How to Lose an Election (Well)

Matthew Kaemingk:
Hello and welcome to Zealots at the Gate, a podcast of Comment magazine. I’m Matthew Kaemingk, and with me is Dr. Shadi Hamid. Together, we research faith, politics, and the future of democracy at Fuller Seminary’s Mouw Institute of Faith and Public Life. Shadi and I are actually writing a book together, and this podcast represents an informal space where we get to talk about how we live with deep difference in a divided age. So thanks for joining us. For those of you who are new, please make sure to subscribe to Zealots at the Gate. You can find us at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you find them. Yeah, and thanks for joining us.

Today, we’re going to be talking… Well, this particular podcast is being recorded only a couple of weeks before the United States election, and while we are thinking a lot about who is going to win this presidential election, Shadi and I actually wanted to talk just a little bit about losing an election and how do we think about this prospect of losing, of conceding defeat as people of faith. How do we process defeat and loss politically, personally, and so on. But before we dive into that topic, Shadi, I just want to mention that this podcast is different from any other episode that we’ve ever recorded in that we are recording it live at a conference at Fuller Seminary that’s specifically focused on Muslim and Christian dialog. So, Shadi, the concern here is that we can’t cover up all the mistakes that you make from time to time when we record these things. So you’re going to have to tighten up, brother.

Shadi Hamid:
Yep, that’s right.

Matthew Kaemingk:
Shadi, I’ll start off with a question for you. I know why I care about this topic of losing and accepting defeat, but I’m wondering, for you, why did you say yes to this topic? What interests you from your own background in politics and faith? What is it about losing, conceding, accepting defeat? Where does your mind go first with that topic? Why did you want to talk about this?

Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. Thanks, Matt, for the intro, and it’s great to be with everyone at Fuller Seminary at this conference and looking forward to this conversation. And also, hope our dear listeners who will listen to this at some later point will enjoy and benefit from what we have to say because it is a really important topic. We keep on hearing that this is the most important election of our lifetimes. That is the constant refrain. And we know that, by definition, not every election can be the most important of our lifetimes. So already there’s something that we should be a little bit suspicious about, but I’m thinking about not just winning but also losing because I think there is a legitimate chance that my preferred side will come out of this disappointed and despairing.

And I don’t think it’s dawned on a lot of us yet that Donald Trump has more than a legitimate shot at winning this election. And I think that for those of us who are Democrats or left of center and lean in that direction, there has been a overconfidence and even, occasionally, an over exuberance. And I think that it’s important in the weeks leading up to an election, particularly one like this, for us to steel ourselves for the worst possible outcome and to prepare mentally, but not just mentally, but also spiritually and theologically. And even in preparing for this conversation with you today, Matthew, and with all of you in the audience, I’ve been forcing myself to come to terms with this and like, “Okay, how would I really contend with that? How should I really prepare myself for this?”

And I think there’s a lot religiously, certainly from an Islamic perspective, I’m Muslim for those of you who are into…, I think there’s a lot that I feel that I can draw on, but it’s not just limited to Islam. I think there’s a general religious sensibility that allows us to contend with losing. Because in some sense, religion is about befriending reality, that even with loss, and suffering, and despair, religion is about understanding that those things are inevitable, that they cannot be completely transcended in this world, that suffering is with us, that difficulty is with us. And I think that secular ideologies aren’t as well-equipped to contend with that reality.

Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah, there’s something just simply about the act of prayer, the regular act of prayer that is in itself an admission, that I’m not God and that I’m not in control. And an important aspect of losing well politically or just in personal relationships is the acceptance that you’re not in control. And even this understanding of a Islam is meeting submission. An important aspect is just the practicing of submission.

And within secular modernity, there’s this rise that the world revolves around humanity, that we can control nature, that we can design and manufacture nature and life, and that we can protect ourselves from the elements. And in our religious traditions, the practice of prayer is in itself a daily reminder of our own finitude, our own fragility. And that seems to be a bit of a training ground for a Wednesday after an election. I think to myself… 2016, I remember there was this skit on Saturday Night Live after the 2016 election in which it’s Saturday Night Live, so they’re all left and they’re all despairing over the election. And Tina Fey, I think was invited on the show and she had an interesting response to the loss to Donald Trump. She just started grabbing huge pieces of cake and shoving it into her mouth-

Shadi Hamid:
Oh, yeah, I remember that one.

Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah, to just deal with it. But there’s a grieving process that goes on when we lose an election or whatever else it is. And, of course, that grieving involves denial, anger, bargaining and so forth. But I did want to really dive into this sense of our faith itself is a resource. Now, but before I do, Shadi, I did a little bit of research before we jumped in here on concession speeches that, for many years, were a ritual of American life. And, of course, Donald Trump famously did not give a concession speech. And there’s this political theorist named Paul Corcoran, who talks about the ritual of a concession speech and the tradition of it.

