Oxford University Press's Blog, page 457
October 6, 2016
The different faces of Taliban jihad in Pakistan
“Many of the inhuman struggles that have divided the human race would hardly have occurred if the situation had been one of completely righteous men confronted by undiluted and unmitigated crime”. These are the words of the historian Herbert Butterfield who several decades ago commented on the tragic patterns in human conflicts.
Back in 2008, when I first travelled to Pakistan in order to understand the grievances and religious worldview of the new Taliban movement that arose in the northwestern tribal areas, I wearily met the ambivalence that Butterfield had pointed out. Had I just encountered pure evil, it would probably have been less troubling for me and for others who are trying to comprehend, how to respond to the growing number of terrorist movements that is currently challenging not only Pakistan, but also Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and various parts of Africa.
All simplistic hypothesis about “what drives terrorists” falter when there is suddenly in front of you human faces and complex life stories. The tragedy of contemporary policies designed to handle or rather crush movements who employ terrorist tactics, are prone to embrace a singular explanation of the terrorist motivation, disregarding the fact that people can be in the very same movement for various reasons. It is not about either politics, religion, vulnerable mental health, or socioeconomics, but more often than not, it is about all of these in mixture. For some, their embracement of violent movements has more to do with their mythic worldviews than their grave analysis of world politics, while for others it has everything to do with the west’s policies and colonial behavior. Again, other cases reveal that unjust socioeconomic structures produce highly vulnerable individuals in search for material gains and personal acknowledgement.
All simplistic hypothesis about “what drives terrorists” falter when there is suddenly in front of you human faces and complex life stories
During my years of research into the Pakistani Taliban movement, I have met aged ideologues who were highly preoccupied with the hypocrisy of the west, and for whom it seemed to be an utmost pleasure to repeat the fact that the west was once sponsoring some of the same people, the mujahideen, that they are now stigmatizing as terrorists. As one of the militants, that I interviewed, told me “back then we smelled awfully of sweat, and today we smell awfully of sweat” – he saw no difference in who the mujahedeen were at that time and what the Taliban stand for today, but the change had come from the west, who well-willingly traded principles for power gains. The fight, for this type of militant, is about confronting the superpower-ambitions of the US and the expansionist-colonialist ambitions of the west. The invasion of Afghanistan was about oil, influence or establishing the cultural hegemony of the west, and the US drone campaign that started in 2004 in Pakistan a reflection of the west’s reckless indifference to the sovereignty of Muslim countries.
Other Taliban adherents that I met did not have a personal historic memory that went further back than 2001, when the US invaded Afghanistan. This type of militants, who I believe constitute the masses of the movement, were obviously younger than the ideologues who loved to share their experiences from the cold war, and the mujahedeen era. What made this type of Pakistani Taliban adherents take up arms was the invasion of Afghanistan and the Pakistan army’s deployment of approximately 70,000 troops in the semi-autonomous frontier areas during 2002-4. They saw the west’s and the Pakistan army’s aggression as a simple case of territorial insult of Afghanistan, an insult of tribal autonomy, and the right to self-determination, demanding that they defended themselves with any means necessary. “What would you do”, they asked me, “if you had seen your family members being killed by their weapons or if your kids had to live with the buzzing sound of danger and drones over their roof.”
Taliban adherents in Pakistan do not only act against the background of a defensive claim. I also met religious zealots, who shared mythic interpretations of the low level of religiosity in Pakistani society, which for them was a sign of an approaching apocalypse – a call for action. In order to prepare for the final days, they felt the need to enforce more religiosity – to implement their interpretation of sharia by, for instance, establishing a religious police and morality corps to Islamize society. Once I met a female supporter of the Taliban who justified her militant activities with reference to a night dream, where the Prophet Muhammad himself handed her a golden sword.
I also met adherents of the Taliban movement who had a more mythic take on the history of the conflict than those I mentioned above. For this category of militants, the war they are fighting is cosmic, i.e. constituted as a battle between forces of good and forces of evil. They actively invoke analogies to important symbolic battles that have gone down in Islamic history as battles with special spiritual significance due to what they perceive to be the intervention of God, such as the battle of Badr, the battle of Karbala, or the encounter between Moses and Pharaoh. The invasion of Afghanistan, for this type of militants, was part of a systematic crusade to eliminate Islam from the surface of earth.
During my intellectual journey into the mindset of the Taliban, I have met all these different faces of jihad, oftentimes embedded in the very same person, wandering in and out between mundane and sacred, social and personal rationales for taking up arms
During my intellectual journey into the mindset of the Taliban, I have met all these different faces of jihad, oftentimes embedded in the very same person, wandering in and out between mundane and sacred, social and personal rationales for taking up arms. These were people with various characteristics and personalities, not subhuman species as terrorists are often reduced to. I met the unpleasant Taliban, who taunted me because he didn’t consider me to be a true Muslim, and raised his patriarchal voice to set me straight. I have met the giant militant, who made me fear for my security, but as our conversation developed, turned out to be immensely goofy with several good jokes up his sleeve. I have also met the scheming Taliban who thought that I should go home and convey his formal message about keeping “your hands to yourself” to the west.
Then, there was this young person, sitting in front of me crouched and fearful, traumatized by his upbringing. He was from a poor family background in the tribal areas and his elder brother had beaten him regularly during his childhood. He ran away from home in a very young age, literally he met some militants on his way who persuaded him that militant jihad would add meaning to his life and guarantee him a merry afterlife. And he joined them. Now he could make sure his parents received compensation when he died as a martyr – at least he was promised. His secret dream though was to be able to live a normal life with a job as a mechanics, but “what else could I have done than joining their jihad”, he kept repeating mostly to convince himself, it seemed.
Meanwhile in the west, we keep on pursuing militaristic policies, which are not based on the slightest insight into the character of the movements that we are out to crush, or why recruits join them. The militaristic policies have since 2001 continuously proven to be only pushing around the problems, not reducing them i.e. the level of violence, the number of terrorist movements and their recruitment capabilities.
