Talking In The Night: Voices of Islam
Reverend Holly Horn
First Unitarian Church, Philadelphia, PA
Around the year 570 of the Common Era, Muhammad ibn Abdullah (peace be upon him) was born in the city of Mecca, on the Arabian peninsula. His father had died a few weeks earlier. His mother died when he was six years old, and he went to live with his grandfather, Abdul Muttalib. Two years later, his grandfather also died, and he was then cared for by his uncle, Abu Talib.
He was a thoughtful and gentle youth, sensitive to plight of the weak and vulnerable. As a young man, he was well known and respected for his honesty and intelligence, earning the nickname al-Amin, the Trustworthy. When he was twenty-five years old, he went into business with a wealthy merchant, a woman named Khadija Bint Khuwaylid. She, too, was impressed by his character and she asked him to marry her. The marriage was a happy one. They had six children, four girls and two boys, although neither of their sons lived beyond infancy.
Like all the pious men of Mecca, Muhammad observed the custom of an annual spiritual retreat at Mount Hira during the month of Ramadan. In the year 610, an angel appeared to Muhammad.
"Read!" said the angel. But Muhammad could neither read nor write. "Read!" the angel said again. Three times Muhammad said he could not read, and three times the angel insisted, "Read!" And the first Surah, or chapter, of the Qur'an was revealed.
Muhammad was frightened and confused by his experience. "Oh, Khadija, I fear I am going mad." But Khadija "reassured him, and convinced him that what had happened was marvelous and unique" - God had chosen him as a prophet. And she became the first Muslim, repeating the shehada, or testimony of faith "La illaha ilallah, Muhammad al-rasul allah." There is no God but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God.
Three years later, Muhammad began to preach publicly, and received revelation continuously for the next 22 years. His message angered the people of Mecca, however. His strident monotheism was a threat to his kinsmen. The hundreds of gods and goddesses worshiped at the sanctuary of the Ka'aba drew pilgrims - and their business. "Some of the early Muslims were beaten up and tortured."
In 619, both Khadija and Muhammad's uncle and powerful protector, Abu Talib, died. The situation in Mecca grew desperate. And in 622, Muhammad and his followers departed for Medina, marking the first year of the Muslim calendar, the year of the Hejira.
In 624, the Meccans attacked the Muslims. Fighting continued until Muhammad's forces occupied Mecca in 630. On June 8, 632, year 10 of the Hejira, the Prophet (peace be upon him) died. Within decades, Islam spread as far as Spain and India. And for 600 years Islamic civilization flourished, producing some of the world's greatest art and literature, science and philosophy.
Today, that civilization is but an echo in the empty halls of the Alhambra. A surly despot rules in once-glorious Baghdad. And the birthplace of the Prophet has become a nursery of terror.
Many Americans are asking, and understandably in the wake of our great and recent loss, is there something inherent in Islam that predisposes its followers to violence? And, saturated with images of the colorful and exotic burka, many ask the same of its treatment of women.
But, in order to begin such an investigation, we must recognize that both the Muslim terrorist and the veiled woman are potent stereotypes in the Western imagination. We must recognize that our perceptions of Islam are distorted in ways of which we have little or no awareness. And so, we must adopt a posture of humility. We must begin with a confession of our ignorance. And we must proceed with caution, with reverence, and with respect.
Islam is the second largest and currently one of the most rapidly expanding of the world's great religious traditions. All Muslims practice the five pillars: The Shehada, or testimony of faith; salat, the five daily prayers; zakat, the giving of alms to support the poor; sawm, fasting during the month of Ramadan; and the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca.
But, beyond the five pillars, in law, politics, and local customs, there is great variety among Muslim societies. The veil, for instance, appears in many different forms. It has never been universally adopted, and in most countries it is not legally required.
Fatima Mernissi is a Moroccan sociologist and Muslim feminist theologian. In her book, The Veil and the Male Elite, she journeys back to the origins of Islam, using traditional methods of interpretation to reveal startling new insights. Mastering massive bodies of Muslim learning, she recreates the settings in which Muhammad received many of his revelations most relevant to women, and in particular the verse of the hijab, or veil.
In Medina, where the work of establishing a new model for society took place, Muhammad was surrounded by beautiful, intelligent women. In particular, two of his wives, Umm Salama and 'A'isha were renowned for their learning and wisdom.
