Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender and Pluralism (50 page)

created you from a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes that you might know each other. Truly the most honoured of you in the sight of God is the most God-conscious of you. Truly God is Knowing, Aware” (49:13). There are four key points in this verse. First, the passage is addressed to all of humanity, and not specifically limited to Muslims. Second, the passage mentions that the creation of humanity into distinct groupings comes from God and is a positive value. Third, it encourages people to transcend their differences and learn from each other. Finally, the passage does not say that Muslims are better than other people, but that the best people are those who are aware of God.

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Islam remained a minority tradition until two years before the death of Muhammad. From the time that Muhammad received his first revelations in 610 to the year 622, Islam was a persecuted minority religion in Mecca. In the year 622, Muhammad emigrated with his community to the city of Medina. In Medina, Islam was also a minority tradition. However, in Medina, free from the persecution of the Meccans, the Muslim community could exist openly as a community. The number of Muslims greatly increased in Medina. Through conversion, the majority of the citizens of Medina became Muslim. In 630, Muhammad was able to return to Mecca in triumph, and much of the Arabian peninsula was converted to Islam by the time of Muhammad’s death in 632.

Islam is, to be sure, a missionary religion. The three largest religious traditions in the world, Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism, are all religions that encourage and engage in conversion. All three believe that there is a proper way to live in the world, and that it is incumbent upon believers to spread information about this proper way. This conviction gives rise to mutually exclusive truth claims: only Jesus’s death saves us from sin; only Muhammad is the final Prophet of God; only the Buddha teaches us how we can attain enlightenment. All three of these religious traditions have, tragically, gone through phases where the “other” was converted to the truth through force and violence.

The Qur’an is clear about not forcing people to convert: “There is no compulsion in religion: the Truth stands clear from the Wrong” (2:256). When Muhammad returned to Mecca in the year 630 as the conquering ruler, he gave Muslims a clear example to follow. The psychological tensions in Muhammad’s consciousness must have been extraordinary when one remembers just what was about to occur. Muhammad was born in Mecca in a branch of the noblest family in that city. He established a reputation for himself as a trustworthy and honest businessman, had a loving wife and four daughters. Then at the age of forty he began to receive revelations from God, revelations that challenged the
status quo
. Muhammad was at first tolerated for his public preaching, and then persecuted. Little more than a decade after receiving his revelations, he had to leave the city of his birth and migrate with his followers to another city. Eight years later,

Muhammad was able to return to Mecca as the conquering ruler. He literally had the power of life and death over those who years earlier had tormented and persecuted him and had killed several of his followers. By pre-Islamic Arab custom, he had the power to seek revenge, even massacre his enemies. Instead, in this most triumphant of earthly moments, Muhammad chose to display the utmost mercy, and declared total amnesty. In this extraordinary act, he came to those who had persecuted him, and recited to them the words from the Qur’an that Joseph had first spoken to his brothers when they came to him in Egypt, humbled after having sold him earlier into slavery: “This day let no reproach be upon you. May God forgive you, and God is the most merciful of those who show mercy” (12:92). There would be no forced conversion or slaughter of the Meccans.

For many converts, it is a message of justice that brings them to Islam. There is an emphasis on social justice in the Qur’an, and on siding with the poor, the orphaned, and the oppressed. The ethical monotheism of the Qur’an requires that obligations be fulfilled, whether they are due to God or to other people. For example, Farid Esack, a brilliant Muslim scholar and theologian, has written about the role of Muslims in the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa.
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Unfortunately, there is a stereotype of Muslims forcibly converting people to Islam. Images persist of Arab warriors on horseback with the Qur’an in one hand and a sword in the other, chopping off the heads of those who refused to convert.
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The reality is very different. For example, the first place that Islam spread to outside of Arabia was Iran. The dominant religious tradition in Iran before Islam was Zoroastrianism. It took approximately two hundred years for Iran to transform from a country where there were almost no Muslims to a country where the majority were Muslim.
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Often, it was the Sufis, the mystics of Islam, who spread Islam by living among the people and providing them with an example of how to live their lives as Muslims. In this way, they were no different from those Christians who lived out their lives as faithful witnesses, not active instigators of the conversion process. There have, certainly, been episodes in which Muslims abused the power that they had when they were able to dictate the discourse. But the dialogues of power corrupt any noble idea, whether it be Islam, Christianity, freedom, or democracy.

I have pointed to a few incidents in the life of Muhammad because that life
(Sunnah)
is considered exemplary for Muslims. In Islamic history, a number of people sought to live out the model of tolerance that Muhammad lived. Another early example is that of the Caliph ‘Umar, the second successor (in Arabic, the word
khalifa
[English: Caliph] literally means “successor”) to Muhammad. ‘Umar ruled the Muslim community from 634 to 644
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. In 638 Muslims arrived at Jerusalem. Far from him being a ruthless imperial conqueror, the traditional stories tell that ‘Umar walked into Jerusalem because it was his servant’s turn to ride the mount that they shared. While in the city, ‘Umar was given a tour of the existing religious sites by the Christian Patriarch of Jerusalem. As the time

approached for prayer, ‘Umar asked for a place where he might offer his prayers. Through translators, the Patriarch offered ‘Umar the opportunity to pray where he stood, in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, one of the most important of Christian sites. ‘Umar refused, saying that wherever he, the first Muslim ruler in Jerusalem, was to offer his prayers, his followers would build a place of prayer (a
masjid,
or mosque). He would not let that place be inside a spot that was of crucial importance to Christians. Instead, he prayed outside of the church on what was then the porch of the martyrs. Sure enough, if one goes to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre today, across the street is the small Mosque of ‘Umar, commemorating his prayers. Clearly for ‘Umar, respect was due to Christians and their places of worship.