While at times, he’s somewhat cynical in talking politicians doing their concession speech for cynical reasons, in studying the pattern of how this concession is done, it seems to me there’s something very important for the spirit of a democracy to go through this practice of conceding a defeat. So here’s what he has to say. He says there’s a basic template for the concession speech, and I just want to walk through these four elements because I think they can actually help us think about how we as voters and as people of faith actually concede defeat. So the first thing he says, the first thing you say is, it’s just a statement of defeat. Although they never use the word defeat, a losing candidate will acknowledge their opponent’s victory and congratulate them.

So Dewey to President Truman, “I’ve sent the following wire to President Truman, ‘My heartiest congratulations to you on your election and every good wish for a successful administration.'” So first of all, just admitting that you have lost is an important step in the process or, in AA, it would be admit that you are powerless in that moment. And so the second one is the call to unite. So in a show of bipartisanship, a candidate will express support for their former opponent and call for unity under their leadership. So Nixon, he says this to Kennedy, “I have great faith that our people, Republicans, Democrats alike, will unite behind our next president.” Now that almost seems… How does that hit you today? I’m curious, that call for unity, what do you think about that?

Shadi Hamid:
Yeah, that’s not going to happen. But also as you know, Matt, I’m not a huge fan of the unity discourse because we are deeply divided for a reason. We do have foundational disagreements as Americans that can’t be papered over or transcended or wished away. They are real. And I think there’s some wisdom in accepting how deep our divides are on things like what it means to be an American, what is the role of religion in public life, questions around abortion and the very nature of human life. These are existential questions. They’re not policy disagreements. So I think that in a Cold War context where there was a bipartisan elite that was fashioning a consensus, it was possible to imagine a united front. I don’t think that’s any longer our reality. And I think that it’s better for us to accept that rather than resist it.

Matthew Kaemingk:
So this third point though, I wonder if this might provide somewhat of the unity that they’re looking for. So the third point of the concession speech is to celebrate democracy. So the candidate who has lost reflects on the power of the democratic experiment and the millions of voters who participated in the election process. So Jimmy Carter says this after he lost to Ronald Reagan. Carter says, “I have a deep appreciation of the system, however, that lets people make a free choice about who will lead them for the next four years.” And then here’s what Hillary Clinton said in 2016, “Our constitutional democracy enshrines the peaceful transfer of power. We don’t just respect that, we cherish it.”

So there’s a sacredness to democratic life that has to be named. And while I completely agree with you, we talk about this all the time on the podcast, there are deep divisions that we cannot paper over. It does seem that American democratic life requires that we… I mean, she uses the word enshrined, like there has to be something that we hold up that, in some way, binds us amidst these deep differences and the choice to celebrate democracy… I don’t know. That’s an interesting one. What do you think about that, the way of phrasing, celebrate democracy?

Shadi Hamid:
I’d maybe even go one step further from celebrating democracy to say that we can’t really, as mere mortals, know with certainty whether a Trump or a Kamala Harris victory would ultimately be better for America, the world or ourselves. I certainly think that a Harris victory would be preferable, but I can’t say that in any definitive sense. And I think there’s a uncertainty that is always either implicit or explicit in the democratic idea, which is we have competing ideas and candidates, and then we have to let go of control. We do our best in the sense that we cast our vote, we organize, we participate, but then the outcome is quite literally out of our hands. And you’ll know, Matt, and for others who have listened to the podcast, there’s a particular prophetic hadith that I love and I keep on going back to it, whether it’s in my own personal life with struggles that I’m dealing with, and then struggles in my own political imagination, which is the tie your camel hadith.

So basically what happens is that the Prophet Muhammad sees a camel shepherd… I know that’s what you call them exactly, who has left his camel to roam. And then the Prophet says, “Why are you leaving your camel?” And then the shepherd says, “Well, I put my trust in God.” Then the Prophet’s like, “No, no, that’s not going to fly. First, you tie your camel, and then you put your trust in God.” And I think there’s something very powerful about this, and I see its applicability in so many different contexts that, first of all, there’s a affirmation of agency that there is something that we can do and it’s our responsibility to do as much as we can do. But then at a certain point, the outcome is very much outside of our grasp. Because after I tie my camel, someone else can come and cut the cord, any number of things can happen, the weather, other problems, and I just won’t even be aware of what those problems are.

And then so there’s that other step, which I think is very difficult for us moderns because we’re so used to having… We want control over outcomes. And to know that to put your trust in God is to accept, as you were saying earlier, Matt, that the outcome is really out of our hands. And so I’m willing to accept the possibility that if Trump wins, as frightening as that might be for me, that in God’s mysterious wisdom, it is plausible that good things could come out of a Trump victory. I know that’s going to be controversial for some of our more secular listeners to accept, but I’ll just put that out there. I don’t know if that provokes any reactions from you, Matt.

Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. I mean, I think this goes back to my earlier comments about prayer and transcendence, the honoring of a transcendent God who is beyond our understanding, beyond our reach, beyond our control, as the Bible talks about, “My ways are higher than your ways. And who are you? Who are you, oh, man to tell God what to do?” And so the human practice of submission to a higher wisdom, submission to a history that we cannot understand, I think is really important.

