Dolce & Gabbana Debuts New Collection for Muslim Women – The Atlantic

2016/01/09 Leave a comment

Fashion and business responding to clients, reminding us that the choice of hijab can signal the degree of religiosity and the balance between faith and the desire to be stylish:

Given these high stakes, it’s perhaps no surprise that designers and retailers at both the high and low end of the fashion spectrum have been quietly courting customers there for years. DKNY, Oscar de la Renta, Tommy Hilfiger, Mango, and Monique Lhuillier have produced capsule collections sold only in the Middle East, generally around Ramadan. The e-tailers Moda Operandi and Net-A-Porteroffer carefully curated “Ramadan Edits,” including Badgley Mischka caftans, Etro tunics, and Diane von Furstenberg maxi dresses. The fast-fashion purveyors Uniqlo and H&M have featured hijab-wearing models in their ads. And, around 2009 or so, savvy retailers and fashion bloggers devised a category of “modest” fashion, with the euphemism neatly encompassing the sartorial needs of Muslims, Mormons, Orthodox Jews, and fundamentalist Christians alike.

The fashion industry has always catered to lucrative emerging markets, whether in China, Japan, or Brazil, enlisting local celebrity spokespeople, creating exclusive new products, and even revamping sizing to fit new customers. Last year, Dolce & Gabbana designed a capsule collection for the Mexican market, inspired by native tiles and embroideries. But Muslims are more diverse, geographically and culturally—what sells in Kuwait won’t necessarily sell in Kuala Lumpur, or Kalamazoo, for that matter.

Dolce & Gabbana’s new collection prompts many questions about the practical relationship between Western fashion and religion. After all, the very things the industry celebrates—materialism, vanity, sensuality—are anathema to many faiths. Add capitalism to the mix, and inclusiveness can risk looking like crass exploitation (just remember the cash-strapped couturiers scrambling for petrodollars in the 1970s).

The link between Western fashion and Islam has been particularly vexed. Look no further than 2008, when the preppy chain store Abercrombie & Fitch denied employment to a hijab-wearing job applicant in California because she didn’t fit their “Look Policy.” (The Supreme Court ruled against Abercrombie last year in a discrimination suit.) Or consider how hijab wearers have suffered not only prejudice but also a series of violent physical attacks, in the U.S. and abroad. Long a symbol of style and personal expression as much as religious devotion, the hijab is increasingly being cast off in favor of “safer” hats and turbans—or taken up as a political weapon by non-Muslims. Dolce & Gabbana’s announcement comes at a critical time, making the statement that Western fashion and Islam can make for an aesthetically compatible and socially productive union: yielding beautiful garments and helping in some small way to chip away at the marginalization of Islam in countries like the U.S., the U.K., and France.

In her 2015 book Muslim Fashion: Contemporary Style Cultures, the London College of Fashion professor Reina Lewis argues that Muslim fashion has been “underrepresented in the style media” while being “overrepresented in the news media” because of two related presumptions: “that fashion is a Western experience and that Muslims are not part of the West.” That’s no longer the case. Far from being the mark of the anti-fashion outsider, hijabs and abayas have become part of the Western fashion mainstream, virtually overnight. From here on in, they’ll be vulnerable to the same trends, knockoffs, and inflated price tags as any other article of Western clothing, but on the plus side, perhaps a new generation of Muslim fashionistas can now see themselves better reflected in an industry they admire.

Source: Dolce & Gabbana Debuts New Collection for Muslim Women – The Atlantic

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Pro-Shariah caliphate lecture held at Ontario college

2016/01/09 Leave a comment

Obnoxious views, but likely better to have them out in the open rather than underground:

Helping Syrian refugees coming to Canada and building an Islamic caliphate are part of the same cause, according to a pro-Shariah speaker at an Islamic conference in Hamilton.

And now Mohawk College, on whose property the event took place, says the group isn’t welcome back.

A YouTube video posted last month shows Mazin Abdul-Adhim delivering a speech entitled “The Truth Behind the Syrian Refugee Crisis” on Nov. 28.

The 40-minute English lecture shows Abdul-Adhim standing at a podium beside the flag and banner of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a global organization that promotes the unification of all Muslim countries as one caliphate — an Islamic government led by a religious authority considered a successor to Mohammed.

