An American Muslim leader asks: Who has the greatest duty to stop violence committed by Muslims in the name of Islam? Muslims
By Ingrid Mattson
Vice President, Islamic Society of North America
The terrorist attack on Sept. 11th exacerbated a double-bind American Muslims have been feeling for some time. So often, it seems, we have to apologize for reprehensible actions committed by Muslims in the name of Islam. We tell other Americans, "People who do these things (oppression of women, persecution of religious minorities, terrorism) have distorted the 'true' Islam."
And so often we have to tell other Muslims throughout the world that America is not as bad as it appears. We say, "These policies (support for oppressive governments, enforcement of sanctions responsible for the deaths almost 1 million Iraqi children, vetoing any criticism of Israel at the United Nations) contradict the 'true' values of America."
But frankly, American Muslims have generally been more critical of injustices committed by the American government than of injustices committed by Muslims. This has to change.
For the last few years, I have been speaking publicly in Muslim forums against the injustice of the Taliban. This criticism of a self-styled Muslim regime has not always been well-received. Some Muslims have felt that public criticism of the Taliban harms Muslim solidarity. Others have questioned my motives, suggesting that I am more interested in serving a feminist agenda than an Islamic one. My answer to the apologists has always been--who has the greatest duty to stop the oppression of Muslims committed by other Muslims in the name of Islam? The answer, obviously, is Muslims.
I have not previously spoken about suicide attacks committed by Muslims in the name of Islam. I did not avoid the subject--it simply did not cross my mind as a priority among the many issues I felt needed to be addressed. This was a gross oversight. I should have asked myself--who has the greatest duty to stop violence committed by Muslims against innocent non-Muslims in the name of Islam? The answer, obviously, is Muslims.
American Muslims, in particular, have a great responsibility to speak out. The freedom, stability and strong moral foundation of the United States are great blessings for all Americans, particularly for Muslims.
Moreover, we do not have cultural restrictions that Muslims in some other countries have. In America, Muslim women have found the support and freedom to reclaim their proper place in the life of their religious community. And Muslims have pushed and been allowed to democratize their governing bodies. Important decisions, even relating to theological and legal matters, are increasingly made in mosques and Islamic organizations by elected boards or the collective membership.
But God has not blessed us with these things because we are better than the billions of humans who do not live in America. We do not deserve good health, stable families, safety and freedom more than the millions of Muslims and non-Muslims throughout the world who are suffering from disease, poverty and oppression.
Muslims who live in America are being tested by God, to see if we will be satisfied with a self-contained, self-serving Muslim community that resembles an Islamic town in the Epcot global village, or if we will use the many opportunities available to us to change the world for the better--beginning with an honest critical evaluation of our own flaws.
Because we have freedom and wealth, we have a special obligation to help those Muslims who do not--by speaking out against the abuses of Muslim "leaders" in other countries.
In his speech to the nation, President Bush argued that American Muslim leaders and other "moderates" represent the true voice of Islam. This is true, and we therefore need to raise our voices louder.
So, let me state it clearly: I, as an American Muslim leader, denounce not only suicide bombers and the Taliban, but those leaders of other Muslim states who thwart democracy, repress women, use the Qur'an to justify un-Islamic behavior and encourage violence. Alas, these views are not only the province of a small group of terrorists or dictators. Too many rank and file Muslims, in their isolation and pessimism, have come to hold these self-destructive views as well.
The problem is that other Muslims may not listen to us, no matter how loud our voices. Surely President Bush wants the moderate voices not only to be raised, but to be heard. American Muslim leaders will be heard only if they are recognized as authentic interpreters of Islam among the global community. This will be very difficult to achieve, because our legitimacy in the Muslim world is intimately linked with American foreign policy. An understanding of some important developments in Islamic history and theology will clarify this apparently odd dependence.
According to Islamic doctrine, after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, no Muslim has the right to claim infallibility in interpreting the faith. There is no ordination, no clergy, no unquestioned authority. This does not mean that all opinions are equal, nor that everyone has the ability to interpret religious and legal doctrine. Solid scholarship and a deep understanding of the tradition are essential. But not all scholars are considered authoritative. Most Muslims will accept the opinions only of scholars who demonstrate that they are truly concerned about the welfare of ordinary people. People simply will not listen to scholars who seem to be mostly interested in serving the interests of the government.
