Dean Gets It, part 94

The statement is brief, and nonetheless deserves to be quoted in full:

As Muslims around the world commence with their most holy month, I would like to wish them a blessed Ramadan.

Through the practice and reaffirmation of self-discipline, charity, compassion, and community, Muslims remind us all of the relationship between our highest aspirations and the commitments of our daily lives.

We are also reminded of how much American Muslims add to the rich diversity of American life, faith, and culture.

It is my hope that we will all be renewed by the devotion of the Muslim community in our commitment to the search for peace and justice throughout the world.

Note also from the comments the following reaction (excerpt, slightly edited for formatting reasons):

As a muslim who grew up in America, I just want to say that this statement by Governor Dean is groundbreaking territory for a politician.

Never before, I can attest, has any politician made such a brave and honest statement that understood the nature of ramadan so deeply, and gave such an embracing attitude towards the thousands of fellow citizens in America who are Muslim.

I think Dean understands religion in a way that the Christian Right doesn’t. He was baptised Catholic, raised Episcopalian, is now a Congregationalist but his wife and children are Jewish. He doesn’t wear his religion on his sleeve - “I don’t go to church a lot, but I pray at night” (read the whole damn article) - but he understands different religions enough, I think, to sense the common goal of all religion, which is, at least for the Western religions, moral probity. Forget all that legalistic stuff about shellfish and menstruating women; the major lesson you can learn from Abrahamic religions is their consistent, and I think worthy, moral code. It survives the passage of time when other commandments, mostly related to local historical conditions, do not, and that’s why we still listen to the Archbishop of Canterbury even though we’re not Christians.

See also this piece (which I originally saw via someone else’s blog but I can’t for the life of me remember which one):

The more one watches him on the stump (and watches his admirers watching him), the more it becomes apparent that he comes out of, and is reviving, a tradition of small-town, New England civic and religious fervor that is all but forgotten in American politics today. He is something the country has not seen in a very long time. He is, essentially, a northern evangelist