By Susan Saint Sing, St. Anthony Messenger Press, 103 pages.
Reports of God's death have been greatly exaggerated. The symbols of Christianity endure.
Basic Christian art, such as that of the Middle Ages or of Eastern Orthodox icons, holds a power over people that contemporary abstract art does not. Medieval art was for the people and their religious edification, if not education.
Susan Saint Sing writes about a piece of art when art was of, by, and for the people - democratic art that affected and continues to affect countless people. The San Damiano Cross is the Cross through which Saint Francis of Assisi experienced a great deal of his conversion; Jesus on that cross instructed him to rebuild his church.
Saint Sing offers insights into Saint Francis and his era with her own spirituality and theological knowledge, thereby showing how art can have a positive, powerful influence on the masses. When art is about something important like God, its message can endure through the centuries.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
A Short History of the Mass
By Alfred McBride, St. Anthony Messenger Press, 128 pages.
Father Alfred McBride's A Short History of the Mass emphasizes the constancy of the Mass throughout centuries of profound change, from ancient, pre-Nicene Creed Christians, towards and through the Middle Ages and Reformation periods and into the turbulent modern epoch.
A strength of the book is that the author does not try to present a Eucharistic celebration that stayed the same in form throughout the centuries. Instead, he shows that even though the liturgy did undergo well-guided and thought-out changes, the underlying spirituality and theology has been unchanging. This is an important achievement because many religious writers and historians emphasize discontinuity.
McBride portrays different Eucharistic practices of various eras as a positive thing: During the Middle Ages, “As members of the assembly felt alienated from the celebrant and the community, a sense of privacy arose. A need developed to find personal satisfaction in a religious experience apart from the Mass... Worshipers became preoccupied with relics, processions, pilgrimages, attachments to favorite saints, acts in which they could invest themselves and find some intimacy with God.”
This sounds a little critical of medieval Christians and the Church, yet the author is simply pointing out that when society changed more quickly than the religious institutions, people would find a way to live their faith, and that the appropriate institutional changes eventually came.
Father Alfred McBride's A Short History of the Mass emphasizes the constancy of the Mass throughout centuries of profound change, from ancient, pre-Nicene Creed Christians, towards and through the Middle Ages and Reformation periods and into the turbulent modern epoch.
A strength of the book is that the author does not try to present a Eucharistic celebration that stayed the same in form throughout the centuries. Instead, he shows that even though the liturgy did undergo well-guided and thought-out changes, the underlying spirituality and theology has been unchanging. This is an important achievement because many religious writers and historians emphasize discontinuity.
McBride portrays different Eucharistic practices of various eras as a positive thing: During the Middle Ages, “As members of the assembly felt alienated from the celebrant and the community, a sense of privacy arose. A need developed to find personal satisfaction in a religious experience apart from the Mass... Worshipers became preoccupied with relics, processions, pilgrimages, attachments to favorite saints, acts in which they could invest themselves and find some intimacy with God.”
This sounds a little critical of medieval Christians and the Church, yet the author is simply pointing out that when society changed more quickly than the religious institutions, people would find a way to live their faith, and that the appropriate institutional changes eventually came.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Personhood in Islam: Harmony in Seyyed Hossein Nasr's Anthropology
By Brian Welter
For Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Islam teaches harmony. Unity, harmony, and the carrying on of tradition form the focal point of Nasr's writing, the story behind the story. His view of man and woman, following an Islamic perspective, distances itself from the Western feminist assertion that male and female are an enmeshed, undifferentiated sameness, and therefore equal, to a vision of women and men in harmony with each other. Likewise, Nasr's view of science, knowledge, and nature invoke harmony. Rather than dominating nature, science and knowledge should bring us into closer contact with God. Islamic science should be a spiritual and science that unites rather than objectifies. The Islamic economy should bring about harmony rather than fierce, profit-making competition. It should build family and community rather than destroy centuries-old human ecology and traditions, as Western-influenced capitalism is presently doing.
Yet how well does Seyyed Hossein Nasr represent Islam? Each chapter will discuss the basic arguments offered by Nasr, interwoven with possible objections and alternative views by contemporary or twentieth-century Islamic thinkers such as Muhammed and Seyyed Qutub, Tariq Ramadan, and others. This will offer some possible assessments of Nasr's teaching from within Islam. How, then, does Nasr transmit his religious tradition of harmony to this West and the wider world? Do other Muslims writers have similar thoughts on the dignity of men and women?
Key to understanding Nasr's thinking is his attempt to show his Western readers that they are wrong in judging Islam as backwards, intolerant, and corrupt. He envisions an elegant religion with a highly developed and highly refined spirituality. On the one hand, he argues that Westerners have misrepresented and misunderstood Islam and its treatment of, for instance, women. Head coverings for women is not Islamic so much as it is middle eastern, something Christian and Jewish women have done for centuries. He also points out that until recently, Catholic women in the West covered their hair when they attended Mass. On the other hand, Nasr challenges some Western criticism of Islam by challenging Western values. He goes so far as to argue that the West is unbalanced on issues like individualism, whereas Islam balances the individual's and the community's rights. On the issue of Islam being backwards, he points out that dynamic, greedy Western science, which objectivizes and pulverizes nature in its search for profit and control of the environment, is leading us to a dead end, and something like an Islamic science is necessary. Islamic knowledge is not about power but is seen as a Muslim's duty, as knowledge leads one to the truth. Islamic science, Nasr argues, would be holistic, taking into account the teachings of the Quran, treating nature as God's gift to humans, to be cherished rather than used. In fact, he believes that much of the West's and the world's problems could be solved by Islam.
Ch. 1. Dignity and Rights: Psychology and Spirituality
In Islam, what is the worth of the individual outside of the community? Does his value only consist in his adherence to the community? Seyyed Hossein Nasr has written extensively on the person and on nature, from his interpretation of Islam, and often to a Western audience that is firmly ensconced in a tradition of individual rights and the diminishment of collective identity, rights, and traditions.
Nasr avoids an entitlement view of rights for the individual. He finds human dignity by locating God in the heart of the person. The Sufi mystic ultimately sees the world with God's eyes. Yet this comes through the arduous spiritual journey. In The Garden of Truth Nasr points to the Universal or Perfect Man as being central to Sufism, the esoteric life of Isam. He cites the French Islamist Louis Massignon, calling the notion of Universal Man “'the privileged myth of Islam.'”1 As a scholar anchored in Islam but open to universalist truths, Nasr quickly turns the discussion of this myth to the Greeks, and the idea of anthropos teleios. He surmises that Neoplatonism could very likely have been the source of this myth, but that, given the universal nature of the Universal Man, Sufis did not rely totally on the Greeks: “But even if the Sufis used certain theoretical formulations drawn from such sources, the reality they were describing did not come from earlier philosophical texts. The Universal Man is a reality independent of any philosophical descriptions of it. On the basis of the Quran and the teachings of the Prophet, the Sufis were able to experience the reality of the Universal Man.”2 In other words, as regarding other topics, Nasr seems to be pointing to a universally-accessible natural law, although for a variety of issues he often uses the term archteype.
