Would a return to "indigenous religions" be a progressive move within US society?

 There are a number of people in the US who, discontented with their childhood religious indoctrination as well as the seeming soulless and anti-human character of our technocratic society, imagine if we only could remove Christianity conditioning of our consciousness, we could get back to some primordial pro-human reality in which indigenous spiritual tradition would provide a basis for new human flourishing, removing things like shame, guilt, and other “foreign” ideas.

Notably, a methodology for this recovery is rarely proposed or specified, so it typically takes a very idiosyncratic form and is often draped in a naive nostalgia, uninformed by history.

A scientific way to study the viability of such assertions would be to look at a contemporary society where rejection of Christianity and Islam in favor of some other religion are actually in ascendancy today and study the practical significance of such views. 

India is an ideal case study: the current government’s legitimacy rests on an assertive Hinduism, which is contrasted with foreign ideologies of Christianity and Islam. Elements within government and civil society assert that these foreign ideologies have had Indians in a mental chokehold for millennia and that only a return to a primordial idea of religious coexistence under Hinduism can revitalise society. Essentially the government is advocating a return to what Christians and Muslims would understand as neo-paganism, only this time with modern characteristics.

I really wish more critics of Christianity in the west, especially those in the wellness industry, would pay much closer attention to the practical consequences of the realization of the idea they cherish in Indian society. If they did, I think they would see there that an assertive and victorious non-monotheism has produced as dangerous a fundamentalist reaction as any monotheistic faith, complete with lynching, widespread religious persecution of minorities, and a thorough-going purity culture as virulent as anything produced in Christianity and Islam. One cannot really avoid the conclusion that the assertion and attempted implementation of Hinduism as the indigenous tradition of India has resulted in many of the worst dynamics present in Christian fundamentalism, and even the resurgence of several anti-human dynamics that Christianity as a belief system had attempted to eliminate or reform.

Unfortunately global dynamics militate against westerners developing a more critical understanding. The dynamic of muscular Hinduism in Indian society is obscured by the rebranding of Hinduism in the US as a tolerant New Age belief system, flattering the sensibilities of the many post-Christians and other lost souls who migrate to the wellness industry in search of meaning. Our New Age wellness advisors have fundamentally misdiagnosed the problem. But they are not the only ones misled. Put in terms familiar to decolonial scholars, modern Hinduism exemplifies the "coloniality of power", but absent any of the ideological geneaologies decolonial scholars impute to coloniality's origins. A similar geneaology of power's coloniality could be revealed in many to most non-western religions, suggesting in turn that decolonial scholars have fundamentally misread the historical situation, and that coloniality is not a historically specific situation but a perennial human dynamic inherent to our attempts to build social groups and create collective meaning. It might also be said to be an artifact of the development of consciousness in our species, inherent in our evolutionary descent from our nearest non-human ancestors.  This is something our decolonial scholars could profitably examine, if they were able to break from the romantic mental shackles imposed by the idea of 1492 and Descartes "cogito ergo sum" as epistemological ruptures producing the ideology of coloniality.

My personal belief is that most such projects of ideological “return”, not only Hinduism, are doomed to produce these types of dystopian outcomes. I believe the way is not to return to a past that only exists as an imaginary construct, but to look boldly forward and define the customs and values worth preserving from our various traditions and try to live by them. Tolerance will play a huge role here. However I will die on the hill that there is nothing inherently tolerant or utopian about pre-monotheistic traditions; their appeal to ex-Christians in the west says more about the psycho-dynamics of romanticism in our secular US society than it does about the practical consequences of reanimating the ethics of those belief systems. I think the decolonial turn is the academic version of these psycho-dynamics. We need a much more sophisticated approach.

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Islam, Christianity and LGBT in the United States: What do we owe to each other?

This is a response to Mobeen Vaid's reflection from Feb. 19, 2020. The author of this piece is an excellent, incisive writer. I enjoy reading him, in spite of my substantive disagreements, because he makes me think. This piece is not the best example of his abilities. In fact, I think the piece shows that the author has some blind spots, some unexamined bigotry on the LGBT issue, as do many of your Muslim faves on this issue. To see why, and to see what I believe to be the shortcomings of his approach, it may help to imagine the post below being written by a Christian about Muslims. To understand the validity of this comparison, we need to erase the Eurocentric distinction of distinct "religious" and "non-religious" communities in modern society. This doesn't mean denying that certain groups think of themselves as religious groups, rather it means seeing that IT MATTERS how, and with what language, groups relate to each other in a plural society. Under US law, religious groups don't have a privileged right to an authentic identity that exceeds that of any other group. In the US, there isn't a meaningful legal distinction between the protection for religious identity, and the protection for sexual identity, although today a number of conservative Christian legal theorists are highly invested in making the distinction. However, both are legally protected by the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment. A thought experiment I often perform when thinking through the subtleties of this issue, is to imagine if a Christian wrote about Islam, the way Vaid writes about LGBT. I can see a Christian 'apologizing' for centering their point of view unequivocally with the following, betraying their profound anxiety about losing followers: "There are increasingly Christians who are attracted to the abominable heresy that is Islam, who are still trying to live a life of fidelity to Jesus Christ, in spite of the increasing public tolerance for Islam's perversion of the gospel." or, an edited version of a sentiment expressed in Vaid's article, from a Christocentric perspective : "Today, Christian activists and politicians are free to support masjids being built in majority Christian neighborhoods, the legalization of polygamy, the practice of the sharia, restrictions on Christian religious freedom, and basically any other pro-Muslim program without receiving even mild push back or concern from anyone other than a few nominal corners online." We can recognize the 'right' of someone to express these opinions, about Muslims as well as gays and lesbians, even if we find them distasteful. But if it is important to critique the above sentiment as partial and based on low-information and a degree of hysteria, then it is equally important to challenge the sentiments expressed in the linked piece by Vaid. With study, we should be able to recognize that the Christian perspective I articulated above is Islamophobic, even if it is a valid generalization from the perspective of an authentically, orthodox Christianity. Similarly, LGBT-phobic Muslims are expressing a clearly recognizable form of bigotry, even if it is a valid generalization deeply rooted in Muslim religious orthodoxy. There are a number of shortcomings and contradictions in modern social progressivism, which Vaid is an eloquent critic. But these contradictions pale in comparison to the contradictions that would arise if orthodox Muslim and Christian views of human sexuality were implemented on a universal basis in US society today, or even ONLY within their respective communities. With its shortcomings, 'liberal progressivism' still provides a valuable safety valve for victims to escape from some of the more damaging views of sex and gender relations emanating from within religious communities.

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"Hang On" or "Antonia's Dream" (a brief foray into fiction)

Based on a true story...

I knew this old woman by the name of Antonia who was my neighbor when I lived in Rogers Park on the north side of Chicago. She was a lovably eccentric but strangely wise soul. She used to come to my apartment on Saturday mornings, to say hello, in her awkward but disarming way, bringing some store bought pastries, a tradition she began soon after I moved into the apartment on Ashland. I invited her in; we would usually sit and she would simply ask after me and my life. After exchanging greetings that day, she made tea and sat at my table, regarding me with a quizzical but slightly humorous gaze, or so I thought.