Throughout Muslim history, religious leaders who advocated aggression against the state were usually marginalized. After all, most Muslims did not want to be led into revolution--they simply wanted their lives to be better. The most successful religious leaders were those who, in addition to serving the spiritual needs of the community, acted as intermediaries between the people and state. There have been times, however, when hostile forces attacked or occupied Muslim lands--for example, the Mongol invasions, (Christian) Crusades, European colonialism, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. At those times, people needed revolutionary leaders; those who were unable to unite the people against aggression were irrelevant.
The question we need to ask is, at this point in history, what do Muslims need to hear from their leaders? What voices will they listen to?
In the midst of a global crisis, it seems that American Muslims are being asked to choose between uncritical support for rebels acting in the name of Islam and uncritical support for any actions taken by the American government. Osama bin Laden has divided the world into two camps: those who oppose the oppression of the Muslim people, and those who aid in that oppression. President Bush has divided the world into two camps: those who support terrorism, and those who fight terrorism.
Where does this leave American Muslim leaders who oppose the oppression of the Muslim people and who want to fight terrorism? In the increasingly strident rhetoric of this war, we may be considered traitors by both sides.
Nevertheless, we must continue to speak. We have to speak against oppressive interpretations of Islam and against emotional, superficial and violent apocalyptic depictions of a world divided. And in our desire to show ourselves to be patriotic Americans, we cannot suppress our criticisms of the United States when we have them.
We have to do this, not only because it is the right thing to do, but also because if we do not, the Muslim world will remain deaf to our arguments that peaceful change is possible, and that revolt and ensuing lawlessness almost always cause the greatest harm to the people.
It is in the best interest of the United States that we be permitted to continue to speak. In many parts of the world, those who speak out against corruption and unfair government policies are jailed, tortured and killed. In such circumstances, very few people--only those who are willing to risk losing their property, their families, their security and their lives--will continue to speak out. Only the radicals will remain.
Islam: The Next American Religion?
The U.S. began as a haven for Christian outcasts. But what religion fits our current zeitgeist? The answer
MICHAEL WOLFE
From a Western Minaret (Beliefnet)
Americans tend to think of their country as, at the very least, a nominally Christian nation. Didn't the Pilgrims come here for freedom to practice their Christian religion? Don't Christian values of righteousness under God, and freedom, reinforce America's democratic, capitalist ideals?
True enough. But there's a new religion on the block now, one that fits the current zeitgeist nicely. It's Islam.
Islam is the third-largest and fastest growing religious community in the United States. This is not just because of immigration. More than 50% of America's six million Muslims were born here. Statistics like these imply some basic agreement between core American values and the beliefs that Muslims hold. Americans who make the effort to look beyond popular stereotypes to learn the truth of Islam are surprised to find themselves on familiar ground.
Is America a Muslim nation? Here are seven reasons the answer may be yes.
Islam is monotheistic.
Muslims worship the same God as Jews and Christians. They also revere the same prophets as Judaism and Christianity, from Abraham, the first monotheist, to Moses, the law giver and messenger of God, to Jesus--not leaving out Noah, Job, or Isaiah along the way. The concept of a Judeo-Christian tradition only came to the fore in the 1940s in America. Now, as a nation, we may be transcending it, turning to a more inclusive "Abrahamic" view.
In January, President Bush grouped mosques with churches and synagogues in his inaugural address. A few days later, when he posed for photographers at a meeting of several dozen religious figures, the Shi'ite imam Muhammad Qazwini, of Orange County, Calif., stood directly behind Bush's chair like a presiding angel, dressed in the robes and turban of his south Iraqi youth.
Islam is democratic in spirit.
Islam advocates the right to vote and educate yourself and pursue a profession. The Qur'an, on which Islamic law is based, enjoins Muslims to govern themselves by discussion and consensus. In mosques, there is no particular priestly hierarchy. With Islam, each individual is responsible for the condition of her or his own soul. Everyone stands equal before God
Americans, who mostly associate Islamic government with a handful of tyrants, may find this independent spirit surprising, supposing that Muslims are somehow predisposed to passive submission. Nothing could be further from the truth. The dictators reigning today in the Middle East are not the result of Islamic principles. They are more a result of global economics and the aftermath of European colonialism. Meanwhile, like everyone else, average Muslims the world over want a larger say in what goes on in the countries where they live. Those in America may actually succeed in it. In this way, America is closer in spirit to Islam than many Arab countries.
