3, 2012) | ISBN: 978-0985823207

Year of the Kumätz: A Mayan Perspective on the Year of the Snake

2013-02-13T09:50:00Z

Photo of Don Tomas Calvo, courtesy of Mayanow.org

Last year, young couples across East Asia scrambled to get married and have babies in the auspicious Year of the Dragon. The same isn’t quite true of the current Lunar New Year, the Year of the Snake, which is being met with a more muted enthusiasm, due to the less favorable position held by the serpent (sometimes referred to as “little dragon”) in ancient Chinese culture. Western culture, meanwhile, is downright unfriendly towards the animal. It was a snake, after all, that in the Bible convinced Eve to eat the forbidden fruit, inviting evil into the Garden of Eden. The western canon is rife with other examples of serpents representing deviousness and evil. From fairy tales to modern cartoons, the snake is a harbinger of bad luck -- a creature to be feared.

Yet, as we embark on this Year of the Snake, solace can be found in the fact that there is at least one culture that views snakes in a more benevolent light. In the highlands of Guatemala, today's Mayan elders hold the serpent in high esteem.

Don Tomas Calvo is Nim Winaq, or the most senior elder, of the indigenous municipality of Santo Tomas Chichicastenango in the department of El Quiché, Guatemala. He is the moral and ancestral authority of the Mayan people, the guardian of the Popol Vuh, a Mayan holy book, and most likely the highest-ranked Mayan elder alive today. For his people, serpents are representatives of good.

"For our culture as Mayans," Don Tomas explains, "[the snake] is a creature of Mother Nature and guardian of the soil and earth. For us it does not represent anything satanic or bad, as it does in the western Catholic world, which mentions that the snake was used for evil to deceive Eve and cause her to eat the forbidden fruit and so deceive Adam so they were banished from paradise, whence the disobedience of original sin."

Above all, he says, the snake represents justice. In ancient times, Mayans would use snakes to help them reach a verdict, placing them among those suspected of committing an offense. According to Don Tomas, "The snake would always bite the guilty party." They could even take advantage of the biological diversity to impose a multilayered justice system. "My grandparents said that seeing a non-poisonous snake, this is a sign that we are doing something wrong," Don Tomas explains. "If we do not correct our path, the real poisonous snake will come." The non-poisonous snake is the toj, or warning. The poisonous snake is the kotzij, the execution of justice.

The significance of the serpent in Mayan culture, however, is broader still than just a symbol of justice. Among other things, the serpent signifies respect, order, reflection, meditation, authority and death. Passed along through generations is the teaching that "you should not kill a snake because it is a creature of Mother Nature and the guardian of the soil and earth," Don Tomas says. For ancient Mayans, serpents also represented a link to the underworld, and therefore, to ancestors and spirits. One particularly well-known motif shows a human head protruding from a snake's mouth. It is an ancestor who is appearing from the underworld through the snake.

Furthermore, a variety of Mesoamerican cultures recognize a "feathered serpent" god. As part snake and part bird, those deities represent the dichotomy of the heavens and the earth, the serpent aspect being symbolic of the earth, water and underworld. This figure has different names in different indigenous languages: Quetzalcoatl in Nahuatl, Kukulcan in Yucatec Maya, and Q'ukumätz in K'iche. In the Popol Vuh, Q'uKumätz is one of the creators of earth and man. The snake also signals something else: the motif of a serpent swallowing its own tail is important to Mayan elders, as it represents the circle of life.

Even with these associations, the true stature of the serpent can be hard to divine. Mayan elders will tell you that, despite Q'ukumätz's preeminence among their ancestors, today, the snake does not exactly represent a god-like figure, even if it is revered. "The snake is not ranked nor represented as a God,” Don Tomas says. "The snake is like the Kap Rakan (tremor or earthquake) -- a signal that you should behave well and do no harm to anything or anyone."

