Polluted Plumes of Bacteria

I've posted some new comments regarding sit-down toilets versus hole-in-the-ground toilets, which is a subject that spawned from my recent Drink Before You Fly posting. I thought it was a subject too worthwhile to remain solely in the comments...

New Recommended Links

The other day I added a Links Page section to the right-hand column of this blog. It’s graphic intensive, intentionally drab and probably overly busy, but it contains the best Islamic links, on a wide variety of subjects, that I'm aware of. If you know of any other websites that you feel I should include on this new Recommended Links page, please let me know via either email or comments. However, even though I welcome feedback, please keep in mind that the Mere Islam weblog is not a democracy...

BOOK REVIEW: Understanding Islam and the Muslims

I recently posted a review of Understanding Islam and the Muslims: The Muslim Family and Islam and World Peace, by T.J. Winter and John A. Williams, on Amazon.com. My review not only expresses my positive feelings about this book, but refutes the slanderous assertions that an Islamophobe makes against it. Not only did this ignorant and hostile review slander the Qur'an, but its sloppiness made me "[sic]" quite a few times as well. Please have a look at my review and leave some feedback if you wish. Insha’llah, I hope to write a lot more book reviews in the future…

Drink Before You Fly

Foul drinking water aboard airliners worsens
by John Heilprin (AP) - January 20, 2005

"The latest round of testing produced positive results for presence of the bacteria in 29 of 169 randomly selected passenger aircraft carrying domestic and international passengers. The tests were done on water from galley water taps and lavatory faucets on planes at 14 airports throughout the United States."

More details can be found in the following WebMD.com article: Bacteria Still Onboard Airline Drinking Water

Veterans: Casualties "far greater" than DoD says

Returning veterans paint grim picture of war's toll
by Cheryl L. Reed
Sun Times - January 27, 2005

"Rieckhoff criticized the military for not releasing the entire number of those killed or injured in Iraq, a figure he said is far greater than the 1,416 listed as killed and 10,622 listed as wounded by the Defense Department."

"'How is it that soldiers can be fighting in Iraq with no body armor, and Bush is having a $40 million inauguration party?' one student asked the panel of soldiers."

Ouch!

Where Are We and How Did We Get Here?

Well again I'm guilty of shamelessly linking to something that I originally found on Sidi Faraz Rabbani's Seeker's Digest blog. Insha'llah, this will be taken as a compliment since I find almost all of his postings to be very worthwhile. Anyway, the following lecture by Shaykh Abdal-Hakim Murad is very relevant and worthwhile, so I encourage everyone to listen to it—and increased publicity for worthwhile content is my sole motive, insha'llah, for borrowing from Sidi Faraz's treasure trove of links.

Twilight of the Islamosaurs
by Abdal-Hakim Murad

I recommend that you don't spend too much time reflecting on the lecture's title, since it isn't really significant. More important are the Shaykh's observations about Sayyid Qutb, identity politics and long-bearded angry engineer-preachers. All of this might be a novel and offensive perspective to those Muslims living off a steady diet of distorted news, shallow conspiracy theories and bland exotericism, but sometimes the bitter pill of reality is needed. Based on some of the ideas masquerading under the banner of "Islam" these days, I think this lecture is just what the doctor ordered...wa Allahu 'alim.

Faith is Multifaceted

For clarification, please see the notes that I've added to my recent Mark Twain on Patriotism posting.

Israel Considering an Attack on Iran

Israel Refuses To Rule Out Attack On Iran
by Anne Penketh
The Independent (UK) - 01/27/05

"Israel's Defence Minister refused to rule out a pre-empt-ive strike on Iran yesterday, claiming that Tehran was 'close to a point of no return' on its suspected development of a nuclear weapon."