Islam contains an attractive mystical tradition.
Mysticism is grounded in the individual search for God. Where better to do that than in America, land of individualists and spiritual seekers? And who might better benefit than Americans from the centuries-long tradition of teachers and students that characterize Islam. Surprising as it may seem, America's best-selling poet du jour is a Muslim mystic named Rumi, the 800-year-old Persian bard and founder of the Mevlevi Path, known in the West as the Whirling Dervishes. Even book packagers are now rushing him into print to meet and profit from mainstream demand for this visionary. Translators as various as Robert Bly, Coleman Barks, and Kabir and Camille Helminski have produced dozens of books of Rumi's verse and have only begun to bring his enormous output before the English-speaking world. This is a concrete poetry of ecstasy, where physical reality and the longing for God are joined by flashes of metaphor and insight that continue to speak across the centuries.
Islam is egalitarian.
From New York to California, the only houses of worship that are routinely integrated today are the approximately 4,000 Muslim mosques. That is because Islam is predicated on a level playing field, especially when it comes to standing before God. The Pledge of Allegiance (one nation, "under God") and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address (all people are "created equal") express themes that are also basic to Islam.
Islam is often viewed as an aggressive faith because of the concept of jihad, but this is actually a misunderstood term. Because Muslims believe that God wants a just world, they tend to be activists, and they emphasize that people are equal before God. These are two reasons why African Americans have been drawn in such large numbers to Islam. They now comprise about one-third of all Muslims in America.
Meanwhile, this egalitarian streak also plays itself out in relations between the sexes. Muhammad, Islam's prophet, actually was a reformer in his day. Following the Qur'an, he limited the number of wives a man could have and strongly recommended against polygamy. The Qur'an laid out a set of marriage laws that guarantees married women their family names, their own possessions and capital, the right to agree upon whom they will marry, and the right to initiate divorce. In Islam's early period, women were professionals and property owners, as increasingly they are today. None of this may seem obvious to most Americans because of cultural overlays that at times make Islam appear to be a repressive faith toward women--but if you look more closely, you can see the egalitarian streak preserved in the Qur'an finding expression in contemporary terms. In today's Iran, for example, more women than men attend university, and in recent local elections there, 5,000 women ran for public office.
Islam shares America's new interest in food purity and diet.
Muslims conduct a monthlong fast during the holy month of Ramadan, a practice that many Americans admire and even seek to emulate. I happened to spend quite a bit of time with a non-Muslim friend during Ramadan this year. After a month of being exposed to a practice that brings some annual control to human consumption, my friend let me know, in January, that he was "doing a little Ramadan" of his own. I asked what he meant. "Well, I'm not drinking anything or smoking anything for at least a month, and I'm going off coffee." Given this friend's normal intake of coffee, I could not believe my ears.
Muslims also observe dietary laws that restrict the kind of meat they can eat. These laws require that the permitted, or halal, meat is prepared in a manner that emphasizes cleanliness and a humane treatment of animals. These laws ride on the same trends that have made organic foods so popular.
Islam is tolerant of other faiths.
Like America, Islam has a history of respecting other religions. In Muhammad's day, Christians, Sabeans, and Jews in Muslim lands retained their own courts and enjoyed considerable autonomy. As Islam spread east toward India and China, it came to view Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, and Buddhism as valid paths to salvation. As Islam spread north and west, Judaism especially benefited. The return of the Jews to Jerusalem, after centuries as outcasts, only came about after Muslims took the city in 638. The first thing the Muslims did there was to rescue the Temple Mount, which by then had been turned into a garbage heap.