Nasr's Islamic approach parallels the Christian belief that human dignity rises from the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, though Nasr does not indicate that this dignity also follows from the fact that we are made in the image of God, which is a cornerstone of Jewish and Christian anthropology: “The grandeur of the human state is not in that human beings can make complicated machines or conceptualize complex theories, but in that men and women are worthy of being addressed by God and being considered worthy of receiving His revelation and grace.”3 In a nutshell, Nasr's Islamic viewpoint does follow the Christian understanding that human dignity comes from the nature of God and the nature of human-divine relations: “To be human is to be capable of hearing the Word of God and being led back to Him.”4 Nasr pinpoints the individual's priestly function as being particularly noteworthy and full of dignity: “The fact that in the Islamic rites each Muslim – man and woman – stands directly before God in the daily prayers without any intermediary indicates from the Sufi point of view not only that each Muslim has a priestly function but also that there is a nexus linking each soul directly to God.”5
Ch. 2. Male and Female; Sexuality
Rather than equality-through-sameness, Nasr offers a traditional Islamic vision of the dignity of women and men that encourages harmony in the household and in society. Yet for Nasr the Islamic tradition is more well-rounded, more tolerant of human realities, than simply offering one vision: “As in the Far Eastern tradition, where males and females possess both yin and yang, but in different proportions, so in the Islamic perspective the male is not simply equated with the active principle and the female with the passive, for both the male and the female contain both elements withing their nature.”6 Nasr here offers an Islamic humanism that places human needs in the center. Yet having said that, Nasr does believe that the differences between men and women have to do with the nature of God. Anthropology and theology are linked: “The male and the female polarization is an essential part of the mystery of God's creation.”7 The yin-yang nature of the relationship is a relationship of complementarity, where together they form a circle of “perfection, totality, and completion. That is why the male and the female both vie with each other and are attracted to each other. The alchemy of marriage and sexual union has the power to transmute and complete each side through the realization of both complementarity and wholeness through a love that transcends the two sides and yet encompasses them, a love that is rooted in God.”8 Note here the traditional alchemical language, rather than the typical psycho-social academic verbiage. Nasr explains the tradition of Islam using traditional language. Though trained as a Western scientist and historian of science, he explains his tradition from within the confines of that tradition rather than from the more scientific and social scientific Western view. God is intimately involved in this love: “The bond between two hearts is made by God ... and the love of one spouse for the other is an earthly reflection of the love of the soul for God, although the male and female forms of spirituality are not the same.”9 Thus love and complementarity draw male and female together.
Certainly, Nasr follows the traditional Islamic teachings on sexuality. He argues that Christians are wrong in condemning the Prophet for having had many wives. With Christianity's traditional suspicion of sexuality in mind, Nasr notes that this has allowed Islam to see sexuality in a positive light, as a gift from God.10
In the important chapter of The Heart of Islam entitled “The Vision of Community and Society,” Nasr explains in some detail the place of women in Islamic society, and the harmonious relationship between men and women that Islam seeks. At the basis of this is justice. Islam is a religion of justice, so that any aspect of male-female relationships must conform to this pursuit. Neither men nor women can be oppressed. Nasr repeatedly points out that the Western view of Islam is erroneous, but also that Western notions of justice are not necessarily the only normative principle for justice. Islam is well within its right to establish its own norms. In fact, those norms, because beholden to God, are superior to those of the consumerist, religiously-skeptical West. That sense of justice, and of the entire relationship of harmony between men and women, is a spiritual path, he notes in The Heart of Islam: “The role of Islamic society has always been to make possible the attainment of virtue and the perfection of character,” with many Muslim authorities such as al-Farabi judging societies according to their success in fostering “this inner perfection of moral and spiritual qualities of the member of society. From the Islamic point of view, the value of a society before the eyes of God lies in its virtuous quality, its moral excellence, and not in power and wealth.”11
This challenges the Western feminist, power-based view of relationships and money. The family, and marriage itself, has become the enemy of women according to this view. Nasr's Islamic view, while also offering a critique of oppression, places much more trust in basic familial and marital relationships. Such human links are the basis of his view of Islamic society. Rather than the Western notion of freedom, he believes that humans come to their full humanity through relationships, through serving others. “The traditional structure of Islamic society is based not on quantitative equality, but on the reality of complementarity, although there are exceptions.”12 Here, Nasr outlines a traditional view, with the man as breadwinner and family protector, as the imam of the family. He is imam because his leadership comprises a spiritual role. Again, rather than the Western penchant for judging relationships according to power, money, credentials/merit, it is the spiritual value of relationships that define basic ties. He then paints a traditional picture of the Islamic woman, as the heart of family life, and not at all in competition with her husband: “The woman is the real mistress of the household, in which the husband is like a guest. Her primary duty has been seen as that of raising of children and attending to their earliest education, as well as being the basic buttress of the family. Like all traditional societies, Islam has honored the work of homemaker and mother as being of the highest value, to the extent that the Prophet said, 'Heaven lies under the feet of mothers.'”13 Femininity, like masculinity, has in its deepest characteristic a spiritual reality. Male and female are the roles that Islam lays out for them. Nasr contrasts this spiritual view of femininity and motherhood with the Western, materialist, feminist view: “Islamic society has never thought that working in an office is of a higher order of importance for society than bringing up one's children.”14
Ch. 3.The Economy, Work and Leisure
What is the role of work and the economy in Islam? How do they promote harmony? The economy and work are closely related to the basic masculinity and femininity of Islamic male and female. In an Islamic society, Nasr argues, the economy is structured around family and not solely around making money. This allowed for traditional motherhood: “an economic system was not created in the cities, where by and large, but not always, the wife was not forced for economic reasons to leave the home and her children during the day. From the Islamic point of view, the right of a child to a full-time mother rather than a nanny or day-care provider is more essential than many rights held dear today.”15 Nasr spends some time discussing the importance of the work of homemakers to the Islamic family. As the center of the family, the mother's work should ideally be at home. Economy therefore has spiritual dimensions; work is about building the family and the community, and not about career attainment or making huge amounts of money. The economy is at the service of the family. People work to build family and community. Work is therefore not an issue of the individual, but of the family and community.
Ch. 4. Community and Hierarchy
For Nasr, the world is necessarily hierarchical. God created the universe, and humans and spiritual beings, as well as animals and minerals and all else. God is the supreme ruler of all, and humans occupy a special place.
Nasr spells out clearly that a good community is one that allows for the Islamically good life. It should allow “its members to live the good life, in the religious sense, based on moral principles. It [the Quran] judges a community to be good to the degree that it reflects the constant presence of the Transcendent Dimension in human life and is based on spiritual and religious values.”16
Nasr equally clearly spells out just what happens to communities unfaithful to holy moral living: “the decay and destruction of communities or nations has happened, according to the Quran, not because of loss of wealth or economic power or even military defeat, but because of moral corruption and straying from the religious norms willed by God for the community in question.”17 Here Nasr raises the sense of hierarchy, with God over top all communities and individuals, who must follow His rule: “The earth belongs to God, and He allows deserving communities or nations to rule over it as long as they deserve to do so. Once they lose their moral authority, they are replaced by God with other communities or nations.”18 Harmony comes from following God's law, and communities that follow this law exist and prosper for long periods of time.
