Worth reading:
Learning to love Islam
By YOSSI KLEIN HALEVI
In recent months I've had a strange and moving e-mail correspondence with my friend Irshad Manji. Irshad, a young Toronto journalist whose Indian-born parents fled Uganda after Idi Amin's takeover, has recently published a book called The Trouble with Islam, which takes the form of an extended open letter to her fellow Muslims. It's passionate, courageous, and astonishingly funny - just like Irshad herself.
Irshad's provocative point is contained in her title: The "trouble" isn't only with Islamism but with mainstream Islam itself. The glorification of jihad, the subjugation of women, the relegation of Jews and Christians to permanent inferior status (dhimmitude) - all are expressions of normative Islam.
Irshad is particularly outraged at Arab - and, by extension, Muslim - hatred of Israel. She understands what most of the world does not: that the Arab world's antipathy toward Israel is a monstrous attempt to deflect onto the Jewish state the terrible failure of its own civilization. And she has taken the time to examine all the little lies that together form the new big lie: that the Arab world is the innocent victim of a rapacious Israel.
Irshad notes the destructive role Islamic theology has played in the Arab-Israeli conflict. According to normative Islam, no non-Muslim sovereignty can be tolerated in lands once ruled by Islam. While that Islamic principle applies, for example, to Spain as well as to Israel, in Israel's case the offense is immeasurably greater, since the Jewish state is located in the Muslim heartland.
For years, many Israelis tried to deny the profound religious aspects of this conflict. And for good reason: A conflict over borders can be rationally negotiated, while a religious war can only be fought until one side concedes defeat. Yet after three years of jihadist terrorism, it's no longer possible to deny the religious overtones of this struggle. For if the intifada were merely a national uprising against occupation rather than a religious war against Jewish sovereignty, why haven't any of the suicide bombers been Palestinian Christians?
Islam, it is true, does make room under its rule for Jews and Christians - but that's precisely the problem. The operative phrase is "under its rule." The trouble with Islam's tolerance, then, is that it is essentially medieval. For Islam to grow, at least part of the faith needs to develop a modern model of religious pluralism as large parts of Christianity and Judaism have done in recent decades.
As a friend, as an Israeli, I cherish Irshad. With the publication of her book, Irshad has joined the moral elite of those ready to risk their lives for truth.
Still, for all my deep appreciation for Irshad, she and I have an ongoing argument. And what's poignant about our e-mail debates is that I, a religious Jew, have been trying to convince her about the need to emphasize not only Islam's problems but also its beauty and power, while she insists that her fellow Muslims need to hear the unadorned truth about Islam's dark side.
In her book she quotes one of my e-mails to her: "Your narrative needs more love. Not for the mullahs but for the billions of souls over the centuries who prostrated on little embroidered prayer rugs and offered their small unhappy lives to God's glory." And here is Irshad's response to me as it appears in her book: "Excuse me for ruining the moment, but why should so many lives be 'small' and 'unhappy,' especially under a merciful God? And please don't tell me these things happen when religions are on the defensive, because even as Islam entered its golden age, lives were small and lies were big. Remember that the caliph al-Ma'mum trumpeted free will, yet flogged people for disagreeing with his interpretation of Islam. Not much has changed in that regard, has it?" And so allow me to explain why I cherish Islam.
In late 1998, I began a year-long pilgrimage into Islam (and Christianity), in Israel and the territories. My intention was to test whether a religious Jew could find a common language of devotion and prayer with Muslims and Christians. I joined Christian monastics in silent meditation and Sufi Muslim mystics in their exuberant dances and lived, as much as possible, according to their religious calendars.
During that year, I learned something of the power of Muslim prayer, which immerses the entire body in choreographed surrender. And I learned to feel at home in a mosque - an experience that now seems to me almost surreal.
But beyond its spiritual power, I learned that Islam, like all great religions, contains powerful tools for renewal and growth - including the potential capacity to reconcile with a Jewish state.
ONE SUCH tool is a Muslim's profound awareness of mortality. The dark side of that awareness, of course, is a brooding fatalism that nurtures the culture of suicide bombings. The positive side, though, is a Muslim ability to place the events of this life in the perspective of eternity.
Almost invariably, when arguing with a Muslim, I've been told "Why should we argue? How many more years do you and I have left in this world anyway?" The Palestinian equivalent to that conversation goes like this: "Why are we fighting over who owns the land when it's the land that owns us? After all, soon you and I will both belong to the earth..."
That humility before death can lead to the wisdom of compromise. As the Catholic Church has proven, even the most entrenched theologies of contempt toward another faith can change. And there are, after all, Muslims who have accepted Israel - from Turkey's Islamist rulers to leading Muslim clerics in the non-Arab world, especially Indonesia and India.
As the crisis in the Muslim world intensifies, reformers will need to draw on the spiritual resources within Islam to justify their political and theological innovations. Fortunately for us all, those resources amply exist.
Which brings me to my argument with Irshad. Of course Irshad is right that Muslims need to be told the truth, and that the religious equivalent of political correctness only encourages Muslim self-pity and evasion of self-criticism.
Still, Muslims also need to know that their faith, and their integrity as people of faith, aren't under attack. Easing Muslims' sense of cultural and spiritual siege - even as the necessary military siege against Islamist terrorism and its vast infrastructure intensifies - may help the reformist argument to be heard.
On second thought, perhaps Irshad and I aren't really arguing. As a Muslim dissident, struggling within the faith, Irshad can allow herself to speak bluntly to her fellow Muslims. And Irshad has, after all, written her angry book as a Muslim, not an ex-Muslim.
And that is crucial because the real war for the future of religion isn't being fought between competing faiths or even between secularists and believers but within each faith - between its fundamentalists, who limit God's greatness to the triumph of their way, and its pluralists, who believe that God is great enough to accommodate multiple paths to truth.
While Irshad has responsibilities as a Muslim dissident, non-Muslims have responsibilities too. Our critique of Islam requires a nuanced tone. We should offer Islam not just our criticism but our respect and, if possible, our love.
And Irshad - this justifiably enraged young woman who still insists on calling herself a Muslim - has given me one more reason to love Islam.
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