Muslim Heretics Conference

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Robin Tyler (left) hugs Diane Olson after their wedding on the steps of the Beverly Hills Courthouse.

By Duke Helfand

LOS ANGELES TIMES

Published: June 21, 2008

LOS ANGELES

As gay and lesbian couples begin to wed across California, people of faith are renewing a passionate debate over whether homosexuality is sanctioned by God.

Christians, Jews and Muslims on both sides of the issue cite the holy writings of their religions. Some note that the Bible depicts man-lying-with-man as an “abomination,” while others say that it speaks of God’s love for all people created in his image.

Both sides defend their positions with the zeal of the biblical warriors who inhabit their scriptures. “Homosexual intimacy is out of bounds. It’s not what God created us for,” said Richard Mouw, the president of the evangelical Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena.

Mouw cites Romans 1 in the New Testament that decried men and women abandoning “natural relations” and men who were “inflamed with lust for one another” committing “indecent acts with other men” — behavior that carried death as punishment. “Sexuality within the context of marriage,” he said, “is the order of creation.”

Nonsense, says the Rev. Mel White, a former Fuller professor and evangelical author who married his partner of 27 years during a ceremony Wednesday at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena.

White calls the Bible a living document that must be understood in its historical context — a view shared by reform-minded clergy and theologians from other faiths.

Early Jews and Christians, White says, defended a heterosexual ethic to ensure the continuity of tenuous tribal communities. These religious pioneers, he adds, had no way of foreseeing modern advances in psychology and other fields that would reveal homosexuality as an orientation rather than a deviant choice.

“The Bible says as much about sexual orientation as it does about toasters or nuclear reactors,” White said. “We have to grow with the times.”

A decision by the California Supreme Court in May allowed weddings to go forward starting Tuesday and set the stage for a statewide referendum in November aimed at reinstating the ban.

Theologians and biblical scholars trace the origins of that dispute to a handful of passages in the Torah, New Testament and Quran.

Perhaps the most frequently cited is Leviticus 18:22: “You shall not lie with a man as one lies with a woman, it is an abomination.” The passage from the Torah is repeated, with slight variations, in Christian scripture, which, like the Jewish text, orders death for violators. The Quran also denounces homosexuality, in Chapter 7, Verse 81: “For you practise your lust on men in preference to women: you are indeed a people transgressing beyond bounds.”

Conservatives in the three religions largely interpret the passages the same way. There is nothing wrong with being gay, they say. Acting on homosexual impulses, however, is another matter.

“The church says that homosexuals should be treated with love and respect, but redefining the natural and divine institution of marriage is simply something we are not able to do,” said the Rev. Marcos Gonzalez of St. John Chrysostom, a Catholic parish in Inglewood that serves 9,000 families. “From all time, it is obvious, for the species to procreate, it requires a man and a woman. The bodies are made to fit with each other. We do not have the authority to redefine it.”

But other clergy decry what they call a selective analysis of the texts. Jesus condemned divorce and remarriage, they point out, but that hasn’t stopped legions of Christians, including priests in some cases, from splitting and remarrying.

“Everybody without exception reads the Bible selectively,” said Jay Johnson, a theology professor at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley. “The question is, how do we decide that one portion is critical to our lives while others are not?

“These texts come from a different culture, a different society,” added Johnson, who also serves as research director at the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry. “They need to be interpreted.”

That is precisely what leaders in Judaism’s Conservative Movement tried to accomplish — with admittedly mixed results.

Eighteen months ago, the movement’s law and standards committee split over whether to allow seminaries to enroll gays as rabbinical students and to let rabbis preside over commitment ceremonies for same-sex couples.

Half of the committee adopted an opinion that called for ordaining gays, as long as they refrained from anal sex, which the panel interpreted as the prohibition expressed in Leviticus.

The panel argued for the importance of restoring dignity and honor to the gay and lesbian community.

But the other half said they could find no basis in Jewish law to remove a long-standing ban against gay rabbis.

As a result, the movement’s seminaries and its 850 affiliated synagogues have been left to decide which opinion to obey.