Nasr avoids setting up the problematic battle between community and the individual. Such a duality is false; the human is both individual and part of the community. “There is no doubt that Islam meant to create a community based on justice, one in which the pursuit of the Divine Law was made possible, not just injunctions for private behavior. In the debate between those who claim the primacy of society and those who emphasize the primal significance of the individual, Islam takes a middle course and believes that this polarization is in fact based on a false dichotomy. There is no society without the individual; nor can the individual survive without society. The social nature of the human being us part of the wisdom of God's creation,” Nasr writes in The Heart of Islam, turning to the Quran (58:7).19
Nasr's view of Islam locates the holy in both the community and the individual, without one superseding the other: “He [God] is present in human community as He is within the heart or center of the individual.”20
Nasr does emphasize that God's judges the individual, not the community as a whole, for entrance into salvation or damnation. While God can judge a bad community in this lifetime, in the next, a community will not face this type of judgment: “Only individual souls do so. Hence our personal responsibility before God remains, in whichever community we happen to live.”21
Ch. 5. Creation
“Esoterically speaking, all things by virtue of their existence, which is ultimately the Divine Breath, praise God, as the Quran asserts. They speak in silence of the mystery of existence, but most of us do not have the necessary power of hearing to grasp their silent words.”22
For Nasr, creation and humans, and God, who created the first two, are all linked through the dynamic mystery of God: “Although from one point of view creation is old, from another it is fresh and new. God's act of existentiation is ever present, and in fact existence is not so much a state as an act, as the existentiating command of God, 'Be!' This doctrine is of great significance not only for cosmology but also for the spiritual life.”23 Creation's youth is caused by the truth that God constantly sustains it, keeping creation in existence. Without this support, creation would cease to exist. This enchanted view of the universe, while not necessarily excluding the laws of Western science, demands something more than laws of physics and Darwinian evolution. Physics itself is an expression of God's support. Physics and the laws Western scientists have discovered depend on divine sustenance. Evolution too depends on God's sustenance; it exists because God wills it to exist. God is prior to and independent of physics and biology, and the laws discovered therein. This is the Islamic or at least Sufi re-enchantment of the world. God's generosity to creation is immediate and intimate: “In a deeper sense, every tree that we observe in the garden comes freshly from God's creative act.”24 Education is a spiritual journey, and the teacher is therefore a life teacher, a teacher of wisdom. This evokes the meaning of the Catholic terms “spiritual formation,” and lectio divina, both of which place spiritual growth above the need for a heavily critical outlook on life and the literary or religious canon and tradition. Education, for Nasr, is the guardian and transmitter of tradition, of spiritual and communal life, rather than about new discovery or revolutionary, radical thinking. This follows from his depiction of Islam as the middle way, something he also admires in the Greeks.
Ch. 6. Philosophy as Wisdom
The wisdom and teachings of the Quran govern what is valuable and not valuable knowledge. Knowledge foremost brings the believer closer to God. As such, knowledge is a lifestyle aid. It gives us the knowledge of the heart. Nasr writes at length about the intellect, which he situates in the heart. The knowledge of the heart – spiritual knowledge in keeping with Islam – governs the knowledge of the head. Science, in other words, falls under the knowledge hierarchy. Knowledge is subject to hierarch; otherwise, it would not lead to wisdom, but to the chaos of modern Western science and technology, which, Nasr repeatedly observes, is killing the planet, as well as the human traditions that dwell on it.
Ch.7. Science, and Knowledge
“Since in Islam the revelation came in the form of a sacred book, many Muslim sages have looked upon nature as a book of God...”25
Nasr portrays Islamic science and knowledge as holistic and unified around the oneness of the religion, a practice personified in the hakim. This knowledge strives for wisdom rather than for the Western-based need for advancement and the domination of the material world. Since Islamic knowledge is really a spiritual striving with God always on the mind, education and knowledge play a central role in the sacred. Knowledge in Islam is sacred, and the hakim is a kind of sacred man.26
Nasr highlights the spiritual and interpersonal nature of Islamic education, which does not seek to cultivate, above all, freedom of thought and a hyper-critical outlook, but which instead emphasizes the human dimensions of community, teacher-student relations, and knowledge itself. Knowledge builds community: “The transmission of knowledge has always had a highly personal aspect, in that the student has sought a particular master rather than an institution, and has submitted himself to that chosen teacher wholeheartedly. The relation that has always existed between the teacher and the student has been a highly intimate one, in which the student reveres the teacher as a father and obeys him, even in personal matters not connected with his formal studies. The atmosphere of these schools has been very relaxed and informal, without there being any great academic or financial pressure upon the student.”27 Nasr then ends this train of thought by gently though forcefully criticizing the modern, Western path: “Nor has there ever been the strong incentive to receive a diploma and then seek to benefit from its social and economic advantages, prevalent in so many modern educational institutions.”28 Education, for Nasr, is a sacred, personal endeavor, the goals of which are spiritual growth and community bonds: “That is why a person may often remain a student all his life, mastering one subject after another and going from one teacher to the next.”29
Ch. 8. God and Being / Ontology
Natural law: an Islamic natural law, or one too in debt to Christian law. Aristotle plays a big role in Nasr's philosophy. He is unafraid to borrow at length from the Greeks in general.
Nasr links God to the person. The individual is nothing without God: “Human beings qua human beings cannot enter the Divine sanctuary, but there is within us a reality that is already Divine. To be fully human is to realize our perfect servitude and to remove the veil of separative existence through spiritual practice so that God, transcendent and immanent within us, can utter 'I'.'”30
“The great mystery of existence is that it veils God by what is none other than Him... This truth is explicitly stated in the Quran.”31 Tells a Sufi story to illustrate: “...The moral of this story is that the in-depth understanding of the truth that God veils Himself by what is none other than God can come only from spiritual realization.”32
Bibliography
Fakhry, Majid,
Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Mysticism, A Short Introduction.
Gülen, M. Fethullah,
Khomeini, Sayyid Ruhollah Mousavi,
Nasr, Seyyed Hossein,
A Young Muslim's Guide to the Modern World.
The Garden of Truth.
The Heart of Islam.
Ideals and Realities of Islam.
Islamic Philosophy from the Origin to the Present.
Knowledge and the Sacred.
Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis in Modern Man.
Religion and the Order of Nature.
Science and Civilization in Islam.
Ozak, Muzaffer,
Irshad – Wisdom of a Sufi Master.
The Unveiling of Love.
Ramadan, Tariq,
Islam, the West, and the Challenges of Modernity.
Western Muslims and the Future of Islam.
Qutb, Muhammed,
Qutb, Seyyid,
Social Justice in Islam.
For Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Islam teaches harmony. Unity, harmony, and the carrying on of tradition form the focal point of Nasr's writing, the story behind the story. His view of man and woman, following an Islamic perspective, distances itself from the Western feminist assertion that male and female are an enmeshed, undifferentiated sameness, and therefore equal, to a vision of women and men in harmony with each other. Likewise, Nasr's view of science, knowledge, and nature invoke harmony. Rather than dominating nature, science and knowledge should bring us into closer contact with God. Islamic science should be a spiritual and science that unites rather than objectifies. The Islamic economy should bring about harmony rather than fierce, profit-making competition. It should build family and community rather than destroy centuries-old human ecology and traditions, as Western-influenced capitalism is presently doing.
Yet how well does Seyyed Hossein Nasr represent Islam? Each chapter will discuss the basic arguments offered by Nasr, interwoven with possible objections and alternative views by contemporary or twentieth-century Islamic thinkers such as Muhammed and Seyyed Qutub, Tariq Ramadan, and others. This will offer some possible assessments of Nasr's teaching from within Islam. How, then, does Nasr transmit his religious tradition of harmony to this West and the wider world? Do other Muslims writers have similar thoughts on the dignity of men and women?
