To Be Deaf and Religious, pt. 1

In a previous post, I wrote that Sign languages have been victims of discrimination throughout history. But of course, the underlying problem here is that Deaf people have been victims of discrimination throughout history. 

Who or what is to blame? Ultimately, I suppose, it’s our human nature. Prone to fear and even detest that which is perceived as markedly different from us or from the majority around us. Prone to be self-focused and bypass opportunities to build bridges across those differences. Prone to speak and act in condescension and call it love.

But while our tendency to discriminate may be tragically inherent, we shouldn’t simply blame our human nature and leave it at that: discriminations are obviously connected to and rooted in cultures – their values, practices, institutions, etc., which can and do engender, perpetuate, and aggravate injustices.

So, what kinds of cultural phenomena have historically contributed to the unjust discrimination of the Deaf?

Above all others, one culprit stands out to me, and it’s one that many of us (including myself) are reluctant to indict: religion.

Both in ancient times and in the present, the three Abrahamic faiths – their scriptures and popular texts, their ritual practices and informal customs – have become instruments of injustice against the Deaf.

Sometimes, the injustice is simply an unintentional byproduct, unnoticed or neglected like the minority group that it wounds. Other times, the injustice is actually deemed just by the masses. Sometimes, we perceive in the injustice an acute distortion of the religious tradition’s claims regarding truth and morality. Other times, we perceive a disturbingly solid foundation within the religious tradition’s claims on which injustices have been historically constructed.

My purpose is not to condemn any of these three religious traditions; rather, I want to illuminate certain features that Deaf outside observers of the traditions may very well interpret as offenses and that Deaf members of the traditions may very well interpret as stumbling blocks. Perhaps the offenses can be erased and the stumbling blocks can be overcome (indeed, I hope that most of them can be!), but first, they must be acknowledged as they stand.

In this lay-person’s analysis, I’ll divide these offenses and stumbling blocks into two categories: those manifested in sacred writings and those manifested in religious practices. For the remainder of this post, I’ll focus on Judaism and Islam. Then, lest the majority of my readers begin to feel self-righteous, I’ll write a follow-up post focusing exclusively on Christianity.

...But before beginning, I should say why I’m bothering to write about this subject.

As someone who is currently living in a Deaf community, I want to better understand the reasons underlying the widespread ambivalence, anxiety, and even animosity towards religion within many Deaf communities. Why do only 1% of American Deaf persons identify as Christian? Why do Muslim students at this school seem desperate to convince others and themselves of their religious identity?

Furthermore, as a person of faith, I want to better understand the ways in which my own religious tradition has been used as an instrument of injustice against certain minorities. Hopefully, as I grow in this understanding, I will learn how to avoid complicity in injustice, as well as how to labor towards true justice – not in spite of, but because of and through my faith.

With that, let’s get started...

JUDAISM

Two promising texts from the Torah. 1) Exodus 4:11 reads, “Then the LORD said to him, ‘Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the LORD?’” 2) Leviticus 19:14 reads, “You shall not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind, but you shall fear your God: I am the LORD.”

These two verses are important because they challenge harmful attitudes towards persons with disabilities. Regarding the first verse, evidence suggests that ancient Near Eastern cultures (like many other cultures) tended to associate various forms of disability with demonic activity. The LORD’s two rhetorical questions to Moses contradict this dangerous association. Regarding the second verse, in many ancient cultures, abandonment of persons with disabilities was not only tolerated, but encouraged. Even in the supposedly civilized societies of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, infanticide seems to have been a fairly common practice. With such horrors in mind, we can be especially grateful for even the slightest of provisions made, like Leviticus 19:14 (see also Deuteronomy 27:18).

Other texts may appear promising to us, but in fact the Deaf are appalled by them. I’m thinking of Isaiah 29:18 and other texts that speak of the LORD healing physical deafness. What? Don’t the deaf want to be healed? Actually, many people who are physically deaf have constructed their identity not in terms of a disability, but in terms of a distinct culture, based on a distinct language. (When I write “deaf” with a capital “D,” I am referring to this culture/community, as opposed to a physical condition.) These people may very well struggle to worship or even respect a god who intends to eradicate that which constitutes the core of their identity.

