Category Archives: Islam and Christianity

Faith confronts culture in “American Dervish”

Islam and Christianity, Islam in America, Judaism, Literature


Author Ayad Akhtar, left

by JENNIFER S. BRYSON, Contending Modernities, August 7, 2012

American Dervish, by American actor and author Ayad Akhtar, is set in one of the many places in the world with vibrant Muslim communities. In this case: Wisconsin.

Akhtar skillfully develops wonderful characters. As I delved into this novel I kept wanting to find more and more time to read so I could find out what would happen to characters such as the main figure Hayat; Mina, a dear family friend; and Mina’s suitor, the kind Jewish doctor Nathan. Also, Akhtar powerfully tackles the serious, generally taboo topics of Jew-hatred and domestic abuse. (This courageous novel goes beyond abstract “anti-Semitism”; American Dervish confronts outright hatred and its real-life consequences.)

Quran “translation” conundrum

Along the way, American Dervish has one of the most interesting wrestling matches I’ve seen yet over whether or not to make the Quran accessible in languages other than Arabic for people who do not know Arabic. (While I as a non-Muslim am an onlooker to these intra-Muslim “wrestling” matches, I myself have sat through more than a few Catholic Masses in Latin trying to figure out why we weren’t using a language the people present would actually understand.) Continue reading Faith confronts culture in “American Dervish” →

Islam and America: A Moroccan View

Books You Should Read, Ethics, Immigration Issues, Islam and Christianity, Islam in America



[Webshaykh’s note: The Moroccan American scholar Anouar Majid, Founding Director of the Center for Global Humanities and Associate Provost for Global Initiatives at the University of New England, has recently published a book well worth reading. Following on his earlier analysis of the evolving relations between America and the Islamic world, this is a personal foray that calls for building a future of mutual respect without prejudice. Below is a brief excerpt, but I heartily endorse reading the entire book, Islam and America.]

I know for a fact that Muslims and Americans can engage in meaningful discussions that can lead to progress, if such discussions are anchored in some knowledge of history. I witnessed such debates in Rabat, Morocco’s capital. in 2005, after I had given a lecture to a packed hall of Moroccan and American students, as well as a couple of officers from the US embassy, on the meaning of American freedom. At that time, the US government was trying hard to reach Muslims, but Muslim skepticism and fear were aggravated by US military actions in the region and by the aspersions cast on their religion in the media. Still, the topic of freedom generated such a lively debate that it planted the idea for this project in my consciousness.

As I did with the topic of freedom in Rabat, I am using this book to survey American-Muslim relations within the old clash of religions before we ask ourselves –Muslims and non-Muslims alike –whether our beliefs and prejudices still make sense today. I wouldn’t be surprised if my readers –American and Muslim, Israeli and Palestinian, Jew and Arab, or just simply religious and secular – found themselves uncomfortable at different points in the narrative. No nation, religion, or ethnicity gets a free pass, not because I want to be provocative, but because I am at a point in my life when, both intellectually and, even more importantly, emotionally, such rigid tribal divisions mean very little to me. The blind passions they engender are plunging our already fractured world into a deepening abyss. If gun lobbyists in the United States often claim that people – not guns – kill, then we must make sure that people carrying guns are not ideologically predisposed to shoot. I do respect the intensity of religion or nationalist convictions, but I also hope that such sentiments do not prevent us from engaging in serious conversations about our common future.

Excerpt from Anouar Majid, Islam and America: Building a Future without Prejudice (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2012, p. 20).

The Weakness of Romney’s Right

Bible and Holy Land, Islam and Christianity, Islam in America, Obama Administration


If one thing is clear in the build-up to the 2012 presidential election, it is that the Republican candidate Mitt Romney is less someone most Americans want to vote for than Barack Obama is someone that many people do not want to vote for. The elephant in the debate room, or at least one of the herd that has swelled with the ramping up of polemical rhetoric on all sides, is Islam. Not the real Islam, which most Americans would have a hard time recognizing anyway, but two prominent distortions. The most conservative born-again, Bible-believing Christians, often lumped together in the loose term “Evangelical,” have long viewed Mormonism as a dangerous cult modeled after Islam. Some of these same folk, including those less devout who drink a redneck portion of beer and say they belong to a tea party, have decided that President Obama is really a Muslim. So for the conspiratorial fringe, this election boils down to voting for one Muslim (or should I say Mohammedan) or another.

