Matthew Kaemingk:
Welcome to Zealots at the Gate, a podcast of Comment magazine. I’m Matthew Kaemingk.
Shadi Hamid:
I’m Shadi Hamid.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Together, we research, politics, religion, and the future of democracy at Fuller Seminary’s Mouw Institute of Faith and Public Life.
Shadi Hamid:
We are writing a book together. This podcast represents an informal space where we can talk about how to live with deep difference. Thanks so much for joining us.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Hey friends, welcome to Zealots at the Gate, and welcome especially to season three. Zealots at the Gate is a podcast of Comment magazine. My name’s Matthew Kaemingk. Along with me here is Dr. Shadi Hamid, my co-host. I’m a Christian. Shadi is a Muslim. I study theology and ethics. Shadi studies political science and international relations. Shadi is a little more of a Democrat. I’m a little more of a Republican, so obviously, we have a lot of deep differences. Together, Shadi and I are researching politics and religion and the future of democracy at Fuller Seminary’s Mouw Institute of Faith and Public Life. We’re writing a book together on those topics, and this podcast is an informal space where we talk about those issues and how we live with deep difference.
Since we ended season two, quite a lot has happened in terms of Christian and Muslim relationships, religion and politics, and most importantly, the war in Gaza is front of mind. Today, I’m going to be talking with Shadi. Specifically, I’ve got a lot of questions for you, Shadi, about this war in Gaza. You’ve been very active in your writing and speaking on this issue from a number of different angles. I want to get some insight into your political thinking about the war in Gaza, the student protests and so forth. But more importantly, I’m hoping we can get a little bit more into the angle of your identity as a Muslim speaking into these issues of student protests, the war and so forth.
So, I guess what I’m wondering, what I’d love to start off with, Shadi, is take us back to October and just that month with the initial attack and shock of October 7th, and how did that all start for you? What were you processing and thinking about in that initial month? Then I’d love to go forward from there.
Shadi Hamid:
Well, it’s worth mentioning what I was thinking the day before October 7th. On October 6th, I was at a party in D.C. A bunch of journalists were there, and I actually remember talking to a journalist friend who I hadn’t seen in a while, and telling her, “Oh, I’m starting this new job at the Washington Post, and I’m looking forward to not focusing on the Middle East as much, because people don’t really seem to care much about the Middle East anymore.” We’ve moved on. No, I actually did… That was an actual conversation. I wrote about it in one of my columns. So, it’s not just a kind of like, “Oh, I’m remembering the past in a way that makes it more interesting.”
But then the following day, it took some time to process what was happening. It was also a Saturday, and trying to enjoy the weekend. But then as the day went on, and more information coming in about what was happening in Gaza and then in Israel proper, Hamas’s atrocities against Israeli civilians, I think it started to dawn on me and so many of us that, “Oh, this is big, and it’s going to change the region. It’s going to change the lives of people living in the Middle East in pretty profound ways, and certainly in Gaza.”
Matthew Kaemingk:
You and I have spent a lot of time talking 9/11, and the response to 9/11, and how Muslims were shaped or maybe forced to react in a number of different ways to that. For you in that initial month, and the response to what happened on October 7th, how was it similar to 9/11, and maybe different in your own experience? How do you think about that?
Shadi Hamid:
Well, now, people are focused on Muslims. Again, there’s a lot of questions about whether Islam is inherently violent or extremist. What is wrong with Arabs? What is wrong with the Middle East? Why can’t Arabs get their act together? Why do Arabs resort to terrorism? Why can’t they be more like us? All of these old tropes, I think, are coming back in a variety of ways, and I really don’t like that. I mean, that was one of my least favourite parts, if I can put it that way, of the post-9/11 era was this constant attention on Muslims as objects of scrutiny that we had to always explain ourselves to others.
Matthew Kaemingk:
How did you handle the desire for you to apologise for what happened on October 7? Are you to… As a part of the global ummah of Muslims, what-
Shadi Hamid:
It’s this question that kept on coming up, “Oh, condemn Hamas. Do you condemn Hamas?” On and on and on. Very similar to how I think a lot of US American Muslims felt after 9/11 that we had to prove that we were against terrorism, and that if we didn’t say anything, the presumption was that somehow we were sympathetic to terrorism, which it was an expectation that wasn’t demanded of anyone else. I mean, after 9/11, if you were just an ordinary white person, no one was expecting you to go out of your way to condemn 9/11. It was presumed as an American that you wouldn’t like it. You’d be against it. It went without saying, so it wasn’t said, but we had to say it.
I found that… I think at the time, I didn’t realise how problematic that was, and I think a lot of us wanted to show that we were good Muslims. We were loyal, that, of course, people could trust that we were on the right side and all of that. But I think as I got older, and I was looking back at the discourse immediately after the attacks, I was like, “Wait, was that a really good idea to keep on condemning and condemning,” because then it feeds into the notion that Muslims have to condemn no matter what. That whenever there’s a terrorist attack, there’s a disclaimer that we have to put at the start of our statements. That’s absurd in retrospect.
So as I got older, I introduced, let’s say, a new personal policy where I wouldn’t condemn terrorist attacks when they happened, because my perspective was that it should go without saying that I’m against terrorism, and no one should ask me to prove my loyalty, and no one should doubt. Unless they have some other reason to think so beyond me just being brown and Muslim, there’s no reason for anyone to doubt that I, like the vast majority of other Americans, don’t like it when terrorist attacks happen. So, that’s something that developed over time. I have been very… I mean, obviously, if you’re talking about Hamas in the post-October 7th context, you’re naturally going to mention that they’ve done terrible things.