The speech begins addressing humanitarian matters such as aid and medical support. But the broader thesis is that much of the current conflict in Iraq and Syria is an attempt to stop Muslims from banding together to form their own Islamic government.

“The society (in Syria) has risen up as a society and says that we want Islam as our way of life,” the well-spoken Abdul-Adhim says, dressed in a checkered shirt. “And the West will not have it and this is what we are seeing.”

He later argues: “We’ve been sitting and not really doing very much for the application of Islam in society … We’re required to call for something — the full implementation of Islam — we’re not allowed to call for anything else or compromise in any other way.” However, he believes others are “trying to turn us away from our Deen (faith) by making us scared of even talking about the application of Islam.” He describes sharia as “the best system that exists on Earth” — claiming that it ends racism, has better currency and promotes “economic justice.”

According to Facebook, where he has more than 1,500 followers, Abdul-Adhim lives in London, Ont., and “was born in Canada and is originally from Iraq.”

Source: Pro-Shariah caliphate lecture held at Ontario college | Furey | Ontario | News |

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Muslim men must learn to treat women as equals: Sheema Khan

2016/01/08 2 Comments

One of the more interesting sessions we held on multiculturalism and faith was a small multi-faith roundtable, with the most interesting exchange being between Sheema Khan and Alia Hogben (Canadian Council of Muslim Women) who challenged some of the more conservative or traditional male Imams present on gender issues.

Both have continued to be outspoken as seen in this latest piece by Sheema:

From 2000 to 2005, I served as the chair of CAIR-CAN, a grassroots advocacy organization that fought discrimination against Muslims. Whether it was a Muslim woman denied employment because of her hijab, or the rendition of Maher Arar, we fought for basic human rights based on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This journey opened my eyes to my own double standards: I fought for Muslims to be treated with basic human dignity by the wider society, yet looked the other way when such treatment was denied to women within my own community.

Toward the end of my CAIR-CAN tenure, I could no longer stand the hypocrisy, and decided to tackle a fundamental problem that our community has been content to ignore: the treatment of women as second-class human beings. As chair, I came across incidents against Muslim women that would never have been tolerated had these been perpetrated by a non-Muslim. But if a Muslim did it, well, we would let it go, hoping that attitudes would one day change.

It was, and continues to be, the denial of the fact that many Muslim cultures have a bias against women. Consider the past few years of the Gender Gap Index, published by the World Economic Forum. It continually lists predominantly Muslim countries in the bottom rung of societies that equitably distribute resources between men and women. From the super rich (such as Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States) to the impoverished, a large chunk of Muslims live in societies where women are shortchanged in terms of development, opportunity and participation.

The bulk of Muslims in Canada are immigrants who naturally bring to this country the attitudes and norms shaped by their culture of birth. These will be transformed by Canadian norms; the transformation varies from person to person. Suffice it to say that many traditional Muslim institutions continue to operate on a patriarchal model, in which women are either unwelcomed or merely tolerated, but are always expected to keep the status quo. Those who demand basic rights are labelled with the “f” word – feminist.

….Some will be critical of the airing of “dirty laundry” during difficult times for Muslims. Yet meaningful discussions about the treatment of women have been avoided for far too long. To what end? What we don’t need is another lecture about the dress and behaviour of the “ideal” Muslim woman. Instead, we need to hear more about men taking responsibility for their actions, and treating women as equal human beings.

Source: Muslim men must learn to treat women as equals – The Globe and Mail

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Sensitivity key for Canadian foreign service, says religious freedom envoy

2016/01/07 4 Comments

Encouraging that the promised spirit of openness by the Liberal government allowed this interview. Agree with Bennett’s fundamental thesis that diplomats would benefit from greater understanding of the role that religious faith plays.

Arguably, the same could be said for public servants more generally, given that many if not most reasonable accommodation issues involve religions:

Canada’s ambassador for religious freedom says the explosive rift between Saudi Arabia and Iran highlights religion’s growing influence on global affairs — and a potential “blind spot” for Canadian diplomats.

In an exclusive interview, Andrew Bennett said Canadian foreign service officers and other government officials need more training on the role that religious faith often plays in an individual country’s domestic policies and international relations.

“We need to ensure that if we want to be really nuanced and winsome in how we engage countries that are deeply religious, that we can actually employ language that enables us to have a deeper engagement,” he said. “If we can’t do that, then we risk developing or having a serious diplomatic blind spot.”