No doubt many of the Bible-believing saints are praying for the Rapture before November. Let’s face it: what would Jesus do if his choice was between voting for a Mormon (that born-againers say are heretics) or a stealth Muslim (as the birthers contend)? I suspect few would quote the biblical passage (Matthew 22:21) where Jesus says “Render, therefore, unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s,” since taxation is obviously Satanic. Besides, Caesar died a long time ago. And I imagine that the Sermon on the Mount mantra of not smiting back, when someone is cheeky. and not resisting evil would also not be quoted. If you happen to be a Mormon, of which there are over 6 million in the United States, then you would expect Jesus to vote for Mitt, since Mormons teach that Jesus has returned to visit various Mormon leaders here in America, as recently as 1918. Muslims are not very likely to vote for Romney because the Mormon church borrowed several ideas (like a divine book delivered by an angel and polygyny) from Islam. So the right wing that has come to vote Republican without thinking is really between the Rock of Ages and a hard place. Continue reading The Weakness of Romney’s Right →

A Salacious Salafi

Bible and Holy Land, Egypt, Ethics, Gender and Sexuality, Islam and Christianity


Sheikh Wanis and his fellow adulterers

Al-Ahram has published an account of a salacious encounter of an Egyptian Salafi who is a former MP.

Egyptian authorities have decided to put on trial a Salafist ex-MP who was caught allegedly performing an “indecent” sexual act with a woman in public, a judicial source said on Thursday.

Ali Wanis’s trial is set for Sunday and will take place on time although he has gone missing since police found him last month engaged in a sexual act with a 22-year-old woman in a car parked on a highway.

The woman, a university student, is behind bars and the public prosecutor’s office has ordered the arrest of Wanis, a cleric and former MP for the ultra-conservative Al-Nour party.

After the incident in early June, Wanis denied any wrongdoing and said in a video posted on his website that he had parked along the side of the road because his passenger “became sick.”

But the pair have been accused of performing an “indecent” sexual act in public.

Al-Nour party, won the second largest number of seats in parliamentary elections last winter after the Muslim Brotherhood.

It was hit with a scandal in March when another lawmaker was forced to resign from parliament and from his party after claiming he was injured in a carjacking — to explain bandages on his face — when in fact he had had a nose job.

Wow — a blow job and a nose job and the appeal of Salafism takes a nose dive. Continue reading A Salacious Salafi →

Tabsir Redux: An American Treaty on Religion

Algeria, Islam and Christianity, Islam in America, Orientalist Art


Yes, a treaty and not a Humean treatise, although Hume’s treatise on Religion no doubt had an influence on the creators of the text. The third treaty established by the young United States, recently liberated from British rule, with the nations of the “Barbary Coast” was with the Bey of Algiers in 1797. Like the earlier two treaties, the focus was on maritime trade in the Mediterranean and the problem of Barbary “pirates” as well as neutrality of the Barbary states when the U.S. was battling other “Christian” powers. Our Founding Fathers (for surely those members of Congress in 1797 were as close to being Founding Fathers as Sarah Palin’s contorted dubbing of John Quincy Adams, who had just turned 20 and had yet to enter politics) were obviously not working hard to free slaves (as these treaties will bear out), but they did stress a point that many rightwing pundits conveniently gloss over: the United States was not created as a “Christian nation.”