They’ve committed these atrocities. They’ve targeted civilians in this wanton fashion. So, it will often come naturally in the course of conversation, but I don’t try to go out of my way to offer that up as a disclaimer to enter the conversation. Of course, sometimes people will demand it either directly or indirectly, and that’s really troubling, I think.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. So October, the public conversation is really around the atrocities of October 7th specifically, and then in November and December, you have the invasion of Gaza. In many ways, we’re speaking from May here, so we’re seven, eight months out now. Early on, it seemed like Israel enjoyed quite a bit of public and global support for responding, defending itself, going after Hamas, and that’s changed quite a bit recently. But in those initial months where Israel did have a lot of support in the Republican and the Democratic Party, what were you thinking about and processing there like November, December, January before things shifted a bit?
Shadi Hamid:
I would say things shifted relatively early. I mean, Israel went in with considerable force and with a real sense of, I would say, vengeance, that there was a desire to punish. That’s understandable. I mean, after 9/11, I think many Americans felt the same way, that we weren’t in our most rational minds, that we went overboard. We had an aggressively militarised response first in Afghanistan and then eventually in Iraq. We’ve been paying the price for that overreaction ever since, and it’s something that will taint American history for some time to come, obviously. So, I think there was a fear that Israel would fall into the same trap.
Actually, it wasn’t even really a fear. It was almost certain that Israel would fall into the same trap. So, we saw just a very violent, brutal response. I don’t use the word brutal lightly, but just when you look at the figures, and now we have more of the benefit of hindsight, and we can see just how it didn’t just get bad. It kept on getting worse. I’ve said this, I try to emphasise to people that this is not just another war. If you look at the number of civilians who are killed in short order just in the first three or four months, it was a per capita per day death rate that we really haven’t seen in any other conflict in the 21st century. There’s been a number of reported pieces and analyses that go into how do you compare this to other conflicts, whether it’s Afghanistan, Iraq, or Ukraine, or the Syrian Civil War.
It got to over 14,000 civilians killed just within the first four months. Then I started to look at just Iraq as a point of comparison, the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the subsequent occupation. If you look at the figures from Iraq body count, the number of Iraqi civilians who were directly killed by U.S. military action from 2003 to 2011, so eight years, the figure there was about 14,000 Iraqi civilians killed. Israel was able to clear that threshold in just a matter of a few months. It’s also worth keeping in mind that Gaza’s population is considerably less than Iraq’s, almost 15 times less. So, you just look at figures like that, and then the fact that over 80% of Gazans internally displaced, and now we see Gaza on the brink of famine, really like a real risk of mass starvation at just an absolutely frightening level.
Then you start to say, “Well, this is unusual. This isn’t just another conflict.” So, that’s how I’ve been trying to… I have actually trouble grasping when you actually look at the humanitarian figures. It’s really hard to actually process it for me, and so it’s just challenging also on a personal level. It’s like, “How is this allowed to happen? Why is this happening?” I think also, we can get into this what I would consider to be the implications for how our Palestinian lives, do they just simply matter less? Why do we, as Americans, empathise less with Palestinians that they just become figures? They don’t even become figures. It’s just they’re dying, but we can’t even really feel any real emotional resonance or empathy for just a scale of death and destruction.
Matthew Kaemingk:
So on that specifically, so I’ve watched and listened to you over the last eight months, speaking on college campuses, speaking on TV and podcasts and so forth. I hear you responding through a number of different lenses, one, as a political scientist who studies international, I’m sorry, Middle East politics and public policy. I hear you responding as a Washington Post thought leader type person. I also just hear you right now responding just as a human being to the brutality of the moment. You’re going to push on me a little bit here on how evangelicals are responding to all this, but I want to push for a moment just for clarity and understanding on how you respond to this situation as a Muslim, just for our listeners to understand what does it look like for a Muslim to respond to these kinds of atrocities?
I know that for Christians, when we see churches being burned, or Christians being persecuted around the world, we feel a sense of brotherhood, solidarity with those who are being cut down. I just wonder, from a Muslim perspective, how do you see Palestinians? Is it just that they’re human beings, or is there something special about Palestinians compared to, say… There are genocides going on in Africa, and maybe you don’t respond in quite the same way as with Palestinians. So, I’m wondering if you could talk just a little bit about how you see these things as a Muslim.
Shadi Hamid:
So in some ways, all of this has made me a bit more sympathetic to identity politics or what we might call identity politics and scare quotes. Again, just to use a term that people use, woke, the word woke, “Have I become a little bit more woke over the past seven months?” Probably, and that my own identity feels… It feels much more visceral. There’s a visceral sense that who I am is effect… So, the fact that I’m Muslim and Arab obviously is going to have some impact on how I view what’s happening to Palestinians as fellow Arabs, fellow Muslims. That’s a tough thing to grapple with, because I think that we have this fantasy that we as analysts should be able to transcend our own identities, and that we have this above the fray view from nowhere that we’re out of place and out of time and out of relationships with other people. We’re just analysing in this objective way, in this pose of neutrality.
I think the fact of the matter is that no one is neutral. One of the themes of the first two seasons of Zealots at the Gate was that there’s a pretence to neutrality, but in the end, we’re all products of a particular context. I think how we wrestle with that is really one of the key questions of this moment, because a lot of our identities are implicated if you’re Arab, if you’re Muslim, if you’re American too, just if you’re just a normal everyday American, because our government is a primary sponsor and military patron of Israel. So, there’s a question of complicity here. What Israel does is not just what a foreign government is doing somewhere over there in a distant land. It’s something that we are directly involved with to the tune of billions of dollars of military aid.