Rabbi Elliot Dorff, who co-wrote the more liberal of the opinions, said that the divide reflects an “honest and appropriate response” to a subject that has provoked controversy among broad segments of the American public.

“It’s not pretending that things are neater and cleaner than they are,” said Dorff, a philosophy professor at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles and one of the Conservative Movement’s most respected scholars. “The reality is that people have very different opinions on this.”

The same tension has played out in Islam.In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision, the Islamic Shura Council, an umbrella organization for mosques and Muslim groups in Southern California, issued a statement that called the ruling “a violation of God’s law as clearly given in the Quran and the Bible.”

The group said that sexual relationships are to be “enjoyed within the framework of matrimony only,” even as it registered its opposition to “all forms” of discrimination.

“We do believe that the traditional family structure has passed the test of time in keeping societies strong and humanity secure,” the group said.

One small Muslim group voiced objections, calling on the faithful to embrace a more pluralistic view of gays and lesbians.

“We’re not reinventing the faith,” Ani Zonneveld, the president of Muslims For Progressive Values, a group that claims about 1,500 members nationwide. “The Quran says that it is a book for all times and all generations. It is not a stagnant text.”

If Muslims cannot interpret the Quran, she said, “then it is irrelevant to how we live our lives today.”

PASSIONATE: Religious debate over gay marriage heats up as couples wed in California

Springfield, Ohio — The audience had many questions, mostly on Jesus, who Muslims consider a prophet, and on the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorists attack.

“There were Muslims in the World Trade Center, too,” said Samina Ahmed, speaker at the Clark County Public Library presentation on Islam: “Thinking Globally, acting Locally.”

At the 11th program in the library’s Global Education Speakers Series Thursday, July 10, the Springfield-based Muslim said she is very saddened by terrorist activities.

She said one of the largest misconceptions people have about Islam is that the religious concept of “jihad” is terrorism. Jihad, she said, means “to struggle” or ‘to strive.”

Jihad usually is the personal, every-day struggle to do what is right and to resist temptation, she said. Excluding self defense, no violence is actually accepted in Islam, and radicals who call their terrorism “jihad” are bad Muslims, she added.

Ahmed said many terrorists are illiterate and were brainwashed to accept violence.

“They really have no knowledge of Islam,” she said. “If I can educate a handful of people, I’ll feel successful.”

Many in the audience of about 75 people protested when Ahmed said the Bible is “human words mingling with the divine.” Muslims, she said, consider the Quran the only “unaltered, unedited, unchanged” holy book.

There are about 30 Muslim families in Springfield, Ahmed said. About 1.82 million Muslim adults live in the United States, according to a 2008 U.S. Religious Landscape Survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

Ahmed said the books of Judaism, Christianity and Islam contain the same message and that all religions should work together for common goals.

Islam “promotes peace, equality and democracy,” she said. “We all have to live in harmony; we’re not here to pick on one another.”

Dialogue on Islam opens

I’m half-Muslim. The other half is Hindu. While there were no overt attempts in the house to make me choose between either religion, there was exposure to both. Outside of the home, you didn’t meet many Muslims and therefore the exposure outside the home was primarily Hindu. And thankfully we grew up celebrating all festivals in the house, and had Christian teachers in school, so there was an ample dose of Christianity thrown in.

I was raised by my Mother on Amar Chitra Kathas. (Uncle Pai therefore shares some of the blame for how I’ve turned out.) I read comics on Jesus Christ, Rama, Krishna, Hanuman, Buddha, Mahavir Jain, Guru Nanak, Kabir, Agastya, Ghatotkach and a truckload on Hindu mythology. I read loads about India’s history, her invasions, her home grown kings, and Amar Chitra Kathas always presented an unbiased, usually positive viewpoint, the kind that kids should be exposed to.

I grew up accustomed to people marvelling at my knowledge of “Hindu” mythology, and other religions. I also grew up practically unaware of what Islam was about. Since my family didn’t pay much attention to it, I was only aware of who the “heroes” of Islam were: The Prophet, Hazrat Ali & his martyred sons Imam Hasan & Imam Husain, and their clan.

