Dishonest warmth or cold honesty?
Thoughts on liberal and conservative cultures of accommodation and "inclusivity"
Back in America a few months ago, I took my family out to a popular brunch spot in a hipster part of town. Vibes were great. Managed chaos with a smile asking, “Can I pour you a cup of coffee?” We all sat at the counter grinning from the moment we walked in. The chef was just over there near the window whipping up everything on-demand. It was a perfect Americana symphony.
It was obvious we were a tad different than your regular customers in this relatively obscure mid-sized town. My wife covers, plus we were paranoiacally checking if there wasn’t any hidden bacon in the menu items. Without us even asking, the cook himself shimmied over and said he would be happy to cook in separate pans for us to avoid cross-contamination. It turns out he was from Chicago, had encountered many Muslims, and knew what halal was. We felt really special, and this small but kind gesture immediately endeared us to the place.
But as I sipped my (black, by the way) coffee, I had to pause. That warm fuzzy feeling started to give way to a weird aftertaste.
Maybe I am just too theory-addled. But I couldn’t help but feel a bit queasy about gestures like this, gestures which I am sure were not consciously done with any ulterior motive. The chef just wanted to be a nice and accommodating. But still—the broader liberal culture sees such inclusionary practices as part of a wider agenda of individuals implicitly agreeing to enter into a very sticky web of intercommunal solidarity with one another, and, to a very real extent, an endorsement of the beliefs of all groups facing struggle, regardless of how contradictory and syncretic this inevitably becomes. By acceding to letting coolguy chef help me #resist haram, I have also implicitly signed up to, I don’t know, #resist fascism by agreeing to bake birthday cakes celebrating gay marriage. With a straight face, we are then told that such intersectional solidarity will somehow not dilute one’s right to freedom of belief.
Are such “nice” gestures, then, really so nice? A gift can’t really be called a gift (هبة) if it is given in exchange for something (بيع وشراء). Then it’s just mutual exchange, commerce. It’s dishonest to call it a gift. This display of warmth has strings attached.
At the same time, I can’t help but enjoy it when it happens. Who doesn’t like feeling accommodated? Especially when its mostly whites bending over backward for your non-white self. At some level, you can’t help but feel honored. I am sure many white antiracist types get off on the faux-servility experienced in such encounters, a small and token reparational act. Perhaps, too, by engaging in such humbling acts, they get to expiate themselves of the guilt they have been shamed into carrying around their necks. You can always see the cultural vestiges of Christianity if you know how to look.
Because I grew up around small-l liberals, it took me years to shed my blinders. My alma mater was particularly lefty, even for a university. They were making us take courses on white privilege in 2010 or so, well before the Awokening began circa 2015. I hate to admit it, but back then, I was a young NPC brainlet who found such ideas edgy and appealing. And so in many ways, I was by default more culturally “close” to those on the left. But in recent years, I have had the opportunity to spend sustained periods of time with those on the right. And the difference is worth drawing attention to.
While liberal establishments are oftentimes more cuddly and accommodating and celebrating of diversity, they lace their inclusivity with expectations of reciprocity. Kind gestures like the one made by coolguy chef once seemed to me pure and selfless, but now come off as sullied and self-interested.
Conservative establishments, in my experience, like to have the freedom to set ground rules and expectations for themselves and for their spaces, in their personal relations, etc. They would expect you, as a guest, to understand and respect this. Individuals in their view do not have the inherent right to change the rules of their space to make it “safe.” If there is room to accommodate you within their existing rules and expectations, then that’s wonderful. But overall, you’re completely welcome to patronize their establishments so long as you respect house rules.
It’s easy for a Western liberal to be accommodating over cosmetic issues like food or dress. But the hospitality will stop when asked to accommodate belief structures deemed illiberal or “exclusionary.” This is because liberals subscribe to a kind of interpersonal syncretism as their civic religion. Syncretism is the heat keeping the melting pot screaming hot. Trudeau, aka Mr. Dressup, is exemplary of this:
Conservative accommodation says: it’s ok if we don’t feel fully accommodated in every single space, because we have the freedom to create spaces where we can set the rules of engagement. Others are free to set the rules of engagement in their own spaces. They are less melting pot and more of a tossed salad, all the ingredients still retaining most of their shape and qualities.