One day, Umm Salama asked the Prophet "Why are men mentioned in the Koran and why are we not?" Later she recounted, "And what was to my surprise one afternoon, when I was combing my hair, to hear his voice from the minbar (the pulpit in the mosque). I hastily did up my hair and ran to one of the apartments from where I could hear better. I pressed my ear to the wall, and here is what the Prophet said:
'O People! Allah has said in his book: 'Men who surrender unto Allah, and women who surrender, and men who believe and women who believe,' etc. And he continued in this vein until he came to the end of the passage where it is said: 'Allah hath prepared for them forgiveness and a vast reward.'"
It was clear that the equality of believers in Islam included women. This verse was followed by others which radically altered the relationships of men and women, including women's right to inherit, rather than be inherited. Mernissi believes these verses were the result of a protest movement by the women of the early Muslim community. And, as she vividly demonstrates, a male backlash followed in its wake.
During a period of instability following a major military set-back, a group known as the Hypocrites attacked Muhammad by attacking his wives, literally by sexually harassing them on the streets. Certain of the Prophet's male companions took advantage of the situation, pressuring him to compromise the equality of all believers. The result was a revelation prescribing the veiling of free women, which left slave women as sexual prey; also abrogating an earlier revelation against the rape of slave women.
What was initially a response to a crisis - the veil - later became a tool of patriarchal power. And the ideal of equality between the sexes - much manifest in the early Muslim community - was eroded as heirarchies of political power were established.
The Qur'an bears two conflicting streams of tradition with regard to the status of women: one hugely liberating, the other sadly constricting. "Of use," says the Qur'an, "is the reminder." So I remind you that the same is true of Christianity, of Judaism, and of Unitarian Universalism - more on this in a later sermon.
It is for the thinking person of faith to sort through these streams of tradition, and to lift up those which speak to the needs of our own times. The high rates of illiteracy among Muslim women and the political repression in many Muslim countries mitigate against their doing so. But, there is nothing at the heart of the faith to prevent it.
Mernissi writes: ". . . beyond its spiritual dimension, Islam was first and foremost a promise of power, unity, and triumph for a marginalized people, divided and occupied, who wasted their energy in intertribal wars."
The promise of Islam has appealed to many marginalized people. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, "African Muslim slaves were noteworthy for their sometimes violent resistance to the institution of slavery. . . In the United States . . . some of them kept their African names, wrote in Arabic, and continued to practice their religion; some of them used the American Colonization Society to gain their freedom and return to Africa." Richard Brent Turner writes in Islam in the African American Experience:
"All of this constituted intellectual resistance to slavery, as African Muslims, who had been members of the ruling elite in West Africa, used their literacy and professional skills to manipulate white Americans. . . In this context, writing in Arabic, fasting, wearing Muslim clothing, and reciting and reflecting on the Qur'an were the keys to an inner struggle [a jihad] of liberation against Christian tyranny."
While African slaves brought Islam to this country, they were not able to build the institutions which could sustain it. Yet, Islam has been continuously linked with black culture in America since the 19th century, when Edward Wilmot Blyden, made the connection between Pan-Africanism, a movement to uplift and unite people of African descent worldwide, and global Islam.
Today, the new Nation of Islam, led by Louis Farrakhan, receives most of the media attention as a result of its incendiary racist and anti-Jewish rhetoric. But, it is the old Nation of Islam, now known as the Muslim American Community, which has received international attention. In 1997, when Turner's book was published, African American Muslims comprised 42% of American Muslims, yet Warith Deen Mohammed, leader of the Muslim American Community, was given the authority to certify all pilgrimages to Mecca from North America.
Ahmed Akbar writes: "It is hard for a Muslim to stand at the Alhambra without feeling a sense of loss. It is the same at the mosque at Cordoba. Nor is this feeling of regret confined to Andalusian Spain. Throughout what were the traditional heartlands of Islam in Turkey, Iran and North India great Muslim civilizations lie in ruins. I believe the past challenges Muslims today in all sorts of complex and interesting ways."
Fatima Mernissi writes: "The difference between the West and us is in the way we consume death, the past. Westerners make it into a last course, and we try to make it the main dish."
