The Power of Popular Culture Chapter 10 Part # 6 Sufi Saints, Sufi Sinners, and Spiritual Alternatives Fallen Star from the Sufi Firmament
Also highly controversial is Reza Aslan, the best selling author of Zealot, a book that gave him the opportunity to gain recognition as a serious scholar of Christian origins. Instead, to prove his superficiality, Aslan has launched into a number of projects that expose his sensationalist values and of his misunderstanding of the basics of Christianity and Islam. But, if you want my opinion, Sufism can do this to you easily enough. The view that "all religions are one" generates false consciousness in not looking for actual distinctions that are important in different faiths, then not seeing what is not looked for, and finally interpreting what one does find as the only plausible view despite the fact that it fails to take into account what even the most pedestrian believer knows from common sense, that competing faiths compete because the differences between them really matter. How else can anyone interpret Aslan's comment reported in the Washington Post, "It’s not [that] I think Islam is correct and Christianity is incorrect. It's that all religions are nothing more than a language made up of symbols and metaphors to help an individual explain faith." It is really hard to take that kind of pronouncement seriously. After all, Christianity and Islam make mutually exclusive claims, viz., Jesus died on the cross vs Jesus did not die on the cross, people of other faiths should be treated with respect vs. people of other faiths should be killed if they don't convert to Islam, and so forth. These views, and there are a large number of discrepancies, simply cannot be reconciled. . What planet does Reza Aslan live on? Maybe his outlook makes a certain amount of sense in a context of linguistics or semiotics but it is unrelated to the real world. That is not how religious people think nor how non-religious people think about religion. The Wikipedia article about Aslan explains things quite well: "Aslan refers to Al Qaeda's _jihad_ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jihad) against the west as "a cosmic war", distinct from holy war, in which rival religious groups are engaged in an earthly battle for material goals. "A cosmic war is like a ritual drama in which participants act out on earth a battle they believe is actually taking place in the heavens." American rhetoric of "war on terrorism", Aslan says, is "cosmic dualism" to Al Qaeda's jihad." Is any of this supposed to make sense outside of the rarified atmosphere of elite graduate schools of religion that are light years removed from any kind of real world faith of actual religious believers? I don't think so. . That is, Aslan has credentials that are as impressive as anything gets -Santa Clara University, Harvard Divinity School, UC Santa Barbara- but this mostly reflects the collapse of standards of scholarship at such institutions during their takeover by the political Left during the past 25 years or so. Hence, as one example, the Harvard Divinity Bulletin, previously an exemplar of rigorous scholarship, has now become almost a laughing stock of deconstructionist jargon, or some kind of jargon, reflecting nothing so much as the agenda of that portion of the Left that has some kind of interest in religion, perhaps speaking of wannabe clergy for the Unitarian Church. As the article continues: "Aslan draws a distinction between Islamism and Jihadism. _Islamists_ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamists) have legitimate goals and can be negotiated with, unlike _Jihadists_ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jihadists) , who dream of an idealized past of a _pan-Islamic_ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Islamism) , borderless "religious communalism." Apparently this is supposed to be some sort of joke. Who are these Muslim moderates? Do they exist anyplace outside of Aslan's imagination? True, there are small minorities in various Muslim countries, from Egypt to the United Arab Emirates, from Tunisia to Indonesia, but they are dwarfed everywhere and seldom are anything but a non-factor in politics. For all practical purposes there are no "moderate Islamist parties," the erstwhile groups that Aslan pins all his hopes on. It has been a long slide down from the time in 2013 when Aslan was catapulted to fame because of a Fox News interview show when _Lauren Green_ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauren_Green) , the less-then-astute religion 'expert' at the network, criticized Reza for his credentials (which can hardly be argued with) rather than the substance of his book, Zealot, which she did not seem to understand except maybe at a religious studies beginners level. Miss Green also was critical of the fact that Aslan, a Muslim, would write a book about Jesus, a question that makes very poor sense on principle but especially since the author had been a Christian for about a decade before converting to Islam. In any case, there have been a number of books by Muslims over the years about Christ or Christianity and the reverse is also true, with many Christians writing about Muhammad and Islam or, for that matter, about Buddha and Buddhism or about Krishna and Hinduism. And why not? Be that as it may, the 10 minute video from Fox TV went viral and in a few days Reza Aslan became the best known religion writer on the planet next to Dan Brown. About the book, what upset many people was Reza's portrayal of Jesus as a 'failed Muhammad.' The thesis was that Christ was crucified for leading