This morning I was forwarded an Op-Ed from the Chronicle of Higher Education written by Carlin Romano, a journalist and scholar of media theory at the University of Pennsylvania. Entitled “Of Minarets and Massacres,” the Op-Ed came across as an opportunistic diatribe against what Romano sees as the egregious hypocrisy of Muslims (and ‘self-hating’ Europeans and liberals) who have condemned the recent Swiss democratic vote (57% in favor) to ban the construction of minarets on mosques in the country.

AP Photo.

The ban will now be added to the Swiss Constitution. Only four mosques in Switzerland even have minarets, and two more were being planned prior to the ban. So the vote was not a reaction to some serious minaret problem impacting Swiss society (such as the cacophony of prayer calls one might hear in Cairo or Ankara). Rather, the vote was a manifestation of a deep-seeded irrational fear and it screams of xenophobic prejudice and paranoid fantasies that the Moslem [sic] hordes are on the march.

But Romano “does not weep,” as he put it, for the Swiss ban because he is “too busy weeping for the Armenians, the first people in their corner of the world to officially adopt Christianity, almost eliminated from history due to regular massacres by the Muslim Turks.” That’s right. Romano makes the astounding rhetorical leap from the November 2009 Swiss vote banning minarets all the way to the horrors of the Armenian genocide by Ottoman Turks one hundred years ago. There is no explicit connection between the two, save for the fact that the majority of Switzerland’s 400,000 Muslims are of Turkish and Albanian origin.

To be clear, I am not questioning the tragedy of the Armenian genocide.  But how does it justify Switzerland’s institutionalized discrimination against its Muslim citizens (and migrant workers) in the 21^st century? Doesn’t Western Europe pride itself on the righteous ideals of the Enlightenment, human rights, and international law?

Romano’s answer: “So long as Muslims anywhere keep their place in the House of Islam everywhere, they bear some responsibility for the actions of their fellow believers.” He further states:

If you steep yourself in the atrocities of the Armenian genocide, not to mention the many intolerances exhibited by majority-Muslim societies toward Christians, Jews, women, gays, and other non-Muslims, one’s conclusion is not an absolutist moral judgment, but a decision on who owes a greater apology to whom, a decision on how to allocate one’s moral energy. The day that Turkey apologizes and pays reparations for theArmenian genocide, that Saudi Arabia permits the building of churches and synagogues, that the Arab world thinks the homeland principles it applies to the Arabs of Palestine also apply to the Armenians of Turkey—on that day, I will find time to commiserate with the generally kind and hard-working Muslims of Switzerland.

I found his insistence on referring to Istanbul as “Constantinople” particularly amusing.  His dismissal of Serbian “persecution” of Bosnian Muslims was also charming.

If Romano were sincerely interested in tackling this subject, and not exploiting it as an opportunity to air his general dislike of Islam and recount the atrocities of the Young Turks and Turkish nationalists against the Armenians (not to mention the aggressive campaign to ‘Turkicize’ the Kurds – but they’re Muslims so Romano ignores them), a far more fruitful and appropriate discussion would have focused on a subject such as Egypt’s institutionalized restrictions against Church construction (as well as repairs and routine maintenance) for its Coptic Christian citizens (approx. 15% of the population).

Those restrictions are, however, rooted in medieval law and enacted in a country where the Constitution states that Islamic law (shariah) is the principle source of legislation. Deplorable yes, but has Switzerland reverted to medieval law like Egypt? Or is Romano suggesting that we in the West should regress to the Dark Ages out of spite?

Romano does admittedly preface his remarks by noting the “widened spectrum of ‘context’” for intellectual debates in the era of online commentaries. But rather than rectifying what he calls the “anarchy of cybercommentary,” he fully indulges in it and perpetuates the same fruitless level of discourse by engaging in something akin to a childish airing of historical grievances. In the process, he succeeds in painting himself as an “Islamophobe” and discredits his own academic credentials (which are completely unrelated to Islamic studies, history, or related disciplines to start).

