Islamaphobia

Rabbi Brian Fox, above, listening to a reading of Islamic materials and Rehanna Ali, Wellington, NZ. Both Rehanna and Brian were presenters in the workshop addressing misconceptions about and fears of Islam.

Islamaphobia
This is one of the workshops that reflects the ICCJ desire to become more inclusive and appreciative of the other Abrahamic faith, Islam. Three speakers made the case for gaining a deeper understanding of Islam, overcoming mythology and misperceptions and recognizing the significance Islam. More importantly, they were concerned that we move away from the tendency to indict all of Islam because of the small segment of Islam that engages in terrorism. All three speakers made significant contributions, but the Muslim woman from New Zealand provided the most thorough overview of concerns about Islam. Following is a few comments from each of the speakers.

Rabbi Brian Fox, Menorah Synagogue, Manchester, England – The first speaker, Rabbi Fox, is from Australia, but now resides and serves in England. Racism, he says, is very limited in contemporary Australia. He experienced very little, if any racism or anti-semitism while in Australia. His experience is dramatically different in England where irrational hatred toward Muslims is widespread. There is great fear and hatred of Muslims everywhere because of the incidents of terrorism. But, it is important to recognize, he says, that 99% of Muslims have an equal, or even more intense revulsion toward terrorism. One problem, says Rabbi Fox, is the failure to recognize that while there may be sources in the Koran that are untenable, there is in the community what he calls the practice of interpretive fluidity toward the sacred texts. Reading of texts within the Halachia process is approached with the law of interpretative fluidity which allows an open interpretation of some texts that are initially untenable. We do not accord the same freedom of practice to Islam and problematic texts. We automatically assume the worst regarding texts that are problematic.

Only 1 – 2 percent of Islam is a problem. With the rest of Islam we must seek dialogue, and strive to reach and support the moderates.

Golam Dastagir - teaches world religions in a college in Bangladesh http://www.dastagir.info/ He is Sunni Muslim. Golam makes a number of distinctive points that are important to recall. Islam, Jews and Christians, he says, are all people of the book. The Koran is clear that non-Muslims are blessed by God. Terrorism is an abuse of the Koranic text. The Koran also gives the commandment not to kill. Likewise, many Muslims oppose the aggressive approach to the war on terror, feeling that it is an artificial war. More important is to break the cycle of violence. Terrorism and violence are not Islam, but specific Muslims that must be dealt with since terrorism does not lie in Islam but in the mind of the terrorist.

Rehanna Ali – a Muslim from Wellington, NZ. Her background is Fiji and Dutch (and something else, but did not get it written down). She is a specialist in Sharia law and British Common Law andhas a law degree from university in Britain. She is very impressive in her style of presentation. The term ‘Islamaphobia’ she says, was first coined in 1991 as part of the Runnymede Brief dealing with religious discrimination. (have to look it up!) Dealing with terrorism cannot accurately address the problem by simply indicting all of Islam. The term is too broad and too general encompassing potentially all of Islam. Think of the David Koresh event, for example. He was a conservative Christian, somewhat cultish, charismatic and fundamentalist. He was a Christian, but, it is not possible to indict all Christians who were anywhere in the vicinity of Waco. That is illogical thinking. But, if he had been Muslim, that likely would have happened as Koresh would have been identified as the archetype Muslim and his behavior would have been generalized to all of Islam. He was a Christian, so we don’t generalize the indictment.

Rehanna Ali also talked about how the news is event based, only reports the bad news, and when reporting good news, or interesting news, tends to report more on “people like us.” We tend not to get good news about good things or interesting things that are happening in Islam. “No news is good news” as we say. But, this is not the case with Islam, because we get too much bad news and it is never counter balanced by good news. SE Asia and Asia are the biggest populations of Muslims in the world. But, they are over there, and we don’t report much that is interesting globally, only the bad news.

Rehanna used an acronym for her discussion of misconceptions of Islam, the word INFIDEL.

I - Islam & Infidel – Islam is the victim of the Infidel syndrome. It is easy to demonize the infidel, the other people, religion etc

N -- news is the culprit as explained above

F – Islam is mostly foreign to the western world, the US, Britain etc. It is ‘over there’ and easy to write off and dismiss.

I - Integrity is a characteristic not attributable to Islam, at least by western standards and western culture.

D – Damned – Islam is identified by many as a bad faith, a cursed people. God has punished the people of Islam.

E – Enemy – and therefore, it is appropriate to demonize Islam, because it represents the enemy and it is more appropriate to be at war with the Muslim people.

L- Losers – Islam represents a failed civilization, a people and a culture that has lost its way. That is the allegation current in highminded discussions of Islam today, and especially as it is viewed in connection with terrorism.

Overall, this was an excellent set of presentations, very provocative and challenging, and helpful at putting Islam in a different light that we typically get from the current discussion.

There are lots of possibilites for further study and conversations about Islam. One item that I have found very engaging and helpful is the relatively new publication that I read on the way over. Vali Nasr provides a nice, accessible background on Islam, the history of Sunni and Shia camps, their distribution across the Middle East and how it all fits into the war in Iraq. Here is the book: The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future by Vali Nasr