….On the broader question of religious reconciliation, Bennett said Canada and its western allies “are not going to solve the Sunni-Shia divide. But we need to understand it.” Key to that, he says, is making sure Canadian diplomats and government officials can understand, appreciate and speak the “language” of religion.

“When we engage, we can at least be somewhat conversant in the language that is used in Iran,” Bennett said. “I don’t mean Farsi. I mean what are the cultural, religious reference points that we need to be aware of and need to sort of integrate into that dialogue.”

The Pew Centre, a U.S.-based think tank, has estimated that 84 per cent of the world population has some type of religious affiliation, Bennett said. Religion has also played a role in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, he said, as well as in Nigeria and other places.

“Religion is becoming more of a geopolitical fact. It’s informing geopolitics,” said the ambassador.

“In Canada, because we live in a fairly secularized society where religious faith is not a strong component in shaping political, economic (or) social discourse, we’re not formed through our education and other things in a way that allows us to engage necessarily in that discussion around faith,” he added.

“So I think we need to increase our knowledge and increase our ability to engage in questions of religion.”

Bennett said his office, which was established under the previous Conservative government three years ago, has been working to expand such understanding in Canada’s foreign service. Several courses were offered and quickly filled up. His hope is that such work will be increased under the new government.

“At a more foundational level, in Canada and in the United States and in many Western countries, really since the Enlightenment, religion and religious faith has increasingly become absent from public discourse and from the public space, and it’s been viewed as something purely of the private sphere,” he said.

“When it comes to foreign affairs and international relations, when we leave a very secularized country such as Canada and go to a country that is not at all secular such as Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Iran, Nigeria, there’s a bit of a disconnect. And we need to address that.”

Source: Sensitivity key for Canadian foreign service, says religious freedom envoy | Ottawa Citizen

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Why ISIS has the potential to be a world-altering revolution: Scott Atran

2016/01/06 Leave a comment

A really good in-depth and lengthy analysis of some of the problems with current strategies against ISIS and similar movements. A necessary if not encouraging read:

The 9/11 attacks cost between $400,000 and $500,000 to execute, whereas the military and security response by the US and its allies is in the order of 10 million times that figure. On a strictly cost-benefit basis, this violent movement has been wildly successful, beyond even Bin Laden’s original imagination, and is increasingly so. Herein lies the full measure of jujitsu-style asymmetric warfare. After all, who could claim that we are better off than before, or that the overall danger is declining?

This alone should inspire a radical change in our counter-strategies. Yet, like the proverbial notion of insanity being the repetition of the same mistakes while expecting different results, our side continues to focus almost exclusively on security and military responses. Some of these responses have proven hopelessly ineffective from the outset, such as relying on the Iraqi, Afghan or Free Syrian armies.

ISIS manages 70,000 Twitter and Facebook accounts, with hundreds of thousands of followers, and sends approximately 90,000 texts daily

By contrast, there is precious little attention to social and psychological needs. I don’t mean to suggest that we solve things by offering potential jihadists better jobs. A still-unpublished report by the World Bank shows no reliable relationship between job production and violence reduction. If people are ready to sacrifice their lives, then it is not likely that offers of greater material advantages will stop them.

Instead, we must meet their psychological and aspirational needs. In just one example of how we fall short, the US State Department continues to send off-target tweets through negative mass messaging in its ineffectual ‘Think Again Turn Away’ campaign. Compare this to ISIS, which can spend hundreds of hours trying to enlist single individuals. Through its social media, the sophisticated Islamic State learns how personal frustrations and grievances can fit into a universal theme of persecution against all Muslims, and then translates anger and unrealised aspiration into moral outrage. Some estimates have ISIS managing upwards of 70,000 Twitter and Facebook accounts, with hundreds of thousands of followers, and sending approximately 90,000 texts daily. ISIS also pays close attention to the pop songs, video clips, action movies and television shows that garner high ratings among youth, and use them as templates to tailor their own messages.

By contrast, the US government has few operatives who personally engage with youth before they become a problem. The FBI is pressing to get out of the messy business of prevention and just stick to criminal investigation. ‘No one wants to own any of this,’ one group from the US National Counterterrorism Center told us. And public diplomacy efforts don’t quite get that hackneyed appeals to ‘moderation’ fall flat on restless and idealistic youths seeking adventure, glory and significance. As one imam and former Islamic State facilitator told us in Jordan:

The young who came to us were not to be lectured at like witless children; they are for the most part understanding and compassionate, but misguided. We have to give them a better message, but a positive one to compete. Otherwise, they will be lost to Daesh.

