Closing the 'hijab murder' file

Khaled Diab guardian.co.uk, Thursday 12 November 2009 16.50 GMT

The life sentence imposed on Marwa al-Sherbini's killer shows that European Islamophobia exists but is not institutionalised

While justice can never resurrect the fallen, it can lay them to rest in dignity and help their loved ones better come to terms with their loss.

In the case of Marwa al-Sherbini, the 31-year-old Egyptian pharmacist who was brutally murdered in a German courtroom this summer, the life sentence handed down by a Dresden court to her racist murderer should help ease tensions surrounding the case, which seems to have been hijacked for political point scoring.

First, let me be clear. This was an ugly and disgusting crime and caused the untimely death of an intelligent mother whose loss has undoubtedly left a huge hole in the lives of her husband and her three-year-old son. Her murderer, Alexander (or Axel) Wiens, a 28-year-old German of Russian origin, was certainly a racist and Islamophobe of the first order whose blind, irrational hatred of Muslims is frighteningly common in far-right circles.

But it was the extent and fury of the reaction in Egypt that astounded me. Although it is understandable that public sympathy for al-Sherbini – whose story is set to be turned into a film – and a certain amount of anger would pour out, I was shocked by the fact that she became popularly known as "the martyr of terrorism" and her case was used by some to claim that European Muslims were a "persecuted" minority and Europe was irredeemably Islamophobic.

Rising anti-German sentiment in Egypt even led to calls for sanctions against Germany. For example, the Egyptian Pharmacists' Association, of which al-Sherbini was a member, unfairly called for a boycott of German drugs.

While this over-reaction probably has some roots in the very real discrimination some Muslims face in Europe and the popular anger at US-led western intervention in places like Iraq, and the heavy human toll this has inflicted, Egyptians should not have allowed the actions of a tiny minority to lead them to make unfair generalisations.

As fellow Cif commentator Nesrine Malik said at the time: "Muslims (me included) constantly protest that the actions of a few extremists should not be allowed to denigrate Islam and its adherents as a whole – but this is exactly what they are doing themselves in connection with Europeans and the actions of Axel W."

At the time of the murder, I was struck by the ironic parallel between the one-sided self-righteous indignation being expressed by some conservative Egyptian Muslims and the almost identical brand of righteous anger targeted at Muslims by the European far right.

For example, many Egyptians pointed to western prejudice against the hijab and how it was prohibited in government institutions by some European states, such as France, as examples of this alleged persecution. "But what about Muslim prejudice against bare heads?" I asked in an article at the time. "In the interest of fairness, why aren't more Muslims openly outraged by attempts to force women to wear the headscarf against their will, as in Saudi Arabia?"

In Egypt, few protests are raised when the mutaween, the Saudi morality police, routinely arrest and beat Saudi women who are out alone or not wearing a headscarf. In an extreme manifestation of their puritanical attitude, they even caused, in 2002, the death of 15 schoolgirls who were not allowed to flee a burning building because they were not dressed in decent Islamic fashion.

In addition, while European Muslims can and do face discrimination, this Egyptian criticism overlooks the fact that Muslims often have more freedom of conscience in Europe than they do in Egypt, and that non-Muslims can also be the victims of enormous prejudice in Egypt.

Copts have to deal with a lot of unofficial and even some institutionalised discrimination in Egypt, as I highlighted in a recent article.

On hearing that the German courts had given the murderer the stiffest possible sentence – life, without eligibility for early release – my first reaction was that this should help restore shaken confidence, though there have been some complaints that the sentence was too lenient.

Some of the people interviewed on al-Jazeera last night and posting on newspaper message boards today expressed the view that Wiens should have been tried in Egypt and sentenced to death. They are obviously unaware of European laws banning the extradition of suspects to countries where they may face capital punishment.

But the verdict has generally gone down well. For instance, Egypt's ambassador to Germany welcomed the court's ruling, while the independent al-Dostour newspaper called it a "victory for justice". This should demonstrate to the doubters that, though there may be racist and Islamophobic Germans and Europeans, discrimination against Muslims is not universal nor is it generally institutionalised.

SNP candidate praised radical Muslim as ‘preacher of peace’

From The Times November 12, 2009

A radical Muslim cleric alleged to have inspired the Fort Hood gunman has been praised in the past as “a preacher of peace” by a prominent SNP candidate with close links to Alex Salmond.

The FBI is investigating communications between Major Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 people at the US Army base in Texas, and Imam Anwar al-Awlaki, a US-born Muslim cleric now based in Yemen. Mr Awlaki has a large following in Britain and counts prominent mainstream Muslims among his supporters.

In 2006 Osama Saeed, who has been selected as the SNP candidate for Glasgow Central for the next general election, wrote that Mr Awlaki “preached nothing but peace”. Last night Mr Saeed, who was researcher to Mr Salmond before he became the Scottish First Minister, distanced himself from Mr Awlaki, saying that he now felt “cheated” by the cleric.

Mr Saeed said: “I completely disagree with what he has said about Fort Hood, and a host of other matters which he has more recently written and spoken about.” Mr Awlaki, 38, who on his blog described Major Hasan as “a hero”, has been a regular visitor to Britain and delivers frequent lectures to audiences here by video or via the internet.

Counter-terrorism sources said last night that Mr Awlaki was barred from entering Britain on security grounds, while the anti-extremist Quilliam Foundation said that he was “perhaps the most influential pro-jihadist ideologue preaching in English today”. Despite his extremist reputation, the cleric has attracted widespread support from mainstream British Muslim groups and individuals.

Azad Ali, president of the Civil Service Islamic Society, wrote last November that Mr Awlaki was “one of my favourite speakers and scholars”. Mr Ali, whose society’s patron is Sir Gus O’Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, distanced himself from the cleric’s views last night. He said: “I reject them and disassociate myself from them completely.”

Mr Salmond came under attack two months ago over SNP links to the Scottish-Islamic Foundation, founded by Mr Saeed, after it emerged that the Scottish government had agreed to give the organisation taxpayers’ cash before it was legally established.

