EV
07-19-2002, 01:39 PM
Interesting, informative take...
Have We All Been Hijacked?
By Karen Armstrong
The biographer of Muhammad and expert on fundamentalism
says Sept. 11 is a watershed moment for all the Abrahamic
faiths.
There has been much talk of the Islamic religion itself
having been "hijacked" by the terrorists. The appalling
crime against humanity violated the cardinal principles of
Islam and has taken it off in quite the wrong direction.
Certainly, this action seemed to endorse the mistaken view
so common in the West that Islam is essentially a fanatical
and violent faith.
But is this really a case of a faith being hijacked? Not
yet. Because in this case, the other people in the
plane--as it were--can take an effective stand against
the moral nihilism of the terrorists. Muslims can decide
whether they are going to follow the hijackers into
violence and hatred, away from the true teachings of Islam,
or ensure that their faith is not driven off-course.
You'll recall that the primary meaning of the word jihad is
not "holy war" but "struggle" or "effort." This is a very
important religious principle. It reminds us that religion
is never something achieved or finished. The revelation is
given, but those who follow it have to make a constant
effort, day by day, year after year, to put it into
practice in a flawed and tragic world.
Each faith tradition represents a constant dialogue between
a timeless, transcendent, or sacred reality and the
constantly changing circumstances of life here on earth. We
all have to struggle to make our scriptures and the
insights of our tradition speak to the circumstances we
find ourselves in.
These circumstances are always unique. The Sept. 11th
events gave Muslims a terrible insight into the way their
faith can be abused and made an instrument of evil. Now
they must initiate a new jihad, a new effort to delve
creatively into their rich faith traditions and emphasize
as never before the compassion, justice, and tolerance that
are central to the Qur'anic vision.
President Bush has pointed out that the terrorists' crime
has "blasphemed Allah." And all over the world, Muslim
leaders and scholars have also condemned the atrocity. But
verbal declarations are not what religion is primarily
about. The struggle, or jihad, must continue every day in
the coming months, in practical ways. Every time a violent
action or an intolerant word is spoken, the world becomes a
worse place and the virus of hatred and evil spreads. But
every time any single believer reaches out to others in
compassion and sympathy, the world improved
infinitesimally. That daily, hourly effort is the jihad
required right now.
Muslims don't carry this responsibility alone. Jews and
Christians belong to the same religious family; they too
can use this trauma creatively to reaffirm the values that
we all hold in common. The religions of Abraham all worship
the same God; all three have a deep commitment to
compassion, justice, and peace.
We haven't always realized this. Christians have persecuted
Jews relentlessly; they have led Crusades against Muslims.
For centuries, Jews and Muslims lived together in peace in
the Middle East, but for nearly 100 years, they too have
been locked in a terrible conflict, leading them to revile
each other's religious traditions. This must stop. We have
just had a terrible revelation about where such hatred can
lead.
Religion, like any other human activity, can be abused. And
the particular temptation of monotheism, with its
personalized conception of the divine, has been to assume
that God is a being like ourselves writ large, with likes
and dislikes similar to our own. The Crusaders went into
battle to slaughter Muslims with the cry "God wills it!" I
am pretty sure that the hijackers went to their deaths with
much the same cry on their lips on Sept. 11th.
But obviously "God" wills nothing of the sort. What the
Crusaders and the terrorists were doing was projecting
their own hatred onto a Being they had created in their own
image and likeness. God can all too easily be made to give
a sacred seal of absolute approval to our most loathsome
prejudices and policies. And now monotheists must be more
careful of falling into this idolatry than ever before.
Far from being addicted to warfare, Islam insists on the
importance of peace. The message of the Qur'an is a plural
vision; it respects and values other traditions. When the
Prophet Muhammad told the Muslim community that in the
future they must pray facing Mecca (instead of Jerusalem,
the Muslims' first orientation), he was trying to return to
the time of Abraham, when, he imagined, believers didn't
consider themselves Jews or Christians, did not argue about
theological issues (such as the divinity of Christ) that
nobody could prove one way or the other. They did not claim
that their tradition had the monopoly on truth, or that
other ways of being religious were inferior, but were
united in their faith.
