","longer_truncated_body_json":null,"longer_truncated_body_html":null,"truncated_body_text":"In 2022, Andrew Tate was the most searched person on Google in the United States. He managed to garner a huge following online - particularly among young men and the far right - with a strong mix of culture. :"culture","hidden":false},{"id":"a2a95249-bc27 -4ab3- a273- 4b0c89a7ba8a","publication_id":260347,"name":"Debates","slug":"Debates" ,"hidden":false}],"publishedBylines":[{"id":3785359, "name" :" Shadi Hamid"," previous_name":null,"photo_url":"https://substackcdn.com/image /fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3 -437e -9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fff73be99-84c5-488d-b6e2-461e792791.05_1791.05 .jpeg","bio":"Shadi Hamid is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a research professor at Fuller Seminary. He is the recent author of The Problem of Democracy: America, the Middle East, and the Rise and Fall of an Idea “. :"shadihamid","is_guest":true,"bestseller_tier":null,"primaryPublicationId":1154037,"primaryPublicationName":"Democracy and other issues","primaryPublicationUrl":"https://shadihamid.substack.com " , "primaryPublicationSubscribeUrl":"https://shadihamid.substack.com/subscribe?","inviteAccepted":true}],"r eaction_count":437,"reaction":null,"comment_count":607,"child_comment_count": 149 ,"audio_items":[{"post_id":101541825,"voice_id":"en-US-JennyNeural","audio_url" :"https://substack-video.s3.amazonaws.com/video_upload/post/101541825 / tts/en-US-JennyNeural.mp3","type":"tts","status":"completed"}] ,"truncated_description":null,"hasCashtag":false,"truncated_body_html":null,"post_paywall_content_for_google " :null,"cover_image_alt":null,"cover_image_caption":"Andrew Tate holds a Koran in front of a tribune bo unal in Romania, where he is being held as part of investigations into human trafficking and rape. (Photo via Twitter)","html":"
In 2022, Andrew Tate was themost searched person on googlein the United States. He managed to garner a massive following online, particularly among young men and the far right, with a potent combination of cultural criticism, self-help brashness, and the kind of outspoken misogyny rare even among misogynists. Then, in December, he was arrested in Romania for sex trafficking. Until the platform banned it, Tate's TikTok videos were watchedover 11 billion times.
But I was interested in Tate for another reason: her religious identity.
By October, the former British-American boxer had converted to Islam. Known for his extravagant lifestyle, including running a sex camera business, he seemed oddly to fit the moral constraints of Islam. And he was.
Muslim reaction to Tatevery public announcementabout his conversion on social networking site Gettr was shared: some saw it as an opportunity to spread the good news. Others were appalledfearTate once again propagated stereotypes about Islam's subjugation of women.
This disagreement mainly reflected differing policies. Like other minority communities, American Muslims, and young American Muslims in particular, are increasingly divided between "woke" and "counter-woke." The anti-wake or "base" was on Jordan Peterson. They also liked Andrew Tate, whose story, whose brand, embodied a defiant and outspoken rejection of progressive mainstream norms, habits and beliefs.
After Tate's arrest, I braced myself for media coverage of his newfound faith. But it was as if nobody in the mainstream press knew he had changed.
The economistsapoProfilefrom the Tate trying to answer the question that plagues millions: who is this guy? I was surprised (and relieved) that the profile didn't mention Tate's religion. EvenIs Washington PostjThe guard. Except for Muslim Twitter, I could hardly find any mention of it.
For me that was progress. What if Tate was a Muslim? People of all religions do bad things and have bad ideas, and Muslims are no exception. Finally we were normal.
ButErasfascinating.
Tate's conversion to Islam is the most striking example of a growing phenomenon: the emergence of what theologian Massimo Faggioli calls "political conversions." Consider that when TateexplainedWhy did he choose Islam, he didn't mention theology, salvation, the Quran, the Prophet Muhammad or anything related to spirituality or faith.