The Scottish government clawed back £128,000 paid to the foundation for a £1.4 million “IslamFest” event that was due to take place in Glasgow last June but was abandoned. An SNP spokesman said last night: “Anwar al-Awlaki formerly expressed moderate views — his more recent comments are disgraceful and have been condemned by all right-thinking people, including Azad Ali and Osama Saeed. Any attempt to smear any individual in the UK over this would be appalling.”

While some people such as Mr Saeed now distance themselves from Mr Awlaki, his lectures continue to be circulated widely. The Times acquired DVDs of his lectures at two Islamic bookshops in East London, while Jimas, a registered charity based in Ipswich, offers downloads of his sermons on its website.

This year a video lecture by Mr Awlaki was delivered at the East London mosque under the banner “The End of Time” with a poster depicting New York in flames. The mosque said that an outside group had used its facilities for the event.

Mr Awlaki was born in New Mexico in 1971 and holds a US passport. He was an imam at Rabat mosque in San Diego, where he encountered two of the September 11 hijackers, Nawaf al Hazmi and Khalid al Mihdhar.

The 9/11 Commission report said that Mr Awlaki “developed a close relationship” with the two hijackers but the cleric condemned the atrocities in interviews at the time. The preacher moved from there to be an imam at Falls Church, Virginia, where he is reported to have first met Major Hasan.

Tariq Ramadan Gets a Hero’s Welcome, and Cold Shoulders, at Religion Scholars Confab

By Allan Nadler
Published November 11, 2009, issue of November 20, 2009.

Swiss-born Muslim scholar and public intellectual Tariq Ramadan has for decades been a lightning rod for controversy. He was barred from entry to America by the Patriot Act’s “ideological exclusion provision,” and then on account of his financial contributions to two Hamas charities. Even so, he took center stage at the American Academy of Religion’s annual conference, this year held in Montreal — allowing him to attend.

The controversial scholar, barred from America, traveled to speak in Canada.The grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna, Ramadan has long been suspected by progressive Muslims and secularists in Europe of radical Islamist tendencies despite his avowed agenda to “reform Islam.” The Canadian Jewish community’s wise silence about his numerous high-profile appearances notwithstanding, Ramadan has repeatedly singled out Jewish intellectuals as among his most damaging detractors. Most recently, in his new book, “What I Believe,” he unmistakably implied that Jews and the pro-Israel lobby were behind the revocation of his visa.

To mark Ramadan’s visit, the National Post, Canada’s conservative national daily, ran a column by liberal Muslim writer

Tarek Fatah called, “Montreal Welcomes an Islamist Extremist in Sheep’s Clothing.” Fatah’s article ended with a powerfully personal pledge: “Brother Tariq, your father Said Ramadan came to my birthplace Pakistan in 1948 as a Muslim Brotherhood emissary and was instrumental in turning a secular Muslim country into a hotbed of Islamic extremism. I will not let the son of Said Ramadan come to my adopted home Canada and do the same, without a fight. Your Islamist father ruined my birthplace; I will not let you ruin the place where I will die.”

On Montreal’s leading morning radio talk show, veteran journalist Denise Bombardier observed to host Denys Arcand that “while Israeli scholars are increasingly boycotted from college campuses, an Islamofascist like Ramadan is welcomed like a rock star.” And two progressive Canadian Muslim groups ran an ad in a Montreal daily, Le Devoir, denouncing Ramadan for his covert Islamist agenda and ties to antisemitic clerics.

The main and far warmer welcome was reserved for Ramadan’s address to four separate panels, including two packed plenary sessions at the private Annual Meeting of the AAR, the world’s largest learned society of scholars of religion. The American ban was denounced each time Ramadan was introduced, unsurprising since the AAR, with the support of the American Civil Liberties Union, the New York Civil Liberties Union and the American Association of University Professors, has been the most prominent petitioner for its reversal since 2004.

His battle for entry has been a matter of particular sensitivity to the academic community, since the initial revocation of his visa came after Ramadan accepted a prestigious chair in Religion, Conflict and Peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame. While this advocacy for Ramadan is ostensibly rooted in concern for academic freedom, his appearance at the Montreal conference, and the hero’s welcome accorded him at his plenary appearance and keynote address, suggested either a more than trivial political partisanship with Ramadan’s views or a naiveté about what he really represents.

In his talks, Ramadan repeated the need for what he calls “transformative” and “radical” reform of Islam, while in fact articulating a fundamentalist acceptance of the divinity of the Quran and the Hadiths (narratives about the prophet), as well as the exclusive authority of the Ulema (scholarly religious establishment), to offer normative Quranic interpretations. Such double-talk, combined with ultraconservative theological views, would be laughed out of the room were they offered by any of his liberal Christian colleagues.

Nevertheless, Ramadan repeatedly rejected the application of universally accepted tools of modern biblical scholarship to Islam’s sacred texts. And, with no serious critical challenge, he dubbed the democratization of the study of those texts “dangerous and unfair.” The passive, indeed mute, reception by critical modern scholars of religion to Ramadan’s repeated fundamentalist proclamations was nothing short of astonishing.

Participating on a star-studded panel chaired by CNN’s Reza Aslan and including award-winning journalist Robin Wright, Ramadan made remarks on the theme of “Islam and Modernity” that showed why the debate about his true beliefs is so intractable. Following Wright’s fine overview of the history of Islamic radicalism and the contemporary changes toward a “softer and less violent Islamism” in the numerous Islamic countries from which she has reported for decades, Ramadan bristled at the notion that violence should serve as any criterion in assessing Islam’s engagement with modernity. Rather, he insisted that “violence is not an issue for the vast majority in the Muslim world,” and that the proper way to understand reform in countries with Muslim majorities must be limited to analyzing those countries’ various interpretations of the Quran, Hadiths and Sharia (Islamic law).

A defining moment in Ramadan’s career was his famous televised debate, in November 2003, with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, then French minister of the interior during a period of antisemitic attacks in France. Sarkozy attacked Ramadan for having accused “the Jews” of serving the interests of Israel over those of their countries of residence: “Your article was not just a blunder; it was a moral failure.”