Mark Twain on Patriotism

I recently came across a valuable quotation by Mark Twain that seems lost on a large number of Americans. Twain quipped that “Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it”. In this age of religious pseudo-tribalism where many Muslims seem to be unaware that our noble Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace, said that he would enforce the hudud on his own daughter if she deserved it, I thought that coming up with an Islamic corollary to Mark Twain’s insight might be worthwhile. So here’s what I’ve come up with: “Faith is defending the teachings of Islam all the time, and the actions of Muslims when they deserve it”. Isn’t the reason that Islam is experiencing such a PR disaster these days is because many people are confusing the actions of Muslims with the teachings of Islam? This isn't an attempt to point the finger, since the blame ultimately is on those Muslims who continue to commit horrific acts and, quite often, our collective inability to articulate and practice the Deen the way it should be. Wa Allahu 'alim...

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NOTE: After reading a comment that someone posted on another blog regarding my formulation that "Faith is defending the teachings of Islam all the time, and the actions of Muslims when they deserve it”, I'd like to make a few clarifications. First of all, I wasn't trying to make an absolute statement, nor did I intend to come up with a new or complete definition of faith. In order to jump to such a conclusion, one would have to be an extreme literalist or seriously hermeneutically impaired (or both). Unfortunately, these characteristics seem all too common amongst some Muslims these days. What I was simply (and maybe that’s the problem!) trying to do was come up with an Islamic corollary to Mark Twain's quotation (and I think this should be rather obvious since I stated it rather clearly) which expressed what I feel is an aspect of faith. Perhaps there might be a better word than "Faith" to use in formulating such a corollary, so if anyone would like to try, here's the formula: "________ is defending the teachings of Islam all the time, and the actions of Muslims when they deserve it". Admittedly, finding a word to effectively replace "Patriotism" in the Twain quotation posed some difficulties, and I certainly didn't want to use a word that parallels the ideological implications of "Patriotism". So in the hasty enthusiasm brought on by my admiration for Mark Twain’s statement, I ended up using the word “Faith” (although I did consider others). On that note, one should keep in mind that it’s never good, especially in an Islamic context, to take statements absolutely unless, of course, there's good reason to do so. When one hears that “The best deed is to do such-and-such” and other such statements, which are quite common in the hadith literature, they are usually not meant to be taken absolutely or considered exclusively. This is because there are numerous authentic Prophetic statements describing various actions as “the best”, which must be understood in the context in which they were made and in light of known Arabic usage. Likewise, faith is multifaceted and has many aspects and levels—and this is what I had in mind when I came up with the formulation mentioned above. That having been said, please consider that the Prophet (salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa salam) said: “Faith consists of sixty-odd (or seventy-odd in another narration) branches: the most superior of them being the declaration that ‘There is nothing worthy of worship except Almighty God’ and the lowest of them is removing something harmful from the pathway—and modesty is a branch of faith".

Worth A Thousand Words...

This says more about the mentality of many people in America today than anything I’ve come across in awhile:

Attack on America / Death to All Arabs

Rumsfeld Diagnosed With Foot-in-Mouth Disease

Rumsfeld Lying
MoveOn.org - Democracy in Action

Iyad Allawi...The Americans call him "Saddam Lite"

Here's some more proof that the U.S. really isn't interested in human rights and democracy in Iraq, but rather they only want someone who will do what they want him to do:

US OFFICIAL CONFIRMS ALLAWI SHOT SIX DEAD
Sydney Morning Herald - 01/19/05

"...an American official confirmed to him that the Iraqi interim Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, executed six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station last year."

"'What a mess we're in - we got rid of one son of a bitch only to get another one'."

"The man ... described how Allawi had been taken to seven suspects, who were made to stand against a wall in a courtyard of the police station, their faces covered. After being told of their alleged crimes by a police official, Allawi had asked for a pistol, and then shot each prisoner in the head. [One of the men survived.] Afterward, the witness said, Allawi had declared to those present, 'This is how we must deal with the terrorists.' The witness said he approved of Allawi's act, adding that, in any case, the terrorists were better off dead, for they had been tortured for days."

