Oct. 16, 2001 | Read the story.
Connerney says, "Representative democracy does not take well in the Muslim world" while implying that it fits well within the Christian world. Connerney is surely aware that our founding fathers' proposed secular democracy severely clashed with contemporaneous church leaders, and that modern Christian Reconstructionists want to base our American judicial system on Old Testament statutes. Even America's most patriotic evangelists will gladly inform you that the Kingdom of God is not a democracy.
Connerney concedes that "To an extent, this ambivalence exists in many religions, including Judaism and Christianity. Muslims are not the only ones to have waged wars in the name of religion. So have Christians, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists. The validity of the comparison ends there, however. It seems plain that Islam is confronted by the problem of religious violence in ways that other religions are not." Connerney then insists that "Fundamentalism, as a literal and non-historic approach to religious scripture, exists in every tradition, but only in Islam does it go hand in hand with widespread violence."
So according to Connerney, the Thirty Years War, the Crusades and the Inquisition were merely historical aberrations that are entirely unrelated to the sacred texts that inspired them.
Finally, Connerney says, "To accomplish a true secularization of the Muslim world would be to ignore the meaning of the Quran at the core -- or at least as it is now interpreted by the most passionate believers."
The very same thing could be said for most Biblical literalists. Islam doesn't resist modernism because it contradicts the Quran. It resists modernism because the West dominates the world. If the situation were completely reversed, with Islam dominating the industrial world while scattering Christians and Jews among poverty-stricken tribes in the Middle East, the three faiths' religious extremism would be entirely reversed.
-- Todd Morrow
Richard Connerney's interpretation of the Islamic faith is both uninformed and myopic in its scope.
He makes it seem as though our Christian and Jewish brothers have never had fringe elements associated with them.
Need we remind everyone of the Spanish Inquisition, where years of torture, murder and pillage occurred. Shall we discuss the Crusades, in which thousands of Arab Christians, Jews and Muslims were slaughtered by the European conquistadors.
Mr. Connerney decided to pick and choose his interpretation of Islam. By no means is what he said representative of Islam, nor should it be interpreted as such.
-- Arsalan Tariq Iftikhar, Midwest Communications Director, Council on American-Islamic Relations, St. Louis, Mo.
I read many articles recently on your Web site, including: "Islam: Religion of the sword?" by Richard D. Connerney. It saddens me that your media outlet has attracted so many anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bashers. Muslims and Arabs are being psychoanalyzed and molded into a vicious, hate-filled and violent people through the lens and sick intellect of racists, bigots and people who have an axe to grind or have a political and religious agenda behind this demonization.
Recently, I have read respectable Muslim scholars bashed as terrorists' supporters and respectable Muslim organizations maligned as fronts for terrorism. Is Salon going to open the discourse and allow Muslims and Arabs to speak, or is it going to let bigots and racists incite hate and fear of Muslims and Arabs?
Racism and bigotry do nothing but fuel extremism.
-- Fadwa Wazwaz
Since September 11 we have all been waiting for a single honest and enlightening word about the relationship between Islam and militancy. There has been so much cant and sophistry, so much false politeness, so great an unwillingness to face disturbing realities. Richard Connerney has now given us that much-needed honest and enlightening word. There are points in his argument that might be challenged, especially his attempts to contrast Islam and early Christianity, but a wonderful basis for discussion has been offered us here. Precisely how to achieve peace when two epochs of human history are clashing--we have not even begun to face the enormity of the problem.
One of the things that will result from the discussion, I believe, will be a new appreciation of the Enlightenment, which has had bad press for quite a while now. I thank Richard Connerney for stimulating a more honest and better informed discussion.
-- David Farrell Krell, professor of philosophy, DePaul University, Chicago
This article is such a mishmash of half-truths, outright misunderstanding, quasi-analysis, and slap-dash misreading that it is hard to know where to start. You might have done better to find an actual scholar of Islam who has some access to the voluminous exegesis on all subjects Muslim. And your writer might do well to do a little research on the subject of religion and politics in Islam -- start with Ibn Khaldun's 14th century classic (more relevant than ever in the last month) "Al-Muqaddimah," and then move on to the recent and excellent "Religion and State: The Muslim Approach to Politics" by L. Carl Brown.