Ramadan responded first by asserting that he had always opposed antisemitism, adding: “They call me a Muslim intellectual; I wrote about Jewish intellectuals. I don’t see any harm in that.” But Ramadan’s shocking response to Sarkozy’s next volley stole headlines throughout Europe. Asked to denounce his brother, Muslim Brotherhood leader Hani Ramadan (with whom Ramadan privately remains very close) for having written a piece justifying the stoning of adulterous women, Ramadan proposed a “moratorium on such practices.” An outraged Sarkozy declared: “A moratorium? What does that mean? We’re in 2003!”

The Sarkozy debacle was eerily repeated in Montreal, suggesting that little has changed for Ramadan. Asked by a self-described “feminist scholar of Islam” to suggest concrete ways of advancing the status of women in the Muslim world, he responded, without a hint of irony, “The best way to transform the position of women in Islam is to go back and look to the life of the prophet and how he treated his wives.” Sarkozy’s indignation echoed: “Wives? Polygamy? What does this mean? We’re in 2009!”

I asked Ramadan, in the final audience question after his keynote address, to rise above accusations of “doublespeak” and condemn unambiguously the rise in religiously sanctioned and state-supported antisemitism throughout the Muslim world. As always when the question of his ties to antisemitic organizations and clerics is raised, Ramadan became both indignant and personally belligerent. Responding to the term “doublespeak,” which has haunted Ramadan for two decades, he accused me of “double-hearing,” evoking hearty laughter from the majority of the crowd, who clearly had not read this response dozens of times in his writings. He continued by asserting that he has “always condemned antisemitism as anti-Islamic.” What this qualified rejection implies remains unclear beyond a chilling reminder that for Ramadan, moral and ethical judgments can be made only through the prism of Islamic values.

Ramadan’s Islamic “reform” has nothing in common with the 16th-century Christian Reformation’s challenging of fundamental religious doctrines and ecclesiastical institutions, and it certainly shares absolutely nothing with Reform Judaism, which left all of traditional Judaism open to radical revision.

Even his harshest critics — such as Denis MacShane in his introduction to the 2008 English translation of French secularist Caroline Fourest’s devastating book, “Brother Tariq: The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan” — at least offer the hope that Ramadan may be evolving and distancing himself from Islamist politics and religious fundamentalism. Sadly, his performances in Montreal suggest that he has not progressed an iota from his fundamentalist views about such issues as the divinity of the Quran, the nature of religious authority, antisemitism and the status of women.

The only evolution evident in Ramadan’s slick performances is his finely tuned taqiyya — the medieval Islamic tactic of strategic dissimulation. After all, it is no small matter to dupe so many thousands of scholars of religion. Or is it?

Allan Nadler, a regular Forward contributor, is Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Jewish Studies Program at Drew University. Contact Allan Nadler at feedback@forward.com

The Grand Mufti's Mission

The Grand Mufti's mission

By Michael Gerson
Friday, October 23, 2009


Sheik Ali Gomaa, the Grand Mufti of Egypt, possesses a wonderfully exotic title, a scholarly manner and the unique burden of issuing about 5,000 fatwas a week -- the judicial rulings that help guide the lives of the Muslim faithful. On a recent visit to the United States, he explained to me the process of "resolving issues of modern life." And modern life offers Gomaa and his team of subordinate muftis plenty of fodder for resolution, from the permissibility of organ transplants, to sports gambling, to smoking during Ramadan, to female judges, to the use of weapons of mass destruction, to mobile phone transmitters on the tops of minarets.



This is perhaps the most difficult aspect of Islam for many non-Muslim Americans, who must look back to Puritan Massachusetts for a time when hermeneutics -- the art of interpreting a holy text -- was such a consequential public matter. In the West, theological debates have long been confined to seminaries, causing nothing more serious than denominational splits. In Egypt, Gomaa is a theological celebrity. His office, the Dar al-Iftaa, is part of the Ministry of Justice. And though his rulings are nonbinding unless adopted into Egyptian law, they are widely influential.

Reform in the Arab world is not likely -- at least soon -- to reflect the Western privatization of theological beliefs. All of life is subject to sharia law, and most Arab governments gain at least a part of their legitimacy by reflecting it. At its worst -- but rarely -- this involves the classical Islamic punishments of stoning and amputation. At its best, sharia law plays an equivalent role to the rule of law, binding both rulers and ruled by the same objective standard of justice.

So it obviously matters greatly how sharia law is interpreted, and who does the interpreting. But Islam, for better or for worse, has no pope or traditional clergy. Instead, it has several schools of interpretation -- all of which view the Koran and the traditions of the prophet Muhammad as normative but reconcile local customs with Islam in different ways.

Some, on the Saudi Arabian model, view the 7th century as the purest Islamic ideal, which is difficult to reconcile with modernity, pluralism, democracy, women's rights and success in the modern world.

Sheik Gomaa represents a different approach. He can hardly be called a liberal. "The Egyptian people," he told me, "have chosen Islam to be their general framework for governance. That being the case, the Egyptian people will never accept homosexual marriage, or the use of illegal drugs, or the commission of homicide or joint suicide." Morality and its sources are absolute. "The Koran and the tradition are what we depend on," he insists. "They were true 1,400 years ago, they are true today, they will be true tomorrow."

But traditionalist Islam, in his view, is pragmatic in the way it applies these principles to "current reality." It is the job of Islamic scholars "to bridge the gap between the sources and life today." Some past interpretations "may have been corrupt -- we may find a better way. What we look to in tradition is methodology, not the exact results of 500 years ago." Gomaa focuses on "the intent of sharia to foster dignity and other core values," as well as "a commitment to the public interest."

"The end result is to improve the world, not destroy it," he said. As a result, Gomaa has made a number of rulings recognizing women's rights, restricting corporal punishment and forbidding terrorism.

