Blog | Page 36 of 64 | Contending Modernities

Global Currents article

“Love” and “Punishment” for Muslim Others

Timothy Gutmann
April 17, 2018September 18, 2018

Stand Up To Islamophobia One of a series of rallys around the UK in response to hate crimes against Muslims. — Photo Credit: Tim Dennell. Stand Up To Islamophobia. One of a series of rallies held on April 3rd, 2018 around the UK in response to hate crimes against Muslims.

The promotion of April 3 as “Punish a Muslim Day” brought considerable alarm and concern to Muslims in Europe and North America. It is unclear who created the flyers, which were circulated by mail to several predominantly Muslim communities in Britain in March of this year and spread to other countries soon after, but they are indicative of a climate increasing hate crimes and discrimination against Muslims and the increased volume of Islamophobic rhetoric in politics. In the face of Islamophobia’s reductive fear-mongering and will to collective retribution, it is tempting for liberals to invoke a love for the persecuted in their general humanity. However, coming to terms with the diffuse workings of Islamophobia reveals the limits of professing ecumenical allyship, and of the frameworks for distinguishing responsibility under the contemporary security state.

The “Punish a Muslim” phenomenon exemplifies the layering of conceptions of the other conceived within the imaginary of a community wronged. Purportedly appearing in Britain in March, a series of fliers declared their support for vigilante action against Muslims, ranging in reward from verbal harassment, to sexual assault, to acid attacks, to the destruction of Mecca. That the flier’s idiosyncratic presentation led some Muslim commentators and comedians to take it as a joke. It would indeed be difficult to judge its seriousness without knowing who made it, and on social media it could potentially call to anyone to find a Muslim at hand to punish. Crucially, it also does not state what Muslims had done to merit punishment. It rather presumes a world of real and imagined violences attributed to Muslims, of a general and inchoate sense of the problem of Muslim religious difference so often expressed in blunt and subtle forms.

The idea of Muslims’ shared culpability emerges strikingly in a recent essay by Bari Weiss, the New York Times’ opinion editor. The piece is noteworthy both for its proximity to the crude “Punish” phenomenon and for how it implies the same collective guilt with the apparent sobriety of a journalist’s report from the field. Weiss describes the brutal murder of Mireille Knoll, a Holocaust survivor, in Paris, which the president of France and other officials have called an anti-Semitic hate crime. After detailing other attacks by young Muslim men against older Jewish women, Weiss points to surveys that indicate disproportionate anti-Jewish sentiment among Muslims as opposed to France at large. Weiss does not state how a community’s prejudices implicate it collectively in the violent crimes of individuals. She does not ask what effects anti-Muslim sentiment in France has on the dispossession and marginalization of Muslims there, or the nation’s participation in the US-led war in Afghanistan that has led to tens of thousands of civilian deaths. The point here is not to propose a model to correctly parse personal and group culpability, but to consider why and how some complex situations of precarity and violence elicit the undifferentiated application of collective responsibility, while others do not. Contrast William Connolly’s descriptions of the assumption that black urban crime in the US is pathological to Talal Asad’s illustration that crimes committed within the work of the security state are only adjudicated individually, if at all (Connolly, 40-74; Asad, 20-38). These default accounts of collective and individual culpability are shaped by the imaginary of the confrontation of crime and terrorism, which Weiss marks with Muslim religious difference.

Weiss’ commentary on community relations in France evinces a view of global Muslim ritual danger. She notes several reports of the perpetrators of violent crimes pronouncing the Arabic formula of takbīr, that “God is greatest”. Takbīr is a fundamental part of the daily ṣalā prayers and a marker of Muslim soundscapes around the world. While Muslims do not all practice religion the same way, the takbīr is one of that practice’s clearest significations, audible practically anywhere among Muslims. Both in its specifically-Muslim sacredness and everydayness, Weiss is promoting a trope that Muslims’ address to the divine should inspire fear in others. The association of non-Christian religious ritual with shocking violence has an extensive colonial history. However, here Weiss pairs this sign of Islam with another universal, that of anti-Semitism itself, reconfigured in every generation, “the oldest hatred in the world”. Even if this is true, anti-Semitism is not present in all places and times equally, and its intensification in the recent centuries of modern European nation-building culminating in the Holocaust is obscured in Weiss’s imaginary of timeless forms of danger, in which those who “shouted” takbīr were “apparently animated by the same hatred that drove Hitler” (Mufti, 37-90).

Photo Credit: Aia Fernandez. Love and Peace Poster.

Unfortunately, faced with a fear of Muslims that looks for complicity, guilt, and punishment in Muslim life anywhere, it is difficult to imagine liberal responses that move beyond the gestural. Leading up to April 3 media reports focused on the coalescence of opposition to the “Punish” discourse under the hashtag #loveamuslim. Because #love is reacting to #punish, it shares applicability to Muslims in aggregate, which is perhaps understandable. However, it also shows the limits of our present conceptual resources in countering Islamophobia, particularly in an “interfaith” context. For one, “love” as universal and transcendent has a distinct Christian patrimony, which while this does not present a problem in and of itself, it does not ask what non-Christians might want anti-prejudice undertaken with them to look like. Furthermore, “showing love” in the face of one potentially menacing manifestation of aggression does not yield up alternatives to the policies of targeted surveillance, entrapping prosecution, and intermittent warfare that keep marginalization, extremism, and Islamophobia in cycle together.

Non-Muslims who want to respond critically to the routinization of this kind of politics should begin not by presuming intimacy with our Muslim neighbors for the sake of showing our goodwill, but by first asking ourselves some questions. What forms of mutuality does pluralized common life require? How can we relate to others as individuals? How might we also make common spaces for others to constitute communities within and without us? How can we recognize and respond together to different forms of biological, socio-political, and historically-contingent vulnerability? How can we respond to violence with justice?

Array

Timothy Gutmann

Timothy Gutmann is a scholar of Islamic and East Asian intellectual histories, education, critical theory and postcolonial thought. He is completing his dissertation titled "Conscripting Traditions: Islam, Confucianism, Modernity" at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Field Notes article

Peace Does Not Grow in Isolation: Madrasa Discourses in Dialogue

Sydney Schlager
April 11, 2018April 26, 2018

Photo Credit: Qatar Foundation. Madrasa Discourses students visit the Doha Museum of Islamic Art in December 2017.

It’s 10am on a Sunday morning in October. The previous evening, I had stood on metal bleachers for three and a half hours to watch the Notre Dame football team beat USC in a sound victory. The student body is still recovering from the previous night’s festivities, and campus is quiet. I’m sitting outside to take advantage of one of the last truly warm days of the year. With my headphones in, I have one eye on my frantically scribbled notes and the other on my computer screen. A lively conversation is taking place, and I don’t want to miss a word. Today’s topic is genetic engineering.

“It’s not that it interferes with nature, or God’s will,” says Hafiz Rehman. He steeples his fingers beneath his nose, pausing before he continues. “It harms society. It changes the structure of the family.”

Photo Credit: Neil Palmer (CIAT). Does gene editing allow us to edit out forms of suffering? **Listen to CM’s “Out of the Lab” podcast episode for more.**

“No, that’s not right,” responds Waqas Ahmad. His face fills the screen. He always leans slightly forward when he’s speaking. “It won’t change the family unit. This technology is worth the risk as long as the disease in question is fatal.” We have been speaking for nearly an hour. The conversation began with a brief introduction to the topic of CRISPR technology and then developed into a debate on the positive and negative aspects of using this technology to develop new treatments for diseases by editing patient genomes. This discussion is our sixth of the semester, and the rhythms of our conversation have developed to the point of familiarity. Interruptions occur less frequently, and there are fewer silences. I remember the difficulty of maintaining natural conversation in our first meeting, even when we were only introducing ourselves. Now we are able to debate the ethical nuances of a complex medical technology with ease. Some moments are even humorous. “I’m sure we’d all like to have been born smarter or more attractive,” Waqas says with a smile. Everyone laughs.

This component of the Madrasa Discourses project, the weekly discussions between Notre Dame undergraduates and madrasa students from India and Pakistan, proves the valuable role of relationships in facilitating transformational intercultural understanding. Many challenges appear in the course of pursuing these relationships, but the potential rewards are worth the obstacles that may arise as a result of this pursuit. Relationships are formed in conversation because “dialogues are transformational processes” that challenge participants to defend their ideas and find points of commonality (Botes 13). The ability to communicate with those of diverse backgrounds and cultures is a crucial skill for the peace activist. Sustainable peace must be upheld at multiple levels of society, from institutions to individuals. The concept of strategic peacebuilding includes dialogue as a critical component of the process. The ability to converse with others creates a dynamic that “redefines the norms that the actors follow in their interactions with each other, and demarcates the boundaries of their relationship” (Botes 8). Thus, the discussion element of the Madrasa Discourses is an important step toward the project’s goal of introducing new modes of thought to students from both the madrasa and Notre Dame.

My experience with the Madrasa Discourses project marked the first time that I had engaged in prolonged theological discussion with students who represented religious and cultural backgrounds that greatly differed from my own. Sometimes we struggled to understand each other, hindered by language and cultural barriers. At other times, we reached moments of true consensus. In our conversation on whether natural disasters were punishments from God, we all agreed that they were not. Our reasoning differed but our conclusion was the same. This semester, I have put a great deal of thought into the purposes of these discussions. I have tried to consider how they connect to the theories that I have explored in my peace studies classes. In a course on nonviolent action in social movements, I learned that social change stems from actors that “extend well beyond the polity to other institutional spheres and authorities” (Snow, et al. 7). The madrasa is one such institutional sphere, and it has a potentially critical role to play in the international drive toward peace. In our conversations, madrasa students often expressed interest in understanding the Western, and particularly the American, view of Islam. They also indicated their desire to change the negative stereotypes around Islam and its practices that they have seen in Western media. This is the work of the Madrasa Discourses, which seeks to broaden viewpoints and stimulate discussion and critical thinking.

