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 9th 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
Mahan Mirza presents the Madrasa Discourses Curriculum to the Singapore delegation.
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.
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.
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).
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).
Photo Credit: upyernoz. Garden Tomb in Jerusalem, which some Christians believe to be the site of the burial and resurrection of Jesus, as opposed to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Christmas has passed in Jerusalem, or at least two Christmases have. The 25th of December saw Catholic and Protestant Christmas, and the first week of January brought Christmas again—this time Orthodox Christmas. Armenian Christmas will arrive later in the month still. When I first moved to Jerusalem over a decade ago, it took me time to become accustomed to the celebration of Christmas day three times in a single year—remembering to wish Merry Christmas to our friends from respective communities on each different day—but for my children, who have lived their entire lives in the city, there is nothing unusual about it. Three Christmases fall in the season when they wait for sufganiyot, the jelly donuts served in Jewish cafes during Hannukah. This year it fell a few weeks after the Prophet Mohammed’s birthday. This lived diversity—as much if not more than the city’s shrines—is what makes Jerusalem holy.
Photo Credit: DYKT Mohigan. Sufganiyah doughnuts in Jerusalem, served during Hannukah.
I’ve been thinking a great deal about Jerusalem’s diversity ever since President Donald Trump announced that the United States now recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. While the international media has focused in large part on what the decision will mean for the viability of a negotiated peace settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and whether a two-state solution will still be possible, Palestinians inside of the city have been concerned about something that is far more difficult to talk about: whether the city as they have known it for generations will be wiped away as a result. Public discussions might focus on preserving the status quo over the city’s major holy sites, but private conversations are often about what will happen to the people of East Jerusalem themselves, to their street names and their cafes, their traditions and their holidays, their trees, their memories. As someone who has lived among Palestinians for years, I have had to wrestle with how much of the Palestinian landscape I have watched disappear: even more, I have had to come to terms with all that I have been silent about.
Loss and Memory
It is easy to say that the Palestinians I know are experiencing a trauma now over the potential loss of Jerusalem as their capital city. What is more difficult to acknowledge is that they have been losing Jerusalem for decades, and that this latest blow has left them not only despairing, but exhausted. In 1948, thousands of Palestinians were displaced from their homes in neighborhoods such as Baq’a and Talbiya, Katamon and Musrara—neighborhoods that are now in Israeli, West Jerusalem. Palestinians lost what we still call “Jerusalem villages”, those villages such as Lifta and Deir Yassin on the outskirts of Jerusalem whose economies, traditions and identities were intimately tied to the city. They lost ‘Ayn Kerim, a village that Israelis and tourists now experience effortlessly as a charming artistic village of historic old houses on the outskirts of Jerusalem—with little thought of who once lived in those houses. For Palestinians, these losses are still real and sustained, mostly spoken of privately, like a wound you would not like to expose openly. But every now and then they emerge unexpectedly. Last month, I found myself speaking Arabic with an elderly taxi driver, who ferried me across the city on Hebron Road and pointed to houses along the way, telling me the Palestinian families who once lived in each one.
Photo Credit: frauscharff. The new highway and separation wall through Beit Jala. Old olives trees grow beneath the noise and vibrations.
The building of settlements such as Gilo and Har Homa added more displacement, fragmenting the Beit Jala area known for having the finest Palestinian olive oil. The construction of the Separation Barrier, which cut East Jerusalem off from those outlying villages whose identity has always been inextricably tied up with the city, was yet another loss. Suddenly Al-Quds University—“Jerusalem University” in English—located in the neighboring village of Abu Dis, was severed from the city after which it was named. The faculty who lived in Ras al-Amoud at the bottom of the Mount of Olives, accustomed to driving up the hill and arriving at the campus in ten minutes, now had to drive around the wall for three quarters of an hour in order to teach their classes. Residents of the villages of Beit Jala and al-Azzariya found themselves cut off by the wall from their fields, their friends, their places of worship. Christian pilgrims accustomed to following the footsteps of Jesus on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem found themselves at the separation wall after Bethany, cut off from where Jesus entered the city on his donkey in Bethphage.
To pretend that today’s borders of Jerusalem correspond to the porous and complex ways in which lives are lived is to misunderstand the ways in which Jerusalem has been experienced by Palestinians, or in fact the way in which any city—particularly one with such religious significance—is experienced by those who inhabit it and its environs. The most recent loss for my neighbors in the Palestinian neighborhood of Beit Safafa came not in the changing of borders but in the building of the Begin Expressway, a process which saw many of them lose land, ancestral olive and hawthorne trees. More importantly and even more intangibly, the roaring of cars made them lose silence—the most profound reminder of their past as a village.
The population itself was transformed by these changes. The Christian population declined dramatically after 1948, and now stands at around 2% of the city’s population. The issuing of permits means that thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank can no longer enter Jerusalem, except by official permission. Arabs from surrounding countries can rarely get visas, which changes the shape of the holidays: almost no Syrian and Lebanese Christian pilgrims on Easter, Muslims forgetting the ancient tradition of visiting Jerusalem after Mecca to bless the Hajj. These are also losses, for how much of a city’s identity is not only its streets, but in those who pass through them and greet one another?
