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“Lessons from Islam”
Sunday, October 19, 2014
Rev. Bruce Southworth, Senior Minister
The Community Church of New York Unitarian Universalist
Readings
(1) Khaled Abou El Fadl is the Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Fellow in
Islamic Law at UCLA and author of Rebellion and Violence in Islamic Law. The first
reading is from his article titled, “The Place of Tolerance in Islam: On reading the Qur'an
– and misreading it.” Originally Published in December 2001/January 2002 issue of the
Boston Review:
It would be disingenuous to deny that the Qur'an and other Islamic sources offer
possibilities of intolerant interpretation. Clearly these possibilities are exploited by the
contemporary puritans and supremacists. But the text does not command such
intolerant readings. Historically, Islamic civilization has displayed a remarkable ability to
recognize possibilities of tolerance, and to act upon these possibilities. Islamic
civilization produced a moral and humanistic tradition that preserved Greek philosophy,
and generated much science, art, and socially benevolent thought. Unfortunately,
however, the modern puritans are dissipating and wasting this inspiring moral tradition.
They are increasingly shutting off the possibilities for a tolerant interpretation of the
Islamic tradition.
(2) Tariq Ramadan, a reformist Muslim who teaches at Oxford, argues for
interpretations of the Koran that respect women’s dignity and reject any literalism,
especially when there are internal contradictions of text or cultural oppressions that go
beyond Muhammad’s practices. For example, in terms of veiling, he argues that in such
cases, “We are forgetting to put things into context. More important than one verse is
understanding the overall message of Islam.” He also gives accounts of how early
Muslims on the Arabian Peninsula adapted their practices rather than necessarily taking
any verse literally.
In an interview in Christian Century magazine (8/21/07, pp. 30, 32), he declares
that he is Muslim by religion, Egyptian by heritage, Swiss by nationality (where he grew
up), and he adds, “At the same, I’m a universalist by principle…. Deep inside me, I’m
nurturing this multiple identity.”
“Something I find in the heart of Islam is universalism” … a God of “love” and
“beauty” and “light.”
(3) This morning in turning to Islam and dimensions of universal religion, I also
offer a story, words from Rumi, who was a Persian mystic born 800 years. Rumi and
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mystics in every tradition, in poetry, story and explanation, want to awaken us, to remind
us, that we are part of the sacred creativity around us and in which we live and move
and have our being. Love, God, the sacred… not out there, but in us… with the ritual of
prayer simply a tool to give us that clarity.
A man [unjustly confined] in prison receives a gift. It is a gift of a
prayer rug. What he wanted of course was a file, a crowbar or a key. But
he began using the rug, doing the five-times prayer at dawn, at noon, midafternoon, after sunset and before going to sleep. Bowing, sitting up,
bowing again... after many days of prayer he notices an odd pattern in the
weave of the rug at the point where his head touches. He studies and
meditates on that pattern, gradually discovering that it is a diagram of the
lock... a picture of the lock that confines him to his cell and it shows how it
works. Studying the diagram, he is able to escape [and to obtain his
freedom.]
Rumi embraces the symbolism, not a juvenile understanding that material results
arise from petitionary prayer. He concludes, “Anything you do every day can open into
the deepest spiritual place, which is freedom.”
The practice of prayer can lead one into escape from the false sense of dualism
that we often may believe is our state of being.
Clarity… that is, after all, what a religious life, spiritual life is about, isn’t it?
“Lessons from Islam”
Rev. Bruce Southworth
Perhaps, you heard about an ugly incident on a late night HBO TV show a couple
of weeks ago. Bill Maher and Sam Harris declared that Islam was inherently evil with its
intolerance and proclivity to violence… akin to the Mafia.
Actor Ben Affleck and NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof rebuked them, rightly
so, and pointed out that each religious path has its share of extremists. Islam is not
alone in that. Nor do particular groups define an entire faith.
Regarding Islam, I recall a visit with the Imam of the Islamic Cultural Center here
in New York, not long after 9-11. Part of that conversation included his condemnation of
those terrorist acts as irreconcilable with Islam. He said that to harm innocents such as
those in the World Trade Center, or the Pentagon, or the airline crew and passengers,
to harm innocents is worse than harming the Kaaba, which is the holiest shrine in
Mecca and in all of Islam.
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He quoted Muhammad, the prophet and messenger of Allah: “To kill an innocent
person (just one person) in the sight of Allah is more dangerous than the destruction of
this universe.”