Shadi Hamid:
I do want to add, just as I’m listening right now, there’s actually a perfect Quranic verse for precisely this scenario. I think we’ve talked about it before in the context. I think I have jokingly referred to this verse once as the breakup verse because it’s a verse that my parents would tell me when I went through some pretty bad romantic breakups in the past-

Matthew Kaemingk:
After you got dumped and you were despondent?

Shadi Hamid:
Exactly. Yeah. But what was interesting in thinking about what we’re going to talk about today, it occurred to me that this verse is actually perfect for elections as well. So it’s verse 2 to 16, and it goes like this, quote, “It may be that you hate a thing, though it is good for you. And it may be that you love a thing, though it is bad for you. God knows and you know not.” In reading that, it does apply very much to how people might feel if their preferred candidate doesn’t win because we’ve imbued elections with such existential meaning. It’s not just that we dislike an outcome, it’s that we hate it. We feel that it is so contrary to everything that we hold dear.

And there is actually some very interesting empirical work on how there is now something called depression through politics or politically-induced anxiety and depression where people literally get sick when politics doesn’t go their way. And I think this verse is a reminder, again, to this idea that it seems really bad in the moment, but it may not be as bad as we think or we’ll probably get through it somehow and perhaps we’ll even learn something positive or maybe even our lives will somehow improve in some unanticipated way.

Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. Okay. So you’ve put out your breakup verse from when the girl dumps you and you’re feeling that loss. Here’s my Christian one for you. This is 2 Corinthians 12:9, or I suppose our former president would say, 2 Corinthians, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness. Therefore… Paul says, “I will most gladly boast all the more in my weakness so that Christ’s power may reside in me,” or as Jesus would say, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now for you who will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now for you shall laugh. Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall weep and mourn.”

So, I mean, there’s something really deep within the heart of the Christian faith that it is a faith for losers and that Jesus actually meets us in defeat. That’s a really important aspect of the Christian life in that even this line of, “My power is perfected in weakness.” So God says, “I’m going to draw near to you not through your success, but actually through your failure. That’s going to be the way that you and I become closer.” So that’s right at the heart of the gospel. So, I mean, we’ve talked about our personal faith, but I do want to bring it back to this concession speech thing because I really can’t get off of it, Shadi, because one of the things that we talk quite a bit about is that democracy, democratic life is not simply a system of government. It’s not simply collecting votes and making bills. Democratic life, there’s a culture to be becoming someone who practices democratic life, someone who practices persuasion, who engages in debate, and in this case, who handles defeat. Right?

Democracy depends upon citizens handling defeat and conceding. Democracy doesn’t work if people don’t concede. And it seems to me, and this is my argument, is that one of the key reasons why the concession speech developed was democracy requires… It requires a ritual. It requires rituals of transfer of power. And last year, we interviewed that bishop from the Church of England, and he was talking all about the transfer of power and the coronation of the king and the liturgies of these things. It seems to me that the liturgies of conceding defeat and the inauguration of a president, there’s a reason why all these rituals develop because we as human beings, we need rituals. We are ritualistic creatures. And all of these aspects of admitting defeat, of congratulating the winner, of stating that, “Hey, we’ve been embroiled in this fight for the last three months. We need an end to the fight. We need someone to say the fight is over and our life is bigger than the fight, that we’re going to move on.” And one of the aspects of our political culture today, it seems to me is the fight just feels never ending.

Shadi Hamid:
Yep.

Matthew Kaemingk:
And so the loss of the concession speech, it doesn’t give us that chance to take our breath at the end of an election.

Shadi Hamid:
Yep. Yep. Exactly. And I think we’re all going to need that breath, but I’d maybe just add one thing to it that I think both of us… And I’d be curious, Matt, if you could say more about this in a second. I think we’re both approaching this election maybe in a different way than a lot of our more energized, partisan fellow Americans because I think we’re both conflicted about how to vote or… I mean, I want Kamala to win, but for reasons having to do with the war in Gaza and what I consider to be the Biden-Harris administration’s enabling and facilitating of the brutality that’s been committed against the Palestinian people, and now the Lebanese people, I think not just myself, but a lot of Arab and Muslim Americans, but also young progressives are looking at this and saying, “Wow, this is more difficult than we would’ve hoped, to… There is a question of conscience here that when you’re alone in the voting booth, it’s just really you and God.

And if you’re approaching it from a lesser-of-two-evils perspective, you might say, “Well, okay, there’s nothing perfect here. Let’s just suck it up and vote for the preferred candidate,” even if that candidate is profoundly problematic or imperfect. But then when you’re thinking about your vertical relationship with God, it’s also a question of can you really live with yourself if you vote against your conscience in some fundamental way. So I think a lot of us as… And being both Muslim and Arab, a lot of us as Muslim and Arab Americans are facing this election with much less enthusiasm than we would’ve than, say, four years ago. And there’s actually a recent survey that came out on Muslim Americans and their voting preferences, and it’s really quite striking that for this one survey by the Yaqueen Institute, close to 70% of Muslims voted for Biden in 2020, and now only about 14% say that they’re going to vote for Kamala Harris.