Key to understanding Nasr's thinking is his attempt to show his Western readers that they are wrong in judging Islam as backwards, intolerant, and corrupt. He envisions an elegant religion with a highly developed and highly refined spirituality. On the one hand, he argues that Westerners have misrepresented and misunderstood Islam and its treatment of, for instance, women. Head coverings for women is not Islamic so much as it is middle eastern, something Christian and Jewish women have done for centuries. He also points out that until recently, Catholic women in the West covered their hair when they attended Mass. On the other hand, Nasr challenges some Western criticism of Islam by challenging Western values. He goes so far as to argue that the West is unbalanced on issues like individualism, whereas Islam balances the individual's and the community's rights. On the issue of Islam being backwards, he points out that dynamic, greedy Western science, which objectivizes and pulverizes nature in its search for profit and control of the environment, is leading us to a dead end, and something like an Islamic science is necessary. Islamic knowledge is not about power but is seen as a Muslim's duty, as knowledge leads one to the truth. Islamic science, Nasr argues, would be holistic, taking into account the teachings of the Quran, treating nature as God's gift to humans, to be cherished rather than used. In fact, he believes that much of the West's and the world's problems could be solved by Islam.
Ch. 1. Dignity and Rights: Psychology and Spirituality
In Islam, what is the worth of the individual outside of the community? Does his value only consist in his adherence to the community? Seyyed Hossein Nasr has written extensively on the person and on nature, from his interpretation of Islam, and often to a Western audience that is firmly ensconced in a tradition of individual rights and the diminishment of collective identity, rights, and traditions.
Nasr avoids an entitlement view of rights for the individual. He finds human dignity by locating God in the heart of the person. The Sufi mystic ultimately sees the world with God's eyes. Yet this comes through the arduous spiritual journey. In The Garden of Truth Nasr points to the Universal or Perfect Man as being central to Sufism, the esoteric life of Isam. He cites the French Islamist Louis Massignon, calling the notion of Universal Man “'the privileged myth of Islam.'”1 As a scholar anchored in Islam but open to universalist truths, Nasr quickly turns the discussion of this myth to the Greeks, and the idea of anthropos teleios. He surmises that Neoplatonism could very likely have been the source of this myth, but that, given the universal nature of the Universal Man, Sufis did not rely totally on the Greeks: “But even if the Sufis used certain theoretical formulations drawn from such sources, the reality they were describing did not come from earlier philosophical texts. The Universal Man is a reality independent of any philosophical descriptions of it. On the basis of the Quran and the teachings of the Prophet, the Sufis were able to experience the reality of the Universal Man.”2 In other words, as regarding other topics, Nasr seems to be pointing to a universally-accessible natural law, although for a variety of issues he often uses the term archteype.
Nasr's Islamic approach parallels the Christian belief that human dignity rises from the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, though Nasr does not indicate that this dignity also follows from the fact that we are made in the image of God, which is a cornerstone of Jewish and Christian anthropology: “The grandeur of the human state is not in that human beings can make complicated machines or conceptualize complex theories, but in that men and women are worthy of being addressed by God and being considered worthy of receiving His revelation and grace.”3 In a nutshell, Nasr's Islamic viewpoint does follow the Christian understanding that human dignity comes from the nature of God and the nature of human-divine relations: “To be human is to be capable of hearing the Word of God and being led back to Him.”4 Nasr pinpoints the individual's priestly function as being particularly noteworthy and full of dignity: “The fact that in the Islamic rites each Muslim – man and woman – stands directly before God in the daily prayers without any intermediary indicates from the Sufi point of view not only that each Muslim has a priestly function but also that there is a nexus linking each soul directly to God.”5
Ch. 2. Male and Female; Sexuality
Rather than equality-through-sameness, Nasr offers a traditional Islamic vision of the dignity of women and men that encourages harmony in the household and in society. Yet for Nasr the Islamic tradition is more well-rounded, more tolerant of human realities, than simply offering one vision: “As in the Far Eastern tradition, where males and females possess both yin and yang, but in different proportions, so in the Islamic perspective the male is not simply equated with the active principle and the female with the passive, for both the male and the female contain both elements withing their nature.”6 Nasr here offers an Islamic humanism that places human needs in the center. Yet having said that, Nasr does believe that the differences between men and women have to do with the nature of God. Anthropology and theology are linked: “The male and the female polarization is an essential part of the mystery of God's creation.”7 The yin-yang nature of the relationship is a relationship of complementarity, where together they form a circle of “perfection, totality, and completion. That is why the male and the female both vie with each other and are attracted to each other. The alchemy of marriage and sexual union has the power to transmute and complete each side through the realization of both complementarity and wholeness through a love that transcends the two sides and yet encompasses them, a love that is rooted in God.”8 Note here the traditional alchemical language, rather than the typical psycho-social academic verbiage. Nasr explains the tradition of Islam using traditional language. Though trained as a Western scientist and historian of science, he explains his tradition from within the confines of that tradition rather than from the more scientific and social scientific Western view. God is intimately involved in this love: “The bond between two hearts is made by God ... and the love of one spouse for the other is an earthly reflection of the love of the soul for God, although the male and female forms of spirituality are not the same.”9 Thus love and complementarity draw male and female together.
Certainly, Nasr follows the traditional Islamic teachings on sexuality. He argues that Christians are wrong in condemning the Prophet for having had many wives. With Christianity's traditional suspicion of sexuality in mind, Nasr notes that this has allowed Islam to see sexuality in a positive light, as a gift from God.10
In the important chapter of The Heart of Islam entitled “The Vision of Community and Society,” Nasr explains in some detail the place of women in Islamic society, and the harmonious relationship between men and women that Islam seeks. At the basis of this is justice. Islam is a religion of justice, so that any aspect of male-female relationships must conform to this pursuit. Neither men nor women can be oppressed. Nasr repeatedly points out that the Western view of Islam is erroneous, but also that Western notions of justice are not necessarily the only normative principle for justice. Islam is well within its right to establish its own norms. In fact, those norms, because beholden to God, are superior to those of the consumerist, religiously-skeptical West. That sense of justice, and of the entire relationship of harmony between men and women, is a spiritual path, he notes in The Heart of Islam: “The role of Islamic society has always been to make possible the attainment of virtue and the perfection of character,” with many Muslim authorities such as al-Farabi judging societies according to their success in fostering “this inner perfection of moral and spiritual qualities of the member of society. From the Islamic point of view, the value of a society before the eyes of God lies in its virtuous quality, its moral excellence, and not in power and wealth.”11
This challenges the Western feminist, power-based view of relationships and money. The family, and marriage itself, has become the enemy of women according to this view. Nasr's Islamic view, while also offering a critique of oppression, places much more trust in basic familial and marital relationships. Such human links are the basis of his view of Islamic society. Rather than the Western notion of freedom, he believes that humans come to their full humanity through relationships, through serving others. “The traditional structure of Islamic society is based not on quantitative equality, but on the reality of complementarity, although there are exceptions.”12 Here, Nasr outlines a traditional view, with the man as breadwinner and family protector, as the imam of the family. He is imam because his leadership comprises a spiritual role. Again, rather than the Western penchant for judging relationships according to power, money, credentials/merit, it is the spiritual value of relationships that define basic ties. He then paints a traditional picture of the Islamic woman, as the heart of family life, and not at all in competition with her husband: “The woman is the real mistress of the household, in which the husband is like a guest. Her primary duty has been seen as that of raising of children and attending to their earliest education, as well as being the basic buttress of the family. Like all traditional societies, Islam has honored the work of homemaker and mother as being of the highest value, to the extent that the Prophet said, 'Heaven lies under the feet of mothers.'”13 Femininity, like masculinity, has in its deepest characteristic a spiritual reality. Male and female are the roles that Islam lays out for them. Nasr contrasts this spiritual view of femininity and motherhood with the Western, materialist, feminist view: “Islamic society has never thought that working in an office is of a higher order of importance for society than bringing up one's children.”14
Ch. 3.The Economy, Work and Leisure
What is the role of work and the economy in Islam? How do they promote harmony? The economy and work are closely related to the basic masculinity and femininity of Islamic male and female. In an Islamic society, Nasr argues, the economy is structured around family and not solely around making money. This allowed for traditional motherhood: “an economic system was not created in the cities, where by and large, but not always, the wife was not forced for economic reasons to leave the home and her children during the day. From the Islamic point of view, the right of a child to a full-time mother rather than a nanny or day-care provider is more essential than many rights held dear today.”15 Nasr spends some time discussing the importance of the work of homemakers to the Islamic family. As the center of the family, the mother's work should ideally be at home. Economy therefore has spiritual dimensions; work is about building the family and the community, and not about career attainment or making huge amounts of money. The economy is at the service of the family. People work to build family and community. Work is therefore not an issue of the individual, but of the family and community.