She told me she had been raised Baptist and I related to her my experience of various sects and denominations of both Christian, Buddhist and Muslim belief. We often spoke of the days news, and the books we were reading. She had unusual reading habits and an extremely large library with books pouring out into her whole house, in a state of organized chaos. Sometimes in our conversations, she would ask me if I had ever dreamed of flying and would often stare at me with the most dispassionate yet serene gaze as I stuttered that I hadn't. I also frequently poured out my heart to her, about my failed relationships, my struggles with faith, and my relationships with my family.

This has been nearly ten years ago now, but I still remember the remarkable story she told me that day. In one of the comfortable silences that often pervaded our conversations, she told me matter-of-factly: “Donnie Hathaway came to me in a dream when I was 12 years old.”

We both shared a love of this amazing musician, who had tragically taken his own life in the midst of a brilliant career.

Still it was an unexpected thing to hear. I didn't know what to say, so I simply said, "what happened in the dream?"

She continued, “Well, I only knew him from my parents record collection. But one night in late April 1980, I was listening to "A Song For You", with my father on his record player, before bed. Later I fell asleep easily."

Antonia continued, "I found myself on the edge of a canyon in a dry landscape dotted with green. Looking around, I began to climb to the top of a large pine tree on a ledge midways above an enormous canyon. Sheltered in the pine's branches, I emerged eventually into a sky of intense blue. The wind whistled by my face and I looked down over an enormous green valley filled with trees. As I looked around, I saw to my surprise, Donnie Hathaway appearing out of the trees of the valley below, flying upwards without visible effort or support, while playing a chord on an instrument seemingly made of a living plant. I sat transfixed.

He held my throat in hand, cradling it. I opened my mouth and he spoke directly into my gullet. It was as if I was digesting his utterances into my stomach. He spoke the following words:

""There is no such thing as ‘religion. There is only something called ‘knowledge of the world’ which encompasses that which is seen and unseen."

He then spoke the following in an instant, almost as a download into my brain:

"We know we are made up of chemical compounds, molecules, atoms, and neutrons interacting in highly complex ways that enable our brain to function. You must integrate the full sensory and motor apparati of the body, including the brain, to learn to 'taste' and subtly evaluate your own experiences of yourself and others. The most relevant context for achieving true wisdom is an understanding of the patterns of behavior of human communities, developed through this evaluation. In college settings, the pedagogical approach to this pattern evaluation is called ' the humanities'. But you can and must also learn such things from navigating the college experience itself. You can also learn it outside of college. You can learn these patterns in a variety of ways, first and foremost by listening closely to what people say, observing what they do and developing a basic empathy for their experience as you naturally have for your own.

Most people have a carefully calibrated mix of 'theist' and 'atheist' assumptions about reality, based on what they think is sinful or shameful. These ideas are frequently in flux. This flux can seem like the arbitrary and inconsistent wind of the fickle mind, but it is in reality an appropriate response to the complexity of existence, though often seen by extremists on both sides as being either insufficient faith or too much superstition. No one can appoint themselves an ultimate guarantor of an unseen reality, nor an arbiter of conscience of the ultimate validity of the sometimes abortive processes of faith and doubt in the individual.

Most important for children is to instill a deep sense of security and love in the child by setting boundaries for it, that must also evolve to meet the growing capacity of the child's sensory, motor and higher brain functions. Ideally parents provide a degree of stability that will allow the child to forms and inform their identity while incorporating flexibility, questioning and a rational autonomy that helps insulate the child from vulnerability to cults, which often prey on misplaced but sincere faith.

The messages we need to live together, to extend the life of the human species in a sustainable manner, and to live in balance with all the seen and unseen forces, is transmitted all around us by reality itself. There is no need to debate who is and isn’t correct about such abstractions like theological conceptions of God. It is strange and contradictory that the messengers of a supposedly all powerful God come every thousand years or so and to a limited swath of humanity, in a particular language. Some civilizations actually do not appear to have a theistic conception of the ULTIMATELY REAL at all. Study the messages of the tradition of your parents, as well as other traditions, whether theist or non-theist, but do not only rely on words spoken or written by someone else in the past to make your judgements. You must also independently evaluate the character of the adherents of these traditions through the power of your own sensory apparatus and intuition. You must purify this intuition to use it well; it can also be a deeply creative source. How do you think I made the song "Giving Up"?

But you must remain humble of your own inherent limitations. Please learn early on and deeply that your experience is a combination of many different inputs, including that which goes by the name of ‘tradition’. You are also a mammal, and a complex organism with many unconscious desires. If you choose the language of God to understand this truth, then: God speaks in words, but more importantly God generates new experiences and new reality every moment. Listen to the world in silent contemplation, listen to humans in compassion, and you will eventually find the wisdom you need to survive a variety of challenges.""

In her dream, the old woman told me she was surprised to find herself speaking the following words to Donny Hathaway, as if in a trance. Actually, she said, it was as if she was singing the words together with him, as if it was a duet:

""Human life and human history is largely just a string of pointless miseries, fruitless endeavors, and civilizations that failed because of human hubris, greed and unsustainable inequality. There is beauty there too, amid the detritus of our repeated and arrogant ruin, of history repeating itself. In their ultimate failures humans managed to form social units and communities to cooperate for common good, and have at times treated each other with remarkable sensitivity and real love, which in turn contributed to a humanly obtainable model of excellence and human flourishing. Some say, if you want wisdom, do not endeavor. But do not neglect to fulfill the obligations immediately in front of you. Often larger truths emerge from this prosaic mosaic.

Look around you at what the people believe; they are mired in ignorance. Do not be too harsh with anyone, except for those who come to you and engage in obviously bad faith. Among all peoples of the world, there are those who have a deep and beautifully profound faith in a good God or a good Force that governs, guides and sometimes rewards their life and accomplishments.

The concept of God is often treated psychologically as a fetish object by some monotheists, in spite of their denigration of its material manifestation as idolatry. This is not only a 'theist' family affair; non-theist 'religions' such as Buddhism also condemn practice, of the other from their limited psychic viewpoint.

God is neither good nor bad, in any conventional moral sense with meaning to human social life. God is sometimes referred to, misleadingly, as our ‘father’. But a father is supposed, even obligated, to protect his children from danger. God knows the future and so allows human evil to happen to these so-called children, including mass killing. He listens to the cries of today’s starving in Yemen and weeps, or laughs, but doesn’t intervene in any rationally comprehensible way we can understandor communicate about. And on goes the killing, fueled by human greed, not Godly punishment.

There are many Gods, there is only one God, there is no God. All of these statements are true and false at the same time. Don’t accept any of these contradictory statements as ontological. Debating whether non-theism or theism is true is like debating whether light is a wave or a particle. The fervency of the true believers ontological preference bears very little relation to the ULTIMATELY REAL or to the hearts of those who hold fervently to it.