Local grass-roots approaches have had better luck in pulling people away. The United Network of Young Peacebuilders has had remarkable results in convincing young Taliban in Pakistan that enemies can be friends, and then encouraging those so convinced to convince others. But this will not challenge the broad attraction of the Islamic State for young people from nearly 90 nations and every walk of life. The lessons of local successes must be shared with government, and ideas allowed to bubble up before they boil over. To date, no such conduit exists, and young people with good ideas have few institutional channels to develop them.

Even if good ideas find ways to emerge from youth and obtain institutional support for their development to application, they still need intellectual help to persuade the public to adopt them. But where are the intellectuals to do this? Among Muslim leadership I’ve interviewed around the world, I listen to PowerPoint presentations intoning on ‘dimensions of ideology, grievance, and group dynamics’, notions that originate exclusively with Western ‘terrorism experts’ and think tanks. When I ask: ‘What ideas come from your own people?’, I’m told in moments of candour, as I was most recently by a Muslim leadership council in Singapore, that: ‘We don’t have many new ideas and we can’t agree on those we have.’

Civilisations rise and fall on the vitality of their cultural ideals, not their material assets alone

And where among our own current or coming generation are the intellectuals who might influence the moral principles, motivations and actions of society towards a just and reasonable way through the morass? In academia, you’ll find few willing to engage with power. They thus render themselves irrelevant and morally irresponsible by leaving the field of power entirely to those they censure. Accordingly, politicians pay them little heed, and the public couldn’t care less, often with good reason. For example, in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, many in my own field of anthropology principally occupied themselves with the critique of empire: is the US a classic empire or ‘empire light’? This was arguably a justifiable academic exercise, and perhaps a useful reflection in the long run, but hardly helpful in the context of a country moving fast to open-ended war, with all the agony and suffering that extended wars inevitably bring.

Responsible intellectual endeavour in the public sphere was once a vibrant part of our public life: not to promote ‘certain, clear, and strong’ action, as Martin Heidegger wrote in support of Hitler, but to generate just and reasonable possibilities and pathways for consideration. Now this sphere is largely abandoned to the Manichean preachings of blogging pundits, radio talk-show hosts, product-pushing podcasters, and television evangelicals. These people rarely do what responsible intellectuals ought to do. ‘The intellectual,’ explained France’s Raymond Aron 60 years ago, ‘must try never to forget the arguments of the adversary, or the uncertainty of the future, or the faults of one’s own side, or the underlying fraternity of ordinary men everywhere.’

Civilisations rise and fall on the vitality of their cultural ideals, not their material assets alone. History shows that most societies have sacred values for which their people would passionately fight, risking serious loss and even death rather than compromise. Our research suggests this is so for many who join ISIS, and for many Kurds who oppose them on the frontlines. But, so far, we find no comparable willingness among the majority of youth that we sample in Western democracies. With the defeat of fascism and communism, have their lives defaulted to the quest for comfort and safety? Is this enough to ensure the survival, much less triumph, of values we have come to take for granted, on which we believe our world is based? More than the threat from violent jihadis, this might be the key existential issue for open societies today.

Source: Why ISIS has the potential to be a world-altering re…

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The Soft Power of Militant Jihad – The New York Times

2015/12/22 1 Comment

An angle that has not received much coverage by Thomas Hegghammer, Director of terrorism research at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment.:

Why have tens of thousands of people from around the world chosen to live under the Islamic State’s draconian rule and fight under its black flag? To understand this phenomenon, we must recognize that the world of radical Islam is not just death and destruction. It also encompasses fashion, music, poetry, dream interpretation. In short, jihadism offers its adherents a rich cultural universe in which they can immerse themselves.

For the past four years I have been studying what jihadis do in their spare time. The idea is simple: To really understand a community, we need to look at everything its members do. Using autobiographies, videos, blog posts, tweets and defectors’ accounts, I have sought a sense of the cultural dimensions of jihadi activism. What I have discovered is a world of art and emotions. While much of it has parallels in mainstream Muslim culture, these militants have put a radical ideological spin on it.

