Yes, Islam is Also an Abrahamic Religion

One of the misconceptions of Islam promoted by much of the Right and some media is that it is not one of the Abrahamic religions. After all if one is pushing for a war between Islam and the West, the more different we see Islam, the easier it is to demonize and fight its believers. First, I want again to say that I am not an expert on Islam nor am I a particularly devout Muslim though I know enough about it to recognize an intentional misrepresentation or just an innocent misunderstanding of Islam. I am not much of a reader, though I have a general interest in religions and philosophy. When I worked on my half hour ride to and from work, I would listen to lectures on religion and philosophy along with a few on economics, science, and history bought from The Teaching Company. These were university level, and in the case of religion non-theological lectures. Each course typically consisted of about 20 to 30 lectures each lasting between 30 to 45 minutes each, on cassettes (in the dark ages) and more recently on CDs and DVDs. I bought courses on each major religion, included Judaism, Christianity, Islam (given by John Esposito of the American University in Washington), Hinduism, Buddhism and Daoism. I also listened to courses such as Augustine: Philosopher and Saint, The World Religions: Beliefs, Practices and Histories, Ancient Mediterranean Religions, Ancient Religions of the Americas, Religions of Sub Saharan Africa, History of the Bible, the Story of the Bible, Philosophy of Religion. Again, though I don’t consider myself and expert, I have had more than a passing interest in all religions and a familiarity with the history and faith of Islam. A while ago I watched a program on PBS “World” entitled “Three Faiths, One God”. Its main thrust was to point out the common history of the three Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam and highlight the similarities in beliefs and differences in culture. There was a diversity of speakers including a couple of Rabbis and Imams, a Catholic priest and several ministers. I find it interesting (though I was pretty much aware of most of what they spoke off) that much of the media, when speaking of Western religions, speaks of “Judeo/Christian religions”, exclude Islam, thus suggesting it is something else. We have a bookstore in a town next to ours where the exclusion shows up in spades. A few years ago, as my wife was shopping for a book, I happened to wonder into the religion and philosophy section where there were many Books and scriptures of all common religions and a few not so common ones. One could read about Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism and Zaroastroism but not a single one on Islam. When I asked a clerk where I could find anything on Islam, she said Islam is in the political section since it is not considered a religion. Recently I went into the same shop and noticed that there were no books on Islam even in the political section. Again I asked a clerk whether I could get a book on Islam, she said they do carry one but it was sold out at the moment but she could get it for me. I was a book on Islam by Glen Beck. The book store is olocated about 30 miles outside of Boston and not in the rural South. A few decades ago, my wife and I were on vacation in Tangier, Morocco. Traveling through the markets you are approached by a barrage of mostly boys and young men looking to be hired as guides. Finally we decided for the sake of peace and quiet to hire an older gentleman (he turned out to indeed be a gentleman). As we walked through various streets of Tangier whenever we ran across a printed piece of paper on the street, he would pick it up and drop it at the next trash can. After a while I asked him why he did this. He said that most printed papers have a name of a person on it and since most names have a prophet’s name as their origin, stepping on them would be disrespectful. He explained that all prophets, not only of the Koran, but also the Old Testament, are revered by Muslims and recognized as prophets of the one God. So prophets like Jesus (recognized as a most important prophet but not divine as nether was Mohamed), John, Jacob, Abraham, Moses even more obscure ones like Jeremiah and Jedidiah are revered. In fact the Name Isa, Arabic for Jesus and Musa, Arabic for Moses are not uncommon in the Arab world. A few years ago an Irish American couple, friends of ours, went to Turkey on vacation. One of the places their guide took them was a shrine to the Virgin Mary on top of a hill. Most Westerners do not realize that Islam recognizes the virgin birth of Jesus and considers Mary as a very important and saintly person in her own right. She is probably more revered by Islam than any Christian faith except Catholicism. One of the reasons for much of the misrepresentation is the fact that, unlike the Bible, the Koran is written in a poetic form and poetry requires interpretation. Meanings in poetry are not limited to words but also rely on rhyme and cadence. For this reason, a Koran written in Arabic, the language of the original, is the only recognized holly book. Most of the English translations of the Koran were written by people unsympathetic to Islam who wanted to put it into a bad light. Unfortunately, even well intended readers, depending on which translation they read, would come away with different impressions.