Now, I assume that that number will get higher when people are just like, “Well, we’re going to have to vote for someone and just do what we got to do,” but there is going to be a massive gap from 2020 and 2024, and I think we’re really in the midst of what could potentially be… Not a realignment, because it’s not as if Muslim Americans are going to Trump, but a dealignment where Muslim Americans find themselves politically and electorally homeless. And that’s something that I’ve been thinking about more and more is what is appropriate for me to advise people. And generally, what I’ve said is if you’re voting in a place like Washington, DC, New York or California, you’re totally within your rights to just vote your conscience and not worry so much about the outcome because your state doesn’t really matter in this case.

But my parents, for example, live in Pennsylvania, so I’m like, “Mom and dad, I think it might be prudent to just to… But can you say maybe more a little bit from your perspective as an evangelical, as a Christian, but also someone who is maybe not where most American evangelicals are when it comes to a very… In terms of an enthusiastic support of Trump, but I think there’s also some concern in the evangelical community about Trump shifts on issues like abortion. I’d be curious about how you’re wrestling with that, because I know we’ve talked about that a little bit.

Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. So for those who are new to me and don’t know, I am a conservative evangelical who has no interest whatsoever in Donald Trump. So that puts me in a weird spot. And, yeah, I think you’re right that for many of us who are pro-life, it has been interesting to watch how Donald Trump has actually stepped back from that pro-life position. And there are many pro-lifers who feel used. And it is interesting to watch Muslims on the left talk about feeling used by the Democrats in much the same way as evangelicals can feel used by Republicans. And so dealing with that disappointment in watching the Democrats side with Israel against the Palestinian cause, similarly for evangelicals to watch Republicans and abandon the unborn. And I think similar to you, one of the hard things for me in dealing with this conversation about losing an election is I don’t feel a lot of enthusiasm for either of the candidates. So it’s not very hard for me with the understanding that one of them would lose, it’s more hard that one of them might win.

But I do think more in terms of… I mentioned that I am pro-life and being pro-life means you lose. I don’t expect to win the pro-life argument at any time in my life. I don’t imagine that America is going to ban abortion. And so each election, I am used to losing that argument. And so spiritually, that’s an annual event. And I guess, for me, yeah, I was actually reading in scripture today about this concept of divine concession, and I’m curious what you have to say about this because actually God, in the Old Testament, concedes to the people of Israel in a number of interesting ways. So he tells them not to have a king, that He doesn’t want them to have a king, that they should serve God alone, but they demand a king and God concedes and gives them one. There are many times where God lets the nations go their own way. That’s in Acts 14. Times when God held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past, that God endured with much patience, vessels of wrath, and times when He overlooked their ignorance. That’s from Acts and Romans.

Divorce, for example, was permitted, but as a concession, it was not God’s plan from the beginning, just as many things were not God’s plan from the beginning, nor His perfect will. So when hard hearts brought destitution on others, divine allowances outside of God’s perfect plan were permitted in the mercy of God. And so it testifies that if God can concede… One theologian says that we live in the days of God’s patience, that God has decided to be patient with us. And that’s different from saying it’s God’s will that we do evil things, but it’s saying it’s a divine concession and we don’t know why. So if God can concede, if God can allow this, then maybe I can as well. And I’ve been thinking about that a lot and thinking about how… We’ve talked a lot about how as America walks away from religion, as America walks away from institutional religion, the paradoxical way in which our politics has actually become more religious, our politics has become more zealous, more fervent, it feels a lot more like a holy war today, even though it’s increasingly secular.

And I think that an important reason for this is that if you don’t have a divine judge who is going to make things right, as we’ve talked about, that there is a judgment that is delayed, if you don’t have that, then what you tend to want is you want perfect justice right now. So you want your enemies to pay right now. You want a perfect victory right now. So the capacity for concession, the capacity for political patience goes down because you have made your political movement the god. Right? And so anyways, I don’t know what divine concession looks like in Islam at all. I mean, what does that look like? What does that make you think of?

Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. So I don’t know if it’s exactly analogous, but I think there’s one particular episode in the prophetic story where there is what’s perceived to be a defeat or a humiliation. So this happens in 628 A.D. It’s known as the Treaty of Hudaybiya. So the Muslims at that point who were a relatively small group and quite weak, they were in Medina and they wanted to do the pilgrimage in Mecca. So they went towards Mecca, but then they found that they were not welcome and they were threatened with violence and attack by the main Meccan tribe, the Quraysh tribe. So then the prophet and his followers had an option, or in some ways, they didn’t really have much of an option because they were in a weak position, but they basically signed a treaty which was seen as very unfavorable.

And so some of the Prophet’s closest companions were outraged. Basically, they agreed to go back to Medina. They didn’t insist on performing the pilgrimage. And in one of the most humiliating concessions, the Muslims agreed that if anyone from Mecca converted to Islam and came to the new Muslim community, they would basically be sent back. So one of the Prophet’s closest companions, Umar, goes to the Prophet and says, “Are you not the messenger of God? Are we not in the right? How can we basically concede this to them? These are our enemies and they’ve been attacking us and using violence against us, and we’re just going to accept these unfavorable terms.” But what ends up happening in the broader sweep of time is that this comes to be known as a real point in the Islamic story because the treaty allows the Muslim community a certain degree of safety and security for a 10-year period. And so the Muslim community is able to grow.

