Muslim Heretics Conference

By Michael Conlon, Religion Writer

CHICAGO (Reuters) - These are uneasy times for America’s Muslims, caught in a backwash from a presidential election campaign where the false notion that Barack Obama is Muslim has been seized on by some who link Islam with terrorism.

The Democratic White House candidate, who would be the first black U.S. president and whose middle name is Hussein, is a Christian. Son of a Kenyan father and white American mother, he spent part of his childhood in largely Muslim Indonesia.

The idea Obama is Muslim has circulated on the Internet for months, presented by some as a fact to reinforce the position that Obama is not a suitable candidate for the White House.

Not since the election of John Kennedy as the first Catholic U.S. president in 1960 has the faith of a White House hopeful generated so much distortion, said about 100 “concerned scholars” and others who have signed an October 7 proclamation aimed at countering Islamophobia they say is on the rise.

In recent weeks:

– More than 20 million video disc copies of a film called “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West” were included as advertising supplements in newspapers across the country, many in battleground states where Obama is in a close fight with Republican candidate John McCain. The film, distributed by a private group unaffiliated with the McCain campaign, features suicide bombers, children being trained with guns, and a Christian church said to have been defiled by Muslims.

– A city council candidate in Irvine, California, who is a Muslim convert, said he got a telephone call saying “I want to cut your head off just like all the other Muslims deserve,” the Los Angeles Times reported.

– A mosque in a suburb of Chicago, Obama’s home city, was vandalized four times in less than two months, with anti-Islamic messages left on its outer walls, and windows and doors broken.

– An account of an Ohio rally for McCain running mate Sarah Palin, filed by Al Jazeera and posted on YouTube, shows a woman saying “he is not Christian, and this is a Christian nation,” and a second woman saying she opposes Obama because of “the whole Muslim thing. A lot of people have forgotten about 9/11 (the September 11, 2001, attacks). It’s a little unnerving.”

“It is frightening to see at this point the label ‘Arab’ or ‘Muslim’ being used de facto as an insult,” said Ahmed Rehab, executive director of the Chicago office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (C.A.I.R).

There is a feeling, he said, that hate crimes increase as Islamophobia rises in public discourse, including that going on peripherally in this election campaign.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a Republican crossing party lines to endorse Obama on Sunday, made a demand for tolerance when he referred to Obama-is-a-Muslim rumors.

“Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?” he asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“The answer’s no, that’s not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion ‘he’s a Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists.’ This is not the way we should be doing it in America,” Powell said, while making clear such sentiment was not coming from McCain himself.

Muslims make up less than 1 percent of the U.S. population of 305 million, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, though some believe that number is low. About a third of the world’s population is Christian, another 21 percent Muslim.

Daniel Varisco, anthropology chair at Hofstra University, said he wrote the “statement of concerned scholars” after seeing Islamophobia on the rise.

“The attempts to label Senator Obama a terrorist or rhyme his name with Osama (bin Laden) or accent his middle name (Hussein), as well as false claims about his being sworn into (U.S. Senate) office on a Koran, demonstrate how near to the surface anti-Islamic sentiment is in the United States,” he said.

Circulating such falsehoods “avoids playing the race card directly but at the expense of Muslims,” he said.

The Clarion Fund, which distributed the film “Obsession,” through a huge newspaper advertising buy, says it is an independent education group focused “on the most urgent threat of radical Islam” and that placing the film in the hands of readers in battleground election states was an attempt to grab attention.

Spokesman Gregory Ross said, “we have no political or religious affiliations to any group whatsoever.”

The Islamic Circle of North America has meanwhile opened an offensive of sorts — a campaign promoting Islam and seeking converts. It said it placed advertising signs inside 1,000 cars in New York’s subway network.

In Chicago the group had a number of city buses adorned top to bottom with pro-Islam advertising, headlined “Islam: The Way of Life of Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad.”

Rehab of the Chicago C.A.I.R. office said that kind of approach may work to a limited degree, “but really the crux of the issue is not learning about the details of a religion but rather interacting with and understanding that the average Muslim is no different than yourself.”

(Editing by Andrew Stern and Frances Kerry)

Sour note for American Muslims in election campaign | Politics | Reuters

What’s wrong with having a Muslim for president?

Clay moulds of US presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama at Madame Tussauds in London. The artists have been studying hundreds of photos and watching hours of video footage to create the moulds, and will use their research to ultimately finish the figures as well. Photograph: AP /Madame Tussauds

OPINION: Where is the outrage over the implication in the US that Islam equates to terrorism, asks Bryan Mukandi ?

A FEW WEEKS ago, an American friend told me that she wanted her country’s elections to come to a close sooner rather than later.

I was a little surprised. The elections have been more entertaining than anything else on television all year. They have been better than even the Olympics. They started before the games, and were still a great source of drama months later.

So why was my friend, a person as fascinated by politics as I, not enjoying the race? She said it was because presidential elections divide the country. As a person who is not from the United States, I must confess that I was not moved by her concerns very much. Admittedly, I think the whole system is a silly way to pick a leader, ridiculous in fact. But even though I have heard people argue that the idea behind football is just as ridiculous, I still watch the sport. However, over the last couple of weeks, things have changed. I too am now sick of the whole thing and want it to end.

It started with the use of the word “terrorist” at Republican Party campaign rallies. Then there was the use of Barack Obama’s middle name - he even joked recently that he was clearly named Hussein by someone who did not think that he would ever run for president.

