interView with Rabbi Dr. Burton Visotzky

Response By Hafsa Kanjwal

An important point that Rabbi Visotzky raises is the role that religious leaders and activists involved in international interreligious dialogue often end up playing in second tier diplomacy. For me, the use of inter-religious understanding to promote certain political or policy agendas can be and has been fraught with complications. Especially given the global context surrounding the politics of Islam, Muslims have been unable to truly engage the deeper issues in interreligious dialogue without a strong eye towards improving Islam’s image. In addition, significant programming led by governments or foundations relating to Muslims in inter-religious dialogue takes on a counter-terrorism narrative.

I agree with Rabbi Visotzky that it is important to begin locally. In response to Rabbi Visotzky’s question on what we are seeking to accomplish when we do inter-religious dialogue, I believe that a priority must be to build relationships that promote the common good, rather than serve narrow political or policy interests. While the translation of dialogue to diplomacy or policy is sometimes inevitable, it must be met with a critical analysis on the part of those who seek to promote mutual understanding and cooperation.

Even as a Jew in New York, I know of what it is like to be Muslim in France.

While studying abroad in the French city of Strasbourg in 2007, I decided to grow a bushy beard. Little did I know that in France only traditional Jewish and Muslim men don anything but the most finely trimmed moustache or goatee. Since I did not wear a yarmulke or other head covering, people who saw me on the street assumed that I was Muslim.

I felt that police officers and passersby treated me with suspicion, and even on the crowded rush hour bus few chose to sit next to me if they could avoid it. On one occasion someone followed me home and tried to start a fight, only to find I was a bewildered American, not a French Muslim.

Never before, and never since, have I experienced disdain of this sort. On a daily basis, I was made to feel badly because of my appearance — and what was presumed to be my corresponding religious affiliation. So when I read of the impending effort by parliamentary leader Jean-François Copé and his supporters to criminalise the burqa (and other garments that fully cover a woman’s body, head and face) in France, I understood it to be far more than a measure to protect women’s rights or preserve the concept of a secular society, on which the modern French state is built.

In my opinion, it is easy to see how the “burqa ban” might be misused as a part of a broader effort to stigmatise a religious population, one that already perceives itself to be on the margins of society.

Books? Videos? Whichever you like (most likely both), there are two new releases that are important for those who are interested in human rights — Abdulaziz Sachedina’s Islam and the Challenge of Human Rights, and a short documentary video on the use of white phosphorus in Gaza by Human Rights Watch.

Adam by Hans Beham, 1524 CE.

When a couple gets married, they traditionally have a wedding. When a child is born, people usually throw some kind of celebration. When a ship sets out on its maiden voyage, it is customary to break a champagne bottle against its bow.

A position as a blogger is, of course, nothing compared to those things. What are the opinions of one pundit, compared to a marriage, a new human life, or the ocean-crossing journeys of a ship? Nevertheless, all traditions teach us that origins are important, and that we should try to begin our first ventures as well as possible–even such humble ventures as this.

So, where to begin? Why not start with the most famous of all accounts of origins, the creation of humankind? But Genesis, by its very nature, covers so many things, so I shall cite just one aspect: its account of the spiritual reasons for human communication.

Genesis portrays the beginnings of communication with the existential need of human beings to be in union with other persons. We can have the whole of inanimate and animal creation brought before us. But we need to engage in the back-and-forth of linguistic communication (whether verbally or in body language) with another person. And the most profound kind of inter-personal communication is that of intimate love between two people.

We know the need for something from its lack. Genesis shows communication as a divine gift to overcome the pain of loneliness. The late Pope John Paul II spoke about this in his lectures on “The Theology of the Body.” Judaism and Islam have their own “theologies of the bodies,” which predate this development in Christianity. As a Muslim who loves poetry, both Eastern and Western, I have decided to give a poetical interpretation of the loneliness of Adam, as described in Genesis, from the standpoint of Sufism (or Islamic metaphysics).

Washington, DC – In the immediate aftermath of the 5 November Fort Hood killings, some media commentators, alerted by gunman Major Dr. Nidal Malik Hasan’s Muslim name, immediately described the murders as a manifestation of his religious beliefs, reinforcing many Americans’ fears about Islam. In a moment like this one, the topic of religious freedom might be one we wish to avoid, but protecting it is essential to preventing another such tragedy. All Americans — both Muslims and non-Muslims — now have a role to play in ensuring that the country moves forward productively and peacefully.

Soon after the attack, Muslim American individuals and organisations, such as Dr. Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) and the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), responded by unequivocally condemning the murders as reprehensible and outside the domain of Islam.

According to CAIR, “No political or religious ideology could ever justify or excuse such wanton and indiscriminate violence. The attack was particularly heinous in that it targeted the all-volunteer army that protects our nation. We Muslim Americans stand with our fellow citizens in offering both prayers for the victims and sincere condolences to the families of those killed or injured.”

The attack has spurred Muslim organisations to urge non-Muslims to refrain from viewing the incident through the prism of religion.

This article was originally featured on the On Faith blog of the Washington Post and Newsweek but is the original work of the author of this blog post.

When Bernie Madoff was arrested in December, 2008 the blogosphere filled with hate. Anti-Semitic remarks of the sort not seen in a generation surfaced, as Madoff fulfilled all of the worst possible stereotypes about Jews. One crooked investor who preyed on his coreligionists’ charitable contributions made anti-Semitism seem trendy.

Last week, when a mentally unstable major in the army shot up a meeting space at Fort Hood in Texas, the blogosphere was again overflowing with hate, this time aimed against Muslims. Even as top military brass made clear that the incident was a military – not religious – matter, bloggers framed Nidal Hasan as a terrorist, inspired to kill in the name of his religion.

The hate must stop. But even as Jewish organizations denounce Madoff and Muslim organizations condemn Hasan, their voices cannot alone silence the din of the blogosphere. They desperately need for institutions outside their own religious communities to join in the chorus against hate and reframe the discourse. This mutual need may in fact provide an unprecedented opportunity for collaboration between the two religious communities.

New at The Immanent Frame: Talal Asad and Abdullahi An-Na’im both stand at the forefront of the challenging and constructive exchange taking place today between European and Islamic traditions of political, legal, and religious thought. At a recent event organized by Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, the two scholars traded questions and criticisms concerning the concept of human rights. Moderated by José Casanova, the discussion addressed the intrinsic limitations and historical failures of the language of human rights, as well as its formidable capacity to challenge autocratic and state-centric distributions of power, creating openings for democratic contestation and political self-determination. A short excerpt of the exchange has been posted at The Immanent Frame and a complete transcript is available for download here (pdf). You can also watch video from this event at here & there.

Subject: Body Of The Goddess

Dear Friends,

Today is Vijaya Dashami, the Day of Victory that completes the 9-day Hindu Navaratri celebration of the Goddess in all her aspects and manifestations. In mythology, Vijaya Dashami marks the final triumph of the Goddess, after nine days of battle, over the demon Mahishasur. It also marks the start of the harvest season, and invokes the Divine Mother as all the powers of fertility and the life-giving gifts of the earth.

I stand firmly, fiercely, and unequivocally against the global rise of Hindu fundamentalism, and its appropriation of Hindu traditions for its fascist agenda. And at the same time, I reclaim my Hindu spiritual and cultural heritage as a feminist scholar, radical activist, and artist.

Here’s a poem that Shailja sent to illustrate her opposition to Hindu fundamentalism:

Asra Nomani’s recent piece in Marie Claire, “My Big Fat Muslim Wedding,” underscored everything that is wrong with Marie Claire’s coverage of Islam and Muslim women. Nomani’s piece was a confused narrative at best, conflating culture with religion and individual bad experiences with larger truths about entire faiths. A story that should have been about Nomani’s conflicted path to love somehow became a treatise on Islam and love generally, suggesting that all Muslim men and women follow similarly conflicted, contradictory paths. Western ways of premarital intercourse and freedom to marry without regard to religious frameworks are presented as the higher moral ground.

A similar sort of paternalism is rampant throughout Marie Claire’s treatment of Muslim women. Time and again, the image we see emerging from this magazine is that of Muslim women as sequestered, brainwashed, and victimized if by no one else than their own naïve, unknowing selves. Almost all of Marie Claire’s stories dealing with Islam or Muslims have to do with Muslim women either oppressed by or complicit in terrorism and extremism. Women who choose to embrace Islam are belittled, and Islam, in the process, is portrayed as attractive to only lost and desperate souls. On the flip side, Malika, the female jihadist in “Love in the Time of Terror” reflects the danger of Muslim female strength, while purportedly more respectable brands of strong females have spurned Islam to some degree or another (think Ayaan Hirsi Ali).

Consider, for example, Paul Cruickshank’s piece, “I Married a Terrorist,” the story of Maureen, a Belgian woman who met a non-practicing Muslim man at a bar and started dating him, their affair a whirlwind of partying. Somewhere amidst all the clubbing, Maureen began feeling empty, overwhelmed by her crazy ways. Her emptiness prompted curiosity about religion, and she began asking her boyfriend, Rachid, about Islam, of which he himself was ignorant.

This is where the story about Maureen begins to reveal its anti-Islamic and sexist undertones;

This post was written by Zehra Rizavi and Yusif Akhund for altmuslimah.com. I think it helps non-Muslims understand the Ramadan experience from an insider’s perspective, while also raising questions of how different interpretations of gender roles may change each couple’s experience of Ramadan.

When my husband finally makes his way down the stairs, my frustration abates and he and I sit across from each other and share our early morning meal. We speak intermittently and keep one eye trained on the clock to ensure we finish our food by the time dawn prayers begin. Despite the sparse conversation and the hurried meal, I enjoy the feeling that we are both beginning our obligatory fasts together, as a unit.

Continue reading on Altmuslimah

“A woman who loses her chastity is worthless,” lectures the sermon-giver at Asra Nomani’s mosque in Morgantown, West Virginia. Nomani carefully jots down this statement in her notebook, right alongside the speaker’s other assertion that “Jews are the descendents of apes and pigs.” Nomani, a former Wall Street Journal correspondent who came face-to-face with extremism when her colleague and close friend, Daniel Pearl, was murdered in Pakistan, is certain that these statements of intolerance in her local mosque are intrinsically related to acts of violence. Thus begins Nomani’s “struggle for the soul of Islam,” a struggle showcased by Brittany Huckabee in her recent documentary, The Mosque in Morgantown.

As Huckabee’s movie follows Nomani’s fight for women’s rights, it shows how her struggle against conservatism becomes intertwined with her repugnance with extremism. The film focuses on how Nomani ends up conflating the two, explaining time and again that there is a “slippery slope” between intolerance and violence. Nomani’s protest goes from wanting to give women a space in the main prayer hall to wanting women to stand beside men in prayer and to lead mixed-gender prayer. Any other view of gender organization in the mosque is, according to Nomani, a sign of extremism, akin to the type practiced by Pearl’s murderers. Yet, as one of the conservative women from her mosque notes, what does extremism have to do with women-led prayer?

Criminal conduct in Canada is normally prosecuted by a Crown counsel representing the formal person of the Canadian state, this being The Queen.

This time the situation is reversed — it is The Queen on trial, and the prosecutor is a remarkably foolish young man named Omar Khadr, who is the last prisoner of a western nation at Gitmo. Omar Khadr was 15 years old when he allegedly threw a grenade and killed a US soldier fighting in Afghanistan.

Precisely why Omar Khadr is the last western prisoner at Gitmo is a tale that will come to define Canada in the 21st century. Barely 10 years into the century and Canada has used the ship of state to ram the lifeboats of six Canadian citizens. All of them are Arabs.

I cannot claim that the ship of state was steered politically. The Canadian citizens in question were victmised under both Conservative and Liberal administrations.

In his 4 June speech to the Muslim world from Cairo, US President Barack Obama started his discussion of religious freedom by pointing out that “Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance”.

Citing its long history of protecting religious minorities as well as his own experience growing up in overwhelmingly Muslim Indonesia where Christians worshipped freely, he then drew upon the present, turning his attention to those vocal Muslims among whom “there is a disturbing tendency to measure one’s own faith by the rejection of another’s”. He urged his Muslim listeners to continue the spirit of tolerance that is reflected throughout their history.

The rejectionist Muslims whom Obama referred to are but one part of the vast Muslim world. Surveys conducted in 44 countries as part of the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project show that people in Muslim countries place a high value on free speech, free press, multi-party systems and equal protection under the law. However, while many Muslims desire the type of pluralism that comes with Western-style democracy, those in the Muslim world who push for such ideas can face pressure, and sometimes threats of persecution, by both their governments and rival groups that see no place for religious freedom in Islam.

New on Altmuslimah:

Jurists have created a contradiction that is not in the Qur’an by encouraging divorce and discouraging marriage. In other words, a Muslim woman who wants a divorce must be set free without using force against her, but a Muslim woman who wants to remain married does so under the threat of being beaten. What woman would want to stay married under such circumstances?

Wajahat Ali, playwright and friend of this blog, sent us this press release today. My eye was caught by the phrase “American Muslims thrive because of the Constitution’s protection of religious freedom,” which I am sure Thomas Jefferson would be happy to hear if he could:

American Muslims Call on Chinese Govt’ to Protect Religious Freedom

In response to the outbreak of violence in Xinjiang, China, in early July, 2009, American Muslims across the country will speak out for religious freedom in China during their July 31, 2009 Friday sermon

SAN FRANCISCO – A collection of American Muslim professionals, journalists and community and religious leaders, are calling for American Muslim leaders and religious figures to speak up during their Friday, July 31, sermon for religious freedom in light of the brutal crackdown by the Chinese on Uyghur Muslims in July and a history of repression of religious groups including Christians and the Falun Gong.

First published on May 1, 2009

Growing up Muslim and female in America was, and remains, a tumultuous process. While Islam generally is under tremendous scrutiny, there is probably no issue in greater contention than that of gender relations in Islam. With the media constantly spewing out images of oppressed Muslim women and angry Muslim men, the world looks on with both fascination and disgust. The Muslim gender dynamic – supposedly a singular, unchanging construct – has become a spectacle for everyone to gawk at, comment on, and ultimately use to ridicule the larger Muslim community.

But it is not just our neighbors who are gawking; Muslims often find themselves feeling awkward as well, especially as the news becomes stranger and more prevalent. Part of this is about Western Muslim women trying to make sense of supposedly religiously motivated gender oppression, but much of this is about reflecting on our individual spiritual cores – the place where we, in our quiet moments, wonder about our identity vis-à-vis the world, the part of us that cowers under the spotlight.

This self-reflection involves quite a bit of confusion, as it is hard to reconcile the heart-wrenching news of oppression with our daily experience of meeting, interacting with, living among – being – strong, confident, successful Muslim women.

Altmuslimah has officially launched its photographic campaign – aimed at providing an alternative to the dominant media image of oppressed Muslim women and angry Muslim men.

The purpose of Altmuslimah’s visual campaign is to present Muslim men and women multi-dimensionally, figuratively speaking. The collection highlights the literary contributions of empowered Muslim American women; telling portraits of tenacious Muslim females, young and old; warm, loving Muslim men; the purity of spiritual devotion; and the dynamics of positive gender interaction in Islam.

We’re now featuring slideshows/videos on our main page – check out the upper right hand corner of the Altmuslimah site. Every other week, we’ll feature a different video or slideshow that will include photos and artwork from artists across the world. Artists can make their own video using Animoto, or a slideshow using Slideshare. Please send us the embed link at asma.uddin(at)altmuslimah.com, and we’ll feature your work for 2 weeks. And if you have trouble making your slideshow or video, let us know and we’ll make it for you.

Altmuslimah would also like to help spread the message by offering the embed link to other sites interested in featuring our photos. If you are a blogger or run a web magazine or other website, and are interested in supporting this mission to change the dominant image of Muslim men and women, please contact us.

Many thanks to Paula Lerner, who contributed her photos for our very first video:

Altmuslimah’s Photographic Campaign

All,

I joined the Tikkun blog yesterday and introduced my way of thinking through my initial posts – I hope you enjoyed them! They reflect my balance between traditionalism and measured, meaningful change.

I am both a lawyer and a writer, with most of my writings focused on either gender issues or religious freedom in the American, Muslim, or American-Muslim contexts. As it turns out, some of my legal work also has to do with these issues.

My latest initiative in the gender rights arena is Altmuslimah (www.altmuslimah.com), an online magazine I launched in March 2009. Altmuslimah is dedicated to compelling comment on gender-in-Islam from both male and female perspectives. Our work includes not just the online magazine, but also our recently launched photographic campaign (which you’ll hear more about here at Tikkun), and our on-the-ground activism in anti-domestic violence efforts (which you’ll also be hearing about).

I look forward to interacting with and learning from you!

The compatibility of Islam and pluralism is sometimes defended by referencing examples of Islamic “tolerance” of minorities in centuries past. Some Muslims’ interpretation of pluralism is colored by Islam’s political power in the past,[1] and they define religious tolerance in terms of how religious minorities were treated in the Islamic Empire – that is, as groups that were free to practice their religion as long as they obeyed the Islamic political order and paid taxes in return for protection by the Islamic state. As some modern Islamic thinkers argue, however, this form of religious tolerance is inadequate in light of changing human rights standards.[2] Whereas the Islamic Empire’s notion of religious tolerance may have been appropriate for that time, Muslims in the modern age must re-evaluate and realize that the historical approach to religious tolerance must be modified. Conditional and condescending “tolerance” must be redefined to include mutual respect, equal treatment, and robust pluralism.

Contemporary Muslims’ effort to grapple with pluralism and their political position in relation to the religious “other” is in some ways analogous to the challenge the American religious right has faced realizing that America is not a “Christian country” – at least not in the sense that allows conservative Christianity to hold a privileged position. In both cases, a religious group that once dominated a society is coming to terms with greater diversity and the demands of justice in a pluralistic context.[3]

Last August, Marwa el-Sherbini, an Egyptian pharmacist living in Germany since 2003, was with her toddler son at a playground in the Dresden suburb of Johannstadt. A dispute transpired between her and a man now referred to by public records as “Axel W.” about whether it was her son’s or his niece’s turn to go on the swings. In the course of the argument, W. called el-Sherbini, who wore a headscarf, an “Islamist”, a “terrorist” and “slut”. Angered by the incident, el-Sherbini filed a formal complaint against W.

A local court fined Axel W. €780 (USD$1,100) for calling el-Sherbini a “terrorist”. During the trial, W. continued to insult el-Sherbini, telling her, “You don’t have the right to live here,” and afterwards, he appealed the fine. Last week, he and el-Sherbini appeared in court for his appeal.

As el-Sherbini prepared to testify, W. attacked her inside the courtroom, stabbing her 18 times. El-Sherbini’s husband, Eliv Ali Okaz, intervened during the attack, only to be stabbed by W. and shot by courtroom security, which unexplainably mistook him as the attacker. Okaz is in critical condition. El-Sherbini died on the courtroom floor. Their three-year-old son witnessed the entire episode.