So, how do we feel about that as Americans? Then if you’re Jewish, then obviously, other questions come up. How do American Jews feel about America’s relationship with Israel if they have friends and family in Israel? That has implications as well. Israel’s not the biggest country, so the vast… Almost all Israelis will know someone who was directly affected by the atrocities of October 7th. So, it’s felt in that very personal, visceral way for Israelis. So, all these questions come about, and I would like to think that you don’t need to be Arab or Muslim to feel strongly about the plight of the Palestinians. I think I’m right in that insofar as if you look at a lot of the campus protests, you’ll see that it’s a motley crew of people from different backgrounds.
Obviously, there is a presence of Arabs and Muslims that are also like a lot of white liberals, white leftists, people of colour. The whole, let’s say, rainbow of the kind of left progressive vibe is there and is present. So clearly, people can feel very strongly about this even if they don’t have direct links to either side of the conflict.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Would you point to Hadith or the teachings of the Quran or anything in terms of your responsibility to advocate for fellow Muslims, or is this just a human issue for you?
Shadi Hamid:
Okay. So, I think it taps into… I don’t think it’s really religious or theological in an obvious way. For me, I think it’s more about cultural familiarity. I know a lot of Arabs. I’ve lived in the Arab world for many years. It’s a part of my own history, and all of my Palestinian friends here in the U.S. know friends or family who have died in Gaza. So, I’m two degrees from that at the very least, but I think that it’s a sense of… Okay, here, I’ll… As I think I maybe alluded to at different points in previous episodes, I think that growing up Arab, even if you’re growing up in the U.S., which I did, born and raised in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, but you’re part of a Muslim community and an Arab community growing up.
You have these dinner conversations where some themes start to arise, and one of those themes is that to maybe overstate it a little bit for dramatic effect is that we used to be one of the greatest civilizations the world had ever seen. The great caliphates, the Abbasid caliphate comes to mind in terms of just intellectual, philosophical, scientific advancement. Well, again, this is overstating things a bit, but this perception of Europe being in the dark ages, then you have Muslim empires that were very much in this state of glory. There was a glorious past that we can harken back to. Then you see this happening, and then you’re like, “Why isn’t anyone standing up for Palestinians who are being killed? Where is the world? Where are we?”
Here, we could be a number of different things. Even when I said we right now, I wasn’t sure exactly who I was referring to. When I think about it now, wait, was I referring to Americans? Was I referring to Arabs? Was I referring to the Muslim Ummah? It’s probably all three, and it’s intertwined in complex ways so that we’re all parts, I guess, of different we’s, right, and there are these overlapping identities, but I do have this sense of I wish the air… I think this has been driving much of my adult life, my work, why have I been so focused on promoting supporting democracy in the Middle East, and really wanting that. I think I’ve said before that in my lifetime, I would love to see the Middle East be more democratic. I don’t want to see it the way it is now, which is the vast majority of Arab countries with just really two partial exceptions.
Iraq and Lebanon are repressive dictatorships to one degree or another. Maybe some of them are less repressive than others, but they’re all authoritarian. None of them are actual democracies besides the two that I just mentioned. So, it’s like, “How did we get here? What went wrong? How did we fall to this degree?” It’s really a precipitous fall from grace, if I can use that terminology, a fall from grace, a sense that God has forsaken us. Why has God forsaken us? How did God… There’s also a question of theodicy here. How does God permit this? Why did God permit this?
Matthew Kaemingk:
So, how does this lament for the loss of Islamic power and glory and civilization, how does that play a role in today’s Muslim politics? This lament of a lost glorious past, how does that shape a Muslim political imagination, if you will? What sorts of things would you do? How would you behave if you had that kind of lament?
Shadi Hamid:
Well, so it’s worth noting that lament is understandable. It’s not always healthy. You don’t always want to be in a state of lament, because lament and longing can distort your politics. It can make you think in impractical terms that you long for things that will never come again. You can see this playing out in different ways. I mean, some people, it’s not very common in the U.S., but certainly in the broader Muslim world, some people lament for the caliphate. If listeners are just joining us for this season, I would highly recommend one of our previous episodes on the case for the caliphate.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Making the caliphate great again, that was the topic. That was a lot of fun.
Shadi Hamid:
Hearing that a very unusual perspective from a leading Muslim scholar who is trying to bring the caliphate back into the Muslim consciousness, so you can see it play out in that way is that the caliphate has this symbolic power. I think some of this is unrealistic. It’s that if only we could have this term and what it represents, and bring it back, maybe that can inspire greatness again, but then what does it actually look like in practise in a world of nation states?
Matthew Kaemingk:
I use the phrase making the caliphate great again tongue in cheek, but there is, I would argue, at least some kind of similarity or resonance for American Christians in wanting to get back to a glory age in which they were, or a perceived glory age in which white Christians were in control of the whole world in America, and things like that, and that politics of lament and resentment-
Shadi Hamid:
Resentment, exactly.
Matthew Kaemingk:
… and longing for a past or a perceived past, I think I agree. It can make you behave politically in a lot of unhelpful ways.
Shadi Hamid:
Look, I think we have to also speak frankly. I mean, there were people after October 7th who found ways to excuse what Hamas did, or to even justify it. I wouldn’t want to overstate that certainly in the U.S. context, and it’s not just… Here, I’m not even really talking about Muslims or Arabs. I’m also talking about young leftists who engage in this language of that the powerless or the marginalised don’t have moral agency, and that anything they do can be justified against the oppressor, this kind of colonial-anticolonial language, but I do think… This is a real risk that we have to be aware of that Muslims, especially Muslims in the Middle East, looking sympathetically at October 7th, because they feel that they have no power. They have no control. They’re just recipients of the violence of others, and therefore, any violence in response can be justified.