"Let me give you an example of the approach from freedom," he told me. "The Prophet, in history, peace be upon him, wore clothes like what they wear in Sudan. The fact that the Prophet did that doesn't mean we all must dress that way. There are those who want to hold on to the past, not hold on to religion." Beneath Gomaa's interpretive approach is a strong assertion of the role of the traditional scholarly class within Islam. The issuing of fatwas by unqualified radicals has often led to religious chaos. Gomaa is a scholar of the first rank and believes that scholars, rooted in a long tradition of learning, should take the leading role in Islamic jurisprudence. His goal is not to liberalize Islam but to rescue orthodoxy from extremism.

This does not amount to a fully orbed theory of human liberty. But Gomaa stands for an important and encouraging principle: Radicalism is the shallowest view of Islam.

mgerson@globalengage.org

Islamic Humor: Divine TV Guide and Forcing Your Fate

Shaykh Yassir Chadly has been the imam (spiritual leader) at the Masjid-Al Iman a multi-cultural Sufi-oriented mosque in Oakland, California since 1992.

His unique blend of deep spiritual subjects combined with Sufi Folk traditions and his own distinctive sense of humor has made him an extremely popular lecturer around the Bay Area on subjects such as Islam, transformation and Sufism.

He is currently an adjunct professor at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley and has taught workshops at The California Institute for Integral Studies teaching classes on Islam, Sufism, The poet Rumi, and Sufi Storytelling and the art of sermon.

As a Moroccan musician, he has recorded albums with Jazz artists Omar Sosa, Pharoah Sanders and Randy Weston and has recently released his first solo CD entitled “AJEEB!!” available on itunes. He has also composed and performed music for The Lines Ballet Company of San Francisco, The North Carolina Ballet Company and The Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre.

He has also presented lecture/demonstrations on Moroccan and Gnawa music at many venues including The Julia Morgan Theatre And The California Academy of Sciences.

In 2002 Yassir performed live at The Diablo Valley College Ethnic Storytelling Festival in Concord, California.

For Peace to Prevail We Must Be At Peace Within Ourselves

Sri Satya Narayan Goenka (born 1924) is a leading lay teacher of Vipassanā meditation and a student of Sayagyi U Ba Khin. He has trained more than 700 assistant teachers and each year more than 100,000 people do Goenka sponsored Vipassana courses. Mr. Goenka is married to Ilaichidevi Goenka who sits as co-teacher with him. They have six sons.

SN Goenka emphasises that, "The Buddha never taught a sectarian religion; he taught Dhamma - the way to liberation - which is universal" and presents his teachings as non-sectarian and open to people of all faiths or no faith. Goenka calls Vipassana meditation an experiential scientific practice, through which one can observe the constantly changing nature of the mind and body at the deepest level, a profound understanding that leads to a truly happy and peaceful life.

Arab/Muslim is not a 'Bad Name'!

'The Case for God' by Karen Armstrong

October 4, 2009
Perpetual Revelations
By ROSS DOUTHAT
The New York Times

By Karen Armstrong
406 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $27.95

The Bush era was a difficult time for liberal religion in America. The events of 9/11 were not exactly an advertisement for the compatibility of faith and reason, faith and modernity, or faith and left-of-center politics. Nor was the domestic culture war that blazed up in their wake, which lent a “with us or against us” quality to nearly every God-related controversy. For many liberals, the only choices seemed to be secularism or fundamentalism, the new atheism or the old-time religion, Richard Dawkins or George W. Bush.

But now the wheel has turned, and liberal believers can breathe easier. Bush has retired to Texas, and his successor in the White House is the very model of a modern liberal Christian. Religious conservatism seems diminished and dispirited. The polarizing issues of the moment are health care and deficits, not abstinence education or intelligent design. And the new atheists seem to have temporarily run out of ways to call believers stupid.

The time, in other words, is ripe for a book like “The Case for God,” which wraps a rebuke to the more militant sort of atheism in an engaging survey of Western religious thought. Karen Armstrong, a former nun turned prolific popular historian, wants to rescue the idea of God from its cultured despisers and its more literal-minded adherents alike. To that end, she doesn’t just argue that her preferred approach to religion — which emphasizes the pursuit of an unknowable Deity, rather than the quest for theological correctness — is compatible with a liberal, scientific, technologically advanced society. She argues that it’s actually truer to the ancient traditions of Judaism, Islam and (especially) Christianity than is much of what currently passes for “conservative” religion. And the neglect of these traditions, she suggests, is “one of the reasons why so many Western people find the concept of God so troublesome today.”

Both modern believers and modern atheists, Armstrong contends, have come to understand religion primarily as a set of propositions to be assented to, or a catalog of specific facts about the nature of God, the world and human life. But this approach to piety would be foreign to many premodern religious thinkers, including the greatest minds of the Christian past, from the early Fathers of the Church to medieval eminences like Thomas Aquinas.

These and other thinkers, she writes, understood faith primarily as a practice, rather than as a system — not as “something that people thought but something they did.” Their God was not a being to be defined or a proposition to be tested, but an ultimate reality to be approached through myth, ritual and “apophatic” theology, which practices “a deliberate and principled reticence about God and/or the sacred” and emphasizes what we can’t know about the divine. And their religion was a set of skills, rather than a list of unalterable teachings — a “knack,” as the Taoists have it, for navigating the mysteries of human existence.

It’s a knack, Armstrong argues, that the Christian West has largely lost, and the rise of modern science is to blame. Not because science and religion are unalterably opposed, but because religious thinkers succumbed to a fatal case of science envy.

Instead of providing the usual portrait of empiricism triumphing over superstition, Armstrong depicts an extended seduction in which believers were persuaded to embrace the “natural theology” of Isaac Newton and William Paley, which seemed to provide scientific warrant for a belief in a creator God. Convinced that “the natural laws that scientists had discovered in the universe were tangible demonstrations of God’s providential care,” Western Christians abandoned the apophatic, mythic approach to faith in favor of a pseudo­scientific rigor — and then had nowhere to turn when Darwin’s theory of evolution arrived on the scene.

An Aquinas or an Augustine would have been unfazed by the idea of evolution. But their modern successors had convinced themselves that religious truth was a literal, all-or-nothing affair, in which doctrines were the equivalent of scientific precepts, and sacred texts needed to coincide exactly with the natural sciences. The resulting crisis produced the confusions of our own day, in which biblical literalists labor to reconcile the words of Genesis with the existence of the dinosaurs, while atheists ridicule Scripture for its failure to resemble a science textbook.