Ch. 4. Community and Hierarchy
For Nasr, the world is necessarily hierarchical. God created the universe, and humans and spiritual beings, as well as animals and minerals and all else. God is the supreme ruler of all, and humans occupy a special place.
Nasr spells out clearly that a good community is one that allows for the Islamically good life. It should allow “its members to live the good life, in the religious sense, based on moral principles. It [the Quran] judges a community to be good to the degree that it reflects the constant presence of the Transcendent Dimension in human life and is based on spiritual and religious values.”16
Nasr equally clearly spells out just what happens to communities unfaithful to holy moral living: “the decay and destruction of communities or nations has happened, according to the Quran, not because of loss of wealth or economic power or even military defeat, but because of moral corruption and straying from the religious norms willed by God for the community in question.”17 Here Nasr raises the sense of hierarchy, with God over top all communities and individuals, who must follow His rule: “The earth belongs to God, and He allows deserving communities or nations to rule over it as long as they deserve to do so. Once they lose their moral authority, they are replaced by God with other communities or nations.”18 Harmony comes from following God's law, and communities that follow this law exist and prosper for long periods of time.
Nasr avoids setting up the problematic battle between community and the individual. Such a duality is false; the human is both individual and part of the community. “There is no doubt that Islam meant to create a community based on justice, one in which the pursuit of the Divine Law was made possible, not just injunctions for private behavior. In the debate between those who claim the primacy of society and those who emphasize the primal significance of the individual, Islam takes a middle course and believes that this polarization is in fact based on a false dichotomy. There is no society without the individual; nor can the individual survive without society. The social nature of the human being us part of the wisdom of God's creation,” Nasr writes in The Heart of Islam, turning to the Quran (58:7).19
Nasr's view of Islam locates the holy in both the community and the individual, without one superseding the other: “He [God] is present in human community as He is within the heart or center of the individual.”20
Nasr does emphasize that God's judges the individual, not the community as a whole, for entrance into salvation or damnation. While God can judge a bad community in this lifetime, in the next, a community will not face this type of judgment: “Only individual souls do so. Hence our personal responsibility before God remains, in whichever community we happen to live.”21
Ch. 5. Creation
“Esoterically speaking, all things by virtue of their existence, which is ultimately the Divine Breath, praise God, as the Quran asserts. They speak in silence of the mystery of existence, but most of us do not have the necessary power of hearing to grasp their silent words.”22
For Nasr, creation and humans, and God, who created the first two, are all linked through the dynamic mystery of God: “Although from one point of view creation is old, from another it is fresh and new. God's act of existentiation is ever present, and in fact existence is not so much a state as an act, as the existentiating command of God, 'Be!' This doctrine is of great significance not only for cosmology but also for the spiritual life.”23 Creation's youth is caused by the truth that God constantly sustains it, keeping creation in existence. Without this support, creation would cease to exist. This enchanted view of the universe, while not necessarily excluding the laws of Western science, demands something more than laws of physics and Darwinian evolution. Physics itself is an expression of God's support. Physics and the laws Western scientists have discovered depend on divine sustenance. Evolution too depends on God's sustenance; it exists because God wills it to exist. God is prior to and independent of physics and biology, and the laws discovered therein. This is the Islamic or at least Sufi re-enchantment of the world. God's generosity to creation is immediate and intimate: “In a deeper sense, every tree that we observe in the garden comes freshly from God's creative act.”24 Education is a spiritual journey, and the teacher is therefore a life teacher, a teacher of wisdom. This evokes the meaning of the Catholic terms “spiritual formation,” and lectio divina, both of which place spiritual growth above the need for a heavily critical outlook on life and the literary or religious canon and tradition. Education, for Nasr, is the guardian and transmitter of tradition, of spiritual and communal life, rather than about new discovery or revolutionary, radical thinking. This follows from his depiction of Islam as the middle way, something he also admires in the Greeks.
Ch. 6. Philosophy as Wisdom
The wisdom and teachings of the Quran govern what is valuable and not valuable knowledge. Knowledge foremost brings the believer closer to God. As such, knowledge is a lifestyle aid. It gives us the knowledge of the heart. Nasr writes at length about the intellect, which he situates in the heart. The knowledge of the heart – spiritual knowledge in keeping with Islam – governs the knowledge of the head. Science, in other words, falls under the knowledge hierarchy. Knowledge is subject to hierarch; otherwise, it would not lead to wisdom, but to the chaos of modern Western science and technology, which, Nasr repeatedly observes, is killing the planet, as well as the human traditions that dwell on it.
Ch.7. Science, and Knowledge
“Since in Islam the revelation came in the form of a sacred book, many Muslim sages have looked upon nature as a book of God...”25
Nasr portrays Islamic science and knowledge as holistic and unified around the oneness of the religion, a practice personified in the hakim. This knowledge strives for wisdom rather than for the Western-based need for advancement and the domination of the material world. Since Islamic knowledge is really a spiritual striving with God always on the mind, education and knowledge play a central role in the sacred. Knowledge in Islam is sacred, and the hakim is a kind of sacred man.26
Nasr highlights the spiritual and interpersonal nature of Islamic education, which does not seek to cultivate, above all, freedom of thought and a hyper-critical outlook, but which instead emphasizes the human dimensions of community, teacher-student relations, and knowledge itself. Knowledge builds community: “The transmission of knowledge has always had a highly personal aspect, in that the student has sought a particular master rather than an institution, and has submitted himself to that chosen teacher wholeheartedly. The relation that has always existed between the teacher and the student has been a highly intimate one, in which the student reveres the teacher as a father and obeys him, even in personal matters not connected with his formal studies. The atmosphere of these schools has been very relaxed and informal, without there being any great academic or financial pressure upon the student.”27 Nasr then ends this train of thought by gently though forcefully criticizing the modern, Western path: “Nor has there ever been the strong incentive to receive a diploma and then seek to benefit from its social and economic advantages, prevalent in so many modern educational institutions.”28 Education, for Nasr, is a sacred, personal endeavor, the goals of which are spiritual growth and community bonds: “That is why a person may often remain a student all his life, mastering one subject after another and going from one teacher to the next.”29
Ch. 8. God and Being / Ontology
Natural law: an Islamic natural law, or one too in debt to Christian law. Aristotle plays a big role in Nasr's philosophy. He is unafraid to borrow at length from the Greeks in general.
Nasr links God to the person. The individual is nothing without God: “Human beings qua human beings cannot enter the Divine sanctuary, but there is within us a reality that is already Divine. To be fully human is to realize our perfect servitude and to remove the veil of separative existence through spiritual practice so that God, transcendent and immanent within us, can utter 'I'.'”30
“The great mystery of existence is that it veils God by what is none other than Him... This truth is explicitly stated in the Quran.”31 Tells a Sufi story to illustrate: “...The moral of this story is that the in-depth understanding of the truth that God veils Himself by what is none other than God can come only from spiritual realization.”32
Bibliography
Fakhry, Majid,
Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Mysticism, A Short Introduction.
