Ideologues, intellectual laziness, and the perils of a compassionless society

About a decade and a half ago I moved to Southern California to attend college. I was late to submit my enrollment paperwork so I did not receive a spot in the dorms. Instead, my mom and I travelled to the area a couple weeks before classes started in order to search for rooms to rent in shared homes and apartments. I sourced rooms on Craigslist while my mom used a low-key website tailored to the South Asian community.

I vividly remember visiting one of the homes that she found. She was excited. It ostensibly met all the requirements—it was close to campus, clean, furnished, private (I would have my own room and bathroom), affordable, and located in the home of a nice family (It was as if my mom was a long lost best friend of the mother of the household). My mom was confident that our search was over. This was the place she wanted me to stay, at least for the first semester.

Once we left the house, however, I immediately rejected the idea of living there. Why? Well, as I entered the front door of the home, I noticed a small piece of Arabic calligraphy hanging on the wall. It said “Allah”. I didn’t know how to read Arabic, but I knew what that sign said and meant. They were Muslim.

What was it about me that permitted such a detestable reason for not living in that home to emanate from my heart? Was I really prejudiced against an entire group of people based upon their faith? To this day, I am not sure why I felt the way that I did—or whether I didn’t want to stay in that home for a different reason and simply used their religion as an excuse. I had never been negatively affected by any Muslim (not that such a history would have justified such contempt). Quite the contrary, despite growing up in a Hindu family, I spent much time with a Muslim auntie and her children who cared for me at home after school while my mom worked. I only have positive memories about that noble family.

If I had to pinpoint my animosity towards Muslims to something, I would suggest that it may have stemmed in part from visiting my family in India as a young child. There I once heard (I don’t know when or from whom) that it is not acceptable to use any piece of cutlery if a Muslim had used it before. I also remember learning to wash myself in a way that was distinctly different than the way Muslims did (Muslims have a specific way and order of washing their limbs as part of their ritual ablution). But I also attended middle school in a relatively politically conservative county during and in the aftermath of 9/11 so who knows what clips and chattering I was exposed to about “uncivilized” Saudis and Iraqis. Or, maybe I was influenced by being called a “sand (n-word)” in high school, not having ever heard the term before. Perhaps, out of shame, I tried to distance myself from anything “Middle Eastern,” leaning into the Indian American role as a “model minority.”

Nonetheless my anti-Muslim sentiment continued in college where I was wary of the Muslim Student Association on campus. It is remarkable to me know that I once sent an email to a student group requesting that I be removed from the list serve because that group was holding a joint event with the Muslim Student Association.

Fast forward a few years, and I found myself in a town outside of Cairo ready to recognize Islam as my own faith. What happened? God knows best.

My path to recognizing Islam as my faith is a story too long for this post. But I share this background to highlight the pernicious evil of a troubling trend that I have perceived in the classrooms of King Hall: the justification of gross generalizations when the ends are justified by one's ideological commitments.

One fundamental problem that I suffered is what Adam Kirk Edgerton calls “intellectual laziness,” which entails the practices of “gross generalizations, oversimplification, and evidence-free claims.”

Interestingly, Edgerton calls out the progressive academic community for engaging in such intellectual laziness:

The default stance in today’s academy is to conflate a whole host of issues — white resentment, gun worship, religious fundamentalism, racism — and apply that uniformly to millions of people. It is far easier to blame our current situation on faceless, ignorant masses elsewhere than to consider how often we in academe practice what we claim to abhor — gross generalizations, oversimplification, and evidence-free claims — against broad swaths of the country.

In my experience, he is spot on.

In particular, progressive folks in the academic setting are able to get away with such shoddy analysis when it is directed against groups that are ostensibly outside the categorization of “oppressed,” (based upon the Marxist oppressed-oppressor dichotomy) such as white people, Christians, and Catholics. Hence, gross generalizations of these groups are simply justified. One may even ponder if this is a natural consequence of Ibram Kendi’s proclamation that the solution to racist discrimination is anti-racist discrimination.

In any case, we must call out intellectual laziness regardless of whom it is levied against since its results are catastrophic.