Radical Islamic Terrorism

I listened to President Trump address CENCOM today where he very slowly and emphatically said the words “Radical Islamic Terrorism” emphasizing that his predecessor refused to utter these seemingly sacred words. I guess, radical Wahhabi terrorism or better yet, radical Jihadi Salafi terrorism, doesn’t sound quite as scary. Last weekend I watched a Bill Mahar Show. His guest was Sam Harris who, like Bill is an Atheist and a vehement Islamophobe. They started with their usual attack on Islam (being very aggressive opponents of all organized religions and whereas Islam, presented by many as an enemy, is the easiest religion to attack). They spoke of “Radical Islamic Terrorists” and how Islam encourages the thinking that leads to their horrific behavior. During their discussion they said something to the effect that if the Mormon Church preached cruel behavior, we would call out the Mormon Church and if the church of Scientology killed people for making cartoons of L Ron Hubbard, we would speak out about the evils of Scientology. It’s interesting that they would be very focused in their criticism. In neither case did they say they would condemn the evils of Christianity but recognized that neither speaks for Christians but is a small sect within Christianity. When James Coney, Head of the Lords Liberation Army was reigning terror in Africa in the name of God, we did not read of this as being a Christian act. Or when the Westboro Baptist Church demonstrates at the burial of a gay fallen soldier, shouting all sorts of obscenities, we know that they don’t reflect Baptist dogma or any teachings of the Christian Bible. When Reverend Jones burned the Koran, it was not Christians who burned it, or even Protestants but a very small splinter of a small splinter of Christians. Why is it then that we cannot apply the same reasoning to acts of splinter groups, as horrific as they are, and not Islam? We don’t say that ISIS is a Jihadi splinter of the Salafi which in turn are sect of the Wahhabi who are Sunni Muslims not Shia. Or that Osama Bin Laden was a Wahhabi (State religion in Saudi Arabia). I guess one thing Sam Harris and Bill Mahar would say is that the terrorists do it in the name of Allah (The Arabic word for the God, the same God worshiped by Jews, Christians and Muslims). Well, James Coney and Reverend Jones along with the Westboro Baptists would say they, through their actions, are also serving God. Sam and Bill’s main agenda is to promote Atheism and attacking Islam is a cheap and easy way to get there. Others do it for various political reasons. Viewing Muslims as evil, it becomes easier to view Palestinians as evil and thus easier to accept Israel’s occupation. Or promoting fear to gain ever more power is another reason. A bunch of guys on camels with machine guns running around in the Middle East (I take some poetic license here) wouldn’t as scary as over a billion Muslims spread all over the world wanting to take it. In our “war on terror” or more specifically “radical Islamic terrorism” hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost and we have spent over a trillion dollars.

Beam Me up Scottie

A couple of hundred years ago man could not imagine technologies we take for granted today. Flying was not even a dream (I know, I know, Michelangelo), nor cloning or transistors not to mention nuclear power. As then, there will be things in the future we cannot even ponder today. Today, watching the snow fall and longing for sunshine and palm trees, I pondered. A few months ago I read somewhere that a Nobel Laureate had claimed to have teleported some object. I dreamt about not having to go to and from an airport and then waiting in long lines followed by sitting in a cramped space. I thought about the possibility of teleporting a person as a means of travel. Today it is accepted that everything, including every part of our bodies is made up of atomic and subatomic particles. Over the years we have developed x-rays to allow us to see our organs and advanced imaging techniques enabling a peek into our brain. Computing power is growing unbelievably and “big data” makes complex analysis practical. We have mapped the human genome and are looking at the structure of the brain with ever greater magnification. How far away are we from being able to map the position of every particle and every bundle of energy in a human body? If we can map a body, why not then, using a pile of subatomic elements, assemble them in precisely the some order shown on the map and voila, the same person with the same genetic makeup, history and memories. The map could be transmitted to a faraway place and the person assembled (that sounds like cloning which we can crudely do now). OK we now have the person at the landing cite. You can say that, from the moment the mapping ended and the file created, these are now two different people, since the original is continuing to change while the other is assembled to the point in time of the cessation of the mapping. So having built the person in the new location, we now have two different people, the original at the destination and a new person at the point of departure. What to do with the person wanting to travel? It could be that there is some sort of a mechanism that starts to disassemble the original as the teleported one is constructed. What happens if the assembly fails? I guess we still have the map. But what if the error was in the mapping? What about the ethics of human cloning? Well it stopped snowing and I can get back to earth and worry about shoveling.

