RE-THINK THE MIDDLE EAST

by Michael Lame, posted on August 30, 2010

The Cordoba Initiative, the organization which first promoted the controversial Park51 project, works to “cultivate multi-cultural and multi-faith understanding” and “to strengthen the bridge between Islam and the West.” But how is Islam to be understood?

One of the conceptual fixtures of the modern world is the yoking together of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism as “The Three Great Monotheistic Religions.” In a global environment which prizes the search for unity, commonality and consensus above all other values, this idea is an easy sell. Too bad it’s not true. Whatever the Big Three are, they are not three of a kind. Managing 21^st century international relations would be so much simpler if being a Muslim meant the same sort of thing as being a Christian which meant the same sort of thing as being a Jew. But they are not the same sort of thing, and the assumption that they are makes us stupid.

Based largely on the national experience of Protestantism and Catholicism, it is assumed that Americans know what a religion is. Islam, pigeon-holed as another religion, must be analogous to Christianity. On the other hand, Islam is more similar to Judaism in that it traditionally encompasses an entire way of life: religious tenets, dietary rules, ethical principles, familial requirements, communal activities, community loyalty, political traditions, cultural values, and more. Islam certainly includes religious beliefs and practices but is far broader than what Americans think of as religion.

A good example of the perpetuation of this misconception of Islam as only a religion is found in a recent piece by Jocelyne Cesari, a French political scientist and currently director of the Islam in the West program at Harvard. She asks what she considers to be a provocative question: “Why is Islam no longer considered a religion?” A more useful question might be: “Is Islam best understood as a religion, in the same way that we understand Christianity as a religion?”

By reducing Islam to a religion we limit how we look at it and how we conduct public discourse about it. To call it a political ideology is likewise misleading. But in America, where most people believe in the separation of religion from politics, a thing must be one or the other. So which is it? Is Islam a religion or a political system? One only has to look back to the earliest days of Islam to see that Muhammad served as a prayer leader, a religious teacher, a moral exemplar, a general, a lawgiver, a community organizer, and a political decision-maker – all rolled into one. Islam was a unified whole, not just religion, not just politics, not just a moral system.

Much of the current debate about the proposed new Islamic center and mosque in lower Manhattan is misguided precisely because pundits and politicians categorize Islam as a religion. Then they weigh in on issues of religious freedom, which are largely irrelevant to the question of whether placing the building at 51 Park Place is a good idea or not. The constitutional right to build a mosque on that site is not in dispute.

Thomas Jefferson, the father of American religious freedom, wrote that “Religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God.” But this description certainly does not fit either Islam or Judaism, both of which heavily emphasize the temporal and communal as well as the transcendental dimensions of life. Despite the shortcomings inherent in his vision of religion, Jefferson’s view has come to be America’s view.

The overt distinction between religion and politics in American life, already referred to, also owes something to Jefferson. Most Americans are still comfortable with the Jeffersonian interpretation of the First Amendment as “building a wall of separation between Church and State.” This particular idea has a pedigree stretching back to the New Testament. “Render under Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God that which is God’s” represents a uniquely Christian perspective on the distinction between the spiritual and material realms.

One cannot just as simply take Jefferson’s “wall of separation between Church and State” and substitute “Mosque” for “Church”. Drawing such a line was anathema to the integrated, all-inclusive Islam as originally conceived and as practiced for centuries. For some Muslims today, the re-integration of the religious and political dimensions of Islam is a goal to be desired and worked towards. Other Muslims wish to move in the opposite direction, towards a further separation of these two realms, in keeping with a more western-style approach to governance and religious belief.

While it makes sense that many American-born or American-educated Muslims adhere to the church-state separation principle and wish to apply it to the Islam they profess, such a distinction rings false to millions of Muslims living in Muslim-majority countries from Morocco to Indonesia. In many of these countries the state supports mosques, pays the salaries of imams, and applies at least some aspects of sharia law. Several of these countries call themselves Islamic republics; several others have declared Islam to be the official state religion. All of them are members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Religion and politics are interwoven in these countries in a way that is unfamiliar to Americans and difficult for us to understand, let alone consider as a legitimate alternative model for a modern society.

