Koran Curious - A Guide for Infidels and Believers (2 page)

Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think
by John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed (Gallup Press; March 2008) sheds new light on this complex question. In the wake of the terrorist attacks on 9/11, U.S. public officials seemed to have no idea whether or not many Muslims supported the bombings. This troubled Gallup Chairman and CEO Jim Clifton, who felt that “no one in Washington had any idea what 1.3 billion Muslims were thinking, and yet we were working on intricate strategies that were going to change the world for all time.” Clifton commissioned his company to undertake the enormous job, making it the largest and most comprehensive study of its kind.

What the data reveals may well shock you as you gulp down your infidel flavored Budweiser:

The research also suggests that conflict or “clash of civilizations” is not inevitable and any likely clash has more to do with U.S. and Israel policy rather than religious principles. Obviously this runs against everything the political right, particularly the Bush Administration, who led us to believe the Muslim world hates us because we enjoy the fruits of democracy, of which a majority of Muslims don’t even know what democracy is, but based on recent events in the Middle East, the Arab Spring, they evidently crave it. The Muslim world couldn’t care less if our television advertisements include images of women in bikinis or frat guys chugging tequila on Spring break. If they hate us, it’s because our airbases are in the Holy Land, Saudi Arabia, our sanctions against Iraq in the 90s killed tens of thousands of children, and thirdly – the big daddy of them all, but no one wants to talk about it – our unconditional and uncritical support of Israel.

Steven Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes and author of “Feeling Betrayed: The Roots of Muslim Anger at America,” says from Morocco to Indonesia, Muslims “are singing from the same song sheet” of feeling oppressed by an America that cares more about oil and siding with Israel than truly supporting the democratic aspirations that have flowered during the recent Arab Spring.

Kull presented his key at the Brookings Institution, which published the book that draws upon five years of polling, focus groups and visits to Muslim majority countries. Although Kull conducted the research from 2006 to 2010, before the current pro-democracy uprisings, his results track with the most recent polls conducted by the Pew Research Centre.

Kull’s offered four key takeaways from his research that should prove challenging for U.S. policymakers. According to him, a majority of Muslims:

Moreover, Robert Fisk warns that Western media is guilty of lulling us into a false sense of good versus evil when it comes to critiquing Israel versus Palestine. Newspapers distort reality with clichéd headlines, such as “Arab 
terrorists
 
threaten 
Israel” played against “Israel 
security
 chiefs 
warn
 Arafat”. Fisk says, “we ask can Arafat 
control
 his own people, when the Israelis ask the same question. Yet when a Jewish settlers’ group killed two Palestinian civilian men and a baby, we did not ask if Sharon could control his own people.”

Now, the objective of this book is not to denounce certain aspects of Israel’s foreign policy, despite the temptation that provides. My goal, however, is to provide you with a better understanding of Islam via providing a deeper understanding of Muhammad’s biography held side-by-side with the relevant passages of the Koran, while also being cognizant of Western media fed prejudices. Hopefully, this will lessen the fear and mistrust we have of the Islamic faith and Muslims in general and then we can begin to address the tenets of Islam that are in conflict with our Western democratic values in a manner without the myths and misconceptions.

Now, this is the book I was certain I’d never write. While I had tackled Judaism and Christianity in my earlier works, I had believed Islam to be off limits due to a combination of two factors: my writing style, which is generally a no-holds barred, give-em both barrels approach, and the fact the Islamic world is, under normal circumstances, not as forgiving as the West when it comes to challenging all things holier than thou. But the more I delved into the subject matter I began to understand that the story of Muhammad, and the themes contained within the Koran, could be told in a manner that is not only informative and enlightening for atheists and non-Muslims, but equally sensitive and informative for Muslims alike. Why? Well, the life and times of Muhammad makes for a great story to tell. This was a man who led a remarkable life – a life of love, heartache, sorrow, war, peace, revolution, hope, fear, conquest – a man who changed the world in ways he would never have envisaged in his wildest dreams at the time when he and his Muslims were facing extinction from a military force that outnumbered them 3:1; a man whose military victories against all odds unified an entire corner of the globe, gave the Arabs a unified language, and changed mathematical thought; a man who became the first to provide legal status and rights to women, and obligations to those captured in warfare. At least from a historical perspective, what’s not to love of such a story?

