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Dear members of the list,
Assalamu Alaikum. I am forwarding to you the article
below with comments from a scholarly Muslimah and a Ph. D. in
anthropology for your perusal.
" This article contributes a certain perspective,
although by no means an original or profound one and not an unproblematic one,
to reflections on the controversy created by the Danish cartoons of the Prophet
Muhammad (pbuh). I therefore thought it might be of some interest to you. It
would seem that the Ulama's call for respectful treatment of all religions is an
opportune one, and might have perhaps come even sooner, instead of, once more,
in "re-action" to harm already done. It seems Muslim and especially our senior
Islamic scholars are not as pro-active as they could be, but too often wait to
re-act to initiatives taken by others. It is time to be on the offensive, rather
than on the defensive. I know that you, among others, are trying to do precisely
that, and trying to do so in a positive way--by carefully critiquing stereotypes
of Islam and unfair assessments of it and by facilitating discussions, education
(both of the West and of Muslims.) and creative research and thinking about
issues crucial for Muslims. Some of my Arab colleagues tell me that
mockery of the Jewish and Christian faith, whether in the form of cartoons or
newspaper columns or sermons or popular religious pamphlets and booklets are
widespread in the Arab world. Needless to say, virulent mockery of Islam is also
common among fundamentalist Christians in Western societies, especially the USA
where Christian evangelicalism has been on the rise in recent decades. Mutual
civil respect for all faiths and ideologies will become increasingly essential
as societies grow more multi-cultural and diverse than ever before, and as
Muslim minorities yearn for equal rights, respect, and citizenship in non-Muslim
majority societies. In other words, if Muslims as a minority wish to be treated
with equal respect and to have equal opportunities in the non-Western societies
they migrate to, Muslim states must be willing to extend the same courtesy to
non-Muslims living in those countries. It is precisely such lack of mutual
respect that, among other things, has culminated in the gravely injurious images
of the Prophet cartooned in the Danish daily. From that light, as the author of
this interesting article says, both Westerners and Muslims are responsible for
these unfortunate events, although clearly, in this particular case at least, it
was a Christian or rather atheism-inspired Danish Daily that took the offensive.
Clearly, globalization demands that each faith community be increasingly guarded
about what it says about other communities and their beliefs and sacred icons.
We live in an increasingly de-privatized world and the smallest action of hatred
or frustration or prejudice or bigotry increasingly tends to have greater
consequences and implications. This calls for a new evaluation of
etiquette."
Shah Abdul Hannan
From: Munir Zilanawala
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: March 23, 2006 11:48:03 AM EST To: HIS Kalam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [HIS Kalam] A sense of awe Prospect Magazine *Issue 120 / March 2006 A sense of awe Portrayals of the Prophet underestimate his grandeur, but they are not "banned" *Tim Winter Tim Winter is a lecturer in Islamic Studies at Cambridge University ------------------------------ One of Marc Chagall's bitterest memories was of an encounter with a devout great-uncle. On learning that there was an image-maker in the family, the old man had refused to shake his hand. To secular sensibilities this seems bizarre, another proof of the irrational bloody-mindedness of religion; yet in Jewish terms, the event signals an interesting clash of humanisms. Neither Chagall nor his elderly relative were fanatics. They were both concerned to honour the mystery of the human face, but in utterly irreconcilable ways. The second commandment is clear enough. "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in the heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth." Many orthodox Jews and Muslims, and some Christians, have taken this literally. When asked to explain, they will sometimes justify the ban on the grounds of the human tendency to fall into idolatry. But more often, such iconoclasm reflects a sense of awe and humility in the face of God's creative power. The founder of Islam taught that at the last judgement, God will summon the makers of images and command them to bring their productions to life. To make images, then, is to compete with God, and to underestimate the glory of his creation, particularly of human beings. For this kind of reason, images of Jesus did not exist in Christianity until the 4th century. When Islam appeared on the scene, it objected in the same spirit to portraying the Prophet, opposing the temptation to define the sacred through material means, and for fear of banishing the sense of awe with which, Islam believes, the miracle of humanity, and particularly the human face, should be approached. This was the theory. But it is also true that images of the Prophet were not unknown, and, in some Ottoman and central Asian traditions of miniature painting, were actually rather popular. More recently, depictions of the Prophet have mostly been passed over in silence. The 1994 publication by a Muslim magazine, The Wayfarer, of a portrait of the Prophet generated a brief frisson, but nothing like the current uproar. Last year, a French weekly published