The End of Nablus Road
Despite this, East Jerusalem today remains astoundingly diverse. On Nablus Road, where I lived with my family for seven years, we had neighbors who traced their arrival in the city to the Arab conquest. A few shops down the Abu Khalaf family, who were Kurdish in origin and traced their history to the armies who came with Salahadin, sold dry goods. The Freij grocery store was owned by an old Greek Orthodox family, and the street vendors were from Hebron and spoke with a different dialect. The White Sisters were Franciscan nuns who spoke French and Arabic; the Schmidt’s Girls College across the street taught their Palestinian students German; the nuns beneath us spoke Spanish; the Garden Tomb, where some Protestants believe Jesus had been raised from the dead, was staffed mostly by British volunteers; and the Ecole Biblique housed the French Dominicans. The Syriac Catholic Church’s community on the same street had its origins in thousands who had escaped the Seyfo massacres against Syriacs in Southeastern Turkey in 1915. Further down the road were the Balians, some of the most famous Armenian ceramicists in the city, the American Colony, and the Nusseibeh house—one of the Muslim families who held the keys to the Holy Sepulchre, the holiest site in Christendom. Thousands of Muslims passed down the street on the way to Friday prayers.
Photo Credit: Miriam Mezzera. Kebab and salad vendor in Musrara, East Jerusalem.
Ours was a single street in Musrara, one of the first neighborhoods that had been built outside of the Old City walls in the late 19th century. During the fighting of 1948 the neighborhood had been split in half, with the other half of Musrara—the larger half—eventually ending up in Israel after its mostly Christian Palestinian residents were displaced. Though that half is only a few blocks away from its Palestinian counterpart, nearly all of the Palestinian history has been wiped from its landscape. Today it is inhabited by Jews largely from North Africa and Iraq, a steadily increasing population of ultra-Orthodox Jews, and NGO workers. This population has its own diversity—but there is little room in it for the memory of who was once there. None of the decades-old stories that are part of daily life on Nablus Road are part of their Musrara. The municipality has even gone so far as to change the street names for the neighborhood to Morasha, to create the impression that it has always been Israeli.
Are Palestinians naïve to fear that the same might happen to the rest of the city, or is that fear rooted in lived experience? Nablus Road is a single street, but in the Palestinian Quarters of the Old City there is a similar complexity—churches ancient and new, mosques and Sufi shrines, gypsy communities and African communities that speak Arabic, Greek and Armenian and Syriac speakers. The Holy Sepulchre and al-Aqsa mosque are entered often and freely by locals, organically part of the lived environment. I used to slip into the Holy Sepulchre on the way to buy vegetables. What will happen if those textures, those stories, those people become part of an Israeli, Jewish capital? Will they be allowed to remain in all of their diversity?
One thinks of this excerpt from Mourid Barghouti’s memoir I Saw Ramallah, which began circulating on social media immediately after Trump’s declaration:
Photo Credit: Flavio. Ancient olive tree in Beit Jamal.
All that the world knows of Jerusalem is the power of the symbol. The Dome of the Rock is what the eye sees, and so it sees Jerusalem and is satisfied. The Jerusalem of religions, the Jerusalem of politics, the Jerusalem of conflict is the Jerusalem of the world. But the world does not care for our Jerusalem, the Jerusalem of the people. The Jerusalem of houses and cobbled streets and spice markets, the Jerusalem of the Arab College, the Rashidiya School, and the ‘Omariya School. The Jerusalem of the porters and the tourist guides who know just enough of every language to guarantee them three reasonable meals a day. The oil market and the sellers of antiques and mother-of-pearl and sesame cakes. The library, the doctor, the lawyer, the engineer, and the dressers of brides with high dowries. The terminals of the buses that trundle in every morning from all the villages with peasants come to buy and to sell. The Jerusalem of the white cheese, of oil and olives and thyme, of baskets of figs and necklaces and leather and Salah al-Din Street. Our neighbor the nun, and her neighbor, the muezzin who was always in a hurry…The Jerusalem that we walk in without much noticing its “sacredness”, because we are in it, because it is us (142-3).
Silence and Imperfect Language
As the crisis of Jerusalem has come to a head, I have had to confront the fact that I have been watching the slow erasure of much in the city for over a decade and have said relatively little about it until now. In part it is because the term most often used to describe the process—Judaization, seems unhelpful and even problematic to me—for it is not the imposition of a specifically Jewish identity onto the city that is the issue, but the imposition of any dominant identity onto a city with such multiplicities. If I do not suggest other terms here, it is because they, too are imperfect—and I have learned that to speak of this conflict with imperfect language is to have everything else that we argue dismissed in the process because of these imperfections. Because I have never found the language to discuss what is happening, I have largely refused to speak or write about it, for fear of offending, of misspeaking. As writers, we are called to invent new language if we must: I have not.
Photo Credit: Dvorit Ben Shaul (c) 2017. Ein Karem home with Islamic-style Seal of Solomon pattern, perhaps built during the pre-1948 Palestinian days in ‘Ayn Kerim, before it was depopulated and absorbed into Israel under a new name.
But even if I were to invent new language, my suspicion is that this language, too, would only briefly suffice. This is a conflict in which we have who have witnessed Palestinian lives have lost control even of the language in which we tell our stories. I have become accustomed to well-meaning friends sitting me down and explaining that what I call a “settlement” is in fact only a “neighborhood”, that what I call “Musrara” is in fact really “Morasha.” Among the many things we do not control in Jerusalem is even the vocabulary in which we can describe what we have witnessed with our own eyes: knowing this, I have chosen to remain silent.