The development of a mutual understanding between our diverse groups has allowed our interactions to flourish. The educational aspect of the project exposes madrasa students to scientific, historical, and theological theories that may not have featured in their madrasa curriculum. My own base of knowledge regarding Islam and my ability to formulate and critique the structure of an argument have similarly grown. This mutual development of ideas has shown me that productive interactions occur between parties that understand and are willing to learn from one another. Thus, the work of the Madrasa Discourses, practiced at a small scale with relatively few participants, illuminates the centrality of relationship building within the broader frame of negotiation and debate.

This specific focus on relationships is a central element of many peacebuilding theories, particularly conflict transformation. These “relationships represent a web of connections that form the broader context of the conflict” (Lederach 5). Therefore, in order for the dynamic of conflict to change, the interactions between individuals must change. The challenge is to identify the best way to provoke this change. Once again, I return to the idea that relationships are formed and changed in dialogue. Therefore, our goal should be to “minimize poorly functioning communication and maximize mutual understanding” (Lederach 6). I found that the work of this project was a continual struggle toward this goal. Occasionally I left discussions feeling that we had made substantial progress in pursuit of our mutual understanding of our separate perspectives. In our conversation on the ethics of artificial wombs, the madrasa students in my group acknowledged my belief that pregnancy could limit a woman’s ability to pursue positions of authority in her workplace. I myself was led to consider how artificial wombs might change our understanding of parenthood or human dignity.

Conflict transformation directly targets societal problems and views these “issues as an expression of the larger system of relationship patterns” (Lederach 9). As relationships change, so do social norms. I learned firsthand about how important it is to “develop a capacity to hear and engage the voice of identity and relationship” (Lederach 16). Our views are shaped by our backgrounds, and when these come into conflict we must consider how our underlying values stimulate such differences. One of the more discouraging discussions revolved around the rights of women in society. The students from India and Pakistan expressed their shared idea that women best contributed to society when they took on domestic roles and did not join the workforce. I struggle to understand this point of view, but I also realize that they do not view this role of women as being lesser than that of men. In their understanding, the two genders serve their community in manners that are different in kind but not in value. I still find myself reflecting on that particular conversation. It was our most contentious discussion, and I found little common ground to share with the madrasa students in the conversation. However, it is precisely due to these challenging conversations that relationships need to develop. We must navigate our differences if we wish to find sustainable peace.

Peace can only be reached through partnerships and coalitions. When analyzing the role of individuals and institutions in peacebuilding, it has been found that “none of these actors, considered in isolation from the others, has provided the conditions for a sustainable and comprehensive peace” (Lederach and Appleby 26). Therefore, relationships are necessary for peace. Specifically, relationships that constitute the “flowing together of people and processes who would not normally come together” are necessary for peace (Lederach and Appleby 27). It is in these interactions between unlike peoples that the foundations for positive new structures are laid. The Madrasa Discourses project represents an example of how dialogues between diverse individuals can lead to relationships that foster mutual understanding. In some cases, that understanding may even lead to friendship. At the conclusion of our conversation on natural disasters, I was about to end the meeting when Hafiz stopped me.

“I want to teach you an Arabic word that we can use to end our discussions from now on,” he said. “It’s inshallah. God willing.”

“Inshallah,” I repeated. “God willing.”

Array

Sydney Schlager

Sydney Schlager is an International Economics and Peace Studies student at the University of Notre Dame. She participated in the one-credit Madrasa Discourses Peace Research Lab course through the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies in the fall of 2017.

Theorizing Modernities article

Understanding Religion in Light of Shifting Practice

Abdulkader Tayob
April 9, 2018

Photo Credit: United Church of Christ/Jessie Palatucci. UCC March and Action to Stop Deportations at Baltimore ICE Office. Rev. Traci Blackmon, Executive Minister for the United Church of Christ.

Christian Smith’s thesis on what religion is and how it works provides a useful framework for the study of religions in our changing, modernizing, and globalizing world. Its key merit lies in turning attention to the practices that constitute and sustain religions. Such practices, he rightly contends, motivate human beings, as individuals and societies, to turn to superhuman entities in order to obtain “goods.” This reality provides a focus on the religious and their practices, and not the theories that scholars love to build and debate.

Smith distinguishes his approach from others by emphasizing the critical realism that he brings to the discipline. He argues that contending theories are generally too positivistic, in the sense that they offer causal analytical paradigms for why and how humans turn to religion. Critical realism introduces a healthy dose of skepticism to the scholarly enterprise that explains, interprets, and generally attempts to control human social life through its production of knowledge. Smith’s approach places attention on what religious people do and why, and not what they might be doing in spite of themselves.

By putting the goods that emerge within religious traditions at the center, one can focus on religious ethics beyond principles or universal values. Such goods are shaped and sustained by rituals, myths, emotions, individual aspirations, and social communities. They generate values that sustain individuals and communities. The study of religions needs to pay attention to such goods, just as it does to identity, social cohesion, and power conflicts. Smith’s model assumes that these latter are all goods, but I am pointing to a particular sense of “good” that merits careful study within a larger framework of goods.

Photo Credit: United Church of Christ/Jessie Palatucci. UCC March and Action to Stop Deportations at Baltimore ICE Office
Rev. Kent Siladi, Conference Minister of the UCC Connecticut Conference.

Having placed practices and their desired goods at the center of the discipline, students of religion may then turn their attention to the formers’ transformation in the context of modern developments in politics, communication technology, or inter-cultural encounters. Such changes may be significant and obvious, or they may be subtle. Smith does not show this change as part of his thesis, but the possibilities emerge from the list of questions that he proposes for the study of religions in the appendix. For example, changing religious practices of a nation experiencing increasing diversity may provide an indication of how such new conditions are reflected and reshaped in practices. Some religious groups may turn attention to personal and individual goods, or focus on charity. Others might put up the barricades in closed religious meetings. Such adjustments and changes often occupy a significant amount of labor and commitment. Attention to practices and their desired outcomes may provide valuable insight into understanding religions and societies in changing times.

If the main labor of religion is to attain goods like ethics, social cohesion and power, then how and why do humans turn to superhuman entities? Smith rejects the rational economic model of human behavior, and introduces readers to a more complex understanding of attribution from cognitive theories. He places emphasis on persons that engage in such attribution, alone or with others. He does not explicitly rely on any model in this fast-changing field, but formulates a set of possible ways in which religious people attribute goods to superhuman entities. Smith’s discussion leaves no doubt that current theories of religion work with simple attribution theories that are no longer tenable.

Smith finds justification for superhuman attribution in religious behavior and practices. More than this, however, the history of religious practices offers a rich source of how cognition is reflected in public life and sustained in spite of criticisms directed at it. Modern criticisms of religions are a prominent feature of public life, but they often miss or ignore the complex attribution that Smith brings up in this book. This calls for rethinking the familiar models used to think of religion and public life: control, capitulation, co-optation, or rejection. They are often guided by simple and instrumentalist approaches to rationality that put the state in the center. They need adjustment and perhaps complete overhaul.

The value of Smith’s thesis may be further developed by paying careful attention to how and where such attribution is invoked and sustained in existing religious practices. Smith does not venture into this area, but his framework assumes religious discourses and patterns. When he writes on religious practices (prayers, etc.) or the patterns of attribution of goods to superhuman entities, Smith alludes to such discourses but does not develop them sufficiently. I believe that practices that are based on beliefs and assumptions of life are woven into a complex discourse in the way first suggested by Wittgenstein. These include verbal utterances, but also movements of the body, aesthetic frameworks and strategies, emotions and dispositions that constitute what Saussure called a langue. All of the signs form a complex system that makes it possible to articulate a practice (parole). Smith’s argument that these practices are directed at obtaining goods provides an important first step in what religious discourse (langue and parole) might be, and how it adjusts and changes over time.

The challenge of writing a theory of religion that fits all forms of cultural life regarded as religion can be daunting. Mostly, such theories serve an academic purpose which identifies an abstract or reified framework that is then difficult to identify and apply to religious traditions. Sometimes it seems that Smith is also engaged in this exercise. But I think his focus on practices and goods provides a useful paradigm for thinking about religion in general and also for thinking about particular religions as they change and confront challenges in the world.

Array

Abdulkader Tayob

Prof. Abdulkader Tayob holds the chair in Islam, African Publics and Religious Values at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He has published on Islam in South Africa, modern Islamic Thought, and Islam and the History of Religions.

Field Notes article

In Pursuit of Our Aesthetic Past

Mohammad Ali
April 2, 2018October 4, 2018

Photo Credit: Qatar Foundation. Madrasa Discourses students at the Doha Museum of Islamic Art in December 2017.

Having grown up in a society that fails to appreciate beauty and often condemns its expressions as an act of evil, I am amazed by the dazzling history of Muslim civilization. I always wonder how Muslims, such as the scholars I have encountered in New Delhi and many other parts of northern India, can claim today to be the heirs of their predecessors if they do not value beauty as transcendent and divine with the same vigor and enthusiasm.