Today, between 10-20% of Afghanistan is still in the hands of the Taliban. In addition to losing territory to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, the Afghan army has come under pressure from the Islamic State who has made its entrance into both Afghanistan and Pakistan. In Pakistan, 134 children were massacred at a school in Peshawar in 2014 by the Pakistani Taliban – this was months after the Pakistani army initiated a large-scale operation to eliminate terrorist in all shapes and sizes in North Waziristan, the hotbed of the Pakistani Taliban. Al-Qaeda, the movement that Bush promised to destroy “piece by piece” in 2001, never left the area, but only expanded piece by piece, to North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, Syria, and Iraq, and recently they also announced the establishment of a new chapter to operate in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Myanmar. In fact, Al-Qaeda is more forcefully present than it was ever expected in 2011, when the death of Osama Bin Laden was celebrated as a huge victory of the war on terrorism.
There should be little doubt, that after more than a decade of fighting that started in Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan, and moved to places like Iraq, Mali and Syria, the mission of crushing terrorism does not only falter, but is producing more enemies and more terrorists. Until we are ready to face that the militaristic approaches are complicit in keeping the terrorist movements alive, we will never be able to turn the tide and develop better tools based on a deeper understanding of the multifaceted character of the enemy.
Featured image credit: Candlelight vigil for the victims of the Peshawar school siege, by Kashif Haque. CC-BY-SA-4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
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October 5, 2016
Etymology gleanings for September 2016
As usual, let me offer my non-formulaic, sincere thanks for the comments, additions, questions, and corrections. I have a theory that misspellings are the product of sorcery, as happened in my post on the idiom catch a crab (in rowing). According to the routine of many years, I proofread my texts with utmost care. The blog is posted on Wednesdays, and I usually write the first draft of the next one on a Thursday, let it simmer on a back burner, reread it several times, and finally send it to New York during the weekend. In the process I change a lot (“alot,” according to most undergraduate papers I happen to grade) and make sure that everything is correct. As a reward, the most elementary words sometimes appear misspelled. Wizardry is undoubtedly the cause of this shame. I have studied enough folklore to know how often “little men” come at night and do their work. They are usually friendly, but not always.

I am also grateful for several letters about Spelling Reform. If the Congress ever materializes, I’ll answer them later. At the moment, I see no point in beating a dead horse.
Huddle, an overused word
No doubt, the observation that huddle originated in team sport is correct, and I have nothing against this verb. I even have a soft spot for it, because I like the image it conjures up. Besides, I treat with respect all words of unknown origin, and huddle, cuddle (and, to a certain extent, scuttle) are among them: the first two are frequentative verbs with unclear roots (what is hud, and what is cud?). But huddle has been trodden to death, with a special grave reserved for it, since politicians and especially presidents are always said to huddle. The implication seems to be that those worthies find themselves in a state of permanent conspiracy or even collusion, whispering something to one another that we, poor mortals, are not supposed to overhear.

Slang, the thing and the word
In my most recent post, I averred with great vehemence that slang has always existed and that, contrary to what dictionaries say, the origin of the word slang is known. My statement aroused a serious critical comment, and I have to say something in my defense. Slang is a loose concept. In discussing it, people tend to lump together a great number of heterogeneous phenomena. For example, our ignominious F-word is called slang, along with many other formerly unprintable obscenities. All kinds of professional jargon, thieves’ cant, and simply colorful, racy words are often called slang. This approach does not clarify the problem.
I assume that human language has always had various registers. People speak differently with their peers and their superiors. There are words you’d rather not use addressing your grandmother. Expressive adjectives, nouns, and verbs must have been around forever. Naturally, our relatively scanty medieval texts have preserved few of them, but old poetry is full of elevated vocabulary, which presupposes the existence of its opposite. From Latin we know dozens of “low words,” for, naturally, in public baths young men resorted to the language different from that expected from them while addressing an oracle or a senator. That is why I believe that slang as a special register is ubiquitous and perennial.
Now the word. Its age has nothing to do with the age of the “thing.” The familiar terminology is recent. The terms jargon and argot were coined relatively late. Samuel Johnson, who wrote his English dictionary at the end of the eighteenth century, called slang words low. Our synonym for low would be vulgar. The evidence points to the origin of slang as I gave it in my post. It appears that the word was current in northern England, meant something like “hawker’s turf” and “itinerant salesmen’s language.” Analogs of this transfer (from the territory to the speech prevailing in it) exist, and the phrase slang patter seems to confirm the idea I defended. The mystery does not concern the origin of the word but rather its spread. Another northern noun that conquered the Standard is pimp. For Fielding and Goldsmith slang was a jocular word. To us it is stylistically neutral.
Etymologies are not theorems. In most cases, they cannot be “proved.” Anyone has the right to say: “I don’t believe it.” Historical linguistics as a field of human knowledge is not different from any other. It is dominated by authority. If some etymology appears in Skeat’s dictionary, no one is afraid to repeat it, for being wrong in such good company is fine. The approval of the OED is even better. So far, the etymology of slang in the OED online has not been revised, and I have no way of knowing what its editors think of my proposal. If one day it happens to be accepted at Oxford, everybody will immediately agree with it. But at the moment it is safer to sit on the fence. That’s fine with me: I have nowhere to hurry. As the mother duck said (though not about the fence) in “The Ugly Duckling”: “I’ve sat on this egg so long, I may sit for some more time.”

Avocado, its origin
Here is the entry from The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, with the abbreviations expanded: “Spanish avocado, advocate (whence French avocat), substituted by popular perversion for Aztec ahuacatl testicle, more closely represented by Spanish aguacate; further corrupted, through avigato, to alligator (pear).” Language is obviously the most corrupt and corrupted of all human institutions.
Boothy
Yes, Scottish boothy “wilderness hut” is indeed booth with a diminutive suffix. I would like to quote a passage from an early translation of Laxdæla Saga, one of the greatest tales recorded in medieval Iceland: “Kjartan and his companions had come south over the pass, and the dale was opening out, when Kjartan said that it was time for Thorkell and his brother to turn back. Thorkell said they would ride with him to the foot of the dale. And when they were come south as far as the boothies called the North Sheilings (sic), Kjartan said to the brothers that they were not to ride further.”
The turns and twists of Modern American English
Singular or plural?
A colleague showed me a sentence from a newspaper. Somebody said: “There are not much data on this problem.” Data is a tricky word. Fortunately, we no longer remember the origin of agenda, another Latin neuter plural.
Justice and poetic justice
Also from a newspaper. The gang squad’s Lt. XX was talking about the most troubled part of the town in which I live. Murder is a common occurrence there, and the murderers are invariably men (that is, males). But the whole world and his wife are now “they.” In speech, this is the result of what I call plural obfuscation: “A guy could’ve shot someone five years ago, and they went to prison, and now they’re out of prison, and they’re shot at because the gang doesn’t think that justice was served.”
