Islam

For years, after 9/11, some enlightened right-wing American pundits (in many ways similar to today’s Fox-Beck-Palin-Limbaugh fans and lovers), have offered a simplistic answer to the question:

“Why Do They Hate Us?”

And by “they,” they pretty much meant anti-US Arabs and Muslims lumped together with the 9/11 terrorists.

So what was the simplistic answer these genius pundits, and their like-minded friends, offered? Well, it was usually one of two brilliant assessments: “they hate us because of our freedoms” or “Islam!”

With the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaching, and the United States’ wonderful reaction to the uprising in Egypt, it would be wise for all of us, global citizens who believe in cooperation, to revisit such assessments, demolish them, and replace them with ones that are actually grounded in facts and reality, and that more Americans must learn about.

And we need to do it in light of statements like this from influential people high up in the US government, in this case, from Vice President Joe Biden himself.

Asked if he would characterize Mubarak as a dictator Biden responded: “Mubarak has been an ally of ours in a number of things. And he’s been very responsible on, relative to geopolitical interest in the region, the Middle East peace efforts; the actions Egypt has taken relative to normalizing relationship with – with Israel. … I would not refer to him as a dictator.”

Yup. Joe Biden refuses to refer to Mubarak as a dictator, and it’s not a surprise. His stance represents the overall and general position of the United States’ decades-long foreign policy towards the Arab world.

For years, America has supported many (but not all) oppressive and brutal Arab dictators, preferring to secure its regional geopolitical interests (and those of Israel’s of course) over the freedom and liberty of the Arab citizens it helps oppress.

In recent days, nothing symbolically captured this fact as powerfully as the numerous pictures spreading on the Internet of Egyptian demonstrators holding up tear gas canisters labeled with “Made in U.S.A.”

Such images provoke a real sense of outrage as they should.

That’s why they, the protesters - the overwhelming majority of whom are not members of the Muslim Brotherhood - dislike you, and in some cases, hate you dear America. That’s why they’re outraged, and it is this kind of outrage that fuels the widespread anti-US sentiments in the Arab and Muslim worlds, which then groups like Al-Qaeda and Islamists exploit for their own gains and destructive ideological goals.

Now, speaking of Al-Qaeda, let us be crystal clear about something important.

If starting tomorrow, the United States stopped supporting the Israeli occupation and brutal Arab dictators, withdrew from Iraq and Afghanistan and basically stopped interfering and causing problems in Muslim countries, we would still end up with very tiny, albeit dangerous globally scattered groups, of radical militant Muslim fanatics motivated primarily by their wicked theology, and who hate America for her freedoms and her values. However, we must recognize that they will have a much harder time recruiting Muslims and radicalizing them.

Still, such groups must be combated everywhere and mercilessly crushed, which brings us to some critical distinctions that we must not fail to make.

Anti-Americanism in the Arab and Muslim worlds is neither uniform nor of the same type as too many right-wing American pundits make it seem.

The kind espoused by violent jihadist groups is far, far from anything like the much milder version you would find espoused by most Arabs and Muslims, and which is primarily caused and aggravated by various injustices of US foreign policy. Not theological reasons.

These are the sort of people who enjoy consuming American pop culture - music, movies, brands, products, etc., and would love to study and maybe even live in the United States, but revile the American political establishment, just as many strongly leftist Americans themselves do. One actually doubts if such sentiments qualify to be labeled “anti-US.”

But then we have various Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and their form of anti-Americanism, which isn’t as strong as Al-Qaeda’s, but is nonetheless troublesome, and not just for the United States, but also for every Arab and Muslim throughout the world who believes in human rights, freedom and liberty, and democracy.

It’s these guys who make things tricky, and whom Tunisians, Egyptians and all democracy-supporting Arabs need to watch out for.

After all, look at what happened in Sudan after we had our own popular uprising against the military dictatorship of Nimeiri in 1985. Here’s an old video featuring the action:

The gains of the uprising were squandered. Merely a few years later, the Islamists took power in a coup and brought us to our miserable situation today.

The gains of the Tunisian people must not be squandered. Islamists must be encouraged to give up their theocractic tendencies and to participate in the democratic process, but more importantly to uphold democratic principles and human rights.

