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Holy Amnesia: Is the Bible more violent than the Qur’an?
Actually I think analyses like these are pointless exercises in exegesis. There isn’t any defensive value to such a “tu quoque” approach and it just gives total jafis like Andrew Bostom another chance to spout their nonsense.
A muslim professor in Germany has decided that the Prophet SAW did not exist.*
I understand the need and right of academia to perform critical examination of religion, but this seems a pretty quixotic agenda. It seems like he’s more intoxicated with his own status as academic freethinker than performing any serious academic inquiry. There’s far more evidence for Mohammed’s SAW existence than there was for Jesus AS.
*astaghfirullah.
Beal says the reaction has largely been positive. But he has also been asked: “When are you going to open a Christian art gallery?” His response: The museum has, in fact, two galleries devoted to Christian art. And Christianity is infused throughout the museum, especially in the European collections. Beal, who is fond of Islamic ceramics, says, “It’s also important for non-Muslims to see this and understand the depth and beauty of Islamic art.” His next challenge: raising $1.5 million to open an Asian art gallery.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1970490,00.html#ixzz0hcMebqCm
Malaysia defends inaction over Catholic ‘desecration’:
The archbishop of Kuala Lumpur Murphy Pakiam has criticised the government’s “failure to act” over the incident, in which the pair joined a Catholic service to investigate claims Muslims were illegally converting.
“The journalists have displayed utmost disrespect for the Catholic community when they admit receiving and spitting out the Holy Communion,” he told a press conference Thursday.
However, the government’s top lawyer, Attorney-General Abdul Gani Patail, said the pair did not understand the significance of the wafer, which Catholics believe represents the body of Jesus Christ.
“The actions of the two reporters may have hurt the feelings of the people but I was satisfied that they did not intend to offend anyone. It was an act of sheer ignorance,” he said in a statement late Thursday.
According to the BBC report the two journalists spat out the communion wafer.
Not that some Muslims, and certainly not those in Malaysia, have a reputation for getting upset at something they deem offensive.
Farid Esack will be live delivering his lecture in few hours. Check here.
Museum collection and Muslim patronage of the arts
Very interesting talk, starts with historical copies of Qu’ran, moves on to other Islamic artifacts.
Seeing the post below by Arif on Pervez Hoodbhoy, reminded me of this rough-and-ready attempt I made to categorise Muslim approaches to ’science’ (below the fold).
Contradictory?
Centuries ago the greatest poets of Persia, like Hafiz and Rumi, stripped away the mullahs’ religious pretensions and exposed their stupidity. Today, however, those same mullahs have taken control of the Iranian republic. The answer lies just as much in the domain of world politics as in theology. Khomeini developed the doctrine known as “guardianship of the clergy,” which gives the mullahs much wider powers than they generally exercised in the past.
—
Ayatollah Khomeini was quite content to keep science and Islam separate—unlike Pakistan’s leaders who have made numerous absurd attempts to marry the two. Khomeini once remarked that there is no such thing as Islamic mathematics. Nor did he take a position against Darwinism. In fact, Iran is one of the rare Muslim countries where the theory of evolution is taught.
Hoodbhoy hardly provides any better answers.
http://www.meforum.org/2593/pervez-amirali-hoodbhoy-islam-science
I found this on a thread at DeenPort:
“Civil society is the deodorant of kufr.”
It is a ‘contention’ (see #70) by Timothy Winter. Sadly, there wasn’t much of a follow up discussion at DeenPort to the initial posting.
What do readers of Talk Islam make of this? The implications seem quite severe on the face of it, if you follow through on the argument being proposed.
“The arts help to humanize cultures where political discourses based on nationalist ideologies tend to dehumanize. They are wonderful pedagogic bridges that help to connect peoples who perceive those different from themselves as ‘the other,’ ” said Asani, Harvard professor of Indo-Muslim and Islamic religion and cultures.
Harvard article here.
Sh. Muhammad Al-Yaqoubi was dismissed from his job as the leader of Friday prayers at a Damascus mosque for using his sermon to criticise the Grand Mufti. He was responding to these remarks made by the Grand Mufti of Syria, Sh Ahmed Hassoun:
(via DeenPort.)
I suggest some of you who have an interest in this sort of thing head over to Midwinterspring’s latest post.
Review of Mark Siljander’s “A Deadly Misunderstanding”
I want to be clear: this is no milquetoast universalist pablum. Siljander is NOT claiming some notion of all roads leading to God. What he’s doing is far more careful and well-thought than that. He is demonstrating the frequency with which fundamental–often violent–differences between the Abrahamic faiths are based on ignorance: not only ignorance of the “other’s” faith, but all too often ignorance of the actual text and context of our own faith and its creeds.
I read good number of books and Mark still holds a high place for me in terms of promoting interfaith dialog. Via @siljander
I offer my take on the Malaysian fracas over the name of Allah at City of Brass.
Should the UMNO succeed in their bid to overturn the court ruling permitting Christians to use the name Allah, then I humbly suggest to the Christian community that there are 98 other names they can (and should) iterate through. They can start with “al Aziz”
Tomb of Imam al-Ghazali discovered in Iran:
Went on a bit of a rant at City of Brass, in response to incessant “liberal muslims must reform Islam” nonsense. I like my Nile River analogy.