He spoke of his “complete condemnation of the unconscionable” aggression and
offered on behalf of his community “their deepest collective grief and massive sympathy
for the horrific loss of life, property and human dignity.” Not only “deeply hurt and
saddened by this tragedy,” he also called these attacks “inhuman acts” which in “the
final analysis are directed against all humanity, against civilization, against freedom,
against all religions.”
Part of my appreciation for Islam goes back to a visit to Jerusalem in the fall of
1988 with an American interfaith clergy group during the first intifada. I traveled with a
cross-section of religious leaders as we sought to learn more at first-hand about the
religious and political realities that were causing so much pain on both sides, that still
cause such pain, and that still await a just resolution for both Jews and Palestinians. I
was able to visit both mosques that are in the city’s center on the Temple Mount, as it is
known to Jews, or Haram al-Sharif, as it is known to Muslims.
There you find the stunning golden Dome of the Rock and also al Aqsa Mosque,
which is almost as large as a football field in breadth and width. By tradition, it is also
the site of the ancient Jewish Temple. It is sacred ground for Muslims for nearly 1400
years and for Jews for thousands of years.
The Dome of the Rock was completed in 691 a. d., not quite sixty years after the
death of Muhammad. That golden domed structure is truly stunning with its decorative
motifs in geometric and floral patterns and elaborate Arabic script with quotations from
the Koran.
[There are no human or animal images. Muslims, for the most part, have been
iconoclastic in the original meaning of the word, avoiding all icons, all representations
that might be mistaken for images of deity. The Dome - brilliant in its gold color - now is
actually a bronze-aluminum alloy, the gold having been stripped away. Beneath the
Dome, the mosque is octagonal, eight-sided.]
The marble, the mosaics, the exterior glazed tiles, the proportions, the expanses
of gorgeous rugs, and the daylight shimmering through translucent marble brings out
exquisite blues, greens, purples, yellows and reds…
It was an altogether luminous, numinous experience.
Inside that mosque, the Dome of the Rock that overlooks the center of old
Jerusalem, there is in fact a very large rock.
[There are many ancient traditions that associate the rock with the center of the
world. For Jews, the rock is also thought to be the site where Abraham took his son
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Isaac and prepared to sacrifice him because of God's commandment to him. Later
Solomon's Temple was built above and around the rock, as was the Second Temple
that was destroyed without a trace.]
Our Muslim guide told us that according to Islamic tradition, this rock (and it's big
- maybe as big as the whole pulpit area here) was where Muhammad ascended to
Heaven upon a winged horse when visited by the Archangel Gabriel, taken to Heaven
and given some of his first revelations that are now part of the Koran.
In fact, and this much is fact, you can place your hand into a small, protected
area and feel as well as see in the rock a horseshoe-shaped indentation. By legend at
least, if not in fact, it is proof of this ascension by Muhammad. Also, there are three
beard hairs of Muhammad on display, just as in other parts of Jerusalem there are a
variety of Christian relics.
This is the legend, and because of it, Jerusalem is truly a holy city for Muslims.
Of all the major religions of the world, Islam in the West is certainly the least
understood and often maligned throughout history. The genius and beauty of the Dome
of the Rock and of so much Islamic art and architecture stand in glorious contrast to so
many of our ugly western stereotypes and caricatures.
The high ethical principles taught by Muhammad stand in gracious contrast to
Dante's depiction of Muhammad as residing in one of the lower rings of Hell reserved
for schismatics, those who break the unity of the Church. Dante depicts Muhammad
split from forehead to bowel with his guts hanging out because of his teachings.
The renown given Islamic scholars for translating and preserving much of the
human knowledge accumulated by the ancient Greeks stands in contrast to the ill will
generated by Muslim fanatics today.
It is a good thing in our times that there are Muslims speaking up for a moderate
Islam, and among those is Reza Aslan, author of No God But God: The Origins,
Evolution, and Future of Islam. He writes, “… the voice of the moderate majority is too
often drowned out by the voices of extremism and fundamentalism.”
As we celebrate Universal Religion here at Community, I turn again to Islam
and some of the lessons. I might add that almost one in four of us on this planet is a
Muslim, and there are as many as 3 million Muslims in the United States, having tripled
over the past 15 years.
Among the lessons: a sense of ethics and community, and our shared
divinity.
