Comments on: *The Mosque at ‘Hallowed’ Ground: Part I, The Controversy and the Meaning of ‘America’ http://vinaylal.wordpress.com/2010/08/25/the-mosque-at-%e2%80%98hallowed%e2%80%99-ground-part-i-the-controversy-and-the-meaning-of-%e2%80%98america%e2%80%99/ Reflections on the Culture of Politics & the Politics of Culture Sun, 21 Apr 2013 09:01:12 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Ajay Singh http://vinaylal.wordpress.com/2010/08/25/the-mosque-at-%e2%80%98hallowed%e2%80%99-ground-part-i-the-controversy-and-the-meaning-of-%e2%80%98america%e2%80%99/#comment-319 Thu, 26 Aug 2010 21:22:23 +0000 http://vinaylal.wordpress.com/?p=313#comment-319 It could equally be argued, beyond rhetoric, that unhappy families are all alike. It all depends on what you mean by unhappiness, which, like happiness, is murky multidisciplinary territory worth exploring. For me, one point stands out: People who TRY to be happy are almost never really happy, and arguably much less happy than those who perhaps don’t think of life as if one of its ultimate goals were something as elusive, even unrealistic (or “un-/anti-scientific”) as happiness.

That said, are Bhutanese happier than Bostonians? To truly answer the question, you would have to lived deeply among both or similar communities. I’ve had a fair taste of both (although I know the former category much better than the latter) and I can say with a sense of conviction matching the results of Bhutan’s recent (ongoing?) Happiness Project that on the “whole” people in that of the world are undeniably happier than (say) the Brahmins at MIT.

]]> By: *The Mosque at ‘Hallowed’ Ground, Part II: Some Notes on the Politics of Place & Name « Lal Salaam: A Blog by Vinay Lal http://vinaylal.wordpress.com/2010/08/25/the-mosque-at-%e2%80%98hallowed%e2%80%99-ground-part-i-the-controversy-and-the-meaning-of-%e2%80%98america%e2%80%99/#comment-317 Thu, 26 Aug 2010 20:56:11 +0000 http://vinaylal.wordpress.com/?p=313#comment-317 [...] See also Part I, The Controversy and the Meaning of ‘America’ [...]

]]> By: Manan http://vinaylal.wordpress.com/2010/08/25/the-mosque-at-%e2%80%98hallowed%e2%80%99-ground-part-i-the-controversy-and-the-meaning-of-%e2%80%98america%e2%80%99/#comment-316 Thu, 26 Aug 2010 15:38:58 +0000 http://vinaylal.wordpress.com/?p=313#comment-316 Dear Vinay,

Thank you for putting it in those terms; I couldn’t agree more.

m

]]> By: Vinay Lal http://vinaylal.wordpress.com/2010/08/25/the-mosque-at-%e2%80%98hallowed%e2%80%99-ground-part-i-the-controversy-and-the-meaning-of-%e2%80%98america%e2%80%99/#comment-315 Thu, 26 Aug 2010 13:37:33 +0000 http://vinaylal.wordpress.com/?p=313#comment-315 Dear Manan,
I think we could debate whether priority of arrival should at all have any bearing on the debate.
In other words, let us allow the opponents the privilege of believing that Muslims are newcomers.
The onus on them would be to show that somehow those who have been around longer have
greater entitlements than those who do not. My many years of reading of Gandhi inclines me to
the view that the greater ethical position is to allow the opponent the strongest possible hand,
if that is what they desire, and then show the weaknesses in their view. Of course, if we had to
challenge the opponents who might stress the ‘newness’ of the Muslim, we could also take recourse
to the readily available argument that they, too, displaced those, that is the native Americans, who
were already here. But I think we would both recognize that, at least among the opponents,
such an argument has almost no traction at all.