Take for example, Edgerton’s anecdote about his experience discussing the tragic Las Vegas shooting with a student who was disturbingly numb to the suffering of those who were murdered. The student “reasoned” about the victims who died: “If they were attending a country-music concert, they must have voted for Trump, which meant they loved guns and thus deserved death.” Surprisingly, Edgerton points out that this student’s perspective is not unique and extends to faculty members as well: 

It’s an extreme example of our discourse of dehumanization — a vivid one in my memory. But it isn’t rare for me to hear similar assumptions expressed by students or faculty members, often without the critical self-reflection. 

As a student at one of the most progressive law schools in the country that also touts itself as being one of the most "diverse" law schools, Edgerton’s anecdote doesn’t strike me as the least bit surprising.

I used to believe the reason for such awful takes is the erosion of American education, perhaps due to the the effective disappearance of the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) in K-12 curriculums. This is especially so since it is increasingly common to believe that grammar is inherently a tool of oppression (especially within the same Marxist circles that operate under the oppressed-oppressor dichotomy). However, I believe there is something else that is contributing to the extreme polarization that begets the deluded justification of intellectual laziness. It pertains to the hardening of hearts, to take a phrase from the Quran. A hardened heart is one that is devoid of mercy and compassion. I truly wonder whether we have become so spiritually void that we simply cannot recognize and appreciate the common humanity in people? I mean, individual, real human beings with names—not collective groups based upon physiognomy and the likes.

El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X) spent over a decade believing and proclaiming that “the white man is the devil!” Yet, though he recognized that there was a brutal reality to the racism of his time that led to such a belief, he ultimately denounced it. Anyone who has studied Malcom X recognizes that his life was one of transformations. He was a transformative human being who, as he admits, always kept an open mind even when proclaiming bold statements with utmost confidence. Malcolm’s ultimate, and arguably most important, transformation was a spiritual one. And it was through this he began to view the world through the lens of mercy and compassion.

In Mecca, upon performing the Muslim pilgrimage of Hajj, Malcolm X wrote a letter home reflecting upon his otherworldly experience with people from all sorts of backgrounds. He says in his autobiography:

I knew that when my letter became public knowledge back in America, many would be astounded—loved ones, friends, and enemies alike. And no less astounded would be millions whom I did not know—who had gained during my twelve years with Elijah Muhammad a ‘hate’ image of Malcolm X.

Even I was myself astounded. But there was precedent in my life for this letter. My whole life had been a chronology of—changes.

Here is what I wrote . . . from my heart:

"Never have I witnessed such sincere hospitality and the overwhelming spirit of true brotherhood as is practiced by people of all colors and races here in this Ancient Holy Land, the home of Abraham, Muhammad, and all the other prophets of the Holy Scriptures. For the past week, I have been utterly speechless and spellbound by the graciousness I see displayed all around me by people of all colors.

There were tens of thousands of pilgrims, from all over the world. They were of all colors, from blue-eyed blonds to black-skinned Africans. But we were all participating in the same ritual, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that my experiences in America had led me to believe never could exist between the white and the non-white.

America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem. Throughout my travels in the Muslim world, I have met, talked to, and even eaten with people who in America would have been considered ‘white’—but the ‘white’ attitude was removed from their minds by the religion of Islam. I have never before seen sincere and true brotherhood practiced by all colors together, irrespective of their color.

You may be shocked by these words coming from me. But on this pilgrimage, what I have seen, and experienced, has forced me to re-arrange much of my thought-patterns previously held, and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions. This was not too difficult for me. Despite my firm convictions, I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth.

During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass, and slept in the same bed (or on the same rug)—while praying to the same God—with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the bluest of blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white. And in the words and in the actions and in the deeds of the "white" Muslims, I felt the same sincerity that I felt among the black African Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan, and Ghana.'

Later in the book, Malcolm X describes how his newfound understanding and recognition of God practically changed his own approach and experiences as a human being interacting with other human beings:

True Islam taught me that it takes all of the religious, political, economic, psychological, and racial ingredients, or characteristics, to make the Human Family and the Human Society complete.

Since I learned the truth in Mecca, my dearest friends have come to include all kinds—some Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, agnostics, and even atheists! I have friends who are called capitalists, Socialists, and Communists! Some of my friends are moderates, conservatives, extremists—some are even Uncle Toms! My friends today are black, brown, red, yellow, and white!

Unfortunately, we have forgotten Malcolm. Instead, we fall peril to justifying gross generalizations when they conform to our ideologies. Yet when we see the same base reasoning deployed against our ideologies, we cry foul.