It’s not really… This is effectively how a lot of terrorist activity is justified. It’s not in the Muslim context in the Middle East. It’s not really justified with a lot of theological argument, because it is pretty hard to justify the mass killing of civilians through Islamic resources. I mean, there’s very strong prohibitions on targeting civilians in what we might call Islamic just war theory. So basically, terrorist groups like Hamas or Al-Qaeda or ISIS will often fall back on secular justifications. There’s actually a really interesting manual that was very central to Al-Qaeda’s thought. It’s called the Management of Savagery, which is actually translated into English by one of my former colleagues, and so people can just like if they want to see what it’s all about.
But basically, if I can boil the argument down in its core premise, it’s that the Western crusaders or the Western colonisers have been so brutal to the Muslim world, that Muslims can be justified in responding with a similar level of brutality. It’s like you have to fight fire with fire, and that because the times are so desperate, you can justify desperate measures in response. It’s basically that the normal rules of war are suspended, because we’re living in exceptional times. So, that’s really how all… It’s not even specific to really Muslim extremist argumentation. It’s actually something you see in any justification of terrorism. It’s that, of course, we know. At some basic level, we as human beings know that you shouldn’t just massacre civilians, but you find ways to get around that, or you find ways to make sense of it.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah, it’s basically defining the exception. So, it’s not denying that murder is wrong. It’s saying we live in a moment of exception outside of those things.
Shadi Hamid:
Yes.
Matthew Kaemingk:
I think within religions, there is this temptation to identify God with the oppressed, with whoever is perceived as under threat. Then once you’ve defined yourself as the one who’s under threat or oppressed, God is immediately with you and your cause. At that point, discussion, debate, compromise becomes extremely difficult.
Shadi Hamid:
Exactly. Exactly. I mean, one thing that… It’s sort of this question of then… Obviously, I think it’s worth speaking out against justifications of October 7th. Again, I don’t really see it all that much in the U.S. context. So obviously, if people are living in Egypt and Jordan, that’s maybe something they can do, although it is hard. Then you get in this issue, it’s hard to focus attention on the atrocities of Hamas.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Okay, so I think I remember this well. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think I remember you very early on in the Gaza war saying, “We have to be able to say two things at once, right?”
Shadi Hamid:
Yes.
Matthew Kaemingk:
“We have to be able to say that October 7th was terrible, and Israel is being irresponsible in its response.” I hear you saying that less now than you used to. Is that because you feel like one side has been clearly told and the other side needs to be, or-
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah, I think part of it is it should just go without saying it’s obvious, and there’s only so many times you can say that what Hamas did was terrible. It doesn’t really add a lot to the conversation, especially in a U.S. context where I think most mainstream folks aren’t going to really question that. They understand that something terrible happened on October 7th. So, I think that’s part of it, but also at some level, it seems odd to continue dwelling on that seven months later when what’s actually happening, when in the moment the overwhelming display of force is coming from Israel, and that’s where we actually have influence. The U.S. doesn’t have much leverage or influence with Hamas. The U.S. doesn’t have any direct engagement or contact with Hamas leaders. It has to be done through intermediaries, but we do have considerable leverage with Israel as one of our closest allies in the region.
So, I think it’s also just a practical focus like, “How can we actually make things better?” But to be honest, I think that once you get to be on one side or the other, so if you’re on the “pro-Palestine side,” there’s almost a sense that if you focus too much on October 7th, you’re distracting people away from the primary consideration, which is Israel’s atrocities on the Palestinian people. But then you see, I think, pro-Israel folks who have a similar… It’s almost similar but in reverse, where they feel if they focus too much on what Israel is doing wrong, then it distracts focus from the memory of October 7th. It’s interesting that I wrote a short post about this many months back where I was recounting how my mom was talking to one of her Arab friends who was in some ways justifying October 7th.
My mom was pushing back to her credit, and saying, “Listen, you have to understand what Hamas did. 1,200 Israeli civilians were killed. This is just a fact of what happened, and we as Muslims have to be able to recognise that it’s actually in some ways our Muslim duty to recognise the suffering that is happening, even if it’s not directed towards Muslims. That’s important.” Then my mom’s friend said after… She’s wrestling with this. They’re going back and forth. What my mom conveyed was just really fascinating that her friend said, “I have no pain left to give.” My mom was saying, “Feel pain for Israeli Jews who suffered on that day.” She said, “I can’t do it.” She was trying. She was trying to understand that argument, but she’s like, “I can’t do it.”
I think that you have this… There’s this zero-sum aspect. It really gets at something profound and profoundly disturbing, and I think that’s what you’re seeing in how this whole debate is played out. It’s a kind of tribalism that we identify with one group. That’s where we feel the most pain, and the more pain we feel for our own group, in some ways, we almost… We have finite attention. We have finite emotional expression, and we only have so much to give. We only have so much love to give. We only have so much hate we can feel to the people, and that in a subconscious way, we’re dispensing empathy, love, and hate to different groups, to different degrees, and who we are plays a role in that.
Group identity matters, and we know this just in terms of there’s a lot of political science and also just in terms of also behavioural economic stuff on group identity and how incentives play out in these different ways. Ultimately, we’re motivated by group identities, maybe not ethnic ones. It could be that we’re Democrats, so we can’t empathise with what Republicans are telling us really hurts them. When Republicans tell us, “We’re under attack. We feel this.” We’re Democrats, so we don’t even know how to feel the way they feel, or to see them as being equally deserving of our empathy, and there are so many ways that this plays out in politics.
Matthew Kaemingk:
I know you wanted to talk about evangelicals and their role in Zionism and all of that sort of thing. I was just reading a study this morning on Christian Zionism in the 21st century. It’s really fascinating with a lot of polling data on evangelicals and specifically on young evangelicals and their relationship with Zionism. A number of the findings really stood out to me was basically for young evangelicals… A little bit of historical background for our listeners who might not be aware, but in large part, American evangelicals have long been supporters of Israel. There’s a long complicated story as to why that is. Part of it has to do with eschatology or their view of the end times.
