What's Right with Islam: A New Vision for Muslims and the West
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What's Right with Islam: A New Vision for Muslims and the West
336eBook
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Overview
An American imam offers answers for today's toughest questions about Islam, and a vision for a reconciliation between Islam and the West.
One of the pressing questions of our time is what went wrong in the relationship between Muslims and the West. Continuing global violence in the name of Islam reflects the deepest fears by certain Muslim factions of Western political, cultural, and economic encroachment. The solution to the current antagonism requires finding common ground upon which to build mutual respect and understanding. Who better to offer such an analysis than an American imam, someone with a foot in each world and the tools to examine the common roots of both Western and Muslim cultures; someone to explain to the non-Islamic West not just what went wrong with Islam, but what's right with Islam.
Focused on finding solutions, not on determining fault, this is ultimately a hopeful, inspiring book. What's Right with Islam systematically lays out the reasons for the current dissonance between these cultures and offers a foundation and plan for improved relations. Wide-ranging in scope, What's Right with Islam elaborates in satisfying detail a vision for a Muslim world that can eventually embrace its own distinctive forms of democracy and capitalism, aspiring to a new Cordoba - a time when Jews, Christians, Muslims, and all other faith traditions will live together in peace and prosperity.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780061755859 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 10/13/2009 |
| Sold by: | HARPERCOLLINS |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 336 |
| File size: | 573 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
What's Right with Islam
A New Vision for Muslims and the WestBy Rauf, Feisal Abdul
HarperSanFrancisco
ISBN: 0060582723Chapter One
Common Roots
Many of the earliest civilizations believed in a plurality of gods. From the ruins and temples of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt in the Middle East and Greece and Rome in Europe to India and China in the Far East, the majority of early civilizations worshiped a pantheon of gods, with each god ruling over a sector of the universe and all of them ruled by a greater God. Representing their gods in the forms of statues, early people practiced idolatry, worshiping the gods' physical representations.
HE WHO CARVES THE BUDDHA NEVER WORSHIPS HIM
In such societies, the pharaoh, emperor, caesar, or king was generally regarded as divine, a son of God, and the priestly class (like the Brahmins in India) a privileged one that supported his function as semidivine. Worldly society reflected the structure of the divine court, the pharaoh or king with his consort ruling over society just as the Great God had a consort and children who were gods, ruling over the many lesser gods. As the son of God, the king was God's representative on earth.
Together with such beliefs about the God-human relationship came a belief in the structure of human society. People were born into classes or castes reflecting the structure of the divine court, showing life "on earth, as it is in heaven." In society were found the royal and noble classes, the priestly class, the warrior class, the merchant and farming classes, and all those who did the most menial and undesirable work. Social mobility was not typically the norm; one was born, worked, married, and died within the boundaries of one's class. One's status in life, profession, and choice of spouse were predetermined by the family and class one was born into -- by the social structure -- and one's destiny was deemed in some societies as karmic.
In many of these societies, rejecting the state religion was not a simple matter of exercising freedom of human conscience (something we in America take for granted today). It was typically regarded as treason against the state, an act punishable by death, not to mention a violation of the institutional social structure on which society was built. Literally, one had no place in society, for such a person would be like an ant rejecting the structure of its colony, unprotected by its institutions. The possible freedom one had to exercise such inner convictions and to be true to oneself was to opt out of society and live as a hermit in a cave. Pre-Islamic Arabs called such people, driven by their conscience and desiring to live by its standards, hanif.
Such powerful social constraints may sound strange to the contemporary American reader, but a mere fifty years ago in America, "unless one was either a Protestant, or a Catholic, or a Jew, one was a 'nothing'; to be a 'something,' to have a name, one [had to] identify oneself to oneself, and be identified by others, as belonging to one or another of the three great religious communities in which the American people were divided."
To be independent and step out of sociological norms and deeply embedded thought patterns is very hard for people to do. And if it was hard for us in America, a country where we prize individual freedom, you can imagine how hard it must have been a few thousand years ago in the earliest known ancient Middle Eastern civilizations that straddled the area between Egypt and Persia.
In that region, and in such a society characterized by a polytheistic religious, political, and sociological climate, a hanif man called Abraham was born in a town in Mesopotamia, the area now called Iraq. He found the idea of polytheism unacceptable. Biblical and Islamic narratives inform us that Abraham's father was a sculptor of such idols. We can well imagine the young boy Abraham seeing his father fabricating such statues from the raw material of wood or stone and perhaps occasionally cursing when the material cracked. The reality of the Chinese proverb "He who carves the Buddha never worships him" must have been apparent to Abraham, who probably observed, in the way children see through their parents' absurdities, the creature creating the Creator.