As you read the treaty below, in celebration of the 4th of July, note article 11 in particular. It turns out that the translation provided to Congress by Joseph Barlow, is not very accurate and the original Arabic version did not contain what we find in Article 11. But in fact, Congress never knew that and only saw the version printed here; this was accepted unanimously and then acknowledged as well by President John Adams at the time. So it was certainly not the contention of the Dey of Algiers that the U.S. was not a Christian nation, but an idea that resonated well with the young Congress.

Treaty of Peace and Friendship, signed at Tripoli November 4, 1796 (3 Ramada I, A. H. 1211), and at Algiers January 3, 1797 (4 Rajab, A. H. 1211). Original in Arabic. Submitted to the Senate May 29, 1797. (Message of May 26, 1797.) Resolution of advice and consent June 7, 1797. Ratified by the United States June 10, 1797. As to the ratification generally, see the notes. Proclaimed Jane 10, 1797.

[Translation]
Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the United States of America and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli of Barbary.

ARTICLE 1.
There is a firm and perpetual Peace and friendship between the United States of America and the Bey and subjects of Tripoli of Barbary, made by the free consent of both parties, and guaranteed by the most potent Dey & regency of Algiers.

ARTICLE 2.
If any goods belonging to any nation with which either of the parties is at war shall be loaded on board of vessels belonging to the other party they shall pass free, and no attempt shall be made to take or detain them.

ARTICLE 3.
If any citizens, subjects or effects belonging to either party shall be found on board a prize vessel taken from an enemy by the other party, such citizens or subjects shall be set at liberty, and the effects restored to the owners. Continue reading Tabsir Redux: An American Treaty on Religion →

Tabsir Redux: Mahdi Madness and the 2008 Election

Election 2008, Iran, Islam and Christianity, Islamophobia

[Note: The commentary below was published as the presidential politics of 2008 were heading into the rhetorical throes of summer. Religion was all over the map, with Obama’s Christianity being questioned and his supposed “Islamic” past salivated by the right. This time around religion seems to be taking a back seat to the economy, perhaps in large part because Evangelicals do not want to remind themselves they are about to vote for a Mormon. But the sentiments discussed below are still quite alive…]

For some partisans, no matter who is elected President to succeed George W. Bush, it will seem like the end of the world. We are in the apocalypse silly season once again. Take Tim LeHaye, the doctrinal inspiration of the WASP-friendly Left Behind book series (Jerry B. Jenkins provides the verbal inspiration in sci-fi style); he has been preaching the politics of biblical apocalypse for years. Indeed, since the apostle John allegedly first had his vision on the island of Patmos, the world has been teetering in the end times. This world is always going to hell; Jesus must be coming soon. Bible-belting believers and bible-belching evangelists constantly look to the heavens with rapturous delight for the mother of all shock-and-awe shows to begin. Up go the faithful in the twinkling of an eye and then it is open tribulation season on the Jews that will make the 20th century Nazi holocaust look like a sabbath picnic. Fortunately, most of the world’s Christians look at such a naive-ity scene with alarm. “Even so,” it might be said, “do not come Lord Jesus.”

Reverends Tim LeHaye, Pat Robertson and John Hagee are not the only mega-mouths who know deep down in their saved souls that they will not be left behind. Ironically, they share theologically-maddened space with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the shi’a-evangelical President of Iran. As noted in a New York Times article today by Nazila Fathi, the Iranian President’s “high father” is Imam Mahdi, the hidden 12th “twelver” Imam who occulted well over a millennium ago, but whose reappearance has been looked for year after year in popular imagination. Ahmadinejad, who loves to wear his religion on his sleeves, says that Imam Mahdi guides his day-to-day decisions as a president. In gratitude, Ahmadinejad has sponsored an institute to prepare Iran for the Imam’s immanent return. This would be like Bush asking his faith-based supporters to create a special office in Homeland Security on Eternal Security Risks to those Left Behind. Continue reading Tabsir Redux: Mahdi Madness and the 2008 Election →

Islam Obscured reviewed

Anthropology/Sociology, Books You Should Read, Islam and Christianity, Islam: Introduction, Scholars

Review of D. M. Varisco, Islam obscured. The rhetoric of anthropological representation, Palgrave MacMillan, New York 2005.

by Estella Carpi, letturearabe di Jolanda Guardi, June 29, 2012

Anche a distanza di ben sei anni, vale la pena recensire il testo dell’antropologo Americano Daniel Varisco, considerate l’urgenza attuale di de-cristallizzare i discorsi sull’Islam, particolarmente nel contesto accademico italiano.