an unsuccessful revolt against the Romans. He had big plans for Judea after the Romans were defeated, namely establishment of a "Kingdom of Heaven." Actually there is a great deal of truth to this hypothesis but the story is far more complicated than Aslan's book suggests, working as it does from a "failed Muhammad" model. For one thing, as John Dominic Crossan points out, it makes far more sense to think of Jesus as having first tried absolute pacifism -and only when that failed did he begin to revise his plans. Crossan makes special note of the so-called "standards incident" of roughly 27 or 28 AD, in the early period of the reign of Pontius Pilate. See Crossan's 1992 book, The Historical Jesus. For an online discussion that is easy to access see "Nonviolent Resistance of the Jews to Roman Occupation in Israel 26-41 C.E." found at the Beki.org website, consisting of historical documents relevant to Biblical history provided by, we might say, a 'synagogue of scholars.' What this is all about was a protest demonstration by a large crowd of Jews upon learning that Roman standards, aka ensigns, had been set up in the Temple in Jerusalem. Josephus provided two graphic accounts of the incident when, after marching to Pilate's residence in Caesarea, then going on a hunger strike that reputedly lasted five days, the Procurator tried to intimidate the Jews by having his soldiers unsheathe their swords, threatening to kill them all. Upon which the Jews bared their throats and said that they would prefer death to the desecration of their Temple. At that, Pilate backed down and agreed to remove the standards. The point is that any theory of a militant Jesus who organized a revolt necessarily needs to account for this dramatic episode in Jewish history on the eve of Jesus' ministry, an example that cannot have been unknown to him. Why wouldn't he have emulated this approach? It worked and it was moral. As well, the Gospels are as clear as anyone might like to the effect that Jesus wanted a peaceful resolution of disputes between the people of Roman Palestine and the Romans. Surely the Sermon on the Mount means something. However, there is a good deal of evidence to the effect that things did not stay that way. It is altogether within reason to think that Jesus had made plans to lead a real world uprising against Rome. This remains to be seen, there is no question about that, either, but the possibility should be taken seriously. Which Reza Aslan did. Even if he hopelessly botched the job. The evidence deserves review. First of all there are references to Jesus' disciples being armed -with swords. The most famous passage in the Gospels concerns Matthew 26: 51-52 where one of the disciples cuts off the ear of a servant of the High Priest. The other well known passage occurs in Luke 22: 36 where Jesus says to his followers, "if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.” There is no question that at least some of the disciples were armed. The question is: For what purpose? We can surmise that the death of John the Baptist was a turning point, that before then Jesus was essentially a pacifist but that after the Baptist's beheading things changed. Possibly -maybe probably- all of the talk about a future Kingdom of Heaven was really about a kingdom based on concepts of heaven but that was intended to take form on Earth. There are more "clues" but let us focus on the pericope that is found in Matthew 12: 41-42, with a parallel in Luke. At the Advent with Jesus will be the "men of Nineveh" and the Queen of the South. How much of a stretch is it to suppose that what this is really all about is a revolution in waiting? At a minimum we know that this material is very old, it occurs in the "Q" source, so that brings us as far back as we can get to the original faith of Christ. There is the consideration that a successful revolt against Rome would require outside help. Successful revolutions may need assistance from another military power. We know this from the example of the American Revolution but other examples include Panama, which received support from America. The Dutch in the 16th century received support from various German states as well as from Huguenot volunteers from France, and, to go back in history, the rise of the Parthian Empire was expedited by help from both Egypt and the breakaway Bactrian state which, until then, had been allied with the Seleucids who ruled Iran and environs. Not all successful revolutions require outside assistance but it can make a great difference. If there was to be a successful uprising against Rome on the part of the Jews and others in their camp, what may well have happened was that Jesus' inner circle looked to other nations for help. For which there was obvious precedent. In 40 BC the Parthians invaded Judea and held it for about two years before the Romans could regroup and take it back. There was also the war against Rome by the Cleopatra and the Egyptians and renegade Romans under Mark Anthony that lasted from 33 BC until 30 BC. Certainly Jesus would have known about this, also. Which brings us to Matthew 12. What could not be said in the Gospels since Roman officials would be able to read them seen enough, were any references to military intervention on behalf of the Jews of Judea on the part of traditional enemies of the Empire. The principle also applied to the author of Revelation, decades later, who used Babylon as a metaphor for the corruption of Rome. In the case of Matthew, what makes sense is that verses 41-42 are meant both to be taken at face value and as code. If this is true -this is an