Asma Uddin is a religious liberty lawyer and a fellow at the Aspen Institute. She’s also a former legal counsel at the Becket Fund and is the author of two books—"When Islam Is Not a Religion: Inside America’s Fight for Religious Freedom” and her most recent book The Politics of Vulnerability: How to Heal Muslim-Christian Relations in a Post-Christian America, in bookstores March 23.

Religion Unplugged contributor Kenneth E. Frantz interviewed Uddin via email about her most recent book and what she thought about both America’s political and religious climate moving forward. The following has been copyedited for style.

In your book, you write about the divide between Muslims and conservative Christians. What are the characteristics of this divide and why did you choose to write about it?

A few of the reasons I write about this divide are personal: for one, I am an American Muslim, so issues facing my religious community are front-and-center for me. As I detailed in my previous book, “When Islam Is Not a Religion”, there are persistent challenges to Muslims’ religious freedom, and many of the most vocal proponents of these are conservative Christian. I am moved to take a deeper look and figure out what, exactly, is going on.

The other reason I am fascinated by this question is because, in the course of my religious freedom advocacy, I have worked or otherwise interacted with many conservative Christians—and many of them have been kind and generous toward me and my family. The disparity in what I know many conservative Christians believe, and the kindness of the conservative Christians I know personally led me to contemplate, in my book, “why do good people believe—and do—bad things?”  

In other words, I’m inclined to think of conservative Christians as good people, even despite some of the bad things they might do (or believe). And I realize just how dramatically different that is from the prevailing norm of seeing one’s oppressor as “evil” or beyond the pale, unworthy of conversation or substantive engagement. I tackle this problem with an eye toward helping readers tackle other sorts of “oppressors” in their own life.

Much of this also ties into the idea that I explore throughout the book of American Muslims serving as proxies for the Left and conservative Christians serving as proxies for the Right. If we can figure out how to get these proxies talking, what does that tell us about other groups that belong to – or are boxed into – these ideological camps?

You talk about how Muslims and conservative Christians compete against each other for victimhood status throughout your book. How does this competition exacerbate the divide between these two groups?

The suffering is not equal and nothing in my book is about equating the two – they are importantly different, and I recognize the difficulties many religious, racial and other minorities have with White conservative Christians’ claim to being the “new minority.” As I state in my book: 

“When white Christians talk about being the “new minority” they ignore the reality of smaller, far more marginalized groups in the US. Even with demographic shifts, white evangelicals are a quarter of the population, whereas Jews constitute 2 percent and Muslims 1 percent. And even with smaller numbers, white evangelicals do not face the systemic disadvantages in housing, employment, and education that racial, sexual, and other denigrated groups face. So, to hear them complain about “persecution” can be hard to bear for many who have experienced much more tangible and urgent suffering.” 

That said, yes, there’s absolutely a tendency to try to one-up each other for greater victimhood status (some have termed the phenomenon here and with other groups the “victim Olympics”) instead of acknowledging the substance of each other’s suffering. My message is: there’s a way to see other humans as humans with real struggles without discounting our own experiences.  

When Muslims and Christians fail to do that, the divide is exacerbated because when one side minimizes, even disparages, the feelings of oppression that the other side has, those emotions are weaponized. I quote Ezra Klein’s “Why We’re Polarized” on this: “To the extent that it’s true that a loss of privilege feels like oppression, that feeling needs to be taken seriously, both because it’s real, and because, left to fester, it can be weaponized by demagogues and reactionaries.”

You suggest that Muslims and conservative Christians should fight for each other’s religious liberties. Why should one group care about the religious liberties of the other?

