Different Outlooks, Same Message: The Need for Interfaith in our Modern Globalized Society

Senior Kaitlyn Curran reflects on what a visit to the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C. has developed her approach to celebrating differences. 

                It is very difficult for me to pick one highlight from the Interfaith Fall Break trip to Washington D.C. because I found the trip as a whole to be powerful and thought-provoking. The service projects made me leave the “Davidson bubble” and face some of the problems members of our society struggle with each and every day, namely hunger and homelessness.  Although I am a religion major and contemplate the role of religion in various aspects of life, visiting the different houses of worship allowed me to meditate on the role and importance of Interfaith efforts within our globalized world.  That being said, the visit to the Islamic Center really hit home for me when Brother Abassi emphasized the need for tolerance among different World religions.

Brother Abassi began the visit by wishing us peace. What struck me was that he used the Jewish term, “Shalom” rather than the Arabic, “Salam.” He said that he greeted us like this as a way to show solidarity with the Jewish community who was celebrating Yom Kippur the day of our visit. He also said that there was really no difference between any of the major world religions because they all preach a total surrender to God.  I followed his train of thought as he traced the similarities between the three Abrahamic traditions but I found that his argument stretched a little thin when he incorporated an overly-simplistic version of Buddhism into his argument.  I was also a little frustrated when he simplified the schism between Shi’ite and Sunni Islam as being merely political and that the only major difference is the minor ritual movements Shi’ites perform as they pray. I kept thinking about what I was learning in my religion class on Shi’ism and how the oversimplification was kind of an insult to Shi’ites who have a rich and complex system of beliefs.

As much as I disagreed with some of the things our host was saying, I knew that his chief aim was to emphasize that Islam advocates tolerance and pluralism within the world. I sympathized with Brother Abassi when he told us that the media has not depicted Islam fairly in over a decade because of the horrible events of 9/11. I agree that the actions of one group should not determine the way an entire religion is perceived. I also support Brother Abassi’s fierce attempt to emphasize unity among religions rather than differences because it strengthens acceptance among different cultures.  Furthermore, I believe that once one sees the similarities with the “other,” celebrating the differences within religious traditions may be easier. I really enjoyed our visit with Brother Abassi because it made me really question what I believe what the term Interfaith means to me. Thanks to our conversation at the Islamic Center, I know that I define Interfaith and pluralism as not only recognizing the commonalities among religions but accepting and celebrating the differences.

Lessons on Truth and God

“Jalal-ud-Din Rumi used to tell a story about a far-distant country, somewhere to the north of Afghanistan. In this country there was a city inhabited entirely by the blind. One day the news came that an elephant was passing outside the walls of this city.

“The citizens called a meeting and decided to send a delegation of three men outside the gates so that they could report back what an elephant was. In due course, the three men left the town and stumbled forwards until they eventually found the elephant. The three reached out, felt the animal with their hands, then they all headed back to town as quickly as they could to report what they had felt.

“The first man said: ‘An elephant is a marvellous creature! It is like a vast snake, but it can stand vertically upright in the air!’ The second man was indignant at hearing this: ‘What nonsense!’ he said. ‘This man is misleading you. I felt the elephant and what it most resembles is a pillar. It is firm and solid and however hard you push against it you could never knock it over.’ The third man shook his head and said: ‘Both of these men are liars! I felt the elephant and it resembles a broad pankah (fan). It is wide and flat and leathery and when you shake it it wobbles around like the sail of a dhow.” All three of the men stuck by their stories and for the rest of their lives they refused to speak to each other. Each professed that they and only they knew the whole truth.

“Now of course all three of the blind men had a measure of insight. The first man felt the trunk, the second the leg, the third the ear. All had part of the truth, but not one of them had even begun to grasp the totality or greatness of the beast they had encountered. If only they had listened to one another and meditated on the facets of the elephant, they might have realized the true nature of the beast. But they were too proud and stead preferred to keep their on half-truths.

“So it is with us. We see Allah one way, the Hindus have a different conception, and the Christians a third. To us, all our different visions seem incompatible and irreconcilable. But what we forget is that  before God we are like blind men stumbling around in total blackness…”

-William Dalrymple, City of Djinns (280)

On Freedom of Speech: A Response to DesPain

This article, printed in the November 3, 2010 edition of the Davidsonian, was written by a Muslim student at Davidson College, Elyas Munye ’13, in response to Bobby DesPain’s article “A Man’s Trial, the World’s Verdict” printed in the Davidsonian on October 20, 2010 pg. 9.

