The Rise of Islamic Radicalism (Islam, Part Ten)

[To see the entire series on Islam, click here]

Where did Islamic radicalism come from?  This is an important question, because we know that the Islamic civilization that has spanned some 14 centuries and a large part of the African, Middle Eastern, and Asian continents cannot in itself be called radical.  To the contrary, it has been throughout history a most impressive civilization, which blended the Islamic religion as founded by the 7^th century prophet Muhammad, with all of the geographic, cultural, social, political, and economic factors that go into any civilization, whether it be Western Civilization, the Chinese Civilization, or the Indian Civilization of the South Asian Subcontinent.

The entity we call Islam was and is actually a hybrid civilization that brought together elements of Arab, Latin, Greek, Persian, Jewish, and Asian cultures.  For about 400 years, from 800 to 1200 AD, it was one of the greatest civilizations of the time, far more cultivated than the Europe of the Dark Ages. Medicine, astronomy, architecture, mathematics, poetry, history, and religious studies flourished. 
Then around the 13^th century, the Islamic empire began to decline, especially under the attacks by the Mongols of Genghis Khan, who invaded the lands of the Middle East, conquering the centers of Islam, including the great centers in Persia and eventually the great Islamic city of Baghdad.  Millions of Muslims were slaughtered by the Mongols, who ironically themselves eventually became converts to Islam. 

Eventually, the Ottoman Turks succeeded the Arabs as rulers of Islam, and the Ottoman empire in its turn became one of the greatest empires in the world for the next six centuries.  It eventually conquered what remained of the Eastern Roman Empire called Byzantium and converted its capital city from Constantinople to Istanbul.

Yet the best days of the Islamic civilization were behind it by the 14 century, and it passed the cultural baton, so to speak, to the West, beginning with the Italian renaissance, which profited immensely from the cultural and intellectual achievements of the Persian Muslims especially.  After that, Islam sunk into a kind of cultural slumber, not really ever going through the ages of reason and science (aka the Enlightenment) that caused the West to become such a powerful civilization technologically.  With the failure of the Ottoman Turk advance on Vienna in 1683, Islam began its long military, political and economic decline vis-à-vis the West.

In Western Europe, the forces of capitalism and democracy were stirring, spurred on by the scientific, technological, and rational advances of the age of reason.  The Spanish, then the British and the Dutch, and finally the French began to project their power around the world, conquering first this land and then that one.  The Islamic countries were first touched by this when the armies of Napoleon invaded Egypt and then colonized other North African countries.  Britain had already colonized India and other Asian lands with their large Muslim populations.  Finally, when the Ottoman Empire sided with the losing Axis powers in World War I, it was eaten up by the victorious Allies, with England taking over the provinces making up Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, and Egypt, while Lebanon and Syria were taken over the French.  The ancient empire of Persia (current day Iran) was just about the only Muslim country to not be colonized.  Over the next 80 years, all of these countries would gain their formal independence from the European imperial powers.  Yet they would continue to be caught in the large political crosscurrents caused by the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States.

During all of this time, the religion of Islam continued to nurture and control the hearts and minds of the vast majority of the people of the Islamic civilization.  And it was a remarkably centrist and stable Islam, with a toleration for diversity.

So what are the factors that have caused the development of Islamic radicalism in the 20^th century?

The Five Pillars of Islam (Islam, Part Nine)

[To see the entire series on Islam, click here]

The 'five pillars' of Islam are the five obligatory actions which every Muslim is supposed to fulfill.  These are the main unifying acts for Muslims around the world.

The first pillar is the confession of faith, called Shahadah. This is a very brief statement in Arabic, which when translated in English, goes like this: “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is His Prophet.” All faithful Muslims recite the Shahadah daily. It is not only a formal statement of belief but also an act of submission to God, to be carried out in all the ways that the Quran mentions.

