Archive for the ‘islam’ tag
Crossing Boundaries on a Train from Tel Aviv to Be’er Sheva
by Ariel Katz
from Common Ground News Service
I am on the train, travelling south from Tel Aviv to Be’er Sheva. Three Bedouin women dressed in hijab (headscarves) enter the train ahead of me and my daughter, each with a toddler. They see there are no seats together, so they opt to sit on the floor, near the doors. I find seats for myself and my daughter. Across the aisle from us sits a man with akipah, a cap worn by Orthodox Jewish men. A Bedouin woman in hijab and her toddler sit facing him. The toddler is cranky; she is tired of sitting on mother’s lap. She wants to explore. Her mother holds her firmly as she squirms and whines, trying to pacify her. Because she is using simple Arabic language for a three year-old, I can understand every word.
It is one of those unpleasant situations that happens all the time, and usually is tolerated in silence, as if it were unnoticed. In this instance, the young man with the kipah reaches into his backpack and withdraws a completed Rubik’s Cube, a puzzle made of interlocking squares. He hands it to the mother who carefully twists the top row of squares to show her daughter it can move.
When the toddler realises she will never find out what is inside the cube, she becomes cranky again, and the mother thanks the man, returning it. We sit with the toddler’s discomfort for a while. Then the Jewish man starts to fold and tear the advertisement flyer that has been left on the table between them. He is making the child something out of the paper using Japanese origami. She becomes engaged in his actions and quiets. He makes a swan and demonstrates how it can flap its wings by pulling on its head and tail. The woman accepts it and plays with her daughter. They are happy. The swan reminds me of a dove. The man speaks to the mother in Hebrew, telling her she has a lovely daughter. The mother thanks him in Hebrew and asks if he has children. He says he has younger siblings. She speaks some Hebrew and they have a simple conversation.
After a while the girl tires of the swan and the mother allows her to squirm off her lap to stand in the aisle beside her. The girl reaches over to my daughter’s armrest, and comes to say hello to us. She has noticed our interest in the unfolding story of the Jew and the Arab. We smile and welcome her to our side of the aisle. My daughter is wearing a skirt and the toddler puts her hand on my daughter’s leg. Her little fingers weave under the wide lace of my daughter’s tights to feel her bare skin. She smiles. Her mother directs her to come back, saying, “ta’ali”. I cheekily contradict the mother in Arabic and tell her, “khalleeki”, stay. “Khalleek” is a central word in Arabic – it is said when a guest makes a move to leave the host’s house. It is polite to beg the guest to stay, even if it is clear the time has come to go. I play with this cultural imperative. “Stay with us.” You have crossed a border into our space, but you are welcome here. We are no longer strangers.
Being a Muslim and Being a Feminist Are Not Mutually Exclusive
By Fatemeh Fakhraie
From Common Ground News Service
Portland, Oregon – People, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, often tell me that I can’t be both a Muslim and a feminist. At a recent book reading in Oregon, for example, a male audience member asked me, “How does that even work?” These questions demonstrate some of the rigid misconceptions individuals have about Islam and feminism; many people think that they’re mutually exclusive categories. In fact, as a Muslim feminist, I have found them to have more in common than people realise, especially when it comes to social justice.
Ethos – the fundamental spirit that guides my faith– is more important to me than edicts, or strict dogma, and so when religious questions arise, I defer to big-picture themes. One of Islam’s major themes is that of equity and justice. The Qur’an details equitable divorce proceedings, fair treatment of orphans and just conduct when it comes to prisoners of war — situations that differ in details and circumstances in our modern times, but which are often fraught with unfairness and injustice. When I read the holy book, the themes of justice and dignity for humanity stand out to me.
These themes are the same ideals I take from feminism. Some assume that feminism is concerned only with the protection and advancement of women. But as a bi-racial Muslim woman, I can’t ignore the ways that different socially constructed categories, such as gender and race, interact and interrelate. My feminism is concerned with the dignity and rights of every person. Regardless of gender, race, religion, ability, or anything else, we all deserve to have control over our own destinies, earn equal compensation for our work and have the same chances at happiness and success.