By my refusal, I have helped to perpetuate the fallacy of how we talk about Jerusalem. The main difference between the way people outside of Jerusalem and Palestinians within Jerusalem are engaging in the current crisis is that outsiders discuss it within the boundaries of a hypothetical future. For them, Trump’s declaration marked the end of the possibility of a two-state solution with a shared capital, something that had not yet been accomplished.
Palestinians discuss it in terms of what has already happened and what is ongoing—as a culmination of what has been lost. Refusing to give space to this discourse is to deny the depth, history, and complexity of their attachment to the city, to erase from the conversation the texture of human relationships, of trees and flowers, of houses in neighborhoods, of feast day pilgrimages—it is to deny the legitimacy of the pain they have already felt and the loss they have already endured. It is also to deny the complexity of what is at stake in the present.
And what is at stake? The diversity of Jerusalem’s population tells the story of its history and its universality—it makes the city’s holiness about its people, not just its stones, and is a reflection that the city belongs to the entire world. It assures that Armenian pilgrims will find a piece of themselves in its people, that Greek pilgrims will stumble upon an old community of Greek speakers across from the Patriarchate, that Muslim visitors who shop at the Abu Khalaf shop will unknowingly continue a relationship with the family who once organized the Hajj to Mecca, that when they speak to a Dajani in the street they will be chatting with the old guardians of David’s Tomb. It assures that the city remembers the love of Jerusalem in the Jews of Kurdistan, who brought their delicious soup to the Mahane Yehuda Market; devotion to the city among Aleppo’s Jews, who brought their distinctive liturgy to their synagogue in Nachlaot; and of the Jews of Eastern Europe, who still speak Yiddish in the streets. It assures that liturgy will still be practiced in the language that Jesus spoke, in the city in which he died. It assures that Jerusalem will not lose its Friday prayer, its Saturday Shabbat, its Sunday church bells, its languages, its silences.
Stephanie Saldaña received a bachelor’s degree from Middlebury College and a master’s degree from Harvard Divinity School. Now a resident of Jerusalem, Saldaña teaches at the Honors College for Liberal Arts and Sciences, a partnership of Bard College and Al-Quds University. She has written two books, The Bread of Angels: A Journey to Love and Faithand A Country Between: Making a Home Where Both Sides of Jerusalem Collide, and is the founder of Mosaic Stories, a project to preserve the threatened cultural heritage of the Middle East through research and storytelling.
Abraha’s attack on Mecca, from a 17th or 18th century manuscript copy of “The Book of Wonders of the Age” (St Andrews University Library)
A well-known tradition in Islam records that on the year of the prophet Muhammad’s birth, Abraha, the ruler of Yemen, laid siege to Mecca. The caretaker of Mecca at the time was ‘Abd al-Muttalib, Muhammad’s grandfather. As the population evacuated the city to the surrounding hills, ‘Abd al-Muttalib entreated Abraha to release his camels to make sure they would not perish in conflict. Abraha’s intentions were to take the city and raze the shrine that housed the city’s gods, the Holy Ka‘ba, to the ground. At this point, the astonished Abraha reportedly lost all respect for ‘Abd al-Muttalib: what kind of leader would prioritize mere livestock over the house of God? Upon noticing Abraha’s disdain, ‘Abd al-Muttalib explained, so the tradition goes, that his camels were his responsibility. The shrine, on the other hand, he remarked, was God’s responsibility, and God would protect it. One of the units in Abraha’s army was an elephant cavalry that dramatically refused to ram the Ka‘ba, and ultimately, a flock of birds descended to lay waste to the aggressors. It was in reference to this event that the one hundred and fifth chapter of the Qur’an, entitled “The Elephant,” was revealed.
Photo Credit: Eric Stolz, Wikipedia. Tomb of Abraham in the Cave of the Patriarchs.
My mind dwells on his tradition when I think of Jerusalem today. ‘Abd al-Muttalib had is priorities in order. He could have put his life, and the lives of countless innocents, on the line to save the sacred shrine of Mecca. He assessed his odds and chose not to resist. That choice was grounded in a profound belief in divine providence and power. In light of this tradition, one might ask whether it is our belief in God, or lack of belief, that makes us—Jews and Muslims—vie for the land? And let us not forget the third in the trinity of Abrahamic faiths, Christianity. If ‘Abd al-Muttalib cared so much for his herd, what would the very Lamb of God say about what is happening in the Holy Land today? In these brief reflections, I draw on perspectives from each of the three Abrahamic faiths on how to think and feel about Jerusalem: Yerushalayim, “abode of peace”; al-Quds, “The Holy.” It is a harsh and bitter irony that the holiest sites of the Abrahamic faiths are either abodes of exclusivism, such as Mecca, or abodes of strife and conflict, such as Jerusalem. How can these sites become symbols of peace, love, and the fellowship of humanity, instead of triumphalist bastions that have become hollower than they are holy, whether by consumerism or conflict?