A more detailed story and anaysis can be found here:

A Man Of The Shadows
by Jon Lee Anderson
The New Yorker - Posted 2005-01-17

“Iyad’s a thug, but a thug where he needs to be one. The Americans who set this up call him Saddam Lite.”

Muslim Children Given to Christians for Adoption

Below is a link to an incredibly heart wrenching story, especially for Muslim parents. It's rather scary that in a country where most, if not all, states have laws that require respect for the culture and religious beliefs of a child's family when adoption is necessary that such a grave injustice could take place—but it seems that justice, dignity and common sense often go out the window when it comes to dealing with Muslims in the so-called “Land of the Free”. On top of the general feeling of disgust that I felt while reading this article, one detail that really annoyed me was the use of the term "birth father", when really what they're saying is "father" since children only have one father. Oddly enough, this isn't just an Islamic position and value, since the Bible’s Ten Commandments say to "Honor thy father and thy mother". By “father” and “mother”, it’s safe to say that “biological father” (another oxymoron) is primarily intended. It should come as no surprise that these antinomian Protestants wouldn’t let a legal injunction like the Ten Commandments get in the way of their cowardly drive to take advantage of some innocent children, since in order to become Pentecostal Christians in the first place that had to turn a blind eye (and heart) to the "First and Greatest Commandment" of the Bible as well! Now they’ve gone and turned three formerly Muslim children into idolatrous Jesus-worshippers in stark contradiction to the way of Abraham and all of God’s prophets—may He bless them all. We can seek solace in the knowledge that Almighty God will give the people responsible for this grave injustice what they deserve. Please try to remember both these unfortunate parents and their more unfortunate children in your du’a—and Almighty God guides whom He will…

Michigan judge clears Muslim woman in death that cost her three children
Detroit Free Press - January 19, 2005

The three formerly Muslim children "have been trained to be Christian missionaries".

"In 1989, the couple lost parental rights to the children, who were adopted in 1990 by a Pentecostal Christian couple. The Amers say authorities were biased against them."

"The Amers say the adoptive parents taught the children that Muslims cannot enter heaven because they do not believe that Jesus is God."

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf Harrassed by U.S. Customs

How U.S. 'harassed' Bay Area Muslim
Customs delay imam who advised Bush
by Ian Hoffman
The Oakland Tribune - 01/16/2005

"His adopted Muslim name was flagged on a Department of Homeland Security computer, and the two agents questioning him wouldn't say why."

"Yusuf's detention in Toronto — his third in two months — is a remarkable turn for a moderate Muslim who advised President Bush after the 9/11 attacks and whose steady condemnation of Islamic terrorism has earned him, in some Muslim circles, criticism as a U.S. propagandist..."

Books Exposing the "War on Terror"

This is a balanced and thoughtful review of some the books about the so-called "War on Terror" that gained notoriety in 2004:

The Truth About Terrorism
by Jonathan Raban
The New York Review of Books - January 13, 2005

He discusses the "creative guesswork or empty propaganda" that drives the war and exposes the "mythmaking" of the neocon policymakers. Excellent...

Pentagon Rejected Love Gas

Pentagon reveals rejected chemical weapons
NewScientist - 15 January 2005

"The Pentagon considered developing a host of non-lethal chemical weapons that would disrupt discipline and morale among enemy troops...Most bizarre among the plans was one for the development of an 'aphrodisiac' chemical weapon that would make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other. Provoking widespread homosexual behaviour among troops would cause a 'distasteful but completely non-lethal' blow to morale."

This certainly seems like a tacit admission that homosexuality amongst combat troops is an inherent blow (no pun intended) to morale. An attack by such a weapon on U.S. troops would seemingly put their "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in grave jeopardy.

