Category Archives: Islam and Christianity

Hear Ye, Hear Ye

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

One of the most common complaints about “Islam” from politicians and other truth-bending members of our society is that mainstream Muslims do not speak out when fellow Muslims commit atrocities such as suicide bombings. Muslims do, of course, both to their friends and neighbors and in forums that usually fail to reach the public at large. But often no one takes the time to listen or to find where these voices can be heard loud and clear. So it is not fair to ask why Muslims are failing so speak out against extremism without also asking why so little attention is paid in the mainstream media when they do. Well, hear ye, hear ye, there is a letter to prominent Christian leaders, including Pope Benedict and the leader of the Baptist church, from a broad spectrum of Muslim intellectuals and leaders, as reported Thursday on the BBC and The Guardian.

A pdf version of the English translation of the letter can be found on a website dedicated to the letter. The letter begins:

“Muslims and Christians together make up well over half of the world’s population. Without peace and justice between these two religious communities, there can be no meaningful peace in the world. The future of the world depends on peace between Muslims and Christians.”

Continue reading Hear Ye, Hear Ye →

Interfaith Understanding: Not Islamo-Fascism

Islam and Christianity, Terrorism Issue

With reference to “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week” (the week of October 22-26, 2007), it is alarmingly odd to hear that there persist to be individuals and so-called neoconservatives in university campuses who claim to be more knowledgeable than that the rest of society [and claim the right] to justify their prejudice against Islam and Muslims.

Instead of hate rhetoric aimed at teaching American students how to stigmatize Islam as fascist, the effort should be made to bring Muslim, Christian, Jewish and other religious communities together to increase dialogue, understanding, and peace. We have many examples of those who were misguided by naïve teachers before and after the tragic events of September 11. Continue reading Interfaith Understanding: Not Islamo-Fascism →

Debating Islamo-Fascism

Gender and Sexuality, Islam and Christianity, Islamophobia, Terrorism Issue

[The message below was written by Marieme Hélie-Lucas, long time coordinator of the European Bureau of Women Living Under Muslim Laws, and was originally posted to the Women in Black (WIB) international list and reposted to ISLAMAAR, the discussion group on Islam of the American Academy of Religion, on September 6, 2007. Following her commentary is a response by Mohammed Fadel, who is on the faculty of the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. Both are commenting on the call by David Horowitz for an Islamo-fascism Awareness Week in October, posted upon earlier on Tabsir.]

Dear friends in WIB,
In response to the mail alerting us about this event against ‘islamo fascism’ led by conservative forces, I think there is a need for clarification from us, who lived under ‘islamo fascism’ :

First of all, let me say that the term ‘islamo fascism’ has been initially coined by Algerian people struggling for democracy, against armed fundamentalist forces decimating people in our country, then later operating in Europe, where a number of us had taken refuge. For us, it has never been equated to Islam, but it points at fundamentalists only : i.e. at political forces working under the cover of religion in order to gain political power and to impose a theocracy ( The Law – singular – of God, unchangeable, a-historical, interpreted by self appointed old men) over democracy ( i.e. the laws – plural – voted by the people and changeable by the will of the people). Continue reading Debating Islamo-Fascism →

Apocalypse Watch: And It’s Gog Awful

Apocalypse Watch, Islam and Christianity, Islam in America

Thus says the Lord GOD: It shall happen in that day, that things shall come into your mind, and you shall devise an evil device: and you shall say, I will go up to the land of unwalled villages; I will go to those who are at rest, who dwell securely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having neither bars nor gates; to take the spoil and to take the prey; to turn your hand against the waste places that are now inhabited, and against the people who are gathered out of the nations, who have gotten cattle and goods, who dwell in the middle of the earth. Ezekiel 38:10-12

Application of biblical prophecy to contemporary events is no doubt as old as the prophets themselves. The extraordinary literary success of the near-sited Left Behind series should not be taken lightly. There are many fundamentally sounding Christian apocalypticists out there and more coming online all the time, thanks to the freedom of website development. One site I recently came across is by a man named Ken Power, who describes himself as follows: Continue reading Apocalypse Watch: And It’s Gog Awful →

The Land and the Book #1: Looking for an Omnibus?

Bible and Holy Land, Islam and Christianity, Lebanon, Travel


Jaffa from Thomson’s “The Land and the Book”

Almost 150 years ago one of the most popular travel accounts of the Holy Land was penned by an American missionary named William M. Thomson. Born in Ohio, my own home state, the 28-year old Thomson and his young bride arrived in Lebanon in 1834 as Protestant missionaries. This was a mere 15 or so years after the first American missionaries had made the Holy Land a mission field. At once an entertaining travel account and Sunday School commentary on the places and people of the Bible, this may have been one the most widely read books ever written by a Protestant missionary.