And in the first two years after the treaty, more people converted to Islam than in all the years combined prior. So this is one of the examples, and I remember growing up with this idea of that sometimes when you’re weak, you’re in a difficult situation, it might not seem like the terms are fair. It may seem like it goes up against your pride and your sense of what is just, but if you are patient and if you have a longer-term view, what is first appearing as a defeat can be a victory. But you can also see it the other way around too, that sometimes you have what seems like a victory in the moment, but over time, you realize that it wasn’t actually in your favor and it actually put you in a worse position than you imagined. And in thinking about this, there’s a famous quote, at least for those of us who study contemporary Islamist politics. So there’s an Islamist party that was on the verge of coming to power in 1992 in Algeria. It was one of the first free and fair elections anywhere in the Arab world.

And so this Islamist party, they’re called the Islamic Salvation Front, they win a massive victory in the first round of parliamentary elections. So they’re thrilled and exuberant, and they feel like they’re on the verge of victory, and one of the leaders of this party actually warns the crowds that are gathering, who are just getting very overly excited that the moment is upon them, and he says, quote, to them, “Victory is more dangerous than defeat.” And there’s something about that that is very powerful because it did turn out to be the case because the secular Algerian military stepped in and canceled the second round of elections, and then Algeria was plunged into a civil war that remained for the duration of the decade. So I just use that as a counterexample that when you think victory is yours, when you win an election by a massive margin, that can provoke opposing forces, in this case, the military in Algeria, to say, “No. Actually, we’re not going to let that victory happen.” And I think those are two examples that stand out to me when we think about how we perceive and understand victory.

Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah, yeah. I’m wondering if you could talk just a little bit about the Arab defeat in 1967 and how Muslims handled that defeat in productive or non-productive ways. What do you think there?

Shadi Hamid:
Well, so I think that it’s not just 1967, which was probably one of the most devastating military defeats in perhaps even human history. I mean, it’s called the Six-Day War for a reason. And when you consider that you have various Arab armies and that they were defeated by what was still then a relatively young nation of Israel, and it was just so lopsided when you think about in terms of population, geographic territory and so forth. But I think that if you look even more broadly at the 20th century, at the colonial and post-colonial period where Muslims, and Arabs in particular in this case, have experienced such a precipitous decline, such a precipitous… If I can use the term, a fall from grace. And we as even growing up in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, we would have these dinner table conversations where there was this sense of…

Well, we used to be one of the greatest civilizations the world had ever seen, and then something starts to happen in the modern period. And colonialism and being under foreign subjugation is perhaps the most striking example of this. And then it’s a question of how we make sense of this defeat, this fall from grace. Because if you’re thinking about it from an Islamic perspective, you might be like, “Well, we’re Muslims. Why would this happen to us? Why wouldn’t God reward us being Muslim or us being believers with at least a better condition, a better state of being?” And so one way this is interpreted throughout the 20th century, and particularly after 1967, is that Muslims had strayed away from God, that we had lost our way and we had ceased to be practicing the way that we should, and that these defeats were a way of chastening Muslims to say, “You have to take stock of where you’re at. There’s a reason that you are failing.”

And this is where I think defeat can be a very useful thing and it didn’t… Well, maybe not in this case because I don’t think there was a lot of great learning after 1967, although people can differ on that. But there’s a sense that if something doesn’t go your way, you have to try to make sense of why that might be. If God isn’t granting you victory, if God isn’t granting you success, you may have to look inward at your own practice, your own worship, your own failures as a community to organize effectively and get your act together. And this leads me to a verse that comes up a lot. It’s maybe, if I can say it this way, it’s the we-get-what-we-deserve verse, it’s 13:11 in the Quran where the verse goes as follows, “God does not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves.”

And I remember whenever we would talk about, and I’m originally Egyptian, why is Egypt in this such a sad state under dictatorship from independence onwards? How could this possibly be? And then so my parents would often say this verse to say, “Well, okay, God isn’t going to do it for us.” We have agency, Egyptians, in this case, have agency, and they have to actually strengthen their faith, and then tie their camel. It’s not just about praying to God, thoughts and prayers. It’s also about acting in politics to change your lot. And that’s obviously not a very easy thing to do.

Matthew Kaemingk:
Oh, man, I love that. So what I’d love to do here, just after these couple comments, is we want to turn it over to the audience to open it up for questions, questions you might have for Shadi or for me, but also your thoughts and wisdom, because I imagine there’s a lot of brilliant people at this conference who may be able to fill out some of this theology of losing. And, of course, Shadi and I have our share of political issues that we care deeply about, but that we imagine we will never win on these particular issues. And, Shadi, I do apologize for my obsession with concession speeches, but I just find them fascinating. I really do. And there’s-

Shadi Hamid:
But they’re also a beautiful thing. I mean, when you think about it, the idea that we’ve regularized this ritual, and for the most part with one exception, it’s part of who we are as Americans that we find a way to concede. And I’m also someone who’s very partial to democracy. I think democracy is just a beautiful thing and a transcendent thing. And I think there’s a spirituality in democracy in the sense that you take responsibility. Europe parties, candidates, individuals, we try our best to persuade our fellow Americans and we want them to come to our side, but we also acknowledge that there’s a real chance that they won’t, and that democracy is, in some sense, the right to make the wrong choice.

