Engaging the Muslim world, next door and at Ground Zero
Last night, a community board in Manhattan approved the siting of a new Islamic community center near Ground Zero, where the World Trade Center towers fell on 9/11.
Some critics, according to the New York Times, say the location is an “affront to victims of the 2001 terrorist attacks.”
I don’t see it that way.
In the months after the terror bombings, I noticed with real excitement — it was the first hope I had felt in weeks — that New York City was rich with opportunities for understanding the Muslim world.
There were art exhibits, musical performances, works of theater, panel discussions, religious round-tables, all offering insight into Islam, its literature, its beauty and complexity.
Many had been scheduled before the attacks. But people were going on with these events. They were unbowed by the savagery of a small group of cancerous and pathetically Medieval souls.
But there is a problem with this dialogue, a kind of creeping unreality, that we’re still struggling to address.
Too often, even the vast majority of Muslims who are nonviolent bring with them to the West values and cultural assumptions that are — put bluntly — morally unacceptable to us.
Most of these practices involve the revolting denigration of women, including the practice of enforced arranged marriages, as well as veiling and shrouding (the niqab).
When I lived in Malaysia, I spoke once to a young girl whose Muslim father had just returned from a pilgrimage to Mecca.
In a few short weeks, she said, his once modern and tolerant views had changed dramatically.
Because he had become more conservative, her entire life would change. She would be forced to take the veil. She would be forced into a marriage, likely with someone she had never met.
She was terrified and powerless.
Other practices, including honor killings and female genital mutilation, are illegal, but remain common enough in the West that the American Academy of Pediatrics developed a policy opposing the procedure.
“It is estimated that at least 100 million women have undergone mutilation,” according to the Academy’s report. “Between 4 and 5 million procedures are performed annually in female infants and girls, with the most severe types of FGM carried out in Somalian and Sudanese populations.”
But the challenge of engagement with moderate Muslims goes beyond these gender issues.
In the West, we have a few cultural absolutes — principles that are as inviolable and hard-wired in our culture as anything in the Koran — and one of these is freedom of speech.
That freedom extends to open discussions of even the most sensitive religious topics. And yes, our conversations often include skepticism, parody, satire, and flat-out scorn. Even the occasional cartoon.
Muslims who don’t accept these values are welcome, of course, to speak out and protest. But according to our values, they are also expected to listen and learn. That’s how this society works.
A provocative and valuable player in this difficult discussion is Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somalian immigrant to the US who herself suffered a clitorectomy at the age of five.
In her new book, “Nomad,” Ali argues passionately for the opening of the Muslim mind, at the very least among those believers who choose to live in countries like America.
In an interview with the Times, Ali argued that, “We who don’t want radical Islam to spread must compete with the agents of radical Islam. I want to see what would happen if Christians, feminists and Enlightenment thinkers were to start proselytizing in the Muslim community.”
“That could be dangerous for the proselytizers,” said the Times’ Deborah Solomon.
“It may be,” Ali replied, “but in the United States we have a police force and the rule of law; we can’t just say something is dangerous and abstain from competing in the marketplace of ideas.”
Which brings us back to the mosque at Ground Zero.
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who hopes to build the new center, has argued that it would be a “bridge and heal a divide” among Muslims and other religious groups.
“We have condemned the actions of 9/11,” he told the Times. “We have condemned terrorism in the most unequivocal terms.”
But sadly, we have learned in the decade since the terrible attack that condemning terrorism isn’t enough.
The new center should also commit itself publicly to embracing the other values that were threatened on that horrific day: freedom of speech, women’s equality in worship and civic life, and intellectual curiosity.
That kind of mosque would truly serve as a monument to the victims of 9/11, and also to the vibrancy and openness of New York City.
And just what do you think the chances of the Muslim world changing it’s views are Brian? What are the chances of other than a very tiny minority of Muslims condemning terrorism and jihad? What are the chances of the Muslim world turning the other cheek?
If the people of NYC can stomach having a mosque built near the site, so be it. I don’t live there, it’s none of my business. I do find the rush to embrace and “understand” the Muslim view, even to propose allowing Sharia Law, to be ridiculous when the same society is actively working against other religions. Is it fear? Guilt? Political correctness? I don’t know. But judging by how things have worked out for other western nations with large Muslim populations I’m more than a little gun shy of embracing Muslim culture and laws within our borders. It would be akin to embracing the Catholic Church of the 1300’s in modern America.
I believe McViegh was a Christian.
Should there be no Christain churches in Oklahoma City?