‘Belief' is not measurable or ultimately definable in any consistent unitary doctrinal fashion. Although there have been many attempts. it is frequently so subtle that an orthodox believer will totally lack faith, in spite of his rhetorical affirmations of the same. Meanwhile the most ignorant “kaffir” or unbeliever may have iman enough to move mountains. The ways of this quality are indeed ultimately mysterious. Avoid judging in spite of a preponderance of evidence one way or the other. For non-theists, faith would be closer to an idea of an 'unveiling' of the senses', which drills a deep insight and deliberation into one's daily practice and existence.

Atheists will sometimes put on airs of superiority, rooted in the faith they have in limited human rationality. Yet take away their material comforts, take away their faith that the world is rationally ordered, and you will see their true character many times emerge. Religious leaders and atheists share one main quality and that is hubris.

To judge anyone, look at how they treat children, orphans and widows. Pay less attention to words and more to human action. which are easily ‘prettified’ by the intelligent.

Education can be a path to truth or a path to ignorance. Many words do not always bring clarity.
Don’t be in a hurry to express truth in words, for the more this something is talked about, the further the experiential intuition gets from it.

There are many spiritual teachers today, promising an easy path to prosperity or knowledge. They may have the right words, the right robes, the right instruments of mystical communion, and yet their heart may well be as hard as a mountain of granite.

There are many political leaders today, promising the kingdom of God on earth. Remember that material inequality always generates the conditions for social upheaval. But do not expect a political messiah. Power is something humans have inherent difficulties handling in large quantities.

Our species has demonstrated at times a remarkable ability to live together and spontaneously organize itself with ingenuity and originality. One doesn't need a Harvard degree or any other fancy piece of paper to know how to do this.

Beware of painting the self-organizing tendency in human communities as primitive or chaotic and beware of those who label it so. Many times the proposed western alternative is the exertion of violent coercion to carve out an arbitrary and damaging concept of sovereign ownership so as to be able to impose a usually highly abstract and violent notion of order. The wealthy will try to use the barrier created by this violence to insulate themselves from uncertainty. Eventually the quest for total security rots the hearts and brains of these people.

Don’t be in a hurry to make a name for yourself. Be in a hurry to listen to everything and everyone.
Reading is the habit of listening to the dead. Use it to relate empathetically with the living. Engage in it daily."

Antonia said at this point her whole body began pulsating with some heartbeat that appeared to be within the intricate structural body of the sky itself. She could hear the chittering sound of sparrows somewhere below her in the tree. Donnie Hathaway spoke again: 

""Remember if there isn’t a God, then anything is permitted to humans in an ultimate sense. This is the most monstrous idea imaginable. Therefore we need God. Human beings as a species cannot live totally without some concept of the ultimately real. It informs our actions and generates both useful prohibitions and a vital survival energy.

But if there is a God, this raises probably the thorniest and most irrational problem in theistic thought. God is good, but God permitted/allowed/intended for millions of humans to die at the hands of diseases, millions of others by the instability of the planet he created, and millions more by their fellow humans. He threw his 'children' to their own devices in the most cruel and calculated manner imaginable. If there is a God (and herein lies the controversy, he is truly a sadistic monster of the worst kind. Instead of imprinting a guide to conduct in his creation, he divided humanity into languages, taught them contradictory philosophies, and then set them against each other to debate and fight about the meanings of words he allegedly spoke 1000s of years ago and which are frequently not even in their first language. God cannot be 'good' and still be God, unless God intends and also creates and actually is the source of, evil itself.

To hold these two contradictory ideas in one’s head at the same time is the path to a profound and indescribable truth. This is why it is better to root the idea of good and evil in the consequences of human conduct, in individual terms, but also in terms that minimize the destructive tendencies of hubris and hierarchy, that in turn give birth to material inequality that generates violence and instability.""

The old woman said that by the time the musician had finished saying this portion, his head was glowing like polished brass, so that she could see her own reflection in pure outline in the shape of his brow. He was smiling gently at her.

Her head was spinning and her palms were sweating onto the fragrant needles of the pine tree. She was aware of her heart beating rapidly in her chest. High in the sky overlooking the verdant valley of her dream, she suddenly felt more deeply grounded and at peace with her own body and self than she ever had before.

Donnie stopped playing the plant-like instrument, and was gradually now surrounded by millions of shimmering spheres, seemingly made of clouds, and looping around him like double helixes. She began to hear the following words--"Allahu La ilaha Ila Huwa al-Hayyul Qayyum"--recited from the mouth of a glowing Donnie Hathaway as he seemed to float away from her on the updraft of some powerful current from the valley below, though she could feel no wind. The phrase of what she only later learned was the Quran resonated and echoed for some time off the walls of the canyon.

"And then I woke up," she told me. She fell silent as I sat totally absorbed by her remarkable story. Slowly the profound and mystical impression of the narrated dream faded from the atmosphere of the room. She pulled something from a small black backpack next to her chair. "I wrote everything down that we had said together." She produced a plain blue spiral notebook and laid it on the table next to me. "You can read it if you want."

She passed me the book, and I saw her neat handwriting, in elegant thin lines of dry ink curling across the page, a written account of the dream she had just related.

As I perused the notebook, Antonia received a call from another friend and had to excuse herself. As I read her words from the notebook, I still had so many questions. Her story of her dream seemed quite surreal, and yet it was a dream, so what else did I expect? As I turned further in the notebook I saw more entries, many of them quite ordinary for a twelve year old girl, like her excitement going on a field trip to Brookfield zoo and seeing giraffes for the first time. There were also lists: like goals she had for herself by age 50, or all of the different kingdoms and phylae of life. She had also written down other dreams, though in no other one was she ever visited by anyone else.

When she came back from her call, I asked her If could make a copy of the dream from her notebook and she told me that I could, but that if I wanted to publicize the dream-advice, she did not want to have her name associated with it. She told me, "write it in a fictional story, change my name, and wait ten years before sharing."

The next day, as I copied the dream notebook into a Word document, a feeling of unease flickered back into view after the pleasant shock of discovery of the remarkable dream. I was mired in debt and my job was stressing me out. I had been feeling on edge, and my grad school routine, with long hours of solitary study, had left me feeling ever more frequently isolated and lonely. Yet the old woman’s words had lodged deep within my body and I turned them over in my mind constantly over the next few days.