As an imam of centuries ago wrote: “Should a man die of starvation, the whole
village is subject to penalty.”
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Similarly, Muhammad was reported to have cried out, “He cannot be a believer.
He cannot be a believer. That man is not a believer.” When asked, “Who?” by those
near him, Muhammad, the Prophet, replied, “He who sleeps the night with a full
stomach while his neighbor is hungry cannot be a believer.”
That powerful sense of community and ethical obligation that is inherent in Islam
is just one of the many elements of Islam that I personally find both nurturing and
challenging spiritually, even as we are surrounded as we are by images of barbaric
deeds of the Islamic State and other Muslim fanatics, though they are in the minority.
A very brief history of Islam takes us back to the visions of a forty-year-old,
trusted man of business, who had prospered in the caravan trade. In 610 of the
Common Era, over 1400 years ago, Muhammad lived in Mecca on the Arabian
Peninsula where we now find Saudi Arabia. There he began to write down words he
believed to be spoken by Allah, an important deity but only one of 354 gods of the
culture. What he wrote down and its radical monotheism challenged the polytheistic
culture. His egalitarianism challenged the business elites. From just a few followers, he
gained converts, but also opponents.
Finally, in 622, at age 52, Muhammad had to flee for his life with some of his
followers to Medina. That year 622, on the Western calendar, is the first year on the
Islamic calendar. There he became a magistrate, a trusted elder, a political leader and
statesperson who won many more followers.
In the year 630, he led 10,000 troops against Mecca, which had been harassing
his new home city. He conquered it without a battle. He went to the Kaaba and
immediately destroyed the idols and consecrated it to God, to Allah. It is to this shrine
that a Muslim must make a pilgrimage at least once in his or her life if he or she is
financially and physically able. Once in Mecca, victorious, he declared a general
amnesty rather than taking vengeance upon those who had been at war with him.
As Islam expanded, vengeance typically did not prevail. Jews, Christians and
others generally (but not always) lived in peace. Muhammad's spirit is exhibited in a
story: Muhammad was once sleeping under a palm tree only to awaken suddenly to
find himself confronted by an enemy standing over him with a drawn sword. "O
Muhammad, who is there now to save thee?" his enemy cried. To which Muhammad
responded, "God." As his enemy tried to strike him, he stumbled and dropped the
sword that Muhammad seized. Muhammad challenged his disarmed adversary, "O who
shall save thee, my enemy?" "No one," the man acknowledged. "Then learn to be
merciful," Muhammad answered, and he handed the man back his sword.
The word Islam means "submission" - submission to God. It carries with it
something of the original sense of the Greek-derived word "enthusiasm" - en theos,
gods within, possessed by god. There is a spirit of contagious enthusiasm that still
speaks to women and men 1400 years later.
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Another of the great strengths of Islam is its clarity in terms of ritual practices,
which are simple and direct. These are the Five Pillars of Faith.
“There is no God but Allah…”
First is the creed, by which one becomes a Muslim. The careful acceptance of
the affirmation, "I bear witness that there is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his
Messenger." This affirmation of God's unity is a denunciation of idolatry and a
declaration of mindfulness to what is important. That Muhammad is God's Prophet is
also a statement intended to prevent Muhammad from being worshipped. It is also a
declaration of faith that revelations once given by Moses, Jesus and other prophets are
now complete with Muhammad.
Prayer
Second is the practice of praying five times a day: in the morning, at noontime, at
mid-afternoon, after sunset and before retiring, each time facing Mecca.
Fasting during Ramadan
The third Pillar is the annual month of fasting called Ramadan, which includes
family festivities after sunset. Many years ago, I had likened it to the severe self-denial
sometimes found in Christian Lent, and a Muslim friend quickly corrected me. Islam
says that fasting during the daytime during Ramadan, to pause in reverence for more
than one day a week, for a whole month, helps us to be in touch with our own shared
humanity more deeply, our divinity, and our co-creativity with Life, with God.
Pilgrimage to Mecca
The fourth Pillar is the pilgrimage to Mecca where the prominent and the lowly,
the wealthy, the common person, and the poor all mingle, each dressed in identical
robes - affirming that each truly is a child of God, brother and sister. It was after his
pilgrimage that Malcolm X began to shift profoundly in his attitudes and opened himself
to a more universal spirit.
Charitable Giving
Finally, there is the duty of giving to charity. The admonition is to give at least 2
1/2% of one's income to help the poor. It’s a minimum. How are you doing? I
personally strive to exceed at least 5%.