]]> By: Manan http://vinaylal.wordpress.com/2010/08/25/the-mosque-at-%e2%80%98hallowed%e2%80%99-ground-part-i-the-controversy-and-the-meaning-of-%e2%80%98america%e2%80%99/#comment-314 Thu, 26 Aug 2010 12:38:43 +0000 http://vinaylal.wordpress.com/?p=313#comment-314 Dear Vinay,

Of course, I didn’t mean to imply you weren’t aware (how could I?) but I do want to raise the point that the issue of “new-ness” as a marker of Muslim immigrant is central to the rhetorical debates on this “Ground Zero Mosque” (“Outsider” being the other, related marker). And as such, I think they ought to be strenuously challenged. But, like I said, I am greatly looking forward to your thoughts.

cheers,
M

]]> By: Vinay Lal http://vinaylal.wordpress.com/2010/08/25/the-mosque-at-%e2%80%98hallowed%e2%80%99-ground-part-i-the-controversy-and-the-meaning-of-%e2%80%98america%e2%80%99/#comment-313 Thu, 26 Aug 2010 11:09:28 +0000 http://vinaylal.wordpress.com/?p=313#comment-313 You may recall the famous beginning of Anna Karenina, where Tolstoy says: ‘Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ I am inclined to think that the nation-state is a spectacularly unhappy way of organizing the affairs of humans, and each nation-state is unhappy in its own way. Now Updike may well be right that America is one gigantic conspiracy to make one happy, but some conspiracies succeed where others fail. It isn’t clear to me that America is more unhappy than any other nation-state, indeed it may be less unhappy.

If at all “United” in USA had to be undone, I would call it “Untied”: the US is much too big, and I go along with the view, not often expressed, that there is an optimum size for a nation. Beyond that the nation-state is a menace to everyone else. But this is going to take us far afield.

]]> By: Vinay Lal http://vinaylal.wordpress.com/2010/08/25/the-mosque-at-%e2%80%98hallowed%e2%80%99-ground-part-i-the-controversy-and-the-meaning-of-%e2%80%98america%e2%80%99/#comment-312 Thu, 26 Aug 2010 11:02:32 +0000 http://vinaylal.wordpress.com/?p=313#comment-312 The questions themselves furnish an insight into what are some of the fundamental issues, not all of them transparent, that lurk behind the present controversy. In subsequent posts, I hope to elucidate some of the issues at greater length.

]]> By: Vinay Lal http://vinaylal.wordpress.com/2010/08/25/the-mosque-at-%e2%80%98hallowed%e2%80%99-ground-part-i-the-controversy-and-the-meaning-of-%e2%80%98america%e2%80%99/#comment-311 Thu, 26 Aug 2010 11:00:53 +0000 http://vinaylal.wordpress.com/?p=313#comment-311 Hi Manan,
You are right to quibble but, frankly, I had anticipated this legitimate objection: thus I qualified my observation with the phrase, “for the most part”. I am aware of the presence of Muslims in the New World stretching back to the early 1600s, and the same can be said for the presence of Indian Americans (which I have documented to the mid 1700s, even though most conventional histories place them as coming to north America around 1890) as I argued in my book “The Other Indians” (2008). But the blog piece is not a full-fledged scholarly article and it is not possible to go into all the details; moreover, the fact remains that, viewed in totality, Muslims are comparatively newer immigrants.
Cheers,
Vinay

]]> By: manan http://vinaylal.wordpress.com/2010/08/25/the-mosque-at-%e2%80%98hallowed%e2%80%99-ground-part-i-the-controversy-and-the-meaning-of-%e2%80%98america%e2%80%99/#comment-310 Thu, 26 Aug 2010 09:32:00 +0000 http://vinaylal.wordpress.com/?p=313#comment-310 Dear Vinay, Looking forward to it! One quibble would be that ” Muslims are, for the most part, among the more recent of the immigrants “. In a sense you are right, but in the sense of the idea of Muslim/Islam, the New World has had Muslim/Moors/Mohamadans since 1600. I wrote on this during the campaign issue
http://www.chapatimystery.com/archives/imperial_watch/a_muslim_like_obama.html

]]> By: Ajay Singh http://vinaylal.wordpress.com/2010/08/25/the-mosque-at-%e2%80%98hallowed%e2%80%99-ground-part-i-the-controversy-and-the-meaning-of-%e2%80%98america%e2%80%99/#comment-309 Thu, 26 Aug 2010 04:12:57 +0000 http://vinaylal.wordpress.com/?p=313#comment-309 America, John Updike perceptively said with more than a hint of irony, is a vast conspiracy to make you happy. You needn’t be steeped in psychoanalysis nor an opponent of happiness, American style or otherwise, to realize how difficult it is to be happy without, to some degree, being unhappy. It logially follows that what Americans really are is unhappy — or else there wouldn’t be the vast conspiracy that Updike alluded to. And we know what unhappy people do: They make everyone around them unhappy. If American history during this decade is anything to go by, it might be time to call this nation not the “United” States of America but the Unhappy States of America.

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