...
Ten years later, as I re-write this into the emerging space of social media networks, I have still never dreamed of flying. But I never forgot the wisdom of Antonia's dream. Whenever I get into a state of deep anxiety, whenever I feel overwhelmed, whenever I doubt, whenever my spirit is troubled I think of the lyrics of the timeless song, “Someday we’ll all be free”, by Donnie Hathaway:

“hang onto the world as it spins around, just don’t let the spin get you down."

the end.
(written by Nathaniel M, March 2019)

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Human Rights in America and the Muslim Ban

To understand the concept of "illegal immigration", used to justify this administration's recent #MuslimBan, it may be helpful to revisit the history of slavery in the United States. 1776-1863 "Slaves should only be able to get their freedom legally" 2017 "Immigrants should only be able to get their citizenship legally" Lesson some of y'all Christians need to learn: Legality is a relative concept. Human rights are not. Legality comes from man-made states. Human rights come from an eternal God. I'm not going to look down on any person seeking to get citizenship in the united states of america, when citizenship in a state is the only mechanism for accessing human rights. Some of you advocating deportation of immigrants need to think about this. You wouldn't dare claim now that the freedom of an enslaved human being in the USA was dependent on them getting freedom legally, yet you have the gall to act like you have the moral high ground when it comes to immigration because of "legality." Would you have turned in a fugitive slave in 19th century America because they were seeking to get their human rights through illegal means? If the answer is no, then why would you insist on this legality when it comes to refugees seeking citizenship in 2017? People have a right to use whatever means necessary to access their basic human rights. Setting up fortress-like enclaves based on fictions of manmade legality, in the middle of the largest migration crisis in world history, is like gluttonous feasting in a glass house while surrounded by famine victims.

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Religion and Approaches to History (A Peoples History of Monotheism?)

Picking up where A. Thompson left off in his insightful discussion of monotheistic religion: One thing all religions need to do, above all, in order to make themselves more relevant and less reactionary, is to avoid making essentializing statements about their history. Notwithstanding the enormous positive impact Christianity and Islam (to name the two major examples) have had on world culture and world society, there is an almost unbearably facile tendency on the part of some of their adherents to engage in a complete whitewashing of the more 'unsavory' aspects of that history. The violence and corruption of the medieval church, the at times rapacious conquest of the early Muslims--these histories are either conveniently forgotten or, if they are mentioned at all, made external to the faith, i.e. they were just a few bad apples. This tendency was aptly described by Wilfred Cantwell Smith:

"This process [of recovering lost history] turns disruptive only when, as has sometimes happenned, the grip of the need to defend is tightened to the point where this delight in greatness, this compensatory self-satisfaction, becomes the compulsive cause rather than the honest result of historical reconstruction. Historiography is then designed alsmot explicitly to nourish and to support one's predelictions. It seeks not to analyse or to understand the past, but to glorify it; that is to glorify oneself. The purpose is not investigation but aggrandizement, not intellectual accuracy but emotional satisfaction."

Smith, as usual, has a penetrating insight here. There is a certain approach to religion and history which sees religion as being 'under attack' by secular forces (Although such charges are usually trumped up, since religion did far more to indict itself than secularism ever could, the motive power of the perception is nevertheless real) and thus rushes to write a history absolving X religion, showing it to be the perfect way, the answer to all our problems, WAAAY better than those other religions, and what would we do without it? While I cannot accept the ignorant rantings of such blowhard atheists as Christopher Hitchens, I equally cannot accept these canards employed in religion's defense. Bottom line, since I cannot accept either approach, I need a new method. Simply defending religion through idealizations and essentializations of its quite checkered history is not only intellectually dishonest, it is bad for the soul.

I define religion as a way of getting closer to God. This obviously includes a great deal under its umbrella. The difficulty comes when X religion claims Y religion just 'doesn't get it'. They are infidels or kaffirs, or they worship cows, or they drink the blood of Christ, or they are going to hell because they don't have the right belief ABOUT God. The sincerity with which these views are propounded do not lessen their incredible shortsightedness. Christians claim Islam is the 'religion of the sword'. Muslims accuse Christians of deifying Christ without bothering to understand what the faith of a Christian might mean for him/her personally. Jews and Christians also battle it out over the divinity of Christ. Now there is nothing wrong with believing in something and standing to defend it. But such an approach has a law of diminishing returns. Instead of trying to get closer to God, many religious adherents are frantically trying to convince everyone else how naturally great and superior their own belief is! And in doing so, they strain logic and credulity.

As a convert to Islam, I wondered for a long time what it truly 'meant' to be Muslim in an ultimate sense. And the best and most general idea I could come up with, after considering all the evidence, both internally and externally, is that Islam is a joyful response to a Divine Reality. I have my own reasons why I consider it 'better' than other religions in this respect, but these are mostly private and personal. Nevertheless, in actual fact, there is a practical tension between Islam as an inner response and Islam as a public cultural matrix one shares with and participates in. Thus the most forward thinking intellectuals now working in the Islamic tradition are those who propose that a distinction should be made between the nucleus of the Islamic revelation (the Meccan revelations), and those rules (the Medinan revelations) which were brought to the early community, and thus constitute an integral part of the social milieu of the Prophet.

The need for this approach becomes clear if we compare the ideals of an Islam touted by its public boosters (The "Islam is the solution for everything" people) and the actual treatment of human beings under modern day Islamic state experiments. Without engaging in an essentialization of Western values, I think it is safe to say that the three foremost examples of Islamic state implementation today--Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Iran--have an absolutely horrible record with regard to the treatment of religious minorities, not to mention women. All obfuscations aside then, if Islam is in its essence aiming for what is supremely right and completely just, then it cannot justify such things as the penalty for adultery, the equivalence of a man's testimony with that of two women, slavery, the status of the 'other' under shari'a, and so forth.

Now apologists will argue in response that we cannot ignore context, and it is certainly true that the penalties outlined in Quran and hadith were not always applied. It is true that manumitting a slave was considered an eternally meritorious act in Islam, unlike the on-the-ground reality of the institution of chattel slavery in the West. It is true that at the time of the Prophet, Islam actually improved the rights of women in that society. But it is the height of foolish arrogance to assume that, for all times and places, implementing these legal penalties and rules as a legal code in will result in the emancipation of women or the establishment of God's justice. Islamic countries, even those where shari'a is implemented through the judicial code, have outlawed slavery, admitting that the Prophet's pronouncements about it were aimed at its eradication. This is patently a social and contextual judgment, so why is it so difficult to undertake the same move when it comes to rights of women or other ideas?

Getting back to my original statement, it is obvious that Christian and Islamic histories have distinct and unique approaches to politics and political theory. Their histories overlap significantly but, as Carl Brown has explained, they developed into world religions out of vastly different social situations. Along the way, power became an emblem to implement Divine Reality, and Divine Reality became the de facto and often de jure explanation for an excercise of political power, however arbitrary. In the process the two were thoroughly confused. Therefore one step towards removing the confusion and telling an accurate history of religion is to untangle the two. Let the Divine do its work, as it continues to do, in the lives of people across the globe. Inshallah, if religious people can learn to think more historically they will recognize what M. Kane called "A Peoples History of Monotheism". That is, the histories of those who opposed rigid dogma, corrupt authority, and worship of idols. Those who eschewed violent conquest for power's sake, but promoted active resistance to authoritarian government. Those who felt compelled to respond to a Divine calling, something irresistible which called them, not to withdraw from the world, but to engage it in the most wholistic and organic way they were capable of.