The icing on the cake was the woman who, at a town hall meeting, told John McCain that she was afraid of Obama because he was an Arab. McCain promptly took the microphone from her and went on to explain that Obama was not an Arab, but was instead, a decent family man. For that intervention, McCain was praised by some in the media for having “defended” Obama.

Some analysts and political commentators have criticised the McCain campaign for propagating the idea that Obama is a Muslim and “pals around” with terrorists. What surprises me is that while there seems to be a lot of outrage at the false Muslim allegations, the same is not true of the implication that Islam equates to terrorism. Why is it that the description “decent family man” can be thrown out as a counter to the suggestion that one is an Arab?

As The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart noted, are there no Arabs who are decent men with families they love? Would a “no Ma’am, he is an American citizen” not have sufficed?

The optimist in me believes that with respect to prejudice, the world has made considerable progress and it is now only a matter of time before racism fades away. But sometimes I wonder if people just need an “other” on whom they can cast their doubts and fears.

Maybe different groups just take turns at being the victim. Jewish people had a stint, black people are hopefully coming out of theirs, and it looks like the group of the moment are the Muslims. All it took was one or two unhinged groups and a couple of acts of terrorism. Now, one can almost publicly say things like “they don’t like us”, “they have a violent culture”, or “they think we are all infidels and want to take over the West”.

As for who “they” are, that’s obvious - people with names like Hussein and people who wear headscarves. It’s not just an American phenomenon either. In July, the Daily Mail’s Peter Oborne wrote: “Islamophobia - prejudice against Islam - is Britain’s last remaining socially respectable form of bigotry . . .”

I think that allegation holds for much of Europe. My German friend, for example, who is often mistaken for a Muslim due to his complexion, is frequently called a terrorist on the bus in Berlin. As for real Muslims who stand out because of their dress, there have been more than a few complaints of prejudice. All because of an extreme fringe group, which is probably no more representative of the whole as the Ku Klux Klan would be of white America today.

I think Colin Powell put it best. He said that pictures of such bigotry were being viewed in the rest of the world and did not serve America’s interests. He also asked why a Muslim could not run for the presidency. And that is a good point. Catholics can become president and it is looking like the same is true of black people. The jury is still out on women.

What about other groups? If the idea of a Latino or a Muslim in the White House is beyond belief, what does that say of American society? Either the White House is strictly reserved for those who profess to be orthodox Christians (that excludes Mormons like Mitt Romney) and the whole notion of plurality is a lie, or something has gone wrong.

If the US is the most progressive nation in these matters, what are the implications for western democracies? Is the idea of people being judged on merit, by the content of their character rather than on characteristics like race and religion just an illusion?

I do not know what it is like to be a Muslim today, but I do know a thing or two about being a minority. Most minorities, in my experience, tend to look to the broader society for clues as to where they fit. There is an insecurity that is inherent in being defined as different.

In the same way Obama’s success will lead to more African-Americans engaging in the wider society, the allusions to Islam and terrorism in election events may have the opposite effect with Muslims and people of other non-Christian faiths. Because America is America, that will have ripple effects beyond that nation’s borders.

Thankfully, in about two weeks this process will be behind us. The politics of race and religion will eventually fade into the background. People will be able to focus squarely on their finances, or pick any number of distractions. And hopefully, the scars of this election will not be too disfiguring.

• Bryan Mukandi also writes a blog, Outside in, on The Irish Times website http://www.irishtimes.com/blogs/outsidein/

What’s wrong with having a Muslim for president? - The Irish Times - Thu, Oct 23, 2008