The second pillar is Salat, which are ritual prayer said five times a day anywhere by every Muslim above the age of puberty. The Salat must be said in the Arabic tongue, silently, while kneeling and facing Mecca. Prayers include praise to God, pleas for forgiveness, chapter one of the Quran and another part of the Quran. The prayers end by passing the peace to the believers on either side. Primarily, the prayer acts as an individual's communion with God, where he remembers God, supplicates for the right path, and then gets a response from Him to implement in his life. Then he bows and prostrates, signifying his subserviency to God, His commands and His law. On Friday, men are obligated to attend congregational prayer, including a sermon, though women are not prohibited from this.

The third pillar is Sawm, or fasting. Observance of the sawm involves abstinence from eating, drinking, smoking, sexual intercourse, unruly thoughts, and other forms of worldly pleasure during daylight hours of the month of Ramadan. As well as fasting, Muslims spend more time praying during this period. Sawm is intended to teach patience and self-control, and is seen as a debt owed by the believer to Allah.

The fourth pillar is Zakat, or alms-giving. Zakât refers to spending a fixed portion of one's wealth for the poor, needy, people whose hearts need to be reconciled, slaves, those in debt, in the way of Allah, and the travelers in the society. The payment of zakât is obligatory on all Muslims. In current usage it is interpreted as a 2.5% levy on most valuables and savings held for a full lunar year.

The fifth pillar of Islam is Pilgrimage to Mecca or Hajj. All Muslims that have the financial and physical means to perform hajj are required to do so at least once in their lifetimes. The pilgrimage to Mecca can only be performed during the Islamic month of Dhul Hijja. Muslims arrive at the Port of Jeddah, and walk to Mecca. Nearing Mecca, Muslims change into a white cloth called an Ihram. This shows equality among themselves. Rich or poor, black or white, all stand side by side.

On my second trip to Israel in 1996, our tour guide for 10 days was a Muslim Palestinian, Kamel. It so happened that our trip occurred during the month Ramadan, so that Kamel had to fast throughout the day while he was with us. At first it was not obvious to us, but when I saw him not eating lunch, I asked him about it, and he explained about the fasting.

The more orthodox forms of Christianity and Judaism have certain actions that are also mandatory (though probably not so clearly spelled out as in Islam).  I think of the 'praying of the hours' that occur in certain Catholic monastery throughout the day, a practice I encountered on a weekend retreat at the Mount Savior Monastery in Elmira, NY in 1983.  On the plane over to Israel in 1993, a certain orthodox Jew put on his prayer shawl and started praying in the aisle of the plane (with the familiar bobbing), forcing those of us trying to go to the restroom to go down the other aisle.  Evangelical Christianity has normally included a requirement for 'daily devotions', which include reading a passage from the Bible and prayer time.  However, I think it is fair to say that probably most Jews and Christians do not feel that their faith requires them to perform specific daily religious acts, though at the same time those same Jewish or Christian believers do try to 'live out' their faith whenever the opportunity rises.

Shalom/Salam/Eirene/Pax/Peace. (To be continued)

Reality

Courtesy of the Daily Dish:

Truthier Than Thou

This is video from Christie O'Donnell's appearance on Bill Maher's 'Politically Incorrect' a few years ago.    What we seem to have here is a very pretty, Christian fundamentalist activist who loves to talk and say things like, "I always try to tell the truth...."   Just what we need in the Senate.   Right.....

More Info on Christie O'Donnell

Here's more information on Christie O'Donnell, the Tea Party victor of the Delaware Republican Senate race and Sarah Palin clone:

O'Donnell first came into the public eye in the 1990s as a foot soldier of the religious right, becoming a press secretary for the anti-abortion group Concerned Women for America, which aims "to bring Biblical principles into all levels of public policy." A devout (and still unmarried) Catholic, she founded the Savior's Alliance for Lifting the Truth, which promoted abstinence and Christian sexual values among college students—an effort that resulted in her now-infamous crusade against masturbation. In 1997, she denounced the government for devoting too much money to AIDS treatment and prevention, criticizing a drag queen ball for celebrating "the type of lifestyle which leads to the disease." From the gays and abortion to evolution—which she's called "a theory" that "too many people are blindly accepting…as fact"—O'Donnell has been a Christian right champion.