Gülen, M. Fethullah,
Khomeini, Sayyid Ruhollah Mousavi,
Nasr, Seyyed Hossein,
A Young Muslim's Guide to the Modern World.
The Garden of Truth.
The Heart of Islam.
Ideals and Realities of Islam.
Islamic Philosophy from the Origin to the Present.
Knowledge and the Sacred.
Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis in Modern Man.
Religion and the Order of Nature.
Science and Civilization in Islam.
Ozak, Muzaffer,
Irshad – Wisdom of a Sufi Master.
The Unveiling of Love.
Ramadan, Tariq,
Islam, the West, and the Challenges of Modernity.
Western Muslims and the Future of Islam.
Qutb, Muhammed,
Qutb, Seyyid,
Social Justice in Islam.
Love & Respect: The Love She Most Desires; The Respect He Desperately Needs
By Emerson Eggerichs, Thomas Nelson Publishers.
Love and Respect, though seemingly just another self-help, pop-psychology book, offers a potentially ground-breaking view of marriage. Rather than calling for the typical sissification of the man by getting him to talk about his feelings and in general see things through a woman's eyes, Dr. Eggerichs asks women to see men differently as well. For once, an author does not assume that women's ways of doing things are normative and morally superior, and that men must conform.
Central to the argument, Eggerich asserts that men and women are not the same, and that the Bible's teachings on marriage are as valid as ever because it shows how men and women have different needs. While women are verbal beings in need of assurance that they are loved and safe, men are action-oriented, and would rather silently share an experience than talk about feelings. Men communicate through words, but more than that, through their actions.
Male readers can understand Eggerichs' argument in their own relationships. Feminists have indoctrinated women to look down on men and not to understand men. They no longer meet their husband's deepest need, which is to feel respected. When they cut down their husband, he shuts off, and she feels unloved. In order to get that love, she becomes more rude and cutting so that he will be able to see just how desperately unloved she feels. This leads the husband to distance himself even more. Thus the couple has entered a vicious cycle.
For this cycle to be broken, wives need to respect their husbands unconditionally, even when they don't feel respect for their man. The husband must unconditionally love his wife, even when he doesn't feel it. This love and respect is actually not about feelings, but about responding to God's call.
Love and Respect, though seemingly just another self-help, pop-psychology book, offers a potentially ground-breaking view of marriage. Rather than calling for the typical sissification of the man by getting him to talk about his feelings and in general see things through a woman's eyes, Dr. Eggerichs asks women to see men differently as well. For once, an author does not assume that women's ways of doing things are normative and morally superior, and that men must conform.
Central to the argument, Eggerich asserts that men and women are not the same, and that the Bible's teachings on marriage are as valid as ever because it shows how men and women have different needs. While women are verbal beings in need of assurance that they are loved and safe, men are action-oriented, and would rather silently share an experience than talk about feelings. Men communicate through words, but more than that, through their actions.
Male readers can understand Eggerichs' argument in their own relationships. Feminists have indoctrinated women to look down on men and not to understand men. They no longer meet their husband's deepest need, which is to feel respected. When they cut down their husband, he shuts off, and she feels unloved. In order to get that love, she becomes more rude and cutting so that he will be able to see just how desperately unloved she feels. This leads the husband to distance himself even more. Thus the couple has entered a vicious cycle.
For this cycle to be broken, wives need to respect their husbands unconditionally, even when they don't feel respect for their man. The husband must unconditionally love his wife, even when he doesn't feel it. This love and respect is actually not about feelings, but about responding to God's call.
Friday, December 4, 2009
Guantanamo North: Terrorism and the Administration of Justice in Canada
By Robert Diab, Fernwood Publishing, 120 pages,.
Western governments followed the Bush administration's example after 9/11 and used that tragedy as cover for increased government encroachment on personal liberties. Swept up in terrorism-inspired hysteria, most of the public did nothing, and in fact approved much of this power grab by the state. Safety in the short run seemed more important than ideals about freedom and curbing state power.
Now that some of the 9/11 dust has started to settle, and we no longer fear terrorists behind every tree, increased government power doesn't seem like such a good deal. The 2001 Anti-Terrorism Act and related amendments, as to the Canada Evidence Act, could potentially infringe too much on our rights as outlined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
An effective way to examine newfound government activities is through the experiences of those unfortunate enough to have their freedoms curtailed by these laws. Guantanamo North, the outcome of a Masters of Laws study, sets the theoretical framework, offers some legal history, and presents the cases of individuals targeted by Canada.
Diab does a good job of addressing several issues at once, and tying them all together in the exceptional conclusion of the book, where the sort of big questions we expect from legal philosophers do get asked.
First, Diab focuses throughout the book on the 2001 legislation's undermining of the age-old presumption of innocence, so central to English common law. Diab warns that “Out of an abundance of caution, we have proceeded to treat these men as guilty and to forgo the need to present evidence in a full trial. We have held them in an administrative limbo that is officially neither a detention pending deportation nor a punishment, but simply an indefinite incarceration. We have preferred to deal with these cases using the language of risk management rather than crime and punishment.”
Secondly, the secrecy behind many of the trials makes it nearly impossible for the accused to defend themselves, given that their lawyers cannot refute all of the charges. Diab believes in the common law system, whereby a suspect can robustly challenge the accusations. This component is missing when the government does not allow defendants and their lawyers the right to see all the information. Diab struggles to find a solution, calling for, at least, special advocates with security clearance allowed to see all the evidence so as to provide a more vigorous challenge to the government's accusations, something that is essential to justice and the respect of human rights.
Thirdly, Diab questions the need for and goodness of the expansion of “state privilege.” He offers the Arar case as an example of the dangers of expanded state privilege. Not all questions regarding the affair have been answered by the inquiry because the government “invoke[d] the new secrecy provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Act to conceal much of the testimony of CSIS and RCMP personnel on their role in the incident, and to censor significant portions of the Inquiry's final report. Questions remain about the complicity of Canadian officials in Arar's torture and imprisonment in Syria.”
Diab laments the growing gulf between “practice and principle in the administration of justice.” Ottawa is failing to adequately follow the ideals of justice, and is denying people their full rights. Diab worries that the new measures taken by Canada's Parliament are permanent, whereas other countries had sunset clauses to emphasize the temporary nature of these increased governmental powers. Judges' independence have been compromised, as has the justice of the entire legal system in Canada. Criminal suspects are treated differently by the arresting authorities and the judiciary if they are suspected terrorists, which means that we are not all equal under the law.
Western governments followed the Bush administration's example after 9/11 and used that tragedy as cover for increased government encroachment on personal liberties. Swept up in terrorism-inspired hysteria, most of the public did nothing, and in fact approved much of this power grab by the state. Safety in the short run seemed more important than ideals about freedom and curbing state power.
Now that some of the 9/11 dust has started to settle, and we no longer fear terrorists behind every tree, increased government power doesn't seem like such a good deal. The 2001 Anti-Terrorism Act and related amendments, as to the Canada Evidence Act, could potentially infringe too much on our rights as outlined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
An effective way to examine newfound government activities is through the experiences of those unfortunate enough to have their freedoms curtailed by these laws. Guantanamo North, the outcome of a Masters of Laws study, sets the theoretical framework, offers some legal history, and presents the cases of individuals targeted by Canada.
Diab does a good job of addressing several issues at once, and tying them all together in the exceptional conclusion of the book, where the sort of big questions we expect from legal philosophers do get asked.