These five practices provide a profound sense of community and spiritual
solidarity among Muslims that transcend the ethnic or national cultures in which Islam
has landed. There is much, much more that could be said, and it is impossible to
capture fully the breadth and depth of this religion, but this outline is a taste.
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Like Judaism or Christianity, Islam has its sects, and it is no more fair to judge
Islam based upon a radical imam than it is to judge Christianity based upon Pat
Robertson or James Dobson. Islam is highly decentralized with considerable
congregational autonomy and has many varying traditions, Sunni, Shiite, and Sufi, to
name a few, just as Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, and Unitarian Universalists
come in many flavors, branches and traditions.
Certainly as a Unitarian Universalist, I have differences with some of the faith
convictions of Islam. For one, I believe in continuous revelation, not that it was
completed with Muhammad. Take a Gandhi or a King or a Dorothy Day or Starhawk or
you or me. We each can experience the holy and teach one another about how to live
and love and serve.
Islam’s attitude toward gays and lesbians remains discriminatory for the most
part. Cultural patriarchy has often obscured Muhammad’s own affirmation of women’s
rights in many, if not all, instances.
But many elements of Islam do resonate within me.
Islam declares itself ultimately to be a way of life, not a religion of the mosque
alone, not a matter only of creed or ritual. Good deeds and daily righteousness beckon
to us.
Islam reminds me of how easy it is to forget the Source of Life, and Love and
Beauty, the wonder of creation, to take it for granted. Forgetfulness and idolatry are
something I must attend to.
Islam says, "Give something of yourself away so that you may have meaning to
your life. Give of yourself to others."
Islam says we are all sisters and brothers. There is none higher, none lower;
there is a family of humanity. The pilgrimage to Mecca in my mind is a powerful image
of equality and humility. And because we are sisters and brothers, there must be justice
for all.
Again, original sin in Islam is a matter of forgetfulness. So often, we forget, I
forget, what is important, precious, and trustworthy. We make our idols and forget they
are our creations, our private gods. Therefore, in order not to forget, the Muslim repeats
five times a day in prayer, (and more likely hundreds of times a day), throughout the
day, "There is no God but God, and Muhammad is God's Prophet."
Which is to say, as a reminder to myself, I am not God sufficient unto myself
alone. I did not create the heavens and the earth. I cannot control all that there is. I
am a part of the sacred creation, a worthy participant and co-creator, and there is
wonder, mystery, and creativity far beyond my abilities to control.
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Our daily challenge is forgetfulness. Each day also offers abundant opportunities
- to seek balance, to offer gratitude, to live with humility and deep connection to Life, to
the sacred, to God - while honoring our sacred, ethical obligations.
It is the spirit of Canadian Muslim and journalist Irshad Manji, now a New Yorker,
that speaks of the heart of Islam that will make a world of difference. She asks, “When
did we stop thinking?” and affirms a vision of her working to give Muslims “a future to
live for rather than a past to die for.” (“Change Agents,” Charles Strohmer, Christian
Century, p. 26, 8/9/05)
In closing, I first return to several sayings of Muhammad that just as easily could
have come from the Buddha, Isaiah or Jesus - teachings our world still needs to hear
and to heed, still too often forgotten.
The ethical vision of Muhammad that I embrace counters homophobia and
heterosexism, such as, "No one is a true believer unless you desire for your neighbor
that which you desire for yourself."
"What actions are most excellent? To gladden the heart of a human being, to
feed the hungry, to help the afflicted, to lighten the sorrow of the sorrowful, and to
remove the wrongs of the injured."
“There can be no compulsion in religion.”
"When we die, our neighbors will not ask what goods we have left, but of us it
will be asked, 'What good have we done?'"
Finally, there is also its spirit so akin to our Transcendentalist heritage, and I
close with words of spiritual clarity from Rumi, a Sufi… a mystic Muslim with a sense of
oneness, of unity and communion with the divine. Our own Transcendentalist heritage
echoes this kind of path that Rumi offers:
“The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want. Don't go back to sleep. People are
going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch. The
door is round and open. Don't go back to sleep.”
Again, Rumi:
Why should I seek? I am the same as
God. God’s essence speaks through me.
I have been looking for myself!
Finally, with clarity… what we want in our spiritual lives: “Let the beauty of what
you love be what you do."
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