Usama bin Laden is without a doubt within an Islamic tradition, but then so is Mubarak and so is the Saudi monarchy. The struggle between the ulama (religious scholars) and the state is as old as the religion, and it has never been permanently resolved, nor will it any time soon. But that is no reason just to throw up one's hands and declare hopeless "a religious vision that is terrorist-prone, modernity-proof, plagued by fanaticism and susceptible to the hellish clarion call of jihad." (Again, the author might profit by having a look at the turn-of-the-century career of the Islamic modernist Al-Afghani, who was not, of course, an Afghan.) Islamic modernism may be on the downside right now, and probably will remain so until the pleadings of a Thomas Friedman find fruit, but it is not inconsequential. It has a history, and it will rise again.
"Our" ideas of religious tolerance may feel fuzzy right now (though I don't fuzzy up to the Christian fundamentalist bigots who call for the extermination of my own social group), but a valid historical analysis would find that the total death count of Christianity still takes the prize ... cold comfort, perhaps, but this was supposed to be a scholarly piece.
Gotta close by saying that the imagined color of the airplane, sir, really doesn't add much to an analysis of religion and state in Islam. It does, however, give us fair warning of the fuzzy thinking that follows.
-- Stephen Arod Shirreffs
As Mr. Connerney writes:
"Can the world truly continue to tolerate medieval minds with access to 21st century military hardware? Is there really room in the family of world faiths for a religious vision that is terrorist-prone, modernity-proof, plagued by fanaticism and susceptible to the hellish clarion call of jihad?"
I think Sept. 11 brings us to only one conclusion to this question. NO.
I have spent time in every country across North Africa and the Middle East. I've argued with educated men about the right and reason for the existence of a secular state with freedom of religion; and at some point, every time, I have seen in their eyes -- their mind closing. How does a state negotiate with a closed mind?
-- Catherine Oller
In this confusing time of identity, suspicion and fear, even the headline of Connery's article, "Islam: Religion of the Sword?" made me cringe.
Religions, especially those entrenched in politics, change with society to reflect advancement. Nowadays only rare brands of mysticism and personal spirituality are not in some way or another tied to politics (religion means "to tie down"). In fact, probably all organized religions are by necessity partially political in nature. Whenever a spirituality becomes a group phenomenon, there will be politics involved. Thus, to isolate Islam as a politically based religion is to miss the larger picture of all religions. Additionally, Islam is supposedly a continuation of Judaism and Christianity. By the time Islam arrived on the scene circa 700 A.D., the Christian empire had been a religious force for centuries.
Additionally, as a reflection of the changing times, the term "jihad" has come to mean a personal holy war, not a physical destructive war. All scholars will agree that the Islamic jihad exists only as a metaphor today. Osama bin Laden is exploiting the doctrines of a beautiful religion in order to brainwash and manipulate his followers into giving their lives for this "holy" cause. But the cause is not holy under the modern interpretation of Islam.
In this time of confusion, the American public needs reliable truth, not fuel for the already destructive fires of hysteria. Connerney's headline was a large dry dead tree, filled with sap. It has fallen recklessly on the ashes of America. I pray no innocent Muslims are injured as a result of the ignorant fire it may ignite.
Learn. Love. Peace.
-- Fasih Hameed
I recently got a subscription to your service. I feel certain that I would not have done so if I had known that you were going to print racist, jingoistic trash like "Islam: Religion of the Sword."
It is quite ironic that the writer feels license to sit in the United States of America, with its rate of violent crime, and call the followers of Islam "violent." In Jordan, where I do ethnographic research, the murder rate is under 20 people a year (the population is about 5 million.) In my hometown of New York, the murder rate (for about 8 million) is in the hundreds -- and everyone is thrilled that it has been so greatly reduced. Not to mention the violence that the U.S. government has been responsible for abroad.
It's true that criminals in Islamic countries more often justify their acts in terms of Islam. This is not surprising. Islam is different from the other religions of the book. Unlike contemporary Christianity and Judaism, it is integrated into all facets of life. Therefore, advocates of causes from feminism to educational reform to yes, terrorism, look to Islam for legitimation. Islam did not produce any of these movements. To claim (inaccurately) that it did is to start down the slippery slope toward racism and hate crimes.
-- Laura Pearl
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