When we consider the regret, the sense of loss, compounded by the very real manipulations of our government in sustaining corrupt and oppressive Muslim regimes; all the vestiges of colonialism and the invasive culture of multinational corporations; the abyss that lies between the rich and the poor nations of the world - yes, Islam holds a promise of power, unity, and triumph for marginalized peoples.
And yes, there are conflicting streams of tradition with regard to violence. "Of use," says the Qur'an, "is the reminder." The same is true of all the world's major religions. But, no the Qur'an offers no unique religious sanction for the murder of innocent people.
In her most recent book, Scheherazade Goes West, Fatima Mernissi explores representations of the harem in Western and in Muslim cultures, seeking to understand how her experience with domestic incarceration might be reconciled with the sexual fantasies of Western men. Central to her search is the figure of Scheherazade, the storyteller of The Thousand and One Nights.
Her story begins with a king whose wife betrays him by having sex with a slave. The king kills his wife and the slave, and then systemically beheads hundreds of innocent virgins, marrying each one at night and killing them at dawn. Scheherazade volunteers to marry the king, she says, "'so that I may either succeed in saving the people or perish and die like the rest.' She has a scheme in mind that will prove to be successful: to weave spellbinding stories that will captivate the king, leaving him hungry to hear more - and save her life."
Superbly educated, psychologically astute, and sufficiently in control of her own fear, Scheherezade saves herself and a whole kingdom; healing the king through her speech.
Mernissi describes Scheherazade's speech as samar, an Arabic word which literally means to talk in the night. But it "also implies that to talk softly in the darkness can open up incredibly rich veins of feeling. Samar reaches its perfect state when there is a moon; 'the shadow of the moon' . . . is, in fact, another meaning of samar. . . In the shadow of the moon, dialogue between a man and a woman - as difficult as it seems during the day - becomes a possibility."
It is powerful tale. For Abdesslam Cheddadi, a Moroccan historian, it illuminates "the emergence of the storyteller as a symbol of human rights in the modern Orient." For the influential Egyptian thinker, Taha Hussein, Scheherazade "becomes a symbol for the many innocents who were engulfed by the Second World War. . . Redemption in Taha Hussein's work, starts when a dialogue is established between the powerful and the powerless."
Men and women, rich and poor, white and black, West and East - redemption begins when a dialogue is established between the powerful and the powerless.
What would a dialogue between Islam and the West look like? It might begin with the inclusion of Muslim history, culture and religion in our public school curricula - a minimum body of knowledge to counter the vast supply of misinformation, media stereotypes, and prejudice. A basic introduction to Islam, as well as an opportunity for discussion, is what I plan to offer in a class beginning this Wednesday.
Establishing a dialogue with Islam would surely include a commitment to language study - not only the languages of Islamic culture, Arabic, Persian, Urdu, others, but languages in general. There was a time, you know, when a foreign language was a college requirement. The idea that we Americans don't learn languages because we don't have to is cultural arrogance and laziness, pure and simple; and as we have recently learned with regard to our national security, it is utter stupidity, as well.
We might also attend to Mernissi's insight that, while "Muslims persist in making the past a profession, a vocation, an outlook . . . [living] the present as an interlude in which [they] are little involved. . . [we] Westerners consume the past as a hobby, as a pastime, as a rest from the stress of the present." There are more ample uses of the past, which do not involve making it the main course.
In our own Unitarian history, there are important points of connection with Islam. It is no accident that the Arabic word "muhawadun", unfortunately associated with the ultra-conservative Wahhabi sect of Saudi Arabia, is translated "unitarian". One of the signal events of the Protestant Reformation, the martyrdom of the Spaniard Michael Servetus, was a result of his commitment - following the carnage of the expulsion of Jews and Muslims from Spain - to forging a theology that would allow Jews, Christians, and Muslims to live in peace. He was the first to challenge the non-biblical notion of the Trinity; and his family may well have been Morisco, forcibly converted from Christianity to Islam.
When Unitarianism assumed its earliest institutional form in Transylvania, it was during a time when that region, now in Romania, was periodically a suzerain state of the Muslim Turkish Sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent, who protected the new faith from the Inquisition. Surely the Sufi missionaries were also there.
Remembering our own past will bring us closer to those who live in theirs. Listening and talking in the shadow of the moon we will also learn more about ourselves. May it be so. AMEN.
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