The safest route would be to follow the herd. Was it not Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad who said that mankind has this herd mentality? As long as you agree with what others believe then life would be very pleasant. The instant you ‘deviate’ or break away from what the majority view as ‘norm’ then your problems begin. Let me quote Bishop Carlton Pearson.
The Judeo-Christian West needs to understand that when it offhandedly dismisses Islam as irrational and violent, it is playing into the hands of extremists, who have succeeded in driving a wedge between moderate thinkers of all faiths (or no faith at all).
n Saudi Arabia, for example, compensation for a Muslim man is greater than that for a Muslim woman, which is greater than that for a Christian woman, which in turn is more than that for a Hindu man. Conversely, in Yemen, the compensation for a Jew is greater than that for a Muslim, on account of the former's status as a protected member of the tribe. In Iran, compensation is not necessary for victims whose blood is considered mobah, or able to be spilled with impunity, such as members of the Baha'i community.
Can there be equal treatment?
Raja Petra Kamarudin
In Acts 23:1-4, Luke writes:
Paul looked straight at the Sanhedrin and said, “My brothers, I have fulfilled my duty to God in all good conscience to this day.” At this the high priest Ananias ordered those standing near Paul to strike him on the mouth. Then Paul said to him, “God will strike you, you whitewashed wall! You sit there to judge me according to the law, yet you yourself violate the law by commanding that I be struck!”
Those who were standing near Paul said, “You dare to insult God’s high priest?”
How dare I insult the system? Where do I come off insulting the powers that be, the traditional leading influences of the day? Where do I get the audacity to speak up and demand change?
I do it, as Paul, Martin Luther, Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, and others did, because of my conscience. Conscience is literally calling me out to proclaim a higher reality. Conscience has attacked my moral amnesia and caused me to remember that we were all created in the image and likeness of God and that anything else is an impersonation, an illusion, and an outright deception.
Truth demands expression, and its call is irresistible. In scripture, the word conscience is the Greek wordsuneidesis, which means “co-perception” -- that is “accompanying moral consciousness and awareness.”
Conscience is, in effect, to have uncommon knowledge or awareness. It is the consciousness and awareness of the soul. It is not only what you know but what you undeniably are.
THE PRICE OF VISION
People like the Apostle Paul, Dr. King, Rosa Parks and Gandhi had this common awareness. They saw what others either didn’t see or refused to acknowledge. The mystical or metaphorical meaning of the wordconscience is to see as God perceives, to see things as they can become. Or perhaps as they are in another reality, rather than as they appear.
Mind you, I do not flatter myself with comparisons to these giants. I humbly submit that I can only hope to capture some small shadow of the light of their greatness and courage. I bring them up only to illustrate that to perceive things outside the box and to try to bring about both spiritual and practical evolution and revolution inevitably comes with a great price.
Visionary minds are always met with violent opposition born of fear. Higher knowledge is costly. It cost Galileo, Dr. King, Gandhi, Paul the Apostle, Jesus, and scores of lesser knowns their lives or livelihoods. People who hear the call to conscience follow what they know inwardly -- what they know in consciousness or at higher levels of awareness. I call this irresistible knowing. It is a form of divinely transcendent memory.
Dr. King remembered his vision of a world “where my four little children…will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character” from another consciousness. He recalled the innate knowledge we all share as our birthright: that we are all safe with God and that we all participate in the fullness of the Divine and the continuing creation and evolution of this world.
Somehow, in our very human failure, we forgot this truth.
Perhaps we buried it beneath the strata of dogma, politics, legalism and lust for power. But Dr. King reminded the world that indeed all people were and are created equal.
This is the message of Jesus and all Hs true disciples, both Christian and non-Christian (Abraham, Prophet Muhammad, Buddha, etc. included). The call of my conscience is to hear and herald this same powerful truth to my generation.
Such resolution can cost you. You can lose things, people, friends, family, reputation, position, and even your life, simply because of what you profess to know and how you see things, especially if it is different from what others see or will admit.
My vision initially cost me dearly in terms of finances and possessions, status and relationships, and my self-imposed illusions about how loving and tolerant many of my Christian brethren and friends were.
It turns out that many of them were loving and tolerant so long as they believed I thought as they did. Once I did not, I became to them a heretic, rebel, or radical, and to some a perceived adversary.