Dan, please- show me where in the Bible it suggests that bombing a building with a day care center in it is considered a righteous act. Show me where it says killing the innocent is justified. I would argue that even thinking of doing such a thing takes you completely out of the realm of being “a Christian” in anyway I understand it. A murdering, cowardly, yellow dog perhaps, but not a Christian in any sense of the word.
Allah O Akbar !!! May Allah show mercy on the victims of 9-11.
Bret –
Actually, the Christian Bible is full of incredible violence committed by God’s chosen people, including sanctioned massacres, pogroms and genocides.
One of the bleakest is in Genesis 34, when the Hivites agree to be circumcised so that they can co-exist peacefully and inter-marry with the Hebrews.
Hamor, the king of the Hivites, goes to the people of his city and says:
“These men are at peace with us; let them dwell in the land and trade in it, for behold, the land is large enough for them. Let us take their daughters as wives, and let us give them our daughters. Only on this condition will the men agree to dwell with us to become one people—when every male among us is circumcised as they are circumcised.”
But once all the Hivite men were “sore” and weakened by the circumcision, the Hebrews fell upon them and murdered all the men.
They then “captured and plundered” everything in the city, including the women and children.
In the text, Jacob expresses some reservations about all this, but only because he thinks the horrific act might sully his reputation and rally his enemies.
Similar divinely-approved or even inspired acts occur throughout the Bible.
Through the course of human history, Christians have certainly used the Bible to justify incredible acts of barbarism — everything from the Crusades to slavery.
–Brian, NCPR
If this is our response, what’s to stop the radicals of this religion to topple more of our buildings and see more mosques built?
Brian:
Are you able to recount the violent history of the Islamic religion?
JDM –
Your responses aren’t really taking us anywhere. The point of my original blog was that modern Islam has serious moral and civic problems.
But arguments that some fundamentalist Christian groups make that Islam is somehow evil or irredeemable are, bluntly, ridiculous.
That kind of ignorance makes it difficult to have a real conversation about what it means to integrate a new and growing religious faith into our multicultural society.
–Brian, NCPR
Thanks, Brian. It takes a tunnel-view reading of the Bible to dismiss all the smiting and such in God’s name. Granted, we’re talking Old Testament, but that’s where the support for the death penalty comes from, and other draconian dictates. It does amaze me how many Christians use the OT to support their views, while, in effect, ignoring Christ’s demands that we love our neighbor, turn the other cheek, forgive our enemies, etc.
JDM:
Does it say in the Bible that 2 wrongs make a right?
Dan:
That’s not my point. I am asking Brian if his knowledge of Islam is as in-depth as his ability to accurately quote from the old testament.
Can Brian recount from history (not necessarily the Koran, although that would be impressive) the violence in the Islamic religion.
JDM:
I can’t claim an exhaustive knowlege of violence in the Islamic religion, but Christianity has more than it’s share.
I specifically refer to the destruction of “heretics”, the Inquisition, the destruction of the Templars, and, let’s (face it), on and on…
The point is that neither has a corner on violence, and neither can trully claim the maoral high ground.
My knowledge of Islam is much less thorough than my knowledge of Christianity.
I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian family and was later an altar boy in an Episcopal church. In the years since, I’ve been fascinated by Christian scripture and philosophy. I traveled in Greece not to see ancient Greek ruins but to look at Orthodox art and architecture.
I don’t have the same grounding in Islamic thought, though I have read widely in the Koran. I’ve also lived in Malaysia and traveled extensively in other Muslim countries.
Several of my favorite novelists — including Naghib Orhan Pamuk — write deeply and richly about Islam.
My experience of Islamic culture has been complex — rich and fascinating and beautiful, sometimes deeply disappointing.
When I was in Binghamton after the shootings at the immigrant center there, the most thoughtful, profound and sorrowful voice that I heard was the local Imam.
–Brian, NCPR
Sorry – that’s Naghib Mafouz and Orhan Pamouk.
brian
Brian M, you didn’t catch the reference to the Catholic Church in the 1300’s? I had a fascination with the Inquisition at one point and never did buy the idea that was a Christian thing to do. And since you and I share a somewhat similar background, what was the overall message of the New Testament? For that matter where in the OT does it support the murder of innocents? Is there anywhere in either you can think of that says those who don’t convert must die? My recollection is that their fate is left in Gods hands, not in the hands of man. Regardless, anyone who throws the, “Yeah, well Timothy McVeigh was a Christian!!!” line out is just baiting and grasping. The Christian faiths do not support Jihad, conversion by the sword or the mutilation of women.
I have no problem with peaceful Moslems. The problem seems to be finding a large enough population of Moslems that are willing to buck the system and talk their not so peaceful pals into putting the Jihad aside. I don’t know of any Christians that support a Holy War, but the world seems to be full of Moslems that do. That looks like a problem to me.
