The Politics of Vulnerability: How to Heal Muslim-Christian Relations in a Post-Christian America: Today's Threat to Religion and Religious Freedom

by Asma T. Uddin

Overview

A religious liberty lawyer and acclaimed author reveals the root of America's polarization inside the Muslim and evangelical Christian divide—and how it can be healed.

Despite the dire consequences of America's cultural, political, and religious divisiveness, from increasing incivility to discrimination and outright violence, few have been able to get to the core cause of this conflict. Even fewer have offered measures for reconcilliation. 

Now, in The Politics of Vulnerability, Asma Uddin, American-Muslim public intellectual, religious-liberties attorney, and activist, provides a unique perspective on the complex political and social factors contributing to the Muslim-Christian divide. Unlike other analysts, Uddin asks what underlying drivers cause otherwise good people to do—or believe—bad things? Why do people who value faith support of measures that limit others, especially of Muslims’, religious freedom and other rights?’ 

Uddin humanizes a contentious relationship by fully embracing both sides as individuals driven by very human fears and anxieties. Many conservative Christians fear that the Left is dismantling traditional “Christian America” to replace it with an Islamized America, a conspiratorial theory that has given rise to an “evangelical persecution complex,” a politicized vulnerability. 

Uddin reveals that Islamophobia and other aspects of the conservative Christian movement are interconnected.  Where does hate come from and how can it be conquered? Only by addressing the underlying factors of this politics of vulnerability can we begin to heal the divide. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781643136639
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	03/23/2021
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Asma T. Uddin is a religious liberty lawyer who has worked on cases at the U.S. Supreme Court, federal appellate courts, and federal trial courts. She is the author of When Islam Is Not a Religion: Inside America's Fight for Religions Freedom, and the founding editor-in-chief of altmuslimah.com. Asma was an executive producer for the Emmy and Peabody-nominated docu-series, The Secret Life of Muslims. She has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Teen Vogue. Asma lives in Washington, DC.

Table of Contents

Introduction vii

Part I Which Christians? 1

Chapter 1 Christian Nationalists Conservative White Evangelicals 3

Part II The In-Group Threat 33

Chapter 2 The End of "White Christian America 35

Chapter 3 Religious Freedom Under Attack 67

Part III The Out-Group Attack 101

Chapter 4 Competing Victimhood 103

Chapter 5 Conspiracies and Demagoguery 135

Part IV How to Heal the Tribal Divide 171

Chapter 6 The Shared Burden of Healing 173

Chapter 7 Making It Work 205

Afterword 219

Acknowledgments 227

Notes 229

About the Author 295

Editorial Reviews

"Asma Uddin confronts the limitations that triabilism and ideological divdes impose on religious freedom discourse in America. She calls on people of all faith—and no faith at all—to remember religious liberty as a human right and not a political tool. She describes a vision for the future of this discussion as one where American's don't water down their beliefs to engage in vigorous debate, but come together in the fullness of those beliefs to discover their American identity."

Montserrat Alvarado

"A concise, challenging clarion call for Religious Freedom. Uddin’s book is filled with extensive research, humanized and complimented by life stories from a wide-array of Americans. A powerful book for our current moment.

Jo Anne Lyon

"American Christians, in their own struggle to protect religious freedoms in America, have labelled American Muslims as enemies when they could be strong allies. If their rights aren’t protected, the rights of Christians will ultimately be threatened as well. With remarkable scholarship and insight, Asma Uddin makes a strong case for why Christians and Muslims should work together to protect the crucial freedoms that both faiths cherish.

Richard Stearns

"In this wonderfully insighful book Asma Uddin presents a compelling and refreshing Muslim perspective on religious freedom and pluralism. Her willingness to share her sense of vulnerability in addressing these issues as a person of faith is a gift to all of us. As a conservative Christian, I not only learned much from this book—I was also deeply moved by it."

Richard Mouw

An exemplar of charitable civic engagement. Without oversimplification or caricature, Uddin dives headfirst into the complex world of Muslim-Christian relations. With clear and accessible prose, her nuanced analysis both explains and models how Muslims and conservative Christians can find common ground across their differences.