These days, however, conservatives are highly anxious over cultural change, because for so long, American culture solidified around a homogenous WASP arrangement—that same classic Americana which drew me to that diner. Unfortunately for them, America is not Europe. Europe is structured of units with one centered nation (the French, the British, etc) governing a given territory (a state). Hence the nation-state. America, by contrast, is a state based on a ideas set down by the Founders—an idea-state. So it is difficult for American conservatives to make the case that the wider social fabric should remain WASPy. It is much easier for, say, France, to engage in laws safeguarding the dominance of French culture. That is literally what France was made to do. (This is my mind is one of the great problems for White Nationalism in America—I don’t see how you can dance around the fact that the Founders were very consciously *not* founding an ethnostate).
Traditional Muslim models of diversity accommodation in the millet system went beyond the nation-state or the idea-state. I would best describe them as nations-states administered by a Muslim imperium. This regime was obsessively anti-syncretic. Each nation, defined not by ethnicity, but by faith (Christians, Jews, etc) were almost forced to retain their distinct beliefs, primarily because these different nations were subject to an entirely different legal system for adherents of those beliefs, a legal system which these nations wrote themselves and used to self-govern. It is not a melting pot, it is not even a tossed salad. It is a bunch of kids sitting at different tables in a shared cafeteria eating entirely different cuisines, with Muslims as watchful lunchladies. There’s much more I can say on this, but I will have to save that for another day. I’ve also left a brief note on generosity as understood in Islam at the end of this post.*
In the short term, we have to bring tact back into the conversation around hospitality and accommodation. In most cultures, the central value which acts as the permissive condition for accommodating the other is simply hospitality, and that is a good thing. This will sometimes lead to awkward encounters, and the way to mitigate offense without becoming a syncretist is to have tact, which is a word seldom used, because it has today become almost a lost art. Smile, explain why you’re doing things in a certain way, why you can’t accommodate x request, etc. Leave a note, offer alternative establishments, apologize for inconvenience, etc. This can go a long way. Only a bonafide cretin cannot appreciate tact.
In the long-term, however, there will have to be a plan for ending the fascist push towards syncretism. People are going to hit the breaking point one day, and the backlash will not be pretty.
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*On ikrām al-dayf, or “being generous to guests” in Islam. Muslim societies are perhaps the most famed amongst all human cultures for going above and beyond. Exceptional and oftentimes over-the-top hospitality for guests is simply the norm (even while maintaining ferociousness against enemies, see the Taliban). This has its roots even in the age of jahiliyyah, before Islam. The Arabs would try and outdo one another in ikrām, in being generous. In fact, there’s a famous phrase in Arabic: “So-and-so person is even more generous than Hātim,” a reference to the legendary pre-Islamic figure, Hātim al-Tā’i, known for his generosity. Without diverging too much, we see that Allah ﷻ terms Himself al-Karīm, The Most Generous, and Dhul-Jalal wal-Ikram, The Possessor of Majesty and Generosity. Many hadiths also emphasize the importance of generosity, explicitly linking it to piety, such as “Whosoever truly believes in Allah ﷻ and the Day of Judgment, then let him honor his guest.” What I find fascinating about this statement in particular is how it ties what seems like a mundane task of being a good host to sincere belief in God and the trials of Judgment Day. We remain generous to the guest in order to receive generosity on that Day when all will be called to account for every single action they undertook in this life.
Excellent post! Im not entirely sure though that liberalism seeks kitchri and conservatives seek tossed salad. I think many conservatives seek a cucumber salad (not much else in it). I think many liberals understand that America is a lattice of spaces where people can live their lives (the Amish, the Hasidim, the Mormons). Liberals seem more tentative today than previously about bringing woke to every space.