Sex, Mom, and God

I've recently read Sex, Mom, and God by Frank Schaeffer. Although I highly recommend the book, I would suggest that if you haven't read Crazy for God you read that first. Crazy is autobiographical, tracing Frank's life as the son of evangelical Christian leaders, and Sex fleshes out a few developments that were left uncovered in the first book.

One of the things I like about Frank's writings is that he and I have followed similar spiritual and intellectual  paths. As a gifted and professional author, however, he has more time and skill to articulate his thoughts than I do. Things that I fleetingly think about find full expression in his paragraphs, and I find myself in agreement with much of what he has to say.

One particular example of this is his view of the Bible in general and the Old Testament in particular. As a critic of Islam as expressed and practiced by Muhammad, I've found myself looking more judgmentally at objectionable parts of early Islamic history than I have at objectionable parts of early Hebrew history. I criticize Muhammad for slaughtering 800 Jewish boys and men at Medina for not accepting him as a Prophet but gloss over Joshua and Saul slaughtering the populations of entire towns including newborn infants for not worshipping the God of the Jews. I condemn Muhammad for stoning to death an adulterous couple in Medina, but ignore the fact that the God of Moses ordered the stoning of married brides who were found to not be virgins. I scorn Muhammad for initiating a sexual relationship with a nine-year-old child (Aisha) that could only be described in today's terms as rape, as well as marrying his own daughter-in-law (Zaynab) and raping another wife (Sofiya) after torturing, robbing, and beheading her husband (Kinana of Khaybar), but skip right over Soloman's Biblical sexual conquest of not dozens but hundreds of women.

What I've done is simply use the excuses Christians have always used and continue to use. It's true that Joshua slaughtered children, they argue, but we don't do that anymore. Besides, maybe those people were so evil their babies needed to be sliced through with those swords. That was for a special time, they argue, only temporary whereas the injunctions of the Koran are for all time and all people everywhere. Jesus has taken us beyond the law of Moses, they argue, and now Muhammad wants to take us back to the law.

All of the above might be true, but they miss the main point which is that the Jehovah of Moses and the Allah of Muhammad both commanded the slaughter of innocents, allowed the sexual conquest of women as the property of men, and ordered the stoning of women who did not abide by the rules.

Maybe it's time for Christians to think a little more clearly, and be a lot more honest. If we are going to argue that their book is flawed and human, is it time for us to admit the same about ours? That's not saying both books are the same, or communicate the same basic message (which I don't think they do). It's just looking at our book with the same critical stance that we use when we look at theirs.

A Wedding Conversation

Last weekend I attended the wedding of two Muslim family friends. The groom’s family is from Pakistan and that of the bride from Bangladesh. As the Imam emphasized in his sermon before the marriage contract was signed, the marriage was bringing those two families and their respective communities closer together.

At the reception dinner I sat next to a university professor who had taught the bride in a few of her graduate classes. The professor and I were talking about retirement, and when she asked me if I had post-retirement plans she might have been surprised by my answer. “I’d like to convince one and a half billion Muslims,” I replied, “That Muhammad was just an ordinary man and the Koran is just a human book.”

“I was recently in Tunisia,” I continued, “And had a conversation with a taxi driver. ‘We just want to be free,’ he said. ‘Let those who want to pray go to the mosque, and let those who want to drink go to the bar.’”

“That’s fine,” I told him. “But there’s only one problem. Muhammad said you can’t go to the bar. As soon as you try to exercise that freedom, someone will grab you from behind and remind you that Muhammad or the Koran said you are not allowed to do that.”

“Educated people might agree with you,” the professor countered. “But the key to change is education. The average Muslim would never accept what you are trying to say.”

"Ordinary people can change,” I replied. “I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian family where we were taught every word of the Bible was literally true. But now as I read the first chapter of Genesis, it sounds much less God’s description of how the universe came into existence than a man living in the Bronze Age four thousand years ago imagining how he thought it came to be.”