Bishop Carlton Pearson: author of “Gospel of Inclusion” and “God is not a Christian, nor a Jew, Muslim, Hindu…”
Even if we were to accept uncontested the notion of the quantifiability of human life in cash terms, it is clear that there is a strong possibility for equality before the law to be compromised under such a system. The fact that we already bear witness to unaddressed inequalities in Malaysia, borne by adherence to some notion or other of ethno-religious supremacy, reflects badly on the prospect for equal treatment should qisas be implemented.
Above all, we must consider how guilt and innocence are determined in syariah law. The existing literature is not encouraging.
Human Rights Watch issued a report in 1999 detailing a case in Pakistan involving a man who murdered his wife's lover upon finding them in a "compromising position". In this instance, it was ruled that, as men were the "guardians of women" (according to Surah An-Nisa, 34), the jealous husband had merely been "protecting his property" when he killed the cuckolding man. It was accordingly adjudged a case of self-defense and no punishment, not even diyya, was levied upon the husband, who was declared innocent. The deceased victim, on the other hand, was deemed guilty by virtue of his complicity in adultery.
That the system of beliefs these moral justifications are based on is not one all Malaysians subscribe to merely compounds the problem. Apologists will, at this point, trot out the well-worn argument that syariah laws only apply to Muslims and not to non-Muslims, and therefore its wholesale implementation should not be of concern to non-Muslims.
That line of reasoning is a poor one. More than one-third of Malaysians are non-Muslims who live cheek by jowl with their Muslim countrymen and women, and sooner or later a non-Muslim will perpetrate a crime against a Muslim or vice-versa.
When this comes to pass, one of two things will happen, both of which are contrary to the purportedly exclusive nature of syariah. Either non-Muslims will be treated differently, in which case we go back to the problem of legal parity, or they will be treated identically, which would necessarily require the imposition of Islamic law on non-Muslims. There is no such thing as compartmentalised law in a multi-cultural society, regardless of what PAS would have us believe.
Hudud is thus only a small symptom of a much larger predicament. What is truly at stake here are the very notions o
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Thumbs up to dialogue |
DETROIT, MICHIGAN |
A little background on how well the average progressive Christian understands the essential differences between Islam and Christianity seems to be warranted. Muslims and Christians share the belief that there is one God. They even agree that he is the God of the biblical Abraham. However, because God chose to reveal himself through different sacred texts that were written by different authors at different times, Islam’s concept of the one and Christianity’s concept of the one are far from one-and-the-same.
The Holy Spirit inspired them, but men wrote the Bible. Most Christians believe that understanding the Old Testament requires distinguishing between what should be read as literal and what should be read as metaphorical or allegorical. The Gospels of the New Testament have been the subject of even more intense scrutiny. Exegesis that takes context - historical, cultural, linguistic, anthropological, et al. - into account continues to this day. In this sense the Bible is organic. God wrote the Qur'an. As a result of its divine authorship, it is word-for-word literally true. It is the permanent, unchanging blueprint for salvation.
Christians believe God is interactive. He has “personality” and is capable of relationships with other personal beings. The God of Islam has revealed himself through the prophets, and he is present within man, but not actively so. He is ultimately unknowable.
Because they share a belief in the one true God, and the belief that only through him can man attain salvation, Christians and Muslims have been arguing over which religion is in possession of his truth since the time of Muhammad. It’s not surprising then that the debate over what constitutes “moderate Islam” has become so contentious. Absolutist arguments abound, and they are being advanced even by scholarly and supposedly moderate factions on both sides of the debate.
Roman Catholic Cardinal George Pell offered his opinion as to the problem inherent in the Islamic way of thinking: “In the Muslim understanding, the Qur'an comes directly from God, unmediated. Muhammad simply wrote down God’s eternal and immutable words as they were dictated to him by the Archangel Gabriel. It cannot be changed, and to make the Qur'an the subject of critical analysis and reflection is either to assert human authority over divine revelation [a blasphemy], or to question its divine character.” If the Qur'an is the perfect and unchanging word of an unknowable God, Islam is based purely on faith. It’s all there in black and white. Reason need not apply.