Shedding Light on Some Misinformation about Islam

For political expediency there is much false information disseminated by the Right to stoke fear. Unfortunately for Muslims they have become the center of this fear mongering. I come from a Muslim family, and would like to make an attempt at correcting some, by no means all, of this misinformation. I am not a theologian, far from it as a matter of fact, nor am I a particularly religious person but, my “dog tags” identified me a Muslim, so I have a “dog in this fight”. Listed is some of the misinformation: 1. Head covering (Hijab) is a Muslim thing 2. Islam is a patriarchal religion 3. Muslims wear beards Below is an old family photograph showing my paternal grandfather, his wife, my grandmother on the left and seated prominently in the center of the picture her mother, my great-grandmother. Standing behind them are a niece and nephew who lived with them at the time of the photo. My grandfather was Imam of a Muslim Tatar community in Minsk Belarus. Tatars have been living in the area of Poland, Lithuania and Belarus since the late thirteen hundreds and, though culturally eastern European, have maintained Islam as their Religion. 4. If we don’t proactively stop it, Sharia Law will be implemented throughout the country. Muslim Tatars have lived in this Christian region for hundreds of years there is still no Sharia law.

You will notice the women are not wearing hijabs which are part of Arab culture. There is no requirement for head covering in the Koran except for the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) wives. In fact I saw a news clip on CNN I believe, that featured a story about the head of one of the former Soviet Republics which has an 80% Muslim population wanting to ban the hijab because he is against Arabification of his country. The Arab culture tends to be quite patriarchal. In a similar photograph from the Middle East the man would be sitting in the middle. However, some Muslims live in matriarchal societies. The obvious head of this family pictured above is the wife’s mother. (My wife, who is of a similar background, shows me a picture of her mother’s family with her grandfather sitting in the middle.) Though my grandfather has a beard, the young man standing in the back, also Muslim does not. More Misinformation: 5. Muslim men cannot marry non-Muslim women. (I think I heard it on a Sean Hannity radio program) There is no prohibition against marrying “people of the Book” (Christians and Jews) though I am not sure that applies to none Abrahamic beliefs also. My father married my mother, a Catholic, with his father’s blessing. Leslie Hazelton, a Jewish academician and student of Islam, in her book “The First Muslim”, a book on the historic Mohamed, writes about his two Jewish wives. In fact my understanding is that if one marries a person of another faith, there is a prohibition against forcing her to adopt Islam. I watched a TED Talk by journalist Mustafa Akyol entitles “Faith Versus Tradition in Islam” Where he highlighted some of the cultural (particularly bad) customs attributed to Islam. 6. Female circumcision is a North African custom practiced by backward people in the region both Muslim and non-Muslim, 7. Likewise “honor killing” is practiced by Muslims, Christians and nonbelievers in parts of Asia and Africa. 8. Separating women from men. Mustafa Akyol pointed out that while on the pilgrimage to Mecca, during the holiest and most ancient ceremony dating back to the beginning of Islam, he noticed women were not separated from men. He suggested that the separation of the sexes was likely to be a custom picked up from Persia. I think its origin may have been Jewish. A few decades ago I attended an Orthodox Jewish wedding and during most of the ceremony and reception men were separated from women. Islam is a progression of the Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Many of the customs practiced by Jews and Christians of the region were adopted by Muslims. 9. Burkinies. There is a requirement for modesty in Islam for both men and women, though modesty, I don’t believe is defined. Amish ladies dress very modestly by western standards as do Jewish Orthodox women, wearing long skirts and covering their arms and heads. In fact there was a clip on the news about two women (I believe they were members of parliament) who were not allowed into the Knesset, (Israeli Parliament) because their skirts were too short. A while ago I a saw a program on PBS featuring a Chechen folk dance group that toured Western Europe. The dancers were mostly in their early teens. When not on stage, they were dressed as any European teens with girls wearing miniskirts or shorts. Were it not for the cupped hands in prayer before the performances, based on what we see on TV, one would never think of them as Muslim. The above are just a few examples of information circulated about Islam and Muslims. Many people are uninformed because until recently, with the exception of the “Black Muslim” movement of the 6os, Islam had not been in the limelight and with such a small population in this country, a majority of people never met a Muslim. Many believe all Muslims are Arab but Arabs make up only a small portion of the world Muslim population. (There are even Arab Christians) There are Muslim communities all over the world made up of every race and almost every ethnicity. However, many are also intentionally misinformed for political reasons. Hopefully the above will help to form a bit truer picture of Islam and Muslims.