How that can happen is a task for Tunisia to figure out and work on, and for the military to hopefully enforce. They might want to use this video in their efforts.

As for Egypt, there seems to be a wide consensus that the Egyptian military has very low tolerance for the Muslim Brotherhood, which is good news.

Ultimately, it seems like the status-quo might be beginning to crumble. Moreover, the American people now have a unique opportunity to pressure their government to do the right thing and to stand on the side of Arabs demanding their rights.

And even if Tunisians and Egyptians still haven’t figured out exactly who’s going to lead them or how, it shouldn’t stop us from supporting them.

Post-communist Eastern Europe didn’t have everything figured out. Post-apartheid South Africa didn’t have everything figured out. And post-dictatorship Tunisia doesn’t have everything figured out either, but they’re all better off. And while the possibility of Tunisian Islamists resurfacing is quite a worrisome one, it shouldn’t scare us or stop us.

Whatever happens, we, global citizens and netizens, Arabs, Muslims, Americans, and people everywhere, East and West, who believe in human rights and democracy, need to work together towards goals that are in our common interests, and that serve a higher purpose regardless of how idealistic or impossible this might seem.

Whoever could have predicted the overthrow of an “impossible” dictator like Ben Ali?

Tunisians have made the seemingly impossible, possible, and in this age of social media and the 24/7 news cycle, we all got to see it, and as a result, have become inspired by it.

So again, let’s work together, and do what we can.

Lastly, allow me to leave you with these two tweets from @Gsquare86.

And of course, let us never forget Khaled Said.

To Freedom,
Drima

PS: If you enjoyed reading this article, and support its premise, please share it on Facebook, and Twitter, and follow my Twitter handle @SudaneseThinker

… she was being “punished under sharia, Islamic law, but there was a mistake in the way the punishment was carried out.”

Yup. Those were the words of Khartoum state Governor, Abder Rahman al-Khidir, of the ruling National Congress Party. They constituted his reaction to the furious Sudanese reactions to this lovely video. (Warning: some of you will find this quite disturbing).

Here’s some background:

This week a YouTube video surfaced showing an unidentified woman in a voluminous cloak on her knees screaming and pleading in agony and pain with blue-uniformed policemen who took turns whipping her across the head and feet.

The policemen are shown to be laughing as the woman received the punishment and they are heard saying that she is sentenced to 50 lashes.

The video stirred widespread outcry among Sudanese around the world and even some pro-government columnists wrote critically of the incident.

“The investigation was started immediately after the images of the young woman, being punished under Articles 154 and 155 of the 1991 Sudanese penal code, appeared on the Internet,” the judiciary said in a statement.

The statement said the investigation would look into whether the punishment was carried out improperly.

The investigation would look into whether the punishment was carried out improperly? Are you kidding me? That’s a serious load of bullshit. The only “investigation” anyone needs to conduct to know if this punishment was carried out improperly is to simply watch the damn video.

You see dear ladies and gentlemen, if you’re wondering what the proper way to implement this punishment is, then let me briefly break it down for you according to the wide-spread traditionalist interpretation of Islam, and without getting too technical.

• Firstly, there obviously needs to be a fair trial.
• Secondly, the scourger must not at any point raise his hand above his shoulder when he flogs.
• And thirdly, the scourger is required to hold a copy of the Koran under the armpit of his striking arm while carrying out the sentence, to discourage him from whipping too hard and potentially dropping the holy book on the ground.

Now, not only where there two men whipping the poor girl at the same time, and in the midst of other people’s humiliating laughter, but they also had no Korans held under their armpits. And my, oh my, if only they held them. If only there was just one man flogging her softly. Gosh, that would have made the situation so much better, right? It would have made it a lot less cruel, right? It would have made the punishment proper and less humiliating, right?

Wrong.

And that’s precisely the thing that upset me the most and boiled my blood when I read too many of the reactions of angry Sudanese to this appalling video, reactions and opinions that are very similar to the one voiced by Khartoum’s Governor.

What we should be outraged about is not how this punishment should have been applied “properly,” but instead, we should be outraged that such punishments continue to exist at all. Flogging should be abolished completely, and we should stop shying away from criticizing troubling aspects of all organized religions.