Muslim Americans, The Next Generation: a guest post at City of Brass by Willow which is pretty much the perfect example of muslims “reflecting about their faith” that non-muslims are always insisting we do in response to violence and whatnot.
an excerpt:
Ironically I think Muslims are at a disadvantage because Islamic law is comparatively easy to practice and apply in isolation. The result is a community with a sustainable level of conservatism (ie, it’s not like orthodox Jewish or Catholic doctrine, which are almost impossible to keep up en toto outside a Jewish or a Catholic community with established kashrut/regular access to communion etc). Other communities were forced to give up a great deal of religious life simply because the bells-n-smells necessary to sustain it weren’t there. Muslims in America haven’t been forced to make compromises. So any compromises they do make come with an almost hilarious level of groaning and moaning, like they are doing everyone a ginormous favor by budging an inch.
Asra Nomani was recently interviewed on NPR’s Talk of the Nation about Fort Hood. Her suggestion to prevent further violence? Monitor guys who wear their pants above the ankle. This police-state tactic has been en vogue in places like Egypt, Tunisia and Syria for many years. I’m sure the Mubaraks, the Ben Alis and the Assads could give her some great tips.
Should muslim Americans serve in the armed forces of the United States?
What are the doctrinal and textual rationales and arguments for and against such service? (Qur’an, hadith, rulings, etc.).
Let’s talk about it in detail. Most of you are more knowledgeable than I so I want to tap the Talk Islam braintrust here and have a rigorous debate. We need to listen to what the Deenport/Umar Lee types have to say as well.
Ross Douthat, boy wonder opinion columnist for the NYTimes, opines today that Christianity’s global encounter with a resurgent Islam could be the reason for Pope Benedict XVI’s outreach to Anglicans.
Uh, no, probably not. I suspect it’s more like your basic, garden-variety church poaching, which has been an intramural sports league within Christendom for nearly 500 years now. (Prior to that, it was just the Catholics and the Orthodox, no sports league possible.)
Island Islam: amazing photos from National Geographic about Islam in Indonesia.
BismillahirRahmanirRahim Salamu’alaykum, I went down to the DC to attend the annual http://oneprayer.org Prayer Vigil for the Earth… here is a short clip of the zikr and short talk our Shaykh Abdul Kerim gave. http://bit.ly/fuN5k
Charles Tripp says the politics needs to be put back into analysis of ‘Islamist politics’ in his review of Gilles Kepel’s Beyond Terror and Martyrdom: The Future of the Middle East and Ali A. Allawi’s The Crisis of Islamic Civilization.
A report which explores the philosophical and theological perspectives on what it means to be a Muslim in Britain today has been published by the Centre for Middle East and Islamic Studies at Cambridge:
The group agreed that Muslims should assert and teach what they see to be the truth of their faith, but also recognise the existence of different religions and the right of others to do the same. Their study urges Muslims to identify shared values between Islam and other world views, pointing out the Qu’ran’s emphasis on qualities such as good neighbourliness, charity, hospitality and non-aggression.
The report also redefines a number of terms which the authors believe have been misinterpreted. It notes, for example, that both Muslims and non-Muslims often have “skewed understanding of the term Shari’ah, which conjures up images of floggings and beheadings.”
In fact, it stresses, Shari’ah is a way of life based on an ethical code that emphasises dignity, equality and justice for all. Islam, it says, teaches the equality of all human beings regardless of gender.
The report was produced by 26 British Islamademics, and there’s a foreward by the Grand Mufti of Bosnia. It’s 80-odd pages long so I haven’t in great detail yet, only skimmed through it quickly: they seem to be seeking to reconcile topics such as human rights and the sharia; politics, citizenship and God’s sovereignty; and secularism and religion.
(Via Yahya.)
Grand Mufti of Egypt, Dr Ali Gomaa, has a guest poost in the WaPo On Faith blog, discussing modernity:
Reconciling Islam with modernity has been an imperative for Muslims centuries before it became a preoccupation for the West. Islam’s reform movement began at Cairo based Al Azhar in the 19th century.
…
While some of the divide between Islam and the West resides in the realm of ideas, it lies mostly in the realm of politics for Muslim countries have also suffered from aggression. Israel’s occupation of Palestine must end. In Iraq and Afghanistan, sovereignty must be restored with the withdrawal of foreign forces.President Obama’s historic address to the Muslim World from Cairo was a landmark event that opens the door to a new relationship. We in the Muslim world received it with enthusiasm. Let us look forward to years in which our children can celebrate our differences.
Our own Willow was the first to have interviewed him, dubbing him the “Show-Me Shaikh”
(via @Kawdess)
Richard Reddie, author of Black Muslims: Why are a Growing Number of Young Black Men Converting to Islam?, writes about what his research has found:
Egyptian authority will issue an edict banning ‘full veils’:
Sheikh Mohamed Tantawi, dean of al-Azhar university, called full-face veiling a custom that has nothing to do with the Islamic faith.