The word ger (or a derivative), meaning “stranger,” appears more often than any other word in the Torah. One of my favorite references is Exodus 22:20: “And a stranger shalt thou not wrong, neither shalt thou oppress him; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” This verse is among those that are cherished by students of scripture, for it gives a not just a command, but also the reason for the command that becomes enshrined as an eternal principle. The reasoning this verse provides is none other than the celebrated golden rule: do unto others as you would have done unto you. Rabbi Hillel famously summed up the whole Torah in one sentence: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor; all the rest is commentary.” We should pay attention when a tradition articulates its first principles so clearly. Is there a contradiction with Exodus 22:20 and the illegal occupation and settlement of lands, the overwhelming use of military force, and the crushing treatment of gerim that borders on apartheid? The answer to this question is yes, you bet there is.
But, what is the alternative? Israel argues that the circumstances it confronts today are exceptional and the threats existential. If the alternative is annihilation, then the first principles must be suspended in favor of survival. Morality follows life in order of priority. Bombastic rhetoric and violent resistance by the Palestinians only serve to fuel further aggression. The charter of Hamas begins with this statement from the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hasan al-Banna: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” This is not helpful for the Palestinian cause. In fact, it is a total disaster, both morally and strategically. Especially since the resistance is so asymmetrical, involving the desperate and indiscriminate targeting of the other side and the never-ending sacrifice, not simply of camels, but of generations of human beings.. Where are the ‘Abd al-Muttalibs today? Make no mistake: Hamas is a resistance movement, but the manner of its resistance has only legitimized further aggression, land grabbing, isolation, starvation, loss of moral clarity, let alone moral high ground, and now, from what it looks like, the loss of Jerusalem.
The Palestinians need to ponder the cost of protracted resistance to innocent lives on both sides—however legitimate that resistance may be—against a foe that has overwhelming military, economic, and technological advantage. One of the arguments the Jewish nation has against the Palestinians is that they are part of a larger Arab nation, while the Jews have no home of their own. This argument is doubly mistaken. One, all Arabs are not the same. The Palestinians are no more similar to the rest of the Arabs than the modern day Irish are to Australians or Canadians. It would be absurd to ask modern day Australians, for example, to transfer themselves to other “white” English speaking lands to make room for aboriginals so they can establish an aboriginal democracy. What is a little difference in accent, right? Wrong! Two, it is wrong because it assumes that democracy can be constructed through demographic control by manufacturing a majority unjustly through a systematic program of ethnic control, if not ethnic cleansing.
Photo Credit: Rafah Kid, Wikipedia. Palestinian residents gather belongings from their homes in the rubble of Israeli air-bombings during the 2008-2009 Gaza War.
How could this happen as the world looks on, eyes wide open? Surely, Israel is on the wrong side of history. But it is on the right side of power. The Arab and Muslim world is an embarrassing disgrace when it comes to reaching for the moral high ground or to reaching for power. What if we were to compare the sins of Israel to the sins of Saudi Arabia against Yemen, ISIS against Iraq and Syria, and the Syrian regime against its own people, just to take a few immediate examples? As a Muslim, I cannot in good conscience point a finger against Israel without four fingers pointing right back at me. And as a citizen of a nation—the United States of America—that has provided material and diplomatic cover for both Arab and Israeli policies for decades, the finger I point at Israel may as well be pointing back at me as well, as if I were pointing in a mirror. If everyone and everything is so messed up—Israel, the Arabs, the Americans, and the rest of the Muslim world—how is it possible to have any kind of moral stance, whether in favor of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions or in favor of more military and economic aid that ends up supporting occupation and settlements?
The answer might at first appear simple: clarity comes with focus. More occupation on the one hand. More resistance and terrorism on the other. The problem is that we often choose to focus on the speck in the stranger’s eye instead of the beam in our own. If Americans worked to reform politics and special interests in America; if Israelis were critical of their mistreatment of Palestinians; if Palestinians gave up all forms of armed resistance and anti-Semitism, accepting at least partial blame for the predicament they find themselves in; if the Arab world showed more wisdom in how it invested its exorbitant wealth and forged unity among its ranks; then we might make progress towards the peaceful resolution of seemingly intractable conflicts. Unfortunately, what appears simple at first is more complicated than it seems. That is because many of us have hybrid identities: some Muslims are also Americans, some Palestinians are also Christians, some Israelis are also Arabs, some Americans are also Israelis, and the most ardent of Zionists are born again evangelical Christians. We each need to look within before causing chaos without.
Introspection, however, is a hallmark of spiritual traditions, not secular politics. Like people, religion and politics can also have hybrid identities. Secular aims can mask themselves as religious: “We don’t want their oil, we just want to spread God’s gift of freedom!” Religious aims can appear in the garb of secular objectives: “We need more land only because we need strategic depth!” The sacralization of partisan politics and secularization of spiritual traditions are the cancers of the world, and they have become malignant in an age of social media and cable news that is driven by market forces. Simple issues like what’s happening in Israel-Palestine become complicated. And complicated issues like terrorism and its causes become simple. Morality is compromised. Intellect is insulted. History is lost. 9/11 happened out of the blue. “We didn’t ask for this war!” “They hate our freedom!” According to this narrative, Christian America in under attack, and secular America does the dirty work needed to defend our borders against the barbarians. The Muslim world is no different. “The problem is colonialism…Hey, boy, bring me some more tea!” O Jerusalem! “A land without people for people without land!” In our own ways, we are all hypocrites.
Photo Credit: Arikk, Wikipedia. Joint Jewish-Arab school, of the “Hand in Hand” education group.