Images: (1) The Elves from Household Stories at Project Gutenberg, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons (2) “Coywolf hybrids” by L. David Mech, Bruce W. Christensen, Cheryl S. Asa , Margaret Callahan, Julie K. Young, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons (3) “Cruikshank – Fagin in the condemned Cell (Oliver Twist)” by George Cruikshank, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. Featured image: Avocado by sandid, Public Domain via Pixabay.
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One concerned economist
A few weeks ago, I received an e-mail inviting me to sign a statement drafted by a group calling itself “Economists Concerned by Hillary Clinton’s Economic Agenda.”
The statement, a vaguely worded five paragraph denunciation of Democratic policies (and proposed policies) is unremarkable — as are the authors, a collection of reliably conservative policy makers and commentators whose support for Donald Trump and tirades against the Obama Administration appear with some regularity in the media.
What is remarkable, however, is that while the group states its opposition to Hillary Clinton’s economic agenda, it can’t bring itself to endorse Donald Trump or his economic platform. What makes this situation even more remarkable is that the mailing address of Economists Concerned by Hillary Clinton’s Economic Agenda is 725 5th Avenue in New York. Don’t bother looking it up—that’s the address of Trump Tower.
Why is a letter denouncing Clinton’s economic agenda without explicitly endorsing Trump’s emanating from Trump Tower?
My interpretation is that the drafters of the anti-Clinton statement, who are receiving at least some financial or logistical support from Trump, decided that it would be impossible to get a substantial number of economists to admit that they are backing Trump in the upcoming election. So they did the next best thing and solicited signers for an anti-Clinton statement.
This episode highlights the extent to which policy experts have shied away from backing Trump’s idiotic economic policy agenda. A recent Wall Street Journal poll of 45 economists who served under both Democratic and Republican presidents on the White House Council of Economic Advisors could not find a single Republican appointee who would admit to supporting Trump’s economic agenda. Indeed, conservative academic heavy-weights like Harvard economics professors Martin Feldstein and Greg Mankiw, who would normally support the Republican nominee, have announced their opposition to Trump.
Voters should be reminded by economic experts that Donald Trump’s economic agenda is a recipe for disaster.
Opposition to Trump is not limited to a few pointy-headed academic economists. The National Association of Business Economists’ asked its — presumably business friendly — members this summer “Which candidate would do the best job as president of managing the economy?” Among the 400-plus economists who responded, Clinton was supported by 55%, while Trump was backed by only 14%. In fact, Trump came in fourth: he was outpolled by Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson and “don’t know/no opinion”— which both garnered 15%.
Lack of confidence in Trump’s fitness to lead the country is not confined to economic experts. In August, a group of 50 prominent members of the Republican foreign and defense policy establishment signed a letter denouncing Trump’s candidacy and pledging not to vote for him. In September, a group of 75 retired senior diplomats, including ambassadors and senior State Department officials who served under Democratic and Republican presidents signed an open letter calling Donald Trump
Witches, werewolves, and Christmas
In Hamlet, Marcellus, referring to the royal ghost, says:
“It faded on the crowing of the cock. Some say that ever gainst that season comes wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated, this bird of dawning singeth all night long, and then, they say, no spirit dare walk abroad, The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike, No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, so hallowed and so gracious is that time.”
However, despite Shakespeare’s optimism about the weakness of demonic power during Christmas, folk in most European countries have thought the season to be one of increased menace from grim supernatural forces. It was widely believed that, as the hour for celebrating Christ’s birth drew closer, the forces of darkness raged ever more furiously against humanity.
The sixteenth-century historian Olaus Magnus said that in Prussia, Livonia and Lithuania, werewolves gathered on Christmas night and then spread out to “rage with wondrous ferocity against human beings…for when a human habitation has been detected by them isolated in the woods, they besiege it with atrocity, striving to break in the doors and in the event of doing so, they devour all the human beings, and every animal which is found within.” At a certain castle, the monsters held werewolf games and those too fat to leap over a wall were eaten by their fitter comrades.
It was also a medieval belief in Latvia and Estonia that “at Christmas a boy lame of leg goes round the country summoning the devil’s followers, who are countless, to a general conclave. Whoever remains behind, or goes reluctantly, is scourged by another with an iron whip…The human form vanishes and the whole multitude becomes wolves.” In Poland and northeastern Europe, it was believed that a child born on Christmas had a greater chance of becoming a werewolf and ritual steps were taken to prevent Christmas babies from this state.
On a milder note, in Louisiana it is said that Père Noel travels through the swamps and bayous on Christmas Eve in a flat-bottomed pirogue pulled by alligators and accompanied by a red-nosed were-wolf.

During pre-modern times, there was often confusion between good female spirits and bad, and a saint in one area might be regarded as a witch in another. Lucia, for example, is celebrated as a saint in Sicily and Sweden but in Central Europe she is the frightening Lutzelfrau who disembowels bad children and punishes lazy girls. Frau Berchta or Perchta can be a stealer of children in one part of Germany or the bringer of Christmas presents in another. In some places she leads the Wild Host, a gang of cursed souls of the unbaptized and murdered. In others, she leaves surprising gifts for those who help her. On Twelfth Night, in some areas, fish and rolls have to be eaten. If someone chooses to ignore this menu, Perchta will come and cut open his body, fill him with chaff and sew him up again with a ploughshare and an iron chain. It was best to stay out of the way of such figures and keep them from gaining admission to the house.
In order to safeguard humans and livestock against these evil spirits certain Christmas-time precautions were taken. The ringing of church bells had power to drive them away as did holy water sprinkled in corners of houses and barns; incense has a similar effect. Logs were left burning in fireplaces at night—sprinkling salt on the fire also helped as did choosing dry spruce which always provided an abundance of sparks. In much of Central Europe it was believed that loud noises will deter the forces of darkness and a number of ceremonies revolve around the firing of guns, the cracking of whips, the ringing of cow-bells and noisy processions of grotesquely costumed figures to drive demons away. In Austria, the Twelve Nights are known as the “Rauhnächte” or “rough nights;” this is a time for driving evil spirits away by incense, loud noises or using a broom. Figures clad as witches and devils will walk the streets with brooms, literally sweeping away unwanted spirits. In England, it was a time to polish the silverware so that spirits could see their faces and thus be deterred from stealing.