As I grew older, I met more Muslims, relatives who didn’t have the advantage of a Western education, who were amazed at how little I knew about Islam. They tried to impress upon me, how good the religion was, what it said etc. Unfortunately, I was in my teens & rebellious, saying emphatic NO’s to everything. Also, these people were not exactly the best of teachers.

Thankfully my Grandfather was an erudite, liberal scholar. And his daughter, my Mother had learnt her Islam from him. So she chose to teach me about the progressiveness of Islam. I found that my Grandfather’s interpretations of the religion were radically different from what the common Muslim knew & believed. My Mother taught me all about the history of the region where the religion originated and linked it to why certain things were expressed in a certain way in Islam. It made much more sense that way. Simple things like this: Islam considers Moses an earlier Prophet of Islam and his teachings are incorporated in the Quran. So “Thou shalt not kill” is an integral part of Islam.

The damage however had been done by then. I knew my family was different, but the image of the common Muslim in my mind was this: They’re Islam obsessed. All they seemed to talk about was religion. If ever another topic came up, the answers were sought in Islam. And that bothered me. Until I realized that all over the World, people seek answers & direction from their religion. Why then did it seem to me that Muslims were more religions focused than other religious groups? That is something I am looking for an answer to.

With all the World attention on Islam & all the hate that spews out in blog forums & on the roads sometimes against it, I’ve been wondering if there is anything Muslims can do to clear the air. Here are some of the things that I think Muslims should/should not do:

• Educated, liberal Muslims should use media to clear the air about what the religion stands for. It should showcase the lives of Muslims like themselves using TV, papers, novels, films whatever i available. The common non-Muslim deserves to know what Islam really stands for. They must undo the damage that the conservatives have caused. A PR exercise is desperately needed.
• Muslim majority countries like Iran should lay off minorities like the Bahais. Educated Muslims should actively condemn Iran when it does something like this. Countries like Saudi Arabia should allow freedom of religious expression in their countries. Unless they’re content to be knows as a hardline, conservative state. I as an educated, liberal, half-Muslim would be the first to condemn religious states!
• The Shia-Sunni divide needs to be bridged. This is easier said than done, but if the differences are irreconcilable, they should at least lay off each other. And guys like zakir naik should be condemned publicly if they mouth any hate.

Notice that I am not just saying “educated”. I am saying “educated, liberal”. There is a difference and that is the section in whose hands the image of Muslims worldwide lies today.

• The media doesn’t seem to be helping on it’s own. So there should be an active involvement with the media, a partnership that showcases the attitudes of people like Ustad Amjad Ali Khan, Farooque Shaikh, the bin laden niece who made a magazine cover in America. People like Dinara Safina, Marat Safin, Sania Mirza & their parents.

I intend to do my two bits. This way while I can & more if I can later.

My mini-mission going forward is to impress upon each uber-conservative Muslim I come across, the importance of being as modern & liberal. And how it’s important for their community to come across as that, if they’re to contribute to solving the problems that face them today. I’m aware that most of them will take it as personal criticism & will react just the way I did as a teenager, but I must sow the seeds of the idea in their mind.

If you agree dear readers, please help me do the same. Please speak to every hardliner you come across & tell them to live their life as they would like their religion to be perceived. If they want to be viewed as progressive, educated, liberal, loving & peaceful, then they must be that themselves. Do spread the good word.

The views expressed in this post are those of the writer and are not necessarily endorsed by Mutiny.in

Mutiny.in » A half-Muslim’s view on how Muslims should be percieved

Years of peddled fear and demonisation have left vulnerable minorities more isolated and the world fixated by a myth

• 
• • Soumaya Ghannoushi
  • The Guardian,
  • Friday July 11, 2008
  • Article history

Pick up any newspaper today in Britain or elsewhere in Europe, switch on the TV or tune in to any radio station, and you’re very likely to get the impression that “our societies” - if not western civilisation in its entirety - face an imminent Islamic threat, on a par with the old dangers of fascism. Since the terrorist bombings of New York, Madrid and London, the “fundamentalist peril” has become part of the air we breathe. It has become a rhetorical crutch for everyone from rightwing bigots to opportunistic politicians and repenting “former extremists”, each with their own agenda.