John Inazu

While evangelical Christians and Muslims differ as to the content of our faith convictions, there is agreement on the ethics our convictions inspire. By striving to heal the divide as Asma Uddin ably articulates, we can make strides as divergent faith communities toward unity of purpose in service for a thriving humanity.

Christianity Today - Daniel Harrell

"In The Politics of Vulnerability, Ms. Uddin dares engage a conversation many wish to avoid – the realization that the US is a post-Christian nation with fear of vulnerability driving our actions, attitudes, and politics. How did we get here? And how do we move forward? Through compelling narrative, theory, and research, Ms. Uddin provides a framework for Religious Freedom; a framework that asks us to consider how Christians and Muslims can move from vulnerability to religious freedom together."

Revered Dr. Colleen Derr

"The threat to religious liberty is real, and sometimes believers are their own worst enemies. Here’s a book that should open up some serious conversations about the current crisis that casts a dark shadow over faith communities in the land of the free, a land conceived in religious liberty."

"The Most Influential Islamic Scholar in the West" (New Yorker) - Shaykh Hamza Yusuf

03/05/2021

Uddin (When Islam Is Not a Religion) takes a sociological view of U.S. society in an effort to better understand public rhetoric, especially relating to how people respond to changing demographics among the country's Christian and Muslim populations. The book is divided into four parts. The first profiles those who feel most threatened by Muslims and their influence on society. Next, Uddin explains how majority groups feel threatened when they become a minority—and how they sometimes respond by calling for conformity. The third part explores the psychology of out-group members, who often feel victimized and engage in similar demagoguery. The author highlights how group differences can eventually lead to an "us" vs. "them" mentality. As a result, polarization intensifies until there is little common ground among the country's different sub-populations. The last part of the book explores ways for people to find common ground. These pathways are more like general directions that people can take to promote greater understanding and harmony. VERDICT From a sociological perspective, Uddin's analysis is spot-on. However, there are other facets to this discussion, including the problem of asking people who are marginalized to reach out, which means these recommendations are primarily useful/actionable/practicable for people with privilege.—Muhammed Hassanali, Shaker Heights, OH

Library Journal

2020-12-19
A religious liberty lawyer delves into the thorny political, social, and cultural issues that divide Christians and Muslims in America.

In this follow-up to When Islam Is Not a Religion, Uddin once again draws on her years of experience with interfaith dialogue. In the first of four sections, the author asks, why do many—though certainly not all—White evangelical Christians fear and/or resent Muslims? As she demonstrates in the second part, the answer hangs on “monumental demographic and cultural shifts,” especially a long-term secularizing and “browning” of America. Feeling left behind by these trends, many conservative Christians react with “a fusion of faith and patriotism” that sociologists Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry dub “Christian nationalism.” Along with divisive political bluster and conspiracy theories, Christian nationalism arouses feelings of in-group solidarity and out-group hostility. These feelings frequently target Muslims as the out group, a fact that Uddin interprets using a concept from political scientist Lilliana Mason: “mega-identities,” meaning that “a single vote can now indicate a person’s partisan preference as well as his or her religion, race, ethnicity, gender, neighborhood, and favorite grocery store.” In this view, defending Islam—and, by contrast, ignoring or even disparaging Christianity—signals a liberal mega-identity and is therefore to be resisted by conservatives. Uddin’s primary solution involves challenging such mega-identities and welcoming partisan realignment despite the risk of “the black sheep effect.” It’s important to note that the author’s message is not just for conservatives or evangelical Christians: “The same intergroup dynamics [that explain why conservative Christians feel threatened] likely also apply to the Left’s hostility toward the Right.” Uddin is coolheaded and sympathetic throughout, refusing to take sides and insisting that listening to the grievances of conservative Christians could be helpful in preventing anti-Muslim anger.

A potent challenge to prevailing thoughts on politics and culture, with the goal of bringing Muslims and Christians closer.

Kirkus Reviews