Yes, there are things about Sharia—dietary laws, the amount of money you should pay for charity, rules that eliminate the practice of usury—that in many ways are actually good and beneficial when we willingly apply them in our lifestyles, and they are not imposed on us.

However, deeply troubling punishments such as stonings, beheadings, and lashings are not good, not humane, and not fit for modern times, and we need to have a frank conversation about that. But when is it going to happen on a large scale? When? If anything, that conversation needs to happen now. The video above should trigger it, but it looks like it hasn’t, at least not adequately… at least not very publicly.

And some Sudanese Muslim friends wonder why I support a secular (not secularist) state. Maybe it’s time they read Abdullahi An-Na’im’s book Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Shari’a. Maybe it’s time they delved into Tariq Ramadan’s and Reza Aslan’s writings. Maybe it’s time they began listening to Muslim scholars like Rashied Omar.

Maybe it’s time they stopped being fooled by the Islamist notion that Sharia is sacred and hence automatically beyond criticism. Maybe they should repeatedly watch that video of that poor girl getting whipped, ehm, not so “properly,” and agonizing in pain. Maybe only then, they’ll reconsider and rethink their stance.

On a related note, Lubna was surely lucky to get away with a fine for the horrible evil crime of wearing trousers. Oh, and let’s not forget Ms. Gibbons. I bet those 40 lashes would have hurt her like hell.

Ah, don’t you just love this? I surely do.

Have a wonderful day everyone.

Some of you might remember my (in)famous post, “The Reboot,” which officially marked the relaunch of this blog with a new design, and its self-proclaimed heretical direction. The conclusions I reached in that post are still very much a part of me, but they no longer really describe what I think or how I feel, which I guess is expected given how much I’ve grown since then.

I mean, damn, that thing was published nearly two years ago. Yeah, I know, it’s been two freaking years. Ah, how time flies, and how minds evolve.

“Transcend and include,” as philosopher Ken Wilber likes to say.

Here’s the interesting thing though. I don’t think I would have been able to notice that change if it weren’t for the archive of this blog, which I’ve contemplated completely deleting on a few occasions. Thing is, while it’s sometimes nice to look back, reflect, and think about the journey you’ve been on, at times, you’d rather not do that. You’d rather not be reminded of who you were. You’d rather avoid confronting your former self, but it’s a small price to pay for what you gain in return.

No matter what, look back or not, what you’ve done, and where you’ve been play a significant role in who you become. And even if going where you’ve gone before wasn’t a choice that you made, your reaction to what you’ve faced was.

If you get what I mean, good. If you don’t, then that’s fine. I’m not really trying to convey my thoughts clearly to a specific audience here. I’m just simply thinking aloud. I miss doing that. I miss writing this way. I miss the feeling that I had when I first began blogging in 2006, but even that is okay. Even that is a small price to pay in return for what I’ve gained in the last two years, and especially in 2010.

I used to view the world in black-and-white. Eventually, that got replaced with white-and-black, which I found to be lacking still. The key at at the end of the day I realize is nuance, and that comes with the ability to contextualize, which is what I’m doing a lot more of these days.

Better still, Drima is now also officially on his way to getting a Master’s in Islamic Philosophy, and has begun working on a thesis focused on the impact of new media on Islamic theology.

Fun.

This is absolutely hilarious and brilliant.

And this one is dedicated to the Pope.

Yay to an evidential worldview.

Now, speaking of social media and what it would have been like if Facebook existed years ago, I highly encourage you to check out this excellent critique by Sami Ben Gharbia entitled “The Internet Freedom Fallacy and the Arab Digital activism.” If you’re a new media enthusiast or you’ve got a strong interest in political blogging, it’s a must-read.

Talk soon.

Cheers.

Abdullahi An-Na’im and the Dalai Lama, two mystics, make an interesting appearance together that I enjoyed watching.

While a lot of what An-Na’im says may seem like the “la la land, let’s get together and sing kumbaya” sort of message, I do believe it has its important place in the grand scheme of things, but it’s not so simple or straight forward as he makes it seem.