There has been much claim that Islam is a religion spread by the sword, that Islam is a parochial religion that oppresses women, that Islam incites hatred towards non-Muslims, that Islam constrains peoples’ freedom to choose. Two weeks ago in Bobby DesPain’s article, “A Man’s Trial, the World’s Verdict,” he affirms “Islam and West…are incompatible.” My problem with his broad generalization is that he discounts the immense diversity of thoughts and practices within the Islamic world. There are over 1.5 billion Muslims on earth. Not every Muslim views the world from the same cropped frame as do the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Wahhabis from Saudi Arabia, the al-Shabab Group in Somalia or any other fundamentalist sect (Al-Ghazali, who is perhaps one of the most respected Islamic theologian and Sufi Mystic, said that religious fanaticism is the biggest veil to the reality of truth).  It is not fair to paint all Muslims with the same brush. To say that Islam and the West are incompatible is to ascribe stereotypes and misperceptions on to the hundreds of millions of Muslims and to the hundreds of millions of non Muslims who don’t share DesPain’s view.

In the Quran, all Muslims accept that God has stated, “O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female and made you into nations and tribes that ye may know each other (not that ye may despise each other). Verily the most honored of you in the sight of Allah [God] is (he who is) the most righteous of you. And Allah has full knowledge and is well acquainted (with all things)” (49:13). From my Islamic perspective, people are of different races, different nationalities, different socio-economic status, and different religious backgrounds and therefore people should learn to understand and appreciate the differences of one another. As Frederick Buechner stated, “If we are to love our neighbors, before doing anything else we must see our neighbors. With our imagination as well as our eyes, that is to say like artists, we must see not just their faces but the life behind and within their faces. Here it is love that is the frame we see them in.”

One might still argue that Islam is a religion of intolerance and compulsion based on the despicable events of September 11, the subway bombing in London, or any other acts of violence committed by a few in the name of all Muslims. One might additionally argue, as Geert Wilders does, that the Quran is a “Fascists” book that incites violence and hatred against non Muslims as one verse commands, “Fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them: seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war).” (9:5). If taken literally, one can justifiably kill “pagans” or non believers. However, this verse has a historical context surrounding its application. In order to understand the meaning of such a verse, one must study its historical context (there are book and articles written on the field of Ethics of War in Islam). As a young Muslim with very little knowledge, I’ve had trouble trying to reconcile the tension between such verses that are explicitly violent with verses that command believers to “repel (the evil) with one which is better (i.e. Allah ordered the faithful believers to be patient at the time of anger, and to excuse those who treat them badly), then verily! he, between whom and you there was enmity, (will become) as though he was a close friend” (41:34).  I don’t see it moral, or even plausible, that 1.5 billion people would go and slay anyone who disbeliefs in Islam.

From my understanding, Islam in the past was not just a practiced religion but it was also a political entity with the goal of establishing a moral, just society under Shari’a Law, or what Muslims believe as Divine Law. Though the Islamic Empire did expand and prosper rapidly during its heyday, the Quran does state “There is no compulsion in religion” (2:256). One thing that violence can never do is force beliefs into anyone’s heart. Religion is a matter of personal choice.

From my point of view, it is unislamic to force anyone to abide by any ideal that he or she doesn’t believe in. I believe that what defines us as human beings is our ability to excercise our free will that gives us freedom to choose, freedom to speak, and freedom to act. From my understanding Shari’a Law, Divine law to Muslims, serves to establish a framework that guides the choices for Muslims as the US constitution serves to establish a framework that guides the choices for Americans.  Today, however, there’s no central authority that speaks for all Muslims.

As a result of this political vacuum, certain individuals or groups, such as al-Qaeda, have exploited this space to advance their agenda. (To better understand the political objectives and motivations behind al-Qaeda’s aims, one should study the role of the US in assisting the Taliban against the Soviets during the Cold War and the Gulf War in Iraq). The murder of more than 3,000 innocent lives can never be justified by Islamic Ethics. Although I’m no expert, I can certainly affirm a fundamental premise, that Islamic law sanctifies each human life: “if anyone killed a person not in retaliation of murder, or (and) to spread mischief in the land – it would be as if he killed all mankind, and if anyone saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of all mankind” (5:32). Despite this firm premise, al-Qaeda has used a book that is holy to 1.5 billion people to justify its atrocious acts. This trend of using holy text to fulfill a political agenda is not new. It has happened all throughout history. It has happened with the Bible in America. It is happening within this article—though I don’t have any political ends to meet!