hypothesis, not established fact- then men of Assyria stands for the Parthians and "Queen of the South," which was an alternative way to refer to Cleopatra, refers to the Egyptians, or some Egyptians, those eager to throw off Roman rule. Without going into details of research of mine dating to ca. 1990, the primary meaning is that the Parthians would return in force in the near future to liberate Judea from the Romans and would receive help from Egyptians. The Jews, under leadership of Jesus, would create a new kingdom, in anticipation of the policy once enforced under Cyrus the Great, identified in Isaiah 44 and 45 as a "messiah" for the Hebrew people and people of "all nations." This is all about creating a "house of prayer for all nations," in which, as chapter 66 tells us, people of all races and ethnicities shall worship together. This is not what Muhammad was all about, someone who insisted on Arab supremacy, insisted on treating the religions of most other people as deserving destruction, and who ruled as a despot. What Jesus seems to have had in mind was a theocracy modeled on the tolerant policies of Cyrus and the Persians. Hence all the passages in the New Testament that say as much, such as the "many mansions" of John 14, and hence various Zoroastrian allusions like reference to the Magi. What went wrong? After the cleansing of the Temple when Jesus used physical force to remove the money changers, the stage may have been set for a popular uprising only to see everything crash down when he was betrayed by Judas Iscariot. This is uncertain. And the possibility would still exist that Christ may have had hopes that the Romans would stand down as had the soldiers in 27 BC or thereabouts at Pilate's orders. Regardless, he was arrested on charges of sedition from which there was no chance of exoneration and was subsequently put to death. Had there been plans by the Parthians for a co-ordinated military incursion, this news would have ended that venture before it began. There is much more to say, but this scenario is one -I think- real possibility. What is missing is hard evidence that the Parthians had any hopes for a new invasion of Roman Palestine; the historical record for Iran in this era is fragmentary and features many unanswered questions. I have looked on many occasions with no results that mean very much. Still, one never knows..... But Jesus as a sort of classical era 'George Washington' has a certain appeal and has various qualities to recommend it. In any case, this is a far cry from Reza Aslan's Jesus-as-wannabe-Muhammad, a view that the reader may also find untenable. Aslan not only pursued a not very well conceived thesis about Jesus, but his efforts to popularize Comparative Religion have misfired badly in the years since his book was a best seller. What has done the most damage to Aslan's reputation was his indulgence in cannibalism on a CNN show he created for the network. Several articles have been highly critical of Reza including: * "CNN’s Reza Aslan Sparks Outrage After Eating Human Brain in New Show: It Tastes Like ‘Charcoal’, by Char Adams on March 9, 2017, * "Reza Aslan and the ‘pettiness of academia’" by Andrew Henry on April 14, for Religion News Service, * "Reza Aslan and the Risks of Making Religion Relatable," by Sigal Samuel for The Atlantic magazine, dated March 12, 2017, and * "The Contradictions of Reza Aslan's Believer,' " by Elias Muhanna for April 9, 2017, in The New Yorker. This concerns a TV travelogue-format program that looks at a variety of religions of the world. The series is titled: Believer. It is a documentary that features Reza Aslan as he visits with people who are members of various religious groups. It follows a format in which Aslan looks at some extreme form of a religion in one show, then follows up with a visit to a more orthodox group of the same religion. This is supposed to "prove" Reza's thesis that what ails religions are their extremes because their orthodox forms are all for the good, or mostly all for the good. What has proven most controversial so far has been Aslan's experience as a guest of a Hindu Aghorist sect that valorizes almost anything that other people detest, such as feces or eating human flesh. It was during this show that Aslan partook of roast cadaver brain, a la carte. Reaction from normative Hindus has been fairly predictable. They have been aghast. They take a rather dim view of the Aghorists, comparable to how Christians react to sick parodies of their religion. One Hindu called Aslan's treatment of his religion as “shock religion porn,” and another said that what this does is contribute to reaction against wider Hindu religion through guilt by association. U.S. Representative Tulsi Gabbard, the first _Hindu member of Congress_ (http://people.com/politics/tulsi-gabbard-u-s-rep-weds-in-hawaii-in-vedic-hindu- ceremony/) , has criticized Aslan severely, as has Shalabh Kumar, a Hindu and advisor to Donald Trump about religion. What this approach also does, -and seems designed to do- is to create a smokescreen that obscures the criminal behavior of Muslim jihadists and other orthodox Muslims who practice female genital mutilation, or who take part in honor killings, or men who marry 9 year old girls, or men who beat up their wives, and other pathological behaviors. In effect Reza is saying: You think Islam is bad, what about these obnoxious Hindus, or those disgusting Jews, or those bigoted Christians? This approach is also called "false equivalence." Are there a small number of Hindu lunatics? Are there a hundred Christians in Idaho who do really stupid things? Is