To escape this pointless debate, Armstrong counsels atheists to recognize that theism isn’t a rival scientific theory, and that it is “no use magisterially weighing up the teachings of religion to judge their truth or falsehood before embarking on a religious way of life. You will discover their truth — or lack of it — only if you translate these doctrines into ritual or ethical action.” Believers, meanwhile, are urged to recover the wisdom of their forebears, who understood that “revealed truth was symbolic, that Scripture could not be interpreted literally” and that “revelation was not an event that had happened once in the distant past but was an ongoing, creative process that required human ingenuity.”

This is an eloquent case for the ancient roots of the liberal approach to faith, and my summary does not do justice to its subtleties. But it deserves to be heavily qualified. Armstrong concedes that the religious story she’s telling highlights only a particular trend within monotheistic faith. The casual reader, however, would be forgiven for thinking that the leading lights of premodern Christianity were essentially liberal Episcopalians avant la lettre.

In reality, these Christian sages were fiercely dogmatic by any modern standard. They were not fundamentalists, reading every line of Scripture literally, and they were, as Armstrong says, “inventive, fearless and confident in their interpretation of faith.” But their inventiveness was grounded in shared doctrines and constrained by shared assumptions. Their theology was reticent in its claims about the ultimate nature of God but very specific about how God had revealed himself on earth. It’s true that Augustine, for instance, did not interpret the early books of Genesis literally. But he certainly endorsed a literal reading of Jesus’ resurrection — and he wouldn’t have been much of a Christian theologian if he hadn’t.

Which is to say that it’s considerably more difficult than Armstrong allows to separate thought from action, teaching from conduct, and dogma from practice in religious history. The dogmas tend to sustain the practices, and vice versa. It’s possible to gain some sort of “knack” for a religion without believing that all its dogmas are literally true: a spiritually inclined person can no doubt draw nourishment from the Roman Catholic Mass without believing that the Eucharist literally becomes the body and blood of Christ. But without the doctrine of transubstantiation, the Mass would not exist to provide that nourishment. Not every churchgoer will share Flannery O’Connor’s opinion that if the Eucharist is “a symbol, to hell with it.” But the Catholic faith has endured for 2,000 years because of Flannery O’Connors, not Karen Armstrongs.

This explains why liberal religion tends to be parasitic on more dogmatic forms of faith, which create and sustain the practices that the liberal believer picks and chooses from, reads symbolically and reinterprets for a more enlightened age. Such spiritual dilettant­ism has its charms, but it lacks the sturdy appeal of Western monotheism, which has always offered not only myth and ritual and symbolism (the pagans had those bases covered), but also scandalously literal claims — that the Jews really are God’s chosen people; that Christ really did rise from the dead; and that however much the author of the universe may surpass our understanding, we can live in hope that he loves the world enough to save it, and us, from the annihilating power of death.

Such literalism can be taken too far, and “The Case for God” argues, convincingly, that it needs to coexist with more mythic, mystic and philosophical forms of faith. Most people, though, are not mystics and philosophers, and they are hungry for myths that are not only resonant but true. Apophatic religion may be the most rigorous way to go in search of an elusive God. But for most believers, it will remain a poor substitute for the idea that God has come in search of us.

Ross Douthat is an Op-Ed columnist for The Times.

Saudi university critic loses job

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has sacked a senior cleric who criticised a new science and technology university which opened in September. The cleric, Sheikh Saad al-Shethry, said the mixing of sexes in any university was evil and a great sin.

He demanded the curriculum should be vetted by Islamic scholars to prevent teaching of "alien ideologies". The $7bn university near Jeddah, named after King Abdullah, is a key project of the reform-minded Saudi monarch.

In what is being seen as a rare intervention, a royal decree removed Sheikh Saad from Saudi Arabia's most senior council of religious scholars, or ulema. No reason was given publicly for the removal.

The timing follows the sheikh's stringent criticism of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), whose administration lies outside the control of the cleric-dominated ministry of education.

"The recommendation is to set up Sharia (Islamic law) committees at this university to oversee these studies and look into what violates the Sharia," Sheikh Saad was quoted saying last week in the Saudi press.

The government hopes the technologically advanced centre with its relaxed social constraints will help modernise the kingdom's deeply conservative society. In contrast to the strict rules outside the sprawling campus, women are allowed to drive and are not required to wear veils in classes.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/8290260.stm

Published: 2009/10/05 10:01:52 GMT

© BBC MMIX

Egypt cleric 'to ban full veils'

Egypt's highest Muslim authority has said he will issue a religious edict against the growing trend for full women's veils, known as the niqab. Sheikh Mohamed Tantawi, dean of al-Azhar university, called full-face veiling a custom that has nothing to do with the Islamic faith.

Although most Muslim women in Egypt wear the Islamic headscarf, increasing numbers are adopting the niqab as well. The practice is widely associated with more radical trends of Islam.

The niqab question reportedly arose when Sheikh Tantawi was visiting a girls' school in Cairo at the weekend and asked one of the students to remove her niqab. The Egyptian newspaper al-Masri al-Yom quoted him expressing surprise at the girl's attire and telling her it was merely a tradition, with no connection to religion or the Koran.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/8290606.stm

Published: 2009/10/05 13:07:55 GMT

© BBC MMIX

Dictatorship Begins at Home

Harsh patriarchal rule in the home teaches deference and acceptance of subservience which begets harsh authoritarian rule in the nation.

Mohammad Rafi: The charming night has set

Suhaani raat dhal chuki
Na jaane tum kab aaoge

The charming night has set
Who knows when you will arrive?

Jahan ki rut badal chuki
Na jaane tum kab aaoge

Life’s direction has been stirred/moved
Who knows when you will arrive?

Nazaarein apni mastiyaan dikha dikhaake so gaye
Sitaarein apni roshni luta lutaake so gaye

The beauty surrounding me even sleeps after showing/alluring its trance
The stars have robbed and been robbed of their twilight and even gone to sleep

Har ek shamma jal chuki
Na jaane tum kab aaoge

Every light has been dimmed
Who knows when you will arrive?

