Religious labels

Conservative. Liberal. Radical.

These are terms more often used to characterize a person’s political views but have lately been used as well to describe religious beliefs. For example, in the current debates on reproductive health in the Philippines, those opposed to the bill are called “conservatives” and those in favor “liberals.”

I’ve used these labels as well but have been aware that it may not always be appropriate to just transfer these from the political domain into the religious.

Let’s start with the way the labels are used for Muslims. Non-Muslims often presume that Muslim women who wear the hijab or Muslim head scarf must be conservative, and that it is a male imposition on powerless and uneducated women.  Yet you will find that in universities, including the University of the Philippines, large numbers of Muslim women insist on using the veil, and they will insist they are not being forced by men to wear it.

Just this week Egypt began to allow women news presenters on TV to wear the hijab, and the news was picked up all throughout the world, including by our own Inquirer, with photos showing Fatma Nabil, the first Egyptian woman presenter to use a veil.  Most of the Western newspapers that featured this development attributed it to a new Egyptian president described as Islamist, meaning people advocating stronger Islamic values and precepts incorporated into governance.

So is Egypt moving toward religious conservatism? In the media websites I scanned, only Al Jazeera, the international cable Arabic channel, gave full details on how the hijab was unofficially banned during the previous dictatorial regime of Mubarak, who was ousted in a revolution last year.  During Mubarak’s time, women wearing the hijab could work in TV stations, but were kept off camera.  Several times, women media workers filed lawsuits to be allowed to wear the hijab and appear on camera, and they were supported by liberal Muslims who argued that it was a violation of human rights to ban the veil.

We see then a politically conservative dictatorship, that of Mubarak, banning what the West would call a conservative religious practice, and liberals defending the right to that practice.  It’s not really that confusing if one understands liberalism as being based on a recognition of the human being as primary, and of each individual having rights that must be respected.  To use the cliché, liberals will disagree with conservatives, but will defend the right of conservatives to express their views.

Modern and traditional

Political labels can be confusing when used to describe Islam and other religions because the tensions are often more between traditionalists and modernists.  Traditional Muslims insist on a literal interpretation of the Koran and its application to all facets of life, both private and public. Incidentally, the most traditional of these Muslims, exemplified by the Taliban, are described as “radical.”

Differing from traditional Muslims are “modernists,” who are also often devout and religious, including in the practice of wearing the hijab, but they call for more open interpretations of the Koran using scientific knowledge.  Even more interesting is that modernists are in a way “conservative” in the sense that they want to return to the spirit of early Islam, with its emphasis on ummah (community) and on ethical living, rather than rigid doctrines.

So instead of looking at jihad as armed struggle against unbelievers, modernists view it as an internal personal struggle.  It should not be surprising then that the Islamists, including the Taliban, come out being labeled as “radical” in the way they are uprooting Islam.

Biden, Ryan

Let’s look at what these terms might mean for Catholics. The website of National Public Radio (NPR) had a recent article, “Biden and Ryan Share Faith, but not Worldview,” which notes that for the first time in American history, two vice presidential candidates are Catholic: Paul Ryan for the Republicans and Joe Biden for the Democrats.  Those following American politics will say, ah, Ryan the conservative Catholic and Biden the liberal Catholic.

But the NPR article describes how the mixing of politics and religion has meant, too, a challenging of these old labels. Biden’s Catholicism is described as “old” and “traditional,” coming from a more working-class Catholic (mainly Irish) America that emphasizes the family and the neighborhood, mutual help, and caring for the poor.  This includes a willingness to pay higher taxes so government can come in with safety nets.

Not surprisingly, there is greater affinity between such Catholics and the Democratic Party, which advocates stronger government around social services. President Barack Obama himself, although not a Catholic, frequently refers to the time, in his younger days, when he worked with Catholic social action programs for the poor and how this experience influenced his thinking on social issues.

Ryan, on the other hand, is described as coming from “younger Catholics” more committed to “conservative parts of Catholic doctrine.”  They are more affluent and are against “big government,” so they want lower taxes, are fiercely opposed to the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act passed two years ago, and want a cutback in welfare services, supposedly because this creates dependency on the part of the poor. Ryan was quoted as having argued that the Catholic Church’s teachings on a  preferential option for the poor means: “Don’t make people dependent on government so they stay stuck in their station in life.”

A number of Catholic bishops, theologians and academics have rebuked Ryan’s proposals.  In another NPR article (“Christians Debate: Was Jesus for Small Government?”), Stephen Schneck, a political scientist from Catholic University, says Ryan is “completely missing the boat and not understanding the real heart, the real core, of Catholic social teaching… When charities are already stretched to their limit, Catholic social teaching expects the state to step up and to fill that gap.”

Some of those debates resonate for the Philippines, for example in the way local “liberal” Catholics want stronger government involvement in providing health services, including family planning.  The “liberals,” though, are also “conservative” in the sense of calling for a return to the spirit of early Christianity, emphasizing compassion, tolerance and social justice, the so-called “traditional” Catholicism of Joe Biden.

It’s interesting that locally, we more often hear “bukas” (open) and “sarado” (closed) rather than “liberal” and “conservative” to describe the views of Catholics. Visit Spanish websites and you’ll find numerous discussions, some even more fiery and furious than the ones we have here, around “catolico abierto” and “catolico cerrado.”   They’re intriguing terms to think about, and to save for another column.

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