More concerning, in my opinion, are those texts which suggest that learning is necessarily dependent on hearing. Deuteronomy 31:12 reads, “Assemble the people, men, women, and little ones, and the sojourner within your towns, that they may hear and learn to fear the LORD your God....” According to Judith Z. Abrams’ Judaism and Disability, the Talmud of Israel and the Babylonian Talmud (revered commentaries on the Mishnah, which is “the foundation of rabbinic literature”) refer to Deuteronomy 31:12 in explaining their association of people who can neither hear nor speak with the fool and the child: according to both Talmuds, all three groups of people are exempt from ordinances of the Torah, because they are deemed incapable of knowing – and consequentially incapable of truly knowing God (even though the verse asserts that “little ones” can hear and learn to fear God).

This final observation of Jewish sacred writing touches on the main observation that I want to make regarding Jewish religious practices and how they may be perceived by the Deaf: in Judaism, the importance of hearing, memorizing, and reciting the scriptures cannot be overstated. These three practices are primary, even essential components of traditional Jewish piety and of participation in the traditional Jewish community. What does this mean for those who cannot hear and thus cannot recite well?

These observations and others lead Abrams to state that “Persons with hearing and speaking disabilities are living, but otherwise they are so far outside the realm of everyday communal, or even private, life that they are closer to death than to life. ... [In ancient Jewish society,] the person with hearing and speaking disabilities is unquestionably at the bottom.”

ISLAM

As in the previous section, I’ll address sacred writings and then religious practices.

Based on what I’ve encountered in the Qur’an, deafness functions exclusively as a metaphor for disobedience. In 2:6, “Allah hath sealed their [the disbelievers’] hearing and their hearts, and on their eyes there is a covering. Theirs will be an awful doom.” In 2:171, “The likeness of those who disbelieve [the messenger] is as the likeness of one who calleth unto that which heareth naught except a shout and cry. Deaf, dumb, blind, therefore they have no sense.” In 30:52, “For verily thou [Mohammed] canst not make the dead to hear, nor canst thou make the deaf to hear the call when they have turned to flee.”

What would it feel like if an aspect of your physicality that was inherently linked to your treasured identity got turned into a symbol for sinfulness?

Regarding religious practices, the aforementioned concerns regarding Judaism apply to Islam as well. In Striving Together, Charles Kimball writes, “First and foremost, the Qur’an is meant to be recited, to be heard and to be experienced. Memorizing and properly reciting the holy book have been, from the very beginning, important components in the spiritual life of the faithful.” What are the Deaf to do when their religious tradition’s primary demonstrations of piety presume the ability to hear? How could Deaf persons outside of this tradition ever find it appealing?

Furthermore, I suggest that traditional Islamic piety presents additional stumbling blocks, as two of the five Pillars of Islam pose significant challenges for fully deaf persons: reciting the shehadah (“There is no god but God, and Mohammed is his messenger”) and praying five times a day upon the sounding of the Call to Prayer.

Imagine the shame that Deaf Muslims might feel at knowing that virtually no one can understand their attempts to recite the shehadah.

Imagine the shame that the young Muslim woman who is severely hard-of-hearing felt when she turned on the radio in the deafblind unit and raised the volume very loud while, unbeknownst to her, the Call to Prayer was sounding, which the majority of Muslims would find deplorable, and an already-stressed staff member quickly approached her and angrily yelled, “Haram!” (sin).

...Part two will be shorter, I promise. Perhaps all of this seems dry and unimportant, but from where I stand, it needs to be said.

Grace and peace.

Hazem on the Job

A Memorial Day Poem

 Inspired by Sigfried Sassoon’s Suicide in the Trenches

and Dexter Filkins’ The Forever War

I knew a simple Texas boy

who grinned at life in artless joy.

He dreamt each night of battles past

and leapt when Duty called at last.

Fallujah streets — debris and dirt

and scraps of flesh and sounds that hurt —

made not a man, but mindless fiend

that shot a cat and then itself.

Support our troops: never forget

that Lives are saved if we just let

ourselves remember him before

we dare to dignify a war. 