When jihadis aren’t fighting — which is most of the time — they enjoy storytelling and watching films, cooking and swimming. The social atmosphere (at least for those who play by the rules) is egalitarian, affectionate and even playful. Jihadi life is emotionally intense, filled with the thrill of combat, the sorrow of loss, the joy of camaraderie and the elation of religious experience. I suspect this is a key source of its attraction.

The corridors of jihadi safe houses are filled with music or, more precisely, a cappella hymns (since musical instruments are forbidden) known as anashid. There’s nothing militant about this traditional genre, which dates from pre-Islamic times. But in the 1970s, Islamists began composing their own ideological songs about their favored themes. Today there are thousands of jihadi songs in circulation, with new tunes being added every month. Jihadis can’t seem to get enough anashid. They listen to them in their dorms and in their cars, sing them in training camps and in the trenches, and discuss them on Twitter and Facebook. Some use them to mentally prepare for operations: Ayoub El Khazani, a 25-year-old Moroccan man who attempted a shooting attack on a Paris-bound train in August, listened to YouTube videos of jihadi anashid just minutes before his failed operation.

Anashid are closely related to poetry, another staple of jihadi culture. Across the Arab and Islamic world, poetry is much more widely appreciated than it is in the West. Militants, though, have used the genre to their own ends. Over the past three decades or so, jihadi poets have developed a vast body of radical verse. Leaders from the Islamic State’s spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani to Al Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahri often include lines of poetry in their speeches and treatises. Foot soldiers in Syria and Iraq sometimes hold impromptu poetry performances or group recitals in the field.

Perhaps more important than poems for jihadis are dreams, which they believe can contain instructions from God or premonitions of the future. Both leaders and foot soldiers say they sometimes rely on nighttime visions for decision making. Omar Hammami, the Alabama-born man who fought with the Shabab in Somalia in the late 2000s, said he thought of defecting, “but it was really a few dreams that tipped the scales and caused me to stay.” Mullah Omar, the mysterious one-eyed Taliban leader who died in 2013, reportedly made no consequential strategic decision before getting advice from his dreams.

Jihadi culture also comes with its own sartorial styles. In Europe, radicals sometimes wear a combination of sneakers, a Middle Eastern or Pakistani gown and a combat jacket on top. It’s a style that perhaps reflects their urban roots, Muslim identity and militant sympathies. The men often follow Salafi etiquette, for example by carrying a tooth-cleaning twig known as a miswak, wearing nonalcoholic perfume, and avoiding gold jewelry, as they believe the Prophet Muhammad did.

As new recruits shed their jeans and track suits for robes, as they memorize the words to the Islamic State’s anashid and learn to look for glimpses of paradise in dreams, they discover a whole new lifestyle. Music, rituals and customs may be as important to jihadi recruitment as theological treatises and political arguments. Yes, some people join radical groups because they want to escape personal problems, avenge Western foreign policy or obey a radical doctrine. But some recruits may join because they find a cultural community and a new life that is emotionally rewarding.

As the West comes to terms with a new and growing threat — horrifically evident in the recent attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif. — we are not only confronting organizations and doctrines, but also a highly seductive subculture. This is bad news. Governments are much better equipped to take on the Slaughterer than they are He Who Weeps a Lot.

Source: The Soft Power of Militant Jihad – The New York Times

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Refugees can move us from multiculturalism to multifaithfulness

2015/12/22 Leave a comment

While I think the existing legal frameworks (Charter, employment equity, Multiculturalism Act etc), along with related institutions, are largely adequate, this article by David Pfimmer is of interest given its call for more multifaith (or interfaith) interaction with society.

A bit overly general, without specific examples:

The issue for faith communities is not responding to secularization, but offering what I would term a new public multifaithfulness to address the growing polarization in our communities. Many Canadian Muslims in particular are developing their own distinct narrative that takes seriously Canada’s multifaith and multicultural context. The resettlement of Syrian newcomers may well help further this new narrative.

Multiculturalism has served Canada’s national narrative well. But it does not consider adequately the important role faith plays for people, especially for newcomers. We all have examples where religious belief can exacerbate problems. Yet faith is the force that gives us meaning. It reminds us of who we are, guides our life’s work and shapes our vision of the world we want.

A public multifaithfulness — a spirit of faith community activism building partnerships across religious and political boundaries — may offer a more positive path to building human relationships, constructing a culture of peace, and safeguarding the integrity of creation. It may also foster faith communities’ self-understanding.