The significance of serpents can vary significantly depending on what era of Mayan history is being studied, and Mayan elders must often walk the fine line of honoring their distant heritage while acknowledging the vast differences between modern Mayan culture and its ancient roots -- the face-painted warriors and pyramids that are the images many still hold of Mayans. “The Mayan civilization is very old and has existed for a long time," explains Don Tomas. "It will continue to exist, possibly in a different form… We don't dress the same way as we did in the classical period, in the year 250 A.D., but the culture and the principles are thriving, in the region that I govern."

The Popol Vuh, the noted Mayan holy book, is written in K’iche’, one of more than 20 Mayan languages spoken in Guatemala. It is also the primary language of Don Tomas and many other Mayan elders who speak only a few words of Spanish. The loss of indigenous language in younger generations, says Don Tomas, is a hindrance to the propagation of ancestral teachings to a larger audience.

"There is a phenomenon that some elements of the indigenous identity are lost," Don Tomas explains sadly. It is indeed a worrisome trend that indigenous languages and traditions are not being passed on to the next generation. In Guatemala, many see Spanish and cultural assimilation as a way for upward mobility and avoiding discrimination. In the United States, most children of indigenous immigrants see their ancestral traditions, languages, and wisdom as useless. "Teaching them to value their culture, their roots, their languages, their vestments is of critical importance," says Don Tomas, "We need to teach them to be proud of this. This gives them a unique badge of honor, and that is very important."

"Facing the closing of the Oxlajuj B'aktun and the beginning of the new era," says Don Tomas, referencing the change in era based on the ancient Mayan calendar which occurred on December 21, 2012, "it is important to know the real truth about the Mayan people and to see the greatness of its knowledge and wisdom. It is time that the world knows its writing, reading, meanings and ways of seeing the world; the knowledge residing within the codices, embodied in each descendant of the Mayan people.”

In speaking to Don Tomas about the symbolism of the snake, a lesson emerges: Every story has another side, just as an animal vilified in one culture can be revered in another – a reminder that every belief, assertion and prejudice can be challenged and seen from a different perspective. It is with that understanding that Don Tomas strives to show the world what his so-often maligned and disenfranchised culture can teach the world. "There are people that believe that the practice of the Mayan religion is synonymous to witchcraft, Satanism, sorcery," he laments. "[This is] a concept inherited from the western world that erased Mayan history and imposed by force its ideas through the Catholic religion first, and then Protestantism. As a result of the invasion and religious imposition, much of the Mayan wisdom has been lost. Today, this ancestral wisdom is found only in low levels, and only in very old elders."

If we can consider the merits of a trampled-upon culture's views on snakes, then perhaps we can also learn to consider disparate viewpoints on other things as well. With the opening of the new B’aktun two months ago and the commencement of the Year of the Snake last week, we have a rare opportunity -- to learn from what other cultures can teach us and implement those lessons into our daily lives. Instead of being wary of the year of the snake, maybe we should welcome it. "[It] is important to bring the message of peace during this change or era," Don Tomas said, "because it is a chance for humanity to change our ways."

La Sorpresa: The Papal Resignation, in the Latin American Eye

2013-02-12T10:30:00Z

SAN SALVADOR -- Local bishops, not the pope, traditionally run church life and sometimes political life from Mexico to Argentina, but the reach of Pope Benedict XVI, who announced his retirement effective Feb. 28, has been unique. For decades, when Ratzinger’s shoe dropped, the tremor reverberated over Latin America, where half of the world’s one billion Catholics live.

After the watershed Second Vatican Council, which stressed ecumenism and invited active lay participation in ecclesial thinking and ritual, Latin America took the fresh insights of the Church to heart perhaps more than any other region. It was as if the piety and first-hand understanding of hardship and sacrifice that filled the lives of the Latin poor had been just waiting to burst out, to inform the wider faith with their understanding of it, thoughtfully to question what they saw as anomalous. Discussions among church members in small “base Christian communities,” and their dialogue with pastors and theologians, made the 1960s and 1970s effervescent with new perceptions and commitments to challenging injustice. Latin American bishops meeting in Medellin and Puebla established “the preferential option for the poor”; called oppressive structures like corrupt capitalism “sinful,” but not unchangeable; and declared the aim of practiced faith was not development, but liberation.