there a hyper-orthodox Jewish sect in Israel whose members belong in the looney bin? Sure, you can find examples of demented religious extremists if you so desire. But how typical are they of the faiths they misrepresent? There are somewhere around 900 million Hindus in the world, possibly close to 1 billion. How many are Aghorists? Maybe one thousand. That is 1/10th of 1%. But how many Muslim extremists are there? Maybe "only" a limited percentage of the overall Muslim population but they draw support -depending on the country- of from 15% or so to a third or half the population, those who favor what the extremists do. Plus, if you add the Hadiths to the Koran, a portrait of Muhammad emerges that is very much like today's "average" Muslim extremist, a member of the Islamic State or Al Qaeda or Boko Haram or etc.. In so many words we are discussing somewhere around 250 million or even 350 million Muslim crazies in the world. Maybe or maybe not, Reza Aslan will portray a Muslim extremist group on his show. He is as much aware of the consequences as anyone else. He might receive death threats or other forms of intimidation; Islam is a religion of intimidation. Or he might get killed, like Theo Van Gogh or the editors of Charlie Hebdo. But let us suppose he does release a show about Muslim extremists. Then he could claim that he has been fair, balanced, and objective. This is the equation he would like you to believe: 1 tiny Hindu extremist group + 1 tiny group of Christian wackos + 1 tiny group of Buddhist idiots + 1 tiny group of lunatic Taoists outnumber 250 million Muslim criminals or de facto criminals. After all, his show would have shown 21 groups of religious oddballs and they outnumber the one Muslim group portrayed 20: 1. In the topsy-turvy world of Reza Aslan, facts tend to be whatever fictions he has a preference for at the moment. Such as, for example, his wild claim that "Islamophobia" is the creation of a small coterie of anti-Muslim paranoids consisting of Pamela Geller, Daniel Pipes, Robert Spencer, and Frank Gaffney, although he allows for a few other eccentrics. Needless to say, this charge has angered these four souls, not least because Geller can't stand Pipes and Pipes returns the favor. But, never mind, these are the culprits responsible for anti-Muslim feelings in America. Not the 9/11 carnage, not the Ft. Hood shootings, not the massacre in Orlando, not the slaughter in Nice, France, nor the terrorist attacks in London at various times. For Aslan, the whole problem has been caused by four devious people. Pamela Geller wrote about this in the Geller Report on March 12, 2017, citing comments by Robert Spencer. Here is the rejoinder to Aslan: "His claim that Geller, Gaffney, Pipes and [Spencer] are actually responsible for any suspicion Americans have of Islam or Muslims is also self-contradictory: on the one hand [Spencer is] a “moron” and Gaffney is a “wackjob,” and all of us are “fringe figures,” yet somehow we have managed to amass enough nefarious power to make “Islamophobia” enough of a serious concern that he has to run around the country giving talks about it. Meanwhile, speaking of “morons,” Aslan has made the _ridiculous claim_ (http://www.salon.com/2014/04/20/you_want_people_like_that_to_hate_you_reza_as lan_on_glenn_beck_that_fox_news_interview_and_who_gets_to_speak_for_jesus/) that the idea of resurrection “simply doesn’t exist in Judaism,” despite _numerous passages to the contrary in the Hebrew Scriptures._ (http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/04/reza-aslan-the-idea-of-resurrection-absolutely-has-no- basis-in-five-thousand-years-of-jewish-history-scripture-or-thought) He has also referred to “the reincarnation, which Christianity talks about” — although he _later claimed that one was a “typo.”_ (http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/12/islamic-supremacist-reza-aslan-claims-his-statement-that-christianity-tea ches-reincarnation-just-a-t) [ Indeed, since Christian teachings reject any notion of reincarnation as a false concept]. In yet another howler he later insisted was a “typo,” _he claimed_ (http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/03/reza-aslan-biblical-story-of-noah-barely-four-verses-long) that the Biblical story of Noah was barely four verses long — which he then corrected to forty, but that was wrong again, as it is 89 verses long." There is more: "_He thinks_ (http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/10/reza-aslan-marx-and-freud-gave-birth-to-the-enlightenment) Marx and Freud “gave birth to the Enlightenment,” when it ended in the late 18th century, before either of them were born. He claims that “the very first thing that Muhammad did was outlaw slavery,” when in fact _Muhammad bought slaves, took female captives as sex slaves, and owned _ (http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/10/reza-aslan-the-very-first-thing-that-muhamm ad-did-was-outlaw-slavery) slaves until his death. He _thinks Ethiopia and Eritrea are in Central Africa_ (http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/10/reza-aslan-excoriates-bill-mahers-bigotry-offers-half-truths-and-deceptions-on-islam) ." There is still more, but to give you an idea. Although I should mention one other false assertion by Reza Aslan, namely, that female genital mutilation is not a Muslim problem and is unrelated to Islam. Other people have said the same thing. This claim, which seeks to exonerate Islam from a practice that Americans regard as a heinous crime, flies in the face of irrefutable facts. The Wikipedia article on the subject -there does not seem