So during the 20th century, there was a rise of a specific Christian view of the end times called pre-millennialism, which believed that essentially, if we support Israel, that will hasten the coming of Jesus, that Jesus will come back, and so we should support Israel. Moreover, there are verses in the Bible that talk about if a foreigner blesses Israel, God will bless them. So, there was this. It wasn’t so much that evangelicals loved the Jews. It was more of, “If we do these things for the Jews, Jesus will come back, and God will bless America,” things like that.
Shadi Hamid:
But then if I understand correctly, things aren’t that great for the Jews in that context when we look at the eschatological story.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. So, that was really prominent in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, but what this study basically said is that evangelical attitudes about Israel are changing, and evangelical attitudes about what will happen in Jesus’s return are changing. Young evangelicals don’t find those stories very compelling anymore.
Shadi Hamid:
They don’t find them compelling. Do you have a sense of what does it mean to not find them compelling? Because if they’re part of a theological story about the end times, that is somewhat important to the evangelical worldview. So, are there views on what happens in the end times changing, or are they just not as focused on the end times?
Matthew Kaemingk:
So, American evangelicals have always disagreed about what happens in the end times, and what it means for Jesus to come back, and what that would look like. They’ve always disagreed. But during the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, they were particularly excited about this view that was very pro-Israel, but that view has lessened in its power, and younger evangelicals are more drawn to other eschatologies that are equally as old if not more old.
Shadi Hamid:
I’d be curious, can you say a little bit more about what those older eschatologies are just briefly?
Matthew Kaemingk:
Sure. So, they’re called pre-millennialism, amillennialism, and post-millennialism.
Shadi Hamid:
It’s a mouthful.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah, sorry about that, all the non-Christians out there. They all have to do with Jesus’s return and what that looks like. The people who are very pro-Israel basically think that we need to support Israel, and hasten Christ’s return. Essentially, they expect the world to get worse before it gets better, whereas the other two don’t really see Israel or the state of Israel as having much of anything to do with Jesus’s return. So, they don’t connect their understanding of the end times with the state of Israel. In fact, they can be rather anti-Semitic, or just imagining that Jesus has no interest in Israel anymore, that essentially Jesus gave up on Israel, or Jesus replaced Israel, these sorts of things.
So, that’s more popular amongst mainline and liberal churches. But also, there are strings of evangelical or my own reform churches that would hold to those kinds of eschatology. So, we’ve talked about how I have Calvinist or reform background, but Calvinists don’t have a theology of the state of Israel as being an important thing for Jesus’ return in quite that same way.
Shadi Hamid:
So, you guys are neutral.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. Amillennial is what we’re-
Shadi Hamid:
Amillenial.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Amillenial, but the bigger point is these young evangelicals who are torn on Israel-Palestine, they feel pulled in both directions. The study explained how and why that was. They were influenced by their understanding of the end times, but they’re also influenced by their belonging to a political party. So, if these young evangelicals are Republican, they want to be with their tribe, and so they support Israel. Whereas if these young evangelicals are Democrats, they want to be with their tribe, and they’re more pro-Palestinian. Then the last factor is age, essentially. The pollsters actually say it’s the most important factor is age.
They speculate that for older evangelicals, their primary memory is that of the Holocaust, and they think of Jews primarily in terms of being the victims of anti-Semitism, whereas younger evangelicals don’t really have those images printed in their heads. They’re much more likely to be impacted by stories of Palestinian suffering, that that’s more relevant and recent to them. The last thing that the study found that was fascinating to me was that they found a correlation. Essentially, if young evangelicals spend a lot of time listening to pro-Israel arguments, do you know what happens? They become less pro-Israel.
Shadi Hamid:
Wow, that is fascinating. So, any explanation as to what’s going on there?
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah, I don’t think they had any idea why that was. I think if I had to take a guess, it was that they didn’t want to listen to boomer evangelicals.
Shadi Hamid:
I can imagine that.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Anyways, that torn… I’m speaking of them at a distance, but just to be more personal as an evangelical, I’m a geriatric millennial, so in some ways I’m considered young, but I feel that sense of being torn as well, just in myself, of my allegiance to the Palestinians, and my allegiance to the Jews. There are theological reasons for that, and then, of course, there’s reasons just why as an American, I would feel torn, or as a member of Western civilization as opposed to the Islamic world. I have a number of different identities, overlapping identities as you would talk about.
Shadi Hamid:
It’s really interesting that, I think, the examples you just raised to the role of group identity in really interesting ways. So, we see with these young evangelicals that them being evangelical is not necessarily the explanatory factor. It’s whether they’re part of a certain political party. So, there you can say that their party identity takes precedence over being evangelical, although even that’s an oversimplification, presumably they see their evangelical beliefs as driving those commitments. But again, we’re obviously products of our environment. So if you spend a lot of time with left-leaning folks, with progressives, with members of the Democratic Party, you’re going to be more exposed to pro-Palestine narratives, especially if you’re young. I mean, pro-Palestine narratives are much more common in the under-30 category.
So, it’s just really interesting to think a little bit more systematically about age, partisan identity, religious identity, ethnic identity, and how all these things play out and intersect with each other. It does raise some interesting questions about where do our beliefs actually come from? It’s not as if we… I don’t go and read the Quran and the Hadith, the sayings and actions of the prophet, and then come to a political position afterwards. It’s not like, “Oh, so the Quran says X, Y, and Z. Now, I’m going to form a political opinion, because I just read those verses.” I mean, no one is really operating in that clear-cut way.