By David M. Kinchen
Huntingtonnews.net Book Critic
Robert P. Jones has discovered a group that many thought had disappeared: Believing Christians, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists who believe in America’s traditional tolerance of other religions and who also support “progressive” — the current name for “liberal” — causes.
Based on his own research and in-depth interviews with nearly 100 Christians, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists, his intriguing book, “Progressive & Religious: How Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist Leaders Are Moving Beyond the Culture Wars and Transforming American Public Life” (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Lanham, MD., 280 Pages, notes, sources, index, $24.95) shows that — in the U.S., at least — there is a countervailing force to the much profiled religious right.
Progressives who are believers are caught between the rock of religious belief dominated by fundamentalists of all faiths and the hard place of fellow progressives who believe that all religion is a relic of a superstitious past, something that should be sloughed off so progressives can get on with the real task of eliminating war, hatred, poverty and other social ills.
The latter group, which Jones calls neoatheists, includes such best-selling authors as Christopher Hitchens (”God Is Not Great”) — for my 2007 review click here: http://www.huntingtonnews.net/columns/070710-kinchen-columnsbookreview.html — and Sam Harris (”The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason,” “Letter to a Christian Nation”). For my 2006 review of Harris’ “Letter to a Christian Nation” click here: http://www.huntingtonnews.net/columns/061008-kinchen-review.html.
As one who trends toward the views of Hitchens and Harris, I was startled to find an echo of something I had written about a few years ago after one of my many visits to Chicago: The remarkable tolerance of diverse religious beliefs in one Chicago neighborhood, Albany Park, on the Windy City’s north side. I called it the “Chicago Solution.”
Interviewing a progressive Muslim in Chicago, Dr. Eboo Patel, Jones notes that unlike in other countries such as India (clashes between Christians and Hindus or Hindus and Muslims) or Iraq (Sunni vs. Shia, Muslims vs Christians, Kurds vs. Arab), different sects in the U.S. at least aren’t killing each other:
Here’s what Patel says (Page 155):
“Now, think about the American achievement….We are the most religiously diverse nation in human history and the most religiously devout society in the West in a moment of global religious conflict. Sunnis and Shias don’t kill each other here, and liberal Protestants and evangelical conservative Protestants don’t kill each other in Boise, and Orthodox Jews and Reform Jews don’t throw rocks at each other on Devon Avenue in Chicago.”
Just before I wrote this review, I read about violent clashes between India’s dominant Hindus and the tiny minority of Christians in India’s Orissa state:
The New York Times reported (Oct. 13, 2008) that:
“India, the world’s most populous democracy and officially a secular nation, is today haunted by a stark assault on one of its fundamental freedoms. Here in eastern Orissa State, riven by six weeks of religious clashes, Christian families … say they are being forced to abandon their faith in exchange for their safety. The clash of faiths has cut a wide swath of panic and destruction through these once quiet hamlets fed by paddy fields and jackfruit trees. Here in Kandhamal, the district that has seen the greatest violence, more than 30 people have been killed, 3,000 homes burned and over 130 churches destroyed, including the tin-roofed Baptist prayer hall where the Digals [a family profiled in the story] worshiped. Today it is a heap of rubble on an empty field, where cows blithely graze.”
Earlier I had read about attacks on Christians by Muslims in Mosul, in Iraq’s north. And the list goes on and on….
People interviewed by Jones — among them David Saperstein, Michael Lerner, Jim Wallis, Brian McLaren, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Feisal Abdul Rauf, Eboo Patel, Kecia Ali, Surya Das, Robert Thurman and E.J. Dionne — reinforce the author’s point of view that virtually every major progressive political involvement in American history (for instance: the struggle for Civil Rights in the South, the fight against child labor) has had progressive religious voices leading the way.
Jones says that “To judge all of religion by the behavior of the far Christian right…is to mistake the part for the whole. As I hope this book makes clear, these voices do not represent all Christians, much less all religious people.”
“Progressive & Religious” is a thought-provoking, very readable book that shows that it is possible to be both religious and progressive — at least in America and other multicultural countries like Canada and Australia.
About the Author: Robert P. Jones, with a Ph.D. from Emory University, and a Master’s in Divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, is president of Public Religion Research and a visiting fellow in religion at Third Way, a progressive think tank in Washington, DC. He was formerly professor of religion at Missouri State University, Springfield, MO.
Publisher’s web site: www.rowmanlittlefield.com

BOOK REVIEW: ‘Progressive & Religious’ Profiles America’s Liberal Diversity of Faith - Huntington News Network

The Taliban have perpetrated another barbaric act in the name of Islam – and all Muslims have a duty to condemn them

Comments (68)

•  Ziauddin Sardar

The murder of aid worker Gayle Williams is an atrocious act. The fact that it has been justified on religious grounds is an abomination. As a Muslim I feel ashamed that such a barbarity has been perpetrated in the name of Islam.
Williams, who worked for the Christian charity Serve, was gunned down by two men on a motorcycle as she walked to her office in Kabul. For over two decades, motorcycle assassinations have been a regular feature of the Afghani and Pakistani landscape. And the murderers have, more often than not, turned out to be religious fanatics. The responsibility for this particular shooting was readily claimed by the Taliban.
Williams was killed simply for being a Christian. “Our leaders issued a decree to kill this woman”, said a Taliban spokesman, because she “came to Afghanistan to teach Christianity”. The fact that “this woman” was a woman was also clearly held against her. As such, her cold-blooded murder was legitimate and had religious sanction in the mental universe that the Taliban inhabit.

Who and what are the Taliban? The majority of their members are young students groomed in seminaries that operated in Pakistan during the Soviet occupation and hard-fought Afghan guerrilla war. The seminaries, financed by Saudi dollars, expounded a particular interpretation and approach to Islam – the totality of dogma as necessary detail, prescriptive dos and don’ts. The objective of the Taliban is to institute an Islamic utopia in Muslim Afghanistan. Like all utopias, religious or secular, it is a restrictive, totalitarian, nightmarish vision.

This vision of Islam, like any utopian project, must clear away imperfections, the unacceptable, the intolerable, the distracting, and create ground zero, the purified territory on which, alone, true righteousness can exist. The fact that Islam has existed in Afghanistan for over a thousand years does not make it Islamic in the eyes of the Taliban. To become truly Islamic, Afghanistan has to be forced to return to an idealised history when Islamic time began and all was perfect. Nothing can be allowed to stand against this endeavour. And all actions, however murderous and criminal, are justified in the pursuit of this goal.

This is why the Taliban hate everything that does not fit their criteria for being Islamic. They execute women who do not cover their hair without a qualm. They behead those who do not support an Islamic beard, which should sprawl unconfined and not be neat and trim. So far this year, they have killed 29 aid workers for simply being foreigners, Christians, or different.

Every act, however barbaric and evil, is celebrated and seen as a step forward towards their ultimate goal. The Taliban see themselves as heroes, engaged in a life and death struggle to recreate an imagined Medina in the time of the Prophet Muhammad. Their disaffection with everything that exists today is zealous to the minutest detail. Oh, and it is certain, unquestioningly certain of the rectitude of all its answers to any and all problems.
That is why Gayle Williams will not be the last innocent person to be brutally killed simply for being different or for serving humanity. There will be many more as long as the Taliban exist. For the Taliban have no notion of humanity, nor do they subscribe to anything that can be remotely described as humane. Such a notion of Islam can only be condemned, in the strongest terms possible, by all people of faith. Muslims need to do much more than simply distance themselves from the inhumanity of the Taliban. We need to take positive steps to do something about this evil.