In the 1980s, the man now known as Pope Benedict XVI directed the Church’s doctrine watchdog office once called the Inquisition. He put the brakes on the fast-growing movement that became known as liberation theology, calling it a “fundamental threat.” The church’s body was moving ahead of its red-cloaked clergy, and that was intolerable. Ratzinger forbade certain world-famous Latin theologians to publish or preach by invoking what is called “silencing,” a tool wielded from above meant to prevent ”confusion” among church members, but arguably used by Ratzinger to quell challenges to structures on which the Latin Church had fed for five hundred years: small, landed, wealthy oligarchies; the militaries at their service; strict ecclesial hierarchies deaf to input from the ordinary laity.

When long-brewing civil strife erupted in Guatemala and El Salvador, the military denounced Church members who abided by liberation theology, characterizing it as a political movement aligned with armed leftist insurgents, killing dozens of unarmed priests and hundreds of civilian catechists. Ratzinger remained virtually silent. Church figures calling for peace were targeted. Here in San Salvador, its government supported by the United States during a 12-year civil war, a right wing death squad killed Bishop Oscar Romero as he said Mass in 1980. Members of the Salvadoran National Guard kidnapped, raped and killed four U.S. churchwomen working among the urban poor in the capital. In 1989, members of a U.S.-trained elite unit assassinated six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter. The Vatican was notable for pulling its punches with Washington during the time. What might have happened, Guatemalans and El Salvadorans ask to this day, if Ratzinger and Pope John Paul II had regarded the Latin American call for liberation from autocratic rulers with the same force with which the European churchmen supported the Polish Solidarity revolution?

Latin neoliberal administrations that emerged from the tumultuous 1980s and 1990s are a disappointment to many, failing to fill the promise of delivering better lives -- even ending poverty -- with development and new businesses. Amnesty International reports that the number of murdered El Salvadoran women and girls, mostly poor, often found mutilated, doubled in three years to 477 in 2011. The most recent (2011) United Nations Development Program Report on El Salvador reiterates throughout the need for social policy to become one of the mainstays of development, that “the welfare of persons is not only about income.” Much of the country, it says, continues finding a way of life in the middle of persistent poverty and inequality.

Rev. Jose Maria Tojeira, former rector of the University of Central America where the Jesuits were killed, told El Faro, El Salvador’s digital newspaper, that whoever is elected pope must be "very committed" to peace and support solidarity with the poorest during the "crisis of meaning" that prevails in the world. Much hunger and social justice persist, he said, "and I believe these are the challenges for the Catholic Church in a world very centered in technology, and in 'how to live' more than 'what to live for.’” Tojeira lamented that the pope would leave without completing the beatification process begun in 1996 for Archbishop Romero, a step to sainthood.

Amid speculation about who will be the next pope, are suggestions that the time may have come for a Latin American prelate, or someone from the global south. Half of the cardinals who will vote are from Europe, but only a quarter of Catholics live there. Whoever is elected, dramatic church changes do not appear imminent.

“Given that the previous and current pope have stuffed the College of Cardinals with like-minded conservatives, the future will probably look like the recent past,” said Thomas Sheehan, Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford University. Sheehan worked in El Salvador war zones as a freelance reporter in the 1980s.

What has not changed from the days when Ratzinger recognized the transformative potential of liberation theology and challenged it, is the understanding that Latin America is the future of the Church. Before the pope’s surprise resignation announcement, he was scheduled to attend the opening of World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro, July 1. The largest Catholic country in the world, Brazil has become an economic powerhouse, and is home to some of the most outstanding liberation theology thinkers. The Vatican says it is not canceling a papal appearance. Brazil is likely to be the first foreign destination of the new pope.

Mary Jo McConahay has reported from Central America for numerous publications. She is the author of "Maya Roads, One Woman's Journey Among the People of the Rainforest." www.mayaroads.com