“A few minutes ago,” I continued, “The Imam read words from the Koran describing God as being the Great One, the Compassionate One, the All Powerful Creator, and the Righteous Judge. As I listened to those words, it sounded much more to me like someone 1400 years ago describing what he imagined God to be like, rather than God’s description of himself.”

“But how would you persuade Muslims that Muhammad was not a Prophet of God, or the Koran was just a human book?” the professor inquired.

“Most Muslims know very little about the life of their Prophet,” I replied. “From before they can walk or talk they are taught to believe in this compassionate, wise person they imagine existed. The average Muslim knows next to nothing of his true history. I would begin by just pointing out events in his life they perhaps haven’t thought about that portray him in a less-than-prophetic light. For example, the fact that he persuaded his own son to divorce his wife so that he could marry his daughter-in-law, and then justified the whole sordid affair by stating that God had commanded him to do it.”

Had we more time to continue the conversation, I might have pointed out to her that many, many Muslims, including the couple whose wedding we had just celebrated, are wonderful loving people. Well, not all of them of course. Not the pick-pocket who had stolen my wallet a few weeks before at the entrance of the old souk in downtown Tunis. But the shopkeeper who recovered my wallet with documents intact and went to quite a bit of trouble to get it back to me certainly was. I just believe that what their Prophet and his book teaches them about God and people holds them back from being all they can be.

One thing the professor said stuck with me. We both have two daughters, and I commented to her that three of the greatest blessings we can give our daughters are to be whoever they choose to me, to marry whomever they choose to marry, and to believe whatever they want to believe. “Islam grants daughters none of those rights,” I said. “Muslim women are not allowed to publicly acknowledge they are lesbian even if they are, Muslim women are not allowed to marry non-Muslim men, and they are not free to let it be known publicly that they are atheists or do not believe Muhammad was a prophet.”

“But that is not true only of Islam,” the professor replied, “Many orthodox Jewish women or evangelical Christian girls are not free to say similar things."

I agreed with her. We might disagree on the penalty - Muslims can be killed for criticizing Muhammad, and although ex-Amish Christians and ex-Orthodox Jews can be shunned by their respective communities for leaving the faith I haven't yet heard of it costing them their heads. But I would agree with her that devotion to any inspired text, and in particular allowing religious leaders to interpret that text to you as a mandate to how you are expected to believe and behave, can be a dangerous thing.

Williamsburg and Tunis

I spent the weekend in Williamsburg, Jamestown, and Yorktown, Virginia, where the first settlers arrived from Europe 400 years ago. The tours, scenery, and bike trails were spectacular. On Easter morning I visited the Bruton Parish Church where most of Virginia's eight Presidents attended services. The highlight for me was not sitting in the pew occupied by George Washington or Thomas Jefferson, but climbing the stairs to the Slaves Gallery for the personal slaves of the Williamsburg elite. The day before I had learned that notices announcing runaway slaves often contained St. Paul's admonition that "Servants are to Obey their Masters".

I could not help making a comparison between four stages of Williamsburg history and that of Tunisia. Stage One, from 1611 until 1776, saw Virginia living under British rule. Stage Two, for almost the next hundred years, had Virginia experience independence and freedom - but only for its white population. More than half of Williamsburg during that time were slaves. Stage Three began with Abraham Lincoln's Proclamation of Emancipation, and the freedom of the slaves. It was only Stage Four, under leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, when blacks were legally integrated into all parts of society.

One might think this was a 400-year process, but in reality the changes came in short powerful spurts of energy. The years just before and during the Revolutionary War set the course for the next one hundred years, and the few short years surrounding the Civil War propelled events for the century to come. The Civil Rights Movement of the sixties, again a focal point of activity compressed into a few short years, set the pace for the next fifty years until the present time.

Tunisia has experienced not four, but three stages of recent history. First was living as a French Protectorate from 1881, second was independence under President Habib Bourguiba in 1956, and the third was the Jasmine Revolution of 2011. The question to be asked now is, Will there be a Fourth Stage? Will a Martin Luther King arise to lead Tunisians into true freedom, or will the country sink into a morass of Islamists and Power Hungry politicans?