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(ISLAM ONLINE) Malaysian Muslims denounce church firebombings

CAIRO - Muslim groups in Malaysia are offering their help to prevent any further attacks on Christian places of worship amid a spree of attacks on churches in the multi-ethnic, Muslim-majority Asian country, The Star reported on Sunday, January 10.

"This is an offer of peace and goodwill," Nadzim Johan, the executive secretary of the Muslim Consumers Association of Malaysia (PPIM), told a news conference.

"We don’t want our Christian brothers to be in danger."

PPIM is one of 130 Muslim NGOs that vowed to become the "eyes and ears" of the government to shield churches against attacks.

Seven churches have been fire-bombed or vandalized since Friday in an escalating row over a court ruling allowing Christians to use the word "Allah" as a translation for God in their publications.

The High Court overturned two weeks ago a government ban on the use of the word "Allah," stirring protests by many Malay Muslims.

The NGOs would be offer volunteers who would be on the look out for any suspicious behaviors and alert the authorities.

"What is important that these people know that they are watched," insisted Nadzim.

"This has got to stop."

The initiative would begin in the capital Kuala Lumpur and the state of Selangor, but could be expanded to other states with the help of more NGOs.

Christians make up around 9.1 percent of the population in Muslim-majority Malaysia, including a Catholic population of nearly 800,000.

The church attacks were condemned by all sections of society.

Dialogue

Seeking to quell the tensions, the government will be sponsoring an interfaith dialogue, reported the Malaysian Insider.

"My department would be holding closed-door interfaith dialogues or discussion," Koh Tsu Koon, Minister in the Prime Minister's Department, told reporters.

The government had already met religious groups separately but will soon hold a meeting with the different leaders privately.

"We will hold closed-door meetings among the leaders first because it is important to arrive at certain common denominators of understanding."

Apart from the government efforts, other faith groups like the Institut Kefahaman Islam Malaysia (Ikim) led by former premier Abdullah Badawi has already started a religious dialogue of its own.

The government said the vehement condemnation the church attacks drew from all sections of society showed they do not represent the majority of Malaysians.

"The way that the vast majority of Malaysians [have] responded actually gives us great hope," Koh said.

"It is very often in the times of trial like these that we discover our true commitment."

Controversy over the use of the word Allah in Malaysian churches
Muslims denounce church attacks

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Political and Cultural Aspects of Qur'anic translation in East Africa Part Three: Ahmadiyya in East Africa

Part 3 in a special series on Kiswahili Qu'ranic translation for The Azanian Sea

Part 3: Ahmadiyya in East Africa and Kurani Tukufu
In a lecture in Dakar, Senegal in 1996, Tigiti Cengo expressed the questions of Islam’s cultural relevance to African culture and religion in a discussion about the Arabic origins of Swahili: “How many realize the direct descendance of the Swahili language, spoken all over East and Central Africa, from the Arabic. (Ebrahim Doda), a question which nobody can answer because it is baseless, unfounded, and even unnecessary. The same is true with the fundamental mistake of dating the birth of Islam as 7th century. How can one justify the non-existence of Allah(SW) and all His Creation which submitted to him before the 7th Century? Muslim scholars should consult deeper sources than those from the exploitative, oppressive, and sentimental generalizations that “Africa has had no culture, language, civilization, nothing; that “Islam is nothing but Arabism,” and the like from euro-western schools.”

Cengo’s assertion is extremely interesting; on the one hand, like the Ahmadiyya missionary Mubarak Ahmad Ahmadi in the introduction to the Ahmadiyya translation Kurani Tukufu, he seeks to give Africa its place in the world history of religion, inverting the argument used by Arabism to subtly argue that Africans possessed concepts of Allah well before Arabs or any other civilization. On the other hand, he posits that most of the negative ideas about Africa and the conflation of Islam with being Arab and speaking Arabic are western ideologies.

The latter statement is partly true, but not completely. British educational policy in Zanzibar was predicated on an absolute separation of races, with each “race” to be taught according to their perceived abilities. Africans figured at the bottom of his hierarchy, and the British went so far as to refuse requests by Arab parents to have the Africans join their children in the classroom. The British believed they were upholding the “natural” social order; in reality they were freezing their conception of “lower races.” Nowhere is this more starkly revealed than in the overall European view of the Waswahili as some kind of morally and racially degenerate mixture between Arab and African, chained to Islam and incapable of renewal, change, or innovation.

Yet this view of African degeneracy was shared by many members of the 'Arab' elite during the early twentieth century, but not for the same reasons. Their concept of civilization was not scientific racialism but cultural chauvinism. In Al-Falaq, one of a group of Arabic newspapers published in Zanzibar, one writer warned that stripping Arabic from the educational curriculum would result in Arabs becoming like the “zanji” in their manners and cultural. This Arab variety of racism relied on the threat of cultural degeneracy through loss of linguistic and religious identity. Without Arabic, Arabs in Africa would become like the heathen Africans, the washenzi.

A new Muslim group calling themselves Ahmadiyya would seek to transform the Arab cultural paradigm through which coastal Islam had traditionally been viewed, seeking to retain the importance of Arabic, while freely translating the Qu’ran into other African languages and employing a discourse of African contributions to Islam.

Founded in the town of Qadian, India (hence its alternate name of Qadianiyat) in 1889 by Hazraut Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835-1908), Ahmadiyyism was a prophetic movement that proclaimed Mirza Ahmad as mujadid, mahdi, and Messiah of Islam. Ahmad came from a family whose forbears fought in the British army in India. Educated in the Qur’an (he knew Arabic, Persian, and Urdu), Ahmad came of age as the subcontinent was wracked by competing ideas of religious legitimacy from all sides. Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, and Christians debated each other and themselves in their attempts to win converts. This policy was partly spurred by the British colonial policy of awarding political representation based on communal religious confession, but it was also a result of the rich texture of religious discourse, a climate that encouraged people to take theological matters seriously.

From 1872, Ahmad emerged as spokesperson for Islam against Christians and various Hindu sects like Arya Samaj. Yet he also proved quite ready to define his vision of Islamic legitimacy; in the early years of his ministry he debated Maulvi Muhammed Husain about the differences between the Hanafi madhab and the ahl al-Hadith Ahmad established a degree of fame before his claims to prophethood by his flamboyant debating tactics: in one instance offering money to the person who would refute his book on Islamic apologetics, in another instance, before a debate with a Christian missionary, issuing an invitation for a mubahala. According to the Ahmadiyya histories, Ahmad received a type of divine illumination through fasting; soon after he proclaimed himself the mahdi. His assertion led even close friends to disassociate themselves from him.

Most authors working on Ahmadiyya focus on the person of Ahmad, the theological debates his claims of prophethood raised, and the religious context of the Indian subcontinent. More work along the lines of Humphrey Fisher’s work is needed to understand the role of Ahmadiyya in the development of Islam in East Africa. It is known that the movement began its work with Mubarak Ahmad’s arrival in Mombasa in 1934. Branches of the organization soon sprang up in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam, while the headquarters were initially located in Tabora.