Ziauddin Sardar: The Taliban’s killing of Gayle Williams was a barbaric act all Muslims should condemn | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Appearance provokes debate among student groups

Written by POOJA KUMAR

Published October 21, 2008

Nonie Darwish, author and public speaker, will be visiting UC Davis on Wednesday, Oct. 22 at 8:30 p.m. in 1100 Social Sciences. Hosted by the Davis College Republicans, the title of her presentation is “Searching for Peace Within.”

“From the side of my culture, the Middle East, I will start by saying every culture has challenges with peace and we might end the finger-pointing,” she said.

Darwish, author of Now They Call Me Infidel, will begin her speech by delving into her upbringing and introducing her perspective on peace between cultures. She will also discuss women’s rights in the Middle East and her belief that American Muslims need to speak up.

Darwish was born in Cairo, Egypt and grew up in Gaza. In 1978, she moved to America and became a Christian.

“I don’t consider [that] I left Islam,” she said. “Islam left me. When I went to mosques in America the atmosphere was very anti-Semitic. I was told, don’t assimilate in America. I lived with that religion for a long time I didn’t want to go anymore. The way Islam is brought today is very anti-women and very anti-minority. Islam law is very oppressive of women and minorities. I could not reconcile that and stay a Muslim.”

After the events of 9/11, Darwish started speaking out against radicalism, hate speech and violence.

“The human rights of 3,000 were taken by people whose religion told them to do so,” she said. “They are following the words of their religion literally. And unfortunately I don’t just blame them; I blame their teachers and religious leaders. There is a lot of literal education of religion in the Muslim world going on right now. If the Koran says strike the hearts of unbelievers they go strike the hearts of unbelievers.”

Sept. 11 prompted Darwish to begin an online forum called Arabs for Israel that is for Arabs and Muslims who support the state of Israel and the cause of peace in the Middle East, according to the organization’s website. She soon started receiving e-mails of support from Arab readers, but the senders always told her to refrain from publishing their names.

“I thought there was a need for good and free-loving Arabs to speak out for their wish of peace for Israel but they are still afraid because it’s a taboo,” she said. “I created this as a forum to speak freely.”

Allison Daley, Immediate Past Chair for the Davis College Republicans said DCR invited Darwish to speak because she will be an interesting and different speaker who has a unique experience to share.

“People will be more open and aware that this going on. We want everyone to come with open hearts and open minds,” Daley said. “We believe that peace comes from the heart, from the individual. We hope that people take away that peace in the Middle East can be achieved and women’s right in the Middle East as well is a big issue. We want a message of peace and love and for everyone to be able to get along in the Middle East without killing.”

President of the Muslim Student Association Yussuf Abdel-aleem said Darwish takes examples from certain instances related to Islam and attributes them to the whole Muslim population.

“We don’t like people like Darwish to come because we feel they misrepresent and misconstrue Islam,” said Abdel-aleem, a senior political science major. “For example, she generally shows Islam as misogynist and chauvinistic, which is the case sometimes, but she can’t make the distinctions between cultural differences between the religion of the Islam and the reality of Islam, which 2 billion people of the world are practicing today.

“And she is part of what the Davis College Republicans are trying to do - to tarnish the image of Islam,” Abdel-aleem said. “I feel like half of what she says is for shock value.”

In response, members of DCR said all student groups are welcome to listen to Darwish and her experiences. DCR encourages people to come with open minds, Daley said.

“Obviously on a campus such as UC Davis the Republicans don’t have a great reputation,” Daley said. “We want people to understand that whatever the stereotype of Republicans might be, they should form their own opinion and meet us. We work towards peace and having people like Darwish who have a message of peace and hope.”

Darwish also said she is trying to speak out against only those who are radical.

“I know the majority of Muslims are good and peace-loving people and those are not the people I’m talking about,” she said. “I criticized Islam and I have the right to.”

“In my culture they are very sensitive to self-criticism and it is time to get over such views because I consider it a virtue [to criticize one owns culture]” she said. “How did we produce so many people who are ready to kill others? Not all Muslims but quite a few of them. Why did this happen? What did we do to produce them? There is something in our education or way we teach our religion.”

POOJA KUMAR can be reached at campus@californiaaggie.com.

California Aggie // Oct 21, 08 // Former Muslim author to speak on peace and human rights

When Islam meets Bridget Jones

Would you read this book? (Picture posed by model)

A romantic telling of the life of one of the wives of Islam’s prophet has caused controversy among some Muslims - and its publication has been indefinitely postponed in the UK amid fears of a violent reaction. But is The Jewel of Medina actually any good? Blogger Shelina Zahra Janmohamed is one of the few people in Britain to have read it.

The Jewel of Medina is a chest-heaving, brassiere-busting book of outrageously tacky historical romantic fiction.

Some parts of the media are suggesting that this book is at the forefront of defending free speech. The author wants it to reach out to solve our global problems of intercultural dialogue. Between them they had me rolling around on the floor laughing.

Even if you feel that it is your duty to read it in the defence of freedom of speech, don’t do it, I beg you - go out and enjoy the last sunny days of autumn, play with your children, watch paint dry - you’ll thank me for it.

