Real Change from Interfaith Dialogue

India

Muslim women search the beaches of Sagar Island for coins thrown into the waters of the Ganges by Hindu pilgrims. Heathcliff O’Malley/Telegraph Media Group © 2007

This morning’s news is predictable deja vu: another car bomb explodes in Iraq killing at least 20 people, the Taliban are poppying up again in Afghanistan, children are still starving in Darfur as their mothers get raped, Somalia is summarily consigned to old news since no new soldier bodies have been paraded in the streets. Page two… So much killing, so much religious faith spread around the ever warming globe, and seemingly so little dialogue for God’s children. But here’s a story from where the river bends, the Ganges of India that is, at the last bend it makes into the sea. Here is a river so holy to Hindus that it is viewed as alive, if not life itself, prompting both the devout and the just-following-the-nabob-mob to toss rupees into the polluted current. As Philip Reeves reports for NPR today, this all results in real change (if you dig hard enough in the sand) for a few of the poorest of India’s 150 million plus Muslims.

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Mary in the Qur’an

Islam and Christianity, Qur'an

Illustration: Theotokos, Virgin Mary, Albanian icon

Bismillah al-Rahman al-Raheem. In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.
. . .And make mention of Mary in the Scripture, when she had withdrawn from her people to a place in the East, and had chosen seclusion from them. Then We [God] sent unto her Our Spirit and it assumed for her the likeness of a perfect human being. She said: “Truly I seek refuge in the Merciful One from you, if you are God-fearing”. He said: “I am only a messenger of your Lord, to give to you a pure son”. She said: “How can I have a son when no man has touched me, neither have I been unchaste”? He said: “Even so. Your Lord says: ‘It is easy for Me. And that We may make of him a revelation for humanity and a mercy from Us, and it is a thing ordained’”. And she conceived him, and she withdrew pregnant with him to a distant place. And the pains of childbirth drove her to the trunk of a palm-tree: She cried out: “Oh! Would that I had died before this! Would that I had been a thing forgotten and unseen!” Then (a voice) called out to her from beneath her: “Do not grieve, for surely your Lord has made a stream to flow beneath you; And shake towards you the trunk of the palm tree, it will drop on you fresh ripe dates: So eat and drink and refresh yourself. Then if you see any person, say: ‘Surely I have vowed a fast to the Merciful One, so I shall not speak to any one today’”. Then she brought the child to her own people, carrying him. They said: “O Mary! You have come with an amazing thing. O sister of Aaron! Your father was not a wicked man nor was your mother an unchaste woman”. Then she pointed to the child. “But they said, ‘How shall we speak to one who is still in the cradle, a little child?’ Jesus said, ‘Behold, I am God’s servant; God has given me the book and made me a prophet. God has made me blessed, wherever I may be; and God has enjoined me to pray and to give alms so long as I live, and likewise to cherish my mother; God has not made me arrogant or unblessed. Peace be upon me the day I was born, and the day I die, and the day I am raised up alive’”. Qur’an, Chapter of Mary, (19:16—35)

Good evening, al-salaamu alaikum, peace be upon you all.

I am, as ever, honoured to be here with you on this blessed night at Trinity-St. Paul’s. It is a great joy to be back in this church, both in the primary meaning of that word as this gathering of people, and in the secondary meaning of this amazing physical space that we share. Continue reading Mary in the Qur’an →

Another Blow for the Horn of Africa

Ethiopia, Islam and Christianity, Somalia, Terrorism Issue

The news this morning after Christmas is more bad news, especially for the Horn of Africa. As if the Darfur debacle in Sudan is not bad enough, the civil war in Somalia has escalated beyond the borders. Yesterday Ethiopia dispatched a fighter plane to briefly strafe the international airport in Mogadishu. This was not exactly shock-and-awe, but then Mogadishu is not Baghdad and the self-styled “Islamists” in more-or-less control of the capital are not a trained and disciplined army.