to be a better compilation of the facts- identifies 24 countries where this custom is commonplace. All except two are in Africa in Muslim nations, or in nations with substantial Muslim populations. The exceptions are Iraq, where this is carried out by a small minority of Muslims, and Yemen, where it is also a minority phenomenon. Until maybe twenty years ago a small minority also practiced this in Saudi Arabia, which now disallows the custom. Female genital mutilation is decreasing in acceptance in all areas but, paradoxically, is spreading to other countries -in Europe and the Americas- where there are communities of Muslim immigrants. Not that we should expect to hear much of anything about this from the mainstream news media, which habitually downplays or ignores altogether the crimes of Muslims in the United States. But there have been reports on the Web and one news story published at Fox TV deserves note. This was a Brooke Sigman story for April 12, 2017: Michigan doctor, wife arrested for allegedly conspiring to perform female genital mutilation. The story was based on information supplied by the US Department of Justice. Since that time there have been additional news stories, available on the Web even if they pretty much do not exist on ABC, CBS, NBC or other major news sources. Pamela Geller wrote about the magnitude of the problem in her website story for April 22, 2017, noting that as many as 500,000 Muslim women in the USA either have hade the procedure done to them while they were still young girls, or to speak of Muslim girls in America now, who come from families where this practice is regarded as 'virtuous' and required by religious custom. Geller's number is probably high, but the extent of the problem is not exaggerated. Muslim immigrants bring their sick values with them, to America. Some opinion leaders simply cannot ignore this outrage. As Geller added: "In 2015, the issue of female genital mutilation received a wave of attention after Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt made a personal pledge of $100,000 to stop the brutal practice, after meeting Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an internationally known women’s rights advocate who suffered the barbaric practice at the age of 5." The point is that, while some kind of case can be made that female genital mutilation might have originated among some retarded tribal group in the middle of nowhere a millennium ago, the fact remains that it flourishes today almost only, or only, among Muslims. That is, there is something about Islam that is receptive to the practice of cutting off a girl's clitoris or otherwise butchering her female parts. Could be the low esteem that women have in Islam, the disrespect for women's rights that is intrinsic to Islam, or Muslim sexual values that are worse than anything in Christian history. In any case, this is a practice that is essentially 100% Muslim and that characterizes Muslim culture in about half of all countries within Dar al-Islam. In short, Reza Aslan doesn't care if he lies about Islam so that other people have the wrong impression about just how immoral his religion of choice happens to be. The best anyone can say is that Aslan is poorly informed about the religions that interest him as a teacher of Comparative Religion. We know what schools Reza attended: Santa Clara University, Harvard Divinity School, and UC Santa Barbara. These are all elite institutions of higher education. For myself, I was able to piece together an education from the University of Illinois, Wright Jr. College in Chicago, a couple of courses from the University of Chicago and one from De Paul, mostly Roosevelt University, and doctoral studies at the University of Massachusetts. There were also two non-credit classes from UC Berkeley. All of which I take justifiable pride in. Still, in the grand scheme of things this is a good "line-up" but not elite the way that Aslan's education was. Yet I would not trade my schooling for Reza's, not at all. Without false modesty, it is safe enough to say that my education was far superior. What does this say about Santa Clara, Harvard, and UC Santa Cruz? The larger question is what Reza Aslan's views say about Sufism. He is a Sufi, by the way. This is not in dispute. He was interviewed by Brian Lehrer on WNYC in 2013 during which he said: "... I'm definitely a _Muslim_ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim) and _Sufism_ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufism) is the tradition within Islam that I most closely adhere to." His philosophy of religion also falls into the Sufi mindset as someone who believes that if you get to core beliefs and values all faiths express the same truths. This happens to be false, but to report Aslan's views. Aslan has been given a platform to promote his ideas that is about as good as it gets. Among his media appearances he has been featured on PBS, Fox, MSNBC, NPR, _Fareed Zakaria GPS_ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fareed_Zakaria_GPS) , _Real Time with _ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Time_with_Bill_Maher) Bill Maher, _The Colbert Report_ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Colbert_Report) , _The Daily Show with Jon Stewart_ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Show_with_Jon_Stewart) , Meet the Press, Hardball, and Nightline. What has he given Popular Culture in return? A lot of sotto voce conversations about the fact that he now is a cannibal. -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. 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