Islam and the Crisis of Modernity

Here's a link to a very insightful and worthwhile essay by S. Parvez Manzoor:

Islam and the Crisis of Modernity

“Today, modernity is metamorphosing itself from a doctrine to an anti-doctrine. Instead of claiming any ‘truth’ for its model of the inner and outer worlds, it is now pleading that the notion of ‘truth’ itself be abolished, at least within the domains of philosophy and science...As for those for whom the universality of Islam and the moral unity of man are two sides of the same coin, there is a compelling urgency to initiate a new Islamic discourse that is more detached from the contingent concerns of Muslim polities and their putative others. Islam’s non-negotiable commitment to the ultimately transcendent, and transexistential, nature of man and his mission in life would further demand that the future Islamic discourse be fully alert to the immensity of being and matter that science has revealed to us. The task of Islamic intellect would be to not to disown this universe but to examine whether the world of science is a meaningful world, whether it can be conceived as a cosmos, universe or nature without the postulation of a transcendent other. Needless to say that any cogent and meaningful metaphysics that has Islamic pretensions will have to rescue science from scientism. The same goes for all other philosophies and worldviews that identify man with genes and posit the annihilation of his being within the world of history and time. Islam’s dialogue with modernity, then, must have a philosophical and intellectual profile, and it must take full cognisance of the metaphysics, ethics and teleology of the Qur’anic revelation.”

Forcing God's Hand With Three Sixes

Earlier today, I came across a nice review of Forcing God's Hand: Why Millions Pray for a Quick Rapture -- and Destruction of Planet Earth, by Grace Halsell. I really appreciated that this review mentioned that "within classical Christian thought, dispensationalism is a fairly recent phenomenon. Its development can be traced to a nineteenth-century minister of the Church of England, John Darby..." I admit that the fact that otherwise intelligent people are still being duped by the shallow and simple-minded proofs of Biblical prophecy continues to fascinate me. However, what I find even more interesting is that Christian Dispensationalists don't have a problem accepting beliefs and interpretations of the Bible that no Christian for 1,900 years ever adhered to, including their early Church Fathers, great sages and renowned theologians. They never seem to address the issue that if all of these Christians for so many centuries were wrong, what does this imply about Christianity and, more importantly, what does this say about God? Ignorance is bliss, as they say. Unfortunately, we have Muslims who—in the name of (allegedly) following the Qur'an and Sunnah—adhere to beliefs that no qualified Sunni scholar for the past 1,425 years ever adhered to...

And while we're on the subject of Biblical prophecy, the Islamic-Awareness.org website posted an article several weeks ago on the New Testament Papyrus P¹¹⁵. What's interesting about this papyrus, which is one of the strongest witnesses to the Book of Revelation, is that it gives the "number of the Beast" as 616 instead of 666. The article mentions that, "Scholars now believe that it is related to ancient Greek ideas about numerology. The letters of a name were ascribed numerical value and added up to give a number; in the case of 666, it is the name of Emperor Nero that adds up to that number. Historians believe that Nero's persecution of Christians in Rome made him a bête noire among the early Christians...But what about the number 616 for the Beast? Working on the principles of numerology, scholars work out 616 indicates the Emperor Caligula, Nero's predecessor. Caligula had had a statue of himself erected in the Temple, the Holiest of the Holies, in Jerusalem which had greatly offended Jews. If the alleged author of Revelation was indeed 'John' and a Jew from Palestine, he would have known this...It should be added that even the number 665 had been ascribed to the Beast in the Book of Revelation. Also, the significance of the number 616 was known to Irenaeus in the second century."

