Some very good news from a mainstream Muslim group in India:
A powerful Muslim group in India, home to the world's third-largest Islamic population, has launched a campaign to spread progressive values in the community and break stereotypes, its leaders said on Thursday.
Thousands of clerics and volunteers of the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, the biggest body of Indian Muslims, are meeting fellow Muslims in towns and villages with the message that a right understanding of Islam would defeat perceptions that Muslims are "fundamentalist" and "militant".
"Our aim is to explain to the community that the true values of Islam do not talk about jihad as an excuse to take up arms," Rahamat Ali Khan, a senior Jamaat leader, told Reuters in Kolkata.
The Jamaat commands widespread influence among Muslims, especially in the countryside, and has around 5 million members and volunteers.
ÂÂ
Zeeshan Hasan,
Your posting made in July 2006 on Islamic non-violence seems to have been drawn directly, although without attribution, from the writings of Jawdat Said. He is the most outstanding and outspoken Muslim theorist advocating non-violence. The most courageous and effective Muslim activist whose practice of non-violence transformed his nation and participated in the liberation of millions from the yoke of British imperialism was Ghaffar Khan. Badshah Khan and Jawdat Said understood that for most Muslims it is necessary to link all reforms to a new reading of the Qur'an, so that they are built upon a foundation in which the people already have complete confidence. Aping the West will never satisfy Muslims for long.
I respect Zeeshan Hasan's scholarship. His clever observation about the Cain-Abel account and non-violence is what first attracted me to this site.
It is my understanding that he studied at Harvard and then returned to Bangladesh.
I like to see talented people return to their native land, to work for progress, rather than settle in a foreign land for the sake of personal gain.
I began to think the other day why someone like Zeeshan would seek to study at a non-Islamic western institution like Harvard.
John Barth quotes one Islamic scholar as saying: "If a book says something that is in the Qur'an then it is superfluous, and if it says something that is not in the Qur'an then it is blasphemous."
If one uses scholarship to forge some new understanding of the Qur'an, then how easy is it to avoid "aping the West", since such a scholarly activity is so Western.
Zeeshan, what do you feel you gained from your study at Harvard? What did you find of value?
What in your Harvard experience is negative? What did you find false or superficial or patronizing?
If you had things to do over, would you do the same thing. Would you do something differently.
The word "ape" reminds me of one verse which occurs several times in the Qur'an: "Thou are apes, despised."
When I read that, I begin to wonder which of God's creatures is despised. Dogs seem to get bad press, returning to their vomit.
Ants seem to be in good standing by virtue of their industriousness.
It is ironic that the ape is the most human like of all the animals, and perhaps the closet kin to homo sapien.
Speaking of apes Take a look at this post/article by an American professor
Click here for blog
three different verses: 7:166, 2:60, and 5:65
Should this verse be taken literally or metaphorically? That is, were these Jews physically transformed into apes?
2:65 And you know well the story of those among you who broke Sabbath. We said to them: 'Be apesâ€â€despised and hated by all.' 66 Thus We made their end a warning to the people of their time and succeeding generation, and an admonition for Godâ€â€fearing people. (Maududi)
Does this passage support the literal or figurative transformation of the Jews?
Yusuf Ali in his commentary on Sura 5:60 is terribly mistaken when he compares the Quranic verse with Matt. 8:28â€â€32, in which demons went into swine, after Jesus cast them out from two poor, possessed men. Jesus commanding demons to go into a herd of swine is far different from Allah turning Jews into apes and swine. But Yusuf Ali's comparison shows how far Muslim apologists will go
Next, Jesus calls Jewish religious leaders a 'brood of vipers' (Matt. 12:34) and 'snakes' and again a 'brood of vipers' (Matt. 23:33)
- Jim Arlandson (PhD) teaches introductory philosophy and world religions at a college in southern California. He has published a book, Women, Class, and Society in Early Christianity (Hendrickson, 1997).
Sitaram comments: See how we ape the west when we enter into semantic
analysis and debate.
Never heard of Jawdat Said before, Peterry, but I just looked him on wikipedia and he does indeed seem like someone who seems to have similar ideas to mine. As the number of progressives interpreting the Qur'an increases, that's going to happen more and more frequently. Which is fine; movements happen because lots of people have similar ideas.
Sitaram, there were lots of great things about Harvard Divinity School, but also some not-so-great things. It's a bit too much for a comment, I think. I'll write a post on the main page about it.
Great, thanks! I am sincerely interested! I admire your intellect. I sense an inherent dilemma between he mind which totally submits to Islam and that same mind when it seeks after Western science, philosophy and the tradition of Socratic dialectic and thinkers like Galileo, Bacon and Locke.
Right now I am reminded of the frequent mention of the Mutakallimum by Maimonides in "Guide for the Perplexed"
http://www.crvp.org/book/Series04/IVA-13/chapter_v.htm
(excerpts from THE Ancient Heritage in
Kalam Philosophy
TAUFIK IBRAHIM K.
)
This theory is also expressed in the fact that the perception of the universe as a Cosmos, as an ordered system of things, is alien to them. The Greeks, when developing metaphysics, turned greater attention to what they called the aesthetic proof of the existence of God, coming from the harmony of things in the Cosmos. Such a proof does not exist in Islamic theology. Its proof of God’s existence is founded on the changeability of all that is not God.7
From this doctrine, "specific" features of the Islamic science, logic, and music are derived. The "fact" that Muslims had a zealous concern for algebra and chemistry8 is also associated with the above doctrine. In logic, although Muslims knew the Greek syllogism, they concentrated on the minor term.9 A similar picture holds for music. Muslims, in general, do not have any idea of harmony, the notion of simultaneous chords, which in themselves are the great discoveries of the Christian West, concludes Massignon.10 Similar ideas are expressed also about other genres of Islamic art.
the attacks on philosophy by the conservative circles began before the appearance of Tahafut of al-Ghazali, whose author usually is accused of having by his anti-Peripatetic deliberations put an end to the further development of Aristotelism in the Islamic world. To illustrate the exaggeration of the role of al-Ghazali, A.S. Sagadeyev cites the words of Nasir Hisrow, who described in 1964 the fatal consequences of the "witch hunts": "As these so-called scientists (that is, theologiansâ€â€I.Ã’.) declared unbelievers all those who mastered the science of created things, searchers for answers to questions "how?" and "why?" became silent; the interpreters of this science continued to keep silent, and as a result everything fell under the authority of ignorance, in particular in the region of Khorasan and lands of the East."62 At that time and for more than a decade in Khorasan, Tugrul-Bek prosecuted Asharites, and on his orders famous Mutakallims-Asharites were expelled from this province. The worst was that al-Ashari was publicly cursed in all the mosques of the province. Thus, both the Asharites and Falasifa equally fell victim to the "orthodox" reaction a long time before the appearance of al-Ghazali’s The Incoherence of the Philosophers.
Post new comment