The Quran quotes Abraham as debating with his contemporaries: "Do you worship that which you yourselves sculpt -- while God has created you and your actions?" (37:95–96). After going on a spiritual search, and after rejecting the sun, the moon, and the stars as objects of worship (objects his community worshiped), Abraham realized that there could be only one creator of the universe -- one God (Quran 6:75–91 describes Abraham's search for God). Today Muslims, Christians, and Jews regard Abraham as their patriarch, the founder of a sustained monotheistic society subscribing to the belief that there is only one God, the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe.
The monotheism that Abraham taught was not only theologically radical, in that it decried the plurality of gods as false, it was also socially radical. The idea that God is one implied two significant things about humankind.
First, it implied that all humans are equal, simply because we are born of one man and one woman. "O humankind," God asserts in the Quran, "surely we have created you from one male [Adam] and one female [Eve] and made you into tribes and clans [just] so that you may get to know each other. The noblest of you with God are the most devout of you" (Quran 49:13). This meant that all of humankind is a family-- brothers and sisters, equal before God, differentiated only by the nobility of our actions, not by our birth. Showing preference for one human over another on the basis of accidents of birth, like skin color, class structure, tribal or family belonging, or gender, is unjust and therefore has no place in a proper human worldview. Although it grossly violates reason and ethics, showing preference on the basis of these categories is the very way people traditionally judged others and structured their societies.
(Continues...)
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Table of Contents
| Foreword | xi | |
| Preface | xvii | |
| Introduction: A Cordoba Lost | 1 | |
| Chapter 1 | Common Roots | 11 |
| Chapter 2 | What's Right with Islam | 41 |
| Chapter 3 | What's Right with America | 79 |
| Chapter 4 | Where the Devil Got in the Details | 113 |
| Chapter 5 | We're All History | 173 |
| Chapter 6 | A New Vision for Muslims and the West | 251 |
| Conclusion: On Pursuing Happiness | 281 | |
| Acknowledgments | 285 | |
| Appendix | Fatwa Permitting U.S. Muslim Military Personnel to Participate in Afghanistan War Effort | 287 |
| Notes | 293 | |
| Index | 307 |
Foreword
At the
beginning of the twentieth century, almost every single Muslim intellectual was
in love with the West. They wanted their countries to look like Britain and
France, at that time the leaders of secular, democratic modernity. Some even
went so far as to say that the Europeans were better Muslims than the Muslims
themselves, because their modernized societies approached the egalitarian ideals
of the Quran more closely than anything that prevailed in traditional, Islamic
countries. Muhammad Abdu (1849–1905), Grand
Mufti of Egypt, was profoundly disturbed by the British occupation of his
country, but was well versed in European culture and felt entirely at home with
Western people. After a trip to Paris, he is reported to have said: “In France I
saw Muslims but no Islam; in Egypt I see Islam but no Muslims.” In Iran, mullahs
fought alongside secularist intellectuals for democratic, representative
government. When the new parliament was established in 1906, Shaykh Muhammad
Husain Naini (1850–1936) argued that it was the
next best thing to the coming of the Shiite Messiah, who was expected to
establish a rule of justice in the last days, because it would curb the tyranny
of the Shah.
It is
important to remember this early enthusiasm. When Muslims first encountered the
modern, democratic West, they did not recoil in visceral disgust, but recognized
that it resonated with their own religious traditions. Today many Muslims and
Westerners regard one another with deep distrust. After the atrocities of
September 11th, many in the West have come to believe that, as Samuel
P. Huntington had predicted, there is indeed a clash of civilizations, because
their religion renders Muslims unfit for modernity. Many are convinced that
“Islam” somehow compels Muslims to commit acts of terror and violence, that it
applauds suicide bombers, and is inherently incompatible with liberal, Western
democracy. This is understandable, since most American and Europeans have very
little understanding of either Islam or the political conditions that have
contributed to our present perilous predicament.
If we
are indeed fighting a “war against terror,” we need accurate information. We
cannot afford to remain in ignorance because the stakes are now too high. It is
vital to know who our enemies are, but it is equally important to know who they
are not. Only a tiny proportion of
Muslims take part in acts of terror and violence. If our media and politicians
continue to denigrate Islam, accepting without question the stereotypical view
that has prevailed in the West since the time of the Crusades, we will
eventually alienate Muslims who have no quarrel with the West, who are either
enjoying or longing for greater democracy, and who are horrified by the
atrocities committed in the name of their faith. We urgently need to build
bridges with the Islamic world. I can think of few projects that are more
crucial at the present time.
That is
why this book is so important. Instead of concentrating on “What went Wrong?” like Bernard Lewis,
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf shows what Islam has going for it, and what it has to
offer the West. He is himself a bridge figure, because he has deep roots in both
worlds. He was educated in Egypt, England, Malaysia and the United States, and
his mosque in New York is only a few blocks away from the site of the World
Trade Center. After September 11th, people often asked me: “Where are
the moderate Muslims?” “Why are they not speaking out?” In Imam Rauf, we have a
Muslim who can speak to Western people in a way that they can
understand.