Karen Armstrong: Prejudices Will Be Shaken by This Show
By Karen Armstrong
From the Guardian
Ever since the Crusades, when Christians from western Europe were fighting holy wars against Muslims in the near east, western people have often perceived Islam as a violent and intolerant faith – even though when this prejudice took root Islam had a better record of tolerance than Christianity. Recent terrorist atrocities have seemed to confirm this received idea. But if we want a peaceful world, we urgently need a more balanced view. We cannot hope to win the “battle for hearts and minds” unless we know what is actually in them. Nor can we expect Muslims to be impressed by our liberal values if they see us succumbing unquestioningly to a medieval prejudice born in a time of extreme Christian belligerence.
Like Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Christians, Sikhs and secularists, some Muslims have undoubtedly been violent and intolerant, but the new exhibition at the British Museum – Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam – is a timely reminder that this is not the whole story. The hajj is one of the five essential practices of Islam; when they make the pilgrimage to Mecca, Muslims ritually act out the central principles of their faith. Equating religion with “belief” is a modern western aberration. Like swimming or driving, religious knowledge is practically acquired. You learn only by doing. The ancient rituals of the hajj, which Arabs performed for centuries before Islam, have helped pilgrims to form habits of heart and mind that – pace the western stereotype – are non-violent and inclusive.
In the holy city of Mecca, violence of any kind was forbidden. From the moment they left home, pilgrims were not permitted to carry weapons, to swat an insect or speak an angry word, a discipline that introduced them to a new way of living. At a climactic moment of his prophetic career, Muhammad drew on this tradition. Fleeing persecution in Mecca in 622, he and the Muslim community (the umma) had migrated to Medina, 250 miles to the north. Mecca was determined to destroy the umma and a bitter conflict ensued. But eventually Muhammad broke the deadly cycle of warfare with an audacious non-violent initiative.
First Mosque Part of the Heritage of all Canadians
By Daood Hamdani
From Common Ground News Service
Ottawa – This May, as Muslims mark the twentieth anniversary of the induction of Al-Rashid mosque in Fort Edmonton Park, the country’s largest living history museum, the spotlight will be on the leadership role of Muslim women in this historic event.
Fifty years after they burst onto the front line to help complete the construction of Canada’s first mosque in 1938, Muslim women took over a floundering campaign to save it from demolition. They surprised many by not only preserving this irreplaceable piece of Canadian heritage but enshrining it in the history museum. Al-Rashid, once a bustling hub of community life, started drifting into disrepair after the congregation outgrew it and moved to a new Islamic centre in 1982. Numerous efforts to raise money and find a new location for the old structure failed. Al-Rashid was set for demolition in 1988. Out of options, the Muslim community could only hope for a miracle.
To many, including Canadians of other faiths, the loss of the country’s oldest mosque and a Canadian heritage building was unthinkable. Al-Rashid was more than a place of worship. It was also the story of the struggle, adjustment and integration of early Muslim settlers.
While the community braced itself for the inevitable, the Terrific Twelve, a group of twelve women who belonged to a relatively new and untested organisation, the Canadian Council of Muslim Women (CCMW), which was founded in 1982 to speak for Muslim women, defiantly dug in to save the mosque. Led by Lila Fahlman and Razia Jaffer, founder and president of CCMW respectively, these young, highly educated women of diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds included second-generation Canadians and new immigrants, working moms, full-time homemakers and single professional women.
Places of Faith Tells What Really Goes on in America’s Temples Mosques and Churches
By David Briggs
From Huffington Post
What do Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn, Hispanic Catholics in central Nebraska, megachurch evangelicals in Houston and South Asian Muslims in suburban Detroit have in common?
More than many people could ever imagine.
Forget the popular cultural images from shows such as HBO’s “Big Love” that revive stereotypes linking Mormonism with polygamy or the ubiquitous images in the news associating Islam with terrorism. Look past the cultural crossfire that lumps religious liberals and conservatives into separate boxes defined by extremist political and social agendas.
The reality, as presented in a new book by two respected scholars, is that if you walk into a mosque, synagogue, temple or church next weekend, you will most likely find groups of believers in prayer and meditation seeking spiritual growth.