No. I’m not dead. Yet. Although this blog sort of has been for the last six weeks. I’ve been busy traveling, and I finally experienced snow for the very first time in my life. Ever. Heck, I even lost my snowboarding virginity up in Northern California, at Olympic Valley, nearby Lake Tahoe.

Fun.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to build that snowman I’ve been wishing to build since childhood.

Next time.

Also, my brother recently got married. The wedding celebration in Khartoum has now been over for a while. Phew, please don’t ask me about the ridiculous summer heat.

Blogging to resume shortly. Meanwhile, check out this cool personality test The LA Times is offering. I’m a Live Wire, and I must say, unlike many of those dumb personality quizzes you find online, this one is actually pretty accurate. It’s sooo me.

Here are the result details.

You’re a Live Wire

You like to be stimulated emotionally and intellectually. It’s all about striking the right balance! You have quite traditional values and believe in working hard to achieve your goals. And, when the work day is over, it’s time to kick back, relax and enjoy your downtime, hanging with friends, relaxing with the kids or enjoying one of your favorite interests, whether that’s on the sports pitch, at the mall or in a theater… Committed and loyal, family is really important to you. You’re successful and empowered by the opportunity you have to live the life that you want. You value your health and financial security and enjoy being able to create a happy home.

You appreciate intelligent conversation and enjoy the opportunity to express yourself and share your views with your friends and family. You’re a bit of a bookworm at heart. You probably have a good pile of books by the bed and maybe even a few on-the-go at once! Success is a real enabler for you. You reap the benefits by enjoying some really magical vacations that broaden your horizons and leave you feeling refreshed and invigorated.

Take the test here, and tell me what you get.

Also, if you haven’t taken time to read this article before on the esoteric Vs exoteric aspects of religion, please do. If you enjoyed my posts on faith and reason, you’ll like this article.

… as prevalent as genuine mysticism is in all these traditions, many people in today’s world go their entire lives without ever hearing about these aspects of religious experience.

… They often do not even recognize the rich legacy of esoteric spirituality that exists in their own tradition, hiding right in plain sight—simply because we are too close to our own cultural preconceptions, too burnt out on the mythic dogma of our childhood, and too alone in the dark without anyone pointing us in the right direction.

In fact, once we have tasted the esoteric waters in another spiritual tradition, we usually intuit that this very same esoteric core is shared by all religions, that it is the cornerstone of spiritual experience for every mystic in history (though expressed very differently from culture to culture).

… The central problem of religion today is not the unavailability of esoteric teachings—they are just as accessible today as they have ever been, perhaps even more so—but that our exoteric religions have become damaged, painfully decoupled from history’s ceaseless march toward more novelty and more complexity. Our religions are fully capable of keeping pace with our progress, growing from magic forms of religion to mythic forms, rational forms, pluralistic forms, integral forms, and beyond. And the esoteric teachings and practices are alive in all these forms, though will certainly be interpreted very differently at each level

Me loves and agrees! I think what the article discusses can easily be applied to Islam as well. In fact, I have applied it, and it has helped me see Islam in a new unique light which in turn enabled me to reconcile many previously troubling things in my head.

Yay to integral theory and epistemology. And yay to Ken Wilber. Reading his work, especially his book The Marriage of Sense and Soul, has been super life-changing and very healing.

More later.

Talk soon!

- Drima

Good discussion you should watch to get an idea on what’s happening. If there’s anything that I find really disturbing, it is the insistence of the two featured Northerners on applying Sharia law. They don’t even seem to have a clue about what democracy really means.

Democracy isn’t just “the rule of the majority.” It is the rule of the majority without infringing on the rights of the minority. One of  these rights is religious freedom.

Lovely.

Gosh, makes me so hopeful about this country’s future.

These guys ought to read Abdullahi An-Na’im’s book Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Sharia.

Not too long ago, I published a post entitled Morality Does Not Come from Holy Books. It Comes from Us. The post drew lots of interesting comments, some of which I think adequately challenged, not my argument itself, but a big troublesome consequence it leads to that I failed to adequately address: moral relativism.

I am not a fan of post-modernism’s relativism. Morality can be and indeed is objective. Just because there are moral issues that are complex, does not mean there is no objective difference between right and wrong.