One
of the most important assets of the United States in their struggle against
terrorism is the Muslim community of America. Many American Muslims have long
been aware that they can practice their religion far more creatively in the
United States than they could in their countries of origin. Years before 9/11,
they were trying to build a vibrant and strong “American Islam,” bringing up
their children to be good Muslims and patriotic Americans. When I visited such a
community in 1999, I suggested that they should ~ at least in some respects ~
look at the example of American Catholics. At the time of the War of
Independence against Britain, only one percent of the colonists were Catholic.
Catholics were a hated and despised minority: they were thought to be in league
with Antichrist, to be ruled by a tyrannical Pope, and to be indelibly opposed
to freedom and democracy. Nobody would have dreamed that a Catholic would one
day become the President of the United States. These were bad times for American
Catholics, but in the Nineteen-Sixties, it was the bishops of the United States
who were largely instrumental in pushing forward the reforms of the Second
Vatican Council. Their faith had been invigorated by the American ideals of
freedom, equality, and transparency in leadership and, like Pope John XXIII,
they wanted the bracing air of modernity to sweep through the musty corridors of
the Vatican. Had this spirit prevailed, the Catholic Church might have avoided
some of its present problems.
American Muslims could exert a similar influence on the
Islamic world, and prove that it is indeed possible to live according to the
ideals of the Quran in the United States. But they cannot do that if they are
shunned as potential terrorists and feel constantly on the defensive. It is
vital that Western people realize that Islam is not an alien creed, but that
this tradition is deeply in tune with their own ideals. In these pages, they
will see that for centuries, Muslims created societies that were far more
tolerant and pluralistic than European Christendom; that there are important
principles of Muslim law that are highly congenial to democracy; and that the
Quran stresses the importance of justice and equity that are so central to the
Western ideal. They will learn that Muslims helped Europeans to rebuild their
culture after the long trauma of the Dark Ages, by reacquainting them with the
philosophical, scientific and mathematical heritage of ancient
Greece.
But
herein lies the rub. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, while European
scholars were sitting at the feet of Muslim scholars in Spain, the European
Crusaders were slaughtering Muslims in Palestine and Syria. There was, at this
formative period of Western civilization, an unhealthy imbalance. In their
efforts to build a new identity, Western Christians saw Jews and Muslims, the
two victims of the Crusades, as a foil, a symbol of everything that they
believed they were not (or feared that they were). They tended to project buried
anxieties about their own behaviour onto these two “enemies of civilization.”
Thus it was during the Crusades that scholar monks of Europe stigmatised Islam
as the religion of the sword, even though Christians had themselves instigated
brutal holy wars against Muslims in the Middle East. During the Crusades, hatred
of Jews became a chronic disease in Europe, and this shameful tradition led to
some of the worst crimes of Western history. But our Islamophobia is equally
engrained, and the cruel atrocities of September 11th have confirmed
many in the old crusading prejudice.
We
now need to cultivate a more just and balanced view of Islam. The old medieval
hatred was fuelled by denial. It is always difficult to forgive people we have
harmed. Crusading Christians found it impossible to appreciate the strengths of
Muslim civilization, because at a subconscious level, they knew that they had
sinned. Jesus, after all, had told his followers to love their enemies, not to
exterminate them. Today Western people must become aware that during the last
century, their foreign policy has contributed to the present crisis. As Imam
Rauf shows in these pages, by supporting undemocratic regimes in the Middle
East, for example, Britain and America have not only failed to live up to their
own ideals, but have unwittingly fostered the growth of extremism. Nothing can
excuse the massacre of September 11th or the suicide bombing in
Israel and Palestine. Imam Rauf explains the causes of the malaise and abuse of
religion in some parts of the Muslim world. Western people rightly demand that
Muslims become more openly self-critical, but they cannot therefore turn a blind
eye to their own shortcomings.
Imam
Rauf’s book has a positive message. It helps Muslims and Western peoples to see
a way out of the present impasse, in which atrocity leads to retaliation, attack
to counter attack, to pre-emptive strike and a new spate of terror. If we are to
break out of this vicious cycle, we must learn not simply to tolerate but to
appreciate one another. The West has lost much of the admiration that it enjoyed
in the days of Muhammad Abdu, partly because of its own misguided policies. In
the middle of the twentieth century, the Canadian scholar Wilfred Cantwell Smith
issued a solemn warning. A healthy, functioning Islam is crucial for world
peace, because for centuries it helped Muslims to cultivate values and ideals
that we in the West also share, because they spring from a common tradition.
Muslims must learn to accommodate the West, and not fall prey to the lure of
extremist rejection of Western power. But the peoples of the West must also
realise “that they share the planet not with inferiors but with equals.” If they
fail, Smith concluded, both “will have failed to come to terms with the
actualities of the twentieth century.” The
blazing towers of the World Trade Center symbolize, perhaps, our collective
failure to pass this test. This book shows that the only possible way forward is
by the assiduous cultivation of mutual respect. It should be read, but then ~
even more important ~ it should be acted upon.