For six weeks, Pennsylvania State University sociologists Christopher Scheitle and Roger Finke traveled nearly 7,000 miles across the country visiting diverse religious communities. What they report back in “Places of Faith: A Road Trip Across America’s Landscape” is a portrait of people of faith sharing many of the same aspirations across theological and denominational divides.
They encounter members of a black church in Memphis and a Mormon congregation in a small Utah town giving personal testimonies amid Sunday worship and religious education classes lasting three hours and more. In both the Friday prayer service at the Islamic Center of America in Detroit and the Saturday morning Shabbat service at B’nai Avraham in Brooklyn, the authors find immigrants from Africa, Asia and Europe praying for the well-being of humanity.
These straightforward observations of faith groups at worship have a critical role to play in public discourse on religion especially when an increasing body of research reveals sharp declines in religious prejudice, the more people of different beliefs get to know one another.
“Places of Faith” allows “students and people in general to look over our shoulder and to find out what these communities are like and how similar they are in many ways,” said Finke, who is also director of the Association of Religion Data Archives.
Speaking Out Against Mosque Desecration
by Rabbi Gideon D. Sylvester
from Common Ground News Service
Jerusalem – Across the world, people were outraged by the news that mosques in Israel had been desecrated and racist graffiti scrawled across their walls. Israeli Jews felt ashamed. We asked ourselves: do the perpetrators have any understanding of Jewish history and theology, – which clearly teach respect for every human being and the necessity of standing up against injustice wherever we see it?
Growing up in the shadows of the Holocaust, I, a young British Jew, learned about Kristallnacht, the night in 1938 when dozens of German synagogues were attacked. In youth groups we discussed how the demonisation of people and the destruction of their religious buildings were a first step to genocide. We proudly proclaimed, “never again” – never again should this happen to Jews; never again should it happen to any other people.
We understood the Biblical requirement for a sovereign Jewish state to care for everyone, including those who do not share our heritage.
Exploring our relationship to other faiths, we discovered that from medieval times, great rabbis taught their followers that Islam is a monotheistic religion whose adherents must be treated with respect. When the great Jewish philosopher, Maimonides, pondered why God had created so many people whose faith differed from his own, he concluded that although God’s will is unfathomable, Islam and Christianity seemed to be part of the divine plan to spread ethical monotheism throughout the world.
Christians and Muslims Unite at Nigeria Protest
By Jon Gambell
From Huffington Post
LAGOS, Nigeria — A human wave of more than 20,000 surrounded the Muslim faithful as they prayed toward Mecca Friday, as anti-government demonstrations over spiraling fuel prices and corruption showed unity among protesters despite growing sectarian tensions in Africa’s most populous nation.
While violence sparked by religious and ethnic divisions left about 1,500 people dead last year alone in Nigeria, some hope the ongoing protests gripping the oil-rich nation will bring together a country that already suffered through a bloody civil war.
“It shows that Nigeria is now coming together as one family,” said Abdullahi Idowu, 27, as he prepared to wash himself before Friday prayers.
Labor unions, meanwhile, announced Friday they would halt their five-day strike for the weekend, allowing families stuck largely inside their homes to go to markets and rest. Union leaders also plan to meet President Goodluck Jonathan and government officials on Saturday for new negotiations, just ahead of a promised labor shutdown of Nigeria’s oil industry.
Nigeria, which produces about 2.4 million barrels of crude a day, is the fifth-largest oil exporter to the U.S. While the country has a several-week stock of oil ready for export, the threatened shutdown Sunday could shake oil futures as traders remained concerns about worldwide supply.
The strike began Monday, paralyzing the nation of more than 160 million people. The root cause remains gasoline prices: President Goodluck Jonathan’s government abandoned subsidies that kept gasoline prices low Jan. 1, causing prices to spike from $1.70 per gallon (45 cents per liter) to at least $3.50 per gallon (94 cents per liter). The costs of food and transportation also largely doubled in a nation where most people live on less than $2 a day.
Anger over losing one of the few benefits average Nigerians see from being an oil-rich country, as well as disgust over government corruption, have led to demonstrations across this nation and violence that has killed at least 10 people. Red Cross volunteers have treated more than 600 people injured in protests since the strike began, the International Committee of the Red Cross said Friday.