And that is a very… You have to have a spirit of generosity for that to say that there are tens of millions of your fellow Americans who might make decisions that you find absolutely abhorrent, but they’re still going to be Americans. They’re not going to be beyond the pale, or that’s what we would hope. Now, one concern that I think both of us have had, especially in recent years, is that there is this tendency to say that you are actually beyond the pale if you don’t vote the way that I do or if you don’t support the causes that we do. And I think that’s something we have to resist. And I think we’re going to have to be encouraging our fellow Americans after November 5th because there’s going to be a lot of angry Americans. No matter what happens, that’s inevitable.

Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. So here’s what Corcoran has to say. He says, “The defeated candidate’s courage in the ancient sense of virtue or manliness is in doubt until he congratulates his opponent. By the same token, the winner’s chivalry is faulted if he claims victory before the loser concedes. There’s thus an antique moral dimension in conceding defeat. A concession speech is a form of noble condescension. The candidate condones the vilification visited upon him by his opponent, ‘It was a hard-fought race,’ and accepts the humiliation of defeat, ‘I respect the people’s verdict.’ By this symbolic condemnation, he forgives the depredations of his private and public honor by journalists, comedians, media experts, and the general public and the party process as a whole. There’s actually something in which those who participate in the ritual of concession actually sees agency in that they are the ones who are the first to congratulate the winner, who are the first to name this, and they get to decide how they will be remembered.” And so by participating in that, I mean… So what I just read to you was written in 1994, so it feels terribly-

Shadi Hamid:
Good old days.

Matthew Kaemingk:
… terribly outdated and sad that we can’t say that with a straight face anymore. But the idea is… And, of course, all the man language in that quote, right? All the male language of that’s who the politicians were at that time, but this sense of we will see your nature by how you lose. We will see your character by how you lose. And it was this ritual, this important ritual by which you can demonstrate who you truly are at the end of the campaign, that losing has a way of exposing us in a way that winning never does.

Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. And there’s something great too about how you can take the initiative because after you lose, you might be despondent and depressed and want to go out into the forest, and you might actually end up going into the forest as Hillary Clinton did eventually. But first, she did… There still was a concession speech in 2016. So it allows the losers to at least have some agency and initiative that they’re not completely powerless, that they don’t have to just be in utter despair. There is something that they can do to signal something to their supporters and followers.

Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. All right. Well, hey, let’s turn it over to questions from the audience. I see we have our first question, which is asking about what do you think about either abstaining for voting or voting for a third party just to foster a more pluralistic democracy? I think, for me, I have often lived in states where my vote did not matter for the presidential election. I grew up in Seattle, which always went for Democrats. And then I live now in St. Louis, Missouri, which Missouri is going to go for Donald Trump. And so I have often used my vote for a third party just because I want to encourage them. I vote for a group of losers called the American Solidarity Party. Yeah, they’re great. It’s a great party. But I do believe that, in general, if you’re in a swing state, you have a moral responsibility to be a part of the actual decision about these elections.

And I respect Christians who say, as this questioner does, maybe I just need to abstain from the political process, but I deeply disagree with that abstinence from the political process because, in abstaining, you are still participating in the political process, you’re making a decision. But I don’t know. Shadi, do you have any thoughts on voting for third parties, and morally, as a Muslim, what is your responsibility? I should also mention for our listeners, we just talked about this with this particular topic for the Christian listeners, we talked about how Muslims feel torn morally in their voting a couple of months ago. We’ll include a link in the show notes. I highly recommend that because the connections between evangelicals and Muslims in terms of feeling morally torn between the parties. It was really a fascinating discussion. But, yeah, Shadi, do you have any thoughts on third parties and stuff?

Shadi Hamid:
First of all, I think that if you’re angry, you as a voter should be able to channel that anger. And it’s not enough for people to say, “Well, there’s only two choices, deal with it.” I think there’s something very presumptuous about that when the leaders of the Democratic Party act as if we have no choice and they point to Trump as being so bad and so abhorrent. It’s emotional blackmail almost. It feels like, “Oh, they use the specter of Trump to just silence dissent,” and to say, “Well, even if you don’t like what we’re doing as the Democratic Party, tough luck guys.” And I think that’s how a lot of Muslims and Arabs feel that we’ve been talked down to in this way. I think that precisely because as you said, Matt, abstaining is its own… That’s a political statement. That is not being neutral.

And I think that if you’re abstaining consciously, I respect that. It’s maybe not something that I would do, but I understand people who feel like they don’t… Even they feel so outraged and so disgusted by our politics that they don’t even want to go. And let’s be honest that third-party options aren’t particularly compelling on the national level when people say, “Well, Jill Stein and Cornell West,” or whoever, I mean, it’s also… So I don’t have strong preferences on that, but I think that there is something important… Anger, as long as we don’t let it become something darker. Anger can have a place in politics because people should be able to express their grievances and channel them in ways that are emotionally visceral.