Suhaani raat dhal chuki
Na jaane tum kab aaoge

The mesmarising night has set
Who knows when you will arrive?

Tadap rahe hai hum yahan
Tadap rahe hai hum yahan tumhaare intezaar mein

I am Yearning/pining/longing/ here
I am Yearning/pining/longing/ here – in this endless wait for you

Tumhaare intezaar mein
In this endless wait for you

Fiza ka rang aa chala hai
The wind/air full of romance is taking color

Mausam-e-bahaar mein
Mausam-e-bahaar mein
In the springful/prosperous weather

Hawa bhi rukh badal chuki
And now the wind has turned its direction

Na jaane tum kab aaoge
Who knows when you will arrive?

Suhaani raat dhal chuki
Na jaane tum kab aaoge

The charming night has set
Who knows when you will arrive?

Meda Ishq Vi Tu – You are also my Love

Celebrating Eid away from home (Scotland) was not easy for me but I was pleasantly surprised to have the good fortune of spending it with two new colleagues and friends and their families, Professor Naeem Inayatullah and Professor Asma Barlas who are both in the Politics Department at Ithaca College.

During our wonderful conversations the topic of music and ghazals came up. It was at this point that Naeem introduced me to Pathanay Khan’s ‘Meda Ishq Vi Tu’ – I had heard parts of Ghulam Farid’s Kafi (more on Ghulam Farid: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khwaja_Ghulam_Farid) with the ‘Radeef’ (refrain) on ‘Vi Tu’ – ‘are also you’, in the songs of Attaullah Khan EesaKhailvi. I also remember that I was once abruptly told to put off this song playing in my car because it was ‘idolatry’. The memory of that moment came flooding back after I heard Pathanay Khan’s beautiful rendition of this Kafi which has pushed me to re-examine this piece in light of my thoughts today. Is this really idolatry? Or is this truly about the Beloved (God)? So here is the Kafi and my simple commentary. I am also grateful to Saba who focused my attention to these ‘youtube’ clips without knowing that I was already thinking about this Kafi. I am taking some of the translations that I found on the web and adding my own translation. Leaving you all to ponder and reflect upon the words…

‘These knots, knots…my beloved, these knots by the hundreds

The material world, the difficulties, the pain, the splendor, oh how they have taken over my eyes and ended me in difficulty…knots…these knots

These eyes weep, they weep, complain, turmoil, recalling the troubles that emerge from you, these knots are attained, over and over again

Oh friend, Farid, they are surely blessed who are attached to the beloved’

Even though God ‘bestows’ knots, difficulties in the body and eyes of the believer there still remains a passion of attaching/associating oneself to the Beloved (God).

Translated by Asif J Naqshbandi
You Are My Ardour
You are my ardour, my friend, faith, creed.
You are my body, you are my spirit, heart, soul.
You’re the direction towards which I pray.
You are my Mecca, my mosque, my pulpit.
You are my holy books and my Koran.
You are my religious obligations,
My Hajj, charity, fasting, call to prayer.
You are my asceticism, worship,
My obedience and my piety.
You are my knowledge and you’re my gnosis .
You’re my remembrance, my contemplation
You are my tasting and my ecstasy.
You are my love, my sweet, my darling, my honey
You are my favorite, and my soulmate!
You’re my spiritual preceptor, my guide ,
You are my Shaykh and my Enlightened One
You are my hope, my wish, my gains, losses.
You’re all I see, my pride, my deliverance.
You’re my faith, my honour, modesty, glory
You’re my pain, sorrow, my crying, playing
You are my illness and my remedy.
You are what lulls me to a peaceful sleep.
You are my beauty and my fate, fortune, fame.
You are my looking, enquiring, seeking
You are my understanding, my knowing
You are my henna, my collyrium,
My rouge, my tobacco, my betel-leaf!
You are my terror, my passion, madness
You’re my crying and my lamentation.
You are my Alpha and my Omega,
My Inner, Outer, Hidden, Manifest.
If, O’Belovéd, you accept Farid
You are my Sovereign and my Sultan.

Who is the ‘you’? What does this ‘you’ really mean to us? If God is love then the entire material world, ritualized life must be imbued in that love which pushes us to consider how can such a passionate world view be physically manifested? Is this a wrong view of spirituality? Love can never be idolatry – love is always God.

The happy Muslims who confuse you By Mona Eltahawy, August 25, 2009

When Can You Say That a Person is No Longer a Muslim?: Q&A with Professor Abdullahi An-Naim

How To Improve the Qualities of the Ulamas So the Real Values of Islam Are Taught: Q&A with Professor Abdullahi An-Naim

Why I Need a Secular State: Abdullahi An-Naim

Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan defends his views

www.latimes.com
By Henry Chu
September 22, 2009
Reporting from London

Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan defends his views
The Swiss-born thinker, who was denied a visa to teach in the U.S., says he is a reformist interested in a 'post-integration discourse' to explore the ways Muslims in the West can contribute.

Liberal Muslim or closet fundamentalist? Peaceful intellectual or militant in sheep's clothing?

Tariq Ramadan has been called all these things -- and more -- by his friends and foes. Whatever the truth, the Swiss-born Oxford University professor ranks among the most influential thinkers in the Muslim world.

The grandson of the man who founded the radical Muslim Brotherhood, Ramadan drew attention in the United States in 2004 when he was denied a visa to take up a post at the University of Notre Dame because he had given money to a Swiss-based charity that the U.S. later alleged had linked to the militant group Hamas. (In July, a federal appeals court ordered that Ramadan's case be revisited.)

Another controversy erupted last month when Ramadan was fired as an integration advisor to the Dutch city of Rotterdam, which said that his hosting of a show on an Iranian state television network could be seen as an endorsement of the Tehran government. Ramadan calls his dismissal a politically motivated decision to appease Rotterdam's anti-Muslim populist party.

Ramadan, 47, recently gave an interview in London, where he lives with his wife and their four children. His comments have been edited for conciseness and clarity.