His boss, Pope Benedict XVI, took the argument a step further when in a 2006 speech he quoted a former colleague who retold a conversation held between a medieval emperor and a Muslim interlocutor: “As a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement (not to act in accordance with reason is against God’s nature) is self evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even rationality.” According to Jeff Israely from Time magazine: “The risk [Benedict] sees implicit in this concept of the divine is that the irrationality of violence might thereby appear to be justified to someone who believes it is God’s will.” To make matters worse, the pope continued to quote the Emperor who challenged his interlocutor by saying: “Show me just what Mohammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”
To his credit Benedict quickly issued a formal apology, rare for any pope. In no way did I wish to make my own the words of the medieval emperor,” the pope said. “I wished to explain that not religion and violence but religion and reason go together.” He went on to say that he has “profound respect for world religions and for Muslims.”
On the issue of whether faith in Islam requires the application of reason, Islamic scholar Aref Ali Nayedexplained: “Muslim scholars were always aware of the fact that the activities of interpretation, understanding, and exegesis (of God’s eternal discourse) are forms of human strenuous striving that must be dutifully renewed in every believing generation. Solemn belief in the eternity and divine authorship of the Qur’an never prevented Muslim scholars from dealing with it historically and linguistically.”
It is my understanding that many other Muslims take a different, but also highly reasoned approach to understanding the Qur'an. They believe that the ultimate meaning of the Qur’an is known only to God. For them the Qur’an is not restricted to its literal aspects. It also has inward aspects. In other words, it’s not acceptable to reinterpret the divine narrative, but it is essential that one continues to strive to understand its ultimate meaning by reading between the lines. Diverse and decentralized Islam - comprised of numerous sects and schools - resists generalizations, something the Roman Catholic hierarchy should have considered before it spoke.
However, Ingrid Mattson, President of the Islamic Society of North America seemed determined to besimilarly polarizing: “Benedict may wish to argue that somewhere in the minds of Islamic suicide bombers is an unstated understanding that if anyone tried to reason them out of their plans they would counter that logic had no role because this was the will of God. But that would be an assumption on his part. And that exposes the essential arbitrariness, at least for now, of the Pope's approach. If he wants to make an ‘essentialist’ argument against Islam—that is, to suggest that there may be something in it that is intrinsically more friendly to fanaticism—then he needs to do it in some way other than the seemingly casual, off-the-cuff route he has chosen.”
From the average progressive Christian’s perspective - or maybe it’s just my own - there are extremely conservative schools within Islam that are comprised of backward-looking literalists. Within these schools are extremists who cherry pick the parts of the Qur'an that support their violent cause - a cause many think is more political than religious - and ignore the parts that don’t. Their pitch goes something like this: the Qur'an is literally the word of God. Violent jihad is a sacred duty. God is unknowable. To question his perfect word is blasphemous. Do as he has [or we have] commanded and heaven will be yours. Reason need not apply.
It seems to me that there is considerable tension within Islam between backward-thinking literalists who believe the word of God as conveyed to Muhammad in the 7th century and recorded in the Qur'an cannot be interpreted, and forward-looking moderates who, without disputing that it contains God’s exact and perfect word, believe the Qur'an must be interpreted and/or read between the lines for its divine author’s true meaning to be understood.
The vast majority of my fellow Americans of the Muslim persuasion reject violence in the name of God, believes the Qur'an must be interpreted to be properly understood and shares my pluralistic belief that a just God will save a worthy person of any faith. But on a global scale, I am unsure which side is winning.
My definition of moderate Islam is as follows: Muslims who read the Qur'an fully and sensibly, reject violence in God’s name, want to live in a pluralistic society that tolerates religious diversity, and importantly, recognize that there is in fact an aspect of Islamic doctrine that leaves it open to manipulation by Islamists and the violent extremists who hide behind them, is moderate.
That moderate-minded believers of all faiths [or no faith at all] might ally themselves with others of a similar ilk seems to me to be a reasonable premise. But until the Muslim middle can demonstrate it is capable of self-criticism by recognizing that there is an aspect of Islam that can be manipulated to misrepresent God’s will, its claim that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance will sound suspicious to Western ears ...even those that are connected to moderate brains.
For its part, the Judeo-Christian West needs to understand that when it offhandedly dismisses Islam as irrational and violent, it is playing into the extremists hands. The extremists have succeeded in driving a wedge between moderate thinkers of all faiths [or no faith at all]. Cooperation among members of the moderate middle is the extremists’ worst nightmare. Unfortunately, the moderate middle has been unable to find its voice. And the scholars and clergy in possession of the media microphone are saying all the wrong things. Amen.
Michael Gonyea was an executive at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency. Neither ecclesiast nor religious scholar, he continues to be a conceptual thinker and problem solver.
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