Interestingly, another thing occurred to me towards the end of my research, and not just a little thing for I rarely concede such a thing. What thing am I talking about? Well, the thing that occurred to me was that until now I had been wrong for criticizing the Koran in terms of citing random passages in isolation to suit my argument against Islam. And it’s on this point my atheist literary colleagues share equal culpability. Although, however, this is not to concede that much of Islam’s values and beliefs shouldn’t trouble our twenty-first century Western democratic sensibilities, because there are numerous problematic aspects of the faith today – namely a lack of a central authority, an absence of reformation, and the difficulty of reconciling seventh century tribal values and morals with the modern world – but this book is not intended to be a critique of Islam in the twenty-first century, the point I’m making is one cannot understand the Koran without first understanding the historical context of the respective verses. For example, there are passages that Sam Harris,
End of Faith
, points to within the Koran that he uses as a “ha, gotcha” verse. He quotes numerous verses including: “Never think that those who were slain in the cause of God are dead. They are alive, and well provided for by their Lord; pleased with his gifts and rejoicing that those they left behind, who have not yet joined them, have nothing to fear or to regret. God will not deny the faithful their reward.” [3:169] Now, in isolation we can use this against Islam, as Muhammad appears to be pronouncing an endorsement for martyrdom, carte blanche. What Harris doesn’t say, however, is that Muhammad recited this particular verse in the days prior to facing annihilation, because he had learned the Meccans were planning on laying siege on Medina with the purpose of finishing off the Muslims once and for all. Essentially, Muhammad had to raise the will of his men to defend the city at all costs, for the Quraysh of Mecca intended to execute every Muslim man, woman, and child should the city’s defenses fall. Moreover, he would never have envisaged that 1,500 years later, men would read this verse and use it for justification to hijack a jetliner and fly it into a building filled with innocent people. Specifically, Muhammad was referring to a specific actual historical event, and it should be read like a military General priming his troops for battle against a determined attacking foe. Obviously, this doesn’t vindicate everything laid out in the Koran, but to understand the life and experiences of Muhammad, then one can gain a better understanding of why Muhammad said the things he said, when he said them. If you’re a Muslim, however, you believe God provided Muhammad with these words.

Similarly when we look at the issue of apostasy, an Islamic law that prescribes the death penalty for men who leave the faith, there is no verse in the Koran that can be ascribed to this, which is something that came as a big surprise to me. So as you can see, there is a basket full of misconceptions and misunderstandings about Islam, for the same reason there are misconceptions about the Bible. Naturally, due to the fact very few bother or are sufficiently educated to actually read it. But as I’ve alluded to earlier, reading the Koran in isolation is not adequate to understanding it, and this is what distinguishes it from learning the Bible.

You see, when it comes to understanding Judaism and Christianity, everything you need to know can be found in the one book, the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. What I’m trying to say is we don’t have any external and independently verifiable accounts of the lives of Abraham, Moses, David, or even Jesus. More specifically, with the exclusion of Saint Paul, we don’t know who any of the actual biblical authors were. For example, we have no clue as to the respective identities of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They could’ve been bong-smoking Greeks from Mykonos, and we’d have no way telling otherwise. The same can be said for whoever authored Genesis, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Kings, and so on and so forth.

When it comes to Islam, however, we do know who authored the oral version of the scriptures, divinely inspired or otherwise, and that author was Muhammad. Now, Muhammad wasn’t a fictional character whose life is void of independently verifiable eyewitness accounts. He was a man of history, a man who shaped history with his own deeds, as opposed to Jesus who shaped civilization via the things other people, who never met him or met the people who met him, claimed he had said. Big difference! Therefore because Muhammad qualifies as a historical character, and it was he who authored the Koran, one must judge the words of the Muslim Holy Book in a deeper analytical light. Not to do so, makes you equally guilty as Islamic extremists in taking the words out context.

As you can see, Islam is a highly complex religion, thus not only do most Americans have difficulty grasping the fundamentals of the faith, equally, a great majority of Muslims have difficulty understanding it in a contextual sense, also. So let’s now set the record straight.

Map of modern day Saudi Arabia that shows the key cities of interest during Muhammad’s time.

Before we examine who Muhammad was, it is important to understand the lay of the sand, I mean land. So let’s take a journey back to Arabia at the start of the fifth century. (Insert flute music and magic carpet ride here)