Matthew Kaemingk:
We have another question, which is essentially a lesser-of-two-evils question. So I’m wondering, within Islam, how do you think about siding with the lesser of two evils, with maybe the… I don’t know if this would be appropriate, but compromising your Islamic principles for the sake of what might seem to be a greater good?

Shadi Hamid:
So it depends what that looks like in practice. Obviously, there’s things that we as Muslims or Christians shouldn’t compromise on, when it comes to things relating to our relationship with God or our worship, the non-negotiables of our faith, that should always be a red line. So if there is a political leader who is threatening to infringe on our religious practice or our ability to be fully Muslim or fully Christian, that, to me, seems more like a red line. I think, thankfully, as a Muslim minority, I don’t think there’s a lot of that in the American context where our ability to pray and worship is being directly threatened by national leaders in contrast to Europe, where in countries like France, there are actually limitations on religious expression in ways that really affect people in a personal sense, the most obvious example being prohibitions on the wearing of the headscarf.

And there’s obviously something great about living in a country with something like the First Amendment, and we should always remember that, that America is pretty damn great when it comes to religious freedom and liberty. I do know, of course, and I hear from my Christian conservative friends that they feel like some of those things are under attack and others can speak to that better than I can. So it’s not all perfect. And there are certainly things… And living in a secular context, there’s always a sense that can we be fully embodied as religious people in a culture that is so aggressively secular and with a political elite that is still, by and large, quite secular and assumes that everyone else… Especially when it comes to the Democratic Party, and that’s one of my own criticisms of my own party, is that the Democrats are no longer hospitable to people of faith. But my answer to that is that people of faith should stay within the party that they lean towards and try to fight the good fight to push their leaders to change when it comes to being respectful of public religiosity.

Matthew Kaemingk:
I’m going to take this next question that you’re welcome to jump on. It’s a broader one. In thinking about discussing all of these topics, what challenges have you and I faced and how have these conversations about faith and politics challenged us and how have they shaped our views? So I think broadly speaking, this podcast experience, Shadi, has very much… It’s been delightfully anxiety-producing for me. I mean, not only because it’s interfaith, but you and I have religious differences, we’ve got political differences, we’ve got cultural differences. And then on something like this, we did very little preparation for this conversation. Right? And I don’t know what you’re going to say.

Well, I learned a lot about concession speeches over the last few days. This has been really interesting. But I think one of our struggles at the very beginning of this podcast, one of my struggles was thinking out loud in public. As an academic, I want to be very careful about my words. I want to footnote everything I say. I also have this sense that I’m representing Christians when I speak, and I have a responsibility to represent my brothers and sisters well. And that can get heavy sometimes. And while I would like for this conversation to be light, that can make it heavy sometimes. So that weight of responsibility, but also just the sense of a lack of control over these podcasts, I have no idea what you’re going to ask me and you’re going to push me in ways and I’ve got to respond, and I can’t take two months to research it before I answer. I just have to try it out. And you’ve really stretched me in that way.

So if I had to respond how it’s shaped me, I think that it’s shaped me to hold things lighter with more joy and curiosity in terms of my faith, in terms of my political identity, and also in terms of my identity as an academic. Because we academics, our personal brand, our personal sense of rigor is important to us. And we don’t want to seem stupid. We don’t want to seem like we don’t have the answer. We don’t want to misspeak. And the humbling stretchingness of doing this podcast has… It’s pushed on me as a follower of Jesus, as an academic, and then just as a public voice, overall in good ways. I would say net benefit, Shadi, you’ve been good for me.

Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. Well, right back at you. And I would say, for me, the stretching is as someone who has been maybe seen myself more as a writer and an academic who happens to be Muslim rather than a Muslim who happens to be an academic or a writer, that sometimes you’ve pushed me on the fact that I’ll answer questions like a liberal, because that’s how I’m used to presenting myself in liberal spaces, having lived in major urban centers with left of center elites, you learn you’re always translating in a way that is intelligible to the people that you’re speaking to-

Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah, or in editing yourself. Yeah.

Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. And that can lead you to dilute your Islamic identity. And over the years of our friendship, you’ve pushed me to lean into my Islam publicly and to do less of that dilution. And it’d be like, “Shadi, come on, you sound too much like a normie liberal. Come on, go one or two steps deeper. There’s something else going on here.” And I think you’ve also… If I can put it this way, I think you’ve made me a better Muslim. And we’ve talked about this before, you know this, but I think that when you’re engaging with someone of a different faith, it pushes you to understand your own faith better because you’re constantly discussing, debating, and challenging.

And sometimes I’m like, “Well, okay, what does my own tradition say about that?” Actually, I hadn’t thought about that. And then I’m going back and I’m pushing myself, and that allows me to recover some of my own tradition, and like, “Where does pluralism come from in an Islamic perspective?” And I think some of those resources have been obscured. People don’t necessarily associate Islam with pluralism these days, unfortunately. But there is a lot that is there, and you’ve helped me find that and rediscover some of those sources and precedents.