The nature of Islam, its similarities and differences from Christianity and Judaism, its compatibility with an American tradition of distinct roles for religion and politics – these are questions that need to be asked, whether the questioner is accused of “Islamophobia”, a failure to appreciate the First Amendment, or any other charge designed to silence criticism and stifle debate.

To ask these questions specifically of Islam does not exclude the possibility of asking similar questions of Christianity and Judaism. Yet there is a difference. The United States was founded by Protestant Christians for Protestant Christians. Catholics were only begrudgingly included in the experiment. Jews were an afterthought. Muslims were not part of the equation at all. Two hundred years later, and with a national Muslim-American presence only emerging in recent decades, Islam is still the new kid on the block.

There is another difference, and that is the not irrational fear of domestic lethal terrorist acts committed by Muslims. Certainly Jews and Christians are capable of committing atrocities in the name of their faith or their community. Baruch Goldstein, an Israeli religious Jew originally from New York, murdered twenty-nine Muslims and wounded dozens more while they were praying in a Hebron mosque. The massacre occurred on the Jewish holiday of Purim, which also fell during Ramadan in that year of 1994. Judaism did not launch that attack, but a Jew did, and he did so as a Jew.

The atrocity that directly affects America and Americans is 9/11. Islam did not launch that attack, but Muslims did – not all Muslims or most Muslims, but at least nineteen Muslims planned and executed a deadly attack against civilians on U.S. soil. Their faith was strong enough that they were willing to blow themselves up, to become martyrs as they saw it. They didn’t just happen to be Muslims anymore than Baruch Goldstein just happened to be a Jew.

Whether we are Muslims, Christians, Jews, or none-of-the-above, as we re-think Islam and its role in the United States, we need to be willing to ask tough questions and to critically evaluate the answers we receive. Some offer answers designed to vilify and condemn all of Islam and all Muslims. Others give answers intended to exonerate Islam of all responsibility for deadly violence and to deny that real Muslims could possibly perpetrate 9/11 or other such acts. Both these sets of answers should be rejected as inaccurate and inadequate.

A new Islamic center in New York City, wherever it is finally built, could serve a useful purpose by providing a forum for honest discussion of these issues. If, however, its founders have already decided to represent Islam’s best face as its only face, then the effort is misguided and America will be the poorer for it.

Note: Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.

by Michael Lame, posted on August 16, 2010

Most of the editorial comments, pro and con, regarding the proposed new mosque complex for lower Manhattan, are concerned with Who and Where: the people behind the mosque and its proximity to Ground Zero. My purpose in these articles is not to support or oppose the project but to examine a different set of questions, What and How: What are the assumptions and premises of the project promoters? How do they intend to build interfaith bridges to Christian and Jewish communities?

The first article examined the ideas of the group led by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf regarding jihad and the supposed hijacking of Islam by violent extremists. Presumably these ideas will help shape the new Islamic center’s outreach to Christians and Jews.

Another key to understanding Imam Rauf’s thinking is his use of the name Cordoba. His non-profit group is called the Cordoba Initiative and, until very recently, the mosque project was called Cordoba House. In order to emphasize “the community center aspect of the project rather than religion,” that name has now been changed to Park51, a more hip, New York style name that offers no associations to another place and time (except perhaps to Studio 54, which I’m sure is unintentional). Cordoba House, by contrast, summons up a host of images and historical references for those familiar with Islamic, Spanish, or medieval history and culture.

The Cordoba Initiative’s website offers this explanation of the Cordoba connection:

“Despite what many think, Islam and the West have a long history of coexistence and harmony. For nearly 800 years, the city of Cordoba in Spain endured as a shining example of tolerance among the three monotheistic religions. Muslim, Christian and Jew cohabited in prosperity during a period known for its outstanding literary and scientific productivity.”

From this blurb it sounds as if medieval Cordoba was an idyllic oasis of brotherly and sisterly love, the sort of world we should all aspire to re-establish. Many writers have waxed rhapsodic about a golden age of peace and prosperity in Muslim Spain. But is that really what it was like? “Nostalgia is the enemy of historical understanding” warns historian Richard Fletcher, author of Moorish Spain. “The simple and verifiable historical truth is that Moorish Spain was more often a land of turmoil than it was a land of tranquility.”

