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Ramadan: A Sermon on Islam
Reverend
Brian J. Kiely, Third day of Ramadan, 1391 Unitarian Church of Edmonton,
November 18, 2001
Last weekend my denominational work took me to Boston, to 25 Beacon
Street, the headquarters of the Unitarian Universalist Association.
In the 19th century, Unitarianism was a strong and powerful presence
in New England, especially in Boston. The historic legacy means that
within walking distance of '25' as it is know, one can visit one
of several prominent and historic Unitarian churches in Boston's
downtown core.
So on Sunday, in the very cradle of our faith in North America,
with an entire smorgasbord of UU services available to me, I attended
a local mosque. Go figure.
In fact, a dear friend who works at '25' was serving his own congregation
by teaching the Junior High School program. This year they are learning
about other faiths. My visit coincided with their trip to the mosque.
It was timely, both for this service and because Friday was the start
of Islam's holiest season, Ramadan.
For most of us Islam seems mysterious and distant. While we know
there are10 million Muslims on this continent, we - or rather I-
tend to see it asforeign in language, custom and theology. The prayers
are all in Arabic, aren't they? The music is all like middle eastern,
isn't it? And then there are those crazy terrorists who die in the
name of Allah led by those even crazier mullahs? What kind of religion
can that be?
Well, in fact everything I have just said is mostly false, taken
out of context and blown way out of proportion. One of the most interesting
facets of our visit was the reaction of the children and parents
who accompanied us.
As we arrived at the Islamic Center, they all took a quiet deep breath.
The people looked strange, the women wore head scarves and we weren't
sure what would happen.
What did happen was a fairly typical 'church mom' took us inside
a classroom, welcomed us and began to teach. From time to time she
went to the adjoining room to shush the kids who were getting a little
too rambunctious. One of the men of the mosque occasionally tried
to take over the question and answer session in the way that some
folks in love with their own voices are wont to do. Our church mom
did a wonderful job of politely shutting him down.
Towards the end, she explained the proper manners required in the
prayer room (it's very simple and naturally respectful) and then
took us over. When all were assembled, we sat through too many announcements
that went on too long. At that point we all felt quite at home. A
brief 10 minute prayer service followed. Islam expects prayers five
times a day, but has little else in the way of ritual or ceremony.
Oh, at the end there was a homily. It lasted four minutes. There
are, perhaps, things UUs can learn from Islam!
Throughout children ran around and some of the women were busy in
the kitchen getting food ready. It all felt like any UU church...
except perhaps that there were more children and youth.
For us, some of the misconceptions began to melt away. Let's look
at a few:
The role of mullahs
There are no ordained clerics in Islam. Mullah
is simply the leader, usually elected by the congregation. Some
are very highly educated. Some are charismatic leaders. Some are
both.
Some are neither. The point is they are not ordained or certified
by a central church. In fact, Islam is the most radically democratic
major
faith in the
world. Each person has the right to read and interpret the Koran
(indeed, is expected to read and even to teach at times).
The terrorist question
It is as wrong to see Al Qaeda terrorists
as representative of Islam as it is to see the Irish Republican
Army as representative of Catholicism or the Ku Klux Klan as
representative of Protestantism. Terrorists are deeply angry people,
in some
cases
deeply disturbed people. They have been twisted by hate and
turned by charismatic leadership into killing machines. They lack
every
compassionate and forgiving quality their religion names as
its highest values. They grab the banner of religion in order to
gain
support
and to lend legitimacy to their psychopathic desire to destroy.
Now it's true that there is usually legitimate anger and injustice
to be found among the peoples where terrorism rises. Terrorists gain
support from moderates because levels of frustration at that injustice
come to a rolling boil. But to suggest that terrorism is an expression
of the message of any world religion is completely wrong and an insult
to all people of faith.
Let's now pull away a few more veils and look at what Islam professes
to be.
Islam began in the year 610 CE when Mohammed, a young businessman
was chosen by God (Allah) to be his 25th and final prophet. The angel
Gabriel Jalazreel) revealed the first five verses of the Koran to
Mohammed in the Cave of Hira near Mecca. Mohammed, himself illiterate,
dictated them to scribes. It would take several years before the
Koran was completed in this fashion, but Mohammed began preaching
the religion of submission to one God right away.