Just in case there any simpletons out there who try to side-step this scholarly difficulty by seeking refuge in simple dogma (i.e. "The Bible says 666 so I believe 666!"), below I've included links to some books and articles that give some history and information on the text of the New Testament. Unfortunately, most Christians are unaware of the fact that the New Testament is an eclectic text that to this very day is being updated by scholars based on the witness of manuscript evidence. However, many Christians, instead of addressing the facts, simply label scholars who actually look at the evidence as "liberals". For example, many modern Bibles omit the story of the woman caught in adultery (i.e. John 7:53-8:11) because it's simply not found in any of the earliest manuscripts of the New Testament (i.e. none before at least 600 AD). Myself and many others are still waiting for a logical and well argued explanation by those who adhere to the dogma of Biblical inerrancy as to why later manuscripts should be believed over older (thus seemingly more authentic) ones. Here are some articles and books that I recommend to those who wants to educate themselves about this important topic:

ARTICLES:

• Criteria Used In Choosing Among Conflicting Readings In New Testament Witnesses, by M.S.M. Saifullah

• Critical Text Of The New Testament: Methodology & Implications, by M.S.M. Saifullah

• Textual Reliability Of The New Testament, by M.S.M. Saifullah and Abdurrahman R. Squires

• On The Textual Sources Of The New International Version (NIV) Bible, by M.S.M. Saifullah and Usman Sheikh


BOOKS:

• The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance, by Bruce M. Metzger

• The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, by Bruce M. Metzger

• The Text of the New Testament an Introduction to the Critical Editions and to the Theory and Practice of Modern Textual Criticism, by Kurt Aland and Barbara Aland

• The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament, by Bart D. Ehrman

Enjoy...

Bernard's Bigotry and the Truth About Muslims

The following article is an excellent and concise exposé of the bigoted scholarship of Bernard Lewis, including his unfortunate influence on the Bush Administration and the demise of his credibility in recent (i.e. Post-War Iraq) years.

The Truth About Muslims
by William Dalrymple
The New York Review of Books - November 4, 2004

A friend of mine has written some poignant reviews of some of Bernard Lewis' works, which are all too often on the shelves of your local bookstore these days. We're not trying to claim that Bernard Lewis is not knowledgeable, but only trying to make the point that his one-sided presentation of things seriously undermines the value of his scholarship. Anyone who has been duped into believing that Bernard Lewis is a Middle Eastern scholar worthy of respect should read all of these reviews:

• The Crisis of Bernard Lewis
  (A review of The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror)
• What Went Wrong With Bernard Lewis?
  (A review of What Went Wrong: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response)
• Decent, But Deplorably One-Sided
  (A review of Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice)

Enjoy...

The Dictators-for-Oil Program

There's not much that the U.S. government won't do or ignore in order to get access to oil. Indeed, it's been running a Dictators-for-Oil program throughout the world for decades now, which once boasted the Shah of Iran and Saddam Hussein as members in good standing. In spite of the smoke screen of rhetoric, the name of the game seems to be that stability comes before morality, which is just a manifestation of the Machiavellian outlook and pagan ethos advocated by George W. Bush's neo-con advisors.

A Touch of Crude
by Peter Maass
Mother Jones - January/February 2005

Please note that conspicuously absent from the article is any mention of Teodoro Obiang's religious affiliation, which is (nominally) Christian. You can rest assured that if he was a Muslim, even a secular and non-practicing nominal one, they'd mention that he was "Muslim".

Scholars' Approval of Sufism

Scholars' Attestation to Sufism and Sufis (Arabic)

Reflections on Islam from Harvard

I've held William A. Graham in high regard ever since reading his Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture in the History of Religion, in which he refutes contemporary skeptics who downplay the veracity of the oral tradition of scripture not only in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but in other religious traditions as well. The following is a transcript of a lecture that Dr. Graham gave last year at Harvard Divinity School:

Reflections on Islam in a Time of Global Uncertainty
by William A. Graham

His thoughts are well worth reading, since he not only takes on the "Clash of Civilizations" thesis of Samuel Huntington, but addresses general Islamophobia as well. In this age of ignorance about and bigotry towards Islam, we could use a lot more erudite, balanced and fair-minded scholars like William A. Graham.

Theological Lessons from the Sumatra Earthquake

Theological lessons from the Sumatra earthquake
by Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has recently said that it is appropriate that one's faith in God should be shaken by the natural disaster which engulfed thousands of people on December 26. And historically, one of the chief causes of atheism in the Christian world has been the sense that the Bible's God is unbelievable in a world filled with apparently arbitrary suffering. Should such a tension endanger Muslim faith as well?

