Category Archives: Islam and Christianity

Shariah at the Kumback Café

Islam and Christianity, Islam in America, Islamic Law, Islamophobia, Orientalism

By Roger Cohen, The New York Times, December 6, 2010

PERRY, OKLAHOMA — They call Oklahoma the buckle of the Bible Belt. It’s the state where all 77 counties voted Republican when Barack Obama was elected and where 70.8 percent of the electorate last month approved a “Save Our State Amendment” banning Islamic, or Shariah, law.

So I decided to check the pulse of a resurgent conservative America at the Kumback Café. The Kumback, established 1926, is a cozy, memorabilia-filled joint that sits opposite the courthouse in downtown Perry, population 5,230.

Things work like this at the Kumback: The guys, average age about 80, arrive around 8 a.m. and get talking on “the whole gamut of life”; the girls, average age too indelicate to print, gather later at a horse-shoe shaped table toward the back. Ken Sherman, 86 and spry, explained: “We’ve got to come here every day to find out what’s going on. And by the time we leave we forget.”

I asked Paul Morrow, a whippersnapper at 71, how things were going. “There’s just too much Muslim influence, all this Shariah law,” he said. “We’re conservative here, old and cantankerous.” Continue reading Shariah at the Kumback Café →

A Philosophical Tale

Books You Should Read, Islam and Christianity, Islam in Europe, Islamic Sciences, Literature, Scholars


While teaching Hofstra’s Honors College Culture and Expression course this term, I suggested the text Hayy ibn Yaqzan by the Andalusian Muslim scholar Ibn Tufayl, who died in 1185 CE, as an antidote to the otherwise “Great Western” bent such courses inevitably take. Ibn Tufayl’s 12th century text is a brilliant fable built on the author’s knowledge of earlier philosophical arguments by Greek (including Plato and Aristotle) Neoplatonist and Muslim (such as Al-Farabi and Ibn Sina) intellectuals and also on the best science of his day. The plot revolves around a child stranded or spontaneously generated (take your pick) on an island, brought up by a nurturing doe and then growing through basic logic from an empirical youth to an enlightened mystic. In effect the hero, Hayy ibn Yaqzan, comes to the ultimate state of being a Muslim without ever having heard of Muhammad or being introduced to Islamic rituals and law. Ibn Tufayl turns St. Augustine’s “original sin” on its head, although still arriving at belief in one God as a First Cause, Prime Mover or Prime Sustainer.

The book is worth a read, since so many European intellectuals did in fact read it after it was translated into English by Simon Ockley in 1708. If you have ever read Robinson Crusoe or Tarzan, this book is worth checking out for its literary prehistoric value. Ibn Tufayl presents a strikingly modern view on the role of symbolism, no matter what you think of his ultimate theological spin. Here is an example from late in the book, once Hayy has gone as far as reason will take him:

Having attained this total absorption, this complete annihilation, this veritable union, he saw that the highest sphere, beyond which there is no body, had an essence free from matter, which was not the essence of that one, true one, nor the sphere itself, nor yet anything different from them both; but was like the image of the Sun which appears in a well polished looking-glass, which is neither the Sun nor the looking-glass, and yet not distinct from them. And he saw in the essence of that sphere, such perfection, splendour and beauty, as is too great to be expressed by any tongue, and too subtle to be clothed in words; and he perceived that it was in the utmost perfection of delight and joy, exultation and gladness, by reason of its beholding the essence of that true one, whose glory be exalted. Continue reading A Philosophical Tale →

Ibn Tufayl’s Fable

Books You Should Read, Environment, Islam and Christianity, Islam in Europe, Islamic History, Islamic Sciences, Literature, Scholars, Sufism


What would happen to a child growing up on an island outside any human society? In real life such a scenario would be absurd. No child could survive from birth on his or her own, despite exotic accounts of feral human babies being reared by animals. But as a thought experiment, it makes an intriguing story. Such is the philosophical fable spun by the Andalusian Muslim scholar Ibn Tufayl over eight centuries ago. I have just finished teaching this text and the lessons in it are fresh in my mind.

If you have never read this classic fable, it can be found online in the original 1708 translation into English by Simon Ockley. A more recent translation by Lenn Evan Goodman is available from Amazon. The author was a distinguished Muslim intellectual who borrowed from the earlier Greek icons Aristotle and Plato, as well as the commentaries by earlier Muslim philosophers like Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and al-Farabi. His fable combines logical arguments, inductive scientific observation and a form of intuition that leads to a union with the One. Continue reading Ibn Tufayl’s Fable →

Guardians of the Sacred

Bible and Holy Land, Calligraphy, Islam and Christianity, Islamic Texts, Judaism

by F. E. Peters, NYPL Website, October 18, 20120

For very long time, Jews, Christians and Muslims have behaved toward one another like members of a dysfunctional family, like the competitors for an immense inheritance, the favor of Almighty God. But the current exhibition at the New York Public Library uncovers quite another strain of familiarity among the three, their devotion to the book.