I stand behind Geert Wilders and Elisabeth Sabaditschwolff in fighting for their freedom to speak. I support South Park’s freedom to put anything on the show. I support Molly Norris, the cartoonist from Seattle, to depict whatever she may please. Will anyone support me to exercise my freedom to practice my religion without being painted with the same brush as any other violent fanatic?  To what extent should these freedoms be allowed, if they become the channel through which hatred is propagated? To what extent should there be censorship? I question Wilder, Sabaditschwolff, and Norris’s understanding of Islam.  If the goal is to have a peaceful coexistence, respect and understanding of our great diversity is critical. Part of exercising our freedom of expression comes with the ethical responsibility to make sure that we give all a fair shake and refrain from slander. Freedom of speech needs to push the envelope, it needs to spark public debate but it should never demonize the other nor incite anger in the hearts of the public.

Art Exhibit: Three Faiths

 Three Faiths: Judaism, Christianity, Islam

Exhibition Review from the New York Times by Edward Rothstein

“The sweep of the new exhibition at the New York Public Library — “Three Faiths: Judaism, Christianity, Islam” — is stunning. It stretches from a Bible found in a monastery in coastal Brittany that was sacked by the Vikings in the year 917, to a 1904 lithograph showing the original Temple Emanu-El on Fifth Avenue. It encompasses both an elaborately decorated book of 20th-century Coptic Christian readings and a modest 19th-century printing of the Gospels in the African language Grebo. There are Korans, with pages that shimmer with gold leaf and elegant calligraphy, and a 13th-century Pentateuch from Jerusalem, written in script used by Samaritans who traced their origins to the ancient Northern Kingdom of Israel.

The library’s Gutenberg Bible is here, as well as its 1611 King James translation. The first Koran published in English is shown, from 1649, along with fantastical images from 16th-century Turkish and Persian manuscripts in which Muhammad is pictured with other prophets, his face a blank white space in obeisance to the prohibition against his portrait.

Out of many, one. That could well be the motto of this ambitious exhibition. It focuses on “the three Abrahamic religions” — Judaism, Christianity and Islam — each of which takes as a forebear an “itinerant herdsman” of the Middle East, Abraham, who affirmed belief in a single God. As the show puts it, Abraham rejected “the religions of antiquity with their plethora of gods, each imbued with a particular attribute, purpose and power,” replacing the many with the one.

The Abrahamic religions share other characteristics as well. Each believes that God has made himself known to his prophets through acts of revelation. And such revelations shape groups of believers by being incorporated in canonical written texts: the Hebrew Bible, the Christian Gospels, the Islamic Koran.

Though the exhibition does not point this out, the connection between monotheism and such texts is no accident. Once multiple divinities are discarded, along with their rivalries and conflicting powers, religion is concerned with just two poles: the human and the divine. Religious events take place not on Mount Olympus or in some imagined godly castle, but in the earthly realm. Religious history becomes fully part of human history. And the telling of that history, along with commentary and reinterpretation, becomes an aspect of the religion itself. These faiths are historical faiths.”

Selected Images from the Exhibit:

Images of Mecca and Medina, Dala ‘il al-Khayrat (Proofs of Good Deeds)” Jazuli, Istanbul (?) Ottoman Empire, AH 1207 (1792 CE)

 

“The Christian Bible, Gospels (Harkness Gospels),” in Latin, Landevennec, Brittany before 917

“The Binding of Isaac, Ketubah (Marriage Contract)” 16 August 1872 CE

“Matthew and Mark in Ge’ez, Gospels according to Matthew and Mark,” Ethiopia (1721-1730)

Detail from “The Whole Megilah (Scroll of Esther)” Raphael Montalto, scribe, Amseterdam, AM 5446 (1686 CE)

 

“Praises of the Prophet,” Religious Anthology, Ottoman Empire, 19th-century

“The Psalms, Psalter (De la Twyere Psalter),” in Latin, Enland, diocese of York, after 1304-ca. 1310

“The Qur’an, Qur’an,” Probably Turkey, AH 734 (1333 CE)