“Over 4,000 persons have also been temporarily displaced there as a result of the strike and communal tensions,” said Mamadou Sow, the deputy head of the committee’s delegation in Nigeria. “Most of them have now started to return to their homes.”
German Muslims Show Solidarity with Threatened Catholic Churches
by Ruby Russell
from ENI News
Three Catholic churches in the west German region of North-Rhine Westphalia that may have to close this month have received a show of solidarity from the local Muslim community.
Muhammed Al, chairman of the Merkez Mosque Association, wrote to Bishop Franz-Josef Overbeck, head of the Essen diocese, on behalf of local Muslims last fall about the three Catholic churches in the town of Duisberg.
“We emphasized our long years of cooperation with the parishes and the importance of the churches in the area. We said this should be seen not just from a financial perspective, but also a cultural and social perspective [including] for the sake of interfaith and cultural dialogue,” Al said in an interview.
Contemplatives in Conversation: Sufi and Christian Perspectives
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Wednesday, February 8, 2012 10:00am U.S. Central Time |
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Contemplative practice is often lauded as a common trait of many religious and spiritual traditions, yet approaches to contemplation can be as diverse as the traditions in which they are practiced. This webinar features two experts in conversation with each other about the contemplative traditions from Sufism and Christianity. Nahid Angha and Daniel Wolpert share their expertise and compare and contrast the contemplative practices of their respective traditions.
Nahid Angha, Ph.D. is the co-director and co-founder of the International Association of Sufism (IAS), founder of the International Sufi Women Organization, and the executive editor of Sufism: An Inquiry. She is an internationally published scholar and one of the major Sufi teachers, scholars, and translators of Sufi literature today, with over fifteen published books. She has lectured throughout the world including at the UN, Smithsonian Institute, CPWR’s conferences, Science and Spirituality, Cortona, Italy, and was among the distinguished Muslim leaders and scholars who was invited to gather for the first annual Shakir World Encounters, an Islamic conference of peace in Marrakech, Morocco.
Daniel Wolpert serves as the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Crookston, MN and is the co-founder of the Minnesota Institute of Contemplation and Healing (MICAH). For the past twenty five years he has taught in the fields of psychology and spiritual formation and led retreats in such settings as the Art of Spiritual Direction Program at SFTS, the Youth Ministry and Spirituality Project, national ministry conferences, UCLA, UND medical school, Luther Seminary, and numerous churches. He is also the author of “Leading a Life with God, the practice of spiritual leadership,” “Creating a Life with God: the call of ancient prayer practices,” and co-author of “Meeting God in Virtual Reality: using spiritual practices with media.”
Title: Contemplatives in Conversation: Sufi and Christian Perspectives
Date: Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Time: 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM CDT
After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.
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Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server
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Required: Mac OS® X 10.4.11 (Tiger®) or newer
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Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
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Religious Wisdom the World Needs Now
by Yaira Robinson
from State of Formation
This was my first visit to the Zen Center. One of the Buddhist priests had invited me to encourage his students to engage in interfaith environmental work. I was a little nervous, but something about this group—their open spirit, perhaps, and honest questions—quickly put me at ease and helped me speak from the heart. At some point, I found myself saying, “The Buddhist tradition has beautiful teachings about how all life is interconnected, and the world desperately needs this wisdom! Pleaseshare it.”
Global warming is a huge behemoth of a problem. It challenges us to work together across the globe in new and unprecedented ways—ways we clearly haven’t figured out yet, as international climate talks repeatedly fail to produce significant agreements. Meanwhile, individual people are waking up to the climate crisis, struggling to make sense of it, and wondering how to respond.
One of the ways that people of faith are responding is by turning to our religious traditions. From them, we seek teachings and practices that might inform our actions as we try to meet these challenges. And we are finding them! Each of the world’s religious traditions offers tremendous wisdom about how we should live in respectful relationship with the earth and with each other.
As I drove home from the Zen Center that evening, I got to thinking: If what the world in climate crisis most needs to hear from the Buddhist tradition is that all life is interconnected, what does it most need to hear from other religious traditions?
