Category Archives: Islam and Christianity

The Tragedy that is Egypt today

"Arab Spring", Egypt, Islam and Christianity, Islamophobia, Terrorism Issue

Egypt is once again under military curfew. Mubarak is gone, but the military and security system that stabilized the Mubarak regime is undeniably in control, no matter what the rhetoric about restoring democracy. The brief flirtation with a seemingly democratic election has been an abject failure, no matter who you think is to blame. There are no winners in the recent protests and crackdown that left well over 500 people dead and several thousand wounded. At this point all Egyptians are on the losing side as violence escalates. The situation today is a tragedy and is bound to get more tragic in the days ahead. Egyptians are pitted against each other in sectarian clashes, Muslim against fellow Muslim and some Muslims targeting the Copts. As many as 20 Coptic churches may already have been torched. God forbid if Egypt still had a viable Jewish population.

Blame is being hurled against all sides with breakneck speed in blogs, commentaries and twitter. But blaming is part of the problem, since it further inflames the frustration that leads to violence. Coptic churches are being burned because the Copts are said to side with the military as though it is only about politics. But the ugly intolerance that many Salafis and Muslim Brothers have preached to their own transcends politics. The military is indeed ruthless and manipulating the media with propaganda, demonizing the Muslim Brotherhood. Enough Brothers are acting out their violence to lend some credence to the claims in the eyes of many Egyptians. There is also the atrocity of pushing for martyrdom, as leaders of the Brotherhood encourage those who are protesting Morsi’s ouster to engage the military in what can only be a losing and bloody battle. Both sides are acting like spoiled children; no one is promoting a peaceful mediation, if one is still possible. Continue reading The Tragedy that is Egypt today →

Humans without Gods

Bible and Holy Land, Books You Should Read, Ethics, Islam and Christianity, Judaism


Theobald von Oer, The Weimar Court of the Muses (1860)

by Anouar Majid. Tingis Redux, August 7, 2013

For many years now, I have shared my utter amazement at how human beings living in the 20th and 21st centuries could still believe that the gods of the Bible and the Koran are as real as the computer or mobile device in their hand, the cars they drive, or the many people, animals, or trees they see and touch. When I ask people if God exists, many say yes. But when I ask them how they got to know Him (God in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition is unmistakably male), they quote their holy books as evidence. I have yet to meet someone who had a direct encounter with God; our knowledge of the Almighty relies heavily on our faith that Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed had exclusive access to Him, and that the books that tell us about these privileged encounters are the uncorrupted truth.

Most of us have been indoctrinated into such beliefs since childhood, so that by the time we start defending God against unbelievers, the best we can do is rationalize the faiths we inherited from our parents, families, and social environments. Take away the holy books and the theologians that have spent millennia preaching their dogmas and we are left with only our mere existences, alone with the elements, without any guide to show us how to make sense of our lives. This is, in fact, how the world was in ancient Greece before Christianity took over and condemned philosophy to perdition. And this is the world that the British philosopher A. C. Grayling wants us to rediscover in his newly published book, The God Argument: The Case Against Religion and for Humanism (2013).

Grayling doesn’t talk about the role of writing and scripture in the making of religions; he is more interested in making a humanist case against the basic assumptions of the three monotheistic religions. (Buddhism, Jainism and Confucianism, for example, are better understood as philosophies, not religions in the sense Westerners understand the term.) Such religions, a “hangover from the infancy of modern humanity,” a collection of “superstitions of illiterate herdsmen living several thousands of years ago,” expressions of the “pre-scientific, rudimentary metaphysics of our ancestors,” and a relic of the distant unlettered past are “essentially a stone-age outlook in the modern world.” It would be as if today’s governments still depended on the power of astrology and magic to govern people and run their affairs. This survival, needless to say, is astonishing in an age when science has made great strides—but, then again, science has yet to make a significant impact on many parts of the world, including the Islamic one. Continue reading Humans without Gods →