Appreciation of beauty stimulates imagination and innovation, and historically Muslims excelled at its expressions. They produced the finest architecture, music, calligraphy, and other crafts. It all began with Muslims setting their feet on the fertile soil of the cradles of ancient civilizations: Egypt, Persia, the lands between the Tigris and Euphrates, etc. They mingled old traditions with the new spirit of iḥsān, a comprehensive concept, writes Oludamini Ogunnaike, denoting the “sense of beauty and excellence—at once aesthetical, ethical, intellectual, and spiritual.” Their understanding of iḥsān drew from the verses of the Quran that give a big picture of the metaphysical beauty of God, and a scenic view of Jannah (Paradise) with its palaces sculptured from gems, surrounded by gardens, where streams of milk and honey flow. As many traditions including Islam assert, ‘God is beautiful and loves beauty.’ Religious inspiration is evident in the designs of the elegant monuments and mosques from Spain to Indonesia. The profound beauty of these structures and decorative art still evokes ecstasy in their beholders.

Ogunnaike defines Islamic art as ‘silent theology’ that successfully holds the picture of Islam intact against contemporary virulent propagandas. He further says, “To many, the silent theology of Islamic art can speak more profoundly and clearly than the most dazzling treatise, and its beauty can be more evident and persuasive than the strongest argument.” I would add to Ogunnaike’s point that past Muslim innovations in beauty serve as a source of inspiration and pride for Muslims even today.

However, some modern Muslim puritanical movements have challenged the role of beauty in Islam. The ideologues of these movements have fomented disregard of Islamic art among the ʿulamā and hence the masses. During my days of madrasa schooling, I heard some of my teachers and peers argue that art is not worth pursuing. It distances man from the remembrance of God and requires an excessive amount of money and resources, it is said. It is no surprise that Aurangzeb, a Mughal Emperor who did not appreciate art very much, is dearer to the ʿulamā than Shāh Jahān, the Emperor who built the Taj Mahal. Sufis are also discredited by these ʿulamā members for their practice of arranging musical gatherings for seeking aesthetic experiences in the presence of the Divine. These reductionist Muslims often view Islam as a sort of strictly ritualistic system and deprive it of its aesthetic heritage.

Photo Credit: Mohammad Rasheed. Pillars at the HBKU College of Islamic Studies.

My experience of Islam has been very diverse between the madrasa and the university. Practicing conventional or ritualized Islam in my days of madrasa schooling seemed very simple. After coming to the university, however, my awareness of Islam grew in complexity with my increasing familiarity with its history and the civilization it produced. My readings about historical and religious understandings of Islam suggested that there is a gap between the way Islamic civilization thrived in the past and how Islam is practiced today. I admire the Muslim genius and fellow citizens of other faiths who contributed to this civilization. But I am also disturbed when I read about the paintings depicting humans on the walls of Qusayr in Jordan built by Walid I, the Umayyad Caliph in the first century of Islam, contrary to the centuries-old fatwa condemning representational art and prohibiting images of living beings (p. 271). This fatwa drew its validity from the hadiths (prophetic traditions) that forbade representational art, considering it a grave sin.[1] The question was whether the Umayyads disregarded the prophetic traditions altogether or if they had a different understanding of them. Debates on representational art developed a new dimension after the invention of the camera. In the Indian subcontinent, the permissibility and impermissibility of photography is still among the most debated religious issues. I faced such contradictions throughout my study of Muslim history. The question was, who should I consider wrong? The conventional view maintained by the orthodox ʿulamā is to perceive the religiosity of the rulers who encouraged and patronized arts with suspicion.

My amazement with Islam deepened as I delved more seriously into the intellectual history of Islam. I found an opportunity to do this in the Madrasa Discourses program, directed by Ebrahim Moosa and Mahan Mirza, Professors of Islamic Studies both based at the University of Notre Dame. This program teaches madrasa graduates modern science and Western philosophy in such a way that the students may develop skills to answer the modern challenges posed to Islam. This past semester we had a long discussion on ‘tradition,’ imagining it as a long rope that connects the past to the present. To keep it going, the people of the tradition have to add new threads to this rope in their respective times. If the people treat tradition otherwise, it will lose its viability. Similarly, Islamic art is one among several threads of Muslim tradition. There is a sense of continuity and progress in it from the very onset up to the modern times. Many of the expressions of this art have been lost, but many are still extant and make us recall the ingenuity and sacredness of the tradition of Islamic art. The best way to perceive it is to experience it personally in art museums, musical concerts, and by visiting renowned sites and monuments.

As a part of the program, select madrasa-educated students from India and Pakistan had a chance to visit the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar during the winter intensive in the last week of December 2017. The museum is located on an artificial island flanked by two huge lawns with a bridge in the middle that connects the old city to the museum. We were told that the architectural design of this museum was inspired by the famous 9^th century Ibn Tūlūn Mosque of Cairo. An exquisite edifice, this museum is often portrayed as an example of generating new threads into the old rope of tradition. Inside the museum, it was as if we were visiting our past. A collection of metalwork, glasswork, textiles, manuscripts, and ceramics are housed there representing Islamic arts throughout the centuries. Examining them closely, I admired the inspiration they drew from the world that they lived in and from the tradition with which they were entrusted. Artifacts in the museum such as colorful rugs and silks with figurative designs, griffins crafted on tiles or a sphinx-faced lusterware ewer were evidently the mixture of creative Muslim imagination with the local cultures and civilizations of the lands Muslims came to inhabit.

Photo Credit: Qatar Foundation. Madrasa Discourses at Doha Museum of Islamic Art.

I was surprised again, imagining the past to be so beautiful and so appreciative of arts in comparison to my present society. Questions troubled me: what was it that disconnected the vast majority of South Asian Muslims from this vibrant tradition? Why do we no longer show the same enthusiasm toward the spirit of creativity? Why do we fail to discuss and give due appreciation to aesthetics? There could be many reasons. I had a chance to discuss my concerns with Professor Ebrahim Moosa, who was with us at the time. I had already thought of an explanation for the dissonance I was experiencing: the recent dominance of a ritualistic and ahistorical understanding of Islam that was confined, in great part, to prayers only. I am not sure whether Prof Moosa agreed with my argument, as he added that Muslims no longer feel confident in performing creativity or talking about aesthetics as they did before. This may be one of the factors that killed Islam’s thriving artistic and aesthetic tradition.

Apart from the museum, we also witnessed an extensive display of magnificent architectural designs in the Education City in Doha. I think that Qatar has devoted much of its resources in reviving the aesthetic tradition of Islam and can serve as an example to Muslims of other nations. Muslims have historically seen beauty as sacred and tried to seek perfection in its expressions. Debates about aesthetics, arts, and erstwhile Muslim experiences should be introduced into madrasa education and students should be exposed to the historical meanings of their tradition. We should engage with the questions: What motivated many rulers and elites of Muslim society to patronize such arts, especially the representation of figures that were considered prohibited by orthodox scholars? Was it an act of indifference towards Islamic law or were there some historical and cultural impulses that led the practitioners and patrons of the arts to define the laws differently? There is a need to analyze the seemingly contradictory practices of past Muslims with the dominant contemporary orthodox Islamic tradition. This can help us understand the significance of art in the robust and cosmopolitan nature of Islamic civilizational tradition.

[1] Bukhārī mʿ Fathul Bārī, Vol 10, pp 314, 316, 323. The Hadiths are cited in Tasvīr ke Sharaʿī Aḥkām (The Rulings of Sharia about Making Images and Photography) by Muftī Muhammad Shafīʿ, published by Idāratul Mʿārif, Karachi, Pakistan

Array

Mohammad Ali

Mohammad Ali is a PhD Fellow at the Department of Islamic Studies at Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi, India. He is also a graduate of the Madrasa Discourses program.

Field Notes article

Freedom: An Intercultural Definition

Kirsten Hanlon
March 23, 2018March 23, 2018

Photo Credit: Alan Turkus, “Speed Limit 10” in New Jersey, USA.

“What do you think is the biggest difference between Pakistan and the United States?” I asked my weekly discussion group of young Islamic studies scholars in the Madrasa Discourses project. I was expecting answers related to Pakistan’s religious society compared to the secularity of the United States, differing gender roles, or notorious Western values, but one female student, Haya, took me entirely by surprise by saying, “In Pakistan, we are much more free.” As a young woman in the United States, I could not imagine that I was living in a more restrictive society than my peers in Pakistan. I am in my third year of studies at the University of Notre Dame, majoring in Neuroscience and Peace Studies. My experiences studying in a male-dominated science field and traveling the world independently have shown me the expanse of my freedom in comparison to women in previous generations and individuals living under more repressive governments. Generally, citizens of the United States pride ourselves on our freedoms, boasting of the liberties guaranteed by the First Amendment of the Constitution, but are these the most crucial aspects of freedom? I probed her further, asking how she saw Pakistan as a freer society. She replied by saying that the United States has so many laws and fines, citing speed limits as a specific example, but in Pakistan citizens can largely live according to their own rules. This statement made me wonder: is greater individual agency indicative of freedom or anarchy? Perhaps more importantly, do socially-enforced norms impact the freedom of citizens more than the few legal codes that are in place?

Photo by Peter Ringenberg/University of Notre Dame: Dr. Ebrahim Moosa Presents the Madrasa Discourses project in February 2018, with video conference in background.