The 800 years referred to by the Cordoba Initiative constitutes the entire era of Muslim rule in Spain, stretching from 711 to 1492. Yet Cordoba itself, the cultural and for long periods of time the political capital of al-Andalus, succumbed to Christian conquest (or reconquest) in 1236.

Imam Rauf’s book, What’s Right with Islam: a new vision for Muslims and the West, narrows the pertinent time frame, explaining that the Cordoba Initiative is “named after the period between roughly 800 and 1200 CE, when the Cordoba Caliphate ruled much of today’s Spain.” This formulation is also problematic. To be a bit more precise regarding chronology and terminology, the Umayyad emirate of Cordoba, established in 756, was proclaimed a caliphate in 929. Barely a century later, in 1031, the last Umayyad caliph abdicated, after which Cordoba ceased playing the central role in Spain’s political and intellectual life.

Yale professor Maria Rosa Menocal, in The Ornament of the World: how Muslims, Jews, and Christians created a culture of tolerance in medieval Spain, further whittled down the time period in question regarding Cordoba’s heyday: “From about the mid-eighth century until about the year 1000 this was an Islamic polity, centered in Cordoba, which at its height, in the mid-tenth century, declared itself the center of the Islamic world.”

Though any identifiable Cordovan era of good feelings lasted closer to 250 years than to the 400 or 800 years posited by Rauf, those two and a half centuries also contained episodes of intolerance and bouts of anarchy. Still, for Rauf, the name Cordoba “reminds us that Muslims created what was, in its era, the most enlightened, pluralistic and tolerant society on earth.” That is a big, bold, though commonplace assertion. The idea of an Andalusian golden age, when Christians and Jews lived contentedly under Muslim rule, has become a fixture of Western historical thinking over the last hundred years. But is it true?

Professor Fletcher weighs in on the question: “Early medieval Spain was multicultural in the sense of being culturally diverse, a land within which different cultures coexisted; but not in the sense of experiencing cultural integration. Toleration for Christians and Jews as ‘Peoples of the Book’ is enjoined by the Koran. But in practice it was limited – Christians under Islamic rule were forbidden to build new churches, to ring church bells, to hold public processions – and sometimes it broke down altogether. In 1066 there was a pogrom in Granada in which its Jewish community was slaughtered. Thousands of Christians were deported to slavery in Morocco in 1126. Thoroughly dismissive attitudes to Christians and Jews may be found in the Arabic literature of al-Andalus. It is a myth of the modern liberal imagination that medieval Islamic Spain was, in any sense that we should recognize today, a tolerant society.”

Regardless of historical accuracy, the very name of Cordoba exerts a powerful appeal for many who long for a multi-religious, harmonious pathway to the future. As Rauf writes, “We strive for a ‘New Cordoba,’ a time when Jews, Christians, Muslims, and all other faith traditions will live together in peace.”

In considering the “Old Cordoba”, however, one should not forget that Cordovan tolerance was predicated on Islamic rule. Jews and Christians, once they accepted their status as dhimmi, protected albeit subservient peoples, could participate in the intellectual, artistic, and economic life of the broader community. But one fact was clear throughout medieval Spain, that a single faith was dominant – Islam in the south and Christianity in the north – and the other religious communities were allowed to remain at the pleasure, or rather the sufferance, of the dominant religious-political power.

Sufferance as the basis for a multi-religious society is not a model that will appeal to 21^st century Christians, Muslims, or Jews. For that reason alone, Cordoba is a questionable symbol of inter-faith co-existence. A better model might be … New York City! Predominantly Christian, with sizeable Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu minorities, a Jewish mayor and a Catholic state governor, NYC is a place where religious freedom is guaranteed by law, with constitutional protections to prevent arbitrary revocation of that freedom. Whether the designated location for the Park51 mosque is a good idea or not, whether its current backers are the right people to build it or not, no one is questioning the legal right of Muslims to build mosques in America and to practice Islam openly.

As we have seen, the suggestion of Cordoba as a relevant religious-diversity prototype for New York City raises questions of historical accuracy and acceptable majority-minority relations. In looking for examplars, we might do better to reverse the geographic direction of the search by asking: Does New York’s multi-faith freedom of expression offer a good role-model for the cities of the Middle East?

