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.

Michael Lame, posted June 5, 2009

I wrote in Part I that Obama should not present himself as an expert on Islamic history. Here’s an example of why not. In Cairo he said that “Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance. We see it in the history of Andalusia and Cordoba during the Inquisition.” This gratuitous swipe at Christianity, perhaps designed to show Islam’s moral superiority in the Golden Age, should have been fact-checked by the presidential speechwriters. Cordoba was captured from the Muslims in 1236 during the Spanish Reconquista. The Spanish Inquisition was instituted by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1478. You do the math.

Obama should be lauded for making several points strongly and clearly: condemning Holocaust-denial; unequivocally naming al Qaeda as the culprit in the 9/11 attack; affirming that Iraq is better off without Saddam; stating that America’s bond with Israel is “unbreakable”; recognizing the Arab Peace Initiative as a beginning, not an end; declaring to Iran that “when it comes to nuclear weapons, we have reached a decisive point”; speaking out on behalf of women’s rights and freedom of religion.

While there was good news in the Cairo speech, yet as with so many of his prepared remarks, the President seems addicted to weighing and balancing every issue: “Having said that. . . On the other hand. . . At the same time. . . Likewise. . .” But foreign policy is not always a balancing act. We should not split the difference between friends and foes. Even-handedness only makes sense when we are truly neutral in our view of a controversy. But that is not the case for America regarding Israel and the Palestinians, Israel and Arab countries, or Iran and Arab countries.

Israel is a strategic ally of the United States, although Obama did not say so in Cairo. He said that “America’s strong bonds with Israel are well known. This bond is unbreakable.” He acknowledges the fact of the bond without defending it or advocating for it. “It is based upon cultural and historical ties,” he asserted, without pointing to the political and ideological ties, i.e., that both countries are vibrant democracies with a free press and a strong concern for civil liberties. This is not an inconsiderable omission. It’s the difference between a nostalgic bond based in the past and a fundamental one based in the values of the present.

Obama’s choice of words is rarely accidental. He is intentionally giving Israelis of the center and the right cause for concern. It appears that his primary interest in Israel at the moment is that it not obstruct the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside it. The difference from previous presidents, both Democrats and Republicans, is significant. It’s a difference of style, substance, and attitude. Sticks as well as carrots may be required to move Israel’s policy towards cutting a deal with the Palestinians, but Israelis need to feel that this President cares about them as he obviously cares about the Palestinians. In his speech, he drew an analogy between African-Americans and Palestinians as oppressed peoples fighting for their freedom. Many liberal as well as leftist blacks in this country see a kindred cause in the Palestinian struggle. But if Obama is to avoid the confrontational mode that the first President Bush and his Secretary of State got caught up in with Israel, then he needs to make clear that his policy towards Israel is more positive than simply pressuring it so that he can fulfill his large policy goal of rapprochement with Arabs and Muslims.

Obama appears to see Israel less as a valued partner and more as a potential obstacle. This is where the carrot-and-stick model breaks down. Context matters. If a President asks for big sacrifices from the Israelis, they are far more likely to make those sacrifices if they feel that the President stands with them and will not abandon them. Even then, there are limits to what Israelis are willing to give up. I doubt that they will give up their violent objection to a nuclear Iran, even if Obama does.

What does Obama ask of Israelis and of Palestinians? He asks them to fulfill their obligations under the Road Map. Then he asks the Palestinians to give up violence, which he calls a dead end. But the real dead end is the Road Map. Rolled out in 2003, it consists of an outdated set of steps imposed by the Quartet, which neither side – Israeli or Palestinian – has taken seriously, except to point a finger at the other side for not fulfilling its requirements. It called for “a final and comprehensive settlement of the Israel-Palestinian conflict by 2005.” Phase One of the Road Map required the Palestinian Authority to disarm militias at the same time that it required Israel to dismantle settlement outposts and to freeze all settlement activity “including natural growth of settlements.” Neither side has lived up to it. Neither side will. Why is anyone still talking about it?