This really is the theme of my first book, When Islam Is Not a Religion, where I explained how all of our rights are bound up together. There, I examined the assertion (mostly coming from the political Right) that “Islam is not a religion” and that therefore Muslims don’t have religious freedom. While courts can determine whether beliefs match up to the legal definition of religion, this is not what anti-Muslim opponents are concerned with. They are instead driven by more emotional concerns. Yet, if courts and legislatures are empowered to say that Islam is not a religion, they can accept the same claim about every other religious group the majority may fear. If courts start to parse Islamic doctrine in order to decide which parts are acceptable or likeable and which aren’t, as some prominent individuals want them to do, courts could conceivably parse the beliefs of every other religious group, too. Seen this way, it becomes clear how an attack that might seem relevant only to a very particular group actually tells us something deeper and more fundamental about American rights. 

You talk about mega-identities and how they have colored the way Americans view religious liberty. How does this hurt our political discourse?     

As I explain in this book, for conservatives, Muslims are part of what political scientist Lilliana Mason calls the liberal “mega-identity.” She uses that phrase to capture this phenomenon where our partisan affiliations have morphed into identities that now include a host of things that have nothing to do with social policy. For example, what we eat, drive, where we live and shop, what our religion or race or sexual orientation is, are all wrapped up in our political identity. We group hybrid-driving, latte-drinking, Whole Foods-shopping Americans into the Democratic Party, and the Land Rover-driving, Cracker Barrel customer into the Republican Party.

Unfortunately, this grouping has also affected religious communities, so that Christians (mostly White and conservative) are associated with the Republican Party, and religious minorities, particularly Muslims, are associated with the Democratic Party. In this battle of ideologies, Muslims are seen less as Muslims and more as proxies for deeper issues that represent the opposing team or the out-group. 

What this means in practice is that, when conservative Christians are opposed to everything that’s part of the Democratic Party, they must also be opposed to Muslims’ rights, too. This is disastrous for our political discourse and our constitutional rights because religious liberty morphs from a constitutional right available to all Americans into a partisan tool to protect one’s interests only.

You talk about the importance of opposing groups having conversations with each other in order to heal both the Muslim-conservative Christian divide and our fractured political landscape. Some people are offended by this idea, because they don’t think the oppressed should have to be in conversation with their oppressors. What would you say to these people? 

I would appeal to both our moral impulse and our self-interest. In terms of moral imperatives, what’s special and different about talking about civil discourse in a religious context is that both religions counsel making peace with our adversaries and centering each person’s humanity. They tell us to “zoom in” (to use a phrase from Brene Brown) and see people for their complex, full selves instead of basing our opinions of them on news, media portrayals, etc.   

On the self-interest part – and I fully acknowledge in the book that our entrenched tribalism (not to mention our survivalist instinct) make it hard to be altruistic – I point out that each side has an important interest it’s seeking to protect, and the best way to serve it is to make peace with the other side. For conservatives interested in protecting religious freedom, they cannot protect it fully without also standing up for the religious rights of minorities. For liberals interested in protecting marginalized minorities, they will keep facing a weaponized hostility from conservatives unless they take the time to listen and lower the temperature.   

How do you think the Biden administration will alter the Muslim-conservative Christian divide and the conversation around religious liberty more broadly?

I think we need more time to see how things will play out. Currently, I hear rhetoric around wanting to unify diverse Americans and reach across tribal lines, but I also see rhetoric that is exacerbating that divide. In my book, I note that the Biden administration will have to learn to work with conservatives and accommodate their interests in a real, substantive way, for unity to even be possible. If it does not, it risks deepening the sense of vulnerability many conservatives feel, and their perception of the Left (and of Biden) as a major threat, and when people feel threatened, they lash out. 

What practical steps do you suggests for healing the Muslim-conservative Christian divide?      

There are a number of such steps, but I place heavy emphasis on religious freedom as a superordinate, or overarching, goal that should unite these two groups. For anyone who values religious freedom as a core constitutional and human right that protects our ability to live according to our deepest convictions, we need to stand up for that right for everyone—or risk losing it.

In my book, I describe very practical strategies, including ones I have incorporated in my own public engagements, that have helped Americans think about these matters through a less polarized lens.

Kenneth E. Frantz is a freelance writer who has written for Sojourners, Real Clear Religion, and Religion and Politics.