Doesn't it bother you to work for and appear on a television station run by the Iranian government, which many see as a propaganda tool of a repressive regime?

I took three months to decide to be involved in this, three months where I talked to people who are not all supportive of the government. Quite the opposite: people who were jailed in Iran, people who are against [the government]. They told me, "Look, if they are giving you this window for you to come with your ideas, to spread around your interpretations, do it" . . .

I'm not at all someone . . . who is through this program supporting the regime. I am a free intellectual and free mind. What I want people to see and to assess is the program itself, to watch the program. You will see with the program I am inviting . . . rabbis, priests, women with head scarf, without head scarf, and having an open discussion.

Can you and have you criticized the Iranian government on this program?

It's not a political program. The program is a philosophical, religious program on [Koranic] interpretations and contemporary issues dealing with religion and philosophy.

You've been called a liberal Muslim reformist and an Islamist in sheep's clothing, with ties to extremist and militant thinkers and groups. How do you describe yourself?

I am a reformist Muslim; I am a reformist scholar. . . . I take the Koran seriously. For me, these are texts that are Islamic reference.

But I'm also facing the contemporary world, so it's a dialectical process between being faithful to universal principles and to take history and context into account.

Critics say that you have made equivocal statements on women's rights, failed to condemn stoning as a punishment, described homosexuality as deviant and referred to the Sept. 11 attacks and the Madrid attacks as an "intervention." How do you respond?

My position on homosexuality is quite clear. . . . Islam, as Christianity, as Judaism, as even the Dalai Lama . . . [are] not accepting of homosexuality, saying that this is forbidden according to the principles of our religion. . . . My position, with homosexuals, is to say, "We don't agree with what you are doing, but we respect who you are," which I think is the only true liberal position that you can have. . . .

My position on the death penalty, stoning and corporal punishment is once again quite clear. There are texts in the Koran and in the prophetic tradition referring to this. But I have three questions to ask Muslim scholars around the world: What do the texts say, what are the conditions to implement [the punishment], and in which context? As long as you don't come with a clear answer to this, it's un-implementable, because what we are doing now is betraying Islam by targeting poor people and women. . . .

You have been accused of saying one thing for Western, liberal, non-Muslim audiences and another thing -- more dogmatic, conservative and possibly extremist -- for Muslim ears. Is your message the same to both communities?

If this was the case, would I be banned on both sides, in the United States but also Saudi Arabia?

So what is your message?

My message [has] different levels and different dimensions. . . .

In the West, I am talking about "post-integration discourse." Integration is over. We are American, we are Canadian, we are European. And we are Muslims. The point for us now is not to integrate; it's to contribute. What we want for our fellow citizens is to integrate us in their minds, to integrate the fact that Muslims are their fellow equal citizens, which is not [yet] the case. We are still "the others.". . .

In Muslim-majority countries, [my message] is really to promote . . . emancipation and liberation [from] anything that has to do with dictatorship, and to promote the five main principles that for me are indisputable: rule of law, equal citizenship, universal suffrage, accountability and separation of powers. . . .

How would you see a Muslim democratic state as different from a Western secular democratic state? What would it look like?

I don't know, because I don't have a model. For me, talking about an Islamic state in the [abstract] doesn't mean anything. What I want for every single society is to respect these five principles. . . . I am sure that the Egyptian model will be different from the Iraqi model, and the Iraqi model will be different from the Saudi model.

Do you feel there is more mistrust of the West by Muslim-majority countries, or more mistrust of Muslims by Western countries?

I think it's exactly the same. . . .

[For] Western Muslims, as well as Muslims in Muslim-majority countries, the perception is that the West has an agenda, which is to dominate us. There is nurturing, sometimes, [of] a victim mentality. On the other side, we have also a victim mentality in the West: "Look at these people. Silent colonization. They come; they are taking our homes, our jobs." . . .

We live in a world of globalized victimization. I'm saying to the Muslims, "Stop with the victim mentality. Yes, you are facing discrimination, but stop with the victim mentality, [which] is nurturing this sense of alienation." And to the West, it's also saying, "Look, to come to a better understanding, it's a question of mutual education and mutual respect."

henry.chu@latimes.com

Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times

Young Muslims use punk to loosen their religion

Chicago Sun-Times, USA
September 20, 2009
BY KATE SHELLNUTT

The notion of Muslims playing punk rock may seem like incongruous cultures -- profanity-laden lyrics following the religion's traditional greeting ("Salaam aleikum"), melodic Middle Eastern strumming punctuates noisy guitar feedback, purple and red mohawks and Arabic-scripted tattoos. But for the second-generation Americans leading this contemporary cultural movement, Muslim punk isn't just an irreverent juxtaposition.

"It makes sense," said 23-year-old Marwan Kamel, a Syrian-American and the lead guitarist for Al-Thawra, an experimental punk band whose name is Arabic for revolution. "You've got this pull from both sides when you're one of the first kids in your family to grow up in America. That's the thing that's so punk about it, 'cause that's what it's all about -- feeling f---ing different."
Taqwacore

Al-Thawra and a handful of other bands build communities online and tour across the country under the banner of taqwacore -- a term that fuses the words hard-core and taqwa, Arabic for piety.

The taqwacore scene spans the religious spectrum -- Muslims, mystics and atheists -- all sharing a real, first-person understanding of the effect religion has on their world. After all, these guys were in high school at the time of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Having faced discrimination and the struggles of dual identity, they're now offering up a space for young Muslims to express themselves outside of Islam's traditional settings.

With a rebellious attitude and unabashed criticism of both East and West, Muslim punk highlights the breadth of Islamic practice and piety. For this colorful crew, donning patchwork jackets and taking slow drags from hookah pipes, religion is more personal than institutional or dogmatic.

For the most part, the bands drink and smoke, in excess, despite Islam's prohibition of both. When driving from coast to coast on tour, they're not stopping to break out prayer mats for the obligatory five-times-a-day salat.

But just because they aren't practicing Islam in the traditional way doesn't mean they don't still consider themselves religious Muslims.

