Dissecting our own ambivalence with Islam
A news story from Somalia late last year recounted an incident in which local men gathered in a stadium in Mogadishu where they stoned to death a 13 year old girl who had been accused of adultery. A similar report from Iraq not only recounted the murder of a teenage girl by a mob but included web postings of the incident taken on camera phones. A Kurd, the girl had apparently entered into a relationship with a neighboring Sunni boy. Islamic courts in various places around the world impose sentences that, by our standards, are horrific--beheadings, eye gouging, hands chopped off.
This week, the news reports that the Pakistani government has cut a deal withTalibani leaders in an area of Pakistan to allow Sharia law to function. Then there are the violent demonstrations and calls for death when westerners parody or caricature Mohammed.
These horrific reports underly, I believe, the discomfort and uncertainty many westerners experience in thinking about Islam. The Muslim family shopping at the grocery store seems so like us and so normal, and yet we don't understand what their connection is to the evil that unfolds somewhere at the other end of their culture. I have to acknowledge that I don't understand it myself. I've read a fair amount of the Koran with the hope of gaining context. I've read books looking at the relationships between Islam, Christianity, and science. And I find little that gives me clarity. Little that suggests that murdering children is acceptable in Islam anymore than it is in our modern world.
At the same time, I am reminded that the Christian Gospels recount the story of a woman sentenced to be stoned for adultery. In that the idea of adulthood is not necessarily the same in ancient Judea as it is now, this could have been a girl by our standards. Regardless, it is a barbaric story to our eyes. Similarly, the Old Testament has many horrific accounts. In the Book of Numbers, Chapter 13, Moses directs his victorious troops to kill all the men, all the women who aren't virgins, and all the male children of the Midianites, but to keep the girls who are still virgins for themselves. Not any less barbaric than the murder of a child today in Iraq.
When we look over our shoulders honestly, there are still examples of conflicts recently in which Christians have been the agents of horrific actions. The massacre of Muslims in Nigeria some years ago is an example. While it seems long ago and far away to us, the religious wars in Europe some centuries back were barbaric in much of their character. And it was within our memory that mobs lynched and mutilated Black people in our own country. What these situations possess in common is that they are most likely in circumstances where underlying tribal or clan identities of longstanding character are overlaid with religious beliefs which become justification for what we'd describe as 'hate crimes'. They are also most likely when people are isolated from outside ideas and perspectives. In fact, excoriating the different is central to these situations.
I'd say that it's not accidental that the Renaissance and the opening up of the West to new ideas and thoughts paralleled declines in this sort of tribalism. The conclusion, it seems to me, has to be that we recognize the potential for evil which lies in every heart. That we do everything in our power to bring connectedness, education, and dialogue to the people in the world. Most of them, the vast majority, regardless of religious belief, are people of good will who have much in common with us. To the extent we light up the world we break the power of the evildoers.
It is not Islam which is the problem. Nor Judaism. Nor any other belief in itself.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/11/17/saudi.rape.victim/
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