Prophet Muhammad novel scrapped

The book claims to tell the story of Aisha, the wife of the Prophet Muhammad, through her own eyes, from the age of six, through adolescence and into adulthood. But although she lives through one of the most dramatic periods of history, the narrative conveys little of the enormity of the changes of the era, and of which Aisha was a huge part.

Sherry Jones, the author, says she wanted her book to be “at once a love story, a history lesson and a coming-of-age tale”.

In order to do so, she fabricates a storyline about a lover, Safwan, whom Aisha runs away with - but then decides to leave and return to Muhammad.

But this invented plot dominates, leaving barely any room for the real history and importance of her story.

Whether you believe her to be fact, fiction or fantasy, and Muslims believe her to be very real, Aisha is of great significance in global history. The one fifth of the world population who are Muslim regards her as the wife of the Prophet Muhammad and a “mother of the believers”.

WHO WAS AISHA?

Second wife of the prophet

Betrothed as a child

Arrangement described as a typical political union of the times

Aisha recorded his life and teachings

Regarded as a scholar

Dubbed ‘Mother of the Believers’

Buried alongside prophet’s companions

She is said to have been a leading scholar and teacher and recounted many of the traditions about the personality of Muhammad.

Muslims hold Muhammad, Aisha and other religious figures very close to their hearts, dearer to them than their own parents, and just as much to be respected, protected and defended.

Muslims believe they went through enormous hardship in order to keep the spiritual message of faith intact, and in return wish to honour their contribution.

This is to be carried out in a measured and peaceful manner, in keeping with the spirit of Islam that advises returning harsh words with good ones, and malice with mercy.

With this in mind, I would have ignored this book and let it fade into obscurity. Allowing the book to be remembered only for the lack of interest it generated would have been the ultimate poetic justice.

The original publisher pulled out - and those parts of the media who wanted to stir things up said Muslims wanted it banned.

So, in order to find out what the (manufactured) fuss was about, I found myself spending 12 dreary hours reading this cringe-worthy melodramatic prose.

Even if you feel that it is your duty to read it in the defence of freedom of speech, don’t do it, I beg you. Go out and enjoy the last sunny days of autumn, play with your children, watch paint dry. You’ll thank me for it.

Bodice-ripper

So let’s deal with its literary merits. If you’re a man, you’ll probably hate this bodice-ripper. If you like well-written prose, then you should steer clear too.

What it does have going for it is pace and saucy pre-TV-watershed romance.

Anyone who reads the book will see that it honours the prophet and his favourite wife

Sherry Jones, Author

Open it randomly and you read churning phrases such as: “His eyes like honey flowed sweet glances over my face and body,” or “Is your young bride ripe at last?” Grab a crumbling Flake and a pot of ice-cream.

The author claims she wants to humanise Aisha, to reach out to the Muslim world and to create debate.

I found the opposite of this spirit in the book. Muslims will not recognise the characters and stories here because they vary so wildly with recorded history. As the copyright note makes clear, this is a work of fiction.

Take, for example, the night of “Hijrah”. This was the moment when the first band of Muslims left the hostile city of Mecca to move to Medina where Islam flourished - a turning point in Islamic history. But the book changes events to place Aisha at the house of Muhammad.

Jones changes the very essence of these individuals, so their characters are at odds with historical traditions.

Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet, as well as one of the great leaders of early Islam, is portrayed as conniving, hot-tempered and lascivious. The Islamic texts document him as a consistently staunch defender of truth and justice, an upstanding character.

So, if you drive a wedge between Muslims and others by fictionalising core characters, how can the book be a platform for debate?

Jones admits that she has introduced concepts that were absent from the period and place to help to create her story.

For example, Aisha is put into purdah, seclusion, as a child, but this is an Indian sub-continental idea then unknown to Arabia.

A huge focus of Aisha’s energies is to become the hatun, the lead wife, and make all the other wives bow to her. But hatun is a Turkish concept - and bowing is contrary to all Islamic teachings.

What we end up with is an outdated Orientalist reading of an exoticised woman.

Her angst is the angst of 19th Century Orientalists who couldn’t understand and therefore maligned ideas they found unfamiliar, such as veiling.

The result is an awkward unconvincing story, created to fit a pre-existing pre-determined idea of what life for Muslim women ought to be like. The cover art is The Queen of the Harem, a 19th Century Orientalist painting of a European-looking woman.

Sex, sex and more sex

The most irritating thing is its constant obsession with sex. The author sees it everywhere and in everything, and makes Aisha do the same. Her life is reduced to a parody of a smutty Bridget Jones diary.

I lost count of the references to “child bride”. Even till relatively modern times, marriage for women in their early teens was completely natural and common in parts of the world, including Europe.

Many Muslims will indeed be offended by this book, and they should make clear why they feel hurt. If our society upholds the right to offend, then the right to be offended goes with it. But it is respect and empathy for their feelings that Muslims want, not fear.

What we need for debate and discussion are accessible histories of all the key figures in Islamic history. As Muslims, instead of honouring these individuals blindly, we will accord them much more respect by opening our eyes to their achievements through critical re-examination of their lives. This cannot be done in an atmosphere of fear and intimidation.

Some Muslims oppose a style of writing and analysis that offers insights into the very human lives these individuals led.

I believe this opposition is misplaced, because that is what we already do with the words and deeds of the Prophet, known as the hadith: we read, empathise and re-apply the essence of those day-to-day experiences.