Surprised Now the Election is Over – Why?

Donald Trump won the electoral vote but lost the popular. He spoke (among other things) to the poor who were worried about loss of manufacturing jobs and no prospects for the future. Surprisingly the vote of this demographic was split, though he did win the majority of the poor white vote. However, the most surprising thing was the percent of college educated whites including women he won over. If one thinks about it, this should not be surprising. Today there are many forces at play, among them globalization and technology. Throughout history, jobs moved from England to the Continent, from there to North America and from North America to Asia (contrary to election rhetoric South America pretty much remains agrarian). Technology also has a history of not only evolutional but also revolutionary change. Machinery changed craft shops to factories and factories were changed by mass production. These changes, by their very nature, are disruptive with technology causing the greatest upheavals. Today, there is much talk and fear of robotics replacing manual labor in manufacturing. but little is said of technology’s effect on others in the work force. Those at the lower end of the wage scale only temporary displacement to be concerned about. Capitalism, to function properly, needs to have the poor live at some relative level of comfort (or else pitch forks in the streets). Capitalism facilitates constant innovation, creating upheavals where new jobs are created and old lost. For centuries, since the Industrial Revolution, the lesser skilled labor force has seen their jobs shift geographically and due to changes in technologies. During this churn many fall by the wayside. There is a historical precedence for these upheavals and for governments often, to preserve the capitalist system, having to adjust. Though there is a lag between the time old jobs are lost and new jobs or new systems (changes in education or new sources of income created) it has always happened. After all there was the “New Deal” with Medicare, Medicaid and various welfare programs to deal with the turmoil in the early part of the twentieth century. Even now there are moves underway to increase the minimum wage and serious discussion about other methods like tax credits or outright cash distribution (a city in Canada has experimented with this) to attend to the loss of or stagnation of income at the low end while we wait for the new technology to come around. For the group that surprised the pundits, the college educated upper middle class, there is no system, , there is none being discussed, nor has there ever been one never mind one under development, to keep them from sliding down to the ranks of the poor. What technology is doing with gusto is, if not completely eliminating, greatly reducing the value of many middle management, technical and administrative jobs. People working in these positions comprise the largest portion of the middle and upper middle class. The working poor aspire to have their children fill these jobs, but deep down inside they realize that these will not be there in the future. Historically, effects of disruptive changes needed developments in multiple technologies and time to resolve. The mating of Information technology with mechanics is needed for robotics to significantly change the factory floor. Unfortunately only the information technology, which already exists, is needed to eliminate middle management along with many technical and administrative jobs. This is already happening. The punditry and most politicians have not seen this but people holding these position have, and they are afraid. Realizing that the current system has no initiatives in place to attend to them, they voted against a status quo. The working poor may slide from an income of say $40,000 (I’m guessing at these numbers) to one of $35,000, not a life style changing amount, while the possibility of returning to $40,000 if not a bit higher is within sight. The current system has demonstrated its ability to do this. On the other hand, the upper middle class may be looking to falling from an income of $90,000 to $35,000 with the accompanying lifestyle change and they are scared. Back about 15 years ago, during the “dot com” collapse, I was talking to a friend about the possible repercussions of an economic collapse including civil unrest. He pointed out that historically, for a regime change, a certain relatively high percentage of middle management needs to be negatively impacted. Whereas the working poor, for the most part, do not have skills to organize and lead a rebellion, middle managers do. So Mr. President Elect, your first priority when you get to the white house should not be to stall, if not reverse, the browning of America nor should it be to protect us from the proliferation of Islam with its imagined terror; or to figure out how to improve the lot of the working poor, though you need to do that, but to develop and implement policies to alleviate the fears of the middle and upper middle class. If you cannot do this, there may indeed be pitchforks in the streets.