Much of the controversy between Ahmadiyya and other Muslims had to do with Ahmad’s view of the death and resurrection of Jesus and the finality of Muhammad’s prophethood. In an 1899 book, Jesus in India, Ahmad claimed Jesus had not died on the cross at all, but had sent a proxy, and had instead migrated to Kashmir and died in Srinagar at the age of 120. The controversy about Muhammad’s prophethood hinged on Ahmad’s unique explanation of the Qur’an 33:41. In Kurani Tukufu, the Arabic Khatataman Nabiyyina is translated as “Muhuri wa Manabii” According to Ahmad, the seal was not a literal finality. To counter the established wisdom, Ahmad related a hadith from Ayesha, “Say by all means that is the Seal of the Prophets, but do not say that there will be no Prophet after him.”

All of these theological issues in turn related to Ahmad’s overarching goal: countering Christian missionizing in its imperial aspect through a reform of key doctrinal vulnerabilities within Islam. One of those “vulnerabilities” was the relationship of Jesus and Muslim belief in his resurrection. The crux of much of this debate was Qur’an 4:157 “The Women” (which, you will recall, was one of the verses Godfrey singled out for criticism in his Qur'anic commentary) :

“That they said (in boast), "We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah";- but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them [or it appeared so unto them], and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they killed him not: Nay, Allah raised him up unto Himself; and Allah is Exalted in Power, Wise.”

The verse itself, because of the ambiguity and indirectness of its phrasing, invited multiple interpretations. The “orthodox” view prevalent in Ahmad’s time was either that God had rescued Jesus from the cross and raised his physical body to heaven, or that it was not really Jesus on the cross to begin with. Christian missionaries like Godfrey seized on this fact to prove the power of Jesus and Christianity over the power of Muhammed and Islam in debates. Ahmad’s mission has arisen because “Islam was in a situation of one who is encircled by bitter enemies and is assaulted continuously from every direction.”

A Kiswahili translation of the Qur’an was thus entirely consistent with Ahmad’s vigorous defense against those who attack Islam; the battle with Christianity became the context for justifying what many scholars viewed as “bida” or unlawful innovation. Sheikh Mubarak Ahmad prepared a new translation, beginning in 1936, as a counter to the “Upinzani unaoletwa na wasiokuwa Waislamu, hasa Wakristo.” (The opposition which has been brought to Islam by non-Muslims, especially Christians). The work was also an explicit response to Dale’s work:

“Zamani Padre Godfrey Dale aliandika tafsiri ya Kurani. Lakini kwa sababu yeye hakuwa na maarifa ya Kiarabu alishindwa mahali pengi kuandika tafsiri iliyo sawa. Mara nyingi hakufahamu neno la Kiarabu, na alichukua toka tafsiri ya Kiingereza baadhi ya maneno na kuyageuza Kiswahili bili kupeleza maneno ya asili. Hivyo tafsiri ya Padre Dale ina uharibifu mwingi unaokutana na kutojua kwake, na kadhalika unaotokana na uadui wake uliopitiliza mpaka. Kadhalika katika tafsiri yake, Padre Dale, hakuandika maneno ya asili ya Kiarabu ili watu wangepata kujua amekosa wapi, na amekosa nini, au amezidisha nini na kupunguza nini."

The work was begun on the first day of Ramadan in the month of November by Sheikh Mubarak Ahmad Ahmadi, the head of the Ahmadiyya mission in East Africa. With the publication of Kurani Tukufu in 1953, the Ahmadiyya made a significant contribution to Islamic renaissance on the East African coast. Copies of the new translation were sent to Mau Mau detainees in Kenya and plans were made for further translations into East African languages like Kikuyu. Whatever their theological differences with other Muslims, the Ahmadiyya, through their translation, addressed themselves to Dale’s denigrations of Islam in Tafsiri ya Kurani ya Kiarabu and also contributed to a debate evolving about the origins of Islamic legitimacy on the East African coast. The Kurani Tukufu linked many Muslims in East Africa with a different part of the Islamic world, Pakistan. Furthermore, the Ahmadiyya were very explicit about the egalitarian and non-racial nature of Islam, mainly in an attempt to contrast it with Christianity. Perhaps this message may have also been effective against chauvinism and nepotism of certain members of the Arab elite, who blocked access to the highest levels of the ‘ulama for African Muslims.
By framing the introduction to Kurani Tukufu in terms of African contributions to Islamic history, the Ahmadi drew on rising nationalist sentiments and offered an alternative to the Arab civilizational motif prevalent in much of the Arab elite resistance to colonial rule. The introduction to Kurani Tukufu can be read as a subtle parable on the arrogance with which the Ahmadiyya itself was treated by the established Islamic authorities, an arrogance equivalent to the early messengers from Mecca who underestimated the Ethiopian king. The Meccan messengers who persecuted the early Muslims are of the same type who persecuted the Ahmadis. In fact now, the Qur’an itself is oppressed, and the Ahmadi translation would help to liberate it:

“To the people of Africa and especially the Eastern part, having studied the language placed before you with this translation, I am proud and happy because in the first days of this book you all’s continent protected those who hoped in this book and completely rejected oppression, injustice. Moreover, you were strengthened to erect justice and ethics. Today the teaching of your Qur’an is in a condition of oppression like those believers who were oppressed.”

Notwithstanding their unique theology, the Ahmadiyya are quite conservative on the issue of ijtihad, and their actual practice of Islam is quite orthodox. Yet they were attacked and heavily criticized both inside and outside of Pakistan. One frequent point of contention was Ghulam Ahmad’s collaboration with the British, which extended to frequent praise for the British role in cultural advancement on the Indian subcontinent. Such statements were used as evidence by anti-Ahmadi groups that the Ahmadiyya were little more than an imperialist front group seeking to undermine Islam. Out of this critique came the impetus for a third translation.

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Political and Cultural Aspects of Qu'ranic Translation in East Africa Part Two: Tafsiri ya Kurani ya Kiarabu

Part 2 in a special series for The Azanian Sea on Kiswahili Qu'ranic translation

Dale Godfrey’s Tafsiri ya Kurani ya Kiarabu
In the early 1900s, when the British colonial administrators in Zanzibar embarked on a project of educational reform, they targeted those schools who taught their students to be huffāz. Canon Godfrey Dale, a UMCA Missionary and the earliest translator of the Qur’an into Swahili, wrote derisively of such a practice, comparing it to a long and wearisome journey in the Arabian desert, and emphasized what in his view was the “frequent, wearisome, and monotonous repetition of the same idea, the same moral truths.” In another instance Canon Dale, relates a visit he made to a Zanzibar madrassa in which students were learning the Qur’an, yet were unable to relate to him its meaning.

On the Swahili coast in the early twentieth century, young Muslim students still embarked on a course of Qur’an memorization, in order to become huffāz (sing. hafiz, an Arabic word which literally means guardian/caretaker), but only a few students, either from the elite or exceptionally gifted, received further instruction in methods of tafsir, fiqh, and other Islamic sciences.