Stitched Together

One week ago, Brother Andrew and 12-year-old Kareem came into my room at 8:00 PM.

Brother Andrew calmly asked, “William, do you want to go to the hospital?”

A pause. Then a smirk. “What kind of hospital?” 

A large splinter was embedded in Kareem’s right thigh, close to his groin. We asked him “When?” and he said “Tuesday,” but the injury looked much older than that. His skin completely covered the splinter, and he wasn't in any pain. Something must have happened at home over Easter or even Christmas break, and he didn’t tell anyone for whatever reason, and no one had noticed it (or at least its gravity) until just now. 

Our regular Thursday night meeting was about to start. “Yunan will go with you,” Brother Andrew said. Yunan is the 13-year-old son of a Deaf Jordanian Christian couple who work at the school. He speaks Arabic and a fair amount of English.

Five minutes later, Yunan, Kareem, and I made the six-minute walk in the dark to the hospital in Salt. I held Kareem’s hand. 

This was my first visit to the hospital. One of my fellow volunteers, a former nurse, recently said, “I would never go there if I needed medical attention.” 

Yunan spoke to a man standing at the front door, who instructed us to walk down two flights of stairs. Then Yunan spoke to a woman behind a desk, who pointed us towards an empty room ten feet away. Five minutes later, a man entered the room, and Yunan explained the situation to him. The man directed us to another empty room, where we waited for another five minutes. Then a man who looked more like a physician entered, and Yunan explained the situation once more. The physician’s hands told Kareem to pull down his pants. After inspecting the injury, the physician said a few more words to Yunan and then directed us towards another room. As we were walking to this third room, Yunan said to me, “They’re going to take it out now.”

The room was small. A pulled curtain divided it into two sections. The left one was already occupied. As we entered the right section, we were immediately joined by two physicians. The men motioned Kareem onto one of those long elevated seats, a cross between a bed and a weight-lifting bench. It was pressed against the right wall, a foot away from the far corner. Two low tables were close by, covered with lots of medical instruments. The physicians began rummaging through them. 

That’s when Kareem started to cry.

Was your body ever cut open as a child? 

Did you receive local anesthesia, so that you were awake to feel the fear?

Could you speak the language of the men who were handling your body? 

Did their angry hands crudely tell you to lie down and be still? 

While the two men were still rummaging, Yunan told me “I can’t see the blood” and then started to leave the room. I stopped him and asked if he could ask the physicians if it was okay if I held Kareem’s hand during the procedure. 

He did. They said yes. 

After squeezing into the far corner, I clasp Kareem’s hand once more and place my left hand on his forehead. His anxious eyes look up at me, but only for a second; he is desperate to look down at the large hands that will soon invade his body. They are dabbing his upper thigh with some yellow liquid. He starts to squirm. They speak angrily in Arabic. Pointless. The tears continue as Kareem struggles to sit up. One of the physicians tries to pin down Kareem’s chest with his elbow. My left hand, which was resting on Kareem’s forehead, is now pressing down hard. 

Finally, Kareem makes eye contact with me again, and I can sign to him (sloppily, because I’m simultaneously pinning him down). 

“It’s very important that you stay still. If you move around, then there will be more problems later.” 

“Is there a lot of blood?”

“No, just a little.”

His blood is dripping directly onto the uncovered dark blue seat. A woman on the other side of the room is shouting in pain. In that moment, I am glad that Kareem is Deaf. 

Our eye contact is now sustained, and he begins to calm down. My smile is pained at first. But then he smiles back. Knowing that he has derived some comfort from my presence and touch, I now smile freely. My left thumb gently brushes back his hair. I blow him a kiss with no hands. He giggles. 

The procedure lasts about ten minutes. 

“You did a great job,” I tell him afterwards. 

And he did. All five of us did. 

Alhamdulillah. 

A Baby Speaker Attempts Big Thoughts

When I catch up with friends from back home, one of the questions that I’m most frequently asked is “How’s your Arabic?”

Well, it sucks. 

I took a 4-week crash course when I first arrived, but only half of what I’ve learned has stayed with me these last nine months, and I just haven’t made the time to progress in the language. I know my alphabet and around 150 vocabulary words, which just barely equip me for social survival at shops, on buses, and in the most basic of conversations. But that’s it. 

