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Muslim literature pushback
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From: Charles Bayless <charles.bayless_at_gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2014 12:05:38 -0400
Rukhsana,
You asked: When K.T. first approached me to join the discussion I couldn't help but wonder if educators wouldn't suffer some push back from some of the parents about the inclusion of Muslim literature in the classroom. Are any of you worried?
No, I am not worried and see little reason to be. I was sort of wondering along similar lines at the beginning of the conversation about whether there is any bias against Middle Eastern or Islamic or Arabic literature
(abbreviated as MEISA). It seemed like in some of the early comments there was a sotto voce unstated assumption (or stereotype) that the reading public was prejudiced against MEISA. I was wondering whether that assumption was true and how we could know.
On the face of it, the answer to the question seems to be no. We have had books and authors from each of the MEISA categories for decades winning popular and/or critical success. On the other hand, that doesn't quite answer the question. Just because we have, and have long had, critically and commercially successful LGBT authors such as Gore Vidal, Jan Morris, Truman Capote, and Dierdre McCloskey doesn't mean that they are writing about LGBT issues. Just because there are commercially and critically successful books by MEISA authors doesn't necessarily mean that people are open to MEISA topics.
So how would we know whether the reading public (and parents, and teachers, and librarians) are prejudiced against Muslim literature in the classroom? In answering the question, we have also to distinguish between bias against MEISA versus simple indifference.
I looked at five types of information to see if there is evidence of systemic overt negative bias. Are there MEISA people with marked accomplishments in many fields? Are the socioeconomic markers for the largest MEISA groups in the US (Lebanese Christians and Iranians) particularly negative? Are there a disproportionate number of hate crimes against MEISA? Are MEISA books disproportionately challenged (ALA)? Are other geographic/cultural regions better represented in children's literature than MEISA?
The answers (I'll leave out the details for brevity, but happy to provide them) are: 1) it's not hard to find MEISA people of significant accomplishment in most fields of endeavor. 2) The socioeconomic markers of success (income, wealth, education attainment) for Lebanese Christians and Iranians are significantly above (better than) those of native born Americans. 3) Other than a spike immediately after 9/11, the number of hate crimes against Muslims in the US runs at about 150 per year out of 5,800 recorded hate crimes. The rate of hate crimes against Muslims in the US is half that against Jews and the US has one of the lowest incident rates of anti-Semitism in the world. 4) There is only one MEISA related book on the most recent list of top 100 challenged books per ALA (Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini) and it is primarily challenged on sex and violence grounds, not MEISA. Interestingly, Religion is only 8th among reasons (and religion representing only 4% of all challenges) for a book to be challenged and the challenge is usually by practitioners within the religion who are upset at what they see as a negative portrayal (as in both the Kite Runner and Satanic Verses cases) rather than against the religion by non-practitioners. 5) The top five Economies in the world and the top five most populous countries are the US (E&P), China (E&P), India (E&P), Japan (E), Germany
(E), Indonesia (P) and Brazil (P). Based on a popular database of children's books, it appears that the number of books about a country is very roughly proportionate to the relative size of their economies (rather than to their population size as one might reasonably expect). It does not appear that books about MEISA countries are disproportionately underrepresented based on their economic size.
None of this is airtight by any means, but there seems to be little or no empirical evidence of any systemic bias against MEISA in the US. As the 150 hate crimes indicate, there are obviously still crimes and there are undoubtedly many people with negative biases. They just aren't showing up in the numbers.
At a much more micro level, as a bookseller, I will say that I encounter virtually no concern on the part of teachers, librarians or parents regarding MEISA as long as the book is well written (and illustrated). What parents, teachers and librarians tend to be concerned about are general strictures applying to all books such as gratuitous violence, dysfunction
(personal or familial), significantly divergent moral ambiguity, sex, drug or alcohol dependency, language and in general age-appropriateness. Different people express it differently and the prioritization of issues often differ, but it is usually roughly the same sets of issues. These map pretty closely to the ALA list of most commonly cited sources of challenge which are, in descending order: Sexually explicit (18% of all challenges), Offensive Language (15%), Violence (13%), Age Suitability (13%), Other (8%), Occult (6%), Homosexuality (5%), Religious Viewpoint (4%), Nudity (3%), Racism (3%), Drugs (2%), Sex Education (2%), Anti-Family (2%), Political Viewpoint (2%), Insensitivity (1%), Sexism, Suicide, Inaccurate, Anti-Ethnic, and Abortion (all less than 1% each).
I think the biggest issue facing MEISA books has nothing to do with any overt bias against MEISA. It is the same issue that serves as a barrier to all books and topics - indifference and low volumes of elective reading.
