Islam in this age

I have what could politely be termed a slight mistrust over religion. A more precise (but less desirable) term is that I carry a flaming hatred for it. To be honest, I can’t abide anything that puts a man on his knees, but my biggest suspicion is with the supposed “enlightened leaders” of religion itself: These men who parade around a dais like a peacock missing so many feathers, screaming for the unrestrained submission of the masses. And the masses are usually more than obliging. People who claim to speak for God need to shut their pie-hole. There may indeed be a God, but he isn’t returning any phone calls these days (which I find more than a little suspicious considering the international chat rooms he used to host back in the days of Abraham). And if HE is up there, he sure as hell doesn’t need a sagging skin suit with hair by brylcreem to do the speech-prep to swindle his followers out of junior’s college fund. I REALLY despise the idea of a holy book dictated by God, unchangeable and all-knowing. It’s like a Royal Flush/One Size Fits All/Get Out of Jail Free card: “Look, God himself said it! Who are you to oppose it??!?!”

Hey, don’t get pissed, if there’s an example of such in your religion, I OWN YOU.

Lately, I have been investigating Islam. This wasn’t by choice, at first I really wasn’t interested. But then a funny thing happened: In the course of one year I met & befriended half a dozen people who were Muslims. And, they were all different. Radically different. One has become a sort of teacher to me, one is my brother in all but blood, and still another is a guy who has the best Turkish coffee in Seattle. They are all my friends.

Like most people in America, I knew exactly two things about Islam before 9-11:

1: It was from the Middle East
2: It was similar to Judaism

After the planes hit, I had more forced on me about Islam than I ever wanted to know in 10 lifetimes, all of it bad. With the invasion of Iraq, the war in Iran, terrorists out the yang and Muslims worldwide shooting Americans and each other, I couldn’t take a crap without hearing the latest casualty tally, or a new Fatwa issued for some woman who just wanted to see where she was going. And as we traveled deeper into the new millennium we were treated to an all-out smorgasbord of global despair. In this age of reason all around us fear, superstition and hatred are growing into a bumper crop, and since Americans know next to nothing about Islam, well, you know the saying: That which we don’t understand, we must destroy.

It doesn’t matter how much information is readily available on the web right now, ask any American on the street what Islam is and there’s a 75% chance he will say “The Terrorist Religion”. This isn’t particularly the fault of Islam itself, but killing people will get you noticed INSTANTLY, whereas prayers and sermons take time. But the kind of notice you get is sort of the same type a hornet in a room full of hairdressers gets: Sooner or later, someone will crush you into dust and a memory.

Islam is still deeply connected to its Arabic tribal roots, and Pre-Islam Arabic customs were interwoven with many Islamic teachings, and have now become unquestionable dogma, even when they defy common sense. I won’t list them here, this isn’t a “Slam Islam” post. (I’ll do one of those later). You can find the nuances and examples yourself with a little Google work. What I want to say is that you can’t categorize or define exactly WHAT “The Biggest Problem” is with Islam, like all other religions Islam isn’t “One”. There is no Caliphate. Again, like every other religion, Islam has split into several divisions, each one racing feverishly to achieve “Alpha Wolf” status. And of course, each one claims mutual exclusivity and an audience with the Deity. I guess otherwise, people wouldn’t follow them.

Last night I was flipping through the channels trying to avoid any more news about the Virginia Tech shooting, and was halfway through a bite of pizza when I heard this monologue:

"My name is Irshad Manji. I can't show you where I live. My home has bullet-proof windows and a lock on the mailbox to prevent letter bombs. My journey is about speaking out against injustice, no matter who's offended. As a Muslim, my faith is unshakable. But my conscience is being shaken. Terrorists are killing civilians under the banner of Islam. I won't abandon my God - or my voice."

Whoa. This might be interesting. Some chick with spikey hair sans hijab in a mosque.

Let’s just see what this is.

I had stumbled on a broadcast of “Faith without Fear”, a documentary/commentary on Islam by a brave radical young muslima, Irshad Manji. Check out her website at Muslim-Refusnik

Irshad Manji is one of the most outspoken Muslim women in the world today. A product of a Muslim household in a Western society (she is an Iranian born and raised in Canada) Irshad’s documentary on Islam today and the state of Muslimas all over the world is thought provoking and radical, to say the very least. In fact, I couldn’t stop watching. The documentary was educational, particularly when Irshad speaks of the golden age of Islam. As the crew toured southern Spain, I viewed with wonder the mosques and libraries the Muslims built, and listened with awe to the wisdom of Averroes, a Muslim philosopher with views on modernizing Islam, and who was largely responsible for the commentaries and translations of Aristotle from Arabic. You cannot envision the splendor that was Al-Andalus, and not be humbled by the achievements of early Islamic influence on Medieval Europe.

As well as exploring the facets and faces of Islam, Irshad promotes a source of hope for the future she has discovered within her own religion, one that many Imams hope you never hear about. It’s called Ijtihad.