A beneficiary of both tea party anger and religious right fervor, O'Donnell represents the potential overlap between Christian conservatives and anti-government activists. She's building this coalition just as the religious right's old power players are trying to ride the coattails of the tea party back into the spotlight. At his Faith and Freedom conference in Washington last week, former Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed attempted to cast small-government conservatism as an extension of God's will. As my colleague Stephanie Mencimer reported, national tea party leaders like Mark Meckler are harping on the "removal of God from the public square," suggesting a possible marriage between the two movements. Sarah Palin, beloved by tea partiers and Christian conservatives alike, has laid the groundwork for this union to happen—as has Glenn Beck at his overtly religious rally at the Lincoln Memorial last month.

Scary People

It is fascinating to watch Sarah Palin take on Karl Rove, Bush's political genius.  Why Rove is allowing himself to get sucked into that conflict is mysterious to me, but if Palin can take down Rove, that will certainly increase her credibility as a political genius in her own right.  Andrew Sullivan writes:

I think Palin is now the GOP leader, and has now ousted even Rove....This is a radical, cultural revolt that the elites have no way of controlling, and which they have encouraged at every turn.

What also strikes me is how O'Donnell disproves the notion that the tea party is uninterested in social issues. O'Donnell is a fundamentalist fanatic - a social reactionary of almost comic proportions. She opposes legal abortion in cases of rape and incest, opposes masturbation, women in the military and sees gays as "curable". And yet there seems no tension between her and the fiscally-oriented tea-partiers. This hope that somehow they can mean the down-playing of Christianism seems like wishful thinking to me. And the idea of these people running foreign policy on the basis of religious doctrine, Greater Israel, institutionalized torture and anti-Muslim bigotry, is terrifying.

The extreme reactionary nature of the Tea Party movement is becoming more apparent every day. Predictions of such a populist movement in response to our growing economic/political/cultural crisis have been around for a long time. I don't know a lot about Father Coughlin in the thirties, but Palin and her hordes reminds me of that. FDR was somehow able to defeat that form of populism, because he put forward the New Deal.  Will Obama?

Lord, these are scary people.

Going Crazy

Sensible conservative writer Kathleen Parker of the WaPo writes about the D'Souzas and the Gringrichs around her:

Of course I knew it all along. President Obama is a Kenyan anti-colonialist and that's why he doesn't get us. He's a ticked-off African.

So goes the latest in Obama-theory, originated by the usually rational conservative thinker Dinesh D'Souza and endorsed by none other than Newt Gingrich, Republican anarchist and onetime speaker of the House of Representatives.

Cue soundtrack to "Twilight Zone." Or "Psycho." Or, I dunno, Tarzan summoning an elephant stampede to quash yet another pestilential imperial invasion.

Actually, scratch that. Call in the shrinks and bring out the couch. If a political season can jump the shark, we have an eye-popping new exhibit for Sea World.

What's next? Obama is an extraterrestrial pod deposited on Planet Earth to occupy a human shell and get elected leader of the free world so that he can lull the population into complacent dependency in advance of a full invasion of body snatchers?

Why not? It's as good as any other theory.

Christians, Jews, and Muslims Becoming More Welcoming

Robert Wright writes about the multiple meanings in all scriptures:

All the Abrahamic scriptures have all kinds of meanings — good and bad — and the question is which meanings will be activated and which will be inert. It all depends on what attitude believers bring to the text. So whenever we do things that influence the attitudes of believers, we shape the living meaning of their scriptures. In this sense, it’s actually within the power of non-Muslim Americans to help determine the meaning of the Koran. If we want its meaning to be as benign as possible, I recommend that we not talk about burning it. And if we want imams to fill mosques with messages of brotherly love, I recommend that we not tell them where they can and can’t build their mosques.