The crucial issue in creating positive understanding and dialogue through such writings is that they must be historically sound, and see the world through the experiences, morality and realities of the protagonists themselves.

Shelina Zahra Janmohamed’s is the author of the Spirit 21 blog. Her book, Love in a Headscarf, will be published in February 2009. Jewel of Medina, by Sherry Jones, is available from international book-sellers - but not currently on sale in the UK.

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | When Islam meets Bridget Jones

The Jewel of Medina: Is This Any Way to Treat the Prophet’s Wife?

By Azadeh Moaveni / London Monday, Oct. 20, 2008

Is it worth risking your life for the sake of a bodice ripper? That was the question I asked myself last spring, when I first read Sherry Jones’ novel The Jewel of Medina, a treacly romance starring the Prophet Mohammed and his favorite wife, Aisha. Now, The Jewel of Medina is at the center of an international controversy over issues from censorship and free speech to the idea of Islam versus Art.

In May, Jones’ publisher, Random House, canceled its contract with the author, citing sources who had warned that the book could incite acts of violence. Two publishers, Beaufort books in America and Gibson Square in the United Kingdom, picked up the novel; the former sped up its release this month to avoid acts of violence, while the latter, having suffered an attempted fire bombing of its offices in early October, said this week it was postponing publication indefinitely. I had been sent an early copy to blurb by Ballantine, a division of Random House, the company that is also publishing my own forthcoming memoir. When my scribbled notes in the margins went from “likely to offend?” to “certain to offend” to “fatwa!” I realized I needed to demur from offering a comment.

Since Random House dropped the novel, a heated and familiar debate (one could insert The Satanic Verses, the film Submission, or those infamous Danish cartoons for every mention of The Jewel of Medina) has erupted over whether Western civilization is once again being endangered by philistine Muslims who just don’t get the concept of free speech. As word about the novel spread across the Muslim internet, Salman Rushdie and a parade of commentators condemned Random House for sacrificing free expression to security concerns. Meanwhile, the most fierce judgment against the novel came last week from a radical Islamic organization in the United Kingdom, which called Jones an “enemy of Islam,” her book “blasphemy,” and warned of “deadly prospects for Jones and prospective publishers.”

Some critics, like Alvaro Varga Llosa writing in The New Republic, argue that “the book’s content is irrelevant to the discussion.” But others — the curious, or potential victims caught up in the threat of “deadly prospects” — will want to know what is causing such offense. Most likely to trouble Muslims is the novel’s overall lustiness, in particular the erotic encounters between Mohammed and Aisha, and the historically contrived sexual attraction between a married Aisha and a young, attractive Medinan. The book’s earliest critic, a professor of Islamic studies at the University of Texas, called it “soft pornography.” Of course, whether you would rate The Jewel of Medina’s erotic passages as porn, run-of-the-mill cringe-inducing sex scenes of the contemporary fiction variety or blasphemy is a matter of perspective, and taste.

The erotic trouble with the novel doesn’t end with its explicitness, however. For the sake of her racy narrative, Jones effectively rewrites Aisha’s biography and casts her in the role of near adulterer. Interpreted in light of the author’s modern, Western sensibility, this underscores Aisha’s power; her fictional Aisha has sexual urges and isn’t afraid to consider acting on them. She’s a woman in the Sex and the City mold. To lead her Carrie Bradshaw/Aisha to the brink of temptation, Jones subverts one of the key events in early Islam’s history, the incident of al-Ifk, or “The Slander.” The historical version has Aisha falsely accused of adultery, and ultimately exonerated by a surah (a revealed verse from the Koran) that also outlines the moral foundation of Muslim society. In Jones’s version, Aisha actually goes to first base.

In an interview published with the novel, Jones says that her objective was to “empower women, especially Muslim women.” But again, empowerment is a matter of perspective. Given that her narrative strips Aisha of the purity for which she is called the “Mother of the Believers,” and given the increasingly conservative social mores that hold sway among young Muslim women across the world, many would argue that the novel fails in this regard.

Jones’s treatment of Ali, the key imam of Shia Islam, the Prophet’s cousin and Aisha’s eventual political rival, is another flashpoint. While it would be impossible to write a novel from Aisha’s perspective without channeling her resentment of Ali, the problem is not Jones’s reproduction of this historically attested antagonism, but her cartoonish portrait of Ali as the Jafar villain out of Disney’s Aladdin. Jones undermines herself here with an astonishing insensitivity to Muslim sensibilities (the faith considers dogs ritually impure) by resorting to verbs usually reserved for dogs to describe Ali’s disagreeableness to Aisha. He points his sharp nose, sniffs for lies, barks — a virtual canine companion to the Prophet — and that’s all before the first chapter even starts.

To give The Jewel of Medina the full Edward Said treatment would take pages — for starters, Jones grafts foreign concepts (such as the Turkish notion of the hatun, or head of the harem) onto 7th century Arabia and conjures an atmosphere dense with exotic clichés (”I spread a smile thick as hummus across my lips”). Her Aisha is so thoroughly Western, indeed so thoroughly American, that she might as well have asked her father, upon being betrothed to the Prophet, “What am I, like, a sheep? Mohammed is old — ick. Can’t I wait for someone more fabulous?” But regardless of the novel’s literary deficiencies, the threat of violence that now stalks Jones underscores that the tensions that kept Salman Rushdie in hiding for nearly a decade have not faded — for writers and publishers wary of attack, and for aggrieved Muslims who feel their faith the target of perpetual insult.