Obviously, if we’re products of a Muslim community, Quranic verses and the actions of the prophet are going to influence us in indirect and indirect ways, but you can’t draw a straight line between scripture and political behaviour. It almost never works that way, really. Oftentimes, what people are doing is that they’re using scripture after the fact to rationalise or justify political positions that they already have for other reasons.
Matthew Kaemingk:
I think we have that, and we can see that in forms of Christian Zionism of we want to see a certain thing, and we can use the book of Revelation, the final book of the Bible. We can use that to get there. The book of Revelation is famously easy to argue just about anything you want just by its style of prose.
Shadi Hamid:
One thing that I’d maybe just want to push you on a bit is the ethnic identity of evangelicals. So here, we’re primarily talking about white evangelicals. Unfortunately, as we’ve talked about before, white evangelicals are one of the or perhaps even the most anti number one.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Number one.
Shadi Hamid:
For those of you who can’t see, Matt was just raising his finger to suggest that they’re number one, that they are in fact the best at being anti-Muslim. Whether or not… I guess the question is why, and we can’t really get into all of that right now, but clearly, maybe there’s an ethnic component that Arabs Muslims are more brownish, also a sense that Muslims are the other, because they are a competing faith that claims to, in some sense, supersede, if I can use that word, imprecisely, supersede Christian theology. So, there’s a sense that we’re always going to be a little bit more uncomfortable with theologies that come after us that claim to be better than we were.
So, Muslims have this thing when it comes to Baha’is, Ahmadis that are variations on aspects of Islam, but then created something that was somewhat distinct. So, this happens, so there’s probably a number of factors there, but I think there’s also maybe a sense that… This isn’t just with evangelicals. I see this actually with even friends of mine who are what we might call classical liberals. They see Israel as an outpost of Western civilization, that Israel represents liberalism more than Muslims do. Muslims are seen to be more illiberal, more contrary to the classical liberal tradition that we might associate with the American constitution and the Bill of Rights.
I think this is very simplistic, because Israel is actually governed by far-right politicians now that I would say are quite divergent from the classical liberal tradition, but there still is this sense that Israel represents something that’s more in line with Western values. So, this plays, I think, a role as well. So, it’s really fascinating, and I think that once you believe that Israel is one thing or the other, it’s hard to then shift. Because if you’re invested in the idea that Israel is part of the West, then to see Israel as violating Western values might be hard for you to see it that way, because it requires you to completely shift your understanding of Israel and what it stands for. So, all of that I think is challenging.
One other thing that I want to put on the table, I’d be curious, Matt, how you would respond to this. I don’t know if talked about this all that much, but we’re talking a lot here about group identities. One thing that’s hit me personally, and I’m struggling with it and I’m wrestling with it, is the fact that friendships and relationships have been strained. So, some of my closest friends in Washington D.C., I would characterise as being more pro-Israel. In some of these cases, their Jewish identity plays a role, and that October 7th hit them so hard, understandably. Then seeing Israel as a place of safety for Jews and perhaps the last line of defence against anti-Semitism, if God forbid things got worse for Jews in America, that at least Israel is still there.
So, there’s also this sense of existential danger. I was actually… This was just a couple of weeks ago. It was a table of us, about six of us, and my American Jewish friend was basically talking about her fears that things would get really bad for Jews in America. Then what was interesting, I don’t actually share this view, but an Arab friend who was also on the table was saying the same thing but for Arabs. He’s like, “God forbid, if the situation for Arabs gets really bad in America where Arabs are being…” I don’t even really know what the scenario is exactly, but more violence against American Muslims, or more arrests of American Muslims for political reasons, or… I mean, we could even think about worst-case scenarios of…
I mean, I want to be clear. I don’t believe this is possible, but when people are in a sense of existential dread, they can imagine things that seem unimaginable. So, we can think about ID cards or something akin to what happened to Japanese Americans during World War Two. These things don’t have to be realistic or even rational. You have these fears, and fear doesn’t have to be rational to really affect how you view the world. So here, I’m adjudicating between… Because I actually was like, “Guys, none of this is really realistic. Let’s keep things in perspective. American democracy is strong. We’re resilient.” Well, I actually think it’s strong. I know a lot of Americans don’t believe American democracy is strong. That’s in the conversation for a different time, but I think our institutions are resilient.
I think our constitution is strong and one of the greatest constitutions, if not the greatest ever, ever constructed. So, it’s hard for me to imagine America seizing to be what it has been. As someone who loves America deeply and really believes in the American story, I just couldn’t relate to these two people right next to me on the table. They’re both sharing. I get where they’re coming from, but I worry that if that is what’s driving our political opinions, how can we ever… Because once you’re talking on the existential level, then you’re not talking about politics anymore.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah, and I think… I guess what I’d say is that dinner conversation highlights the tragedy and the heartbreak of the Middle Eastern crisis, and it highlights why it’s in transition, and why it’s not going to change anytime soon, and it is… There are real victims and there are real grievances, but victimhood and grievance actually is not a very effective pathway to peace or pluralism or negotiating deep difference. You get in a situation where you have a sort of what my friend would call oppression Olympics, where each side of the table is trying to narrate their oppression, and narrate their story. You’re trying to one up one another in describing your suffering, and trying to one up one another in describing how endangered you are, and what you might have to do next.
It’s not to say that the pain isn’t real, or the violence isn’t real, or the grievance isn’t real, but it is to say that that oppression Olympics dynamic can’t really lead to the productive pluralism and living with that deep difference in a peaceful way. It can’t really get you there. You just keep reliving that. So, in the ways that Muslims narrate their history of suffering, and Jews narrate their history of suffering, you just see that repeating itself again and again and again. In my own world of Christian theology, I’ve been picking on Jews and Muslims here for the moment, but we have this same pattern, and I alluded to it earlier. It is when you say God is with the suffering, so this is common for Christians to say like, “Jesus is with the poor, or Jesus stands in solidarity with the oppressed,” which is very true biblically speaking.