This gets to the heart of Muslim-Christian difference, because perhaps the most salient Christian interrogation of Islam lies in Islam's insistence on the divine transcendence. For Christians, it is axiomatic that God can only be fully engaged with by human beings when He is entirely a person like ourselves. The alternative is 'Semitic legalism', a system in which, supposedly, an abstract transcendence is worshipped from afar, through laws and rituals.

The Koran's God is, of course, depicted in personal terms. The 99 Names are all names which have some imaginable manifestation among human beings. We cannot be omnipotent, but we understand power, and hence can in some sense apprehend that God possesses power which can brook no opposition. And so on with the other qualities, of sight, hearing, knowledge, and the rest.

To say, on the basis of this language, that God is a 'person' (which Muslims can in some careful sense do, although the term is absent from our classical theology), because He possesses qualities which we identify as analogous to those found in human life, such as consciousness, purpose, will, capacity, and perception, is, however, not to affirm a Christian notion of 'God amongst us', immanuel. Firstly, because for God, as a personal, localised presence, to be at one place inside His creation suggests that He is otherwise absent from it, which is a dualist notion. And secondly, because it concedes to the natural human desire to think that God is like ourselves, only without the imperfections. Keep adding to power, this logic seems to suggest, and eventually you arrive at omnipotence.

This reasoning, however, is not accepted by our theology. The relationship between God's power and our power is not one of degree, but of category, just as the difference between the finite and the infinite is categoric. His power is ultimately quite unlike our power. Our power is what it is because of the reality or the possibility of its encountering an obstacle. If we had omnipotence, we would probably not immediately associate it with the power we used to have at all. The same may be said for the other divine names which appear to have human applications. Hence the Qur'an says, 'there is nothing like unto Him.' (42:11) And in the hadith: 'whatever occurs to your mind; Allah is other than that.'

Part of the brilliance of the Qur'an is that it makes no compromises over God's transcendence, as it battles against pagan and Christian attempts to 'localise' God; while at the same time it makes no compromises over the human requirement to worship Him. In the Qur'an, His transcendence is not in tension with His immanence. This is because the transcendence is true in an absolute sense, because His nature is transcendent. The Qur'an's language about the immanent God (the God of tashbih) is true contingently, because human beings are contingent. Tawhid was identical in all prophetic teachings since the beginning of time; but the ways in which He is worshipped and spoken of familiarly may validly change. It is thus a fundamental Muslim belief that 'He is not asked about what he does.' (21:23) For to ask Him would be to impose upon him purely human conceptions of the meaning of His names.

The Divine Essence, the true God an sich is beyond imagining, and indeed, we are forbidden to ponder It. Instead, we ponder Its names, and it is the names which make worship possible. Yet insofar as they are intelligible to us, they are contingent. They are true insofar as they save us. He tells us that He is 'Hearing', not because He possesses an organ which can physically intercept sound-waves, but because this is the truest way of conveying to our minds an aspect of His nature. And put together, His names of immanence do not yield a person truly analogous to other persons. Thus Islam does not say, 'God is love'. God is loving (wadud), and mercy is ultimately His preponderant quality, but it is to limit His plenitude to deny that He is other things as well, some of them easier for our finite minds to make sense of than others. Christianity, because of its insistence that the immanent Christ was truly God, banished from Him the attributes of rigour, which are less intrinsic to immanence. Once 'back in Heaven', this person-God could then be validly questioned about events we dislike in the world, just as Odysseus challenges Poseidon to explain a storm.