I'm not optimistic about Tunisia's short term prospects. The last thing Muslims want to hear, but to me the most rudimentary truth, is that they have to make a choice between Muhammad and freedom. They simply can't have both.

The words "free" and "freedom" are mentioned dozens of times in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. The second chapter of Genesis, the Bible's first book, announces, "You are free to eat from any tree of the garden." (well, except one!) One of Jesus' primary messages was, "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

How many times do you think "freedom" is mentioned in the Quran? The Arabic verb to be free is Hurr, to set something free is Tahrir, and freedom is Huriyah. The verb Hurr does not appear in the Quran a single time. Tahrir is mentioned a few times, but only in a legal sense - if a Muslim kills another Muslim, he must set free a Muslim slave in compensation (not a non-Muslim slave, mind you!). And the most important word of all - freedom? It is not found in the Quran a single time. There is a reason for that, you know.

The Buddhist New Year

Today I joined literally thousands of Buddhists in our area as they celebrated the Buddhist New Year at the local temple. I've driven past the temple hundreds of times - an inauspicious building off the highway - but except for a few saffron-robed monks in front had never seen much activity. I never would have imagined our city had so many Theravada Buddhists; they are the ones who celebrate the New Year this weekend. It was a festive, family occasion with stalls selling types of food I've never even seen much less tasted and people wearing jeans, tee-shirts, miniskirts and tank tops. Everyone was welcomed inside the temple, non-Buddhists as well as believers, women as well as men, where people sat together and waited patiently to receive individual blessings from the main monk.

I could not help but compare the experience with the recent CNN program "Unwelcome: The Muslims Next Door". When the several hundred Muslim families of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, decided to build a 52,000 square foot Islamic center in the middle of town, local residents responded with protests, vandalism, arson, and lawsuits. To me the difference is striking. In my neighborhood, thousands of Buddhists who blend into the general culture in their mannerisms and dress turn out to celebrate their faith at a small, inconspicuous temple. In Tennessee a few hundred Muslim families whose women, children, and even men often stand apart from the dominant culture even in their dress decide to build a large, imposing center and refuse to back down when asked to reconsider. I have the impression that Islam seeks to impose its presence whenever possible, and when that imposition is resisted cries of Islamophobia are quickly heard.

Even though I enjoyed the day, I'm not about to become Buddhist. I like Jesus, thank you, and still have problems with Siddhartha Gautama abandoning his young wife and newborn child forever to seek enlightenment. Even more significantly, I think Buddhism is way too pacifist. Afghanistan was once a Buddhist country, but because there was no emphasis on self-defense they had nothing with which to resist Islam when it steamrolled in and demolished Buddhism there forever.

But I welcome the Buddhists in my neighborhood. And by the way, CNN, I welcome Muslims as well. I would actually love to have "Muslims Next Door".

Where are the Christian Pirates?

After hearing a Democracy Now story last year linking suicide bombings in Pakistan to poverty and hopelessness, I posed what seemed an obvious question. "If poverty causes extremism, why are there no suicide bombers from among Pakistan's poorest of the poor? Where are the Christian Suicide Bombers?"

A similar question came to mind today after hearing this NPR story about the pirates of Somalia. Poverty and lawlessness, claimed the author, are the main reasons for the piracy. The question that came to my mind probably never even crossed the mind of the author, "If Somalia were a traditionally Christian country, like Uganda or Ethiopia, would international piracy even be an issue?"

