Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender and Pluralism (49 page)

1. In July 2002 the United Nations Development Program issued the
   Arab Human Development Report 2002.
   The report was written by a group of distinguished Arab intellectuals and scholars. The unbiased study showed that the twenty-two Arab countries have made significant strides in several areas of human development over the last three decades. Yet, the report notes that there are deeply rooted constraints within these societies that are serious obstacles to human development. These are: (1) lack of respect for human rights; (2)
   lack of rights for women
   ; and (3) a deficit of knowledge acquisition and utilization. As a member of a political and economically marginalized group in the U.S.A., I am greatly concerned that African-American Muslims are often adopting the same characteristics that have retarded development in the Arab Islamic world, particularly repression of female leadership in Muslim communities. There is also disrespect for the views of Muslims and others who challenge orthodox Islamic views imported into the community from the Arab world. In my opinion, to shackle and muzzle half of the community’s population certainly does not bode well for a community that is already politically and economically marginalized within the U.S.A.
   

2. Margot Badran, “Independent Women,” in
   Arab Women: Old Boundaries, New Frontiers
   , ed. Judith E. Tucker (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 131, 135. Additionally, there are numerous excellent works on Muslim feminism and Muslim feminist writings. Please see: Margot Badran,
   Feminists, Islam, and Nation – Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt
   (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); Margot Badran and miriam cooke (eds),
   Opening The Gates: A Century of Arab Feminist Writings
   (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990); Lois Beck and Nikki Keddie (eds)
   Women in the Muslim World
   (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978) to cite just a few.
   

3. John Esposito, “Introduction: Women in Islam and Muslim Societies” in
   Islam, Gender, & Social Change
   , ed. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and John Esposito (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), ix–xxviii. Also see Badran, “Independent Women,” 144.
   

4. Margot Badran,
   Feminists, Islam, and Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt
   ; Eliz Sanasarian,
   The Women’s Rights Movement in Iran
   (New York: Praeger, 1982).
   

5. Not only are many Muslims here in the U.S.A. unaware of the Islamic feminist movement, but what is even more alarming is their resistance to learning anything about it. In my “Introduction to Islam” classes, most of the Muslim students are adverse to reading books about Islamic feminists and in many cases are quite annoyed with me that I incorporate this material in the curriculum and self identify as a Muslim feminist. A number of my female colleagues who teach Islam at colleges and universities across the U.S.A. say that they get very negative reactions from their Muslim students on the inclusion of Islamic feminism in their classes on Islam. I have taught a
   “Women and Islam”
   class in two different semesters. There were no Muslims enrolled the first time that I taught it. Given the large number of Muslim students on my campus, I was rather surprised. The second time I offered the class there were several Muslim women enrolled, most of whom were from the Subcontinent. There was also an Arab and an African-American Muslim in this second class. The fact that they all stayed and wrote excellent research papers on feminist topics has encouraged me to keep offering this class.
   

Part III

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10

MUSLIMS, PLURALISM, AND INTERFAITH DIALOGUE

Amir Hussain
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Truly, there was a party of My servants who said: “Our Lord! We believe, therefore forgive us and have mercy on us for You are the best of all who show mercy.”

(Qur’an 23:109)

In this essay, I explore some of the relationships that modern North American Muslims have had with people of various other religious traditions. As this essay is intended for non-specialists in the study of Islam or religion, I refrain from using jargon or situating my work in complex theoretical matrices. I will begin with a discussion of inter-religious relationships during the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad, move to a broad historical survey, and then focus on interfaith dialogue in contemporary North America. Along with other contributors to this volume, I locate myself as someone who is both a Muslim (from a working class background) and an academic who studies contemporary Muslim communities. I have been involved with interfaith dialogue at local, national, and international levels for over a dozen years.

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It is hard to talk in public about religion these days, and that certainly goes for pluralism. When some people hear the term “pluralism,” they think of an “anything goes” moral relativism that seeks to mix all religions into one. My own perception of pluralism is shaped more by scholars such as Wilfred Cantwell Smith and Diana Eck, who have championed the necessity of thinking deeply about religious pluralism. In her book
A New Religious

America
, Diana Eck comes back to identify three important themes about pluralism:

1. Pluralism is not simply the same thing as diversity. One may have people from different religious and ethnic backgrounds present in one place, but unless they are involved in an active engagement with one another, there is no pluralism. In other words, pluralism is not and cannot be a non- participant sport.
   

2. The goal of pluralism is not simply “tolerance” of the other, but rather an active attempt to arrive at an understanding. The very language of tolerance in fact keeps us from the type of engagement we are speaking of here. One can tolerate a neighbor about whom one remains thoroughly ignorant. That stance, while no doubt preferable to outright conflict, is still far from genuine pluralism.
   

3. Pluralism is not the same thing as relativism. Far from simply ignoring the profound differences among religious traditions, a genuine pluralistic perspective would be committed to engaging the very differences that we have, to gain a deeper sense of each other’s commitments.
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Issues of pluralism and interfaith dialogue are of crucial importance to Muslims, particularly to those of us who live in countries where Islam is a minority religious tradition. Islam is already (or will become very soon) the second largest religious tradition in a number of European and North American countries.
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Muslims living in these countries have to articulate their understanding and practice of Islam in the midst of a plurality of belief systems. It is the responsibility of Muslims to help non-Muslims to understand how it is that we, as Muslims, live out our lives. Those of us who see ourselves as progressive Muslims understand that there is a need for all people to work together on our common problems. As Muslims, we can help in the construction of a world in which it is safe to be human.