Today we live amid an explosion of discourse and imagery around Islam and Muslims. Sparked by al-Qaida’s lunatic atrocities, it has since fed on the politics of fear and suspicion. The victims have included objectivity, balance, and the ability to judge issues calmly and rationally. Flawed material is endlessly reproduced and recycled, so it is little wonder that the public’s understanding of Islam and the complex political problems of the Muslim world are limited at best.

Years of peddled fear and demonisation have had severe consequences: a widening of ignorance and bigotry, deepening mistrust between individuals and communities, and the resurrection of the pernicious language of racism and fanaticism - as journalist Peter Oborne illustrated in his Channel 4 Dispatches documentary earlier this week.

It is probably no exaggeration to say that Islam is now the religion closest to Europe and remotest from it. Islam is no longer an alien, distant religion. It is now woven into the very fabric of European society. Muslims are the largest of the continent’s minorities. Yet their physical proximity does not appear to have made them more familiar or better understood. If anything, to most European eyes they seem stranger, more distant, more ambiguous than ever.

The much hyped Islamic threat is one of the greatest lies of our time. The “Muslim world” - though no such bloc really exists - is politically fragmented and economically impoverished. It is reeling under the weight of crises and a long colonial legacy. Militarily, it is of scant significance. It is laughable that we should be discussing the Islamic threat when in the past seven years alone two Muslim countries have come under direct military occupation, ending hopes that the world had firmly closed this chapter of history decades ago.

I suspect many military experts must struggle to keep a straight face every time the subject of the “Islamic threat” is broached. They know that strategic threats are not founded on mere anxieties, imagination and illusions, but on concrete military and political facts. This is not to play down the seriousness of the dangers presented by al-Qaida and other violent groups. But these constitute a security problem to be dealt with through the intelligence and security services. Whatever its braggadocio, al-Qaida does not amount to a strategic military threat, let alone a menace to “western civilisation”.

The security risks posed by al-Qaida, moreover, face Muslims and non-Muslims alike. After all, al-Qaida has perpetrated more atrocities in Muslim countries than western capitals. Attacks in Casablanca, Bali, Riyadh, Algiers, Tunisia, Istanbul and Iraq have outnumbered those in New York, Madrid and London.

In the fog of the so-called war on terror, al-Qaida, terrorism, extremism and Islamism - the list of -isms goes on - have been employed as potent weapons in a range of battles. They have been deployed to demonise vulnerable minorities - their community groups and their leaders, mosques and faith schools. They have been adopted to eat away at civil liberties. And they have been exploited to target mainstream Islamist political parties. Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development party; the Muslim Brotherhood - the largest opposition in the Egyptian parliament; and Anwar Ibrahim’s People’s Justice party in Malaysia, are among the movements cast in one terrifying category labelled “Islamism”, alongside al-Qaida. The huge differences are wilfully ignored to justify this strategy of unrelenting confrontation. The consequences have been devastating for social stability and community coexistence, as well as for relations between the “Muslim world” and the “west” - something which, ironically, has been recognised by President Bush recently.

Political expediency and scaremongering has seen the propagation of the idea of a grave Islamist threat to the status of orthodoxy. But however easy it might be to surrender to this fiction, it remains just that: a myth fabricated by a few, exploited by a few, and consumed by many. No matter how widely circulated, or endlessly regurgitated, a myth remains a myth.

· Soumaya Ghannoushi will join John Esposito, Alastair Crooke, Martin Bright and Robert Leiken to debate “The Islamic threat: myth or reality?” at IslamExpo in London tomorrow. The expo runs from today until Monday at Olympia in Kensington
islamexpo.com

Soumaya Ghannoushi: Saying ‘Islamic threat’ over and over doesn’t make it real | Comment is free | The Guardian