This exchange occurred in the context of a dialogue group for the Madrasa Discourses Peace Lab that I am participating in at the University of Notre Dame. The Madrasa Discourses Project is a three year course that encourages madrasa-educated students to recover methodologies and perspectives from their own tradition to face modern challenges, invites them to question why they hold certain beliefs, and fosters conversation with members of other cultures in an open-minded way. The madrasa graduates, all from India and Pakistan, participate in several weekly classes and discussion groups, as well as onsite intensive programs during the summer and winter. By bringing traditional Islamic learning into conversation with new knowledge, ideas grounded in the students’ madrasa education are challenged. They are forced to see their own definitions and belief systems from an outsider’s perspective in order to better defend those beliefs or adapt them to modern circumstances. Madrasa Discourses encourages the graduates to arrive at their own carefully reasoned definitions, rather than blindly accept those handed to them. This project also requires intercultural conversation in discussion groups comprised of participants from India, Pakistan, and the United States. The cohort from the United States consists of undergraduate students at Notre Dame, such as myself. We also benefit from engaging with questions related to freedom, culture, and identity during these intercultural conversations and from forming meaningful relationships with students living across the world. In these discourses, all participants come to a better understanding of each other’s worldviews and the peace that can be brought about through sustained dialogue and reflection.

My conversation with Haya opened my eyes to the ways that cultural and experiential differences can lead to varying conceptualizations of the same word. At first, I thought Haya simply did not understand the true meaning of freedom. In my eyes, laws are in place to protect our larger freedoms, such as religious practice, private property, and self-expression, not to take away our agency. In the days following this discussion, the question followed me: Am I really living in a free society? The Oxford Dictionary Online defines freedom as “the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants.” According to this definition, Haya may have a better understanding of the word “freedom” than I do. This realization opened me up to a larger inquiry: Who has the authority to set a definition for a word, and how can intercultural dialogue be successful if our definitions of key concepts are different? I reflected specifically on the importance of subsidiarity in reaching a definition, the necessity of sustained dialogue between cultures, and the ways in which the Madrasa Discourses project at the University of Notre Dame attempts to tackle these issues.

Subsidiarity is the principle that people, associations, and institutions closest to a matter are best able to respond because they have a “fine-grained sense of the texture” of that matter (Whitmore, 174). This concept applies in the context of creating definitions because the people who live in a particular society are best able to state what a particular idea means to them. Outsiders cannot impose their own beliefs or demand that these societies conform to a rigid, pre-established definition because that word would no longer sustain its meaning. Americans cannot assume that our perception of freedom is universal. The meaning of freedom in the United States is grounded in the legal framework of the Constitution, but that document is not relevant in other cultures. As tempting as it may be for me to conclude that Haya misjudged the true sentiment of freedom, I must examine the influences behind my own definition first. Members of Western societies often assume that their ideals and conceptions are correct, and others’ conflicting views are problems that can be solved through cultural imperialism, but that is not the case (Lederach and Appleby, 28). The instances of freedom or abuse that one recognizes are dependent on one’s social location (Price, 2012). What one individual interprets as confining may be perceived as liberating from another’s point of view.

Author Kirsten Hanlon sits with Madrasa Discourses students at the 2017 Kathmandu Summer Intensive.

Identifying and clarifying these examples of inconsistency is essential for intercultural conversations. In another group discussion, the topic of gender roles came up and a debate ensued about the particular freedoms of women in Muslim societies. We were looking specifically at the fact that a woman must obtain consent from a male guardian to travel or attend university in Saudi Arabia. The Indian and Pakistani men argued that these guardianship laws are in place only to protect the women from dangerous situations. I braced myself to defend my ideas about women’s rights, expecting little support from the Pakistani women. I presumed that their decisions not to show their faces on the video conference was an indication of submission to patriarchal societal norms. Again, my preconceptions were tested when the other female student, Momina, said, “I am speaking as a feminist… How will a woman know how to judge for herself about the world if you are going to pamper her every time?” Upon reflection, I recognized my flawed perception of the Pakistani women’s freedom. I assumed they were unaware of cultural violence in their societies because of their decision not to show their faces. Momina is not blind to the use of religious beliefs to justify the institutionalized restriction of women to their homes and local communities. She fights against the practices that she feels restrain her freedom, while still actively choosing to preserve her modesty. I came to realize that veiling oneself can be an act of freedom to live according to one’s religious beliefs and assert agency over how the world perceives you as a woman and human being. This conversation forced me to challenge my fixed understanding of feminism to appreciate that what I first saw as a patriarchal restriction may be an act of religious freedom and self-expression for some women. After this conversation, I realized that Momina is much more qualified to assess her own freedom than I am as a member of a starkly different culture. In this way, definitions should be set by the members of the culture that will use the term so that words can be applied most accurately. The need for culturally relevant definitions, however, does not imply a complete concession to relativism. Moral and practical objectivity also plays an important role in intercultural conversations.

The question surfaces again: if all cultures have accurate, but different definitions for concepts, how can intercultural conversations be successful? The key to these intercultural discussions is a sustained commitment to dialogue to humanize and better understand those with opposing views (Freire, 68). Initially, a great deal will be lost in translation between two groups or individuals with different cultural backgrounds, but continuous discourse provides an avenue to bridge that divide. Each participant in the conversation must recognize the cultural basis of their set definitions, appreciating that no one definition is universally accurate, and be open to the different perspectives of those whom they encounter. All members share what the idea, such as freedom, means to them so that a collective definition can be built up. Diversity in these discussion groups should be maximized because the “broader the coalition’s base, the clearer it becomes that no single religious outlook can be taken for granted as a framework for discussion” (Stout, 227). It is even possible that the intercultural discussion group can, in a sense, form a new culture grounded in the mutual notions that they construct together. The most fruitful conversations in our discussion group emerged when we shared our individual understandings of the topic at hand, creating collective definitions before delving into discussions of differences in worldview. Precise language is critical to dialogue, so this process of building up shared definitions is incredibly important. After coming to a more robust understanding of Haya’s perception of freedom, I succeeded in learning more about my own views on agency, challenging cultural preconceptions about Islamic feminism, and building stronger relationships with my international peers.

Array

Kirsten Hanlon

Kirsten Hanlon is a Neuroscience and Behavior major at the University of Notre Dame, with a minor in Peace Studies. She joined the Madrasa Discourses Summer Intensive in Kathmandu in July of 2017.

Theorizing Modernities article

Toward a Common Respectful Attentiveness to Religions

Francis X. Clooney, SJ
March 9, 2018March 16, 2018

Offering of ghee into Yajna Agni, the sacred sacrificial fire. Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Religion is a richly textured and rightly complex book, in which Smith seeks to talk about religion as it functions in societies and individual lives; the five major chapters are wide-reaching, exploring the what, why, how, and future of religions.

Smith’s approach is to focus on practice and the practical, seeking out what motivates people to read the human condition in light of powers beyond it that they can relate to, powers such as can be approached with discernible benefit to humans. This is a wise approach; while the book is erudite and conversant in current conversations in the social scientific study of religion, his return again and again to what people do in specific circumstances is wise. He is also insistent on the openness of his approach, which refuses to settle for a divide between those who are religious and those who study religion. In a page-long footnote (on page 18), he points out that it is helpful to see the social scientific approach as compatible with the internal perspectives of traditions, neither in conflict, nor the one replacing the other. The social scientist, in other words, now finds herself in a public space where she does not have a higher, privileged viewpoint, only a viewpoint that is to be honored, but within a strategic frame of having to build compatibility with religious people.

While admitting that he is not an expert in all religions—but who would be?—Smith is diligent in bringing in examples from various traditions along the way in his major chapters, and a diverse range of illustrations appear throughout the volume. Each chapter begins with two epigraphs: the Indian Sama Veda and a Christian hymn, the Guru Granth Sahib and the Gospel according to Matthew, etc. Smith explains in his preface that by these citations he is showing his awareness of the diversity of traditions, which stubbornly refuse to be reduced to religion in any simplistic way. Still, these epigraphs are a bit of a puzzle. What does the opening hymn of the Sama Veda have to do with the hymn, “O God Our Help in Ages Past?” We are given no clue. My instinct though would be that once the hymns are cited, they lead to some particular kind of chapter, not the one that Smith gives us. I return to this point below.

The questions posed to those of us contributing to this symposium were similarly thorough. We were asked to think about how far Smith’s understanding of religion might be extended in making a difference in the public sphere today: why does religion endure, and how significant is it with respect to ending or fomenting violence? How can we cultivate a public role for religions in an increasingly individualized age? In very diverse societies with many positive and negative attitudes toward religions, how can we foster an optimal public role for religions? Smith’s practical approach suggests that we look not to doctrines or controversial ethical issues, but to the motives for why people remain religious when we don’t have to; for there we will find common ground. This is a wise move; but it then turns us to the personal, discerning why people act in certain ways in certain situations, and for that, we need also to understand the truths and values of traditions. And all of this requires presence, spending time with people. Theory, such as Religion proposes to us, orients us in the right direction, to take seriously how religious people live, their choices, their personal and communal agency in being religious people.

In other words, we are then drawn out of our offices and libraries and conferences, into the realm of interreligious dialogue. Attending to the practical commitments of religious people leads then into the pragmatism of convening conversations where we listen as well as speak. Smith does this well, bringing different religious cases to bear in the course of his chapters. This also makes sense to me personally. I am a Jesuit and Catholic priest, and as such I have been involved in direct dialogues over four decades and more, and I have many Hindu friends. My study of the traditions gives me a wonderful vantage point, but this does not put me above the persons and communities I meet in the course of the dialogue. I have a clear and considered viewpoint, but it is not a higher viewpoint.