Matthew Kaemingk:
All right, friends. We’re running out of time. I want to close with this… I think this is a great question and I’m going to twist it just a little bit. Shadi, as you think about what listeners might take away from this episode on losing, on conceding, how might this apply to our personal relationships with those that we disagree with? As we think about this election’s only a couple of weeks away, we’re going to be interacting with people who won and people who lost. How do we think about this spirituality of losing, of concession? What do you think is the impact in terms of how we interact with people in November after the election?

Shadi Hamid:
Well, I think reminding folks as they get agitated or angry or despairing… Look, well, first of all, we live in a democracy. It could be a lot worse. And having lived in authoritarian regimes at various points in my life and my parents having grown up under the Nasser regime in Egypt, which is one of the more authoritarian regimes in the panoply of authoritarian regimes, there is something to be said for actually being like, “Okay, this won’t be the last election. There will be another one, and you will live to fight another day peacefully through the ballot box if you wait another four years. This is quite literally not the end of the world. And there’s no election in America that is the end of the world.”

And I think it’s always worth just reminding people of that. But also, I did cry after the 2016 election, and I regret that, because I don’t think people should cry over elections and democracies because you should cry over things that are actually more meaningful and more personal. Politics just doesn’t feel deserving of that in my perspective, because, ultimately, there are other things that are more important, what I would call the three Fs and the C. Faith, family, friendship, and community. And for people to de-center their obsession with national politics and to think about what really gives them happiness. Politics might give you a thrill, but it rarely gives you anything resembling happiness. And if you’re looking for happiness in those places, then maybe you should check your priors when it comes to that.

Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. One of our friends, and much beloved writers, Michael Ware, talks about this complaint that American Christians have that they feel politically homeless. And he says, “That’s a terrible complaint. That’s not the crisis. The crisis is that you even believed that you could find a home in politics, that politics could provide you with the comfort, and belonging, and meaning, and purpose that a family can or that faith can.”

Shadi Hamid:
So, Matt, I’d never thought about it that way. Even that term, politically homeless, which I use pretty regularly, that we should even question why we would use a term like that. It hadn’t occurred to me before. So we use these terms in this very casual way, and we don’t even realize the meaning we’re imbuing in these words.

Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. So for me, as a Christian, I should only find my home in God. I should not be looking for another home. And the sense that I feel politically homeless should be, “Of course, I feel politically homeless because this is not my home.” And so to cultivate a pilgrim’s mentality and to understand that my sense of security, my sense of meaning and purpose is not going to be from this politician or this cable news network or whatever else, but it needs to be found in God. Yeah, that’s… Gosh, friends, that’s really important. And I think that just the simple recognition for Christians is if you look at all of the kings that are discussed in the Bible, the vast majority of them are tremendous disappointments.

And so if on election day, you are disappointed with the leader that you have, that should not be a cataclysmic surprise. That should be an expectation. That scripture, in many ways, I think tells the truth about political life, which it is a disappointment which involves violence, and difficulty, intention. And the expectations that politics would provide you with peace, and comfort, and a home, it just doesn’t fit with the scriptural witness. Shadi, any final words on failure and losing?

Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. Well, I’m reminded of another Quranic verse, which we Muslims like to say a lot in difficult times. “Verily… I’ve always wondered why verily is used so often in translations of scripture. “Verily, we created man in struggle.” But the Arabic word in this Quranic verse can also be translated as hardship. And I think both are very applicable that life and politics are about learning to live with struggle and despair and adapting to them in a way that is constructive and not giving up hope and curling into a ball and sulking, that religion provides us a way forward in our moments of grief and despair, and that we have to steel ourselves for those. And also, I think, in both of our traditions, there is an undercurrent of the idea that grief can actually be an entry point into becoming closer to God and inching nearer to Him, and that there is almost a solace in having that experience of grief if we allow it to open our hearts towards God.

Matthew Kaemingk:
That’s wonderful. Yeah. Gosh, I’m just going to let you have the last word there. Friends, thank you so much for listening to Zealots at the Gate. And thank you for having us at this conference. Our warm greetings to everyone at Fuller in Pasadena, and our thanks for your magnificent questions. Feel free to reach out to us on Twitter with continued questions. If you like what you’ve heard, please, for those of you who are listening online, leave us a rating. Check out this podcast, Intellectual Seedbed, which is Comment Magazine. You can find them at comment.org where you’ll find all kinds of incredible and illuminating essays on politics, culture, and faith.

Like I said, we want to hear from you so you can connect with us at Twitter, @shadihamid and @matthewkaemingk, or you can write to us an email, zealots@comment.org, and you can expect a sincere exchange there. Our thanks as well to our sponsor, Fuller Seminary’s Mouw Institute of Faith and Public Life. Zealots at the Gate is hosted by Comment Magazine, produced by Allie Crummy, audience strategy by Matt Crummy, and editorial direction by Ms. Anne Snyder. Friends, until next time, I’m Matthew Kaemingk.

Shadi Hamid:
And I’m Shadi Hamid. Bye-bye.

Matthew Kaemingk:
Bye.