Historical Islam began as a minority tradition in a non-Muslim setting. When the Prophet Muhammad received his first revelations in Mecca in 610
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, the people around him were largely tribal and polytheistic. Even though the people of Mecca knew of Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and other religious traditions, large concentrations of Christians or Jews were only to be found in other cities in Arabia.

As with any new religious tradition, Islam would not have developed had it not been for interfaith dialogue. After Muhammad received his revelations, he began to speak about them publicly, first to his own family and then to other people. Slowly, people began to convert from other faiths to the religion of the

one true God that Muhammad was preaching. Muhammad, then, from the beginning of his first revelations to the end of his life was actively engaged in interfaith dialogue.

The Qur’an, as the revelations to Muhammad from God came to be called, assumed that the first hearers of the revelation were familiar with the stories of Judaism and Christianity. For example, a verse in the Qur’an (5:27) begins, “Recite to them in truth the story of the two sons of Adam.” The implication is that the hearers are already familiar with aspects of the story, but that the Qur’an affirms and represents, and at times modifies, the previous versions of narratives. Another example is the mention of Gabriel and Michael in the context of angels and prophets (2:98). The verse does not specify that Gabriel and Michael are angels and not prophets, but assumes that the hearers are familiar with the Jewish and Christian traditions around them. A third example is found in chapter 12 of the Qur’an, entitled “Joseph.” This chapter, which is referred to as “the most beautiful of stories” in verse 3 – and is the longest sustained narrative in the Qur’an – tells the story of Joseph who is sold into slavery. It does not go into details about the family background of Joseph, but does speak of Joseph and his brother being sold into slavery by their other brothers out of jealousy (12:8). Presumably, the first hearers of this revelation were familiar with the story in the book of Genesis about Joseph and Benjamin, who are sons of Jacob and his wife Rachel, while the other brothers have different mothers. A fourth example is found in a verse about Jesus (3:55): “And God said: ‘O Jesus, I am gathering you and causing you to ascend unto Me and cleansing you of those who disbelieve and making those who follow you above those who disbelieve to the day of resurrection. Then to Me shall be your return, and I will decide between you concerning that in which you differed.’” Presumably, the early Muslim community who heard these verses for the first time had some idea that, besides the Qur’anic presentation of Jesus, there was a range of interpretations in previous Christian communities about the life and nature of Christ. The Qur’an was revealed in a world that knew about various other religions.

Many people are aware of the emigration of Muhammad and his earliest followers from Mecca to Medina in the year 622. However, there was an earlier emigration to Abyssinia which underscored the value of interfaith dialogue to Muhammad. The earliest biographer of Prophet Muhammad, Ibn Ishaq (d. 767), and the famed Muslim historian Tabari (d. 923) discuss this migration.
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As people began to accept Islam they met with opposition from others in Mecca. This opposition turned to physical persecution against certain members of the early Muslim community. Muhammad gathered a group of those most vulnerable, and instructed them to go across the Red Sea to Abyssinia, a Christian country ruled by a Christian king. There, the emigrants were welcomed and accepted. Indeed, the Christian king protected the Muslims against demands of extradition by the polytheists of Mecca. The emigrants stayed in Abyssinia until they rejoined the larger Muslim community in Medina.

Muhammad’s act represents the first time that Muslims, as Muslims, dealt with Christians as a community. There was no sense of enmity against the Christians of Abyssinia; instead, they were seen as a people that would protect members of the nascent Muslim community. Clearly, this is a very early example in Islam of the importance of pluralism and interfaith dialogue, and the debt that we Muslims owe to Christians.

As mentioned earlier, Islam arose in an environment where the first converts were persecuted by polytheists for their beliefs. Later, there were tensions among Muslims and Jews, as well as tensions between Muslims and Christians. Not surprisingly, there are passages in the Qur’an that say positive things about other traditions as well as passages that are critical of them. One of the challenges faced by Muslims in an honest interfaith dialogue is to come to terms with the full range of verses that address the issue of relationships between Muslim and non-Muslim communities. Given that the Qur’an was revealed over a period of twenty-three years under a number of different historical settings, it is not surprising that there are different sets of guidance given to the young Muslim community. For example, there are passages in the Qur’an, such as 5:51 or 60:1, which advise against taking “non-believers” as protectors. There is also 5:82, which reads, “You will find among the people the Jews and the Polytheists to be the strongest in enmity to the Believers.” On face value, those passages seem quite different from other verses, such as the rest of the same verse 5:82, which continues, “nearest among them in love to the Believers will you find those who say ‘We are Christians.’” While it is perhaps some consolation to recognize that the Qur’an never sanctions the killing of Jews and Christians, it is also important for Muslims to be aware of how the various strands in the Qur’an can be used both as a bridge-building tool and to justify mutual exclusivism. Admittedly, the situation is different for the case of polytheists, as exemplified by 9:5: “But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Polytheists wherever you

find them.”
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But there are also passages that are critical of Muslims who show

disregard for others. Chapter 107, “The Small Kindness,” is succinct:

In the Name of God the Compassionate the Caring Do you see him who calls the reckoning a lie?

He is the one who casts the orphan away who fails to urge the feeding of one in need. Cursed are those who perform the prayer unmindful of how they pray

who make of themselves a display but hold back the small kindness.
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It is crucial for contemporary Muslim and non-Muslim readers of the Qur’an to know something of the contexts of the original revelations to Muhammad.

In a remarkable passage, the Qur’an does speak about the creation of humanity, and which people are better than others: “O humanity! Truly We