The “public square” is not a place where people leave religion behind—doctrines, ethical values, practices—but an extension of religious identity and disposition into a new context where basic practical religious attitudes now adjust, in encountering people with other such dispositions, and people who for whatever reason no longer enact the world in a religiously signified manner such as Smith details. The scholar, therefore, needs to rethink not only religion and the behaviors of religious people, but also the notion of allegedly neutral or secular spaces. Religious people don’t own the space, but neither need we tolerate a secular retelling of our public life, as if it were natural or even in touch with reality to imagine spaces somehow free from religion and religions, to which religious people may be admitted.

I would of course have written a quite different book. As a scholar, my work is primarily about the reading of texts, and of Hinduism and Christianity together, and I would have begun my work with the epigraphs, in order to see where they might lead; in other words, rather than adding in such quotations along with photos, to signal the author’s good will toward pluralism, my approach would be to begin with such passages and see where reading them gets us in textual and practical contexts. As they stand, that they float free of the chapters is not entirely surprising. If we attend to such texts and study them carefully, they turn out to be unruly, with a life of their own. They may support the point we were making in quoting them, or take us—as careful readers, believers or not—into ideas, emotions, and practices quite apart from what we anticipated. They will not serve neatly an author’s pre-established intent.

I can take up here only one example. Smith quotes the opening hymn of the Sama Veda, a very ancient set of Vedic hymns meant to be sung in the sacrificial context. It is the first of twelve hymns in a row dedicated to Agni, the god of fire, the deity central to the practice of sacrifices:

Come, Agni, praised with song, to feast and sacrificial offering: sit as oblation-offerer on the holy grass!
O Agni, thou hast been ordained oblation-offerer of every sacrifice, by Gods, among the race of men.
Agni we choose as envoy, skilled performer of this holy rite, oblation-offerer, possessor of all wealth.
Served with oblation, kindled, bright, through love of song may Agni, bent on riches, smite the demon Vritras dead!
I laud your most beloved guest like a dear friend, O Agni, him who, like a chariot, wins us wealth.
Do thou, O Agni, with great might guard us from all malignity, yea, from the hate of mortal man!
O Agni, come; far other songs of praise will I sing forth to thee. Wax mighty with these Soma-drops!
May the rishi Vatsa draw thy mind away even from thy loftiest dwelling place! Agni, I yearn for thee with song.
Agni, the rishi Atharvan brought thee forth by rubbing from the sky, the head of all who offer sacrifice.
O Agni, bring us radiant light to be our mighty succor, for Thou art our visible deity!

All of this promises complications, even beyond translation issues. (Smith fairly enough uses Ralph Griffiths’ 1895 translation, and I have not checked the original, though I’ve touched it up lightly, to make it easier to understand.) We would need to look further into the identities of the poet seers Vatsa and Atharvan, explore the myth of the smiting of the demon Vritras, and the connections/differences between Agni as sacrificial fire and Agni as invoked deity. We would need also to understand more richly the Vedic sacrificial world, to understand the dynamics of this plea to Agni to be present on earth, in this sacrifice, amid these uttered verses, on this day.

And only then would we move to reconsider the hymn by Isaac Watts, paired as an epigraph alongside the Atharva Veda text:

O God, our help in ages past, Our hope for years to come, Our shelter from the stormy blast, And our eternal home.
Under the shadow of Thy throne Thy saints have dwelt secure; Sufficient is Thine arm alone, And our defense is sure.
Before the hills in order stood, Or earth received her frame, From everlasting Thou art God, To endless years the same.
Thy Word commands our flesh to dust, “Return, ye sons of men”: All nations rose from earth at first, And turn to earth again.
A thousand ages in Thy sight Are like an evening gone; Short as the watch that ends the night Before the rising sun.
The busy tribes of flesh and blood, With all their lives and cares, Are carried downwards by the flood, And lost in foll’wing years.
Time, like an ever-rolling stream, Bears all its sons away; They fly, forgotten, as a dream Dies at the op’ning day.
Like flow’ry fields the nations stand Pleased with the morning light; The flow’rs beneath the mower’s hand Lie with’ring ere ’tis night.
O God, our help in ages past, Our hope for years to come, Be Thou our guard while troubles last, And our eternal home.

This text too is rich in theology. It draws us into a world of devotion and ecclesial practice. Though only 300 years old (rather than 3000, like the Sama hymn), Watts’ hymn has remarkable staying power, and may be heard on many a Sunday in Christian churches today. We could take a long while to unpack its theology, its music, the singing of it, and what it means to believing Christians.

Both texts are rich in theology, and it would be foolhardy to focus just on the singing or role in communal worship. Yet neither is the theology in these hymns free-standing doctrine, abstracted from real life. (But really, is doctrine ever entirely abstracted from the lives of real people?) We can learn to sing these hymns (here in the West, easily the Watts hymn; and with extraordinary difficulty, I fear, the Vedic hymn), visit sites where they are performed in a worship context, talk with practitioners. And then, after appropriation of both, we would begin the rich interactive process of knowing them together, what I call comparative theological learning. We might begin with the first lines of each: “Come, Agni, praised with song, to feast and sacrificial offering: sit as oblation-offerer on the holy grass,” and “O God, our help in ages past, Our hope for years to come, Our shelter from the stormy blast, And our eternal home,” and ponder the problems and possibilities of singing them one after the other. And then, we would go back to the two communities, to one of which we may belong, and find ways of speaking of the realities—the what, why, how, and future—of interreligious learning.

All this in the short run turns out to be quite different from what Smith is up to; as I said, I would end up writing a quite different book if I studied the epigraphs for all five chapters. Yet it ends up in a place not entirely different, by way of a common respectful attentiveness to religions as they are practiced, lived, thought intelligently, shared. Practitioners, scholars, and social scientists who study religion; theologians and comparative theologians; people who no longer believe or never believed: we all share the same living spaces. Smith helps us to see that people who are religious can with more confidence lay our claim to a public sphere which turns out to be no longer a neutral, secular space where religious people are at best politely received. It is rather where we who are religious and we who study religion are at home too.

Array

Francis X. Clooney, SJ

Francis X. Clooney, S.J. is Parkman Professor of Divinity and Professor of Comparative Theology at Harvard Divinity School. His primary areas of Indological scholarship are theological commentarial writings in the Sanskrit and Tamil traditions of Hindu India. Professor Clooney is also a leading figure globally in the developing field of comparative theology, a discipline distinguished by attentiveness to the dynamics of theological learning deepened through the study of traditions other than one’s own.

Field Notes article

Translating Islam Across Cosmologies in Qatar

Talha Rehman
February 23, 2018February 20, 2019

Pakistani and Indian Sisters with CM Program Manager at 2017 Doha Winter Intensive.

As we came out of the Hamad International Airport on the evening of December 24th, 2017, Doha seemed like a city under construction. Huge concrete structures and machinery rose up across the landscape along our way from the airport to our hotel near Education City. Coming from India, I wasn’t sure what to expect from an Islamic country. However, as the billboards around the construction sites invited onlookers to “think,” “discover,” and “innovate,” my fellow students and I knew that we were in for some pleasant surprises.

I was in Qatar to attend the week-long Madrasa Discourses Winter Intensive class. The Contending Modernities-housed project, which aims to develop scientific and theological literacy in madrasa graduates, selects students from India and Pakistan for rigorous semesters of in-depth coursework, discussions, and dialogue with each other and with undergraduate students from the University of Notre Dame. When I first came to know about Madrasa Discourses during the third year of my PhD in Islamic Studies at Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi, I did not hesitate to join the program because it offered a platform for serious engagement with Islamic religious tradition and provided an opportunity for Madrasa graduates to collectively rethink some of its aspects in a rapidly changing world.

In the course of this one week, we unlearned some of our long-held notions while building new experiences and gaining new insights into the relationship between religion and science, religion and language, as well as a deeper understanding of Islamic religious tradition. The lessons, including among others “Islam, Sustainability and the Environment” by Dr. Mohamed Khalifah; “Teaching Evolution in the Muslim World” by Jordanian Microbiologist Dr. Rana Dajani; “Homo-Deus and the Future of Humanity” with Professor Mahan Mirza; and “Hermeneutics, History, and Islamic Tradition” with Professor Ebrahim Moosa were extremely unsettling, but also simultaneously liberating.

The Urgency of Translation

A Madrasa Discourses student views a 17th century map of the Tigris and Euphrates Valley at the Qatar National Library, December 2017.

Modern scientific theories of the Big Bang, evolution, genetic engineering, and other innovations pose challenges to a theology based on a geo-centric model of the universe which presupposes a fixed human nature. Islamic theology, which was developed in the classical period within the framework of Aristotelian logic, had a very different cosmology than the one constructed by modern scientific disciplines. Because this theology has not yet been translated across cosmologies, a deadlock has emerged between the proponents of modern human knowledge and Islamic theology, with the people on both sides rejecting the claims of those on the other side of the divide. Professor Mahan Mirza presented material emphasizing both the urgency and the inevitability of translating the tradition across cosmologies. As stated by Harari, “The single constant of history is that everything changes” (2017). History teaches us that alternate modes of thought and life have existed in the past and therefore current understandings and frameworks are not inevitable.

Harari gives the example of lawns, a European status symbol that has become widespread across the globe. Lawns have been imported to predominantly Muslim Middle Eastern countries as well, most of which happen to be arid. While there’s a hue and cry over importing supposedly “Western concepts,” such as democracy and secularism, we see almost no scholars raising an objection to maintaining lawns in the middle of a desert. For a just society, the aesthetic must go hand in hand with the ethical.