The Jewel of Medina: Is This Any Way to Treat the Prophet’s Wife? - TIME

Caryle Murphy

• Last Updated: September 26. 2008 12:17AM UAE / September 25. 2008 8:17PM GMT

Riyadh // When the head of Saudi Arabia’s Supreme Court recently declared that media officials responsible for airing immoral television programmes could be killed, his remarks provoked what has become a familiar response around the world.
Ridicule and scorn for Saudi Arabia, and more “proof” for Islamophobes of the “backwardness” of Islam.
Sheikh Lihedan’s remarks were not the only ones in recent months to trigger a spate of global eye-rolling.
In March, Sheikh Abdul Rahman al Barrak declared that two Saudi writers, whom he accused of expressing heretical ideas, should be put to death unless they recanted.
Another elderly sheikh, Abdullah bin Jibreen, told an interviewer on Al Majd TV, a conservative Riyadh-based religious station, that journalists “who insult scholars to shame or discredit them or undermine their authority … should be punished”.
Sheikh Jibreen’s suggested chastisements included “imprisonment for a long time”, being “removed from the positions they hold, or … flogging”.
There were other less frightening, but sometimes silly, pronouncements that caused non-Muslims to wonder why representatives of such a profound and spiritual religious tradition as Islam concern themselves with trivialities.
The most famous was a declaration by a member of the Saudi religious police, officially known as the Commission to Promote Virtue and Prevent Vice, that dog-walking had become an unacceptable “phenomenon” in Riyadh. He demanded enforcement of 14-year-old ban on selling cats and dogs.
Then came a Saudi cleric bemoaning the fact that young children have become enamoured of such cartoon figures as Mickey Mouse even though Islamic law stipulates that mice should be killed.
Sheikh Mohammed al Munajid told Al Majd TV last month that sharia regards a mouse as “one of Satan’s soldiers”.
According to a translation of Sheikh Munajid’s statements by MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Institute, the cleric then said: “How do you think children view mice today – after Tom and Jerry? Even creatures that are repulsive by nature, by logic, and according to Islamic law have become wonderful and are loved by children. Even mice. Mickey Mouse has become an awesome character, even though according to Islamic law, Mickey Mouse should be killed in all cases.”
Saudis who do not follow the austere, narrow-minded version of Islam that prevails in their country’s religious establishment love to publicise comments such as these to embarrass the clerics.
But the press coverage, both in Saudi Arabia and abroad, often disregards some important aspects of religious discourse in the kingdom.
First of all, the press almost always refers to any comment from a religious figure as a fatwa. But in most cases, their comments do not rise to the level of a fatwa, and are therefore not worthy of the deference normally accorded such religious opinions.
One only has to look at the YouTube video of Sheikh Munajid’s Mickey Mouse comment (youtube.com/watch? v=bnhQjk7T478) to see that it was an offhand remark, perhaps an attempt to make a joke. It was not a researched, carefully worded fatwa.
Indeed, a more pertinent criticism of such comments is to ask why sheikhs do not spend their religious capital on more important moral concerns, such as demanding badly needed reforms to the Saudi court system, and urging kindness and justice for the poor, including the expatriate workers who do most of the manual labour in the kingdom.
Also, the press rarely notes if the sheikh making the controversial comments is associated with the government or not. Sheikhs Barrak, Jibreen and Munajid, for example, do not hold government jobs.
By contrast, Sheikh Lihedan does. And this was why his comments about television executives prompted a rapid government rebuttal.
Sheikh Abdul Mohsen al Obaikan, a moderate religious scholar who advises the justice ministry, denounced Sheikh Lihedan’s remarks, and said they would encourage terrorists by giving them “a reason” for “taking lives, attacking television stations and targeting the localities where TV owners may be”.
He made clear that Sheikh Lihedan’s statements should not “be considered as the opinion of the Saudi Muslim scholars or even of the state”.
Lastly, those who publicise controversial remarks by Muslim scholars rarely raise the bigger question prompted by such comments: Who speaks for Islam?
Actually, this is the burning ember stoking almost every controversy in Islam in these volatile times. What the ultra-conservative sheikhs – and often their critics too – fail to note is that the voices of authority in Islam have become far more numerous than at any previous time in modern history.
Rising education levels of all Muslims in the past 50 to 100 years means that today the realm of who is qualified to interpret Islam’s holy texts has expanded greatly. Religious scholars who spend their whole lives poring over ancient scriptural texts used to have unchallenged authority to interpret Islam. Not any more.
Today, those clerics are being asked to share that authority with other Muslims in a wide variety of occupations – professors, journalists, artists, film-makers – who have their own ideas about Islam’s role in intellectual pursuits, governmental affairs and even just plain everyday life.
Muslim clerics generally do not like and even feel insulted by this challenge to their monopoly on interpreting Islam. During the Al Majd TV interview, for example, Sheikh Jibreen said the punishments he recommended for his critics were “so that they can concede to the superiority of scholars and clergymen who are held in high regard in the state and otherwise”.
And Sheikh Munajid, in a television interview in March that was translated by MEMRI, addressed the question of clerical authority directly.
“Some of these heretics say, ‘Islam is not the private property of anyone.’ So what do they want? … They say, ‘We want to issue rulings.’ Someone who is ignorant, who does not know any Arabic, or who has no knowledge of Islamic jurisprudence wants to issue rulings?! They say, ‘We reinterpret the texts’,” Sheikh Munajid said.
“There is a very dangerous conspiracy against the religion of Islam in newspapers and in what these people say,” he continued. “A journalist, or one of those low lifes, wants to … These people are a mixture of western, local and imported ideologies, but they want to express their views with regard to religious rulings. This is the prerogative of religious scholars, not of ignorant people – the prerogative of knowledgeable people, not of fools or heretics.”
So what to do?
The Arab world needs more freedom of speech, not less. So as long as ultra-conservative clerics do not incite violence, they should be allowed to publicly say what they please.
Those who disagree with them ought to have the same right.
I asked one Saudi government employee recently what he thought King Abdullah felt about Sheikh Lihedan’s comments.
“Disappointment,” he replied. “The king just made a big effort and spent a lot of money to hold an interfaith conference in Madrid as a way to improve Saudi Arabia’s image,” he said. With one sentence, he added, Sheikh Lihedan destroyed the king’s efforts.
In a meeting with Islamic scholars in Mecca on Monday, King Abdullah spoke frankly about the challenges facing Islam, saying that “unfortunately, the image of Islam is being tarnished by none other than Muslims themselves”.
“If we want to be honest with ourselves,” he said, “we have to accept this reality that the sons of Islam are the ones desecrating this pure religion. Islam disowns them and disowns anyone who tries to give it a bad name.”
Of course, he was speaking about suicide bombers and their terrorist handlers.
But was he also thinking about others whose words harm Islam?
cmurphy@thenational.ae

