Category Archives: Islam and Christianity

The Meaning of Islam

Islam and Christianity, Islam in America, Islam: Introduction, Islamophobia 101, Teaching Resources, Terrorism Issue

by William Chittick, Huffington Post, September 22, 2010

A few years back, long before 9/11, one of our Religious Studies majors told me that she had taken my course to learn why she should hate Islam. As a normal young American growing up on Long Island, she had no doubt that she should hate Islam, but she still wanted to know what was so bad about it.

There are many historical, political, and cultural reasons for the negative stereotypes of Islam that permeate American society. One of the more obvious is that people confuse religion and ideology.

Scholars often distinguish between “Islam,” meaning the religion as taught and practiced over the centuries, and “Islamism,” meaning the various ideologies that have appeared over the past century claiming to speak on its behalf. As one of these scholars put it, “An ideology is a clear blueprint that requires only mechanical implementation. … It offers easy answers to the most difficult and fundamental questions. … [It] renders redundant the human processes of constantly thinking, evaluating, facing hard choices, and balancing” (Farhang Rajaee, Islamism and Modernism, p. 4). Continue reading The Meaning of Islam →

On Professor Mohammed Arkoun

Algeria, Islam and Christianity, Islam in Europe, Islam: Introduction, Qur'an, Scholars


Professor Mohammed Arkoun: A Courageous Intellectual Who Advocated A Tolerant, Liberal and Modern Islam

Simerg, September 18, 2010

Algerian born scholar Mohammed Arkoun (February 1, 1928 – September 14, 2010) was a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Ismaili Studies and also a member of its Board of Governors, which is chaired by His Highness the Aga Khan

In a tribute to the Algerian Islamic scholar Mohammed Arkoun, who died at the age of 82 in Paris, France, on Tuesday, September 14, 2010, Algeria’s Minister of Culture, Khalida Toumi, said that Professor Arkoun “believed in dialogue between cultures and civilizations of which he was an ardent activist” and “his sincerity and dedication to bringing people and religions together have made him a true messenger of peace and harmony between different societies.” In her condolence message she also stated that he was “the author of books in the field of critical thinking who taught in the most prestigious universities of the East and the West.”

Amongst his peers around the world, Professor Arkoun was regarded as one of the most influential scholars in Islamic studies contributing to contemporary Islamic reform. Continue reading On Professor Mohammed Arkoun →

Message to Muslims: I’m Sorry

Afghanistan, Development, Islam and Christianity, Islamophobia 101, Journalism and Media, Pakistan


Message to Muslims: I’m Sorry
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, The New York Times, September 18, 2010

Many Americans have suggested that more moderate Muslims should stand up to extremists, speak out for tolerance, and apologize for sins committed by their brethren.

That’s reasonable advice, and as a moderate myself, I’m going to take it. (Throat clearing.) I hereby apologize to Muslims for the wave of bigotry and simple nuttiness that has lately been directed at you. The venom on the airwaves, equating Muslims with terrorists, should embarrass us more than you. Muslims are one of the last minorities in the United States that it is still possible to demean openly, and I apologize for the slurs.

I’m inspired by another journalistic apology. The Portland Press Herald in Maine published an innocuous front-page article and photo a week ago about 3,000 local Muslims praying together to mark the end of Ramadan. Readers were upset, because publication coincided with the ninth anniversary of 9/11, and they deluged the paper with protests. Continue reading Message to Muslims: I’m Sorry →

The Empire’s New Clothes

Bible and Holy Land, Ethics, Islam and Christianity, Islam in America, Islamophobia 101


Biblical Job by Gustave Gore, surrounded by his so-called “friends”

In biblical times when an individual mourned, it involved tearing up everyday clothes and putting on coarse sackcloth and ashes. This is what the patriarch Jacob did when told his young son Joseph had been killed. When Job lost his family he sat on a dung pile. Both acts were motivated by humility rather than thoughts of revenge. As fitting as Job’s location might be for some of the memorial scenes yesterday, several of those making the news headlines represented the Empire (it is hard not to think of the United States superpower as anything else but an empire) in what they thought were patriotic “red, white, and blue” cloth, but which even a little child could see were politically naked to the core. The New York Times reports a woman at the 9/11 site holding up a sign that read ““Today is ONLY about my sister and the other innocents killed nine years ago.” Would that were true.

The loss of life nine years ago in a terrorist act deserves reflection for many reasons. For those of us who live in the New York area, there but for the grace of timing go we. Those who died had pulled no triggers, pushed no buttons to drop bombs, made no political decisions to invade another country, burned no Qur’ans. They died because politically motivated extremists so hated the policies of the United States in the Middle East that they were willing to commit an atrocious suicidal act to make a symbolic statement. It did not matter that among those killed were Americans who strongly disagreed with America’s foreign policy or were in fact Muslims. Such is the ethical nothingness that hate sets as a trap, no matter which God is being called upon to condone an evil act. Continue reading The Empire’s New Clothes →

Eid Mubarak: Blessed Holiday, Service to Humanity

Islam and Christianity, Islam in America, Islamic Rituals, Islamophobia 101


by Omid Safi, The Huffington Post, September 9, 2010

Ramadan is the holiest month of the year for Muslims, a lovely combination of spiritual introspection, family gatherings, late night prayers, and social justice identification with those for whom going hungry is not a voluntary choice, but a daily reality. And Eid, the holiday marking the end of Ramadan, is a joyous time. In many Muslim cultures, this is the time of the year where families will buy new clothes for the children, and the whole town is dressed up in lights, sweets are served, and families visit loved ones, offering embraces and celebrations.