Islam in the history of the Swahili coast was a social marker for the coastal elite, the dynamic that separated them from the “washenzi”. Yet despite their sense of controlling the set of mores and manners known as ustaarabu, most members of coastal society spoke only Kiswahili. Even prominent ‘ulama rarely used Arabic in their daily conversation. For the lower classes, knowledge of the Qur’an was limited to being able to recite its words, and this was important because the importance lay in the recitation as much as in the explained meaning.

The British colonial administration, as well as some members of the ‘ulama, called these methods of memorization “parrot talk,” and spurred Ibn Sumayt in 1925 to formulate a new set of texts for teaching Qur’anic verses, which reduced dramatically the amount of required suras and included explanations of key concepts in Kiswahili. However, in Zanzibar, education in Arabic was a political issue, linked with access to power and the ability to determine one’s cultural destiny. Thus the educational reform threatened the most sacred elements of the elite’s identity: language and religion. Amal Ghazal writes, “Arabs believed, the British (and their collaborators) were not only trying to damage their identity and that of the island, but also trying to sever Zanzibar’s relationship with the broader Arab-Muslim world.”

As long as cultural and linguistic links to the Arab world survived, a potential for social ferment and upheaval in Zanzibar and the Swahili Coast existed; a point echoed by many European writers about East Africa. This is not to say that resistance could only originate from an Arab source. But the colonial administrators as well as the missionaries recognized the potential of Islam to serve as a base for overturning the terms of European order. This belief led Godfrey Dale to allude to a global conspiracy by Muslims to enslave all of mankind: “Before we allow lower races to drift into Muhammadanism let us remember to whom these words, “which your right hand possess” might apply if there were a Jehad (sic) proclaimed in Europe, Africa, and Asia tomorrow…unless there is some Christian power at hand to take advantage of and enforce these mitigations, slavery will continue unchecked with all its horrible cruelties.”

Dale’s translation—the Tafsiri ya Kurani ya Kiarabu —was received with much hostility. It represents how important the issue of a frame is in conceptualizing Islamic legitimacy. In fact the debate over Dale’s translation was a debate over who had the “right” to translate the Qur’an, as well as the right of Muslims to reject hostile interpreters. Godfrey Dale was an outsider who had learned Kiswahili (and for that matter Arabic) only to communicate Christianity through it. Furthermore, his translation of the Qur’an did not contain the original Arabic text. (Even now, translations of the Qur’an into English are typically presented with the Arabic text, and if they are not then they are titled “a translation of the Qur’an or “the message of the Qur’an.” )
Secondly, Dale used the Kiswahili word Mungu to mean God, which is unacceptable for many East African Muslim scholars as a translation for Allah, because Mungu can be pluralized as miungu. Later translators prefer Mwenyezi Mungu, (lit. Almighty God) for its inability to be pluralized.

Finally, Dale wrote in the newly standardized Roman script for Kiswahili. Carl Meinhof, the German who first suggested that Kiswahili be written in this manner, though that it might be useful in training African civil servants if it could be stripped of its Islamic character. Thus the transformation of Kiswahili orthography was directly related to anti-Islamic sentiment as well as pragmatic administrative concerns. Sheikh Al-Amin bin Mazrui, a prominent East African scholar who had also translated large portions of the Qur’an into Kiswahili, complained that the new orthography distorted the Kiswahili sound system. Most Zanzibari intellectuals—whose relationship to Kiswahili as a language of Islamic communication was already ambiguous—looked askance at written Kiswahili which had been deliberately stripped of its visual relationship to Arabic.

For Canon Dale, the translation was a way of training missionaries to counter Muslims on their own linguistic terms, a sort of religious guerilla warfare with the text as weapon. His goal remained to show uncivilized “Muhammadans” the true way: “It seems to me a mere matter of loyalty and common honesty not only to contend ourselves for the Faith once and for all delivered to the saints [Christianity], but to do all that in us lies to bring the same Faith within the reach of the most backward races of mankind.”

Nowhere is Dale’s disdain for Islam and its theology more apparent than in his commentary on the Swahili translation, where he constantly seeks to demonstrate its logical inconsistency. For example, in his commentary on Sura An-Nisa, verse 157 (Qu’ran 4:157), Dale writes, “We have already explained the Muslim idea of a crucificixtion in place of our Lord. But it is very useful to know this aya and to know it together with those of An-Nas and Aali-Imran. To him he ascended; meaning after death or before death like Elijah? They do not mutually agree.”

Lacunza-Balda concludes, “Dale’s translation has been greatly disliked and, historically speaking, it well be that it has accentuated both the Muslim-Christian controversy and the emergence of a collective Muslim front to answer the challenge coming from a non-Muslim.” But if this was the initial point of debate out of which conceptual repertoires were built, the next set of debates around a Swahili translation of the Qur’an translations framed a complex set of ideas at the intersection of race, African identity, and Islamic legitimacy, thus contributing to a a process by which slaves and lower-class people re-appropriated concepts of Arab exceptionalism (ustaarabu) in light of Islamic ideals of universalism and equality, a process, that as we have seen, played an important role in the social integration of East African coastal society. New ideas of African nationalism and the intensified migration of upcountry people to the coast opened up the field for socio-religious reinterpretation of those who the coastal elite had previously referred to as washenzi.

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Muslims cautioned over guide to Tanzanian elections (The Citizen)

Muslims cautioned over document on elections
Minister says guidelines to be released on Friday should not cause disharmony

By Paul Dotto, Dar and Patty Magubira, Mwanza

The Government yesterday cautioned Muslim leaders against issuing a document similar to the controversial Catholic booklet containing guidelines for voters on how to choose leaders in next year's General Election.

The State Minister in the Prime Minister's Office (Policy, Co-ordination and parliamentary Affairs), Mr Philip Marmo, advised the religious leaders to avoid anything that could create disharmony in the country. He cited the Catholic Church document, which he said had sparked heated exchanges among politicians, professionals and even ordinary citizens.

But speaking in Mwanza during a requiem Mass for Bishop Anthony Mayalla, which was also attended by President Jakaya Kikwete (see separate story Page 3), top Catholic Church leader Polycarp Cardinal Pengo told the Government not to meddle in religious affairs by censoring evangelical circulars.

Cardinal Pengo was apparently responding to the recent criticism by some CCM and government officials of the Roman Catholic Church circular, which guides its followers on how to choose good leaders in the civic poll later in the year, and in next year�General Election.

Minister Marmo was reacting to the plan by leaders from the Supreme Council of Islamic Organisations and Institutions in Tanzania (Shura ya Maimamu), who have prepared a document called 'Mwongozo', which they say is intended to guide followers on important social and political issues ahead of October's civic vote and next year'selections.

However, the minister said the Government respects the freedoms of expression and worship enshrined in the Constitution.

"Religious leaders should keenly weigh and consider the possible effects before launching such documents. But I have no doubt that theirs will adhere to those principles and will not break any laws," he said.