Saudi clerics’ outbursts hurt image of Islam - The National Newspaper

Daniel Pipes’ Witch Hunt at a Public School

In September 2007, the Khalil Gibran International Academy, named for the noted Lebanese Christian poet, became the country’s first public school focused on Arabic language and culture.
According to the New York Department of Education (Brooklyn Eagle, 7/30/07) the school was using “the same curriculum packages as other New York City public schools,” and the chancellor of schools emphasized (Christian Science Monitor, 6/1/07) that its curriculum would be subject to departmental monitoring as with any other public school.
In short, according to New York schools chancellor Joel Klein, it was not so different from the 60-plus other dual language schools already operating in New York.
However, months before it opened its doors in Brooklyn, N.Y. the school came under fire from detractors who preemptively accused it of “imbuing pan-Arabism and anti-Zionism, proselytizing for Islam, and promoting Islamist sympathies” (New York Sun, 4/24/07). Charges were led by the New York Sun and its writer Daniel Pipes, a conservative Mideast historian who runs the Middle East Forum and Campus Watch.
Pipes sits on the advisory board of the Stop the Madrassa Coalition (New York Times, 4/28/08), created, according to the coalition’s blog (4/29/08), to end the “’soft jihad’…infiltrating our schools.” Although “madrassa” is Arabic for “school,” KGIA opponents used it to mean “a religious school” that would “impose a radical Islamic agenda in its classrooms” (CNN, 9/4/07).
Pipes has long argued that “Arabic-language instruction is inevitably laden with pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage” (New York Sun, 4/24/07), and fellow Sun writer Alicia Colon wrote (5/1/07) that this “pandering to multiculturalism” must have “delighted Osama bin Laden.” She then called on her readers to “break out the torches and surround City Hall to stop this monstrosity.”
Special abuse was reserved for Debbie Almontaser, the school’s main founder who was also chosen to be its first principal. A prominent member of New York’s Arab-American community, Almontaser earned praise for her work forging interfaith and interethnic alliances (New York Times, 4/28/08), but that history was omitted when right-wing media painted her as “a classic ’stealth Islamist’” (Weekly Standard, 4/11/08) with “an Islamist/leftist agenda” (Pipe Line News, 4/19/07).
Almontaser was further characterized by Pipes (New York Sun, 4/28/07) as a September 11 apologist in connection to her statement, “I don’t recognize the people who committed the attacks as either Arabs or Muslims.” Pipes failed to include Almontaser’s following sentence (New York Times, 8/29/07): “Those people who did it have stolen my identity as an Arab and stolen my religion.”
Attacks on Almontaser intensified after the New York Post reported (8/6/07) that she had “downplayed the significance” of a T-shirt emblazoned with the phrase “Intifada NYC.” The shirt was produced by the group Arab Women Active in Art and Media, a youth media group that shares office space with an organization on whose advisory board Almontaser sits. When asked about the word “intifada,” Almontaser explained to the Post that it literally means a “shaking off,” as of oppression, and that she doubted the girls were attempting to incite violence.
The Post began its article: “Activists with ties to the principal…are hawking T-shirts that glorify Palestinian terror,” and the following day (8/7/07) concluded that “the hijab-wearing principal…has issued a fatwa against the kids of New York.” “Why would this principal defend T-shirts celebrating a Palestinian uprising that has seen suicide bombers killing hundreds and hundreds of innocent Jews?” asked Rich Lowry, guest host on Hannity & Colmes (Fox News Channel, 8/10/07).
In August 2007, as a result of the media onslaught, Almontaser resigned. She has subsequently said that she was forced to do so and is now suing the city of New York. The case is still pending, but in a ruling that denied her request to prevent the Department of Education from hiring a new principal, Judge Jon O. Newman concluded (New York Times, 4/28/08): “This was a situation where she was subject to sanction not for anything she said, not for anything she did, but because a newspaper reporter twisted what she said, and the result of it was negative press for the city and the Board of Ed.”

Case Studies - Daniel Pipes’ Witch Hunt at a Public School