Many cultures value the written word, the art of writing and a reverence for books, but Jews Christians and Muslims are unique in their devotion not merely to books – the scribe was always among their elite members before the age of printing – but to the Book. Continue reading Guardians of the Sacred →

Sanity through Inanity

Ethics, Humor and Satire, Islam and Christianity, Islam in Europe, Islamophobia, Journalism and Media, Judaism

Yes, sanity through inanity, and certainly not with a talking (but brainless) head like Hannity. Yesterday comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert brought a few hours of utter sanity almost to the steps of Congress in their Rally to Restore Sanity. Fear and hate, the fuel of electoral robo-calling, were ridiculed. If, as Glenn Beck not long before sermonized, people in America have turned their back on God, perhaps they should back off a bit and act more like the Jesus of the beatitudes than Joshua at the battle of Jericho. All it takes to get back on track is for everyone to tone down the rhetoric and hear the laughter. For one sunny afternoon in our nation’s capital God finally had a reason to laugh, given the mess we humans have been making of things and each other. At least this time the stage featured two jesters who know they are jesters rather than Fox News’ gift to incivility. No one was compared to a Nazi, nor a Communist. As Stewart noted in an eloquent speech at the end of the show:

“This was not a rally to ridicule people of faith, or people of activism, or to look down our noses at the heartland, or passionate argument, or to suggest that times are not difficult and we have nothing to fear.”

It was, contrary to those steeped in Tea Party rhetoric, a clarion call for the values that have become antithetical to our political system: being calm, civil and accepting of differences. Stewart has not only read Rousseau’s “social contract,” but reminds us through humor of the central importance of tolerance for democracy to work. If the world was watching yesterday, they finally had something to smile about: I do not only mean the jokes but an American proud of his country for the right reasons.

One of the right reasons is the beauty of a Jewish comedian defending the right of Muslims to be American too. Continue reading Sanity through Inanity →

The Jewish-Christian Tradition Is an Invention

Islam and Christianity, Islam in Europe, Judaism


Almut Shulamit Bruckstein Coruh; photo by Simon Harik

by Almut Shulamit Bruckstein Coruh, Qantara.de

Every day in Germany, one hears talk of the Jewish-Christian tradition in the West. Usually, it is meant in the context of defending our system of the rule of law and the constitution, the liberal values of our society, and even “gender equality and the freedom of artistic expression, opinion, and religion”. On this battleground, there is one main opponent – Islam. And it doesn’t appear that any hyphen will come to our aid.

Islam is often reflexively equated with religion – one that cannot deny its “militant Arab” origins. It supposedly consists of Sharia and the Koran, explain the experts, TV presenters, educators, politicians, and journalists, all the while invoking the Jewish-Christian tradition.

They all unashamedly tinker around with concepts from a literary tradition that is foreign to them, and which, just as the rabbinical tradition, embraces a whole world of casuistic judgements. In all this, one thing prevails – a threatening, didactic tone of unambiguity: This is what it says in the Koran, Islam says this, that is what the Sharia commands. Continue reading The Jewish-Christian Tradition Is an Invention →

It’s the Occupation, Stupid

Afghanistan, Arab-Israeli Conflict, Iraq, Iraq War, Islam and Christianity, Islamophobia, Osama Bin Laden, Terrorism Issue


[Webshaykh’s Note: In the current online issue of Foreign Policy there is an excellent essay by Robert Pape on the post 9/11 missteps and how a faulty narrative has not only bogged us down into two unwinnable wars, but also not made us safer from terrorism. Click here for the full article; I excerpt the ending here.]

by Robert Pape, Foreign Policy, October 20, 2010

Put differently, adopting the goal of transforming Muslim countries is what created the long-term military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, the United States would almost surely have sought to create a stable order after toppling the regimes in these countries in any case. However, in both, America’s plans quickly went far beyond merely changing leaders or ruling parties; only by creating Western-style democracies in the Muslim world could Americans defeat terrorism once and for all.

There’s just one problem: We now know that this narrative is not true.

New research provides strong evidence that suicide terrorism such as that of 9/11 is particularly sensitive to foreign military occupation, and not Islamic fundamentalism or any ideology independent of this crucial circumstance. Continue reading It’s the Occupation, Stupid →

Blogging Islamophobia

Ethics, Islam and Christianity, Islam in America, Journalism and Media, Terrorism Issue


Blogger Pamela Geller and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf

How the “ground zero mosque” fear mongering began

BY JUSTIN ELLIOTT, Salon.com

A group of progressive Muslim-Americans plans to build an Islamic community center two and a half blocks from ground zero in lower Manhattan. They have had a mosque in the same neighborhood for many years. There’s another mosque two blocks away from the site. City officials support the project. Muslims have been praying at the Pentagon, the other building hit on Sept. 11, for many years.

In short, there is no good reason that the Cordoba House project should have been a major national news story, let alone controversy. And yet it has become just that, dominating the political conversation for weeks and prompting such a backlash that, according to a new poll, nearly 7 in 10 Americans now say they oppose the project. How did the Cordoba House become so? Continue reading Blogging Islamophobia →