Reading Thomson is like reading one of the early English novels. The language is less familiar, although still thoroughly Yankee and the devotional tone has long since disappeared for a readership buying out The Da Vinci Code as soon as it hit the bookstores. The biblical exegesis, literalist yet frankly pragmatic at times, is intertwined with astute and at times humorous accounts of the people Thomson met along the way. But the style is not at all dry or discouragingly didactic. From the start Thomson engages in a dialogue with the reader, making the text (which stretches over 700 pages in the 1901 version) a rhetorical trip in itself.

Here is one of the forgotten books of a couple generations back. Easily dismissed as an Orientalist book, in the sense propounded and confounded by Edward Said, it is nevertheless a very good read. With this post I begin a series to sample the anecdotes and local color presented by Rev. Thomson. The times have indeed changed, but such textual forays into the night reading of a previous generation of Americans are well worth the effort. Let’s begin with the author’s own invitation. Continue reading The Land and the Book #1: Looking for an Omnibus? →

When in Paris, Don’t Drink the Wine

Islam and Christianity, Islam in Europe, Travel

There are numerous travel accounts by European and American writers who spent time in the Middle East. Many of them comment on Islam, whether as missionaries condemning a rival religion or admirers of what they often saw as a vibrant faith in the everyday life of people. But few people are aware of the writings by Muslim visitors to Europe. I am talking about real individuals, not the fictional characters like those in Montesquieu’s The Persian Letters. One of these travelers was the Moroccan Ahmad ibn Qasim al-Hajari, a translator for the sultan, who visited Paris in 1612. As translated by Nabil Matar, Ahmad provides a lively account of what he saw and the debates engaged in.

One of these revolved around the issue of drinking wine, a Christian custom that his French guests thought a kind of sacred duty. The visiting Moroccan set out to disabuse them of such a notion:

“One day before sunset, I walked to the judge’s house to attend to some formalities. The judge said, ‘Would you like to have dinner with us?’

‘I am not permitted to eat some of your foods,’ I replied. Continue reading When in Paris, Don’t Drink the Wine →

Islam Obscured

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


“Interior of the Amron Mosque,” Henry Bechard, ca. 1870

[Note: the following excerpt is from the introduction to my recent book on the ways in which anthropologists study and represent Islam.]

What the world does not need is yet another book which assumes Islam can be abstracted out of evolving cultural contexts and neatly essentialized into print without repeating the obvious or glossing over the obtuse. This is–I believe and I hope–not such a book. I have no interest in telling you what Islam is, what it really must be, or even what it should be. In what follows I am more attuned to what Islam hopefully is not, at least not for someone who approaches it seriously as an anthropologist and historian. I bare no obvious axe to grind as either a determined detractor against the religion or an over-anxious advocate for it. Personally, as well as academically, I consider Islam a fascinatingly diverse faith, a force in history that must be reckoned with in the present. The offensive tool I do choose to wield, if my figurative pen can stand a militant symbol, is that of a critical hammer, an iconoclastic smashing of the rhetoric that represents, over-represents and misrepresents Islam from all sides. By avoiding judgment on the sacred truth of this vibrant faith, I shift intention towards an I-view that takes no summary representation of Islam as sacred. Continue reading Islam Obscured →

Mahdi as Hell: Look out Darwin

CyberOrient, Islam and Christianity, Islamic Sciences, Turkey

Has your atlas arrived yet? The New York Times reported yesterday that prominent American scientists and politicians are receiving what purports to be an “Atlas of Creation” from a Turkish media guru self-named Harun Yahya. No, it is not revenge for the “War on Terror.” Nor is a glossy book of patent nonsense, no matter how intelligently designed and styled as “probably the largest and most beautiful creationist challenge yet to Darwin’s theory” much of a challenge. Scientists will recognize it for a “load of crap,” as Kevin Padian, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, impolitely phrased it.

The “War on Terror” has manufactured a whole host of new enemies. But what a strange bedfellow is Charles Darwin, who liberated science from the dogmatic demands of religious apologists like Mahdi Yahya a century and a half ago. Darwin’s approach now summarizes all of modern science, a steady advance in knowledge because no specific idea is ever held sacred. This does not mean that scientists must abandon religion and faith, but it does offer a view of the world in which human reason is not abandoned under the cloak and rhetorical dagger of a supposedly spiritual quest for moral behavior. Continue reading Mahdi as Hell: Look out Darwin →