Of course, the street runs both ways. Muslims can influence the attitudes of Christians and Jews and hence the meanings of their texts. The less threatening that Muslims seem, the more welcoming Christians and Jews will be, and the more benign Christianity and Judaism will be. (A good first step would be to bring more Americans into contact with some of the overwhelming majority of Muslims who are in fact not threatening.)

You can even imagine a kind of virtuous circle: the less menacing each side seems, the less menacing the other side becomes — which in turn makes the first side less menacing still, and so on; the meaning of the Abrahamic scriptures would, in a real sense, get better and better and better.

Lately, it seems, things have been moving in the opposite direction; the circle has been getting vicious. And it’s in the nature of vicious circles that they’re hard to stop, much less reverse. On the other hand, if, through the concerted effort of people of good will, you do reverse a vicious circle, the very momentum that sustained it can build in the other direction — and at that point the force will be with you.

Beyond-Pathetic Gingrich

Concerning Newt Gingrich, Maureen Dowd writes:

The 67-year-old former speaker, who has a talent for overreaching, is more unbridled than ever. He’s decided he’ll do or say anything to stay in the game — even Palin-izing himself by making outrageous, unsubstantiated comments to appeal to the wing nuts among us.

The conservative who fancies himself a historian and visionary did not use his critical faculties to resist his party’s lunacy but instead has embraced it, shamelessly.

There is no doubt that Gingrich (unlike Palin) is clearly intellectually bright, but he is certainly not wise, and he is now self-promoting himself by saying whatever it takes, including calling Obama a 'Kenyan anti-colonialist'.  This is beyond pathetic.

It's hard to imagine this group of demogogues in power again, but it could happen this fall.

What Is Islamic Sharia Law (Islam, Part Eight)

[To see the entire series on Islam, click here]

The Jews received the divine Law (also known as Torah) from God through the prophet Moses, and they tried to live by it because they believed it was the path to true life.  (The heart of the Law was the Ten Commandments, revered still today by Jews, Christians, and Muslims.)  We see this clearly in Psalm 1:

Happy are those

who do not follow the advice of the wicked,

or take the path that sinners tread,

or sit in the seat of scoffers;

2 but their delight is in the law of the Lord,

and on his law they meditate day and night.

3 They are like trees

planted by streams of water,

which yield their fruit in its season,
and their leaves do not wither.
In all that they do, they prosper.

The Pharisees, a Jewish sect of legal scholars, in particular were extremely dedicated to keeping the Mosaic Law, and Jesus came into conflict with them over the keeping of that Law, because he sometimes had a somewhat different view of it.  For example, in Matthew 12, we read about Jesus healing a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath, despite it violating the Pharisaic legal understanding of the Sabbath (the Fourth Commandment).  The Pharisees went crazy and discussed "how to destroy him."   In response, Jesus made one of his classic statements: "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." 

Jesus summarized God's Law this way: Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:34-40).  That is probably the way most Christians try to obey the divine Law.

Which brings us to 'Sharia,' the Islamic version of the law of God.  [For more detailed information and references on this subject, consult this source.]   The Muslims have their own version of the Divine Law, interpreted through the lens of their prophet Muhammad and his take on the Jewish/Christian tradition as well as that which he added to it.  It is in many ways similar to the Jewish law, but also differs at points.  And as you might expect, there is considerable debate in majority Muslim lands as to how to apply the Muslim law to their own societies.

The name 'sharia' comes the Arabic word for 'path to the watering hole' (which connects amazingly well to the Psalm 1 passage quoted above).  It refers to the enormous accumulated collection of civil, criminal, and moral law that has developed throughout the 1,400 years of Islamic religious and social experience, which Muslims believe is the 'path' to the life God desires for us.