Note: Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.

by Michael Lame, posted on August 10, 2010

The Cordoba Initiative, the leading sponsor of the mosque complex slated to be built near the site of the Twin Towers, seeks to improve Muslim-Western relations through interfaith dialogue and outreach. Its founder and chairman, Feisal Abdul Rauf, has served for many years as the imam of a Manhattan mosque and has actively fostered Christian-Jewish-Muslim communication. He writes and speaks extensively on behalf of what is known in the West as moderate Islam. Characteristics of that approach are evident in this paragraph from the Cordoba Initiative’s website about one critical Islamic concept:

“In the post-9/11 environment, some Americans tend to think of Islam as a violent creed and of those who practice jihad as terrorists by definition. Jihad, however, is a large and complicated concept, whose meaning actually boils down to the need for peaceful struggle for self-betterment – the war that we wage against the vices within ourselves – a central injunction to all Muslims. That Americans associate Islam with violence is, of course, entirely the fault of the extremists who perpetrate crimes under a false Islamic guise.”

Like any other advocacy group, the Cordoba Initiative is not eager to post inconvenient truths on its website. Instead, it will present those parts of the truth that forward its mission, while denying or ignoring the rest. The group’s definition of jihad as essentially a “peaceful struggle for self-betterment” no doubt is designed to reassure a non-Muslim American audience well disposed to the idea of personal improvement, but that definition certainly doesn’t tell the whole truth. For a fuller picture and another perspective, read the following from Rudolph Peters’ book, Jihad in Classical and Modern Islam:

“The Arabic word jihad…means to strive, to exert oneself, to struggle. The word has a basic connotation of an endeavour towards a praiseworthy aim. In a religious context it may express a struggle against one’s evil inclinations or an exertion for the sake of Islam and the umma…In the books on Islamic law, the word means armed struggle against the unbelievers, which is also a common meaning in the Koran. Sometimes the “jihad of the sword” is called “the smaller jihad,” in opposition to the peaceful forms named “the greater jihad.” The origin of the concept of jihad goes back to the wars fought by the Prophet Mohammed and their written reflection in the Koran…It is not clear whether the Koran allows Muslims to fight the unbelievers only as a defense against aggression or under all circumstances.”

Other books and treatises offer additional interpretations of this key Islamic concept of jihad, which is sometimes referred to as the sixth pillar of the faith. The point here is not whether Peters or Rauf got it right, but that serious students of Islam see jihad quite differently, and these differences are reflected in the views of millions of Muslims around the world.

According to the storyline developed by Rauf and other moderate Muslims over the last decade, radicals such as al-Qaeda have “hijacked” Islam, which is a religion of peace. The terrorists who bombed various cities around the world during that time period are political revolutionaries or reactionaries who happen to be Muslims. They do not represent Islam and their actions cannot be attributed to Islam since terrorism is un-Islamic.

On the other hand, if you read the statements released by Osama bin Laden and Aymin al-Zawahiri as well as the notes found after the bombings, you will see that Islamic beliefs lay at the heart of the 9/11 bombers’ murder-suicide operation. Neither the bombers nor the men who sent them just happened to be Muslims. That moderate Muslims would say otherwise, claiming that al-Qaeda adherents perpetrated their “crimes under a false Islamic guise,” is understandable, but unpersuasive.

While one might prefer Rauf’s descriptions of jihad and Islam to be correct, they are only partial pictures. And therein lies the danger. Most Americans, Europeans, and Asians, most Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and atheists do not understand Islam, yet it is increasingly important that they do. So which of the many Islams should they get to know? The moderate and peace-loving Islam of Rauf? The spiritual and quietist Islam of the Sufis? The austere Islam of the Wahhabis? The various strains of Shi’ite Islam – the Fivers, the Seveners, or the Twelvers? The national liberation Islam of Hamas? The terror-promoting militant Islam of al-Qaeda?

There is no single Islam. No one on the planet – no matter how devout or how steeped in Islamic literature, history, tradition and practice – can speak for Islam. Muslims never had a pope; the caliphate was abolished decades ago. In its stead, there exist multiple Islams with numerous spokespersons, all competing with one another.