Theories of language by Izutsu, Ricour, Wittgenstein, Gadamer and Gardner introduced to us by Professor Moosa problematized our presumed notion of exact correspondence between human language and the natural world. The problems under discussion included:

What are the origins of language?
Does the language we use correspond to reality?
What is the role of culture in language production?
Why is it so difficult to translate concepts from one language to another?

According to Izutsu, during the time in history when humans had no language, they would experience all nature, everything around them, as one (2002). Izutsu calls it an undifferentiated whole. He adds that language begins to take shape when people start to categorize and divide things. People can divide reality in whatever way they like, giving rise to the vocabulary. As different cultures may categorize reality differently, the process of language production, through naming and categorization changes from one culture to another. People belonging to different cultures may look at the world differently and therefore form different categories. The language of a people therefore represents the world not as it is, but as they interpret it. Moral concepts, as a category of language, are similarly embedded in the worldview of the speakers of that language. As a result, it is difficult to translate a moral concept precisely from one language to another. This idea of human language created culturally runs counter to the dominant view in Muslim societies where language is thought of as created by God and having one to one correspondence with reality. This view gained currency due to the politics of the classical period of Islam, which were deeply linked with theological debates around the un-createdness of the Quran (which later became a bedrock of the orthodox Asha’rite theological position against the rational Mutazili).

A historical reading of Islamic tradition, however, reveals a more contested view of the nature of language and its relation to revelation, as shown by Moosa (2006, pp. 300-326). This observation may liberate Muslims to collectively re-think the nature of language and engage with their tradition more creatively to come up with the answers for some of the most pressing questions for Muslim communities across the globe today.

The centrality of the text of the Quran in Islamic religious tradition makes the assumptions about language theologically and politically charged. Naturally, “debates over language are prominent very early in the history of Islam” (Moosa 2006). During the session, Prof Moosa, speaking on hermeneutics and history, warned against two tendencies in particular:

Negating the experiences of the people of the past
Allowing the people from the past to negate our experiences

This will require us to step outside of our historical context to appreciate more fully the perspectives that held sway in the formative period of Islamic tradition, to distinguish the particulars from the universal values that were being implemented through those particulars and then to apply those values in our own time. Shifting one’s perspective, however, can be a tricky task.

Clay and Evolution

Dr. Rana Dajani presents on Islam and evolution at the 2017 Doha Winter Intensive.

In just one minute, Dr. Rana Dajani showed us that we can be conditioned to look at a thing from a particular perspective, to the point we are unable to easily see other perspectives. How difficult would it be for someone conditioned to look at things in a certain way all their life to look at it through another lens? As the discussion on evolution ensued, we considered: How is it that Muslims are able to reconcile the idea that each human being is created by Allah and that everyone is born of a mother’s womb? Why is it that this reasoning cannot be extended to evolution? It can be unsettling for Muslims, including me, who have grown up reading the Quranic account of human creation in a particular way, to consider evolution as a valid explanation for creation of life. Yet a shift in perspective can reconcile the two seemingly opposing views of creation by an all-powerful God and biological evolution.

The image of creation of Adam in the Muslim psyche is that Allah made a human figure from clay and breathed His breath in the figure, bringing it to life. The everyday experience of believers will, however, show them that humans are born in a biological process quite different from the way they believe Adam was created. Yet the relationship between God and human remains the same as it was between Allah and Adam. The fact of a biological birth, from a single cell, that originated in unanimated matter, does not imply for Muslim theologians that the intervention of Allah in the creation of humans after Adam is any lesser. As Adam was fully created by Allah, so is every other human being, irrespective of their biological birth. Moreover, the creation of a figure from clay, its perfection and the breathing of life into it is all visualised as taking place in one definite moment in time. In ordinary human life, however, it is impossible to identify any one moment as the moment of creation, as a human being is constantly growing, developing, ageing, decaying with a million biological processes going on within its body at once in every moment. One must add to that the cognitive development of the individual. The picture which emerges is far more complex.

In my opinion the problem here is that humans have visualised the Quranic account of Adam’s creation as they themselves create objects, which do not grow or develop rational faculties, have emotions and experiences or reproduce. In order to reconcile evolution and Islam, we need to rethink our idea of God’s intervention. Rather than perceiving God’s intervention as the impact of a hammer, dramatic and contained in a moment, it has to be visualised like an intervention that flows through everything.

The sessions with Professors Waris Mazhari and Ammar Khan Nasir, lead faculty from India and Pakistan, respectively, engaged us with the readings on al Ghazali, Ibn Taymiyyah, Shahrastani, and other classical scholars of Islamic tradition, and revealed that we are not alone in trying to reconcile our experiences, our understanding of the natural world, as well as our social realities with our interpretations of revelation. Historical Muslim scholars too have made efforts to reconcile reason and revelation. They faced similar dilemmas and made their own moral choices. An engagement with historical Islamic tradition helps demystify the ways to make it forward looking and robust enough to provide a coherent theology and ethics to Muslims living in a rapidly changing and multicultural world.

Array

Talha Rehman

Talha Rehman is a PhD Candidate at the department of Islamic Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. She is a participant in Madrasa Discourses curently in her third and final year in the course. Her academic interests involve Islam and gender justice, science, multiculturalism and religous pluralism.

Theorizing Modernities article

On Sameness, Difference and Wholeness

Anne C. Klein
February 16, 2018

Unveiling of the Grand Tangka during the Shoton Festival at the Drepung Monastery near Lhasa, Tibet. Image courtesy of Max Pixel.

My work in religion focuses on Buddhist philosophy, practice, and the liturgical traditions of India and Tibet. My experience of religion is broader: born Jewish, raised Protestant, with compelling memories of attending Catholic Mass with a Catholic friend every New Year’s day from sixth grade through high school. Other than that, by the time I was thirteen my parents, due to their own divergent views, took a hands-off approach to me and religion. Left to my own devices, I morphed to a comfortably agnostic posture until I encountered Buddhist thought, language, and literature in graduate school and then in situ in Tibetan communities in India and Nepal. I mention this by way of underscoring an underlining principle of Christian Smith’s Religion—that the hows and whys of religion’s impact on our lives derive as much from our historical, familial, and personal location as from the actual traditions we contact. They interact with every component of our lives, and with each other. They impact not only how we view our own religious tradition, or lack thereof, but the degree of distance we feel toward “other” religions. They also impact the kind of gulf contemporary cultures construct between “religious” and “secular” (which doesn’t really exist in traditional cultures) as well as the contemporary intermediate zone of “spiritual but not religious.”

The importance of remembering this interactive dynamic grows ever more evident. Christian Smith’s laudable wish to “generate new fruitful research” that furthers such reflection animates his book and inspires my reflections here. In practice, religion may be institutional, inherited, haphazard, or even professional. But it is always personal. Lived experience therefore provides a good starting point.

The Presumption of Otherness

In my case, entering the arena of Tibetan Buddhism when it was still little known in the West, much less in the academy, meant often being the only Buddhist scholar or practitioner at conferences or social gatherings. Nonetheless, I still feel a possibly naïve amazement at how “other” my friends seemed to perceive the cultural matrix of Buddhist thought and practice. This was true even of friends whose education, family backgrounds, and general worldviews are very similar to mine. True, most of them hadn’t lived in Asia or in Buddhist communities as I had, just as I had not shared important areas of their life experience, including their religious background. Yet, overall our easy conversation and body language suggested that we inhabit a shared linguistic and symbolic universe. But Buddhism seemed curious, if not outright strange, to them.

As I reflect on this, a memory resurfaces. Some years ago I was invited to be part of a public discussion among four scholars of religion. As often happens, though thankfully a little less so today, all of us were white and US-born. I was the only female, and also the only Asian religionist. The discussion was friendly enough, and probably bland as well. Afterwards, as we rose from our seats to say goodbye to each other, one colleague from another University said, in the same friendly tone, “You know I always find it difficult to talk with someone from a tradition without a Creator God.” “Really? Why is that?” “It’s just difficult. It’s so different.” Mind you, he and I were both educated in the Western academy, and grown up in families where Christianity was important. For my part, based on my mother’s regularly reading Bible stories aloud to me before I could read myself, and also perhaps due to my church going, however modest, I was comfortable with Jewish and Christian ideas of creation. Even though they were no longer part of my explicit belief-identity, they will always be part of my “born in the USA” identity. And as I learned more about Buddhism, I also came to feel that even traditions that looked so different on the surface had enough in common not to seem so very strange to each other.

Western monotheisms understand that a Creator with infinite creative power brought forth this world and its inhabitants. This Creator also indicated how we are to behave toward our fellow human creatures. On the one hand, there is the golden rule, “Do unto others….” That seems a pretty clear instruction, though we see it enacted or dismissed in wildly different ways by self-identified Christian groups. And of course the Ten Commandments aren’t the only behavioral referent. Biblical passages such as “an eye for an eye” complicate things. However, the larger truth is even a relatively homogenous understanding of creation does not mean that the “what then”—the way believers actually behave toward other living beings—is not extremely variable. Antipathies and estrangements among and within traditions are so widespread that we may presume them normative and unassailable.

It is also the case that Western monotheisms distance themselves more vigorously from “other” traditions than is common in much of Asia, where participation in multiple traditions are common. Japanese say they are born Zhinto, marry as Christians, and die Buddhist. That’s not to say there isn’t seriously politicized and racialized religious friction, but the overall cultural compass is broad.

