“Unfortunately it is ever so much harder to know this actual culture than it is to summarize and to comment upon the works of genius.”  –Walter Lippmann

Got back from the UAE on Sunday, and as the jet lag wanes, I can start to unpack my experiences.  One side trip I can’t stop thinking about was our trip to the Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi (a.k.a. Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan Mosque).   The sheer size of the enormous structure was humbling, but most fascinating was the seeming contradiction between the outer and inner faces of the building.  From the outside, the mosque seems to pop up from nowhere.  The surrounding area is still under development, so it’s very visible and almost imposing.  However, on the inside, the decorations and embellishments are delicate, intricate and very feminine.  I suppose I was expecting something more austere, not flowers, chandeliers and gold inlay.

Mainly, I wondered whether those who want to prevent the building of mosques would still feel the same way after walking through one.  How many members of the Swiss anti-minaret movement have actually seen the inside of one?  Would any actually go inside if invited?  Would they still be afraid and opposed after visiting?  Demystifying mosques is only part of the greater equation, but public tours are a good way to create space for dialogue and introspection.  For example, conservative dress is required to enter the Grand Mosque, and abayas are provided for women.  Every woman in my group had positive opinions about the abaya after wearing them for the tour.  We certainly didn’t feel oppressed by the garment, much like the Emirati women I spoke with about their reasons for choosing to wear it.

While I don’t agree with the Swiss anti-Minaret movement or the French ban on the veil, I understand from where those fears emerge.  Minarets and veils are easy targets because they are visible reminders of otherness, so Muslim communities have an opportunity to turn that visibility into a conversation.  I have a feeling that many opponents would reconsider if they were invited to learn more.  Reminds me of the “Muslims & America” episode of 30 Days…

“In hating one thing violently, we readily associate with it as cause or effect most of the other things we hate or fear violently. They may have no more connection than smallpox and alehouses, or Relativity and Bolshevism, but they are bound together in the same emotion. In a superstitious mind, like that of the Professor of Celestial Mechanics, emotion is a stream of molten lava which catches and imbeds whatever it touches. When you excavate in it you find, as in a buried city, all sorts of objects ludicrously entangled in each other. Anything can be related to anything else, provided it feels like it. Nor has a mind in such a state any way of knowing how preposterous it is. Ancient fears, reinforced by more recent fears, coagulate into a snarl of fears where anything that is dreaded is the cause of anything else that is dreaded.

Generally it all culminates in the fabrication of a system of all evil, and of another which is the system of all good. Then our love of the absolute shows itself. For we do not like qualifying adverbs.  They clutter up sentences, and interfere with irresistible feeling. We prefer most to more, least to less, we dislike the words rather, perhaps, if, or, but, toward, not quite, almost, temporarily, partly. Yet nearly every opinion about public affairs needs to be deflated by some word of this sort. But in our free moments everything tends to behave absolutely,–one hundred percent, everywhere, forever.

It is not enough to say that our side is more right than the enemy’s, that our victory will help democracy more than his. One must insist that our victory will end war forever, and make the world safe for democracy. And when the war is over, though we have thwarted a greater evil than those which still afflict us, the relativity of the result fades out, the absoluteness of the present evil overcomes our spirit, and we feel that we are helpless because we have not been irresistible. Between omnipotence and impotence the pendulum swings.

Real space, real time, real numbers, real connections, real weights are lost. The perspective and the background and the dimensions of action are clipped and frozen in the stereotype.” –Lippmann.