Islam has not been hijacked. The spread of Islam by any means necessary has been advocated by some Muslims since the 7^th century, while others have espoused a live-and-let-live approach towards non-Muslims. One can cite chapter and verse from the Quran to back either position. The commonly quoted “There is no compulsion in religion” (Quran 2:256) can be set against “Slay the idolaters wherever you find them” (Quran 9:5). True, these quotes are taken out of context, but that is how scriptures are always quoted – out of context. Periodically, throughout Muslim history, reformers and fundamentalists have stepped forward to rescue or revive Islam, either by modernizing or by purifying it. Imam Rauf would have more credibility with American skeptics if he did not speak as if there is only one true Islam (the one he espouses) and that more extreme versions of Islam are false.

Building a massive 15-storey Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero is already highly controversial. If the project comes to fruition, it will continue to attract attention. What sort of speakers, one wonders, will be featured in its 500-seat auditorium? Will only moderate, peace-and-tolerance-promoting, Jew-and-Christian-loving Muslims be allowed to appear? And if so, will that moderate view become the face of the faith that New Yorkers accept as the real and true Islam? Or, on the contrary, will a series of moderates-only speakers present such a continuous contradiction to what people hear, read and see everyday that the entire enterprise will be discredited as a whitewash of aspects of Islam which are less-than-friendly to non-Muslims?

Once we get past the “we all love Abraham” meet-and-greet, Christians, Jews, and Muslims would be well served, as they engage in real interfaith dialogue, to remember the traditional Anglo-American court room oath required of each person who offers testimony: “Tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help you God.”

Note: Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.

by Michael Lame, posted on August 3, 2010

In the Rose Garden last week, President Obama asserted that “if we’ve learned anything from the tragedy in the Gulf, it’s that our current energy policy is unsustainable.” Perhaps he meant energy practices rather than energy policy, since an energy policy would presumably be government policy which means the policy of his own administration. Obama’s Secretary of the Interior has slapped a six-month moratorium on deep-water drilling in the Gulf in order to prevent more BP-style disasters, so the “current energy policy” the president criticized is clearly not his energy policy. But whatever he was referring to, what exactly is unsustainable about it?

Oil, gas, and coal will continue to be produced and consumed for decades to come. Perhaps the global reliance on fossil fuels is not sustainable for another 50 years but only for half that. In political terms, however, even 25 years is an eternity. Given how much attention the BP spill has attracted, improved industry safety practices as well as increased government regulation will likely result in diminished risk of a Deepwater Horizon-type disaster in the future. The near-term future, then, will no doubt include more deepwater oil drilling with increased safety measures.

So why would the President call something unsustainable which probably is sustainable for a long time to come? Because “unsustainable”, as a judgment on the status quo, has become the new universal watchword among change-advocates. Why must we make a change? Because the current condition, situation, policy, or system is unsustainable. It’s a more powerful word than untenable because it conveys a sense of urgency. Time is running out. We must act now!

The term “unsustainable” has also recently surfaced in Obama administration references to the Israeli blockade of Gaza. On the day after the flotilla incident, Secretary of State Clinton proclaimed that “The situation in Gaza is unsustainable and unacceptable.” Since then, the Israeli government has announced a lifting of its restrictions on the entry into Gaza of many foodstuffs and consumer products, but the ban on other imports as well as all exports remains in place, as does a set of severe travel restrictions. The blockade has not ended.

Middle East scholar and Palestine-watcher Nathan Brown of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace recently quipped that the typical language of EU documents states that “the situation in Gaza continues to be unsustainable.” He concluded that it’s possible for an “unsustainable” program or policy to be “sustained at this unsustainable level for a long time to come.”

That even the unsustainable is sustainable should come as no surprise. Human beings, after all, have an enormous capacity to adapt, even to horrific circumstances. Tyranny, oppression, malnutrition, poverty are but a few examples of the ills we bear indefinitely as a species. Through human ingenuity and perversity, that which, morally speaking, should not continue even one more day can be made to continue ad nauseum, if not ad infinitum.