This Ramadan, on the contrast, has felt heavy. Don’t get me wrong: there have been hundreds of millions of Muslims fasting around the world, and untold numbers of Muslims have spent nights drawing nearer to their Lord through prayer and recitation of the Qur’an. There have been family gatherings and mosque prayers as before, but at least for Muslims in America a heaviness has also been a part of this Ramadan. The whole month has had the shadow of the Park51 controversy (the misnamed “Ground Zero Mosque”) and then more recently the prospects of the savage Qur’an-burning episode down in Gainesville, cast over it. Continue reading Eid Mubarak: Blessed Holiday, Service to Humanity →

Bücher und Menschen

Bible and Holy Land, Islam and Christianity, Islam in America, Islamophobia 101, Luke R. E. Publican


“Is this the book you wish to burn, Rev. Jones?”
Painting of the Devil tempting St. Augustine, by Michael Pacher (1435-1498).

I doubt that Rev. Terry Jones reads German, but he should. The German poet Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), reflecting well over a century ago on the atrocities of the Spanish Inquisition, wrote:

Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen
“Where they burn books, so too will they in the end burn human beings.”

Heine was born Jewish. His books were eventually burned in Nazi Germany; so were a number of his coreligionists.

If there is a hell down there or out there (apart from the one some people create for others here on earth every day), the Rev. would seem to be warming up for his grand entrance and welcome from Der Teufel himself.

Luke R. E. Publican

Burning books, burning bodies, burning bridges

Bible and Holy Land, Humor and Satire, Islam and Christianity, Islam in America, Islamophobia 101

“Burn, baby, burn.” One might expect these words to come from a comedian as much as an arsonist. If you put the name “Terry Jones” into Google you will find a comedian. That is Terence Graham Parry Jones of Monty Python fame. These days there is another Terry Jones, a “Rev.ed” up one to boot. Rev. Terry Jones is the previously and foreseeably future little-known pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center on the outskirts of Gainesville, Florida. For a congregation estimated at about 50, their outreach may take a millennium or more, but they do have an inflammatory website, which promotes the “Right” (in all the irony this words entails) Rev. Jones’ book with the rather unoriginal title of “Islam is of the Devil,” which is for sale, as is a $20 t-shirt to advertise hatred of Islam. For an individual who has no clue about Islam, apart from his own rabid intolerance, the devil is certainly not in the details. His moment of fame is about to eclipse, but his motive is so shameful it deserves all the condemnation it can get, the kind in which the pen is mightier than the bonfire.

Let’s start with the desire to burn. One name should suffice to call out the hypocrisy of Mr. Jones. That name is John Wycliffe, the 14th century Christian cleric whose name inspired the Wycliffe Bible Translators, one of the most active Protestant organizations translating the Bible into other languages. Wycliffe dared to translate the Latin Vulgate into English, so earning the ire of the Catholic Pope that he was excommunicated. Some 44 years after Wycliffe died of a stroke, the “Church” had his bones dug up and burned, along with all his writings. I suspect that Jones prefers the King James Version of the Bible, although I do not know if he is aware that this “authorized” version was greatly influenced by Wycliffe. Continue reading Burning books, burning bodies, burning bridges →

Don’t Call Me Moderate, Call Me Normal

Islam and Christianity, Islam in America, Islamophobia 101, Journalism and Media, Terrorism Issue


Ed Husayn

[The Wall Street Journal recently published a series of short commentaries on “moderate Islam.” Here is the one by Ed Husayn, author of “The Islamist” (Penguin, 2007) and co-founder of the Quilliam Foundation, a counterextremist think tank.]

By Ed Husain

I am a moderate Muslim, yet I don’t like being termed a “moderate”—it somehow implies that I am less of a Muslim.

We use the designation “moderate Islam” to differentiate it from “radical Islam.” But in so doing, we insinuate that while Islam in moderation is tolerable, real Islam—often perceived as radical Islam—is intolerable. This simplistic, flawed thinking hands our extremist enemies a propaganda victory: They are genuine Muslims. In this rubric, the majority, non-radical Muslim populace has somehow compromised Islam to become moderate.

What is moderate Christianity? Or moderate Judaism? Is Pastor Terry Jones’s commitment to burning the Quran authentic Christianity, by virtue of the fanaticism of his action? Or, is Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual head of the Shas Party in Israel, more Jewish because he calls on Jews to rain missiles on the Arabs and “annihilate them”?

The pastor and the rabbi can, no doubt, find abstruse scriptural justifications for their angry actions. And so it is with Islam’s fringe: Our radicals find religious excuses for their political anger. But Muslim fanatics cannot be allowed to define Islam.

The Prophet Muhammad warned us against ghuluw, or extremism, in religion. The Quran reinforces the need for qist, or balance. For me, Islam at its essence is the middle way in all matters. This is normative Islam, adhered to by a billion normal Muslims across the globe.

Normative Islam is inherently pluralist. It is supported by 1,000 years of Muslim history in which religious freedom was cherished. The claim, made today by the governments of Iran and Saudi Arabia, that they represent God’s will expressed through their version of oppressive Shariah law is a modern innovation.

The classical thinking within Islam was to let a thousand flowers bloom. Ours is not a centralized tradition, and Islam’s rich diversity is a legacy of our pluralist past.

Normative Islam, from its early history to the present, is defined by its commitment to protecting religion, life, progeny, wealth and the human mind. In the religious language of Muslim scholars, this is known as maqasid, or aims. This is the heart of Islam.

I am fully Muslim and fully Western. Don’t call me moderate—call me a normal Muslim.