Voltaire on Tolerance

Books You Should Read, Ethics, Islam and Christianity, Terrorism Issue


Allegorical bust of Voltaire; from 1901 text

One of the vexing paradoxes of modernity is whether or not intolerance can be tolerated. Should dictators be cuddled if they play up to the foreign policy concerns of a democracy? Should anyone — man, woman or child — be forced to live by religious dogma? How much of the intolerable actions in this world should we tolerate? Some wise words on the problem were offered two and a half centuries ago by the French savant, Voltaire, as brilliantly said in his Philosophical Dictionary. Here is what Voltaire said:

What is tolerance? it is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other’s folly–that is the first law of nature.

It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster. That admits of no difficulty. But the government! but the magistrates! but the princes! how do they treat those who have another worship than theirs? If they are powerful strangers, it is certain that a prince will make an alliance with them. Franois I., very Christian, will unite with Mussulmans against Charles V., very Catholic. Francois I. will give money to the Lutherans of Germany to support them in their revolt against the emperor; but, in accordance with custom, he will start by having Lutherans burned at home. For political reasons he pays them in Saxony; for political reasons he burns them in Paris. But what will happen? Persecutions make proselytes? Soon France will be full of new Protestants. At first they will let themselves be hanged, later they in their turn will hang. There will be civil wars, then will come the St. Bartholomew; and this corner of the world will be worse than all that the ancients and moderns have ever told of hell.

Madmen, who have never been able to give worship to the God who made you! Miscreants, whom the example of the Noachides, the learned Chinese, the Parsees and all the sages, has never been able to lead! Monsters, who need superstitions as crows’ gizzards need carrion! you have been told it already, and there is nothing else to tell you-if you have two religions in your countries, they will cut each other’s throat ; if you have thirty religions, they will dwell in peace. Look at the great Turk, he governs Guebres, Banians, Creek Christians, Nestorians, Romans. The first who tried to stir up tumult would be impaled; and everyone is tranquil.

Islam minus “Theism”

Ethics, Islam and Christianity, Islam: Introduction, Terrorism Issue

[Webshaykh’s note: There are many Christians and Jews who still find spiritual and moral value in their faiths while rejecting literalist interpretations, especially those that preach exclusivity rather than tolerance. This same holds for many Muslims, although their voice are seldom given a chance to be heard or else are gobbled up with relish by Islamophobes. The following commentary by Ali A. Rizvi is well worth reading.]

An Atheist Muslim’s Perspective on the ‘Root Causes’ of Islamist Jihadism and the Politics of Islamophobia

by Ali A. Rizvi, Huntington Post, May 3, 2013

The ambassador answered us that [their right] was founded on the Laws of the Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have answered their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.

The above passage is not a reference to a declaration by al Qaeda or some Iranian fatwa. They are the words of Thomas Jefferson, then the U.S. ambassador to France, reporting to Secretary of State John Jay a conversation he’d had with Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, Tripoli’s envoy to London, in 1786 — more than two and a quarter centuries ago.

That is before al Qaeda and the Taliban, before the creation of Israel or the Arab-Israeli conflict, before Khomeini, before Saudi Arabia, before drones, before most Americans even knew what jihad or Islam was, and, most importantly, well before the United States had engaged in a single military incursion overseas or even had an established foreign policy.

At the time, thousands of American and European trade ships entering the Mediterranean had been targeted by pirates from the Muslim Barbary states (modern-day North Africa). More than a million Westerners had been kidnapped, imprisoned and enslaved. Tripoli was the nexus for these operations. Jefferson’s attempts to negotiate resulted in deadlock, and he was told simply that the kidnapping and enslavement of the infidels would continue, tersely articulated by Adja in the exchange paraphrased above.