In the early days of his mission, Muhammad seems to have
assumed that Jews and Christians belonged to the same
religion: After all, they all worshipped the same God.
When, later, he found that in fact they had serious
theological disagreements, he was shocked. It seemed
perverse and wrong to him that people who surrendered their
entire lives to God should quarrel with one another about
abstruse theological matters--it was God that mattered, not
how people interpreted their experience of the divine.
It was not that Muhammad thought that everybody should
belong to one giant world religion. The Qur'anic view is
that God has sent prophets to every people on the face of
the earth, who speak His word to them in their own language
and their own cultural traditions. The Qur'an was a
scripture in Arabic for the Arabs, though anybody of any
race was welcome to join his faith community. Muhammad
never expected Jews or Christians to convert to Islam
unless they specifically wished to do so, because they had
received perfectly valid revelations of their own. But he
did think that they should stress the things that united
them, instead of exalting their own tradition at the
expense of other faiths.
The Qur'an insists Moses, Jesus, and all the great prophets
sent to humanity confirmed one another's insights. But it
does mean that religion and revelation should bring us
together and must not separate us into warring camps.
We need to cultivate this "Abrahamic" spirit during these
terrible days. All of us, Jews, Christians, and Muslims,
have used our religion to denigrate and even to persecute
others. But Abraham is our common father, and if we can use
this horror to realize that we must not exalt our own faith
at the expense of others', perhaps something good can come
out of evil.
If the atrocity is used by Christians and Jews to ostracize
all Muslims and to denounce their faith as inherently evil,
then it would not simply be Islam that was in danger of
being hijacked on Sept. 11th, but Judaism and Christianity
too.
Karen Armstrong is the author of 'The Battle for God,' 'A
Brief History of Islam' and the best-selling 'A History of
God.'
Have We All Been Hijacked?
By Karen Armstrong
The biographer of Muhammad and expert on fundamentalism
says Sept. 11 is a watershed moment for all the Abrahamic
faiths.
There has been much talk of the Islamic religion itself
having been "hijacked" by the terrorists. The appalling
crime against humanity violated the cardinal principles of
Islam and has taken it off in quite the wrong direction.
Certainly, this action seemed to endorse the mistaken view
so common in the West that Islam is essentially a fanatical
and violent faith.
But is this really a case of a faith being hijacked? Not
yet. Because in this case, the other people in the
plane--as it were--can take an effective stand against
the moral nihilism of the terrorists. Muslims can decide
whether they are going to follow the hijackers into
violence and hatred, away from the true teachings of Islam,
or ensure that their faith is not driven off-course.
You'll recall that the primary meaning of the word jihad is
not "holy war" but "struggle" or "effort." This is a very
important religious principle. It reminds us that religion
is never something achieved or finished. The revelation is
given, but those who follow it have to make a constant
effort, day by day, year after year, to put it into
practice in a flawed and tragic world.
Each faith tradition represents a constant dialogue between
a timeless, transcendent, or sacred reality and the
constantly changing circumstances of life here on earth. We
all have to struggle to make our scriptures and the
insights of our tradition speak to the circumstances we
find ourselves in.
These circumstances are always unique. The Sept. 11th
events gave Muslims a terrible insight into the way their
faith can be abused and made an instrument of evil. Now
they must initiate a new jihad, a new effort to delve
creatively into their rich faith traditions and emphasize
as never before the compassion, justice, and tolerance that
are central to the Qur'anic vision.
President Bush has pointed out that the terrorists' crime
has "blasphemed Allah." And all over the world, Muslim
leaders and scholars have also condemned the atrocity. But
verbal declarations are not what religion is primarily
about. The struggle, or jihad, must continue every day in
the coming months, in practical ways. Every time a violent
action or an intolerant word is spoken, the world becomes a
worse place and the virus of hatred and evil spreads. But
every time any single believer reaches out to others in
compassion and sympathy, the world improved
infinitesimally. That daily, hourly effort is the jihad
required right now.