In fairness, it must be noted that sometimes devils such as Krampus, Klaubauf or Cert accompany the St Nicholas or the Christ Child on their Christmas gift-giving rounds and serve to frighten bad children into good behaviour. It should also be said that there are good witches at Christmas as well. In Italy the Befana, who is depicted as an old crone flying about on her broom, brings presents to children on Epiphany Eve. Her equivalent in Russia is the Baboushka. In the Franche-Comté the Gift-Bringer is also depicted as witch: goose-footed Tante Arie who comes down from the hills with her presents on Christmas Eve.
Featured image credit: “Spooky Moon” by Ray Bodden. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.
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6 common misconceptions about Salafi Muslims in the West
Salafism, often referred to as ‘Wahhabism’, is widely regarded as a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam that fuels Jihadism and subjugates women. Some even lump ISIS and Salafism together—casting suspicion upon the thousands of Muslims who identify as Salafi in the West. After gaining unprecedented access to Salafi women’s groups in London, I discovered the realities behind the myths. Discover the six most common misconceptions about Salafi Muslims in the West below:
Misconception #1: They’re all foreigners
Salafism is often—rightly—associated with Saudi Arabia. Indeed, it was this country’s immense oil wealth that enabled it to spread its ‘Wahhabi’ brand of Salafism abroad from the 1970s onward. But we should not deduce from this that Salafism in the West is essentially an ‘Eastern’ or ‘Gulf’ phenomenon.
Groups that identify as Salafi in Britain are dominated not by Saudi migrants—whose numbers are actually very small—but by young people who were born here or who arrived at an early age. These include second- and third-generation Muslims—particularly South Asians—but above all, young Somalis and Afro-Caribbean converts.
A growing number of young black people, typically with Christian backgrounds, have embraced Islam since the 1990s, with a significant number following the Salafi interpretation. This trend is most manifest in south London, where the Salafi mosque in Brixton (where I did much of my fieldwork) has offered a welcoming base for black converts—some of whom felt socially and culturally alienated at other mosques.
Brixton became known as the ‘revert [i.e. convert] mosque’ and the ‘Jamaican mosque’ during the 1990s. Today, however, it is also host to a burgeoning young Somali contingent, who arrived in Britain after fleeing the Somali Civil War in the 1990s or were born in Britain following their parents’ resettlement.
Salafism, for these British-born (or raised) Muslims, was convincingly ‘pure’ and ‘authentic’ because it appeared to be anchored in something familiar, authoritative, and readily accessible to them—the Islamic scriptures (Qur’an and Prophetic traditions). Many drew contrasts with what they described as a ‘cultural’ approach to Islam—i.e., traditions transplanted from their parents’ countries of origin.

Misconception #2: They support Jihadism and shari’a for the West
While aspects of their purist creed are shared by Jihadi groups, most—probably the vast majority of—Salafis in Europe are explicitly against terrorism. Not only that, but they tend to oppose all formal political forms of organisation, such as political parties and campaign groups. Although they believe that the shari’a is the best system, they do not seek to impose it on non-Muslim countries.
Instead, their (not uncontroversial) mission is peacefully to nurture distinct Muslim identities. This includes a duty to proselytize to both non-Muslims and Muslims who have, in their view, ‘deviated’ from the ‘correct’ path.
In Britain, the ‘Salafi’ label has been associated with non-violent, often quietist groups since at least the end of the 1990s. These Salafis have condemned Al-Qa‘ida and ISIS vocally and vociferously on public platforms—occasionally at some risk to their personal safety and reputations.
One preacher, for instance, encouraged his online followers to ‘mass distribute’ an anti-ISIS leaflet he had written, in which he urged anyone with information about terrorist plots to ‘inform the authorities’. That same preacher reported receiving death threats from ISIS sympathizers.
Misconception #3: They secretly support Jihadism and shari’a while publicly claiming to respect the law of the land
During nearly two-and-a-half years of fieldwork with Salafi groups, I never witnessed any explicit or implicit support for Jihadism, or calls for shari’a for the United Kingdom. I only ever witnessed condemnation of the former, and express prescriptions to obey the law of the land. While it is, of course, possible that Salafis moderate their speech in front of researchers, it would become almost impossible to keep this up after a few months of regular interaction. That’s why long-term participant research is so valuable.
Once I became a familiar face in Salafi circles, I became less conspicuous and people were less likely to react to my presence. In fact, a few women felt comfortable enough to tell me about their prior sympathy with or involvement in Jihadi groups, such as Al-Muhajiroun, and why they had left these. Other Salafis had actually helped them to understand that terrorism was forbidden by the scriptures.
Misconception #4: They are brainwashed
‘Brainwashing’ is typically understood as a coercive process that renders an individual powerless to choose an alternative course of action. Although five decades of research on New Religious Movements have yielded no empirical evidence for the so-called ‘brainwashing thesis’, it is nonetheless often regarded as the primary reason why people become ‘Islamic extremists’.
I found no evidence of so-called brainwashing. On the contrary, I found that the Salafi conversion process was largely intellectual, rather than based on social or other pressures.
Each woman’s story was unique, but all spoke of coming to see Salafism as an approach that made rational sense to them. Typically, I was told that Salafism was an evidence-based methodology, with every single prescription tied to ‘authentic’ scriptural ‘proofs’, rather than to culture or human opinion. This gave the women—most of whom had been exposed to a plethora of Islamic interpretations—the reassuring certainty that they were following the ‘pure’ Islam.
Far from being caused by social pressures, conversion often occurred despite protests from family and friends, and frequently led to long-term rifts in families and friendship groups. It also had little to do with warm feelings toward other Salafis. On the contrary, under the condition of anonymity, many interviewees spoke of the Salafi ‘sisterhood’ as cold, unwelcoming, and judgmental. Others said that their conversion was smoothed by the experience of a strong and supportive community—but this was often only during the holy month of Ramadan.
Misconception #5: They are the uneducated ‘drop-outs’ of society
Some argue that, while Salafis are not brainwashed, they are the downtrodden, alienated ‘drop-outs’ of society, whose lack of education makes them ill-equipped to make sensible, rational decisions about their lives.
My impression as a researcher was that these women are at least as likely as the general UK population to pursue higher education. Most of my interviewees had already started or finished university, and just one had no plans for further education. Most were also keen to launch or pursue existing careers.