Islam was not created out of whole cloth. As Christianity was an
offshoot of ancient Judaism, so is Islam. As we know from the Hebrew
Bible, Abraham became a messenger of God. Now he was an old guy and
his wife Sarai had never had children, so she arranged for Abram
to sleep with her maid Hagar.
The result was a son Ishmael. Now God made a promise to Abram and
soon Sarai conceived in her old age and gave birth to Isaac and so
began the Jewish race. Hagar and Ishmael were turned out into the
desert.
In Islam, Ishmael became the next prophet in a line leading towards
Mohammed. Similarly, Jesus becomes the 24th prophet, just before
Mohammed. Islam accepts and honors the wisdom and value of Christianity
and Judaism. It simply believes that Mohammed received the updated
and final teachings of God. But all three religions worship the same
divinity. It is merely the vagaries of language that label them God,
Yahweh and Allah.
I"ve often said that religion cannot be separated from the
culture in which it arises. This is true of Islam. A major part Mohammed"s
mission was to bring an end to the kind of mass slaughter we witnessed
both on September 11 and in the zealotry of both Iran and Afghanistan
in past decades.
Pre-Islamic Arabia was caught up in a vicious cycle of warfare in
which tribal vendettas were a way of life. Mohammed himself survived
several assassination attempts and once had to flee for his life
to Medina.
Islam was born in a deadly war of survival, but as soon as a feeling
of security developed the Prophet began to preach peace and compassion.
Indeed, he spread Islam through the Arabian peninsula through an
ingenious campaign of non-violence and coalition building. When he
died in 632 he had almost singlehandedly brought peace to the peninsula.
Because the Koran was revealed in the context of all out war, several
passages do deal with armed struggle. But violence and warfare are
only legitimate as means of self-defence. You must be attacked first,
and it is always more meritorious to forgo revenge in favor of charity.
Like some fundamentalist Christian preachers who sell more hate
than religion, people like Osama bin Laden cite the passages on war
selectively, ignoring the longer compassionate and peaceful verses
which almost always follow. Like the Bible, you can prove just about
any point of view with Koranic verses taken out of context.
And they can twist words. We are all familiar with the word 'jihad'
which we are told means 'holy war'. That's not true. It means 'struggle'
and usually means an internal personal struggle to submit to God's
will (inshallah).
There is one Koranic passage where Mohammed returning from battle
says it was a 'jihad' but that now the far greater 'jihad' to seek
peace and act with compassion begins.
The word Islam means 'submission' meaning complete submission to
a single God, and the word is related to 'salaam' which means peace.
Every Muslim I have ever talked with has asserted that Islam is a
religion of peace. As well, Muslims believe that on one can be forced
to convert. The Koran insists "There must be no coercion in
matters of faith".
In the 7th and 8th centuries when Islam spread so rapidly through
all of North Africa and up to the Franco-Spanish border in the west
and the Balkans in the east, Jews and Christians were never forced
to convert. The best example is probably the Eastern Orthodox Church.
It has been based in Constantinople (or Istanbul) since it split
from the Roman church in 1054. For almost all of that time, that
city has been under Islamic rule.
In one of his last sermons, Mohammed said, "O people! We have
formed you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another." --
not to conquer, subjugate, revile or slaughter, but to reach out
towards one another with int elligence and understanding.
While the Koran is complex and requires a lifetime of study, the
basic teachings of Islam are very simple. They resolve into what
are called the five pillars:
1. Accept that there is no God but Allah and that Mohammed is his
messenger. Say that aloud with belief in your heart and you are a
Muslim. No complicated rituals required.
2. Pray five times a day in the prescribed manner.
3. Charity. You are expected to share of yourself and your wealth,
to model Allah's compassion in your life.
4. Fast during Ramadan.
5. Make a pilgrimage to Mecca once in your life if health and money
allow. Do that and you are a good Muslim.
I would leave the conclusion to a 17 year old Jewish lad I met at
the mosque.
He had converted to Islam after September 11. "Don't make the
mistake of confusing the faith with the society," he said. "Sure
there are repressive regimes and anti-woman societies within Islam,
but that's the society they live in, not the religion we practice.
It's no different from the way we Americans had slavery and denied
women the vote once upon a time. Those things had to do with culture,
not Christianity or Judaism. It's the same with Islam."
I have found nothing in the classical understanding of Islam that
I cannot fully respect and honour. If Islam fails to live up to its
origins in any particularnation, it's only because the religion is
in the hands of fallible human beings, just like every other religion
on earth.
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