If we continue to promote that which is unsustainable, then we are clearly on the wrong road going the wrong way. According to the views of most clerics and politicians, with intellectual underpinnings provided by theologians and ideologues, there is a right road and a wrong road in life. If we choose correctly, life will be long; society will prosper; civilization will flourish. But if we choose incorrectly, woe unto us! The wrong road is characterized not only by unsustainable options but also by diminishing possibilities. “The window of opportunity for a two-state solution is rapidly closing,” we have been told for the last ten to twenty years. Some argue that the window has already slammed shut. Perhaps the closing window is a trope that should itself be finally closed and retired from future discussions of Middle East peace.

The linguistic flip side of unsustainability and the wrong road is that of inevitability and the right road. In the 1990s, Oslo promoters in Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Washington repeatedly and categorically stated that “the peace process is irreversible” and “the two-state solution is inevitable.” Neither prediction turned out to be the case, as demonstrated by the failed Arafat-Barak-Clinton negotiations at Camp David, followed shortly thereafter by the outbreak of the second intifada, the subsequent disappearance of the peace camp in Israel, and the redeployment of Israeli troops in Palestinian cities.

To call a condition “unsustainable” is to contend that it will (and must) break down. To call an outcome “inevitable” is to assert that it will (and must) occur. Both notions are presented as predictions of the future, but in political discourse often they are not really predictions based on weighing the evidence; they are projections. They project an image of the future that the speaker hopes for. The projection’s power may stem from a belief in the efficacy of affirmations: if one says it often enough and loud enough, it will become true. Sometimes matters are presented as inevitable or unsustainable not because the speaker is foolish but because he hopes to fool others. Or it may simply be a matter of wishful thinking: I want peace. Everyone wants peace. Therefore we will have peace. I want the blockade to end. All good people want it to end. Therefore it will end. But the world generally doesn’t work that way, and the Middle East definitely doesn’t.

So how does it work? Conspiracy theorists assume a conscious will behind every action on the international stage. If something bad happens, it must be because someone wants it to happen. There is a certain logic to such theories, but as historians like Barbara Tuchman have shown, wars can break out from mistakes, miscalculations, and misinformation, even when no one wants war. While that is generally true, it is particularly true in the armed-to-the-teeth, hair-trigger, security-minded Middle East. One act of disrespect, one misinterpreted troop movement, one leaked document can set in motion a chain of events leading to pulverized buildings and dismembered bodies. Capriciousness and happenstance cannot be overlooked as key factors in Middle East politics and warfare. They must be considered along with the more traditional strategic, demographic, and economic factors in composing plausible scenarios of potential futures.

While neither war nor peace between Jews and Arabs is inevitable, one is more likely to win a bet that calls for another round of blood-letting than for the achievement of comprehensive peace in our time. Given the odds, what is one to do?

Americans typically assume not only that problems have solutions but that the solutions will be found and implemented quickly. The idea of a catastrophic oil spill continuing to devastate the environment day after day for three months running has been an affront to the American can-do ethos. The fact that Syrian-Lebanese-Palestinian-Israeli peace has eluded president after president for several decades is sobering if not maddening.

In the search for Middle East solutions, too often a short-term fix has morphed into a long-term fixture. Deleterious conditions which should not be sustained have been allowed to continue and to sink deep roots. Who imagined that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians would still be living in refugee camps more than sixty years after the Nakba? Who thought that the occupation of the West Bank would last for more than 40 years? Who believed that the state of Israel, established in 1948, would still lack peaceful relations with most of its neighbors?

The more we assume that the Middle East’s future has already been determined, the less likely we are to take positive action to shape that future. Engagement is not required if the conclusion is foregone, while energy drains out of options that everyone “knows” will one day be implemented. The urgent question, then, is not whether an analysis is accurate, a condition unsustainable, or an outcome inevitable, but whether governments, organizations, and individuals will take timely action to alleviate human suffering and resolve the region’s conflicts.

The words people say and how they say them offer strong indications of what, if anything, people intend to do. By paying close attention to the language employed by the region’s players, we can begin to discern whether their words evoke an energetic bias for action which can make a genuine difference or rather reflect a bystander’s judgment of a pre-determined future.