Although the conflict is portrayed as being between two sides, Jerusalem is the city of three faiths. And Christians find themselves on both sides. As a significant portion of the Palestinian population, Christians are being crushed under the weight of occupation and the external imposition of a wholesale identity that equates “Palestinian” (and “Arab” in general) with “Muslim.” As a powerful lobby in the US, fundamentalist Christians are driving a brutal policy of exclusion and dehumanization in the name of an apocalyptic end-times ideology. But all generalizations eventually break down. There are also many non-Palestinian Christians who believe that the Christ of the Cross is with the oppressed, and the oppressed are the Palestinians. Similarly, there are noble Jews whose love and activism on behalf of the Palestinians at times earns them the title of “self-hating” or “refusenik.” All they are doing is upholding the moral commandment of helping the oppressed. They are the true Israelis, in the spirit of a well-known prophetic tradition where Muhammad is reported to have asked believers to support other believers, whether they are oppressed or the oppressors: one helps an oppressor by restraining him, not strengthening him. There are many more voices for peace than of conflict at the grassroots—on all sides—but the market has been captured by secular states and war industries that profit from instability. Of course, foolish religious actors—also on all sides—have played right into the hands of power politics, secular interests, and media sensationalism.
The Quran says that “God’s earth is vast,” enjoining believers to move about freely if they find themselves oppressed. The Quran also says that it is the righteous who will inherit the Holy Land. But no piece of religious real estate is worth innocent lives or losing moral high ground, as Abd al-Muttalib demonstrated so long ago. The words of the thirteenth century Andalusian mystic Ibn ʿArabi, so often quoted by my colleague Ebrahim Moosa, ring true, comparing the dignity of human beings to the value of holy shrines made of stones:
Birds circumambulate Me, hour after hour
From passion, love and desire to touch My legs
The manner in which the noblest of prophets performed the pilgrimage
A rite, that intellect declares, makes no sense
The Messenger, then goes further, and kisses a stone
But how, he declares, can the revered status of the sacred house ever compare to the value of a human being?
In my identity as a Muslim, I pray that Muslim nations develop some sense to support the Palestinian struggle with a unified voice in international forums with dignity and resolve. As a neighbor and well-wisher of Israel, I pray that the Jewish nation is able to show generosity and kindness to those who are now strangers in their own land, as the Torah commands. As an American, I call on the US government to be just and wise in its domestic and international policies, wielding its tremendous influence and power responsibly and fairly.
Photo Credit: James Emery. Mural is located in the Niwano Peace Auditorium below Church of the Sermon on the Mount.
I believe that if and when the time of crises has passed, whether Jerusalem is entrusted to Jews, Christians, Muslims, or shared by all three, its custodians will honor it by welcoming everyone as visitors, guests, and pilgrims in peace. The problem right now is a conflict on who will be Jerusalem’s permanent residents. Here again, the wisdom of our faiths guides us. Nobody is a permanent resident anywhere on earth. “Be in the world as a stranger or traveler,” said the prophet Muhammad. We are all travelers. We are all strangers. Generations come and go. With this reality in mind, let us tread with humility as the fate of Jerusalem hangs in the balance. Rabbi Hirsch, in his commentary on Exodus 22:20, writes: “The great, meta-principle is oft-repeated in the Torah that it is not race, not descent, not birth nor country of origin, nor property, nor anything external or due to chance, but simply and purely the inner spiritual and moral worth that is the nature of a human being, that gives him/her all the rights of a human being and of a citizen.” Jerusalem belongs to us all. Jerusalem is not Israel’s to take, and it is not America’s to give. Nonetheless, if Israel upholds the meta-principle of Exodus 22:20, which is the very same principle offered by the prophet Muhammad in his last sermon, echoing the Great Commandment of Jesus “to love thy neighbor as thyself,” then God may once again make Israel its custodians.
From where I’m standing, that is a very big if. An even bigger if is whether the Palestinians can forgive Israel. Who will take the first step to build trust? From which camp will our Abd al-Muttalib emerge? It takes two ifs to tango. Our religious traditions are a resource rather than hindrance for peace, if only we could tap into them for the right kind of inspiration.
Mahan Mirza was appointed teaching professor and executive director for the Keough School's Rafat and Zoreen Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion on July 1, 2019.
An Islamic studies scholar and expert on religious literacy, Mirza brings extensive pedagogical and administrative experience to his roles at Notre Dame, including serving as dean of faculty at Zaytuna College in Berkeley, California, America’s first accredited Muslim liberal arts college. Prior to his appointment as Executive Director of the Ansari Institute, Mirza served as the lead faculty member for Notre Dame's Madrasa Discourses project, which equips Islamic religious leaders in India and Pakistan with the tools to confidently engage with pluralism, modern science, and new philosophies.
Mirza holds a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, an M.A. from Hartford Seminary, and a Ph.D. in religious studies from Yale University. He has taught courses and lectured on Arabic-Islamic studies, western religions, and the history of science, along with foundational subjects in the liberal arts, including logic, rhetoric, astronomy, ethics, and politics. He has edited two special issues of The Muslim World and served as assistant editor for the Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought (2018).
He is a fellow with the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies at the Keough School and continues to serve as an advisor for Madrasa Discourses.
Photo Credit: Alan Miller 2008. Evangelical group visits Haifa, Israel.