What does public multifaithfulness involve?

A public multifaithfulness would be different than the role churches once played in Canada. Public multifaithfulness expects state neutrality and equality toward all faiths. Governments are expected to not give preference to, nor discriminate against, any faith group.

Nevertheless, faith communities will be expected to make non-partisan contributions to political life. After all, if faith communities enjoy religious freedom, they have a responsibility to support the process that safeguards those very freedoms. Their expertise can partner with governments to achieve our important common goals. Government refugee sponsorships are one example where partnerships with faith communities have worked well.

A public multifaithfulness will mean new types of relationships between different faith groups with emerging new institutions. This is already happening in many places. These relationships will be guided by a principle of engaged mutual respect.

Multifaithfulness is not a replacement for faithfulness to one’s own tradition. Such engagements will understand that others, in being fully faithful to their own tradition, help us to be more authentic and live with integrity within our own tradition.

A public multifaithfulness needs to take seriously the public purpose, affirming human dignity and building communities, or publics, that are guided by a commitment to the common good and the well-being of our neighbours whether they live across the street or around the world.

Source: Refugees can move us from multiculturalism to multifaithfulness

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A leap forward in Catholic-Jewish relations: Marmur

2015/12/22 Leave a comment

Dov Murmur on both current developments and the historical context:

In order to explain and strengthen the relationship between Catholics and Jews the Vatican has followed up its historic document Nostra Aetate that initiated the dramatic shift half a century ago and about which I wrote last October. Over the years the Church has issued statements which amplify its stance. Five aspects are particularly significant.

  • The Church no longer sees itself as having superseded Judaism. It now speaks of Jews as elder brothers and sisters. It maintains that God’s covenant with the Jews has not been abrogated by Christianity.
  • The accusation that the Jews are responsible for the death of Jesus has been revoked. The possibility that his contemporaries were involved in the crucifixion in no way puts the burden on their descendants.
  • Christian anti-Semitism that has been the cause of persecution and extermination of Jews to this day has been repudiated in the light of what had befallen the Jews by the hands of believing Christians and subsequent secular imitators.
  • Affirming incontrovertible historic facts about the roots of Judaism in the Land of Israel, the legitimacy of re-establishing a Jewish homeland there has been affirmed. The Vatican maintains diplomatic relations with the State of Israel. The fact that Christianity was born in that land is being celebrated by Christians without in any way denying Jewish rights.

As a result, as David Berger put it in the online journal Tablet, “No longer could a loyal Catholic assert that Jewish dispossession from the land resulted from sin of the crucifixion and that unrepentant Jewry must remain in its exile.”

Berger also reminds readers that the Catholic Church has come to occupy the middle ground between most evangelicals’ unconditional support of Israel, including the policies of the current government, and at the other end of the wide spectrum, the stance of many Protestant denominations that tend to repudiate virtually everything Israel does, at times perhaps even questioning its right to exist.

  • The latest Vatican elucidation of Nostra Aetate came last month. It states that the Church “neither conducts nor supports” any institutional missionary initiative directed toward Jews. Not only has the legitimacy of Judaism been affirmed, the accusation of deicide withdrawn, the concomitant persecution of Jews repudiated, but now also attempts to make Jews “see the light” and embrace Christianity have been removed from the Church’s agenda.

Source: A leap forward in Catholic-Jewish relations: Marmur | Toronto Star

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The Ugly Fight Over Arabic in Augusta County – The Atlantic

2015/12/21 Leave a comment

One of the better pieces on the Virginia county controversy over the content of a world religions module of geography classes, and the choice of the shahada as the example of Islamic calligraphy:

Of all the phrases to choose, though, why this one? Using the profession of faith, an essential part of converting to Islam, feels strange, especially when there are so many other possibilities that could achieve the same task. (The phrase is also on the flags of Saudi Arabia and ISIS, among other places.) Why not bismillah al-rahman al-rahim (in the name of God, the most gracious the most merciful), a far less charged phrase? There’s no reason to believe that LaPorte was trying to indoctrinate her students into Islam, but the choice of phrase just feeds paranoia about it. It may be just another case of conservative political correctness run amok, but there’s also something uncomfortable about using someone’s expression of faith in this impersonal way. It’s hard to imagine a case in which students would be asked to recite the Apostle’s Creed as part of an academic lesson on Christian liturgy.