Misconception #6: Salafi women are forced to wear niqabs (face veils)
Coerced veiling undoubtedly occurs in many societies, but I could not find a single case among the Salafi women I interviewed in Britain. I did, however, encounter many cases where women’s families tried to force them—sometimes threatening violence—to discard their veils and gowns, which they saw as ‘extremist’ or ‘the culture of the Arabs’. A few young women confessed to having actually concealed their niqab-wearing from relatives, wearing the veil only when at a safe distance from the family home.
Headline image credit: Women wearing niqabs in London. From PaoloNapolitano. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
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October 4, 2016
How Americans found information before the Internet
How was information used before the age of Google? Cookbooks showed people how to make new dishes; instructions packed with disassembled toys carried the terror-filled message “some assembly required” and ensured hours of labor on Christmas Eve for millions of parents. Today, people “Google,” but this kind of information gathering has occurred since the seventeenth century. When colonists landed in North America on the Mayflower in the 1600s, they started tracking who lived in towns in order to know how many teachers they needed to educate their children about the Bible, reading, arithmetic, and local colonial customs.
Why do we care about how people used information? Given the enormous amount of data we can obtain with Google searches, for example, we need to know how to sift through the 1.5 million hits for the ten we really could use. If you are helping a child prepare a paper for their class, the old idea of the family encyclopedia comes in pretty handy, but today we use a PC or an iPad, not the 12-volume Britannica. Obtaining information is as important as ever, yet we are not taught in any formal manner how to find and use information effectively. So, what does the historical record suggest people used to do?
They treated information as a tool. Much like you would reach out for a hammer to pound in a nail, people reached out for facts to facilitate research, answer a question being raised in conversation at a bar, or get directions to the zoo with a carload of noisy children. The devices they used to get to information were physical, such as a newspaper or book in the 1700s and 1800s. Because most Americans and Western Europeans could afford many of these tools by the 1870s, they acquired every new tool that became available.
Information and its tools acquired for one purpose were applied in other parts of peoples’ lives. In the 1880s, someone might learn about budgeting at work, then create a budget for their church. The practice of consulting military manuals on how to fix cars, trucks, and airplanes gave veterans confidence to fix lawnmowers, home heaters, and their own cars, relying on similar manuals.

As new bodies of information appeared, people sought these out. In the 1920s, psychologists discovered a whole new species: human teenagers. Before their discovery, these were just young workers. But with the discovery—or invention—of teenagers, parents sought out information on how to manage or control them because even in the 1920s teenagers wanted to use the family car, needed “walking around” money, and discovered premarital sex. Since then, hundreds of books and hundreds of thousands of articles have been published and sought out by parents dealing with this new development.
New information expanded rapidly during the mid-1800s when the Second Industrial Revolution began. In the 1880s, people needed to know how to install a toilet (the new fashion). Once refrigerators had freezer compartments in the 1920s, information was needed on how to cook using frozen food. In the 1980s, people learned how to operate a PC by relying on Microsoft’s user manuals, then later the PCs for Dummies books. In fact, people ran out so fast to acquire these kinds of practical guides that DOS for Dummies sold over a million copies in its first couple of years.
The arrival of the Internet opened a new era of accessibility to information, perhaps too much. However, people had learned how to find information in books, magazines, and conversations, and had learned to focus on immediately-needed facts. That same discipline is now imposed on the Internet. At work, people are taught to rely on algorithms, formulas developed by information providers to filter out what someone does not want. Instead of getting 1.5 million citations in Google, people are learning that artificial intelligence can get that down to, say, 100 or fewer.
They are carrying that expectation of the Internet and its tools over to their private lives. They want it to be even better. When MapQuest offered you three possible routes to your destination in the early 2000s, you became irritated because you just wanted to get somewhere as fast as possible. Today, you tap your smart phone and Siri calmly tells you how to get to your destination without giving options. The system knows you want to get there directly and quickly.
Googling in the twenty-first century is about searching using the Internet. Googling in the 1700s was about looking up things in a book. By the mid-1800s, it was about going down to your neighborhood library. The tools changed, but not the habits. That is why the history of how people used information is useful to know. It offers “best practices” to get information fast.
Featured image credit: Workspace by Tim Dorr. CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr.
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The early promise of “liquid” cancer tests
A powerful technology that continues to evolve, researchers say, has rekindled interest in liquid biopsies as a way to disrupt tumor progression.
The technology, genetic sequencing, is allowing researchers a closer look at the genetic trail tumors leave in the blood as cancer develops. That capability, as these new “liquid” blood tests work their way into clinics, may further a deeper understanding of how tumors alter their molecular masks to defy treatment. And it may help identify changes that foreshadow early, more treatable, disease.
The tests scour the blood for DNA fragments and other genetic materials that tumors shed as they grow. Some tests measure intact circulating tumor cells; others, circulating DNA alone; and still others look for exosomes, a grab bag of genetic debris that includes DNA, RNA, and metabolites.
Which approach, eventually, may best guide cancer treatment decisions in the future has yet to be determined—one of many unknowns that researchers face as commercial interest in liquid biopsies increases. The India-based consulting firm RNCOS estimates that the market will cross the $1 billion mark by 2020. At least 30 companies are competing for a market foothold.
According to Richard Schilsky, MD, SVP and chief medical officer of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), such tests’ great promise is to monitor tumors over the long term as they change genetically to escape detection and develop resistance. “No one is suggesting they should be used yet for early screening or as a diagnostic test. We’re not ready for that type of use,” he said.
Where liquid biopsies will probably carry initial patient benefit, Schilsky and others said, is as a backup or as a possible alternative to surgical tissue biopsies, the standard method doctors use to get information about tumors’ genetic makeup and how best to treat them. But biopsies can be painful, carry considerable cost, and may not be possible, depending on a tumor’s location or a patient’s health. So having a noninvasive and potentially cheaper way to track—and perhaps even diagnose—early cancers with a simple blood test someday has long held appeal. “We need to know if one mutation found by liquid biopsy is representative of the tumor burden. And if you have one mutation, can you base your treatment on that one mutation?”
Prenatal Ties
Liquid biopsies began to gain traction in the cancer community about two years ago, although the technology is not new. Cell-free DNA technology—that is, measuring circulating DNA in the blood—grew out of prenatal testing for fetal abnormalities. Those tests, separating fetal from maternal DNA in the blood, unexpectedly detected several maternal cancers. That discovery led to liquid biopsies’ entry into the far larger cancer market today.