I like Bret’s question:
“What are the chances the Muslim world will change it’s views?”
Slim, probably, but there’s even less of a chance of simply exchanging views without the community center.
I’ve lived in Israel and Utah and spent a little time among some faithful Roman Catholics in Italy and almost all the conversations I’ve had with lay-people (non-clergy) have revealed a surprising detachment from the magical thinking at the root of their religion.
I’ve played pool (and drank beer) with Palestinians (in Ohio). I’ve played backgammon and smoked with Arabs in Jerusalem and I’ve listened as Mormon moms broke down crying because their children were ostracized after a divorce in the family or a sexual orientation that didn’t quite fit scripture.
Moments like this give us a chance to see our similarities and transcend the religious or political beliefs that (on the surface) may separate us.
Bret, I don’t know what you do, but I’m willing to bet that if you sat down with an Iranian man who did the same thing, you’d be surprised how similar you are. And of course I mean that in the best way. You’d probably talk about how much you love your families, your work, how your governments drive you crazy, etc.
This is the kind of exchange that – I really hope – will be possible at the Islamic community center at the WTC.
For those Muslims who spend time in such a center, it’s not hard to foresee them returning to Africa or the Middle East with a better perspective of the western world–and maybe some new ideas on how to live in their own culture.
But, in the end, we can’t control them. We can only control us. And I like the idea of extending the olive branch. I think that’s what the local NYC board members did when they approved the community center.
And I’m going to visit it. I’d like to once again play backgammon with an opponent who really knows what he’s doing.
Jonathan, NCPR
Brian:
My knowledge of the Bible is also greater than that of the Islamic religion, although I have a fairly good working knowledge of the historical facts and some supporting translations of the Koran (English-ized version of the title of that book).
While I believe that the accounts of God-ordained killings in the old testament have significance on our eternal state (the sum total of which need not be discussed here), I also think the muslim believes that the voracity with which they proselytize has bearing on their eternal state.
If we respond to the 9/11 incident by erecting a mosque, for whatever reason we put on it from our perspective, they (muslim) will assign to it their perspective and we will only be encouraging them to do so more.
You may do well to learn what their perspective on this is. It ain’t what you think.
Jonathan, please don’t misunderstand. I’m a religious liberal. Believe what you will, whoever you are, where ever you are. But I’m also a realist that can still taste the dust and smell the smells from 9/11 and recalls vividly picking up little pieces of my fellow Americans and watching Moslems rejoice in the streets in celebration of 9/11. Did many, or any, of those Palestinians in Ohio renounce Hamas? Did any of the Arabs in Jerusalem favor the State of Israel existing? Did any of them extend the olive branch to you as a Christian? (If you are)
I have no doubt that I would find much in common with people around the world, I already have found that to be true. The problem appears to be that the leaders of one religion intend to carry on with conversion by the sword. It would be wonderful if they would drop that idea, but then that would destroy their power base wouldn’t it? That would negate the idea of infidels in the US being the great evil and would kind of be cutting their own throats (apologies to Daniel Pearl) wouldn’t it? I don’t have much faith that the Moslem leaders will give up all their power and whatever wealth/prestige goes with it just because we’re nice to them and approve them building a Mosque near the site. As JDM says, they may well look at it from a different perspective that doesn’t meet with our expectations. You aren’t going to get the Pope to say Joseph Smith was right and Franklin Graham isn’t going to endorse Scientology and Rabbi Whoever isn’t going to start using snakes and laying on hands at worship. And we share more between those variations of the same theme than we do with the Koran and Mohamed’s followers.
So I understand and sympathize with the desire to see peace in the world, I’m with ya 100% on that. I just question if the olive branches we extend are viewed in the same manner we intend in the Moslem world.
But a Christian by definition is a follower of Christ who said in the New Covenant how we are to act today and hopefully forever, and that would be to model His life as best we can by following His Spirit which we believe dwells in all believers.
The Old Testament certainly contains violent acts of war sometimes ordered by God. But that is not guidance for the Christian it is descriptive of what happened, the Christian is told to follow Christ who said love your enemies, as we have peace with God. Have we done this? No we have often had a sorry history and certainly as a Catholic I realize some of the sorry things that my kin have done in the past 2000 years, but there have been many who have heeded the call and we can hopefully follow them. As far as Muslims go if they own the land and have the permits I would think that they can build a mosque wherever they want. I would hope that they will however welcome Christian Churches in areas and neighborhoods that are dominated by Muslims and allow the spreading of the Gospel to anyone who will listen within the bounds of free speech.