First, Diab focuses throughout the book on the 2001 legislation's undermining of the age-old presumption of innocence, so central to English common law. Diab warns that “Out of an abundance of caution, we have proceeded to treat these men as guilty and to forgo the need to present evidence in a full trial. We have held them in an administrative limbo that is officially neither a detention pending deportation nor a punishment, but simply an indefinite incarceration. We have preferred to deal with these cases using the language of risk management rather than crime and punishment.”
Secondly, the secrecy behind many of the trials makes it nearly impossible for the accused to defend themselves, given that their lawyers cannot refute all of the charges. Diab believes in the common law system, whereby a suspect can robustly challenge the accusations. This component is missing when the government does not allow defendants and their lawyers the right to see all the information. Diab struggles to find a solution, calling for, at least, special advocates with security clearance allowed to see all the evidence so as to provide a more vigorous challenge to the government's accusations, something that is essential to justice and the respect of human rights.
Thirdly, Diab questions the need for and goodness of the expansion of “state privilege.” He offers the Arar case as an example of the dangers of expanded state privilege. Not all questions regarding the affair have been answered by the inquiry because the government “invoke[d] the new secrecy provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Act to conceal much of the testimony of CSIS and RCMP personnel on their role in the incident, and to censor significant portions of the Inquiry's final report. Questions remain about the complicity of Canadian officials in Arar's torture and imprisonment in Syria.”
Diab laments the growing gulf between “practice and principle in the administration of justice.” Ottawa is failing to adequately follow the ideals of justice, and is denying people their full rights. Diab worries that the new measures taken by Canada's Parliament are permanent, whereas other countries had sunset clauses to emphasize the temporary nature of these increased governmental powers. Judges' independence have been compromised, as has the justice of the entire legal system in Canada. Criminal suspects are treated differently by the arresting authorities and the judiciary if they are suspected terrorists, which means that we are not all equal under the law.
The Theology of Tariq Ramadan: A Catholic Perspective
By Gregory Baum, 178 pages, ISBN 978-2896-460-793.
Just as the Catholic Church had to confront the secular, liberal order of modernity, eventually accommodating itself to a large degree, so Islam now is being confronted by the same forces of individualism, secularism, and democracy. Canadian Catholic theologian Gregory Baum examines how Swiss Muslim theologian Tariq Ramadan's appeals to Western Muslims echo many of the earlier developments in Catholic theology over the same issues. Baum's argument is from a very narrow left wing Catholic perspective, so the subtitle is misleading, as he is not representative of large swaths of the Church, including those who follow Vatican teaching.
Baum notes: “Since Islam, like traditional Catholicism, sees itself as a total system, Muslim societies challenged by political modernity have defined themselves either as ideologically secular, as Turkey has done, or as religiously reactionary, as Iran or Saudi Arabia have done.”
Islamic theology has reacted to the forces of modernity with, depending on the brand, varying degrees of liberalism, fundamentalism, or traditionalist reform. Ramadan belongs to the last one.
Ramadan is no liberal revolutionary, according to Baum, but he has been equally misread as a fundamentalist, which he is not. Ramadan does not believe that the Quran should be read simply for its legalistic declarations. Theologians who follow this way, like the Taleban or Saudi Wahabbis, tend to believe that seventh-century Arabia is the normative Islamic culture, and that all cultural change is aberrant.
Ramadan, conversely, believes that it is natural for societies to change, so the laws must as well, including shariah law. While he supports Quranic law, he emphasizes its spirit rather than specific prescriptions. What is unchanging for Ramadan, however, are the truths revealed in the Quran and shariah about God and about how Muslims need to relate to God.
These unchanging laws and spiritual truths can and need to be applied in every cultural and historical circumstance. Ramadan thus seeks the spiritual and theological truths of the Quran -- the religious rather than legal truths – according to Baum.
Following the Salafi Reformist tradition of al-Afghani (1838-97), Ramadan opposes the fundamentalist belief that interpretations of the Quran were closed after the tenth century. Salafi reformists like Ramadan, Baum notes, “prefer to return to the Islam practised by the Prophet and his 'Salafi,' or companions – an Islam that was open to reason and common sense and capable of responding creatively to historical challenges.” In other words, the “doors of ijtihad,” or “interpretation,” remain open.
Since Baum himself as a liberal Canadian Catholic theologian pushed for decades for the most possible feminist-liberal interpretation of Vatican II, he sometimes builds up for readers an image of Ramadan as a kind of Islamic left-wing Vatican II theologian, someone with whom Baum and his ilk can do business.
Baum does a good though incomplete job of discussing parallels between the Catholic Church's struggles with modernity, and the struggles of Islam with modernity. As a liberal theologian, Baum seems insensitive to the damage liberalism and feminism have done to Catholicism and Islam (not to mention to the family and human ecology as a whole). A wider discussion on how liberals and feminists have for decades attacked the pro-family, pro-life traditions of Islam would go a long way to show why Islamic theologians such as Ramadan have been so intensely discussing whether Muslims should or should not adopt Western values.
The Theology of Tariq Ramadan does nonetheless take an important first step in addressing inter-religious dialogue, hopefully putting to silence the unhelpful idea of a clash of civilizations. Perhaps the book will encourage other writers to address the deep chasms that inevitably remain between Western liberalism-feminism and Islam in its Western and non-Western forms.
Just as the Catholic Church had to confront the secular, liberal order of modernity, eventually accommodating itself to a large degree, so Islam now is being confronted by the same forces of individualism, secularism, and democracy. Canadian Catholic theologian Gregory Baum examines how Swiss Muslim theologian Tariq Ramadan's appeals to Western Muslims echo many of the earlier developments in Catholic theology over the same issues. Baum's argument is from a very narrow left wing Catholic perspective, so the subtitle is misleading, as he is not representative of large swaths of the Church, including those who follow Vatican teaching.
Baum notes: “Since Islam, like traditional Catholicism, sees itself as a total system, Muslim societies challenged by political modernity have defined themselves either as ideologically secular, as Turkey has done, or as religiously reactionary, as Iran or Saudi Arabia have done.”
Islamic theology has reacted to the forces of modernity with, depending on the brand, varying degrees of liberalism, fundamentalism, or traditionalist reform. Ramadan belongs to the last one.
Ramadan is no liberal revolutionary, according to Baum, but he has been equally misread as a fundamentalist, which he is not. Ramadan does not believe that the Quran should be read simply for its legalistic declarations. Theologians who follow this way, like the Taleban or Saudi Wahabbis, tend to believe that seventh-century Arabia is the normative Islamic culture, and that all cultural change is aberrant.
Ramadan, conversely, believes that it is natural for societies to change, so the laws must as well, including shariah law. While he supports Quranic law, he emphasizes its spirit rather than specific prescriptions. What is unchanging for Ramadan, however, are the truths revealed in the Quran and shariah about God and about how Muslims need to relate to God.
These unchanging laws and spiritual truths can and need to be applied in every cultural and historical circumstance. Ramadan thus seeks the spiritual and theological truths of the Quran -- the religious rather than legal truths – according to Baum.
Following the Salafi Reformist tradition of al-Afghani (1838-97), Ramadan opposes the fundamentalist belief that interpretations of the Quran were closed after the tenth century. Salafi reformists like Ramadan, Baum notes, “prefer to return to the Islam practised by the Prophet and his 'Salafi,' or companions – an Islam that was open to reason and common sense and capable of responding creatively to historical challenges.” In other words, the “doors of ijtihad,” or “interpretation,” remain open.