Yet, if we consider things more or less objectively, it is not at all obvious why, in the face of so many basic and clearly evident human commonalities, these particular religious differences should provoke such powerful feelings of otherness, disdain, or downright enmity, with respect to people who are, in most ways, very much like ourselves. And really, every human being is much more like us than not. When we study medicine, biology, even the arts such as dance and music, we understand this. But when we study religion, do we take it for granted that difference dominates? Scholars, as well as other cultural custodians including politicians, bear some responsibility for this. Nonetheless, as is often observed, expressions of love and illuminating knowledge are a crucial essential of virtually all religious, spiritual, and humanitarian traditions. To love the divine or, in the secular context, to choose equality, is to loosen one’s own fixed sense of identity in ways that conform with Christian ideas of “becoming like a child” to enter the Kingdom, with Sufi ideas of recognizing the Friend in everyone, and Buddhist ideas of recognizing one’s true face and thereby finding a potential Buddha in every being. Sameness, or at least a potential for connection, surfaces right along with difference.[1]

The Wholeness of Infinite Variety

Drepung monastery is one of the largest monasteries in Tibet. It was from here that the 2nd through the 5th Dalai Lama lived and ruled - until the 5th commissioned the Potala to be built. — Photo Credit: Ernie R. Drepung monastery is one of the largest monasteries in Tibet. It was from here that the 2nd through the 5th Dalai Lama lived and ruled.

Religion, like language and like life itself, is infinitely various. A moment’s reflection establishes that variety and change are perhaps the most ubiquitous characteristics of everything we encounter. Yet, when it comes to religion and to culture more generally, we humans often exhibit powerful expectations of sameness, and seem surprised, if not dismayed and even violent, when we don’t find it., Does narrowing our focus to particulars cloud the larger compass in which multiple styles all participate? Even if not, it seems clear that awareness of that compass gives all of us a wider berth as humans. Some folks sing well, others dance with special grace, still others leap over hurdles, swim, or run at record speeds. All display a capacity that nearly everyone possesses, if to a lesser degree. Recognizing the infinite variety of song, dance, and physical prowess across cultures helps us appreciate that our own expressions are part of something larger than any one modality can reveal. Do we not in fact often recognize this, at least implicitly, when we take pleasure in art or ways of being associated with traditions quite different from our own and which, partly for that very reason, surprise and delight us?

My colleague who found it difficult to converse with a tradition lacking a Creator deity overlooked a crucial matter. Virtually every tradition, great or small, is preternaturally interested in the issue of creation. We all want to know how we got here. Even Confucianism, which doesn’t look into creation as a past event, is nonetheless deeply concerned with creating a humane present and future. Why is this shared interest in creation not more compelling than the different narratives about it?

Monotheistic communities focus on believers’ relationship with the Creator—love, obedience, above all a sense of belonging to something of ultimate grandeur, power, and meaning. This relationship generally undergirds a sense of responsibility for self and kindly conduct toward others. Other traditions emphasize not a creative person but the emergent creative process itself. Buddhists for example take great interest in causal properties of intentions and actions, and thus are dedicated to reducing reactivity, thereby setting in motion positive causes through ethical, kindly behavior.

Regardless of how a tradition characterizes the forces of which we are all the fruition, it pretty much always concludes that some type of love and understanding is key. Moreover, when we look at these varied iterations, we find, as has often been noted, that the moral outcomes are disarmingly similar.

Yet, we often fasten on the arguably much less significant differences, dividing the world, our cities, neighborhoods, even families, accordingly. There are, however, compelling reasons to recognize that no matter how we understand creation, whether we believe, with Buddhists and Hindus, that the universe is born through our own actions, or see through the eyes of Jews, Christians, and Muslims that it arises through divine agency, we easily conclude that we are all the children of the same powers that be. We can interpret creative powers differently while still recognizing they are something we all share. Recognizing and calling out this variegated wholeness is a sameness that makes a difference.

[1] See Klein, “The Knowing Body” in Women and Interreligious Dialogue, eds. Catherine Cornille, Jillian Maxey.

Array

Anne C. Klein

Anne Carolyn Klein /Rigzin Drolma, is Professor of Religion at Rice University, co-founder of Dawn Mountain Center for Tibetan Buddhism www.dawnmountain.org and a Lama in the Ancient (Nyingma). Tibetan tradition. Her training, in addition to her academics, includes close study with major Tibetan Lamas in three of Tibet’s great traditions, with about ten years overall spent living with these teachers. Her writings and teaching-retreats draw from all these, with special emphasis on Nyingma and Heart Essence traditions.
Her translation work includes Tibetan texts and oral commentaries on them. Her central thematic interest is the embodied interaction between head and heart as illustrated across a spectrum of Buddhist descriptions of human consciousness and its cultivation. She has also been a participant in Mind Life and other conversations between Buddhism and contemplative science.

Her seven books include Heart Essence of the Vast Expanse and Meeting the Great Bliss Queen and, most recently, her translation of Strand of Jewels: My Teachers’ Essential Guidance on Dzogchen by Khetsun Sangpo Rinpoche. She is currently working on The Sunlit Sky: Longchenpa’s Open Secret.

Field Notes article

Sharing Madrasa Discourses with Singapore

Dania Straughan
February 3, 2018February 6, 2018

Minister Dr. Yaacob Ibrahim (center left) and Dr. Ebrahim Moosa (center right) stand in the Notre Dame Dome with the full Singapore delegation, which includes representatives from the Ministries of Culture, Community, and Youth; Communications and Information; Education; and the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore.

Imagine, for a moment, that you are a young Singaporean Muslim. Your dream is to serve your community as a spiritual leader, and so you leave your home to study at one of the world-renowned Islamic theological centers in the Middle East or North Africa. Three years later, steeped in your tradition, you return home as an imam or religious scholar.

Singapore is a multi-cultural society and, seeking your guidance as an internationally-educated spiritual leader, your fellow Muslim citizen of Singapore bring the following kinds of questions to you:

What are the sharia guidelines for regulating interfaith weddings today?
What are the ethics of assisted reproductive technologies in Islam?
Can good Muslims participate in the religious festivals of their neighbors of other faiths?

These are constant and real concerns in a complex, religiously plural, scientifically forward-looking, and secular Singapore. Off the southern tip of the Malay peninsula, global financial powerhouse and city state Singapore has an active and integrated Muslim population of about 840,000, 15% of the population. While less buffeted by the questions of identity affecting Muslim populations in other states, Singaporean Muslims are nonetheless sensitive to hardening views on what constitutes Islamic tradition and practice. Young Muslims, recently returned from studies abroad, also bring home approaches and perspectives that might not be in accord with the cosmopolitan nature of the city state.

Minister Yaacob Ibrahim asks a clarifying question about the Madrasa Discourses curriculum.

Recognizing the importance of developing local programs for the education of Muslims, especially for Singapore’s future Muslim religious leaders, an official Singaporean delegation visited a variety of institutions in North America last December. The inter-departmental ministerial delegation, headed by Dr. Yaacob Ibrahim, Minister for Communications and Information of Singapore as well as Minister-in-charge of Cyber Security and Minister-in-charge of Muslim Affairs, have traveled to many institutions around the world, learning from their experiences in religious education. Singapore envisages launching a homegrown Islamic College offering a degree program comprising courses in traditional Islamic sciences, enriched with modules on contemporary issues and professional skills to meet the needs of the Singapore Muslim community. The ministry and education authorities are exploring models for the design of such an institution.

Dr. Yaacob’s delegation visited the University of Notre Dame at the suggestion of CM Co-Director and Madrasa Discourses Primary Investigator Dr. Ebrahim Moosa. Interested in religiously-informed tertiary education, the delegation joined Dr. Moosa and others for a visit to the Dome with ND Vice President Michael Pippenger, a conversation on the Keough School of Global Affairs, a detailed presentation of the Madrasa Discourses curriculum, and a visit with Notre Dame students of all levels, from freshmen to PhDs.

Madrasa Discourses

Tradition is complex and contested, began Mahan Mirza, introducing the Madrasa Discourses curriculum on the afternoon of the visit. In order to move forward in grappling with the questions of today, we must also look back and recognize the rich intellectual history of Islam as internally contested and deeply influenced by the philosophical currents of the age. Some of the tools Muslims need today, he explained, exist within parts of the Muslim tradition that have been neglected. For instance, the great theologian Abu Mansur al-Maturidi (d. 936) grounded his theology in a version of reason that was independent of revelation. The historian Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406), stressed that understanding history required the aid of philosophy. And, the renowned Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111) placed an emphasis on logic and the centrality of lived conditions of human existence to the foundations of religious thought. Eliciting the resources within the Muslim tradition, Muslims can fruitfully engage modern thought in a way that is both faithful to the past and relevant in a new and changing world where scientific cosmologies and even newer philosophical worldviews reign.

Notre Dame students stand with the Singapore Delegation and Contending Modernities team at the University of Notre Dame.

In sharing the goals and methodology of the Madrasa Discourses program, CM’s Ebrahim Moosa and Mahan Mirza sought to contribute to the broader conversation in which the program is embedded: updating and strengthening Muslim education to face the challenges of modernity. The Madrasa Discourses program provides continuing education for a handpicked group of young Muslim theologians from India and Pakistan. With a similar aim, the Ministerial delegation approaches this conversation largely to train Singapore’s future religious and spiritual leaders. Moosa, who has visited Singapore several times and taught members of the rising theological fraternity in that country, said the proposed educational program was an innovative move to adequately prepare the next generation of Singaporean Muslim theologians. It will make theological education more efficient and the outcomes can transform and impact the region, he added with optimism.