Charles
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Received on Tue 26 Aug 2014 11:06:38 AM CDT
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2014 12:05:38 -0400
Rukhsana,
You asked: When K.T. first approached me to join the discussion I couldn't help but wonder if educators wouldn't suffer some push back from some of the parents about the inclusion of Muslim literature in the classroom. Are any of you worried?
No, I am not worried and see little reason to be. I was sort of wondering along similar lines at the beginning of the conversation about whether there is any bias against Middle Eastern or Islamic or Arabic literature
(abbreviated as MEISA). It seemed like in some of the early comments there was a sotto voce unstated assumption (or stereotype) that the reading public was prejudiced against MEISA. I was wondering whether that assumption was true and how we could know.
On the face of it, the answer to the question seems to be no. We have had books and authors from each of the MEISA categories for decades winning popular and/or critical success. On the other hand, that doesn't quite answer the question. Just because we have, and have long had, critically and commercially successful LGBT authors such as Gore Vidal, Jan Morris, Truman Capote, and Dierdre McCloskey doesn't mean that they are writing about LGBT issues. Just because there are commercially and critically successful books by MEISA authors doesn't necessarily mean that people are open to MEISA topics.
So how would we know whether the reading public (and parents, and teachers, and librarians) are prejudiced against Muslim literature in the classroom? In answering the question, we have also to distinguish between bias against MEISA versus simple indifference.
I looked at five types of information to see if there is evidence of systemic overt negative bias. Are there MEISA people with marked accomplishments in many fields? Are the socioeconomic markers for the largest MEISA groups in the US (Lebanese Christians and Iranians) particularly negative? Are there a disproportionate number of hate crimes against MEISA? Are MEISA books disproportionately challenged (ALA)? Are other geographic/cultural regions better represented in children's literature than MEISA?
The answers (I'll leave out the details for brevity, but happy to provide them) are: 1) it's not hard to find MEISA people of significant accomplishment in most fields of endeavor. 2) The socioeconomic markers of success (income, wealth, education attainment) for Lebanese Christians and Iranians are significantly above (better than) those of native born Americans. 3) Other than a spike immediately after 9/11, the number of hate crimes against Muslims in the US runs at about 150 per year out of 5,800 recorded hate crimes. The rate of hate crimes against Muslims in the US is half that against Jews and the US has one of the lowest incident rates of anti-Semitism in the world. 4) There is only one MEISA related book on the most recent list of top 100 challenged books per ALA (Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini) and it is primarily challenged on sex and violence grounds, not MEISA. Interestingly, Religion is only 8th among reasons (and religion representing only 4% of all challenges) for a book to be challenged and the challenge is usually by practitioners within the religion who are upset at what they see as a negative portrayal (as in both the Kite Runner and Satanic Verses cases) rather than against the religion by non-practitioners. 5) The top five Economies in the world and the top five most populous countries are the US (E&P), China (E&P), India (E&P), Japan (E), Germany
(E), Indonesia (P) and Brazil (P). Based on a popular database of children's books, it appears that the number of books about a country is very roughly proportionate to the relative size of their economies (rather than to their population size as one might reasonably expect). It does not appear that books about MEISA countries are disproportionately underrepresented based on their economic size.
None of this is airtight by any means, but there seems to be little or no empirical evidence of any systemic bias against MEISA in the US. As the 150 hate crimes indicate, there are obviously still crimes and there are undoubtedly many people with negative biases. They just aren't showing up in the numbers.
At a much more micro level, as a bookseller, I will say that I encounter virtually no concern on the part of teachers, librarians or parents regarding MEISA as long as the book is well written (and illustrated). What parents, teachers and librarians tend to be concerned about are general strictures applying to all books such as gratuitous violence, dysfunction
(personal or familial), significantly divergent moral ambiguity, sex, drug or alcohol dependency, language and in general age-appropriateness. Different people express it differently and the prioritization of issues often differ, but it is usually roughly the same sets of issues. These map pretty closely to the ALA list of most commonly cited sources of challenge which are, in descending order: Sexually explicit (18% of all challenges), Offensive Language (15%), Violence (13%), Age Suitability (13%), Other (8%), Occult (6%), Homosexuality (5%), Religious Viewpoint (4%), Nudity (3%), Racism (3%), Drugs (2%), Sex Education (2%), Anti-Family (2%), Political Viewpoint (2%), Insensitivity (1%), Sexism, Suicide, Inaccurate, Anti-Ethnic, and Abortion (all less than 1% each).
I think the biggest issue facing MEISA books has nothing to do with any overt bias against MEISA. It is the same issue that serves as a barrier to all books and topics - indifference and low volumes of elective reading.
Charles
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Received on Tue 26 Aug 2014 11:06:38 AM CDT