GOP Want to Create “Safe Zones” for Syrian Refugees

Granted, life in a war zone is horrific, but life in a refugee camp isn’t so great either. We spent most of seven years in Germany after the war (WWII) as refugees living in various camps where in the better ones, we share a room the size of a large classroom with three other families. The room was divided into four areas by army blankets strung on wires. Our section had just enough room for two cots, one for Mom and Dad and one for my sister and I and a wall locker. In the next section lived a couple with a son and a nephew who was around 10 years old. Toward the end of the war the Nazis executed his mother and father right in front of him. He was very traumatized and would have nightmares almost nightly which we could clearly hear through our blanket wall. The entire floor shared one bathroom and there was a separate bathing area for the entire building much as one would find in a gym. For kids this was not too hard. But one time more recently, I was at an airport and our flight was delayed. I was sitting around and started thinking about what the life of my parents as adult refugees must have been like. It occurred to me that it had to be like waiting for a flight at an airport for several years. How awful! There is no work. There is very little entertainment. There is no comfort, only waiting endlessly. Not to mention the anxiety of not knowing if you can ever be granted asylum or return to your home. So those of you who think that herding people into camps is such a great deed, go spend a weekend at an airport waiting for a flight and imagine doing that not for two but for one thousand days.

Preamble to the Constitution of the United States

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” In the last day of the Democratic Convention, a Muslim immigrant and father of a fallen soldier gave a moving speech which put our Constitution into the spotlight. He asked whether Donald Trump had ever read it, reached into his pocket, took out a pamphlet containing the Constitution and offered to loan it to him. Given the Constitution’s current prominence, I would like to discuss its Preamble and give my interpretation of what it means in the current era. In reading it again, I noticed the Preamble has a number of words capitalized where they might normally not be. I assume this was done to elevate their importance. People, Order, Union, Justice, Tranquility, Welfare Blessings of Liberty, and Posterity (defence was not capitalized). It is interesting that in today’s political climate, defense is a major theme of the presidential candidates, each stressing that the most important part of a president’s job is to keep us safe and they would be the best Commander in Chief and be able to do that better than the other candidate. In fact the oath the President swears is not to keep us safe but to “faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”. WE THE PEOPLE: From the very beginning there is an emphasis on the “People” and there is no mention of government until later in the Articles. It is we, the People, who established the Constitution and are thus responsibility to for its charter. Subsequent Articles describe the structure of the government and broad responsibilities. Too often we think of our government as some foreign entity that mistreats us. We forget that government serves at our pleasure and is responsible to us, “the People”. So if we feel mistreated, it is not the government but we who elected it and who it is accountable to and works for, who are responsible. The tasks enumerated in the Preamble and listed below are our responsibility and government is just a tool to help accomplish them. Note: At the preamble stage there is no differentiation between people. Article one talks about legislative power, staffing and taxation. Here is where a bag of worms is opened and is created a source of much criticism. The way I read the section regarding the tallying of people is that it was not directly a division by race but maybe by position and taxes. At the time of the writing a segment of the population felt that only land owners should have a right to vote and this may have been a compromise to appease them. Native Americans, if they pay taxes are counted (“excluding Indians NOT taxed”). But I don’t know if there were any “Indians” taxed at this time though there were Native American farmers in some New England communities who stayed loyal to the Colonials during King Philip’s War I assume they were taxed. It also does not discount Africans per se by stating that all Free Persons are counted as one “including those bound to service for a term of years”. This inclusion of indentured servants, who are predominantly white, in the count of “whole people”, and exclusion of slaves, all black, counting them as a fraction of a person, is troubling but may be in part a financial matter and not strictly a racial one. FORM A MORE PERFECT UNION: One of a number of common