Since Baum himself as a liberal Canadian Catholic theologian pushed for decades for the most possible feminist-liberal interpretation of Vatican II, he sometimes builds up for readers an image of Ramadan as a kind of Islamic left-wing Vatican II theologian, someone with whom Baum and his ilk can do business.
Baum does a good though incomplete job of discussing parallels between the Catholic Church's struggles with modernity, and the struggles of Islam with modernity. As a liberal theologian, Baum seems insensitive to the damage liberalism and feminism have done to Catholicism and Islam (not to mention to the family and human ecology as a whole). A wider discussion on how liberals and feminists have for decades attacked the pro-family, pro-life traditions of Islam would go a long way to show why Islamic theologians such as Ramadan have been so intensely discussing whether Muslims should or should not adopt Western values.
The Theology of Tariq Ramadan does nonetheless take an important first step in addressing inter-religious dialogue, hopefully putting to silence the unhelpful idea of a clash of civilizations. Perhaps the book will encourage other writers to address the deep chasms that inevitably remain between Western liberalism-feminism and Islam in its Western and non-Western forms.
Creating a Failed State: The US and Canada in Afghanistan
By John W. Warnock, 209 pages, Fernwood Publishing, ISBN 978-1-55266-2-625.
“[T]he United States is now deeply involved in World War IV, the struggle to control natural resources and in particular oil and gas. The primary area of conflict has been the less-developed countries, including those declared to be failed states.” So writes Warnock in this damning book on American and Western greed and colonialism.
America's involvement in the Middle East follows the logic of oil rather than the logic of justice and peace. If Saddam Hussein starts selling too much oil to China and elsewhere, take over the country. If Afghanistan won't allow pipelines and other petroleum-related infrastructure, take over the country.
Many pieces of American foreign policy (and its poodles such as Britain, Canada, and Australia) are linked to this thirst for oil. The goal of containing Russia and to a lesser extent China aims for American control of Caspian Sea oil, working closely with American oil companies.
Washington negotiated with Pakistan and the Taliban for the better part of 2001 over Caspian Sea oil as a way to shut out Iran, since both governments were anti-Iran. Warnock reports, though, that America, with the help of Russia, was actually thinking of invading Afghanistan and overthrowing the Taliban. This plan, which somewhat counters the containment of Russia theory, “was widely discussed at the July 2001 meeting of the G8 countries in Geneva.”
The politics in Creating a Failed State, as the above shows, are shocking in their single-mindedness and lack of respect for the lives, cultures, and nationhoods of the target countries. In fact, Warnock links this neo-colonial indifference to the lives of people with the mentality of the nineteenth-century European colonists, who also put a premium on the lives of their own citizens even while committing countless acts of violence against subjected populations.
Creating a Failed State follows American oil imperialism as it built up Islamists during the Cold War. The leader of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood admitted that “America made Islam” in the 1960s. Washington helped al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups recruit fighters from all over the world, including from Brooklyn.
During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, Arab, Pakistani, and Afghan trainers were trained by the CIA in America. Bin Laden's main focus at this time was on the “Little Satan,” the Soviet Union, but he became incensed when Saudi Arabia allowed American troops on Islam's holy land in 1991.
America's relationships with jihadists in the 1990s were confused, as Washington often had them do its dirty work. Yet throughout the decade, the Islamic fighters constantly increased their activities and rhetoric against America.
Because of Washington's belief in bin Laden's continued utility, it never had him extradited even though the Sudan (and the Taliban after that) had offered this and even though countless opportunities for his capture had presented themselves.
Why didn't America nab bin Laden when he was in the American Hospital in Dubai for kidney treatment from July 4-July 14, 2001? Bin Laden “was even visited by the head of the CIA operation in the city. But the US government did not ask for his extradition,” Warnock notes. Bin Laden, it seems, was still America's guy right up until 9/11. Even in 2002, when holed up in Tora Bora by the US military, he was allowed to escape.
Why did so many senior Bush administration officials deny that they had advanced knowledge of 9/11 when so many foreign governments, including those of Jordan, Israel, and Russia, had warned them? The former Egyptian defense minister Mohammed Heikal said after 9/11 that it was impossible for the American government not to have known of the planned attack.
Looking back, in the days immediately before September 11, why do we see such frenetic stock market activity from World Trade Center-based companies such as Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, and from United and American Airlines?
While American and Canadian neo-colonialism in Afghanistan is bad enough, the politics and purported dirty dealings that occurred before 9/11 are disturbing to say the least.
“[T]he United States is now deeply involved in World War IV, the struggle to control natural resources and in particular oil and gas. The primary area of conflict has been the less-developed countries, including those declared to be failed states.” So writes Warnock in this damning book on American and Western greed and colonialism.
America's involvement in the Middle East follows the logic of oil rather than the logic of justice and peace. If Saddam Hussein starts selling too much oil to China and elsewhere, take over the country. If Afghanistan won't allow pipelines and other petroleum-related infrastructure, take over the country.
Many pieces of American foreign policy (and its poodles such as Britain, Canada, and Australia) are linked to this thirst for oil. The goal of containing Russia and to a lesser extent China aims for American control of Caspian Sea oil, working closely with American oil companies.
Washington negotiated with Pakistan and the Taliban for the better part of 2001 over Caspian Sea oil as a way to shut out Iran, since both governments were anti-Iran. Warnock reports, though, that America, with the help of Russia, was actually thinking of invading Afghanistan and overthrowing the Taliban. This plan, which somewhat counters the containment of Russia theory, “was widely discussed at the July 2001 meeting of the G8 countries in Geneva.”
The politics in Creating a Failed State, as the above shows, are shocking in their single-mindedness and lack of respect for the lives, cultures, and nationhoods of the target countries. In fact, Warnock links this neo-colonial indifference to the lives of people with the mentality of the nineteenth-century European colonists, who also put a premium on the lives of their own citizens even while committing countless acts of violence against subjected populations.
Creating a Failed State follows American oil imperialism as it built up Islamists during the Cold War. The leader of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood admitted that “America made Islam” in the 1960s. Washington helped al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups recruit fighters from all over the world, including from Brooklyn.
During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, Arab, Pakistani, and Afghan trainers were trained by the CIA in America. Bin Laden's main focus at this time was on the “Little Satan,” the Soviet Union, but he became incensed when Saudi Arabia allowed American troops on Islam's holy land in 1991.
America's relationships with jihadists in the 1990s were confused, as Washington often had them do its dirty work. Yet throughout the decade, the Islamic fighters constantly increased their activities and rhetoric against America.
Because of Washington's belief in bin Laden's continued utility, it never had him extradited even though the Sudan (and the Taliban after that) had offered this and even though countless opportunities for his capture had presented themselves.
Why didn't America nab bin Laden when he was in the American Hospital in Dubai for kidney treatment from July 4-July 14, 2001? Bin Laden “was even visited by the head of the CIA operation in the city. But the US government did not ask for his extradition,” Warnock notes. Bin Laden, it seems, was still America's guy right up until 9/11. Even in 2002, when holed up in Tora Bora by the US military, he was allowed to escape.
Why did so many senior Bush administration officials deny that they had advanced knowledge of 9/11 when so many foreign governments, including those of Jordan, Israel, and Russia, had warned them? The former Egyptian defense minister Mohammed Heikal said after 9/11 that it was impossible for the American government not to have known of the planned attack.
Looking back, in the days immediately before September 11, why do we see such frenetic stock market activity from World Trade Center-based companies such as Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, and from United and American Airlines?
While American and Canadian neo-colonialism in Afghanistan is bad enough, the politics and purported dirty dealings that occurred before 9/11 are disturbing to say the least.
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