Today, of course, the long discord between Israel and Palestine has acquired harsh religious overtones. Yet the fact remains that this is a battle for real estate, not a war between two faiths. Islam and Judaism revere the same prophetic lineage, back to Abraham, and no amount of bullets or barbed wire can change that. As The New York Times recently reported, while Muslim/Jewish tensions sometimes flare on university campuses, lately these same students have found ways to forge common links. For one thing, the two religions share similar dietary laws, including ritual slaughter and a prohibition on pork. Joining forces at Dartmouth this fall, the first kosher/halal dining hall is scheduled to open its doors this autumn. That isn't all: They're already planning a joint Thanksgiving dinner, with birds dressed at a nearby farm by a rabbi and an imam. If the American Pilgrims were watching now, they'd be rubbing their eyes with amazement. And, because they came here fleeing religious persecution, they might also understand.
Islam encourages the pursuit of religious freedom.
The Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock is not the world's first story of religious emigration. Muhammad and his little band of 100 followers fled religious persecution, too, from Mecca in the year 622. They only survived by going to Madinah, an oasis a few hundred miles north, where they established a new community based on a religion they could only practice secretly back home. No wonder then that, in our own day, many Muslims have come here as pilgrims from oppression, leaving places like Kashmir, Bosnia, and Kosovo, where being a Muslim may radically shorten your life span. When the 20th century's list of emigrant exiles is added up, it will prove to be heavy with Muslims, that's for sure.
All in all, there seems to be a deep resonance between Islam and the United States. Although one is a world religion and the other is a sovereign nation, both are traditionally very strong on individual responsibility. Like New Hampshire's motto, "Live Free or Die," America is wedded to individual liberty and an ethic based on right action. For a Muslim, spiritual salvation depends on these. This is best expressed in a popular saying: Even when you think God isn't watching you, act as if he is.
Who knows? Perhaps it won't be long now before words like salat (Muslim prayer) and Ramadan join karma and Nirvana in Webster's Dictionary, and Muslims take their place in America's mainstream.
Ask the Scholar
Jihad: Does It Really Mean Holy War?
Al-Hajj Talib 'Abdur-Rashid, imam of the Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood in Harlem, New York answers a question that has puzzled both non-Muslims and Muslims for ages.
What is jihad and what role does it play in the lives of Muslims?
Answer: Jihad is one of the most misunderstood of Islamic terms used today, and many Muslims are as confused by it as non-Muslims. In the West, few words carry as much power to instill fear or hatred. That's because the news media have widely interpreted jihad to mean "holy war," linking it with extremism and terrorism in the public consciousness. News reports of bombings in the Middle East only deepen the identification of jihad with violence. It's not surprising that so many Americans perceive the word in light of the Crusades of centuries ago -- as a kind of latter-day Crusade in reverse.
But the concept of jihad is a beautiful one that has nothing to do with aggressive warfare. Simply put, jihad finds its origin in the verb jahada which means to struggle, to fight.
The word has a few different connotations, since struggle can occur on several levels. Muslims understand these levels based not only on the words of Allah in the Qur'an, but also on the authentic statements of the Prophet Muhammad as recorded in our oral traditions, preserved as ahadith. Here are the levels of jihad:
Personal Jihad:
Prophet Muhammad Ibn 'Abdullah (may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said, "The most excellent jihad is that of the soul." This jihad, called the Jihadun-Nafs, is the intimate struggle to purify the soul of satanic influence -- both subtle and overt. It is the struggle to cleanse one's spirit of sin. This is the most important level of jihad.
Verbal Jihad:
On another occasion, the Prophet said, "The most excellent jihad is the speaking of truth in the face of a tyrant." He encouraged raising one's voice in the name of Allah on behalf of justice.
Physical Jihad:
This is combat waged in defense of Muslims against oppression and transgression by the enemies of Allah, Islam and Muslims. We are commanded by Allah to lead peaceful lives and not transgress against anyone, but also to defend ourselves against oppression by "fighting against those who fight against us." This "jihad with the hand" is the aspect of jihad that has been so profoundly misunderstood in today's world.
American Jihad
Young American Muslims are looking for ways to change their countrymen's idea of Islam
By Rhonda Roumani (Beliefnet)
To counter Osama bin Laden's bogus jihad, we need an American-grown jihad led by a new generation of American Muslims.
And this is starting to happen. The day of the terrorist attacks, a group called Muslims Against Terrorism was born. It began as a website created by about two dozen young New York Muslims who, within the first week after the attacks, came together to reaffirm that, yes, they are all Americans--and, no, the terrorists are not true Muslims. Now this network has attracted members from Los Angeles, Chicago, Cleveland, San Francisco, Detroit, Washington, and other American cities. The group has a simple message, with a simple goal: to teach Americans about Islam--real Islam.