So, while I’m still a beginner (and will almost certainly remain one), I’ve been around the language long enough to make some observations and form some opinions. 

On a purely surface level, I’m struck by the beauty of the language. 

There are times when it reminds me of French, other times when it reminds me of German, and still other times when it sounds utterly exotic. Like French, Arabic has a lot of elongated vowels and consonants, which are especially nice when spoken softly and romantically. On the other hand, like German, Arabic has several guttural sounds, which are especially nice when spoken loudly and angrily. So, whatever their temperament, Arabs always sound cool to me.  

On a deeper level, however, certain features of the Arabic language seem to reveal certain features of Arab cultures. 

Of course, we must be wary of generalizations and simplifications, and of course, this approach has its limitations. Even so, the fact remains that languages/dialects reflect, and thus illuminate, aspects of the people groups who speak them. 

There are infinitely many illustrations, but here’s one that’s coming to my mind right now: in American English (dunno about those Brits), numerous expressions about time consist of monetary terms: we spend time, we save time, we invest time (usually in relationships, ironically). This observation indicates some sort of connection between time and money as regards our conceptions, values, and/or actions. We would be hard pressed to find many corresponding expressions in the tribal tongues of the Developing World. 

So then, what might the Arab language teach us about Arab peoples? 

Even an elementary student of Arabic will observe the pervasiveness and centrality of God in Arabic discourse. 

A very common response to the question kiffak (How are you?) is alhamdulillah -- praise be to God. 

A common expression of happiness, often spoken after hearing exciting news, is ma shah allah (abbreviated mah shallah) -- whatever God wills. 

In situations when English speakers say “hopefully,” Arabic speakers say inshah allah (abbreviated inshallah) -- if God wills.

And actually, Arabic speakers will also say inshallah in situations when English speakers would typically say “I hope so” or “I’d like that.” Don’t miss the beauty and the theological richness: to use the word in this way is to implicitly assert that what a person wants and what God wills should be the same thing.

In addition to language of God, language of peace permeates Arabic discourse.

There are quite a few common phrases that include the word salahm or one of its variants. Many of us are already familiar with salahm alaykum -- Peace be upon you [all]. 

It’s worth noting that many if not most Arab Christians do not use this particular phrase because of its association with the wider Muslim community. Even so, Arab Christians probably say salahm more often than we say “peace.” 

...which reminds me that, from what I’ve learned, the vast majority of Arab churches profess  pacifistic faith convictions. 

They don’t just say it more often. 

Alhamdulillah. 

Deaf vs. Hearing

Our Little Prince

How could I have been blogging for this long and not yet told you about little Mohammed?

  

 

I’ve only worked one-on-one with Mohammed for about ten hours total this year. Seriously, ten of my happiest hours in Jordan so far. There’s something special about this boy, whose body is utterly vulnerable, but whose spirit is strikingly serene.

Here’s an excerpt from a piece that I wrote for my host organization.

“He’s our little prince,” says Tamara, a long-term volunteer at the Holy Land Institute for the Deaf. Indeed, seven-year-old Mohammed attracts attention wherever he goes on school grounds. Many of the Deaf students are eager to give him a hug, gently pinch his nose, or kiss him on the cheek.

But this adorable little boy has not always been so warmly received. Like many Deafblind children in Jordan (and much of the world), Mohammed was regarded not as a blessing, but as a source of shame for his family. Thus, he has suffered from serious neglect. For example, before he arrived at the Holy Land Institute for the Deaf (around a year and a half ago), Mohammed had never received any form of nourishment other than plain milk.

The path towards physical and social development will be long and arduous for Mohammed. His obstacles include malnourishment, immobility, tactile defensiveness (recoiling from all touch), and the absence of communication skills. Slowly but surely, however, he is making progress. Mohammed can now sit up straight on his own strength and put some weight on his feet. In addition, he has largely overcome his tactile defensiveness; if approached properly, Mohammed is receptive to anyone.

And thankfully, here at the Holy Land Institute for the Deaf, there are many people for him to receive – and who joyfully receive him.