In the days before and following President Trump’s decision “to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel” and to direct the US State Department “to begin preparations to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem,” political pundits sprang into action, asking who, exactly, was responsible for this policy change.
The speech seemed to contradict a strategy presented by Jared Kushner a few days before, leading to the resignation of Dina Powell, so official Jewish influence was apparently off the table. That the speech was delivered against a backdrop featuring a portrait of George Washington, a Christmas tree, and a steely-eyed Vice President Mike Pence pointed to evangelical Christian influence. Melani McAlister has recently argued that evangelical politics are far too fragmented for such a clear line to be drawn; Jonathan Tobin, writing in Ha’aretz, exonerated both “the Christians” and “the Jews” and pointed the finger at Trump himself.
Although Christian Zionism—which I define as “political action, informed by specifically Christian commitments, to promote or preserve Jewish control over the geographic area now comprising Israel and Palestine”[1]—has been my academic pita and hummus over the past few years, I am inclined to follow the complementary analyses by McAlister and Tobin. I differ with Tobin, however, in my assertion that Trump’s logic on Jerusalem is a product of American cultural presuppositions themselves informed by Anglo-American Christian Zionism and its theopolitical antecedents. Christian Zionists in the United States—most of whom are evangelicals—are right to view President Trump as an ideological fellow traveler; this is true not because he is overtly religious but because he epitomizes the America Christian Zionism helped create.
Christian Zionist leaders were quick to heap praise on President Trump’s decision. Cheerleading, however, does not point to policy creation. Jumping to pin the tail on the evangelicals illustrates a tendency among commentators from many different points of the political spectrum to overemphasize religious dimensions present in the midst of political conflicts. While comprehensive analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must acknowledge its theopolitical dimensions, analysis overplays religious elements when portraying them as sole drivers of politics and policy. Christian Zionists, like other religious actors, are highly responsive to the cultural, historical and political contexts within which they operate.
One example of blaming “the Christians” (as opposed to “the Jews”) was titled “Armageddon? Bring It On: The Evangelical Force Behind Trump’s Jerusalem Speech,” also published by Ha’aretz. There, Allison Kaplan Sommer reported on an explanation of evangelical politics in a Twitter thread from prominent progressive Christian historian Diana Butler Bass (later expanded into an editorial). Sommer quotes Butler Bass saying that President Trump’s declaration on Jerusalem is one of many “theological dog whistles to his evangelical base.” This is so, Butler Bass says, because “They want war in the Middle East. The Battle of Armageddon, at which time Jesus Christ will return to the Earth and vanquish all God’s enemies. For certain evangelicals, this is the climax of history.” The key phrase here is “certain evangelicals.” While Butler Bass’s analysis is pithy, it only applies to a certain segment of religious believers: premillennial dispensationalists.
My analysis of polling data since the mid-1980s suggests that, among American voters, beliefs alone cannot predict levels of support for the State of Israel. Instead, support for configurations of US policy favoring Israel over the Palestinians (the declaration on Jerusalem being a clear example) is predicted less by adherence to conservative doctrines than by a combination of religious traditionalism, belief in American exceptionalism, and whiteness.[2]
These racial, nationalist, and religious elements link Christian Zionism to American fundamentalism and the theopolitical sources of American identity and mission. Its roots are interwoven with the Puritan movement which formed the idea of America itself. Thus, it is not surprising for rhetoric resonating with Christian Zionism to crop up in political discourse. Christian Zionism is not only compatible with President Trump’s rhetoric of populism and ethno-nationalism—it is a direct source. In what follows, I outline several ways the December 2017 announcement on Jerusalem resonates with Christian Zionist social imaginaries and thought structures.
Literalism, Religious and Political
Photo Credit: Zeeveez. Israeli and US flags during official US visit to Israel in 2008.
Christian Zionists promote literalism. Although, in the United States, literalism is associated with debates over science, literalism in the English Reformation context was focused on biblical prophecies regarding Jews. When the Bible mentions Israel or Jews, Henry Finch argued in 1621, it means “Israel properly descended out of Jacob’s loins…The same judgement is to be made of their returning to their land and ancient seats…These and such like are not Allegories…but meant really and literally of the Jews.” Rejecting allegory (and with it, Catholicism), this interpretive move promoted historicized biblical interpretation.
President Trump appears similarly literalist; a debate has swirled about whether or not his own words should be interpreted literally. The declaration on Jerusalem eschewed all previous US Presidents’ nuance and context when interpreting the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995. The text of the law provides an escape from lockstep literalism—an escape Trump refused.
One of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s primary goals is the destruction of Palestinian nationalism. Trump’s Jerusalem announcement directly supports this process of delegitimization. In Trump, Netanyahu found an American president willing to take literally political demands the rest of the world has read as rhetorical or figurative. Supporters of Netanyahu’s vision—including many Christian Zionists—could not react to Trump’s action with anything other than shock and awe.
Fueling Extremism
Christian Zionists, like all Abrahamic believers, have learned to live with some measure of unfulfilled prophetic expectations; eschatological hope provides dynamism. Instituting prophetic visions is akin to establishing utopia; the move risks unleashing forces of dystopian extremism. This political and religious literalism, while psychologically comforting for some, can be lethal, especially when wedded to the military might of global and regional superpowers.