From year one of the Muslim Hijri calendar, which began when Muhammad traveled as a Muhajir, or migrant from Mecca to Medina in about 623 AD, two Arabic words became an important part of the lexicon of the language. These are Ghazawat, the raids of the Prophet, and Anfal, the spoils of war. Muhammad had only been in Medina a few months when he realized an easy and effective way to meet the economic and financial needs of his growing community was to attack trade caravans passing through the area. Rather than combine the desert expertise of Medina's Arabs with the agricultural and industrial success of the Jewish tribes who had lived there for centuries to develop caravans of his own, Muhammad found it easier to simply condemn the Jews for not accepting him as a Prophet and attack the caravans of others. Literally hundreds of pages of the earliest biographies of the Prophet are devoted to accounts of these raids, and most of the second part of the Quran, those suras authored in Medina, are related to the same subject.

The death of Muhammad ten years later did not signal the end of the Ghazawat, but only their beginning. In swift order his warriors swept north, south, east, and west, continuing the raids (which had by now developed into full-scale attack and conquer) and reaping the benefits. Christian societies (Egypt and the Copts) were given the choice of conversion or subjugation. Societies containing "pagan idolaters" - the Zorastrians of Persia and the Buddhists of Afghanistan - simply saw their religious traditions wiped out. Those who were strong enough to resist Arabization as well as Islamization - Turkey, Iran, etc - were able to maintain their traditional languages. Weaker societies - Egypt and the countries of North Africa - saw their traditional languages obliterated and replaced by Arabic.

The Muslim pirates of Somalia are simply carrying on a time-honored tradition hallowed by the example of their Prophet. In their mind, they really deserve the wealth of the people they plunder.

Do poverty and lawlessness, as suggested by the NPR reporter, play a role? Of course. Are the "Christian" countries I mentioned, Uganda or Ethiopia or others in the region, glowing examples of Christ-like character and behavior? Not by a long shot. But at the same time I think it is a mistake not to acknowledge the fact that it is the life of Muhammad, not Jesus, that provides a model for attacking the wealth of others and appropriating it as something that you deserve. And that, not only poverty and lawlessness, is at the heart of Somali piracy.

Georgetown's Common Word Conference

I recently attended John Esposito's Common Word conference at Georgetown University. Listening to charismatic and eloquent speakers took me back three decades to being mesmerized by the lectures of Dr. Ismail Al Farouki and Sayyid Hossein Nasr as a student of Islam at Temple University. And now as then, it was only afterwards that I realized I was left with many more doubts than assurances.

One of the speakers was Bob Roberts, who blogs here and is pastor of the Northwood Church in Dallas. He engages the Muslim community there, and is going turkey hunting with the Imam this Saturday. He informed us that when he meets Muslims who remind him that according to their religion he is going to hell, his response is that according to his religion they are hellbound as well. "Now that we've gotten that behind us," he urges them, "Let's be friends."

Does Pastor Roberts really believe that, or was he just being cute? If he does, it stands to reason that his desire is for Muslims to escape hell by accepting what he believes about Jesus. I wonder how successful he has been. How many of his 2000-plus congregation are ex-Muslims? What would happen to his vaunted relationship with the Muslim community were he to appoint an ex-Muslim from that community to a position of leadership within his church?  Would he have the courage to do so?

Another participant was Nigerian diplomat John Gana, a Christian whose ancestors converted from Islam as a result of  Christian missionaries. Emphasizing the fluidity of Muslim and Christian relationships in his country, he informed us that his younger brother had converted to Islam to marry a Muslim woman. He seemed not at all concerned that his brother was forced to change his religion to marry the woman he loved, nor that their children would be raised Muslim without the freedom to change their religion back to Christianity even if they wanted to.

Henry Izumizaki, a Japanese American who is CEO of the One Nation Foundation, told us about the millions of dollars his foundation spends to improve the image of Muslims in America. He said he is neither a Muslim nor a Christian, and that one of the early productions of his company was the movie Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet.

Am I the only one who found it ironic that the man who produced the Legacy of a Prophet does not believe that Muhammad was a Prophet? As not even part of the Ahl Al Kitab, the People of the Book, does Henry Izumizaki know what Muhammad said about him? Does he realize that none of his Muslim co-panelists would allow their daughters to marry his sons?