Attraverso una rassegna concettuale di eminenti studiosi tra i quali Ernest Gellner e Clifford Geertz, e la de-mitizzazione della sociologa marocchina Fatima Mernissi che ancora pecca di una visione monolitica dell’Islam, Varisco riesce totalmente, a mio avviso, nell’intento di decostruire il solo Islam univoco, omogeneo, aspettatamente coerente e destoricizzato che ci viene rifilato.

L’Islam che definirei “monolitico” tuttora pervade i discorsi dei più esperti: Varisco, attraverso il suo background squisitamente antropologico, invoca invece all’osservazione degli individui che si auto-definiscono “musulmani”, piuttosto che alla catalogazione di ciò che l’Islam teologicamente prevede. L’Islam, come qualsiasi altra religione intesa sia come istituzione che pratica culturale, può soltanto essere rappresentato.

Per demolire le tuttora ancor troppo diffuse stagnazioni dogmatiche e una comprensione campanilistica dell’Islam, è quindi necessario, sostiene Varisco, tener conto del fatto che additiamo costantemente ai misfatti compiuti dai musulmani con maggior indignazione, in riflesso appunto alla nostra lettura dell’Islam, inteso come insieme di valori e pratiche rigorosamente coerenti, rispetto a qualsiasi altra religione.

I musulmani sono invece “conservatori o comunisti, maschi o femmine, giovani e vecchi, ricchi e poveri, di buon umore o mal intenzionati”, che poco hanno a che fare con una logica islamica del “prendere o lasciare”, quale invece ampiamente diffusa nella letteratura al riguardo. Continue reading Islam Obscured reviewed →

The Quran in East and West: Manuscripts and Printed Books

Conferences and Talks, Islam and Christianity, Qur'an, Teaching Resources


Burke Arabic MS 1, unsigned and undated (Iraq or Iran, before 1300 CE)

The following is a nicely done website about a Quran exhibition held at the Burke Theological Library of Columbia University in 2005 and curated by the historian Dagmar A. Riedel.

During the month of Ramadan, Muslims commemorate the revelation of the Quran to the prophet Muhammad. In Fall 2005, from October 4 until November 2, Burke Library exhibited some of its Qurans to explore during Ramadan 1426 AH how attitudes toward Islam are reflected in the books that give readers access to its revelation.

Since Burke Library was founded as a Protestant research collection, the study of Islam is not often associated with its holdings. But its small collection of Near Eastern manuscripts includes five Qurans which represent the regional esthetic traditions of Quran illumination between the thirteenth and nineteenth centuries CE. Furthermore, Burke Library owns many of the seminal works of Quran scholarship published in early modern Europe, documenting how non-Muslim Europeans translated the Arabic Quran first into Latin and then into European vernaculars. The exhibition traced the process, stretching from the twelfth to the nineteenth century, by which the European approach to the Quran was transformed from an angst-ridden defense against yet another Christian heresy to the investigation of another strain of monotheism.

The 2005 project was made possible by Michael Boddy’s enthusiastic support which in turn ensured the permission of Sara J. Myers, the director of Burke Library, to go ahead with an exhibition that in the middle of the term occupied space in the Burke’s conference and reading rooms. I am also indebted to Jean W. Ashton, the director of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, for lending a Quran from the David E. Smith Collection of Oriental Manuscripts for the exhibition. In the winter of 2011, Burke Library director John B. Weaver generously sponsored the web adaptation of the original brick-and-mortar exhibition.

Exhibit Curator
Dagmar A. Riedel