Adja’s position wasn’t a random one-off. This conflict continued for years, seminally resulting in the Treaty of Tripoli, signed into law by President John Adams in 1797. Article 11 of the document, a direct product of the United States’ first-ever overseas conflict, contained these famous words, cementing America’s fundamental commitment to secularism:

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext, arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

Yes, the establishment of secularism in America back in the 18th century was largely related to a conflict with Islamist jihadism.

So where did Abdul Rahman Adja’s bin Laden-esque words come from?

They couldn’t have been a response to American imperialism (the start of the conflict precedes the presidency of George Washington), U.S. foreign policy, globalization, AIPAC or Islamophobia. Yet his words are virtually identical to those spouted ad nauseum by jihadists today who justify their bellicosity as a reaction to these U.S.-centric factors, which were nonexistent in Adja’s time.

How do we make sense of this? Well, the common denominator here just happens to be the elephant in the room. Continue reading Islam minus “Theism” →

Bipolar Religion

Ethics, Gender and Sexuality, Islam and Christianity, Muhammad

The trendy 19th century Protestant philosophical theologian Søren Kiergekaard published a Danish book in 1843 entitled Either/Or. His faith-based binary is not the the standard good vs evil, God vs. Satan model that had long been enshrined in Christianity, but rather a dialogue between an aesthetic hedonist and a duty-bound ethicist. His point, or at least one of them, is that by rigidly following either life trajectory one can simply go too far and not realize one’s true self. He was aware of the binary bind that haunts many, if not most, religions and worldviews. In politics the mantra would be “my country, love it or leave it,” or more crudely, “my way or the highway.” In economics, capitalism vs communism. In all cases binaries bind us to intolerance and the hubris that I am right and you are wrong.

At least the Manicheans dared to assert the obvious that good and evil, like light and darkness, are locked in an eternal duel rather than an ultimate triumph of good. But this was deemed a heresy. The simple solution, what might be called the Salafi fix in Islam, is the fixation on a single standard of truth. Even if one takes the Quran as the literal word of Allah, it must still be interpreted. The history of Islamic exegesis demonstrates that very little is obvious in a text that was not originally written down as it was received in a linguistic idiom now fourteen centuries past. Yet, like the Bible thumpers in American Fundamentalism, there are always those who think they have the right interpretation and that alone must be followed. Continue reading Bipolar Religion →

Hezbollah and Bashar: Another Unholy Alliance

Ethics, Islam and Christianity, Islamic Sects, Islamic Texts, Lebanon, Muhammad, Shi'a, Sufism, Syria


Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah; Photograph by Wael Hamzeh/European Pressphoto Agency

My friend Omid Safi has created a provocative blog entitled What Would Muhammad do? Today I would like to ratchet up the commentary game to an approach which may, at first glance, seem sacrilegious. Given that the Lebanese “Party of God” (Hezbollah) is now known to be sending its fighters to support the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Asad, it is time to ask “What Would Allah do?” As much as I admire the spiritual sentiment of the crucified mystic al-Hallaj, I am not advocating oneness with the Supreme Being. But if I were to try and imagine what Allah would say about the current trials besetting his umma, I think I might begin by insisting that those who spread messages of hate and turn jihad into an excuse for political gain stop using my name. The Shi’a at least had the common decency to call themselves shi’at Ali, rather than presume from the start that they exclusively spoke for me. If these partisans of the hundreds of sects that have evolved since the Prophet Muhammad received the Quran want to hear me, they should stop selecting isolated verses from my message for their own agendas. Submission to Allah is the message of Islam, not submission to any party claiming to be Allah’s party.