usages of the term union is defined as “a number of persons, states, etc. joined or associated together for some common purpose”. A “more perfect Union” recognizes that we are a community as opposed to a bunch of individuals and requires us to work on ways for us to complement each other. ESTABLISH JUSTICE: There is a difference between legal and just. Legality tests adherence to a written word. Justice is more complex and gets into subjective areas based on morality and what is just in one person’s eye is not just in another. Justice is one of the responsibilities we delegate to our legislature. If we are true to our charter, we require our representatives to pass laws and implement policies that are perceived as just by larger and larger disparate elements of our society. INSURE DOMESTIC TRANQUILIT: Tranquility is defined as “quality or state of being tranquil; calmness; peacefulness; quiet; serenity.” Though we tend to think of tranquility primarily as freedom from crime, I think the founders took a broader view. PROVIDE FOR THE COMMON DEFENCE: This refers to us (all of us) getting together and defending ourselves against foreign aggression. Not much nuance. PROMOTE THE GENERAL WELFARE: I believe this is the most neglected portion of the Preamble (particularly by the Right). We the People have a duty to work for the overall wellbeing, not just the material, of all of our citizens. This is particularly challenging, but no less necessary, during rapid changes in global economics, technology, demography and world order we face today. Though the notion of “I am my brother’s keeper” is a very important portion of the “general welfare”, it is not the only one. SECURE THE BLESSINGS OF LIBERTY TO OURSELVES AND OUR POSTERITY: There are a number of definitions of liberty. 1. “freedom from arbitrary or despotic control”. The key terms here are ARBITRARY and DESPOTIC. To fulfill our responsibilities stated in the preamble there needs to be some level of control though it cannot be arbitrary or despotic. We the People need to ensure that policies implemented by the government on our behalf are not. 2. “freedom from external or foreign rule, independence”. 3. “freedom from control, interference, obligation, restriction, hampering conditions, etc; power or right of doing, thinking, speaking, etc., according to choice”. I believe this definition of liberty is the one we generally think of. At the very extreme, the Right takes this too literally considering any control, however necessary some controls might be to “promote the general Welfare” to be unacceptable. State’s Rights people want as many of these controls moved from the federal to state government though the preamble speaks of “we the People of the United States” not individual states. 4. “freedom from captivity, confinement or physical restraint”. Establishing a just legal system ensures this. The Asian Kingdom of Bhutan has a Minister of Happiness and measures itself against a “happiness standard” rather than GDP. We might consider forming ministries for the six challenges outlined in the Preamble to the Constitution. We already have a Defense Department and a Department of Justice, (though it is more focused on law than justice). We could have a Perfect Union Departments focused on issues that unite us and facilitate the advancement of our society; a Department of Tranquility under which could fall corrections, policing, recreation facilities, parks …..; a Department of General Welfare (we tend to think of welfare in the narrowest of terms as providing assistance to the needy), the department would encompass healthcare, education, transportation, environment, discrimination, labor and food and drugs; and finally the Blessings of Liberty Department would ensure that policies proposed do not put us under despotic and arbitrary control or lead us in a direction that will diminish our power over the workings of our government (Citizens United is such a court decision. Adam Smith, in the Wealth of Nations, warns against allowing people who make a living from profits to influence policy, because their interests are not only not aligned with the wellbeing of the society as a whole but are often conflicting. He goes on to point out that, on the other hand, the interest of people who make their living from wages and rent are generally aligned with the wellbeing of a society as a whole.) I know, I know, more bureaucracies. But the larger and more complex a society, the greater is the cost of governing. We should focus not on how large or small but on how effective our government is in helping us achieve the goals outlined in the Preamble. The charter in the Preamble was not meant to be accomplished piece by piece as broken down above. All segments are interrelated and any one needs to be realized in the context of all the others. The Constitution is a marvelous, well thought out piece of work which has endured these centuries and indeed will continue to guide us for several more centuries.