"It's infinitely more pious to be true to your heart, because that's where religion really lives," said Kamel, who grew up in the Chicago area, raised by a Muslim father and Catholic mother.

Last week, a few taqwacore bands performed in a space not even tall enough for the musicians' mohawks -- a barely 6-foot-high basement under Kamel's apartment on Chicago's West Side. His band played alongside the Kominas, touring taqwacore rockers from Boston.

The sweaty crowd chanted along with the religious references and politically charged lyrics, written slightly tongue in cheek -- but mostly with tongue stuck out. Their song titles have shock value. The opening act sang a song dubbed "I Pray Every Day Because I Don't Want to Die." The Kominas are best known for their catchy hit "Suicide Bomb the Gap."

"It's about the false dichotomy between East and West, talking about those gray zones," said Kamel. Thousands listen to Al-Thawra and the Kominas on their MySpace pages, with popular songs racking up nearly 10,000 plays thus far.

Muslim in-betweeners

While this generation's immigrant parents remain loyal to their home countries, and Muslims in their 30s and 40s having more fully assimilated into American culture, the taqwacore group finds themselves in between.

"The younger kids are more religious, but also more civic-minded," said Syed Ali, a sociology professor at Long Island University in Brooklyn, who researches second-generation Muslims. "They are very adamant about saying, 'I am a Muslim,' but also adamant about saying, 'I am an American, and I have these rights and no one's gonna screw with me.'"

From this contemporary Muslim-American experience comes their no-holds-barred criticism of both East and West. Band members say their music is a way to show fellow young Muslims that they don't have to limit themselves to conventional notions of religion.

"It's OK to approach Islam on your own terms," said Imran Malik, 25, the Kominas' drummer, wearing a cut-off black T-shirt with a picture of a spiky-haired Muslim kneeling for prayer.

Malik joined the band earlier this year after finishing medical school in Pakistan, where he also played for indie rock and punk groups. While there, the Princeton, N.J., native took the time to consider his own relationship with Islam and came to realize he was an atheist.

Many young Muslims like him connect with the cultural aspects of their religion but not the theological ones. Professor Ali at Long Island University said it's similar to secular Jews in the United States, people who connect to homeland and tradition and readily identify with the group but don't embrace its religious dogmas.

"I don't believe in God, but I see that religion has importance," said Malik. "It means different things for different people, and it's great that we can gather together under the term taqwacore."
Breaking it down

That word is taken from The Taqwacores, a novel about imaginary Muslim punk bands, written five years ago by Michael Muhammad Knight, an American convert to Islam. The countercultural-types that read Knight's fiction contacted him about the made-up scene and have since brought Muslim punk to life in concert venues, bars, hookah cafes and dimly lit basements, labeling themselves with the book's title (also the name of an independent feature film Knight is producing this year).

Real-life taqwacore spans musical styles and levels of religious dimension, band members say.

"I don't know if it's all that Muslim or if it's all that hard-core," said Kamel, whose own upbringing in Islam was more based in family tradition than teachings from a mosque. "Taqwacore is more about earnestness in music and earnestness in religion. Different people are in different places in terms of those things."

At a recent taqwacore show in Chicago, Kamel and Malik sat in a circle with a dozen or so other performers, fans and friends on the dirty floor littered with empty beer cans, clapping along to the loud chords of an electric guitar.

Omar Waqar, a Washington D.C.-based artist performing on tour with the Kominas, belted out a song about the partition of India, its lyrics scrawled in a black composition notebook set next to the stage.

Waqar cites his Sufi mysticism as inspiration, referring to one song as "qawwali," a type of devotional music from Pakistan and northern India. The crowd, most in their mid-20s, chants along, "They call it partition, it's more like separation!" singing out against a political event that took place decades before any of them were even born.

In America, Islam skews young, with a greater proportion of adherents under 30 than any other major religious group, according to the Pew Forum for Religion and Public Life. These Muslims in their 20s are twice as likely to report instances of discrimination than older ones, but they're also more likely to find support and solidarity from non-Muslim peers, according to the 2007 report.

Taqwacore shows draw audiences beyond the Arab-American and South Asian-American demographics. White kids and black kids who identify with or at least appreciate the Muslim punk message -- openly expressing views on religion, politics and the second-generation experience through music -- happily head-bang in the front row alongside a twirling belly dancer dressed in traditional jewelry.

"It's about being with a bunch of like-minded individuals," Malik said, noting, "We have the same questions, the same conflicts about identity."

Mainstream Muslims seem to more readily embrace hip-hop fusion (as seen in the PBS documentary "New Muslim Cool") while remaining hesitant about the rebellious punk scene. A few years ago, the Islamic Society of North America called police when taqwacore bands played at their national convention in Rosemont, the largest annual gathering of Muslims in the country.

At the ISNA show, girls in colorful hijabs cheered and rocked along with the music, evidence that many young people -- even more traditionally pious-types -- see a place for the punk genre in the Muslim-American community.

Ahlam Said, a 23-year-old activist, remembers watching the punk bands get kicked off the stage at the ISNA conference. At the time, she was involved with the Muslim Students Association at DePaul University in Chicago, where she attended school with Al-Thawra frontman Marwan Kamel.

"Just from the little instances I had with him, he was somebody who really was able to connect the dots around these issues and build solidarity around it, which I think is really important across the line," said Said, who now works for the Inner-City Muslim Action Network, a community outreach organization in Chicago.
Perspective

The young Muslim musicians involved in taqwacore have developed a new medium out of remnants of history -- cultural bits of their parents' homelands, Islam in its American form and the legacy of punk rock, a genre that began back in the '70s.

As they tell their stories and mock the stereotypes that mark their upbringing, they push the edges of the traditional box America's estimated 1.4 million Muslims typically find themselves in. And that's what makes it worthwhile, they say.

Aiming to open minds to new approaches to Islam, Malik, a doctor-to-be but a drummer-for-now, said candidly and absolutely: "This is the most important thing that I can be doing with my life right now."

Kate Shellnutt is a Carnegie-Knight fellow and the religion reporter for Northwestern University's News21 (northwestern.news21.com).

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