The ND Experience

Minister Yaacob Ibrahim speaks with undergraduate Notre Dame students.

Before the Ministerial delegation embarked on their drive back to Chicago in light snow, the group also met a select number of Notre Dame students. Sitting together at the front of the room, undergraduate and graduate students from all fields of study responded to Minister Yaacob’s questions about their choice of university. Spirituality, many students noted, was important to them and hence they chose Notre Dame. Few Universities in the United States blend a top-tier rating in the sciences and humanities with an express commitment to religion. Religion can’t be set aside or siloed, echoed one Masters student of Global Affairs. It’s an integral part of the human experience.

Array

Dania Straughan

Dania is Program Manager at the Contending Modernities research initiative, where she oversees operations and contributes to program development. Dania is a graduate of the Kroc Institute’s Masters in Peace Studies. She is active in efforts to establish restorative justice pathways in her local community, and volunteers to advance grant making for community-led social cohesion programs globally. She previously served as outreach coordinator at the Millennium Nucleus for the Study of Stateness and Democracy in Latin America, at the Catholic University of Chile.

Field Notes article

Ethical Discernment and Coexistence

Siti Syamsiyatun
January 22, 2018January 23, 2018

Photo Credit: Enda Nasution. 2009 Indonesian Presidential Debate.

It was a great pleasure and honor to participate in the “Beyond Coexistence in Plural Societies” conference organized by the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame in collaboration with the State Islamic University (UIN) Syarif Hidayatullah of Jakarta, Indonesia on July 10-11, 2017. I have been deeply impressed by the significant findings from the careful research on coexistence in Indonesia presented at the conference, featuring many foci and methodological approaches. I would like to highlight a few issues emerging from the conference that most attracted my attention.

Portraits of Human Struggles for Coexistence

As I listened to the presentations, most findings showed a positive dynamic at the grassroots, as communities found their place and space within their own historical contexts of pluralism. This is clearly shown in the cases of the ethno-religious identity of Chinese settlers and non-Muslim minority groups in Aceh, in the experiences, negotiations, and struggles of a number of Islamic groups in Java, and in the experiences of women voicing their strategic and practical gender interests amidst the rising patriarchy of some orthodox Islamist groups.

A positive dynamic does not mean the absence of conflicts; conflicts do exist among the groups researched by the ACI Indonesia working group. While a few conflicts emerged to the surface, others are contained at the level of perceptions. However, local positive dynamics have been damaged by the domino effect of a majoritarian democratic system in a country where the distribution of wealth is not just and is rather accumulated in the hands of a few citizens. Undoubtedly, in such a situation, money talks louder than vision, and money politics destroys the basic foundations of free elections and an equal vote for all citizens. Money politics also destroys neighborhood trust in communal living as mutual caring and engaging (rukun and srawung).

The Role of Individual Ethics

Photo Credit: UIN Jakarta. Dr. Syamsiyatun presents at the 2017 Beyond Coexistence conference.

One question I did not get a satisfactory answer to from the research conference findings is about the socio-ethical vision of people in positions of authority within a given community. While people’s environment is very important in shaping their perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors towards those with different gender, ethnic, religious, and other identity markers, I do believe that each person has the ability to exercise agency, however limited. It is important to study more deeply how these individuals have struggled to accept or develop the social ethics that guide them in navigating the social psychology of plural identities and their respective different interests. For example, how have Chinese women of Aceh exercised their agentic power differently from their male counterparts in order to find their space in society? How have women asserted their various gender interests within the political landscape of patriarchal politics? Research led by Nelly van Doorn Harder and Farsijana Risakotta and their colleagues, presented at the conference, highlights such women’s agency exercised through societal associations, namely Komnas Perempuan (National Commission on Women), and Koalisi Perempuan (Women’s Coalition).

The conference presentations portrayed the many confrontations and negotiations involved in creating social space for coexistence. There are always ongoing struggles and negotiations between advancing individual interests as portrayed in the democratic value of on person, one vote, and respecting familial as well as social harmony. The issues become more complex and interesting because each individual has multiple identities, willingly or unwillingly, such as: racial and ethnic group, gender, age group, profession, political affiliation, and religious denomination. Conflict and negotiation for coexistence take place not only between groups in societies, but also between the members of a community.

Modes of Discernment

How do individuals discern their choices regarding coexistence, both for their own identities and in their relations across difference? What sort of ethical compass do they consider or develop to guide their attitudes and behaviors? From the research conference presentations, we understand that religions, positive laws, as well as local cultural norms have been the major basis for Indonesians to develop their ethical views and attitudes. However, it is apparent that there are contestations and sometimes ambiguities, between these three sources of ethical values. For instance, on questions of democracy: a few segments of Indonesian society believe that democracy is not compatible with their local culture, nor is it compatible with their beliefs or religion. However, as citizens they must uphold that practice because it is sanctioned by the positive law. So, there is an interesting question about how deeply, or in what ways, religions and positive or national laws play a role in Indonesians’ modes of discernment, whether individually or collectively as members of associations, political parties, or the like. These questions can be applied to various groups in our societies—such as our diverse political, religious, social, and ethnic groups. What kind of ethical values have the groups under study developed to see their place in Indonesia? How do they construct their perceptions of leaders within a democratic and majoritarian political system? In such a system, what are the political spaces available for minorities in terms of economic access and distribution, race and ethnicity, religion, age group, and other socio-political markers within a democratic Indonesia?

The Way to Coexistence

Photo Credit: Ikhlasul Amal. Examining ballot paper for the Bandung Mayor Election 2013.

I have seen a pattern of rising identity tensions during elections, be they for members of parliament, local majors, or the president. Political parties have instrumentalized voters’ identities to generate support for their candidates, even by demonizing the identity markers of opponents and their constituencies. Such a massive effort to polarize identities in order to win political support and votes has left deep scars in the minds and hearts of many Indonesians. I believe our forefathers and mothers who struggled for independence and imprinted our national aspiration for freedom as manifested in the Muqaddimah Undang-Undang Dasar 1945 (the Preamble of the Constitution) would weep knowing their fellow children citizens were fighting each other in order to advance limited group interests rather than be guided by our common ethical values of creating an independent Indonesia. I’d love to end this short reflection by quoting our normative, ethical, and legal vision of coexistence in Indonesia, because I am convinced this can be our common guide for equal citizenship and for just, peaceful co-existence:

Whereas freedom is the inalienable right of all nations, colonialism must be abolished in this world as it is not in conformity with humanity and justice;

And the moment of rejoicing has arrived in the struggle of the Indonesian freedom movement to guide the people safely and well to the threshold of the independence of the state of Indonesia which shall be free, united, sovereign, just and prosperous;

By the grace of God Almighty and impelled by the noble desire to live a free national life, the people of Indonesia hereby declare their independence.

Subsequent thereto, to form a government of the state of Indonesia which shall protect all the people of Indonesia and their entire native land, and in order to improve the public welfare, to advance the intellectual life of the people and to contribute to the establishment of a world order based on freedom, abiding peace and social justice, the national independence of Indonesia shall be formulated into a constitution of the sovereign Republic of Indonesia which is based on the belief in the One and Only God, just and humanity, the unity of Indonesia, democracy guided by the inner wisdom of deliberations amongst representatives and the realization of social justice for all of the people of Indonesia.

Some References:

Dean G. Pruitt dan Jeffrey Z. Rubin, Teori Konflik Sosial/Judul asli Social Conflict: Escalation, Stalemate and Settlement (Yogyakarta: Pustaka Pelajar, 2004).

Departemen Agama RI, Konflik Sosial Bernuansa Agama di Indonesia (Jakarta: Departemen Agama RI 2003).

Array

Siti Syamsiyatun

Siti Syamsiyatun is currently Associate Professor in Islamic Thought at Universitas Islam Negeri (UIN) Sunan Kalijaga. She earned a PhD in Politics from Monash University in 2006. Since 2010 she has been elected the Director of ICRS (Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies), a consortium of three leading universities in Yogyakarta, as well as named Board Member of Globethics.net Indonesia. Her publications include Pergolakan Puteri Islam (Muhammadiyah Voice Publishers, 2016); Serving Young Indonesian Muslim Women: The Dynamic of the Gender Discourse in Nasyiatul Aisyiyah 1965-2005, (LAP Lambert Academic Publishing, 2010); and “Women Negotiating Feminism and Islamism: The Experiences of Nasyiatul Aisyiyah 1985-2005” in Indonesian Islam in a New Era: How Women Negotiate Their Muslim Identity, S. Blackburn, B. Smith, S. Syamsiyatun (Eds), (Monash University Press, 2008).

Global Currents article

Share this article:

Field Notes article

Share this article:

Theorizing Modernities article

Share this article:

Field Notes article

Share this article:

Field Notes article

Share this article:

Theorizing Modernities article

Share this article:

Field Notes article

The Urgency of Translation

Clay and Evolution

Share this article:

Theorizing Modernities article

The Presumption of Otherness

The Wholeness of Infinite Variety

Share this article:

Field Notes article

Madrasa Discourses

The ND Experience

Share this article:

Field Notes article

Portraits of Human Struggles for Coexistence

The Role of Individual Ethics

Modes of Discernment

The Way to Coexistence

Share this article: