Category: Religion

I’ve been doing a little reading about Islam while I’ve been here. It’s been a little frustrating trying to learn about it in Yemen, nobody I talk to seems to have any more than a superficial understanding of their religion. Worse, they have zero experience with other religions, that makes it particularly difficult to converse or to find common ground.

I was reduced to picking up a copy of “Islam for Dummies,” Don’t laugh, it’s a decent enough introduction. I’ve also bought some books on Sufis and another on the various sects and divisions. I’ve learned a few interesting things…

Muslims see Jesus as a very important prophet, but not divine. This I knew and I though was one of the basic differences between Muslims and Christians. Muslims do believe in Jesus’ virgin birth, that caught me by surprise. They hold Mary in very high regard (she is supposedly one of the three “purest” women of history), that too surprised me a bit. Here’s the thing, with just a few questions about the virgin birth, things get pretty murky pretty fast.

If you accept the idea of Jesus’ virgin birth, it leads to some tricky issues regarding His paternity. If Mary was a virgin, then who impregnated her? She couldn’t do it herself obviously, it must have been God. It doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch to then consider God as the father of Jesus, or to put it another way, that Jesus was the son of God. I’m not quite sure how muslims wriggle out of this, it would seem to me that you either believe that Mary was not a virgin or you believe that Jesus was the son of God. What other choices are there?

I was also struck by the seeming silliness of the basic Sunni/Shia divide. The Shia believe that only members of the prophet’s family should be Caliph, specifically, only descendants of the prophet’s nephew Ali should be Caliph. OK, fair enough, but there are two problems with this. First, Ali’s decedents died out 10 generations after Ali. Many Shia get around this by claiming the existence of a “hidden” imam. The story with 12ver shia that the 11th “correct” caliph had a son disappear when he was 4 years old. That son is still alive and will return at the end times. Seems to be a bit of a stretch and a bit of a cop out made just to keep the shia way of doing things relevant. I dunno, it sounds weird to me.

The bigger problem with the Shia/Sunni split is that there hasn’t been a caliphate since 1924, and even then it wasn’t regarded by many muslims as being a true caliphate. Since then, the muslim world has gone very far away from a unified view of things and the chances of a new caliphate coming along to unify things is zero. So why still fight over whether or not Ali and his decedents were the right caliph all those years ago? It’s puzzling to me, and I need to do some more reading to try to understand why this is still considered important long after the disputed title has faded into history.

I plan on getting most of the way through my sects book on the flight to Doha, I hope to have a better idea of things and be able to do some more intelligent research this time around in Yemen.

It turns out that you can’t buy a Q’uran. You can buy a book with the words of the Q’uran in it, but not the Q’uran itself. You see, the Q’uran is the word of God, it is the words. A mushaff is the book that contains the word of God. You can buy that of course… This makes sense from a theological standpoint, but it does make me wonder about the reactions people here have about abusing the mushaff. A little while ago, there was a riot in Shebwah province that started with the rumor that a Frenchman had drop kicked one. There were over 1400 people involved and they did millions of dollars worth of damage including burning a helicopter. it turns out that the drop kicking incident never happened. If the word of God is eternal, and the book itself is a work of humans, then why get so upset when someone does something to the book, like put something else on top of it? Once again, the theory and practice seem to be at odds here, at least as far as I see it…

… the more I think that the recording that I call “Call to Prayer 1” (available here) is the same one that they use in the Dubai airport. This was the first call I had ever heard, and I thought it was really beautiful. The calls here in the old city sound mostly like yelling. Not quite as nice…

How does this happen? I think that it’s because my teacher is curious about things he doesn’t know about. But why does he have to ask such difficult questions and expect me to answer in Arabic? Today it started out with currency values and led to the function of a central bank, pegging currencies to others, and a brief discussion about why currencies fluctuate in value. Needless to say, I think I was only partially successful in explaining that stuff. It’s difficult enough to do in English, try doing it in Arabic with someone that doesn’t even understand the function of interest in an economy…

As that conversation was going nowhere, I pulled out the Q’uran that I bought yesterday. That shifted the conversation quickly, he was in his element. We spent some time talking about how the book was organized, what some of the extra marks mean, and some of the ideas surrounding the different styles of recitation. Of course we drifted to comparing the Q’uran to the Bible, and then Islam to Christianity. He claims to have read the New Testament but I’m not really sure how much he could have gotten out of it. I’ve never read the Q’uran (I hope to remedy that situation soon), but I know some of the real basic stuff.

He knows a little of the book angst I have about the Bible and I think he was trying to use that as leverage to steer me towards Islam. He asked me which book I thought was “The Truth.” Obviously, that was a no win question for me, so I told him to be careful and not get me in trouble… He laughed at that and then got right to one of his main problems with Christianity, “How could Jesus be a man and Allah at the same time?” Woosh, how can anyone understand that, let alone someone that has been taught from a little boy that that was blasphemy? Sidestepping the direct question, I replied that it was one of the mysteries that Christians had to meditate on and wrestle with. “Why?” Well, this is where my Arabic deserted me. I said something to the effect that the only way that we can glimpse God was through these things that He accomplished that don’t make much sense to us. He is so far beyond us, it is like your dog trying to understand you, anything that we do would probably seem mysterious to the dog (if they were capable of that sort of thought.).

Adel responded that he (and it sounded like he was expounding on a general Muslim belief) doesn’t ned any more evidence for God than creation itself. There are, of course, many different possible explanations (big bang, evolution, etc.) for what we experience as creation but, and this is no slight on Adel, those theories are totally beyond him. Instead, I told him about the “Watchmaker’s” theory. Basically, just because He made something doesn’t mean that He cares about it or is involved in it. Creation may (may) be enough for some people to believe in God, but what difference does it make if He doesn’t care? What Christians believe is that the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus is a sign from Him to show His continuing commitment and love for us. Now that got him thinking…

Too many Christians do not appreciate the more nuanced ramifications behind the crucifixion, there is zero chance that anyone in Yemen can appreciate it. Adel asked me straight, “Do you think Mohammed (PBUH) was a prophet for the Arabs?” I thought that the “for the Arabs” bit was interesting. I replied that yes, if he was going to phrase it that way, I did believe that Mohammed (PBUH) was a prophet for the Arabs. I then wrapped it up by making my point about God sending messages in a way that people understand and does not force them to be shoehorned into some other culture.

It went pretty well I think. We both had to do some serious thinking on our feet. I was at a bit of a disadvantage for a while as I attempted to do this all in Arabic, but I gave that up 2/3 of the way into the class. I’m glad that I was able to paint a little more complicated picture of Christianity than it just being corrupted scripture. At the end, I suggested that we do some newspaper reading next class, he seemed to think that was a good idea…

I was given some literature while I was at the book fair about “Signs and Mericals (sic) of Prophet Messenger.” It’s a substantial book, 300 something pages long and it has as its mission to educate me about Muhammad (PBUH) and the Q’uran. Needless to say, it’s awful. I think it must be aimed at someone with about a 10th grade reading comprehension but with a 2nd grade mentality about religion. I can’t imagine this being effective with anyone that already has a faith and certainly would not resonate at all with a real atheist.

The first part of it is all about how Muhammad was foretold by various texts from other religions. They pull stuff from the Old and New Testaments, an apocryphal gospel, some Hindu texts, and even some Zoroastrian texts. Of course this is after explaining that the other traditions texts’ were corrupt and couldn’t be trusted. Not a great idea to dismiss the credibility of your sources before you start to use them… Anyway, I did a little digging about the stuff in the Bible and of course they’re way off. They claim that both the Old and New Testaments refer to Mohammed by name but that sloppy translation has kept the knowledge from the Christians and that outright deception has kept it from the jews. Um, yeah… whatever.

The best thing is the so called “scientific” proofs of things in the Q’uran. They point to a sura that talks about God sending down water to agitate the earth and make things grow and then exclaim that scientists didn’t know how that worked until recently! They spend pages talking about how that sura was way ahead of its time in “explaining” how water makes things grow. There are other equally vague references to “green matter” in plants and iron falling to earth that the authors then say that there is no way that they could have known about them back when it was written, it must have come from God! It actually crosses from being preachy to insulting one’s intelligence.

This has been the latest in a long line of ridiculous religious literature that I have read. Why is it that a religious organization (the Catholic church, The Church of LDS, Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc.) can have a well defined theology with many nuances and still sound idiotic when it prints literature designed to recruit people? How difficult is it to put down in writing what they believe and maybe some of the benefits of belonging to that particular denomination? Is it so hard to talk about the merits of your religion without disparaging the others? Can’t it stand on its own? Why do they feel the need to “prove” things in 500, 1000, or even 50,000 words? Most of the Christian literature and all of the Muslim stuff I’ve read have tried to be logically rigorous, arguing from some sort of authority (A book, a prophet, a disciple, etc) and “proving” that they are indeed the correct religion. Of course it’s much easier to use logic to refute the entire basis of religion, so I’m surprised so many people try that approach. The way I figure it, if Descartes couldn’t do it, what chance do any of us have in logically proving this sort of stuff?

I think I’m going to have to do what I’ve had to do with all the other religions I’ve studied, namely not listening to the rank and file in that religion and consulting some actual texts. I’ve found both scholarly and religious books to help in this regard. Unfortunately, my Arabic is not nearly good enough to start reading the stuff I want, not yet. With a little more time, I’ll do it. It’s easy to get motivated to study something that you’re actually interested in…

One other thing that came up with Adel yesterday is how he viewed Jesus. Moslems consider Jesus (Issa, PBUH in Arabic) to be the 2nd most important prophet behind Mohammed (PBUH). Adel believes that Jesus was sent to correct the followers of Moses and that Mohammed (PBUH) was sent to correct the mistakes of the followers of Jesus. I have a slightly different take. If I assume that Mohammed (PBUH) really was a prophet, I think that there might have been something else going on than “correcting” the Christians. After all, it’s my understanding that most Arabs were not Christians when Mohammed (PBUH) started to preach, they were polytheists. It took some time before there was contact with a Christian nation, so when did the “correction” start? I think that God may have sent another prophet because the Arabs were not (and are not) able to respect, let alone worship, anyone they perceive as weak.

Even the Bible mentions the stereotypical Arab mentality when it describes the descendants of Ishmael. In Genesis 16:12 it says (referring to Ishmael), “This son of yours will be a wild man, as untamed as a wild donkey! He will raise his fist against everyone, and everyone will be against him. Yes, he will live in open hostility against all his relatives.” To be fair, the bedouin life was pretty tough, and lead to some tough people. By all accounts, the people that Mohammed had to deal with were a little rough and tumble, and there’s still a lot of that kind of attitude around today. The stereotypical Arab (and there’s always a grain of truth in stereotypes) is quick to anger, prone to vengeful thoughts, and doesn’t hesitate to judge. It shouldn’t be any surprise that the concepts of self sacrifice, pacifism, forgiveness, and subjecting oneself to persecution does not sit too well with a lot of people over here. The culture that has been developed over millennia has systematically disparaged the the core teachings of Christianity.

Instead of “correcting” Christians, I believe that Mohammed (PBUH) was sent to the Arabs so that they could channel their culture into useful and good purposes. That hasn’t always worked out of course (name one religion that has) but I believe that the overall impact on the Arab culture has been a positive one. There are many Christians that would like nothing more than the entire middle east to be converted to Christianity. That thought has some appeal, but aside from the obvious problems, I just don’t think that it’s realistic to expect Christianity to be persuasive in this culture.

One of the things that has stuck with me from my Buddhist studies is the concept of “skillful means.” In that context, a Buddha can teach in a way that makes sense to that person in order to lead them to enlightenment. They were adamant that there wasn’t one way of doing that, there were an infinite number of ways. I don’t think that it’s unreasonable to think that God does the same thing. Or maybe actually is the same thing… Anyway, I’m willing to believe that some messages will be accepted by some people and not by others. And I’m also willing to believe that none of us have the complete picture, none of us is capable of it. So different people get different glimpses and do the best they can with things that make sense for them…

Adel (my teacher) and I were talking about various things between Christianity and Islam today. One thing that came up was how the Bible was constructed. He had actually heard of the Apocrypha but didn’t really understand what they were. Ooog, I gave up trying to explain in Arabic and did the best I could. I’ve found that teaching is the best way to learn how much you really know. I have had several instances when a question was asked and my first reaction was, “I don’t know that..” but with a little reflection it turned out that I did, I just hadn’t thought of it before.

His question about the Apocrypha brought a lot of loose ends together in my head… I explained that for a long time, there wasn’t a single text that Christians based their faith on, there were many texts that purported to tell some of the story. What has become known as the Catholic (and guess the Orthodox) church had ecunenical councils in 692 (the so called Quinisext council) and the more famous council of Trent in 1545 to determine what books were orthodox and which were not. They based this decision on the practices of the church which supposedly had been passed down from Peter and the rest of the Apostles down to the present day. They already had an idea of what was orthodox, the church had its practices down and the Bible was going to reflect those practices. When the Bible was put together, it was corroborating the church’s practices. I’m sure that the people involved at the time would never have thought to try to understand the Bible separate from the church’s beliefs and practices.

Of course when the Reformation came along, the attempt was made to strip the Bible from the church that created it. Nowadays, a basic article of faith in most Protestant churches is that the Bible is the word of God and infallible. But I’ve never heard of any serious attempt to reexamine what books make up the Bible despite the fact that the newer churches don’t look or practice anything like the Catholics.

Here’s where my issues come into play. I really don’t think that the Bible is complete without the background that the church brings to the table (as the Orthodox and Catholics believe from the teachings of the Apostles). This is totally missing from the Protestant churches, and I can’t really take them seriously. On the other hand, I have issues with the Catholic and Orthodox churches. So Adel asked me, “So which is it? The book or the church?” Of course it’s neither for me. I gotta believe that there’s some truth in both, but that neither by themselves pass “The smell test” and that in combination they (IMO) reek of humanity and have very little holiness in them. Adel was of the opinion that I was going to have to choose a church, I don’t think that’s true. Things have been going just fine without having to rely on a book or an organization completely, and until that changes, I don’t see why I should have to subjugate myself to something that I can’t believe…

My teacher was telling me about some of his experiences when he went on Haj. That is the pilgrimage that all muslims should take to Mecca if they can. He, his wife, and his mother all went together by bus. When they got to the Saudi border, the men and the women were separated into different busses. From that point onwards, the only time he could actually be in the presence of his wife and mother was in the main mosque in Mecca, everywhere else it was forbidden for the sexes to mingle. There were even separate hotels for the men and the women, even though he was married to one of them. The idea was that he needed to be protected from seeing any other man’s wife, it might incite lust in him…

It gets better than that, he learned of some real bizarre practices by some Whabis. There are apparently hadiths (Islamic writings used by the faithful to guide their practice) against men hugging or kissing their sisters or daughters because of the fear of arousing sexual feelings. Also, if a husband and wife have sex, it must be in total darkness. To be fair, I think that the orthodox Jews have similar restrictions, or at least the ultra orthodox Hasidim do… Here’s my favorite one, some people believe that it is dangerous for women to chop cucumbers or carrots. Yes, it’s for the reason that you think. How twisted is that? Actually, it wouldn’t surprise me if they don’t want women to cut those vegetables due to fear of them getting vengeful ideas in their heads…

At some point you have to wonder if all of these restrictions have the opposite effect. Instead of avoiding lustful thoughts, people will get the idea that every single thing can, and does relate to sex and sexual feelings. By keeping it in the forefront all the time, they may be twisting people more than protecting them.

We talked a little about the treatment of women in Saudi, you know its repressive if a Yemeni thinks they are crazy. It wasn’t too long ago that the law in Saudi allowed women to go to school and work unescorted, but many people do not approve of these laws. My teacher is constantly pained by the idea that people world wide associate wahabism with muslims in general. As a matter of fact, I have yet to meet a single muslim that didn’t think that the wahabis are crazy. Unfortunately, I think that many people do think of wahabis when they think of muslims, especially in the US. It’s too bad… My teacher believes that the reason that the Arab world is in such bad shape is because God is punishing them for the actions of the Wahabis. Now there’s something to think about….

My last post on religious tolerance had a couple of comments that amounted to, “But Christians are jerks too!” There’s no question that all religions tend to breed intolerance, but I do think that it’s important to keep things in perspective. Randy said that the attitude that I ascribed to Christians as letting people make their own decisions and facing the consequences was “magnanimous” and wondered where those Christians were. Well, you’re probably surrounded by them every day, even in Ithaca. The US is overwhelmingly a Christian nation. People are, in general, pretty reasonable and in day to day interactions questions about divinity and belief just don’t come up that often. Of course the exceptions really stand out. We’ve all had some nutjob trying to cram literature down our throat all in the hope of “saving” us.

It’s basically the same way over here. The vast majority of people leave you alone and some may ask if you are a muslim. I’ve never had a really bad reaction to the news that I am a Christian. I’ve faced some incredulity. One guy asked how I could possibly believe in that, I couldn’t help but think that I take that question much more seriously from agnostics and atheists, Muslims’ beliefs are just as wacky as mine… I have gotten some literature given to me. It was, without exception, dreadful. The stuff I get in the States is pretty bad, but these make an effort to seem in depth and scholarly. It really backfires, if I had any leanings towards Islam, those pamphlets would have driven me away…

Anyway, my experiences here go a long ways towards the “people are people all over the world,” theory, but they don’t prove it. There are some huge differences of course, and my last post on religious freedom was meant to highlight one of them. No serious follower of any religion is happy when people stop believing in it, or turn to something that is considered evil, or just wrong. I have yet to make any casual acquaintances that consider me a “serious” Christian, so maybe I’m exempt:-) My last post on the subject was trying to highlight the difference between any Christians that I can think of and muslims in this part of the world when it comes to apostasy. If a Christian makes a declaration of not believing anymore, or changes to another sect or religion entirely, there may be some personal contact (and family) issues, but nothing that can’t be dealt with. Here (in Yemen, KSA, and probably places like Afghanistan), if someone makes the statement that they are no longer a muslim and/or converts to another religion, people expect that person to be killed.

Islam is practiced differently in many different places, but here, apostasy is a capital crime. It’s funny, in the US both atheists and Christians feel that they are “under attack” from all angles. Each side thinks that the other side is “winning.” Neither really knows what it is like to be “under attack” for religious beliefs. No one in the US fears for their life because of what they believe or what they say about it. People here that become disillusioned with Islam and become atheists or people that convert (I assume that if there’s any conversion going on at all, it is to Christianity) have to stay quiet and keep it hidden from friends and family. It wouldn’t surprise me if they had to keep pretending to be a good muslim, it’s funny what the threat of death can do to a person.

You can say what you want about Christian hypocrites and their intolerance, Lord knows there’s plenty of them around, but they don’t kill people for religion’s sake any more. The US’s report about religious freedom in Yemen was right to criticize Yemen on the inability to convert. Certainly, not all muslims share that opinion, maybe not even all here, but enough do to make conversion a decidedly dangerous proposition. Compared to this part of the world, I do call Christians “magnanimous” and yes, tolerant…

I just finished “The Name of the Rose” this morning. It was good, but you have to be in the mood for really Catholic book. A lot of the plot revolves around different orders (Benedictines, Franciscans), heretical movements, and various political intrigues involving the papacy, emperors, and various power bases in the cities. There is a fair amount of theological discussion, at times the characters break down and argue and fight about them. The main theological issue that dominates the book and drives the plot reminds me a bit of a book that I only read a part of during my trip to Greece.

I found “The Principles of Orthodox Spirituality” in a bookstore in Athens. It was a religious bookstore with about two shelves of English titles on it, this being one of them. Seeing it, I thought that my friend Dana would enjoy it. She’s an Episcopal that is fascinated by Catholics. She also studied Russian for a while and so I figured she might be intrigued by the Orthodox churches as well. I read a few chapters while I was in Greece. It was a bit of a struggle to read since I’m not used to reading theology, but I did get a few interesting tidbits from it. The thing that struck me was the quick differentiation that the book made between the Catholic churches (Roman and otherwise) and the Orthodox ones. In a nutshell, the author claimed that the Orthodox fathers had, unlike the Romans, rejected the Aristotelian approach to theology and God. I consider it kind of odd since this particular church started in Greece… I don’t think that they rejected logic all together, but they do not depend on it to make their theology coherent. I could be wrong about this, but it was the general gist of what I read. Anyway, that struck me because I had never really thought that there was much difference between Catholics and the Orthodox churches, but I guess there is. It intrigued me because as much as I admire Catholics (most of the people that I have known that I could call exemplary Christians have been Catholic), their theology, as coherent as it is, relies on some sometimes torturous logic. In addition, in years past many of the decisions to label things as heresies (when not motivated by political issues) were based on exacting logical arguments on what was and was not logically consistent with church teachings. If the Orthodox theology could avoid some of that, I would find it much more appealing.

“The Name of the Rose” certainly highlights the dangers of logic mixed with religion. Granted, it was only a danger to people that were extremely well read in not only the early church fathers, but in the classic philosophers as well. In addition, their position in the church and their placement in the timeline of church history also were determining factors when it came to how “dangerous” these ideas were. The worldwide impact of these ideas has long since past, but it can still crop up in the thoughts of thoughtful people who may be overeducated. I, of course, have no idea who those people could be (ahem), but I think that it could be a good read for people that are interested in that sort of thing…

Oh, one other thing. About 4/5ths of the way through it, I realized that I had been told, or had read how the people were dying in the book years before. That kind of pissed me off as the murder mystery element had been ruined for me. Still, I knew the how, which allowed me to figure out the who, but I still didn’t know why. I won’t ruin the ending for anyone, but even if you do know the how, it takes the entire book to explain the why…