All this suggests that Islam is the middle way, located between, at the one extreme, the incarnationism of Christianity, which posits a God of Love and then cannot explain natural disasters, and on the other extreme, the impersonal Real of most forms of Buddhism, which has no problem at all with the existence of evil in the world. We are 'neither of the East nor of the West', we are the 'middle nation.' And part of this is that we recognise the provisional quality of our understanding of His names. He, the Glorious, cannot be accused; to do so is simply to announce our own ignorance and arrogance. Instead, we submit to Him, thanking Him for the unearned gift that is every breath we take, and confident that those who die in ways we cannot understand, will receive, in the justice and mercy of eternity, a reward besides which their earthly suffering seems slight indeed.

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Abdal Hakim Murad (né Timothy J. Winter) graduated from Cambridge University with a double-first in Arabic in 1983. He then lived in Cairo for three years, studying Islam under traditional teachers at al-Azhar, one of the oldest universities in the world. He went on to reside for three years in Jeddah, where he administered a commercial translation office and maintained close contact with Habib Ahmad Mashhur al-Haddad and other scholars from Hadramaut, Yemen.

In 1989, Shaikh Abdal Hakim returned to England and spent two years at the University of London learning Turkish and Farsi. Since 1992 he has been a doctoral student at Oxford University, specializing in the religious life of the early Ottoman Empire. He is currently Secretary of the Muslim Academic Trust (London) and Director of the Sunna Project at the Centre of Middle Eastern Studies at Cambridge University, which issues the first-ever scholarly Arabic editions of the major Hadith collections.

Shaikh Abdal Hakim is the translator of a number of works, including two (1, 2) volumes from Imam al-Ghazali's Ihya' Ulum al-Din. He gives durus and halaqas from time to time and taught the works of Imam al-Ghazali at the Winter 1995 Deen Intensive Program in New Haven, CT. He appears frequently on BBC Radio and writes occasionally for a number of publications including The Independent and Q-News International, Britain's premier Muslim magazine.

Forgotten (Palestinian) Christians

Most Americans are seemingly unaware that there are significant numbers of Palestinian Christians who have been expelled from their land by the Israelis and continue to suffer injustice under the Zionist occupation. The following article discusses this inherent contradiction in Christian Zionism:

Forgotten Christians
Not all displaced Palestinians are Muslims.
by Anders Strindberg
The American Conservative - May 24, 2004

"Christians find themselves under the hammer of the Israeli occupation to no less an extent than Muslims, yet America—supposedly a Christian country—stands idly by because its most politically influential Christians have decided that Palestinian Christians are acceptable collateral damage in their apocalyptic quest."

