On Islam

On Islam

Karen Armstrong: The US should foster democratic strands in Islam

[9-13-02]

Noted scholar Karen Armstrong, writing in the Washington Post, urges that "Americans should support Muslim initiatives to build a spiritually and intellectually vibrant American Islam, which could counter extremism at home and abroad." She notes that "the bedrock message of the Koran is that Muslims must build a just and decent society, in which poor and vulnerable people are treated with respect. Hence politics has always had near-sacramental importance in Islam. If Muslims see their community humiliated by a foreign power or corrupted by a tyrannical regime, they can feel as religiously distressed as a Christian who sees the Bible traduced."

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The Rev. Dr. Robert Boehlke, who spent many years teaching in the major Protestant theological seminary in Indonesia, offers both criticism and appreciation for Armstrong's statement:

More about Islam -
[9-13-02]

Your WebWeaver got into conversation a couple days ago with Dr. Robert Boehlke, formerly professor of Christian Education for many years in the Protestant theological seminary in Jakarta, Indonesia. We studied the Indonesian language together many years ago, and were "neighbors" (a mere couple hundred miles apart) in Indonesia for some ten years.

Our conversation turned to our mutual concern for the anti-Muslim attitudes in some parts of American Christendom, and our growing concern for US policy and action relating to the Arab/Muslim world.

I mentioned a recent article by religion scholar Karen Armstrong, author of The Battle for God, a history of fundamentalism, and a popular study of Islam. Our conversation evolved into these comments by Dr. Boehlke on Armstrong's article, and wider questions of Islam and American attitudes toward it.

Here is Boehlke's e-mail comment, which he has graciously permitted me to post.

I certainly agree with Armstrong about the folly of the Bush administration in trying to pick a fight with Iraq and setting in motion the proverbial "law" of unintended consequences. Mr. Bush may want only to prevent Iraqi development of atomic weapons but at what price will this be accomplished? How many thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians will have to die, be wounded, have their homes and livelihood destroyed? Ditto for how many young Americans? Then what? The president may fantasize that "we are good people" and will be welcomed as liberators. Just as likely and more likely an Islamic conflagration will be ignited which we cannot possibly control.

Thus far I haven't heard any administration voice even hint that there could be a similarity between Saddam's storehouse of chemical/biological weapons and his possible acquisition of nuclear capacity. He refrained from using the former during the Gulf War in the certain knowledge that the Coalition had greater capacity in the same area than Iraq and in their use, Iraq would experience more devastation than the Coalition. What might be an American response to an Iraqi nuclear attack either on Israel or an American facility? He may acquire two or three warheads but what about the several thousand available in the US arsenal? Saddam might be cruel, despotic, etc., etc., but autocrats are not automatically stupid. or suicidal. They want to continue living and holding on to absolute power - not to die!

Of course, we need to build on the considerable areas which we share with ideal Islam in order to develop an atmosphere of trust which might make it possible for Muslim leaders to deal with those elements of their history which seem to have been part and parcel of Islam as well, the one perfect religion which has the responsibility to be in a continued struggle against non-Islamic societies. I have never read about a Muslim leader disowning that part of ideal Islam which divides the world into Dar El Islam and Dar El Harb or of apologizing for its lst century imperialistic expanse in the certain conviction that all this was God's will. Somewhere along the line, too, Muhammad's own role in the Koran must also be investigated. He was more than just a receiver who neutrally passed on what he "heard."

Karen Armstrong has made a considerable contribution towards inter-religious understanding, but in my judgment she has dealt with Islam with the proverbial kid gloves. Whereas she can point to mythic, non-historical dimensions of the Christian story, she puts her scholarly judgment in the closet when she deals with Islam. There is none of the same hard questioning of Islam that she addresses to Christians.

I hope that the American experience will foster a modification of the confident ultimacy in religious matters which Muslims have confidently affirmed thus far. If I have learned anything in my 77 years, it is that we need great convictions without transforming them in to great certainties. We must have beliefs and convictions about ultimate matters but these must remain just that as long as we share life on this fragile planet.

By the way, are you familiar with Gotthold Lessing's, Nathan the Wise? [He tells a] story of the marvelous ring handed down from father to son who as father hands to his son, and so on. That story needs to be dusted off again in both our intra-religious conflicts but also in our inter-religious competitions.

When Muslims are neighbors instead of "them" [9-11-02]

The Rev. Alex Awad, a Methodist minister who teaches at Bethlehem Bible College, takes a thoughtful look at Christian attitudes toward Muslims -- from the perspective of one who lives in Israel/Palestine, with Muslims as friends and neighbors. Hostile evangelical rhetoric condemning Islam is doing harm, he says, to the cause of Christ among Muslims.

"If we want to find the enemy," he says, "we must look within us rather than at Islam and Muslims. The enemies of the United States and the Western world are found mainly within the United States and within the Western world. Greed, pride, hypocrisy, racism, atheism, moral corruption, xenophobia and social injustices are our worst enemies."

The Rev. Robert Campbell sends his comments on Rev. Awad's essay. Campbell agrees with Awad on some points, but sees major problems with Islam: that it "started out as an evangelical/military religion," and that it rejects any "separation of Church and State." [9-13-02]