He deliberately constructs a historical narrative of the Armenian genocide as a binary Muslim slaughter of Christians, and pastes copious dates and data into his Op-Ed to dress his polemic with a facade of academic authority.  But his framework is erroneous.  He (intentionally?) overlooks the fact that while a Muslim empire ruled the region for centuries, the genocide of ethnic Armenians coincided with a wave of ethnic nationalism sweeping Europe and the broader region at the turn of the century.  The Turks were busy creating a Turkish homeland for themselves (not an “Islamic state”) as the old Ottoman Empire crumbled before them.

The Arabs were busy too, fighting and seceding from the Ottoman Turks (siding with the Christian British) to create their own ethno-nationalist nation-states (or as Romano would put it “Muslim fighting Muslim”). The Orthodox Christian Czars of the Russian Empire, long a bitter foe of the Ottoman Turks, claimed authority over the Orthodox Christian minorities (or millets) in the Ottoman Empire following the decline of its military power and submission to several humiliating treaties. The Young Turks, who were Turkish nationalists (not Islamic activists), allied the Ottoman Empire with the (Christian) Germans, but the Armenians were the natural allies of the Russians.  Some Armenian units actively fought for the Russians.

Religion, in this complex picture, was just one source of division and conflicting interests, not the motivating force for a horrific genocide. Thus, as Romano writes: “That year, 1915, saw the awful crescendo of the genocide as the CUP government forcibly deported Armenians eastward [to Syria, Iraq, and Russian territory], tortured, massacred, and starved them on death marches, confiscated their property, killed almost all of the arrested 250 leaders, and resettled Muslim [i.e. Turkish!] refugees on Armenian land.”

Also, we might note that the current Islamist-oriented government in Turkey recently established diplomatic relations with Armenia and President Abdullah Gul is the first Turkish leader to visit Armenia.

But, to get back to the point, as Romano suggests, “Let’s talk again about voting against two new minarets in Switzerland.” I paraphrase Romano’s argument as follows:

If Muslims do bad things to religious minorities, women, gays, and others in their countries, we in the Western countries, like Switzerland, should betray our own principles of justice and equality and hypocritically lower ourselves to the same level of injustice and discrimination. Then after this game of tit-for-tat, and only then, will we give equal rights to the Moslems [sic] that reside in our borders as tolerated aliens.

How was this nonsense printed in an “academic” publication like the Chronicle? This is the last sort of narrative discourse we ought to be perpetuating. It does not serve Western or global interests in the least. In fact, Islamist extremists would undoubtedly look upon these developments with delight. The “wicked Crusader West” is oppressing more Muslims in their own borders – perfect! What a wonderful recruiting opportunity for embedded terrorist cells.

Switzerland, and the rest of Europe, should remain true to their ideals and universally apply them to all those who legally reside within their borders. Hypocrisy is not an image we want to (further) project to the Muslim world, even if many in the Muslim world are guilty of the same sin themselves.

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As an American who has traveled overseas throughout my life, as well as a teacher of intercultural communication, I often wonder how it is that we don’t relate travel experiences and study abroad to the potential for loneliness and identity questions—and to the potential for association with radical groups. I remember traveling to Turkey, alone, as a woman, with no clue as to how I would be perceived, with the false security of a Lonely Planet Turkey guidebook in hand. After relentless pursuit throughout Istanbul by various men of different ages due largely, I suspected at the time, to my uncovered blond hair, I realized that I hated Turkey, and all the people in it. I was so incredibly relieved when I met a group of fellow Americans at a youth hostel in Sultanahmet that I wound up traveling with them for a week. It took me six days to realize that these fellow travelers were missionary Christians who were attempting to convert people (possibly me) to their religion.Somehow, my desperate need for cultural similarity due to my lack of preparation for the cultural differences of my destination allowed me to overlook the rather obvious recruitment tactics of this particular group—which included the fact that they wore T-shirts with bible verses on them.

When my students or other travelers I meet ask me why I love to travel and to study travel, I try to explain that I am interested in what happens to the parts of our identities that are called into question when we are faced with ideas and ideals that are different from our own. These moments of heightened uncertainty leave us more open to the influences of people and movements championing passion, belonging, and a stronger sense of group identity. Such influence has greater potential to occur when people relocate to strange countries without the resources through which to create strong support systems and coping mechanisms for identity needs called into question, creating the psychological crisis commonly known as culture shock.