There have been times in various Muslim civilizations where there were good relations between Muslims, Christians, and Jews when Jews and Christians were the minority. One thinks for example of the city of Baghdad in the eighth and ninth centuries.
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Baghdad was built on the banks of the Tigris River as the capital city for the Abbasid Empire (750 to 1258) by the Caliph Al-Mansur, who ruled from 754 to 775
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. Baghdad truly was a metropolis with links to Persia, India, China, Byzantium, and the Latin West. One sees this cosmopolitan nature in the great literary classic to emerge from Baghdad,
The Thousand and One

Nights
, with its mix of diverse characters and stories from various locations. Baghdad was also home to the House of Wisdom
(Bayt al-hikma)
, built by the

Caliph Al-Ma’mun (ruled 813–833
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) as a center of learning and translation for scholars from around the world. A Christian, Hunayn ibn Ishaq, was appointed as the director of the translation academy. This research institute was at the center of the movement to bring the philosophical heritage of the Greeks, Persians, and Indians within the fold of the Islamic quest for wisdom.

It is important here to emphasize that Islam has long existed in Western culture, first in Europe and later in North America. The pluralism that we see in the modern Western world has ancient roots. From the eighth to the fifteenth centuries, much of Spain was Muslim, and Al-Andalus (the Arabic term for Muslim Spain, Andalucı´a) was a high point of Islamic civilization.
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In the ninth and tenth centuries, Cordoba in Muslim Spain became one of the most important cities in the history of the world. Christians and Jews were involved in the Royal Court and in the intellectual life of the city. Historically, there was also an Islamic presence in Southern France, Italy, and Sicily, with Arabic being a language known to the highly educated. And of course, under Ottoman rule, there was a profound Muslim presence in Turkey, the Balkans, and Eastern Europe. The Mughal Empire was also known for its pluralism.

The Arabic language (especially via Spanish and French) has contributed to the vocabulary of English. Common English words such as “coffee,” “sofa,” “genie,” and “alcohol,” technical words such as “algebra,” or “alkaline,” and even archaic words such as “lute” and “alchemy” all have their roots in Arabic. Arabic words such as
hajj
, “jihad,” or
hijab
have become commonplace enough as not to

require translation. There is a history of Muslims, Jews, Christians, and members of other religious traditions living together in a pluralistic society. Muslims influenced and were influenced by the people with whom they lived.

The Crusades radically altered the way that Muslims, Christians, and Jews understood each other. Before the Crusades, Muslims were relatively unknown to the European public. After the Crusades, with the making of enemy images on both sides, there was a great deal of polemic in European texts about Muslims.

Norman Daniel has written the classic study of this time, his magisterial
Islam and the West: The Making of an Image
.
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The ordinary European might come into contact with Muslims as merchants, traders, seafarers, or pirates. However,

the educated classes read works of Islamic philosophy, as well as classics of Greek philosophy (such as Aristotle) translated into Arabic and then into Latin. Maimonides, the great medieval Jewish philosopher, wrote
The Guide of the Perplexed
in Arabic. Muslim physicians were among the best of their day, and Muslim scientists and mathematicians (in collaboration with non-Muslims) made great advances in the sciences. Anybody familiar with Thomas Aquinas’s
Summa Theologica
has felt the hovering presence of medieval Muslim scholars. This powerful presence has been beautifully represented by the great Renaissance painter, Raphael, who included Ibn Rushd (Averroes) in his painting
School of Athens
.
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The Qur’an set forth perennial principles of humane interfaith behaviour. For example, Qur’an 5:48 ends with the following words: “for every one of you did We appoint a law and a way, and if God had pleased God would have made you a single people, but that God might try you in what God gave you, therefore strive with one another to hasten to virtuous deeds; to God you will all return, so God will let you know that in which you differed.” The Prophet Muhammad and other early leaders left Muslims with edifying examples of cooperative relations with religions other than Islam. Throughout history, Muslims have existed in dialogue with others. Whether the relationships have been productive or disastrous, Muslims have defined themselves in dialogue. They have always understood – and constructed – their “Islams” in a context of pluralism.
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This interfaith consciousness is particularly vital in contemporary North America.

There have been modern attempts at dialogue between Christians and Muslims in Canada going back at least to the visit to Canada by Maulana Muhammad ‘Abdul ‘Aleem Siddiqui, also known as al-Qadiri.
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Siddiqui was an Indian Sufi, born in 1892, who traveled extensively and made a trip to Canada in

1939.
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On his trip to Canada, Siddiqui spoke at the al-Rashid Mosque in Edmonton, the first mosque built in Canada, which had been opened in 1938.

After speaking in Edmonton, Siddiqui travelled to Toronto, where he spoke “to a largely non-Muslim gathering.”
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Some Canadian Muslim communities were dependent on support from Christians for early meeting facilities. For example, the first public prayer service in Ottawa (1963) was held in the basement of a Christian church.
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According to a former President of the Ottawa Muslim Association, “we have to acknowledge the help we got from Christians, especially the United Church.”
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Since 1980, the National Christian Muslim Liaison Committee has existed as an official vehicle of dialogue. Under the leadership of the largest Protestant denomination in Canada, the United Church of Canada, there have been a number of conferences and workshops on interfaith dialogue. Several useful resources have been produced as a result of these workshops.
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This interfaith work also involves the attendance of non-Muslims at Muslim rituals and celebrations and the attendance of Muslims at non-Muslim religious ceremonies. The result is “Islams” that influence and in turn are influenced by the other traditions with which they come into contact.
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And as members of a minority religious tradition, Muslims in North America are aware of the dominant religious tradition, Christianity. While the majority tradition has not always had to be aware of the minority traditions in its midst (even that situation no doubt is changing because of our shrinking world), the minorities must always understand the majority culture in order to survive.