Religious extremism, as I have written elsewhere, is devoted solely to the manifestation of its ideology rather than the wellbeing of human communities. Christian Zionism often exhibits this characteristic. As prominent evangelical leader Richard Mouw has observed, “Evangelicals who are Christian Zionists want to see events unfold, but they aren’t so concerned about justice.”
Prior to his Jerusalem declaration, President Trump was warned by governments throughout the Middle East that such a move had real potential to fan the flames of extremism: Jewish, Christian, and Islamic. While rhetoric around moving an embassy can be minimized as figurative, symbols involving Jerusalem are fissile material in settler and jihadi nuclear reactors.
Jerusalem: Means to the End
My historical research into the roots of Christian Zionism revealed it to be a tradition that constructs Jews for explicitly Christian purposes and the systemic interests of empire. Christian Zionism, both old and new, ultimately manipulates Jewish existence for Christian purposes alone; Jews and Judaism thus become mere means for Christian theological ends.
Following the declaration, Christian Broadcast News reported the views of John Hagee, who founded Christians United for Israel in 2006. Hagee indicated that President Trump’s message to evangelicals was that while “Other presidents have failed you … I will not disappoint the Christian community in this issue. I will stand with Israel.” Notice here that “Israel” is framed as a Christian issue alone; neither Hagee nor Trump (in Hagee’s rendition) have concern for Jewish or Muslim communities in Jerusalem. Hagee continued, saying “I believe at this point in time, Israel is God’s stopwatch for everything that happens to every nation, including America, from now until the Rapture of the Church and beyond.” Hagee’s Christian Zionism, for all its Judeo-centrism, has little to no concern for Jews, as Jews, existing with integrity outside of Christianity as the ultimate referent.
For Trump as well, Jerusalem and its peoples appear to be little more than symbols or abstractions. When policy is crafted on such a basis, the lives of flesh-and-blood humans living in and around Jerusalem do not enter into the equation. While governmental policy often involves cold calculation, purportedly religious groups can be critiqued according to a different standard. It is reductive and unethical—both in relation to the nature of the city itself and the communities living there today—to treat Jerusalem as a mere pawn in a geopolitical game.
Simplistic, literalist, and extremist declarations on Jerusalem that reject complexity do not reflect the realities of the city. Such statements reveal egocentrism and hubris, traits long associated with President Trump. But as Jerusalem legal expert Daniel Seidemann—founder of Terrestrial Jerusalem—tweeted on December 5, “Jerusalem is a wise and kind city towards those who treat her and her complexities with the caution and dignity they deserve. She is cruel and vengeful towards those who don’t. Forewarned.”
Faint Concern for Arab Christians
Photo Credit: Dennis Jarvis. Greek Orthodox church of Saint George in Israel.
While President Trump promised certain things to his Evangelical Advisory Board, he hadn’t requested much consultation from the Christians in Jerusalem or elsewhere in the Middle East. Throughout the region, Christians were deeply angered by the announcement, which ignored an appeal from the Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in Jerusalem. Vice President Pence, an evangelical standard-bearer, intended to travel to the Middle East the following week. The trip was billed, in part, “as a chance to check on the region’s persecuted Christians.” The visit began falling apart as Christian representatives announced their intention to refuse meetings with the Vice President.
Christian Zionism emerged within a Reformation context facing Catholic and Islamic threats; its self-serving imagining of Jewish allies was supplemented by deeply anti-Catholic and anti-Islamic thought. Much contemporary Christian Zionist concern for Arab Christians is filtered through this unreconstructed, proto-Orientalist lens. This operationalized Islamophobia sidesteps any analysis of western colonial manipulation in the Middle East and bolsters perceptions of the State of Israel as an essential ally against what President Trump insists on calling “radical Islamic terror.” Palestinian Christians, who make up about 1% of the total population in Israel and Palestine, receive sentimental support but little foreign policy consideration.
Court Theologians of Global Empire
As Brookings Institution analyst Shibley Telhami noted regarding President Trump’s Jerusalem declaration, “It is almost impossible to see the logic.” No major domestic constituency, including evangelical Christians, was demanding this announcement at this time. It is not necessary, therefore, to blame anyone else for this policy shift: President Trump, with only slight affirmation from “the Jews” and “the evangelicals” is cause enough.
The connection with Christian Zionism is found in the essential Americanness of both that theopolitical movement and in President Trump himself. He is a potent distillation of one form of American identity—capitalist, heteronormative, hyper-masculine, and xenophobic. All of this renews what Richard Hofstadter called “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.”
The first documented manifestation of Christian Zionism (if one accepts my narrowly political definition) was in January 1649, when Johanna and Ebenezer Cartwright, English subjects living in Amsterdam, petitioned the War Council led by Lord Thomas Fairfax and his deputy, Oliver Cromwell. This political communication stood on a scaffolding of Judeo-centric prophecy interpretation stretching in England back to 1585, a hermeneutic with antecedents in the prophetic speculations of Christopher Columbus.
In its dialectical formation of Anglo-American identity through apocalyptic imaginings of Jews as allies and Muslims as enemies, Christian Zionism provides a specific example of what Enrique Dussel describes as eurocentric modernity’s efforts to establish universal colonial hegemony. In response, the Argentine-Mexican philosopher critiques both eurocentric readings of modernity and relativist postmodernity, positing instead a “transmodern” position toward the construction of a globally inclusive ethics. The intertwined relationship of modernism, imperialism, and western Christianity is exemplified in the Cartwright Petition, the charter document of Christian Zionism.