That’s a clear teaching within Christianity, that Jesus is with the oppressed, and Jesus is with the poor, that God takes sides with those who are suffering. It’s just very true. The problem, however, is that you get into a situation where God is so identified with the victim, with the aggrieved, that religion can be a heightening role and can actually make this situation worse. Shadi, you and I, we talk a lot about the good of religion and how religion can help us be better citizens, and can improve our democratic spirits and whatnot. I think that’s part of the reason why I actually have not always looked forward to talking about Israel-Palestine is because in so many ways, it highlights the absolute worst of faith, because we take God, and we start to control him as on our side and with our particular grievance.
He seems to have no care whatsoever for the grievance or the suffering of the other side. I see Muslims do that. I see Christians do that, and I see Jews do that. So, you and I are working on a chapter right now on idolatry, and I think it’s worth reflecting on the ways in which we turn our grievance stories into idols that actually rule us.
Shadi Hamid:
Yes.
Matthew Kaemingk:
So, when you think about the pain that you felt at that dinner table, I would argue that there are certain idols that we turn our trauma into an idol, and then we sacrifice our friendships to that particular idol. So, it becomes harder for you to be friends with your Jewish friends. That’s not to say you or they are bad, but it’s just our trauma can start to own us and control us and sever our relationships. Then I think just bringing back to the… You were talking about the woman. I think your mother was trying to get her to be passionate, and her expression of, “I don’t have more pain to give,” is this sense of she’s a prisoner of her pain. She lacks the freedom to reach out.
I think that can happen with our various political traumas and our various religious traumas, is we become a prisoner of that heartbreak, and then we behave out of that heartbreak.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah, I think you’re right. I mean, victimhood is intoxicating, because it gives you something against which to define yourself. You know you have a cause when you’re a victim, but you also have a way to explain why things have gone wrong. If you’re a victim, there’s only so much you can do. It’s part of your identity. If you are a victim, you’ll probably be a victim in the future, and then there are these outside forces that are a raid against you, and that gives you a clarity as well, and it allows you to-
Matthew Kaemingk:
Well, and that phrase you used, it allows you to explain. It gives you clarity.
Shadi Hamid:
Yes.
Matthew Kaemingk:
I think that shouldn’t be missed because when we’re in pain, we want to make sense of it. There’s something deeply senseless about what’s happening in Gaza right now. There’s something deeply irrational, and about what happened on 10/7, right? There’s something deeply senseless, deeply chaotic, and we as human beings want to make sense of it. We want to call it, “This is racism, or this is bigotry, or this is colonialism, or this is American imperialism.” Of course, those things are all a little bit true, but the yearning is for a way to name the evil that we’re experiencing, and to paint it on specific people.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah, it’s easier to construct a narrative that clarifies good and evil and so forth. Edward Said, I think he had this very memorable phrase where he described the Palestinians as the victims of the victims. I just think there’s something about how he renders it there that is just really powerful. We’re talking about two peoples who are both victims in different ways who have legitimate grievances, and the victimhood is so central to these stories. The other thing… You mentioned… We were talking a little bit about American Jews and Muslims, and how we relate to each other. I think one thing that’s sad to me about all of this is American Muslims and Jews had pretty good relationships overall in America pre October 7th, I mean, unlike various European countries where the communities have often been at odds politically in very tense relations.
We didn’t really have that, so there was something promising. It was almost like the U.S. as it is on a number of things, an exemplar of pluralism in this regard. I think now that is being undermined, and I don’t know exactly how bad it will be and for how long. I mean, maybe things will go back to normal, and after, God willing, this war comes to a close, and maybe we can start to repair some of this, but you start to feel like when you know there are Muslims and Jews in the room together, there’s a kind of palpable tension because you don’t know what to say. You don’t know what other people are going to say, and you expect that they’re going to… So, if you’re a Muslim, unfortunately, there is political stereotyping on both sides where Muslims are assumed to be pro-Palestine, which they are.
So, it’s not even wrong to politically stereotype in that way. Then Muslims might assume that American Jews are going to be pro-Israel. That’s not as much the case as the other way around, but American Jews are more likely to be explicitly and openly pro-Israel compared to the average normie American who’s not really political. So, you’re stuck in this situation where you’re jumping to conclusions about other people’s political views, and you’re group… Instead of seeing people as individuals, we run the risk of seeing them as representatives of their group identity. I think that’s unfortunate. Now, it’s probably inevitable. This is what we do.
Political stereotyping is part of who we are as human beings. It’s something that we have to resist, but I just worry that knowing what we know, people are going to jump to conclusions. The tension is going to be there regardless. I’ve seen it in almost every situation where this comes up, this topic comes up, where there are Muslims and Jews in the room. You start to feel it like, “Oh, boy, how are we going to talk about this?” With my pro-Israel friends, some of whom are Jewish, some who aren’t, I mean, one of the ways we’ve dealt with it, and this may not be ideal, and I’m not advising this necessarily for other people who are trying to navigate this. At some point, you just say, “Hey, we’ve talked about it. We’ve had the conversations, and you know what? There isn’t really a middle ground here. We are literally on opposite sides.”
“Maybe it’s just better to not talk about it, to suspend judgement , if you will. Hey, we know that we’re on the opposite sides here. Let’s table that, because we’ve come to the conclusion that we’re not going to… There’s not a lot that’s going to be fruitful or productive about just dwelling on these issues. We know where we stand.” That can almost be a little bit more helpful where you say, “We’re not going to let these constant conversations harm our friendships. We’re going to focus on what we have, what we had before October 7th, which was obviously we’re close friends for a reason, because we like things about the other person.” At some fundamental level, we believe in the goodness of the other person of our friends, but we also realised that everyone should be allowed one to two terrible opinions at any given time.