Even though this inherent contradiction of Christian Zionism should be glaringly obvious, I'll try to explain it in a basic and comprehensible way for the benefit of the historically challenged and doctrinally misinformed. Hopefully most readers are aware that the Christian Bible is divided into the Old Testament and the New Testament. This division came about, according to Christian belief, because God abrogated His covenant with the Jews (as described in the Old Testament) due to His New Covenant with mankind based on the (alleged) incarnation and sacrificial death of His Son Jesus Christ. Therefore, Jews who rejected the "New Covenant" of Christian belief and continued to practice Judaism were considered by the overwhelming majority of Christians, both in official Church doctrine and practical persecution, for the overwhelming majority of Christian history (i.e. almost 2,000 years) to be hell-bound disbelievers. Setting aside the fact that stealing land is fundamentally unjust, the idea of driving Christians from their homes so that they can be given to gospel-rejecting Jews would have been anathema to any and all Christians just over a half-century ago. This is because historically Christians always believed, based on the New Testament, that Jerusalem and the land of Palestine rightfully belonged to Christians—not the Jewish rejecters of Christ's message. Indeed, Christians launched a whole series of Crusades in the Middle Ages to establish Christian rule in Palestine and drive out both Muslims and Jews. When the Christian Crusaders conquered Jerusalem and massacred the entire city, they slaughtered Jews as liberally as they did Muslims. Once this is understood, one can hopefully begin to see the problems inherent in Christian Zionism. Not only do their beliefs imply that for about 2,000 years, all Christians (others than themselves) had a flawed understanding of the gospel message, but they are also tantamount to advocating the persecution of fellow believers for the benefit of disbelievers. Obviously this is only a problem if one is actually aware of the fact that there are Christians amongst the native inhabitants of Palestine—which explains why most people, spoon-fed by the popular press and mass media, are not aware of it. One should also understand that although there are many liberal Christians today (both churches and individuals) who do not consider believing Jews to be hell-bound disbelievers, this is not the case of Christian Zionists who adhere to a very conservative and exclusivist view of Christianity. These Christian Zionists, in their misguided zeal to force a fulfillment of (alleged) Biblical prophecy (which is the "apocalyptic quest" referred to in the article) are not only willing to take advantage of Jews (whom they consider to be disbelievers), but to persecute fellow Christians as well. This, more than anything, explains why most people in the U.S. aren't aware that there are hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Christians, because if they did they might begin to question some of the actions of the Israelis. Seemingly, their brutal policies are okay as long as they're only killing Muslims, but if they're killing and stealing land from Christians then it would be time to put a stop to things. One should also be aware that, contrary to popular belief, most Israelis are of European, not Middle Eastern, origin. In the first few decades of Zionist mass migrations to Palestine, starting just after the Second World War, those being displaced were simply described as "Arabs" (not "Palestinians"), which implied in the minds of Americans that they were a backward, dark-skinned and uncivilized people. It was rarely, if ever, mentioned in the popular press that some of these "Arabs" were Christians, since that would have have added some moral ambiguity to the entire scheme—at least where Christians are concerned. That there's an element of racism in Christian Zionism should come as no surprise since historically racism and conservative American Protestantism have gone hand-in-hand. Anyway, while I think the general tone of the above mentioned article tries to imply that Palestinian Christians haven't been involved in violently Israeli occupation, since they only "congregate for Bible study", the author is forthright enough to admit that back in the days of Arab Nationalism "some of the most prominent militants were yet again of Christian origin". That's just another fact that many Americans need to be made aware of...

How and Why to Exit Iraq - The Cato Institute

Exiting Iraq: Why the U.S. Must End the Military Occupation and Renew the War Againist Al Qaeda
by Chris Preble

This 96-page book, which is the report of a special task force sponsored by the Cato Institute, makes some compelling arguments for the U.S. ending its military occupation of Iraq as soon as reasonably possible (which they suggest should be around January 2006). Hopefully this well argued treatise won't fall on deaf hears, but when it comes to the Bush Administration, it probably will. From what I've seen lately, there's no reason to believe that Bush and his cronies will let such things as objective facts, a realistic outlook, informed analysis, valid criticism and the interests of the American people get in the way of their foreign policy. I believe that the Cato Institute is reasonable in expecting this to be their "See, we told you so!" publication on the War in Iraq.

FP vs. Conventional Wisdom

Think Again: Middle East Democracy
by Marina Ottaway, Thomas Carothers
Foreign Policy - Nov/Dec 2004

Over the past few years, Foreign Policy magazine has continued to impress me with a steady stream of articles on U.S. Foreign Policy, the Middle East and Islam that are very insightful and unique in their questioning of conventional wisdom. In most cases, they are head-and-shoulders above what one generally finds in other journals of the same nature:

"Although this desire for democracy may be heartfelt, the United States has a lengthy laundry list of other priorities in the region: access to oil, cooperation and assistance on counterterrorism, fostering peace between Israel and its neighbors, stemming the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and preventing Islamist radicals from seizing power...The newfound U.S. enthusiasm for democracy competes for a place in this mix. Fighting Islamist militants and safeguarding oil still compels the United States to cooperate with authoritarian regimes."

"Arab rulers have been highly authoritarian, but no more so than European or Asian rulers for most of history."

"More democracy, therefore, equals less extremism...History tells a different story. Modern militant Islam developed with the founding of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the 1920s, during the most democratic period in that country’s history."