In their petition, the Cartwrights proposed that “this Nation of England, with the Inhabitants of the Nerther-lands, shall…transport Izraells Sons & Daughters in their Ships to the Land promised to their fore-Fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, for an everlasting Inheritance.” This suggestion was made in the context of an intensifying trans-Atlantic slave trade; in 1651, England’s offer of economic partnership with the Netherlands was rejected, the Navigation Act was passed, and a trade war broke out between the two Protestant economic powerhouses. Menasseh ben-Israel’s correspondence with Oliver Cromwell and the subsequent policy shift allowing Jews to live openly in London took place within a context of economic interests involving Jamaica and Barbados. The settler-colonial practices of the Massachusetts Bay Colony were by then already in full swing.
Photo Credit: Gerry Dincher. Benson Free Will Baptist Church in Johnston County, North Carolina, USA.
American identity was formed in its nascent stages through a tripartite alterity encountered in New World peoples presupposed to be barbariansavages, African communities victimized by slavery, and continued competition with subjects of the Ottoman Empire. Cotton Mather’s most popular writings detailed the experiences of Europeans held captive by American Indians and Barbary Pirates. Peter Silverhas explored how conflict with American Indians in the mid-1700s transformed Europeans who never would have cooperated in the Old World into a unified people under the banner of whiteness. It is not incidental that the “hymn” of the Marine Corps begins with auspicious references to fighting battles not in North America but in Latin America (“from the Halls of Montezuma”) and the Maghreb (“to the shores of Tripoli”), events that can be celebrated with Fox News anchor Brian Kilmeade or interpreted as efforts to protect colonial interests and economic trade routes.
Each of these processes in the assemblage of Anglo-American modernity—including the sanctification of economic interests, the military protection of international trade, the normalization of occidental conflict with the Islamic world, and the construction of liberal toleration under the common interests of whiteness—was accompanied by refinements in the Anglo-American tradition of Judeo-centric prophecy interpretation. As Dussel asserts, “Modernity includes a rational ‘concept’ of emancipation” but simultaneously “develops an irrational myth, a justification for genocidal violence.”[3] This conception of American identity and mission—including a facile acceptance of sacrificial violence—informs contemporary American Christian Zionism and the core theopolitics of the Trump/evangelical alliance.
Close to a decade ago, I was part of an effort organized by the National Council of Churches in the United States to study and respond to Christian Zionism. Our working group produced a four-page brochure. The wording was strong and succinct. At that time, few of us were cognizant of the deep roots Christian Zionism has in Anglo-American culture. I have since become convinced that the movement will be successfully countered by something far more forceful than a well-worded pamphlet.
In the same way, I do not share Melani McAlister’s optimism that American evangelicalism will be fundamentally reformed through its emerging generations of globally-informed leaders and growing numbers of communities of color. Nobody should underestimate the resilience traditional, white leadership within evangelical and Christian Zionist movements, including market-driven capacities to absorb and commodify critique. Christians United for Israel, for instance, is intensifying its efforts to recruit Black and Latinx evangelical and Pentecostal communities into its fold. The establishment’s eagerness to promote the global military-industrial complex is far too profitable to let lapse.
The chief political function of contemporary American Christian Zionism in relation to this political moment is not to be a catalyst of foreign policy; rather, its function is to reinvigorate a sacred canopy of theopolitical validation, sanctifying and mystifying policy options, rendering them immune from rational critique. Reinforcing the proclivities of American empire, Christian Zionists like John Hagee and Paula White serve as court theologians, constantly working to refine and justify the myth of sacrificial violence underlying America’s Novus Ordo Seclorum, which for now enables President Trump’s efforts to bend the world to his will.
[1] “Christian Zionism” isn’t a self-evident phrase, especially if one assumes Zionism is an essentially Jewish category. In naming this phenomenon, I follow not only contemporary self-identified Christian Zionists but also Nahum Sokolow, who appears to be the first to use the term “Christian Zionist” in English literature. See his History of Zionism, 1600–1918, two vols. (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1919), 1:162; 1:174; 2:410.
[2] The continuing importance of whiteness for comprehending evangelicalism (often with Christian Zionist elements) is underscored by Melani McAlister when she points to recent studies in which persons of color who are evangelical show dramatically different political orientations. In the age of Trump, evangelicalism has again been confirmed as Republican and white (as in this tweet from former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee). McAlister’s forthcoming The Kingdom of God Has No Borders: A Global History of American Evangelicals (Oxford, 2018) appears promising.
Robert O. Smith (Chickasaw) is Assistant Professor of History at the University of North Texas, specializing in religious history, Indigenous studies, and critical race studies. Smith, an enrolled citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, is ordained as a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). In addition to many academic articles, he is the author of More Desired than Our Owne Salvation: The Roots of Christian Zionism (Oxford, 2013) and editor, with Göran Gunner, of Comprehending Christian Zionism: Perspectives in Comparison (Fortress, 2014). Currently, he is co-researching and co-writing three book-length projects on the movement and discipline of critical race theory, which are under contract with New York University Press, the University of California Press, and Penn State University Press. Smith and Martinez draw on mixed methods, ranging from archival, to ethnographic, to literary and rhetorical analysis, to re-tell the stories of CRT’s origins within the broader scope of US history.