How do we achieve such objectivity if morality does not come from holy books? Well, for a start, religion’s esoteric aspects and mysticism have a lot to teach us about human psychological well-being. On top of that, we have the insights offered by perenial philosohpy. Both have a great deal to teach us.

But today though, we have Sam Harris discussing his approach to this issue in a brilliant TED Talk that probably made many politically-correct liberals in the audience cringe uncomfortably, thanks to their postmodernist leanings.

Be sure to watch it.

While Sam makes one hell of a compelling argument, I do disdain his portrayal of burka-wearing women and the Taliban’s nuttiness in a way that attempts to make them seem representative of Muslims. There was also no effort on his part to clarify that the practice of honor killings is mostly cultural, and has no basis in virtually all Islamic interpretations, even the most traditionalist.

Dear Sam, I know you hate religion, but applying some nuance and taking into account differences in interpretation and how the faithful practice their faiths, will make more in your audience more receptive to your ideas.

Other than that, awesome stimulating talk. Thumbs up.

Related:

• Defining Open-Mindedness: A Story About a 14 Year Old Kid and the Torture of the Grave
• 7 Categories of Faith, Explained
• The Ultimate Proof of How Patriarchal Muslim Societies Oppress Women

Here’s a quote I read recently that I absolutely fell in love with. It’s from the book In the Mystic Footsteps of Saints, by the Naqshbandi Sufi, Shaykh Nazim Adil Al-Haqqani.

“Don’t worry about bringing people “in line” but rather concern yourself with making sure that your own practices are becoming a means for attaining inner peace and are not becoming an end in themselves. If your practice brings you inner peace and wisdom others will emulate those practices voluntarily.”

Where can you find Shaykhs who are well-known around the world, with this kind of thinking, nowadays? Answer? Sadly, not many. Or maybe I just haven’t come across them yet.

Shaykh Nazim is a breath of fresh air. I’m glad I discovered him and his beautiful insights. Yay to Sufi mystics who speak the language of love.

Edge recently asked some of the world’s leading scientists, authors and thinkers the following question: “How has the internet changed the way you think?”

One of my favorite answers came from the one and only, Kevin Kelly. And yes, I’m a huge fan of Kevin Kelly’s work. Here’s what he has to say in response to the question.

… my knowledge is now more fragile. For every accepted piece of knowledge I find, there is within easy reach someone who challenges the fact. Every fact has its anti-fact. The Internet’s extreme hyperlinking highlights those anti-facts as brightly as the facts. Some anti-facts are silly, some borderline, and some valid. You can’t rely on experts to sort them out because for every expert there is an equal and countervailing anti-expert. Thus anything I learn is subject to erosion by these ubiquitous anti-factors.

I can so relate to this. Think about the above and then just imagine the impact the web will have on religion in the long-term.

… My certainty about anything has decreased. Rather than importing authority, I am reduced to creating my own certainty — not just about things I care about — but about anything I touch, including areas about which I can’t possibly have any direct knowledge . That means that in general I assume more and more that what I know is wrong. We might consider this state perfect for science but it also means that I am more likely to have my mind changed for incorrect reasons. Nonetheless, the embrace of uncertainty is one way my thinking has changed.

Uncertainty is a kind of liquidity. I think my thinking has become more liquid. It is less fixed, as text in a book might be, and more fluid, as say text in Wikipedia might be. My opinions shift more. My interests rise and fall more quickly. I am less interested in Truth, with a capital T, and more interested in truths, plural. I feel the subjective has an important role in assembling the objective from many data points. The incremental plodding progress of imperfect science seems the only way to know anything.

Brilliant. Read the rest here.

I’m in love with the fact that “truth” is no longer what the guy sitting on the throne and a bunch of bearded men want it to be. Like inter-continental satellite television before it, the internet is now causing disturbances in the epistemologies of Muslim countries worldwide.

But, unlike the push medium of conventional media, the internet is a pull medium and the epistemic consequences of this massive property are as fascinating as they are exciting.

Me loves.

One the negative side, say hello to postmodernism on steroids!