Muslims should remember the history not only of their faith, but also the religions founded by other of my prophets. Jews and Christians are not infidels; their lives are as precious to Allah as those of Muslims. Muhammad was sent as the “seal” of the prophets, not to brag that he was superior to my other prophets. Each prophet was sent for a specific purpose, to guide people at different times in history. Muhammad received the Quran not so everyone after that could stop time and live as though it was still 7th century Mecca and Medina. Look at his life and you will see that he was a mediator, who preached salam and knew full well that the greater jihad took place within the individual. Jews and Christians heard from their prophets that humans are not divine, not perfect, and easily seduced to go astray. But Moses gave commandments to run society, Jesus showed the power of love to conquer hatred and Muhammad was a living example of how to live, but not an icon to follow blindly because of the recorded faulty memories of his companions. Continue reading Hezbollah and Bashar: Another Unholy Alliance →

The Vanishing Christians of Islam

Egypt, Islam and Christianity, Islamic History


Mosaic depiction of Mary holding an Arabic text, Convent of Our Lady, Greek Orthodox Church, Sednaya, Syria.

by Anouar Majid, Tingis Redux, April 14, 2013

Recently, Tawadros II, the Coptic pope of Egypt, said that “even during the darkest ages” of its history, his church was never subjected to the violence it is now suffering at the hands of Sunni Muslims. Maybe. But what is well known is that the fate of Egyptian Christianity and that of all Christians who found themselves under Muslim domination beginning in the 7th century when Islam emerged as a new religion hasn’t been an easy one.

It is true that the Koran periodically adopts a conciliatory attitude toward the “People of the Book,” but Islam is, in the end, categorically clear about who is right and who is wrong. Not only does Allah reject any religion that is not Islam, but the Koran also commands Muslims to “fight those among the ‘People of the Book’ who do not believe in Allah and the Last Day, who do not forbid what Allah and his messengers have forbidden and do not profess the true religion, till they pay the poll-tax (jizyah) out of hand and submissively.” The Christians’ off-and-on persecution has been a constant fact of life under Islamic rule; in fact, the notion of “genocide” was first inspired by the atrocities that befell Iraqi Christians in the 1920s, which came on the heels of the Turkish massacres of Armenians. As I am writing this, the Copts–a corruption of the word Aigyptos, whose original language goes back to the age of pyramids and which helped decipher the hieroglyphics in the 19th century—who make up some 10 percent of Egypt’s population of 90 million, are the only community of Christians left in any meaningful numbers. And, quite frankly, if Egypt doesn’t change, I wouldn’t bet on their long-term survival. Continue reading The Vanishing Christians of Islam →

Farid Esack in New York

Conferences and Talks, Islam and Christianity, Islamophobia, Scholars, Terrorism Issue


Farid Esack

The Academic Study of Islam and/in/for the Wounded Empire
A Lecture by Dr. Farid Esack
Fri, 5 Apr, 2013 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM

Union Theological Seminary
3041 Broadway at 121st Street
New York, NY 10027

The September 11, 2001 attacks in the USA significantly impacted Islamicists (scholars in the Study of Islam). These events contributed immensely to the growth of irenic scholarship, in which Islamicists increasingly dove into the trenches in order to help save Muslims and the image of Islam from the attacks of different quarters—primarily Western governments and armies and the mass media. This defensive engagement of the Islamicist, described as ‘bunker scholarship’, raises significant questions about fidelity to the post-Enlightenment foundations of critical scholarship. What is more, such scholarship often plays a significantly accommodationist role in co-creating compliant Muslim subjects in a larger hegemonic project.
About Dr. Farid Esack

Professor Farid Esack is a South African Muslim theologian who cut his teeth in the South African struggle for liberation. He studied in Pakistan, the UK and Germany and is the author of Qur’an, Liberation and Pluralism, On Being a Muslim, An Introduction to the Qur’an, and Islam, HIV & AIDS –Between Scorn, Pity & Justice. He has published on Islam, Gender, Liberation Theology, Interfaith Relations, and Qur’anic Hermeneutics. Professor Esack served as a Commissioner for Gender Equality in South Africa and has taught at the University of Western Cape, University of Hamburg, the College of William & Mary, Union Theological Seminary, and Xavier University in Cincinnati. More recently he served as the Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal Professor of Contemporary Islam at Harvard University. Farid Esack is now Professor in the Study of Islam and Head of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Johannesburg.

Registration is required. RSVP online.