Here, I’m going to give grace to my friend, and say, “Hey, this is your allowance. This is your carve out. You have terrible opinions on this topic, but you know what? I’m going to sit with that. I’m going to name it, but I’m not going to let it get in the way of the friendship that we’ve had over years.”
Matthew Kaemingk:
That’s a good word, Shadi. I mean, there’s so much we’ve talked about today, and we’re running out of time, so we need to bring this to a close. I am thinking a lot about your statement that tribal identity is inevitable. It is human. It’s a deeply human thing that’s not going to come to an end. You and I have talked about our own tribal identities as Americans, as a Muslim, and as an evangelical, as members of Western civilization, as Democrats, Republicans. We have those tribal identities. They define and shape us in many ways, and there’s no sense denying it. It’s important to own that. I think the question for those of us with a religious identity is in what ways does God call us to confess our tribe’s shortcomings and failures?
In what ways does God call us to see the humanity of those outside of our tribes? In what ways does God call us to loosen our grievances, or to hear the grievances of others and to ponder the victimhood of others? I think that’s what I’m thinking a lot about. I don’t know. How about for you, Shadi, as you reflect on all of this? I pressed you a bit on your Muslim-ness today. I got a little bit from you, but-
Shadi Hamid:
You weren’t satisfied.
Matthew Kaemingk:
No, I wanted a hadith from you, but I’m just wondering. For you, final reflections on this. I mean, as you think about American Muslims and how they are processing the last eight months, are there things that give you hope, and things that concern you about how American Muslims like yourself are thinking about this?
Shadi Hamid:
Well, I should note, just to be clear, I don’t consider Israel-Palestine to be a religious conflict. So, that’s maybe why I’m a little bit reticent to bring out Hadith, and to see it from that standpoint. That’s not really the way that I’ve traditionally approached the conflict.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Oh, that’s interesting.
Shadi Hamid:
I mean, others may differ, and others may argue that religion plays a larger role. I’m sort of sceptical of that narrative, although certainly, religion plays a role. It’s just a question of to what degree. I mean, when I’m thinking more broadly going forward, I do like what you said. I think that all of us… I don’t mean to be corny here, because this is a little bit trite to say, “Well, oh, each and every person who’s listening to this podcast should try to engage in self-criticism, and to maybe exert extra effort to see the shortcomings of their own group, and to maybe find ways to consciously identify with or empathise with groups that they’re not a part of.”
In some ways, it’s so obvious. I mean, we probably hear people telling us to do that all the time. It’s one of these really obvious things that we know we should do, but it’s actually very difficult to do in real life. The same really goes for pluralism. I mean, this is a podcast about thinking about how to live with deep difference. We know intuitively that we should live with deep difference, that we should try to be better, and if I can use an overused and sort of absurd phrase, do the work, but it’s really hard to live this way, and to exemplify these attributes in our daily lives, and so much of the push and pull and the messiness of politics, and the fact that we get angry so quickly and outrageous is so easy to come to, especially if we’re on social media and that sort of thing, that we always have to be reminding ourselves.
I’m actually… As an editor once said, we write the books that we need to read. I guess you can extend that to say we give the talks that we need to hear. So in some sense, we’re saying this to you as our listeners, but I think we’re also, at least I am also saying this a bit to myself. I mean, there have been times that I’ve been engaging in these debates on Twitter, social media, whatever, and I’ve lost my cool. I’ve gotten angry. I’ve let my outrage over what’s happening in Gaza get the better of me, and I haven’t always, as a result, maybe treated people with the kind of grace or respect that they deserve. When you’re in the heat of the moment, the heat of a debate, you lose a sense of where you’re at.
So, I think it’s just worthwhile for all of us, because Israel-Palestine, obviously, it’s what we’re focusing on in this episode, but you can extend this to any number of other issues, especially as we enter into a very tense election season, the issues that are just decisive for us emotionally, the future of the Republic, if that’s what we think is at stake, or abortion issues that hit to the very core of who we are. Then we’re getting into these arguments with friends or maybe even enemies, and how do we talk about these things? So, I’ll maybe end on that note, and hopefully that offers something up for listeners to reflect on. I would also say that this is going to be a theme of season three, just as it’s been in previous seasons, but maybe now even more so because we are thinking more about the election that’s about to be a part of our lives as Americans.
So, we’re going to have to wrestle with this, I think, pretty constantly, for better or worse. So with that in mind, I’d say thanks for joining us for episode one. I hope you enjoyed it and found it useful. I certainly did. It’s good to talk these issues out a little bit, and to do so with a great conversation partner like Matt. So with that, thanks for listening to Zealots at the Gate. If you like what you heard, check out our other episodes, our previous two seasons. Stay tuned for the episodes to come, and check out our host, Comment magazine at comment.org. We want to hear from you. You can find us on Twitter at my handle, which is Shadi Hamid, my full name, and at Matthew Kaemingk.
Please note the Dutch spelling, K-A-E-M-I-N-G-K. See? Whoa. Wow, or you can use the hashtag #zealotspod on Twitter. That’s something we’ll be keeping an eye on, and hopefully we can have some exchanges there. You can also feel free to send us an email at zealots@comment.org.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Thanks to our sponsor, Fuller Seminary’s Mouw Institute of Faith and Public Life. Zealots at the Gate is hosted by Comment magazine. It’s produced by the wonderful Allie Crummy, audience strategy by Matt Crummy, with Editorial Direction by Ms. Anne Snyder. Until next time, I’m Matthew Kaemingk.
Shadi Hamid:
I’m Shadi Hamid. Thanks for joining us.
Matthew Kaemingk:
See you next time.