a similar portrait, which was met with indifference by the Muslim community. There is, in fact, no consistent tradition in classical Islamic law which specifies a penalty for Muslims or non-Muslims who portray the Prophet. In practice, it has been widely accepted that such images"while tragically underestimating the grandeur of their subject"can be endured as long as the intent is not clearly insulting. Blasphemy, however, is a different matter, and whether it takes the form of a book or an image, is deeply wounding to Muslim sensibilities. Even here, however, the classical Sharia contains grey areas. Medieval Islamic law, while forbidding blasphemy against the Prophet by Muslims, could make exceptions in the case of non-Muslims. For instance, Ibn Abi Zayd, one of the founders of classical Muslim law, wrote that it is not a criminal offence for a Christian or a Jew to blaspheme against the Prophet in a way that is mandated by his or her own beliefs. Whether the Jyllands-Posten editors were acting in accordance with such beliefs is a matter of debate. The fundamentalists, of course, refuse to conform to classical Islamic law, and read the scriptures on the basis of their own turbulent emotions. Yet mainstream and fundamentalist Muslims alike have the right to point to the inconsistency of the large western claims made on behalf of freedom of _expression, when measured against the reality of legal practice in Europe and America. In the Netherlands, for instance, "scornful" abuse of the Christian deity is an offence. German law prohibits disturbing the peace through the ridicule of religion. In Canada, "blasphemous libel" carries a maximum prison sentence of two years. In the US, the first amendment coexists uncertainly with the many state laws which defend Christianity. Finland, Italy, Spain and Britain all restrict blasphemy in one way or another, and when defendants appeal to the European court of human rights, the original judgement is often upheld. The law books typically defend specifically Christian sensibilities. There are exceptions: last year, for instance, an Australian court found against a Christian fundamentalist group which had misrepresented Muslim beliefs, and ordered it to place apologies in national newspapers. Yet there is an overall inequality which is felt as a desperate injustice in the ghettos, where the honour of the Prophet is the source of so much self-worth. Of course, the legitimate Muslim demands for equal treatment urgently need to combine with introspection. Saudi sermons that mock Hindu or Jewish beliefs are no less offensive than the Danish cartoons, a problem which the middle east has hardly begun to address. The turn that many Muslim countries have taken over the past two decades, reversing the 20th-century moves to aggiornamento, is towards the most religiously faithful approach to modernityâ€"and imposing the narrowest possible interpretation of the Koran. This has energised a furious xenophobia, and matters have not been helped by Palestine and Iraq. Both sides to the current dispute are at fault: Europe, for its manifest double standards, and many Muslims, for having rejected the higher aspects of their heritage in favour of an emotive and often brutal hatred of difference. A full reconciliation between Islam and the west, however, is not going to happen; neither is it in the interests of either that it should. The west, imposing its own sensibilities on the world through a totalising globalisation, can only be impoverished if there are no radically different voices, grounded in other certainties, to call it into question. And Muslims, like other religionists, will never be quite comfortable in a civilisation which is materialistic and profane. Their unpopularity is probably inevitable. ------------------------------ *************************************************************************** {Invite (mankind, O Muhammad ) to the Way of your Lord (i.e. Islam) with wisdom (i.e. with the Divine Inspiration and the Qur'an) and fair preaching, and argue with them in a way that is better. Truly, your Lord knows best who has gone astray from His Path, and He is the Best Aware of those who are guided.} (Holy Quran-16:125) {And who is better in speech than he who [says: "My Lord is Allah (believes in His Oneness)," and then stands straight (acts upon His Order), and] invites (men) to Allah's (Islamic Monotheism), and does righteous deeds, and says: "I am one of the Muslims."} (Holy Quran-41:33) The prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: "By Allah, if Allah guides one person by you, it is better for you than the best types of camels." [al-Bukhaaree, Muslim] The prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) also said, "Whoever calls to guidance will have a reward similar to the reward of the one who follows him, without the reward of either of them being lessened at all." [Muslim, Ahmad, Aboo Daawood, an-Nasaa'ee, at-Tirmidhee, Ibn Maajah] -------------------------------------------------------------------------- All views expressed herein belong to the individuals concerned and do not in any way reflect the official views of IslamCity unless sanctioned or approved otherwise. If your mailbox clogged with mails from IslamCity, you may wish to get a daily digest of emails by logging-on to http://www.yahoogroups.com to change your mail delivery settings or email the moderators at [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the title "change to daily digest". YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS
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