Shamil Idriss of Soliya described the Muslim-non-Muslim relationship as akin to people throwing sparks into a tinder dry forest. He was not the only person to bring up the TJ factor - no, that is not Terrorist Jihadi but Pastor Terry Jones. Shamil did not bring up the more appropriate analogy that a spark dropped in a tropical rain forest causes no reaction at all. Why is attention focused on the person dropping the spark rather than changing the nature of the forest?

"As I condemn Terry Jones for burning the Quran," continued Shamil, "I condemn President Karzai in Kabul for exacerbating the situation." It seems that even when Muslims criticize the response of other Muslims, they draw a moral equivalence between the initial act and the riposte. I draw a cartoon you don't like, you respond by killing my son, but in your mind the two acts are morally equal? Ya Shaikh!

Other panelists assured us that "studies all show" that poverty breeds extremism, and that "nobody in America" wants Sharia law. It is simply not true that the hundreds of Jihadi foreign fighters in Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and a host of other locations are there because of poverty. And if the panelists truly do not want the path of Allah and his Apostle to be followed in the West, it is only because they have become "Westernized, Christianized Muslims" who have strayed a long way from their Prophet.

Three freedoms I grant my daughters are to be whoever they decide to be (including lesbian), believe whatever they want to believe (including atheism), and marry whomever they choose (regardless of religious creed or lack thereof). Islam grants women none of those choices. If the panelists truly granted their daughters those freedoms, I might believe they were free from the binding grip of Sharia. I might question, however, if they were still Muslim.

Professor Bart Ehrman at the University of North Carolina grew up as an evangelical Christian. He attended the best fundamental and evangelical Christian schools, the Moody Bible Institute and Wheaton College. Somewhere along the way he lost his faith. He no longer describes himself as a Christian, and does not believe the Bible is the Word of God nor that Jesus is the Son of God.

Would John Esposito have the courage to bring a "Muslim Bart Ehrman" unto the staff of his Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding? Someone who like Bart Ehrman had really believed and attended the best Muslim universities, but who like Ehrman "let the scholarship take them where it would" and reached the conclusion that Muhammad was not a Prophet of God, the Quran was not a book from God, and Islam was not true? I would like to believe the answer was Yes, but I have my doubts.

In spite of the considerable amount of money spent to bring in speakers from all over the country the conference seemed sparsely attended with many empty seats. Was the lack of attendance due to a lack of interest, or did others sense as I did that conversations would only go in one direction and not very far at that?

If I were to summarize my take-away for the entire day, it would be that there is an increasing problem in America betweeen Muslims and non-Muslims, but always to be blamed is the ghayr Muslim - the non-believer. It's the fault of Pamela Geller, Newt Gingrich, Barack Obama for flipping on Afghanistan and Guantanamo, birthers and anti-mosquers, Tea Partyers and Terry Joneses. The list is endless. Am I the only one asking the question, "Who's this big guy sleeping in the hallway that everyone is gingerly stepping around but no one is talking about? I think his name is Muhammad."

Miral

It's been a weekend of emotionally-draining movies. First was Of Gods and Men, about which I wrote here. That was followed by Miral, the story of four Palestinian women whose lives intersected in Jerusalem over a period of several decades.

The movie literally left me speechless, but with a strange feeling of hope. It took a day or so for my emotions to process to the point that I realized why a movie that was depressing in many ways would leave me hopeful. I then understood it was the emphasis that was placed upon the education of women in general and Palestinian Muslim girls in particular. One of the main characters of the film is a Palestinian Christian who dedicated her life to the education of these girls including the main character Miral.

Dr. Izzaldin Abuelaish, about whom I write here and here, argues that the key to a successful future for the Palestinians is the education of Palestinian girls, and Miral presents a visual example of that argument.

By coincidence - although I don't believe in coincidence - I had a most interesting conversation today with a young woman from a Brahmin family in India who is now an American citizen. One of the formative experiences of her life was being taught by Catholic monks as a young girl in Bombay. Again, it's the story of young girls being influenced and benefited by dedicated Christian educators.