Among the many companies funding liquid biopsy development are industry giants such as Johnson and Johnson, Illumina, Qiagen, Foundation Medicine, and Roche. Roche won approval in June from the US Food and Drug Administration for the first liquid biopsy test for patients with advanced non–small-cell lung cancer. The test picks up mutations in a mutated gene on the surface of cells, found in 10%–20% of lung cancer patients. Many of these patients often respond to the targeted drug, erlotinib (Tarceva), which tamps down the rapid cell division characteristic of all cancers.
Guardant Health, based in Redwood City, CA, recently completed a study of its liquid biopsy assay, which measures 70 cancer-related mutations in the blood. Results of the study, the largest to date, were released at the annual ASCO meeting in Chicago this past June.
“What we intended to do is identify those mutations that can be treated,” said Philip Mack, PhD, director of molecular pharmacology at the University of California, Davis, Comprehensive Cancer Center. “Otherwise, there would be no impact on the clinical situation.”
Mack, a consultant for Guardant, presented the study’s findings. Overall, the genomic patterns identified by blood tests in 15,000 patients with some 50 tumor types closely matched those documented in tumor-profiling studies in the literature.
Also, in a cohort of nearly 400 patients, direct comparisons were made between circulating DNA in the bloodstream and tissue samples previously removed from the same cancer patients. If a mutation was detected in the blood it also was picked up in the tumor 94%–100% of the time. The assays also identified several treatment resistance–related mutations, which the investigators said the original tissue biopsy missed.
Fifteen percent of patients, however, had no detectable tumor DNA.
“You’re always going to miss something, but 15% is pretty good,” Mack said. What most people are concerned about is false positives, especially in early disease, when tumors shed far less DNA than their fast-growing, aggressive counterparts, he said.
Research Hurdles
At this point, using biopsies as a diagnostic tool has several limitations. Researchers don’t yet know, for instance, which tumors shed the most DNA into the blood. Also uncertain is whether some tumors shed no detectable DNA at all.
“This is a most intriguing question,” said Sudhir Srivastava, PhD, MPH, chief of the cancer biomarker research group in the National Cancer Institute’s division of cancer prevention. The typical volume collected for routine bloodwork is 4mL for adults. “To detect a single DNA mutation in the blood, you need 5–10 mL of blood,” he said, illustrating the technical challenges ahead, despite rapid advances in gene sequencing over the past decade.
Srivastava called for more comparison studies between tissue samples and liquid biopsies.
“We need to know if one mutation found by liquid biopsy is representative of the tumor burden,” he said. And, with tumors’ diversity, he added, “If you have one mutation, can you base your treatment on that one mutation?”
For now, Srivastava said he agrees that the most immediate use for these blood-based tests will be monitoring treatment, predicting recurrence, and tracking resistance.
But caveats remain. Sensitivity needs to improve. And “if we want to use these tests to find early mutations associated with drug resistance, it’s only useful if we can offer patients an alternative therapy to stop exposure to harmful side effects,” ASCO’s Schilsky said.
Looking Ahead
According to Mack, investigators will meanwhile follow up on the early Guardant data to look for additional mutations that contribute to cancer’s rise. Multicenter clinical trials in patients with advanced cancers are planned, he said—to not only validate these new molecular findings but also intervene as resistance develops.
Of the three blood-based approaches to capturing cancer information, Mack said he feels measuring circulating tumor DNA remains the optimal way—and the one with the fastest turnaround time.
But even that approach, he conceded, may not be up to finding cancers anytime soon in a routine blood test in seemingly healthy people.
“Early-stage tumors are hard to detect,” Mack said. “And precancerous tumors might not show up at all with this technology.”
Whether a combination approach might work better remains to be seen. At least one company in England is exploring that possibility, believing side-by-side technologies may show more about tumor DNA content, said Leonard Lichtenfeld, MD, deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society in Atlanta. If successful, however, such tests must be refined enough to overcome concerns about detecting “something that may not turn into cancer, but lie dormant for many years,” he said. “Our need is to identify which information we can detect has true clinical implications for the individual.”
Schilsky puts it another way: “If you have a test with infinite capacity to interpret mutations, what does that mean? The clinical community has to sort out its real value.”
A version of this blog post first appeared in Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
Featured image credit: blood tubes by keepingtime_ca. CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr.
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Counter-terrorism and mental health issues
Throughout the world, many people suffer from profound afflictions of mental illness. Of these, a plainly substantial number are inclined to various forms of violent behavior. And when opportunities arise to dignify their more-or-less irrepressible violent behaviors under the purifying rubric of some “higher cause” — e.g., revolution, rebellion, or jihad — some will gratefully seize upon those “exculpatory” opportunities.
There is a singularly important lesson here for our growing struggle against terrorism, even if it should now be declared (with great political fanfare) a “world war.” It is that in many cases, religion and politics are not genuinely causal. Rather, and far more often than we still willingly understand, such allegedly high-minded associations are merely an ex post facto rationalization of certain inherently barbarous human behaviors.
This is evident — as was the case with ISIS, and the horror inflicted along the Cote d’Azur, in Nice — even where an established terror group deviously claims the particular mass murderer as one of its own “soldiers.”
“Homo homini lupus,” said Freud. “Man is a wolf to man.” In essence, this unassailably correct observation lies at the explanatory heart of all forms of terrorism, as it does, also, of war, genocide, and myriad iterations of violent crime. It follows that if we should ever really want to declare a sincere “world war on terrorism,” a meaningful advocacy more serious than just another shallow politician’s empty metaphor, we would first have to go beyond the usual mélange of military and security remedies. It’s not that these proposed remedies are necessarily wrong or inappropriate, but rather, that they can generally never exceed a more-or-less futile tinkering at the margins of what is most important.
Years back, Harold Lasswell, the great American political scientist, described political figures as those who “displace their private motives on public objects, and rationalize the displacement in terms of public advantage.” What he meant by this conspicuously psychological explanation was simply that the core motives of politicians may be deeply personal, relate primarily to apprehensions over deference or status, and still be reassuringly justified or “sanitized” in terms of some elevated motive. To wit, no candidate for the American presidency will ever acknowledge that he or she is running for office in order to maximize compelling personal needs or satisfactions, but all candidates will readily affirm that they have been “called” to rescue an imperiled nation from one or another of the “usual suspects.”