So how does culture shock relate to the ‘war on terror’?In their book, Handbook of Intercultural Training, Drs. Janet and Milton Bennett and Dr. Daniel Landis define culture shock as “…a crisis of identity characterized by feelings of inadequacy, frustration, and anxiety [that goes]…hand-and-hand with the realization that the new environment may be ‘difficult’ and requires considerable effort to negotiate” (2004, p. 187). Specifically, culture shock takes place as one of a series of stages in the cross-cultural adaptation process.The traditional stages of the culture shock model predict that the traveler will go through anywhere from three to five stages of emotional adaptation throughout his or her time abroad:

• The honeymoon stage, leading to feelings of initial euphoria
• Culture shock, resulting from feelings of disorientation
• Hostility towards the host culture, leading to feelings of resentment
• Initial adaptation, leading to a sense of autonomy within the host culture
• Assimilation into the host culture, and a sense belonging in both host and home culture

Under these kinds of circumstances, isolated and unequipped for the shock of culturally unfamiliar environments, individuals can become drawn into religious, ideological movements that they might otherwise not be drawn to, simply for a sense of identity inclusion and understanding. Witness, for example, Mark Sagemen’s picture of the terrorists involved in the al Qaeda movement. He characterizes them as highly educated, middle-to-upper middle class men in their mid-twenties or older, who are not necessarily of strong religious backgrounds, and who for a large part have been disconnected from their homelands. In The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright notes that Said Qutb, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mohammed Atta and Osama bin Laden, among others, all lived outside their home cultures, all well-educated, scientifically motivated, relatively non-religious men who experienced crises of faith in a similar manner to the crisis of identity experienced in culture shock.

Sageman’s perspective is that when individuals “became homesick, they did what anyone would and tried to congregate with people like themselves…not because they were religious, but because they were seeking friends.” This elucidates an important link between research on culture shock and the very real, applied issues of the spread of dangerous fundamentalist ideologies. Through this link, we may come closer to understanding how an intelligent individual living in a strange country would gravitate to places that remind him of home, even if it is symbolic rather than realistic. Further, the embodiment of friendship/family bonds within Islamist groups creates a space of emotional as well as identity support—a family away from family, a home away from home. Under these circumstances, people who are experiencing identity vulnerability might also be more suggestible to radical ideas, particularly if following such ideas and ideologies allows them to be accepted by the group and feel a connection to their own homelands, and particularly if they are discriminated against within their host cultures. Indeed, sociologists Dr. Robert Benford and Dr. David Snow emphasize the psychology of identity as it is involved in social movement:“Participation in social movements frequently involves enlargement of personal identity for participation and offers fulfillment and realization of self” (p. 631).

I believe that those who wish to combat terrorism would be wise to examine the histories of terrorist cell recruits and founders from the culture shock perspective. An interesting notion would be for university study abroad offices and terrorism experts to coordinate in an attempt to understand culture transition processes and provide better resources for easing the pains of the transition. This could be a particularly important resource for recruitment interventions, as study abroad and international programs offices at American universities filter through hundreds of thousands of international students each year—and we should remember that such influential individuals as Qutb and Zawahiri attended such universities and indeed probably experienced such culturally shocking experiences as prejudice, alien ideas, and lack of cultural tolerance. Terrorism experts can also work with international exchange coordinators and diplomatic organizations to implement better programs to educate and assist sojourners in their transition experience, both in terms of accomplishing tasks in an unfamiliar place and in terms of emotional support. In particular, creating international, multi-ethnic, multicultural third cultures at sites of intercultural contact can ease the growing pains of culture shock while creating cultures of tolerance for diversity, rather than relegating international students to enclaves of similar cultural backgrounds.

Terrorism of the kind we are facing today is not born and bred from the proletariat, as may be widely believed (although it may recruit from there); it has in many cases arisen from the disenfranchised and educated who may be seeking some sense of understanding and cultural identity in a dizzyingly fragmented world. Culture shock models should be actively applied to circumstances outside of the classroom, probing the circumstances through which individuals living in cultures far from home are recruited to fundamentalist groups. Such knowledge can assist in discerning if and how interventions can be made at the vulnerable moment when young intelligent travelers are lonely and isolated, far from home, and experiencing the crushing vulnerability and inevitable questioning of culture shock. In this manner, this work can move the practice of intercultural understanding onto the wider world stage.

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