"We believe that groups, which have been preparing directives as we approach the elections do so with good intentions of offering civic education. We don't expect them to dwell on politics and direct people on who to vote for, as this would be contrary to the Constitution," he added.

The secretary general of the Supreme Council of Islamic Organisations and Institutions in Tanzania, Sheikh Ramadhan Sanze, announced that their document on the forthcoming elections was ready and would be launched tomorrow at Mnazi Mmoja grounds in Dar es Salaam.

He said they had decided to launch it after the Government failed to take action following the release of the Catholic Church�s pastoral letter on civic rights.

Sheikh Sanze added: "We don't have any problem with the Church. Our target is the Government, which failed to respond to their document."

However, the clergyman explained that their preparations started long before the Catholics issued their pastoral letter and was, therefore, not necessarily a reaction to it.

"Even in 2005, we released similar civic education guidelines. However, what we are going to launch will now incorporate a reaction to the church document," he said.

The Shura ya Maimamu secretary general, Sheikh Ponda Issa Ponda, told The Citizen that more than 100 Imams from across the Mainland regions had put together a collective stand on the coming elections.

"We are not in the position to divulge the contents of the document at this point. But the main focus is on health, education, the economy, freedom of expression, and democracy," Sheikh Ponda said.

Ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi stalwart Kingunge Ngombale-Mwiru, who recently added fuel to the controversy on the Catholic document by asking the Church in his contribution in Parliament in Dodoma to consider withdrawing it, arguing that it posed a threat to country, declined to comment on the Muslim leaders' initiative.

When reached for comment, the veteran politician and long-serving former Cabinet minister, posed:"Why do you ask me about this? I have no comment."

Another ruling party MP, who is also on record as having strongly opposed the Church manual, Mr Manju Msambya, of Kigoma South, also declined to comment.

Speaking in Mwanza, Cardinal Pengo said the Government's attempt to censor the Church over the document was tantamount to trying to dictate to clerics how to write their evangelical circulars.

He directed Roman Catholic bishops around the country to stop issuing such circulars if the government criticism persisted.

Cardinal Pengo denouncing the Government criticism, cited Poland's past communist government, which tried to gag religious leaders, to no avail.

"I do not want to provoke anyone by saying this, but I want to know if Tanzania today is far from Poland�s communist government, and if the country is not heading in the same direction by trying to censor clerics' circulars," he said.

This, the cardinal said, was tantamount to the government to putting itself in God's shoes "as was the case with Poland�s communist leadership".

Our sister paper, the Sunday Citizen, exclusively broke the news in June that the Catholic Church issued an elaborate document, which was being circulated to its followers around the country to educate them on the qualities to look for when voting for leaders in next year's elections.


Since then, debate has been raging countrywide, with some critics, arguing that politicians are alarmed because the Catholic booklet also calls for electoral reforms before the elections.

The Church has rejected calls by politicians to withdraw the document, arguing that those opposed to it are either supporters of the mega corruption scandals in high places or beneficiaries.

However, some analysts have warned that the acrimonious debate on the Catholic civic education blueprint might lead to divisions along religious lines if not well handled.

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How Do We Think About Religion?

In the spirit of the discussion going on below about religious truth, I offer the following reflections from Talal Asad's Genealogies of Religion: Disciplines of Reason and Power in Christianity and Islam I offer these because Mr. Skeptic, you still have not addressed yourself to my (and rehenuma's) critique of the central conceit of western rationalism--that is its claim to be speaking from a place of 'objective' truth. You also did not address my critique of the free market along the same lines you criticize religion. You claim to be speaking from a postmodernist perspective. However, you also wrote:
"You can always tell which religions and belief systems actually do not have the real truths, because they are the ones that demand that you subject yourself to endless quotidian rituals and constantly recite passages from books, as though ostensibly the only way to convince one of a truth is to have them repeat it over and over and over again until one doesn't even think to challenge the habitual thought."

"Now, if truth and meaning are inherently subjective, then how is one 'always able to tell which religions and belief systems actually do not have the real truths'? I agree that truth is often constructed through discipline and instrumental power, but you are making a very interesting leap between postmodernism and rationalism. I don't think you have decided which side you are on, yet, maybe.
Anyway, lets marinate on these quotes from Asad, who draws his critique of anthropological study of religion from Geertz's definition of religion as "affirming something" ("it must if is not to consist of the mere collection of received practices and conventional sentiments we usually refer to as moralism, affirm something.") Geertz also says that religion helps man to cope with his intellectual, physical, and moral limits.

"This modest view of religion (which would have horrified the early Christian fathers or medieval churchmen) is a product of the only legitimate space allowed to Christianity by post-Enlightenment society, the right to individual belief: the human condition is full of ignorance, pain, and injustice, and religious symbols are a means of coming positively to terms with that condition. One consequence of this view would in principle render any philosophy that performs such a function into religion (to the annoyance of the nineteenth century rationalist), or alternatively, make it possible to think of religion as a more primitive , a less adult mode of coming to terms with the human condition (to the annoyance of the modern Christian). In either case, the suggestion that religion has a universal function in belief is one indication of how marginal religion has become in modern industrial societyas the site for producing disciplined knowledge and personal discipline. As such it comes to resemble the conception Marx had of religion as ideology--that is, as a mode of consciousness which is other than consciousness of reality, external to the relations of production, producing no knowledge, but expressing at once the anguish of the oppressed and a spurious consolation."
"Geertz'z treatment of religious belief, which lies at the core of his conception of religion, is a modern privatized Christian one because and to the extent that it emphasizes the priority of belief as a state of mind rather than a constituting activity in the world.

To me, religion is a way of engaging with the world, a method of practice that involves the body and is embodied in physical movement. Consider the following, also from Asad, quoting Mauss approvingly:
"According to Mauss, the human body was not be viewed simply as the passive recipient of 'cultural imprints' still less as the active source of 'natural expressions' that are 'clothed in local history and culture' as though it were a matter of an inner character expressed in a readable sign, so that the latter could be used as a means of deciphering the former. It was to be viewed as the developable means for achieving a range of human objectives, from styles of physical movement, through modes of emotional being, to kinds of spiritual experiences. This way of talking seems to avoid the Cartesian dualism of the mind and objects of the mind's perception.

So to sum up:
1) Religion as a universal concept for describing those practices which attribute divine agency to the world is a culturally conditioned definition, conditioned by our experience of religion as 'one choice among many'. This too is linked with our modern conception of the autonomous self.
2) This view of religion supported (and supports) a particular accretion of power in the modern secular states that constitute 'the West'.
3) Religion is a way of teaching bodies, it is a physical as well as a cognitive knowledge. As such, consciousness is interdependent with bodily practice. It follows then, that one 'knows' something, particularly religious truth, by DOING IT. Critiquing it as an irrational leftover of our primitive brain was and is made possible by the construction of religion as a dangerous historical object that must be confined to the private sphere as a belief, and constitutionally subordinated to the state.
So what do you think?

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