To be sure, there is no credibly scientific way in which determinations of motive can be usefully foreseen or subsequently diagnosed, but even a quick glance at the identified perpetrators in Nice, Orlando, and New York will support this “Lasswellian” hypothesis. It follows that our next step in fashioning more purposeful counterterrorism must be a sober awareness (however distressing) that many of our potentially most dangerous terrorist adversaries cannot always be rooted out via the usual forms of intelligence, counterintelligence, and homeland security — even when all such protective operations would function flawlessly.
Terrorism and the psychiatric are plausibly inseparable. But where shall we go from here at the policy level?
Nowadays, the standard characterization for seemingly eccentric terrorist foes is “lone wolf,” but even if we should prefer to preserve this otherwise apt analogy, it is also essential that we begin to understand something more: The particular psychiatric dynamic that may set off future “lone wolves” would not necessarily be any genuine commitment to some cause or other, but rather a convenient and accessible opportunity to dignify ordinary crimes.
In the absence of such a useful justification dynamic, these crimes would simply be heinous and inexcusable. With its self-serving invocation, however, they can readily become “heroic” acts of revolution, liberation, or “martyrdom.” For the calculating perpetrator — and mental illness does not preclude high intellectual capacity — an available metamorphosis of criminal violence into permissible and even celebrated forms of presumed obligation could be most welcome. For today’s terrorist, whether in Paris, Orlando, or Nice, the mass murder of noncombatants is a satisfying expiation, a scapegoating operation that brings to mind certain ritualistic processes of bloodletting and religious sacrifice. For the jihadist in particular, terror may find a ready ideological shelter in Islam, but more often than we seem to understand, the expressed theology is little more than a disguise or masquerade. Undoubtedly, this underlying theology represents an unambiguously authentic source of Islamic radicalism, and must be truthfully recognized; nonetheless, without a ready source of already twisted adherents, it would pose less of a civilizational threat.
Just how much less, of course, is not an answer we should seriously seek in politics.
“Man seeks for drama and excitement,” wrote Erich Fromm, “but when he cannot get satisfaction on a higher level, he creates for himself the drama of destruction.” As to the sacrifice of innocents, in Florida or in France, an aptly ritual bloodletting furnishes the prospective terrorist with (1) a seemingly incomparable outlet for those grievously violent impulses that he or she cannot hold in check by self-restraint; and (2) a corollary opportunity to disguise grotesque forms of murder as “faith.”
In the end, terrorism and the psychiatric are plausibly inseparable. But where shall we go from here at the policy level; how, pragmatically, shall we build upon this hugely complicating factor in creating a more promising strategy of counterterrorism? If there are literally millions of remorseless and deeply troubled individuals across the world who might crave a “drama of destruction,” and who could expectedly discover retroactive justification or a palpable redemption in religion or other “high” motives, what can be done operationally to identify and to neutralize them?
Naturally, the task, even if it could somehow be executed legally and decently, might lie well beyond the realm of possibility. Here, the sheer numbers involved would be overwhelming; further, we can’t simply convert usable counterterrorism policy into an urgent new branch of psychiatry.
Still, we also can’t just continue to fashion such an obviously indispensable policy according to multiple false presumptions. In the final analysis, as in all science, truth alone is exculpatory. In the end, our operational plans concerning jihadist terrorism may need to be more consciously structured upon the cumulative wisdom of Erich Fromm and Sigmund Freud, than upon Sun-Tzu or Clausewitz.
More than anything else, this means (a) taking care not to consider all “sheltered” or rationalized excursions into mass killing as expressions of genuine terrorism; (b) acknowledging the core limitations of seeking and identifying prospective terrorists exclusively in connection with known terrorist organizations or movements; and (c) creating more suitable “firewalls” between psychopathic behaviors and political interventions. This last recommendation must depend upon prior efforts to disabuse pertinent individuals of a virulently seductive but hopefully still-expungable notion; that is, that terrorism can offer would-be killers an incomparable path to sacredness and redemption.
Featured image credit: US Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Pablo Perez provides security during counter-improvised explosive device training at Camp Leatherneck in the Helmand province by Defense.gov News Photos archive. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
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The eighteenth-century rhythm riddle: what is the quarter note quandary?
If you were to ask a modern musician what the quarter note means in Common Time the answer would be simple: “It lasts for one full beat, to be released at the beginning of the succeeding beat.” Ah, but eighteenth-century rhythm reading is not a simple “one-size-fits-all” affair. Just as spoken language has evolved over time, so has music notational language. The notation has remained much the same; it is how the notation is read that has changed. So, how is the quarter note quandary solved? Gazing at the issue through an eighteenth-century lens will answer the riddle.
Eighteenth-century style is one of clarity – expressive rhythmic clarity – that projects character or affekt through the notation at hand. And the crisp, articulate fortepiano is the perfectly suited instrument for executing the style. All rhythmic elements are chosen to reflect affekt; so much so that when certain elements are present a particular affekt is understood. The Rhythm Schemata diagram provides insight to the interacting elements:

Rhythm Schemata
Notice that affekt is at the center of the wheel. All notational decisions – appropriate tempo and meter, carefully crafted formal and phrase structure to allow for execution of rhetoric, and specific rhythm choices – are made to express the desired affekt.
Execution of the quarter note varies greatly depending on tempo and meter choices, which are directly related to period dances. For example, a march in duple meter commands a different affekt than a minuet in triple meter. Just like there are heavy and light meters, note values act in much the same way. A time signature with a 2 in the bottom denotes heavy affekt, one with a 4 lighter, and one with an 8 in the bottom lighter yet. Note value choices within the meter provide execution clues. For instance, a piece made up primarily of half and quarter notes would be heavier than one of eighth and sixteenth notes. A comparison of Beethoven’s Sonata, op. 10, no. 3 to his Sonata op. 14, no. 2 demonstrates how note values take on differing character based on these period practices. So, the quarter note may take on a variety of characters, and consequently lengths, based on affekt.
Today, legato is the ordinary way of playing. If a line is presented with no markings (staccato or legato), the performer assumes to play legato, holding every rhythm for the full value. Not so in eighteenth-century style. This is where the answer to the riddle lies: The quarter note is held for its full value only when it occurs under a slur or a tenuto marking. How long should it be held? Just when is it appropriate to release the quarter note? This is where affekt is essential (and why it is at the center of the wheel). Depending on affekt, a quarter note may be cut quite short (like a crisp timpani attack) or held for most of the beat (as in a forlorn oboe solo). One must turn to the nuances of notation – formal structure, meter, expression marks, dynamics, and beaming – for clues.