Muslims don't carry this responsibility alone. Jews and
Christians belong to the same religious family; they too
can use this trauma creatively to reaffirm the values that
we all hold in common. The religions of Abraham all worship
the same God; all three have a deep commitment to
compassion, justice, and peace.
We haven't always realized this. Christians have persecuted
Jews relentlessly; they have led Crusades against Muslims.
For centuries, Jews and Muslims lived together in peace in
the Middle East, but for nearly 100 years, they too have
been locked in a terrible conflict, leading them to revile
each other's religious traditions. This must stop. We have
just had a terrible revelation about where such hatred can
lead.
Religion, like any other human activity, can be abused. And
the particular temptation of monotheism, with its
personalized conception of the divine, has been to assume
that God is a being like ourselves writ large, with likes
and dislikes similar to our own. The Crusaders went into
battle to slaughter Muslims with the cry "God wills it!" I
am pretty sure that the hijackers went to their deaths with
much the same cry on their lips on Sept. 11th.
But obviously "God" wills nothing of the sort. What the
Crusaders and the terrorists were doing was projecting
their own hatred onto a Being they had created in their own
image and likeness. God can all too easily be made to give
a sacred seal of absolute approval to our most loathsome
prejudices and policies. And now monotheists must be more
careful of falling into this idolatry than ever before.
Far from being addicted to warfare, Islam insists on the
importance of peace. The message of the Qur'an is a plural
vision; it respects and values other traditions. When the
Prophet Muhammad told the Muslim community that in the
future they must pray facing Mecca (instead of Jerusalem,
the Muslims' first orientation), he was trying to return to
the time of Abraham, when, he imagined, believers didn't
consider themselves Jews or Christians, did not argue about
theological issues (such as the divinity of Christ) that
nobody could prove one way or the other. They did not claim
that their tradition had the monopoly on truth, or that
other ways of being religious were inferior, but were
united in their faith.
In the early days of his mission, Muhammad seems to have
assumed that Jews and Christians belonged to the same
religion: After all, they all worshipped the same God.
When, later, he found that in fact they had serious
theological disagreements, he was shocked. It seemed
perverse and wrong to him that people who surrendered their
entire lives to God should quarrel with one another about
abstruse theological matters--it was God that mattered, not
how people interpreted their experience of the divine.
It was not that Muhammad thought that everybody should
belong to one giant world religion. The Qur'anic view is
that God has sent prophets to every people on the face of
the earth, who speak His word to them in their own language
and their own cultural traditions. The Qur'an was a
scripture in Arabic for the Arabs, though anybody of any
race was welcome to join his faith community. Muhammad
never expected Jews or Christians to convert to Islam
unless they specifically wished to do so, because they had
received perfectly valid revelations of their own. But he
did think that they should stress the things that united
them, instead of exalting their own tradition at the
expense of other faiths.
The Qur'an insists Moses, Jesus, and all the great prophets
sent to humanity confirmed one another's insights. But it
does mean that religion and revelation should bring us
together and must not separate us into warring camps.
We need to cultivate this "Abrahamic" spirit during these
terrible days. All of us, Jews, Christians, and Muslims,
have used our religion to denigrate and even to persecute
others. But Abraham is our common father, and if we can use
this horror to realize that we must not exalt our own faith
at the expense of others', perhaps something good can come
out of evil.
If the atrocity is used by Christians and Jews to ostracize
all Muslims and to denounce their faith as inherently evil,
then it would not simply be Islam that was in danger of
being hijacked on Sept. 11th, but Judaism and Christianity
too.
Karen Armstrong is the author of 'The Battle for God,' 'A
Brief History of Islam' and the best-selling 'A History of
God.'