One of my first reactions was that the name implied that some Muslims are for terrorism. It seemed defensive, since anyone who knows anything about Islam would know that Islam is against terrorism. But Muslims Against Terrorism leaders say their audience is a largely unaware American public searching for answers. Oprah, The West Wing, and all kinds of media outlets, it seems, are tackling the question: What is Islam really about? These young Muslims believe they are in the best position to explain.
What is particularly interesting about the group is its makeup: young, professional, male and female, mostly in their 20s and early 30s, and from various racial and cultural backgrounds. They are Americans--with African-American, Sri Lankan, Anglo, Syrian, Egyptian, Pakistani, and Filipino roots. Men and women mix freely. Not all the women wear hijab, the traditional Muslim head covering. And most important is that this group of indigenous and second- and third-generation Muslims is concerned primarily with America rather than a distant homeland.
Muslims often talk about a rift between the African-American and immigrant communities. African-Americans focus more on local issues, and immigrant communities care more about problems overseas. In addition, many African-American Muslims came to Islam by way of the Nation of Islam and the black separatist movement of the 1960s. That history is completely different from the stories of immigrant Muslims.
But according to Asma Khan, 30, a lawyer and the new group's spokeswoman, young Muslims are determined to make this new struggle ethnically all-encompassing. Khan puts it this way: "Our religion has been hijacked by people who have no right to represent it."
The website explains the mission: Take back Islam from those who preach hatred and violence. Stand up and be counted as vocal, Muslim, American proponents of peace. Make it clear that Islam prohibits terrorism and demands peace. Educate Muslims and non-Muslims alike about the prohibitions Islam makes against the taking of innocent life. Assist with efforts to combat terrorism and aid its victims.
Could this generation be the one that finally brings Islam into mainstream American culture?
Most Muslim-American organizations, however focused they are on the American scene, also maintain an eye on the Muslim world--the Palestinian territories, Pakistan, Kashmir, Chechnya, and the Balkans. And, often, the simple message of Islam gets lost in political causes.
"[International] politics has made a mess of Islam," Khan says. "We are worried about the message of Islam because we have seen the 'message of Islam' used to justify horrific mass murder. And while this may have happened overseas, it never hit home before."
The message is being heard.
"People are inspired by the fact that we're taking Islam back. Volunteers are calling asking to help, asking if Christians can be involved," Khan says.
Pressure is often placed on Muslim organizations to take a strong stand against terrorism, particularly when it comes to political hot spots such as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. But often such organizations, while not supportive of terrorist acts, have been careful not to criticize too harshly lest that disapproval be mistaken for opposition to all forms of resistance.
And so, a tragic episode in this country's new century may open new possibilities for real justice and for better understanding. A new American Muslim movement may finally have come into being.
Have We All Been Hijacked?
The biographer of Muhammad and expert on fundamentalism says Sept. 11 is a watershed moment for all the Abrahamic faiths
By Karen Armstrong (Beliefnet)
There has been much talk of the Islamic religion itself having been "hijacked" by the terrorists. The appalling crime against humanity violated the cardinal principles of Islam and has taken it off in quite the wrong direction. Certainly, this action seemed to endorse the mistaken view so common in the West that Islam is essentially a fanatical and violent faith.
But is this really a case of a faith being hijacked? Not yet. Because in this case, the other people in the "plane"--as it were--can take an effective stand against the moral nihilism of the terrorists. Muslims can decide whether they are going to follow the hijackers into violence and hatred, away from the true teachings of Islam, or ensure that their faith is not driven off-course.
You'll recall that the primary meaning of the word jihad is not "holy war" but "struggle" or "effort." This is a very important religious principle. It reminds us that religion is never something achieved or finished. The revelation is given, but those who follow it have to make a constant effort, day by day, year after year, to put it into practice in a flawed and tragic world.
Each faith tradition represents a constant dialogue between a timeless, transcendent, or sacred reality and the constantly changing circumstances of life here on earth. We all have to struggle to make our scriptures and the insights of our tradition speak to the circumstances we find ourselves in.