Ijtihad (pronounced “ij-tee-had”) is Islam’s own tradition of independent thinking. It sounds suspiciously like “jihad”, because they come from the same Arabic root word for “Struggle”. In the early centuries of Islam and the spirit of ijtihad, 135 schools of thought thrived. Inspired by ijtihad, Muslims gave the world inventions from the astrolabe to the university. So much of what we consider "western" pop culture came from Muslims: the guitar, mocha coffee, even the ultra-Spanish expression "Ole!" (which has its root in the Arabic word for God, "Allah").

Toward the end of the 11th century, the "gates of ijtihad" were closed for entirely political reasons. During this time, the Muslim empire from Iraq in the east to Spain in the west was going through a series of internal upheavals. Dissident denominations were popping up and declaring their own runaway governments, which posed a threat to the main Muslim leader -- the caliph. Based in Baghdad, the caliph cracked down and closed ranks. Remember those 135 schools of thought mentioned above? They were deliberately reduced to four conservative schools of thought. This led to a rigid reading of the Koran as well as to a series of legal opinions -- fatwas -- that scholars could no longer overturn or even question, but could now only imitate. To this very day, imitation of medieval norms has trumped innovation in Islam.

Manji probably isn’t the spokesman modern Islam would have chosen to represent them. Tough noogies. As I said in a previous post, it’s an easy thing to condemn the dreams of others. More difficult to take action yourself. If you don’t like what she says, dammit, SAY SOMETHING YOURSELF. It’s refreshing to see someone publicly matching the terrorist representation (and they are WELL represented, no question there) with an equally reaching voice in the name of peace and Islam.

Irshad, you have my attention.

Of course, the documentary was no more than 3 minutes over when Discovery Channel threw up a stark, bleak documentary on Islam and the terrorist links in Indonesia. Which, since I am the whitest Indonesian around these parts, I had to watch as well.

Focusing on the terrorist attacks in Bali and the Sharia movement in Java, the documentary (whose name I have forgotten) explores people like the fecal Abu Bakar Bashir, whose hatred for all human life is second only to his hatred for his own people. The camera zones in on his clearly insane image as he speaks “There is no such thing as Democracy, it does not exist. There is only Allahcracy. There is no nobler life than to die as a martyr for jihad. None. The highest deed in Islam is Jihad. If we commit to Jihad, we can neglect other deeds, even fasting and prayer”. This is a far cry from Irshad Manji’s reading of the Koranic verse “The ink of the scholar is more valuable than the blood of the martyr”, and I can only imagine it serves it’s supposed purpose to remind America that Islam cannot be trusted. The vast difference between the two points of view are so unbelievable, I had to turn the second documentary off.

There’s only so much overwhelming political/religious crap I can fill my head with.

So, what did I learn from all this? Well, I can turn on the news again & see quite clearly that we as a species still have a long way to go. I still see Hamas with that constipated look in their eyes longing for blood and death. I can see President Bush looking confused as ever, and all too ready to leap to the wrong conclusion in a manner that will cost us another million bodies and another million broken homes. I can see the Muslim apologists saying “Tell us something we don’t know”, but blaming America in the same breath. I see the world still unsure as to which direction to go from here. I see Israel hoping to sweep the whole thing under the rug as if nothing happened, similar to the way some people are trying to sweep the Holocaust away from history. I see young men dying foolishly for nothing. I see the world spiraling wildly from one side to the other, as if it’s trying to shake this object insanity off the planet’s surface.

Oh, Blue Planet, save yourself.

There can be no “Unified world under Islam”, any more than there could be a “Unified world under Catholicism". What a horrible thought. I have no other choices but Allah? I don’t want to pray 5 times a day, nor will I give up pork chops or beer. I pray to a squid. My wife can wear whatever she wants, and that’s how I want it. Surely, I will fight and kill to stop this “conversion” from happening to me.

Surely, others feel the same as I do.

Do you see what I mean? The price of living in a diverse society is adaptation and integration. To do otherwise is to invite destruction. To exist in a society yet live under different rules and alienated from the community you are in merely sets the stage for the next race/religious war. I have said it before, you cannot demand unequivocal acceptance and claim mutual exclusivity in the same breath.
This is not to say “abandon Islam” or forsake the teachings of the Koran. It IS to say that the Koran is not the only thing under heaven. If it was, well, it would be the only thing under heaven. Do you understand? You either join with the body, or you will forever be treated as a cancer. This is the law of nature, you can look anywhere and find it yourself, and it reminds me of Voltaire's famous quote:

“Go into the London Stock Exchange - a more respectable place than many a court - and you will find representatives of all nations gathered there for the service of mankind. There the Jew, the Mohammedan and the Christian deal with each other as if of the same religion, and give the name of infidel only to those who go bankrupt. There the Presbyterian trusts the Anabaptist and the Anglican accepts the Quaker's promise.”

May we come again to peace and the age of reason in the time of man.