It does bother me that the government of Saudi Arabia has funded many of the Mosques built in the US and other western countries however.
I think the Muslim perspective is that they have the true faith and that that true faith, Islam is succeeding in America. One great thing about America at least for me, is that believing that is fine.
Just as there is no Christian view or Jewish view, there is no Muslim view. There is a fundamentalist mentality that is cross-cultural and manifests itself on this very blog regularly.
knuckleheadedliberal –
i think that’s too easy. i think what’s happening right now in the muslim world isn’t on a continuum with what’s happening in the vast majority of christian and jewish communities.
yes, fundamentalism manifests itself in every faith — and in every secular ideology as well. seems to be a human tendency.
but the islamic world, imo, is struggling with a far more pervasive set of values (many having to do with human rights for women).
brian, ncpr
Knucklehead, what do you see as a fundamentalist ideology manifesting itself on this board?
Will the people that will attend the Mosque built at ground zero not believe the Koran is a true revelation of Allah as transcribed by the prophet Mohammad?
I mean to be true to themselves, I hope that they do.
Last I checked, America had freedom of religion.
Or did 9/11 really change everything, after all?
Brian,
there are of course human rights problems in Islam concerning women and many other things as well. Some things that are perceived as Islamic, such as female genital mutilation are not Islamic at all although they are sometimes practiced in Muslim countries.
Muslims may point to repression of women in the west as well. Consider that women in Afghanistan officially were given the right to vote before women in Switzerland. In Islam women were allowed to own property long before women in many western countries, including the US.
Pakistan, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Turkey have all had women leaders while the US has yet to do so.
Certain practices, like arranged marriages, are cultural. Many hundreds millions of people who have arranged marriages throughout the centuries have found them fulfilling and satisfying. Many would argue that properly arranged marriages tend to be far more successful than those in the US where the divorce rate is what? 50%?
There is certainly no denying that there are problems in the Muslim world. There are also problems in the Western world. There is a clash of civilizations going on. If we want to diffuse it we must first understand it.
I will follow up later, but now there is a lightning storm rolling in. Perhaps Allah is angry.
FGM is not an Islamic practice.
I don’t think there are any Christian, Buddhist or Hindu dominated countries however that officially implement the death penalty for anyone who converts to another faith. As far as women not being able to drive or go into public, I suspect it is more about divisions within Islam largely Wahhabism versus other traditions. I have to say I appreciate Ali’s comments about the need to proselytize within Islamic communities. The only concern of course is not necessarily those who are preaching the Gospel, but the reactions of the Muslim families toward their members who may convert.
But you really have to work hard to cover your PC eyes on this one, no other faith is as realistically feared as much as radical violent Islam in the West, to the degree that it causes self-censorship in what is published or produced by writers and artists. The writers of South Park are not worried about Timothy McVeigh crazies coming after them when they blaspheme Christ, but they very much fear the people who killed the Dutch film maker and thus they self censor and they are not the only ones. Maybe this is more about the cowardice of the secular West though than Islam itself? If you were a crazy violent Christian fundamentalist what lesson would you learn from this?
So, where was I?
Let me first postulate a couple of things.
1) Cultures are different around the world but people are all the same within a finite spectrum.
2) People who feel poor and oppressed will react angrily to those they feel are their oppressors.
Now, given that there are hundreds or thousands of books devoted to the subject in various forms, let me try to get to the real nut of the problem in just a few words.
Most Islamic countries are very poor, this is a fact not of some lack on their part but of quirks of history. For many hundreds of years Muslim countries were the great centers of learning and culture while Europe was backward and barbaric. Europe never experienced the Mongol invasion, but the Mongols tore through Central Asia in the 14th Century and into the Middle East and destroyed cities and cultures in a way that has yet to be mended.
Meanwhile, Europe began a program of colonial expansion expanding into the New World and the Old, enslaving and killing by the millions, performing unspeakably barbaric acts on the native people, taking their natural resources, their gold, silver, and more recently their oil.
Africa has yet to recover from European Colonialism, China was set back several hundred years, no Native American has led a country on this hemisphere (that I know of) since colonialism except Evo Morales (and we don’t like him), all of Oceana including Australia and New Zealand …you get the point. Just think of the tons of gold that were taken from Central America that financed war around the world.
So all these conquered nations were driven to poverty. Being poor, they are largely uneducated. Being uneducated they are susceptible to extremist ideology. All extremist ideology needs to take root are a few ideas about oppression.
So let me just toss a couple at you.
After WWII the allies had a “Jewish problem”, they wanted to settle the Jews somewhere but nobody wanted them in Europe and America didn’t want them. So they were sent to Palestine. I’m not going to get into the history of Israel but suffice it to say that there is essentially an aparthied state there which creates anger among Muslims.