These circumstances are always unique. The Sept. 11th events gave Muslims a terrible insight into the way their faith can be abused and made an instrument of evil. Now they must initiate a new jihad, a new effort to delve creatively into their rich faith traditions and emphasize as never before the compassion, justice, and tolerance that are central to the Qur'anic vision.
President Bush has pointed out that the terrorists' crime has "blasphemed Allah." And all over the world, Muslim leaders and scholars have also condemned the atrocity. But verbal declarations are not what religion is primarily about. The struggle, or jihad, must continue every day in the coming months, in practical ways. Every time a violent action or an intolerant word is spoken, the world becomes a worse place and the virus of hatred and evil spreads. But every time any single believer reaches out to others in compassion and sympathy, the world improved infinitesimally. That daily, hourly effort is the jihad required right now.
Muslims don't carry this responsibility alone. Jews and Christians belong to the same religious family; they too can use this trauma creatively to reaffirm the values that we all hold in common. The religions of Abraham all worship the same God; all three have a deep commitment to compassion, justice, and peace.
We haven't always realized this. Christians have persecuted Jews relentlessly; they have led Crusades against Muslims. For centuries, Jews and Muslims lived together in peace in the Middle East, but for nearly 100 years, they too have been locked in a terrible conflict, leading them to revile each other's religious traditions. This must stop. We have just had a terrible revelation about where such hatred can lead.
Religion, like any other human activity, can be abused. And the particular temptation of monotheism, with its personalized conception of the divine, has been to assume that God is a being like ourselves writ large, with likes and dislikes similar to our own. The Crusaders went into battle to slaughter Muslims with the cry "God wills it!" I am pretty sure that the hijackers went to their deaths with much the same cry on their lips on Sept. 11th.
But obviously "God" wills nothing of the sort. What the Crusaders and the terrorists were doing was projecting their own hatred onto a Being they had created in their own image and likeness. God can all too easily be made to give a sacred seal of absolute approval to our most loathsome prejudices and policies. And now monotheists must be more careful of falling into this idolatry than ever before.
Far from being addicted to warfare, Islam insists on the importance of peace. The message of the Qur'an is a plural vision; it respects and values other traditions. When the Prophet Muhammad told the Muslim community that in the future they must pray facing Mecca (instead of Jerusalem, the Muslims' first orientation), he was trying to return to the time of Abraham, when, he imagined, believers didn't consider themselves Jews or Christians, did not argue about theological issues (such as the divinity of Christ) that nobody could prove one way or the other. They did not claim that their tradition had the monopoly on truth, or that other ways of being religious were inferior, but were united in their faith.
In the early days of his mission, Muhammad seems to have assumed that Jews and Christians belonged to the same religion: After all, they all worshipped the same God. When, later, he found that in fact they had serious theological disagreements, he was shocked. It seemed perverse and wrong to him that people who surrendered their entire lives to God should quarrel with one another about abstruse theological matters--it was God that mattered, not how people interpreted their experience of the divine.
It was not that Muhammad thought that everybody should belong to one giant world religion. The Qur'anic view is that God has sent prophets to every people on the face of the earth, who speak His word to them in their own language and their own cultural traditions. The Qur'an was a scripture in Arabic for the Arabs, though anybody of any race was welcome to join his faith community. Muhammad never expected Jews or Christians to convert to Islam unless they specifically wished to do so, because they had received perfectly valid revelations of their own. But he did think that they should stress the things that united them, instead of exalting their own tradition at the expense of other faiths.
When he arrived in Medina, he was bitterly disappointed when the Jews living there didn't accept him as a prophet. This challenged his vision, but some Jews of Medina were friendly to the Muslims. They told them a very interesting local tradition about Abraham that delighted Muhammad, because it proved that the Arabs had not been left out of the divine plan, as they thought, but had been included from the very beginning.
The friendly Jews told him that Abraham had had two sons: Isaac, through whom the Jews trace their lineage, and Ismail, who was the father of the Arab peoples. The book of Genesis told how Abraham had been forced to cast Ismail and his mother Hagar out of his household, but that God had promised Hagar that Ismail would also be the father of a great people, just like Isaac. In later years, went the local belief, Abraham had visited Ismail in the wilderness of Arabia and together they had built the Kabah, the ancient cube-shaped shrine in the heart of Mecca, the holiest site in Arabia and the first temple there to the One God.