Not that the new compromise seems great either. “Although students will continue to learn about world religions as required by the state Board of Education and the Commonwealth’s Standards of Learning, a different, non-religious sample of Arabic calligraphy will be used in the future,” the district said in a statement. That’s throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Arabic calligraphy is of world-religion interest specifically because it is Islamic. Because Arabic is the language of the Qur’an, it has attained an exalted place in Islam throughout the world, well beyond Arabic-speaking countries. And because many forms of Islam prohibit or discourage figurative imagery, elaborate, beautiful, and highly stylized calligraphic artwork using Qur’anic phrases is a staple wherever Muslims are, around the world. Islamic art is a major chunk of world art, and while it’s inextricable from religion, it’s also a larger, civilizational thing than mere devotion. Using a secular Arabic phrase glosses over all that context.

Think about it this way: Would someone try to teach a class on Western art while excising Christian art as indoctrination? Of course not—in part because they’d have very little to work with in the centuries between Constantine’s conversion and the Renaissance. But Islam is something different, something that many Americans still view as a threat. My colleague Emma Green reported earlier this week on how schools in Tennessee and around the nation are facing intense efforts to roll back even the most academic, detached lessons on Islam. In many of these cases, too, the fight is being led by a small but vocal band of parents who find the act of educating about Islam, a religion with 1.6 billion followers around the world, itself objectionable and dangerous. It’s no coincidence that these battles almost always occur in heavily white, Christian school districts.

The Augusta County assignment was more vulnerable to outcry because of the unwise step of including the shahada. But there’s little question this is about fear of Islam, and not about objections to religion in the public schools. After all, Augusta County schools also offer students the chance to leave school once a week to attend Bible study.

Source: The Ugly Fight Over Arabic in Augusta County – The Atlantic

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British chief rabbi supports teaching Islam in Jewish schools

2015/12/19 4 Comments

Welcome contrast to so much of the US Christian right inveighing against any teaching of Islam in US schools. Greater religious literacy in an interfaith context helpful to integration:

Britain’s chief rabbi has called on the country’s Jewish schools to amend their curricula to include Islamic studies in order to be able to comply with new educational guidelines being put in place by the government.

In an interview with the Jewish Chronicle published on Wednesday, Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis took a radically different position than he had expressed in the past, when he and representatives of other Orthodox organizations advocated against the push for British schools to include a second faith in their religious studies curriculum.

The new rules would cut down the amount of time Jewish schools that follow the state curriculum could dedicate to Jewish schools by a quarter.

“Losing 25 percent of the time allotted for teaching Jewish studies as part of the religious studies GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) was a serious loss for Jewish education in our schools,” a spokesman for Mirvis told the Chronicle.

“It is more important than ever that our children have a better understanding of Islam and that we build strong relationships with British Muslims. As such, the chief rabbi has recommended that schools take this opportunity to teach students Islam, a faith which is widely discussed but often poorly understood in public discourse,” he said.

“Although the chief rabbi has not issued any formal guidance on this issue – since, ultimately, it is for the schools themselves to judge how best to tailor their curriculum – we have had a series of positive discussions with a number of our schools and made recommendations to them,” the spokesman added, calling the chance to include Islamic studies a “valuable opportunity.”

The Reform Movement in Britain praised Mirvis on Thursday, with the movement’s senior rabbi, Laura Janner-Klausner, telling The Jerusalem Post that she felt that teaching about Islam was both “an excellent idea” and “long overdue.”

“We are stronger as a faith group, and as a community, when we better understand others in our society,” she said.

The London-based JFS secondary school remained concerned that adequate time be given to the study of Judaism, but welcomed the guidance of the chief rabbi in helping to decide that Islam will be the second religion taught at GCSE.

“Our students will relish this addition to our curriculum and we welcome the opportunity to enhance our students’ understanding of their own religion alongside an increased understanding of others,” said head teacher Jonathan Miller.

Rabbi Marc Schneier, the founder of the New York based Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, which works on Muslim-Jewish dialogue both in the United States and Europe, also approved of the decision.

“Given that Jewish communities live alongside Muslim communities not only in the UK, but around the world, it is very important for Jewish youth to be exposed to the guiding principles of Islam,” he said.

Source: British chief rabbi supports teaching Islam in Jewish schools – Diaspora – Jerusalem Post

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , , , ,

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