"Islam is a very accurate reflection of my personal beliefs," he said.sayingin an interview with Muslim polemicist Mohammed Hijab. "In my personal life, I've learned that if you don't have standards and aren't a strong person willing to stand up for your ideas, you get devastated."
While Christianity in the West is weak, unassuming, and free from rigid rules, Tate believes Islam is sophisticated, masculine, and energetic. She refuses to be ridiculed and refuses to conform to progressive norms, especially when it comes to gender and family. Where Christianity has indeed suffered defeat, Islam, Tate said in the same interview, "looks like the last religion on earth," the only faith that has any chance of effectively resisting decay and moral decline. (Whether Tate himself is or wants to be moral is secondary.)
It's hard to say how widespread "political conversions" are, but recent polling data shows they're spreading. after aPew Poll 2020The Evangelicals, for example, were one of the few religious groups to become members in the last four years.
But there was a catch. Many of these self-proclaimed evangelicals do not go to church. They identify as evangelicals because of what it meanspolitically. As political scientist Ryan BurgeNuts, “Instead of a theological affinity with Jesus Christ, millions of Americans are drawn to the evangelical label because of their connection to the Republican Party.”
I'm not saying that many political converts are infidels, including Andrew Tate. In a somewhat amusing defense of Tate's conversion (thecomparedIslam to a Toaster), YouTube personality Smile 2 Jannah quoted a saying from the Prophet Mohammed in which he urged Muslims not to doubt the sincerity of seemingly dubious conversions.
And what Andrew Tate is doing in emphasizing the politics of faith over spirituality is not entirely new. After all, religion is never just religion. As Christian theologian William Cavanaugharguein his 2009 bookThe Myth of Religious Violence, the separation of politics and faith is an "invention of the modern West".
However, Tate's conversion tells us something important about what is happening in America right now.
As culture continues to secularize and move further and further away from any underlying moral vision, right-wing intellectuals have responded by being drawn to more sophisticated forms of Christianity, particularly Eastern OrthodoxyCatholic Integralism. Among the most prominent converts is conservative author Sohrab Ahmari, who grew up in Iran from a secular home, immigrated to the United States, and eventually embraced Catholicism, which Ahmaricreditsto impose an "enormous metaphysical order and direction" on his life. Like Islam, these religious orientations are perceived as harsher, more masculine, and based more on rules than sentiment. They order freedom by restricting it. They involve not only sophisticated rites and rituals; it's explicitly about thatNOConcessions to secular modernity.
Some of these Christian culture warriors see Islam as a resource and Muslims as allies in the long struggle against progressive cultural dominance. Conservative author Rod Dreher, who converted to Eastern Orthodoxy in 2006 before it caught on,describedhis admiration in a post entitled "Islam: 'The Last Badass Religion'."
"That's something I respect about Muslims in general," Dreher wrote, "they take their faith much more seriously than Christians. The only forms of Christianity that will survive the dissolution now upon us will be those that take the faith seriously and incorporate it into a disciplined lifestyle."
Ahmari put itThis way: "I regard Islam as a Catholic with more respect than as a secular [person] or as an atheist."
This tells us something about the all-consuming political divide in America today, which has less to do with politics than with culture, that is, with religion. Finally, religion, or lack thereof, shapes our habits, norms and attitudes. Secularization does not make religion irrelevant; Instead, it creates new ways of being "religious."
All of this explains how evangelical voters rallied to Donald Trump, and why some Muslims still insist on seeing Andrew Tate as a flawed but necessary vessel. They don't care what he believes, but what he means. In the end, it didn't matter what was in her heart, and how could anyone know what was there? It was his politics that mattered, as politics became his own brand of belief.
Are you hearing about political conversion for the first time? Or is it a phenomenon that you are following? Tell us in the comments.
And if you believe in the work we do at The Free Press, subscribe today:
subscribe now
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