Two years after his arrival in Medina, Muhammad was inspired by God to rule that Muslims must face Mecca and the Kabah when they prayed. This reflected his wish to go back to the spirit represented by Abraham, who had lived before the arrival of the Torah and the Gospel, and thus before the faith had been divided into hostile groups. Abraham, says the Qur'an, had simply been a hanif, a man of pure faith. Muslims were to remember this when they prayed facing the house that Abraham had built: They were now turning toward God himself and not toward any established religion.
"Verily, as for those who have broken the unity of their faith and have become sects--thou has nothing to do with them. Leave them to God, and in time He will make them understand what they were doing.
Say: 'Behold, my Sustainer has guided me onto a straight way through an ever true faith--the way of Abraham, who turned away from all that is false, and was no idolater.
Say "Behold, my prayer, and all my acts of worship, and my living and my dying are for God alone, the Sustainer of all the worlds."
--Qur'an, 6:159-162
This did not mean, of course, that the Qur'an denied the revelations of the later prophets--quite the contrary. The Qur'an insists Moses, Jesus, and all the great prophets sent to humanity confirmed one another’s insights. But it does mean that religion and revelation should bring us together and must not separate us into warring camps.
We need to cultivate this "Abrahamic" spirit during these terrible days. All of us, Jews, Christians, and Muslims, have used our religion to denigrate and even to persecute others. But Abraham is our common father, and if we can use this horror to realize that we must not exalt our own faith at the expense of others', perhaps something good can come out of evil.
If the atrocity is used by Christians and Jews to ostracize all Muslims and to denounce their faith as inherently evil, then it would not simply be Islam that was in danger of being hijacked on Sept. 11th, but Judaism and Christianity too.
A Great Moment for Muslims
by Steven Waldman (Beliefnet)
Will we look back on Sept. 11 as the day Islam entered the American mainstream?
The attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon might be the best thing that's ever happened to Islam in America.
This may seem like a strange thing to say, given that we're witnessing a grotesque backlash against American Muslims. But in the long run we may view this as a positive turning point for Muslims in America.
First, Americans are now learning about the religion. Bookstores report big increases in sales of the Qur'an and books about Islam. Oprah Winfrey devoted a show to Islam 101, and Beliefnet has gotten huge interest in its Islam mini-courses.
Some Americans are merely curious, but many are also feeling a moral obligation to learn. We know that our current view of Islam--is that the religion that promotes terrorism?--isn't quite right. But that's about all we do know. Normally, our civic ignorance doesn't have horrendous consequences; if we don't know the capital of Montana, no lives will be lost. Now, ignorance of Islam could lead to mistreatment of fellow Americans or ill-conceived foreign policy.
Another historic milestone: The President of the United States has repeatedly, vocally, and persuasively embraced Islam, making clear this isn't a war against the religion. To some extent this may be geopolitical tactics--he wants to prevent certain Islamic countries from turning against us. But whatever the reason, it is extraordinary that this evangelical Christian has embraced as a "great religion" a faith that many of his own supporters have viewed as destining millions of souls to hell.
And perhaps most importantly, the attacks are going to push American and other western Muslims to define and cultivate a unique western form of Islam. When President Bush said the terrorists had hijacked Islam, he was partly right. But it goes farther than that. Many American Muslims privately feel that many Middle Eastern Muslims have so infused their faith with anti-Americanism, tolerance of terrorism, or other customs (like subjugation of women), that it is polluting Islam.
Even before Sept. 11, American Muslims were growing their own style of Islam (just as Christians, Jews, Buddhists, and Hindus did when they immigrated). The new form is deeply rooted in the Qur’an, but features a more prominent role for women, an emphasis on democracy, and less hostility to the United States. This evolution has been happening here in part because many Muslims are now second generation and because about a third of U.S. Muslims are African-American with no particular allegiance to the Middle East.
Western Muslims are in a very difficult position. They want to remain loyal to their countries of origin at the same time that they defend the core values of their faith.
But the terrorist attacks have forced their hands. The events will probably accelerate a positive process that was occurring anyway. Though it hardly seems like it now, twenty years from today we may very well view this as the moment when Islam became a mainstream American religion.