Solution? What Carter Phipps said:

Rehabilitating confidence in truth and reason will undoubtedly be one of the tasks of the twenty-first century. As a culture, we must begin to recognize that while truth and objectivity may not be absolutes that exist perfectly free of time and history, neither are they hopelessly embedded in personal perspectives. Simply because truth is always subject to revision does not and could never mean that all truth claims deserve equal space at the table of cultural discourse. Let’s not put reason and science on the pedestal of perfection, but let’s also not confuse leaps of faith with rational inquiry. If the twenty-first century is being defined by an ongoing clash of traditional, modern, and postmodern worldviews both in individuals and in societies around the world, then escaping that clash with minimal harm and maximal development will mean finding a fourth way. It will mean learning to steer our ship of culture away from the overconfident certainties of theology and science but also away from the overwrought uncertainties of contemporary philosophy.

Right on.

Bearded lunatic on the right asks “are we wrong?”

Wisey beard on the left replies “absolutely not, they criticized us first.”

O

ur quote of the day comes from Michael Knight, author of the infamous book, The Taqwacores.

When he was 17, Michael Knight left his mother’s home in Rochester to study Islam at a Pakistani madrassa. It was his first act of rebellion – against his abusive, schizophrenic, white-supremacist father. Years later, burned out on the demands of religious dogma, Mike rebelled once more – by penning a Muslim Punk manifesto called The Taqwacores. His work of fiction struck a chord with young Muslims around the world and before long, real-life Taqwacore bands were creating a scene. This film follows Michael and his band of Muslim punks as they journey across the U.S. and Pakistan, transforming their worlds, their religion and themselves through the spirit of Taqwacore.

The quote? Well, it comes from this awesome interview he gave about his new film.

“I realized that I’d rather be inside the mosque urinating out than to be outside the mosque urinating in.” - Mike Knight

LOL, hilarious!

Watch the whole interview here:

And here’s the film’s trailer:

N

o, this isn’t some New Age pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo. No I haven’t been converted into a believer in The Law of Attraction after watching that hit film, The Secret. And no, I don’t buy into everything New Age guru, Deepak Chopra says, although he does have many cool and pretty valid ideas.

I’m talking about something very different here - how science and religion connect together at their deepest level.

Neil Tyson says it better in this video.

What Happened Before the Beginning?

Here’s something that pretty much sums up what was said in the video.

Read it all, every word of it.

“What happened before the beginning?”

Astrophysicists have no idea. Or, rather, our most creative ideas have little or no grounding in experimental science. Yet certain type of religious person tends to assert, with a tinge of smugness, that something must have started it all: a force greater than all others, a source from which everything issues. A prime-mover. In the mind of such a person, that something is, of course, God.

But what if the universe was always there, in a state or condition we have yet to identify–a multiverse, for instance? Or what if the universe, like its particles, just popped into existence from nothing?

Such replies usually satisfy nobody. Nonetheless, they remind us that ignorance is the natural state of mind for a research scientist on the ever-shifting frontier. People who believe they are ignorant of nothing have neither looked for, nor stumbled upon, the boundary between what is known and unknown in the cosmos. And therein lies a fascinating dichotomy. “The universe always was” goes unrecognized as a legitimate answer to “What was around before the beginning?” But for many religious people, the answer “God always was” is the obvious and pleasing answer to “What was around before God?”

No matter who you are, engaging in the quest to discover where and how things began tends to induce emotional fervor–as if knowing the beginning bestows upon you some form of fellowship with, or perhaps governance over, all that comes later. So what is true for life itself is no less true for the universe: knowing where you came from is no less important than knowing where you are going. ~ Neil Tyson

Right on Neil.

And that ladies and gentlemen, is where science and religion connect - at their deepest questions.

So, whether you’re an atheist, pantheist, theist, mystic or just plain agnostic, next time somebody starts going on a rant about how it all began, keep in mind that to a certain extent, the two of you are merely engaging in a game of semantics.

At the deepest level, “The universe always was” Vs “God always was” aren’t such different answers after all.

Unless of course, you take the discussion to a higher level and begin discussing the qualities and properties of those two entities.

Either way, it’s something I personally find pretty damn fascinating and I love Neil’s approach to the issue.

Cool video from a person who’s ideas have had a massive impact on my journey and intellectual development.