religion

Writer/Producer Sameer Asad Gardezi is behind a trio of videos that are a response to a video entitled “Hate Comes to Orange County” {below}, where protestors and local politicians {Ed Royce [R-40], Gary Miller [R-42] and Villa Park Councilwoman Deborah Pauly} expressed their views about an event at the Yorba Linda Community Center. The event in question was a fundraiser held by the Islamic Circle of North America, an America Muslim relief group, raising money for women’s shelters. The controversy about protest centres on the taunts, including derogatory comments about Muhammad being a pervert, references to wife beating, and the ever popular “go home terrorist”.

Gardezi is using these satirical videos to push back on this divisive speech::

“I can’t say that this was my revolutionary stance to vindicate a group of people…It was the only way I felt I could react to the situation in a way that could satisfy me — if other people felt the same that was the cherry on top.”

He’s using humour, on a YouTube channel titled teapartyyouthla, in the Aladdin videos [see part 1] to take a Disney pop culture icon and turn the extreme rhetoric against it::

“We weren’t explicitly unveiling anything or trying to provide a new truth, just trying to break down something that already exists and use satire as a way to showcase that.”

There’s also a Facebook page with this gem::

“Let’s never forget a kabob is an evil hot dog. Nonetheless, thank you for the post KABOBFest.”

Gardezi noted the use of humour with the blowback from the Alexandra Wallace debacle, where a notorious fameball UCLA student posted an anti-Asian rant to build an audience–further questioning the adage that any PR is good PR. Sameer wanted to tap this satirical vein with his videos. I think this is an interesting addition to the discourse, using hyperbole and projecting context on to a sacred cow of sorts. I also think that this shtick is a whole lot fresher than Stephen Colbert’s, which is getting stale and sharing far too many jokes with The Daily Show.

From Robert Wright’s New York Times review of Putnam and Campbell’s American Grace:

gaining an evangelical friend leads to a warmer assessment of evangelicals — by seven degrees on a “feeling thermometer,” to be exact — and gaining a non­religious friend brings four degrees of added warmth toward the nonreligious.

This suggests that the best antidote to religious intolerance is more religious pluralism. As numbers of Buddhists, Mormons and Muslims grow in the US and proliferate around the country, negative perceptions will be reduced. I look forward to reading their book, particularly how they reconcile Putnam’s hunkering theory that posits a negative relationship between neighborhood diversity and trust, with this finding about religious diversity.  Is race/ethnic diversity qualitatively different than religious diversity in how it affects trust?  It would seem to be.  It is conceivable than in a generation, we see interfaith tension between Christians and Muslims are significantly reduced.

My sense is that what led Putnam down this road is the potential power of religion as a “bridge” between racial and ethnic difference.  Wright’s has an interesting insight about the emerging rift between the “religious” and “non-religious” in society being a rather new cultural chasm.   More than the “clash of civilizations” the religious-non-religious divide  might be what defines the “culture war” for the next few decades.  It’s worth thinking about how the religious and self-identified non-religious talk with each other.  I’m proud to say that my campus seems to be on the forefront of having conversations between these groups.  Can athiests see the value of faith in serving as a central organizing principle for vast numbers of people and can the religious recognize that individuals can construct legitimate  ethical systems without appeals to faith-based systems?