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Turning the World Upside Down

Islam and Christianity, Islamophobia

[Note: The following Islamophobic/Christophilic piece was written by the early 20th century missionary Samuel Zwemer and his wife Amy for Christian children. The overt Orientalism seen here through a virtually complete opposing of Arab Muslims to “civilized” American Christians is chilling; unfortunately it still resonates and not only with conservative Evangelicals intent on converting Muslims to their own brand of Christendom. I offer the following selection (the whole cloth is preserved at Project Gutenberg) as a reminder that the so-called “clash of civilizations” has deep roots. So on this Christmas Eve, as you count your blessings, consider also the many curses you can find in the following excerpt as a Muslim reader. A century or so after this book was written, a different kind of mission embroils Baghdad. On this Christmas Eve, for President Bush, mission not accomplished; for Samuel Zwemer, prayer not answered. For Iraqi Muslims the world has indeed been turned downside up. ]

The story of mission work in Arabia is not very long, but it is full of interest. From the day when Mohammed proclaimed himself an apostle in Mecca until about sixteen years ago when Ion Keith Falconer came to Aden as a missionary, all of Topsy-turvy Land lay in darkness as regards the gospel. For thirteen hundred years Mohammed had it all his own way in Arabia. Now his dominion over the hearts of men, is in dispute, and there is no doubt that the final, full victory will rest with Jesus the Son of God, the Saviour of the world.

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The Sunni Triangle: Where is Square One?

Iraq War

[Pick your triangle and move to square one…]Our self-effusive politicians lie rather than admit mistakes. Our soldiers keep dying and these same politicians talk about sending more into harm’s way in Baghdad. The military death toll is now only 60 off the 3000 mark, one we are sure to reach in early January. Yesterday the Department of Defense released the names of the last nine on this list: they were Joe, Matthew, Henry, Kevin, Nicklas, David, Matthew, Seth and Luke. Tomorrow new names will be added. “Regretable but acceptable,” argue the rhetorical warriors against international terrorism.

It seems like everyday we are back to square one. Continue reading The Sunni Triangle: Where is Square One? →

Poetic Vengeance

Poetry, Turkey

The Critics
by Ceyhun Atuf Kansu (1919-78)

They know their English:
The Victorian Age,
Eliot schmeliot
Are complete on their shelves.

They know their French:
From its origins to the present
The grasshopper and the ant
From La Fontaine to our day.

I am not even mentioning
Those who know Italian or German
The erudite scholars
Those who did it the American way.

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Among the Earlier Ruins

Archaeology and Antiquities, Iraq

[Donny George at Iraqi exhibition of pre-Islamic antiquties.]

Muslims Need to be Sensitised to their Own Material Past
By Alastair Northedge, The Art Newspaper, November 2006

At the end of August, The Art Newspaper revealed the stunning news that Donny George, president of the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage in Iraq, had been forced to flee the country in fear of his life and take refuge in Damascus. In recent months, Dr George sealed up the treasures of the National Museum in Baghdad behind concrete walls, as it was too dangerous to leave them exposed. He was replaced by a relation of the Minister of Tourism, who comes from the party of Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia cleric and leader of the resistance movement. Continue reading Among the Earlier Ruins →

Gone to Pottery Barn

Iraq War

In a candid moment near the start of the Iraq War (pre-civil, civil or post-civil), then Secretary of State Colin Powell told President Bush exactly what the Iraq Study Group has now reminded him three years later. We broke Iraq and now we own the problem. We have been paying, of course, all along in lives and billions of dollars that might have served a useful purpose rather than taking more lives. Now encoded in mediaspeak as the “Pottery Barn rule,” the label sticks even though the commercial Pottery Barn does not have such a rule. The fact that the situation in Iraq is “grave and deteriorating,” as the Iraq Study Group bluntly states, shows that the current war and occupation have indeed gone to pot. Leave it to ten former politicians and continuing public personas to hash[ish] it out and exhume the failed policy for all to see. Continue reading Gone to Pottery Barn →