Iran is told that it needs to have inspectors for its nuclear program, but what about Israel? Everyone knows they have the Bomb but they wont admit it. Where is the demand for weapons inspectors?
Why did the US (and the forerunners of BP?) over-throw the democratically elected leader of Iran in the 50’s?
Why are Muslim leaders all portrayed, one by one, as the next Hitler or Stalin (both Christians); Khaddaffi,the Ayatollah, Saddam?
And what will we think of Subsaharan Africans in the coming years when they start looking at their poverty and oppression and the next wave of terrorism comes from there?
KHL- “Meanwhile, Europe began a program of colonial expansion expanding into the New World and the Old, enslaving and killing by the millions, performing unspeakably barbaric acts on the native people, taking their natural resources, their gold, silver, and more recently their oil.”
And the Moslem world where slavery was and in parts still is the norm is the fault of Europe? Sorry, but you can’t try and say that Europe and the west created the conditions that plague the rest of the world when many of the problems existed long before Europeans came on the scene. Cultures rise and decline. The ebb and flow of humanity, right? It as African and Arab slavers that sold their countrymen to the west. Why is it they are guilt free and we are forever stained? They still commit atrocities that would shock the average American into hysterics, and yet it’s somehow our fault?
Be honest, how many gazillions of dollars has the western world poured into Africa, the middle east and Asia? How much of that money was given the “Kofi Anon” (sp) treatment and siphoned off by corrupt leaders? Even here in the US LBJ’s Great Society has cost trillions with almost no results. The people in those areas bear some responsibility for this. Why have the truly wealthy countries in the Moslem world not used their wealth to bring education, healthcare and prosperity to the rest of the Moslem world? The US and other western nations have attempted to bring other nations up to our standard of living, or to at least give them a chance to help themselves.
I’m somewhat familiar with the grievances of the east vs the west, I have a basic understanding of eastern history and the changes that occurred from the 1600’s to present day. I won’t attempt to deny that westerners have done horrible things, but neither will I deny that eastern and aboriginal populations have their own skeletons in the closet.
Look, it’s 2010, not 1120. We don’t burn witches, depend on bones of Saints to protect us or impale our enemies on pikes outside the village walls here in the west. However, our Moslem brothers still use methods like baking the child of a recalcitrant politician and serving him for dinner! http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1862028/posts
“Unspeakably barbaric”? We learned from our past, at least we have to an extent. Can we really say the same for others?
Well I think that many Muslim leaders are portrayed as the next Hitler because many of them are holocaust deniers and horrible anti-Semites today, not 50 or 500 years ago but today right now and they have nuclear weapons.
Certainly Arabs who lost land when Israel was established and indeed are persecuted we can understand having a biased view of Jews. What is the current leader of Iran’s excuse?
Many Muslim terrorists are not poor and oppressed but like Bin Laden are from very wealthy families. We can’t lay this all on the tired old Colonial narrative of oppression.
Besides I think that narrative is elitist, “the poor oppressed people don’t know any better, because we all know that what they believe couldn’t possibly be true”. It goes to a basic lack of understanding of people of faith by the secular west, as if God is something that oppressed people believe who don’t know any better or are uneducated and unenlightened. It causes many of our misunderstandings in my opinion.
As I tried to point out I was painting a very rough picture for context, sometimes (and I’m being generous) we get caught up in tit-fo-tat detail and miss out on the crux of an argument.
This isn’t about who beats their wife harder or more often.
The point is that we cannot solve deep-seated problems with guns, bombs, hatred, ignorance and misunderstanding. And it works two ways.
I totally agree with you on those points.
KHL, I look at the Israel-Palestinian issue as an example of how things really work. Was it Perez that basically offered the Palestinians everything they wanted and they still refused? I forget, but he ended up dead anyway. I’m not sure that this issue will ever resolve itself. I’m not sure the other side wants peace. Oh, the individual Moslem may desire peace, but as a group our very existence seems to be a burr under the saddle they cannot tolerate.
Bret,
I am guessing that you are referring to Yitzhak Rabin who worked for a peace plan with the Palestinians (was awarded the Nobel Prize as well as the Ronald Reagan Freedom Award) and was assassinated by an orthodox Jew who opposed peace with the Palestinians?
Are you trying to make my points for me?
To be honest Israel has had so many PM’s over the past 20 years I get them confused. The one I’m thinking of offered Arafat pretty much everything he wanted and Arafat kept refusing and adding demands. I’m not sure how that would make your point for you, but that may be a perception issue.