Taking specific steps will facilitate creating a rhythmically authentic and personal eighteenth-century style on the modern piano.
Begin with Urtext. It is essential to work from an authentic score to determine how best to follow the clues left by the composer rather than an interpretation offered by an editor.
During initial experiences work with a piece that contains simple textures and is quite bare (few slurs or dynamic markings). Simple dances from Mozart’s Klavierstücke, Beethoven’s German Dances, or Piano Sonata in C Major, K. 545 by Mozart are good starting places.
Do some digging: What dance is being described? Is the meter heavy or light? In context, are the note values heavy or light? Unearthing answers will impact the length of the quarter notes.
Hold the quarter notes for full value only when under a slur or tenuto.
Strive for a strong metrical pulse. The down-beat is extremely important in this style.
Allow the energy and expression (determined by the affekt) to influence carefully placed timing and rubato within metrical boundaries.
Sing each line; this will go a long way in deciding tasteful rhythmic length and timing.
The fortepiano’s strength is crispness and clarity of tone, the modern piano’s is to produce a long, legato line. Listen carefully and continually. Adjust to the feedback from the instrument to prevent a choppy tone and choked endings of phrases.
Hear the improvement in the sound aesthetic as you move through the following audio examples: 1) a frequently-heard modern rendition, 2) an interpretation on a Belt-Walter replica ca. 1780’s five-octave fortepiano, and 3) a reconciled and historically informed rendition on a modern piano. The energy and vibrancy provided by using period rhythm-reading strategies is markedly noticeable.
http://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Example-1-Clementi-Sonatina-op.-36-no.1-ms.-1-6.m4a
http://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Example-2-Clementi-Sonatina-op.-36-no.1-ms.-1-6.m4a
http://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Example-3-Clementi-Sonatina-op.-36-no.-1-ms.-1-6.m4a
Clementi, Piano Sonatina in C Major, op. 36, no. 1/I, mm. 1-6.
Taking the time to view the score through an eighteenth-century lens and apply the period performance practices judiciously to modern playing provides the opportunity to discover an old language that may be recreated in a new way.
Featured image: “Fortepiano label” by Ching. CC by 2.0 via Flickr.
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October 3, 2016
Churches and politics: why the Johnson Amendment should be modified and not repealed
Speaking before the Family Research Council, the Republican nominee for president, Donald Trump, called for a repeal of the “Johnson Amendment.” The Johnson Amendment is part of Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, and prohibits tax-exempt organizations such as schools, hospitals, and churches from participating in political campaigns. The Republican Party’s 2016 platform echoes Mr. Trump and similarly urges repeal of the Code’s prohibition on political activity by tax-exempt entities.
In particular, the “Johnson Amendment” states that an institution tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3) cannot “participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.” The IRS interprets this bar broadly to prevent, in many situations, personnel of schools, hospitals, churches, and similar tax-exempt entities from expressing political opinions in their institutional capacities.
This provision of the Internal Revenue Code was introduced by then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson on the floor of the United States Senate in 1954, as Congress debated the recodification of the federal tax law. The Johnson Amendment passed with little discussion. Today this prohibition has become controversial as churches and their ministers claim that the federal tax law improperly prevents them from speaking on matters of public importance.
Congress should modify the Johnson Amendment, not repeal it altogether. Internal church communications should be protected from governmental interference, but tax-exempt institutions should not be used to divert tax-deductible financial resources to political campaigns.
Critics of the Johnson Amendment raise important concerns.
Some of the IRS’s interpretations of the law are troubling as applied to churches and other religious entities. For example, under the IRS’s “issue advocacy” standard, a minister’s sermon could jeopardize her church’s tax-exempt status if the minister from her pulpit supports or opposes abortion rights, same-sex marriage, gun control, the death penalty, or the Confederate flag should the IRS determine this subject to be “a prominent issue” in a current electoral campaign.
Critics of current law occupy their strongest ground when they seek to protect internal communications within congregations. The Johnson Amendment unacceptably entangles church and state insofar as the Internal Revenue Code now requires the IRS to monitor and evaluate discussions within congregations to ascertain if those discussions constitute political campaigning including “issue advocacy.”
Had Section 501(c)(3)’s ban on campaigning been aggressively enforced in the past, American life would have been diminished. Such causes as abolitionism and civil rights were deeply anchored in America’s churches. In particular instances, the “issue advocacy” of churches could have been construed as political campaigning, forbidden by the Johnson Amendment.
The Johnson Amendment unacceptably entangles church and state.
Consider in this context an iconic moment in American history: Martin Luther King, Sr.’s switch of his support in the 1960 presidential election from Richard M. Nixon to John F. Kennedy. Rev. King announced that he now supported Kennedy (despite Kennedy’s Catholicism) because of Kennedy’s telephone call to Mrs. Coretta Scott King. In that call, Kennedy had expressed concern for the safety of Martin Luther King, Jr., recently arrested by the Atlanta police and being held in a Georgia state prison.
Under the IRS’s current interpretation of Section 501(c)(3), this endorsement, had it been made from the pulpit or been construed as an official church statement, could have cost Rev. King’s church its tax-exempt status. It entangles church and state unacceptably for the IRS to monitor and police internal communications within churches, synagogues, mosques, and other religious congregations. The opponents of current law correctly argue that the federal tax collector should not be entangled with churches in this way.
However, these critics press their case too far when they call for complete repeal of the Johnson Amendment. Without some restraints, nonprofit institutions (including churches and other religious congregations) could become conduits for funneling income tax deductible resources into political campaigns. If there were no Johnson Amendment, a church (or a school or a hospital) might agree to receive a tax-deductible contribution from a political donor and then pass those funds to the campaign the donor supports. The proponents of Section 501(c)(3) in its current form correctly raise the prospect of such tax-deductible resource diversion in the absence of some variant of the Johnson Amendment.
Balancing these concerns, the Internal Revenue Code should be modified to permit any kind of internal communication within a church or other religious institution. It unacceptably entangles church and state for the IRS to monitor and police internal communications within churches, synagogues, mosques or other religious congregations. So modified, the prohibitions of the Johnson Amendment should be retained in Section 501(c)(3) to prevent the diversion of tax-deductible dollars to political campaigns.
Featured image credit: church wood benches by MichaelGaida. Public domain via Pixabay.
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