Iranian epic ‘Muhammad’ aims to change Islam’s image – Business Insider

2015/08/27 Leave a comment

Interesting that such a film received approval to be made and shown in Iran and how audiences inside and outside Iran (those that can see it) react:

The award-winning director of Iran’s most expensive ever film, “Muhammad”, says he hopes it will improve Islam’s “violent image”, but the religious epic risks angering many Muslims despite not showing the prophet’s face.

The huge production about the childhood of the prophet cost up to an estimated $40 million and took more than seven years to complete.

The 171-minute film, which stars many top Iranian actors, premieres on Wednesday in 143 theatres throughout Iran, the day before it opens the Montreal Film Festival.

In an interview with AFP in Tehran, its director Majid Majidi, 56, said extremists and jihadists such as the Islamic State group “have stolen the name of Islam”.

In the Western world, “an incorrect interpretation of Islam has emerged that shows a violent image of Islam, and we believe it has no link whatsoever” to the religion, he said.

“Muhammad” is the first part of a trilogy on the life of the prophet. The film depicts events before his birth and up to his teenage years, before he became prophet, which according to the Koran was at the age of 40.

While Iran has denounced cartoons of the prophet like those published by French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, Shiite Muslims are generally more relaxed than Sunnis about depictions of religious figures.

While many planned screenings of “Muhammad” in Shiite-majority Iran have already sold out, in the Sunni Muslim world the production has triggered controversy.

Iranian epic ‘Muhammad’ aims to Islam’s image – Business Insider.

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Overcoming Islamophobia: Fear is never the best basis for action – William Macdonald

2015/08/26 Leave a comment

Good essay on the need for perspective and mutual accommodation by William A. Macdonald in the context of Canadian Muslims but applicable more broadly:

The numbers tell their own story. There are about a million Muslims in Canada, and 1.6 billion around the world, one-quarter of whom reside in India and Indonesia. Despite the current problems particular to Islam, there is no irresistible link between Islam itself and terrorism. No Muslim country is in the world’s top 20 in terms of homicides per capita, nor is Islam associated with any of the 10 largest genocides in history.

The only long-run solution to the relationship between Islam and the rest of the world is rooted in mutual accommodation. Whatever is being done to fight terrorism must always keep that reality in mind. Words matter, and we should avoid to the extent possible including the terms Islamic or Muslim in our descriptions of extremism or terrorism, even if the violence is being done in the name of Islam. Readers already know that’s what al-Qaeda and Islamic State claim.

Islam is no different from any other religion in its need to examine itself critically. The thinking mostly has to come from within, while the challenges will often come from outside events. The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding gay marriage is a good example: Religion not only challenges the world; the world challenges religion. Institutional religions, if they are to survive and thrive, need to communicate with their adherents, and everyone else. For example, the Pope challenges the world to do better at the very moment when the acceptance of gay marriage challenges his church (and not very long after it was challenged by the adverse reaction to its reluctance to respond to the sexual abuse of young people in its care).

David Brooks, the insightful conservative columnist for The New York Times, described the current post-gay-marriage situation in the United States very well. True believers – mostly of a religious persuasion – have a choice, he says; one way is to keep fighting for what they believe by seeking to change laws so that they can impose their views on society. The other, as Mr. Brooks and I both believe, is for these groups to accept that they are special communities of individual believers who can make their best contribution to their members and to society, not by trying to impose their views on others, but by the strength of their own communities of faith.

In recent weeks, the racist massacre in Charleston, S.C., has provided yet another example to our world, desperately in need of more compassion and a larger purpose than individuals themselves. It is difficult to imagine anything more powerful than the personal, face-to-face forgiveness of the deeply mourning relatives to the murderer of their loved ones. The authenticity of this forgiveness could come only from the force of their deep faith.

There is an urgent need to find the best strategy to address the double challenge presented by terrorist acts in Canada and terrorist recruits from Canada. Aside from that issue, how big a problem are Muslims? Or, from another perspective, is Canada a problem for Muslims? Canada’s history is all about a growing capacity for the inclusion of more and more differences in our society. Covering a woman’s face with a niqab is certainly incompatible with the openness that has become part of the Canadian way. Yet it represents no threat to anyone except on those occasions when there is a clear need to see someone’s face, such as for identification purposes or during testimony in court.

Overcoming Islamophobia: Fear is never the best basis for action – The Globe and Mail.

For those interested in his website and more of his views, his framing piece can be found at CANADA: STILL THE UNKNOWN COUNTRY along with other commentary at Canadian Difference.

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How to correctly engage with Catholicism and Islam in public commentary

2015/08/20 Leave a comment

Useful piece providing some guidance on how to discuss religion in public (leave it to my more religiously-literate readers to comment and correct):

Whether it’s same-sex marriage, Pope Francis’ encyclical on the environment, deradicalisation programs or Islamic State (IS), academics and commentators have found a need to engage with religion. Some do so with an ease built from familiarity, others less smoothly.

The problems begin with a common view that those who study religion do so based upon faith requiring belief rather than scholarship. This misguided view encourages commentators who would otherwise hesitate to reach beyond their areas of expertise to weigh in on religion.

Yet the approaches used for the study of texts such as the Quran or Bible are no less rigorous than those employed in other legal and literary fields. Similar methodologies from anthropology, sociology and the political sciences are adapted to undertake research on religion.

But the allure to ignore this complexity appears too strong for some who borrow a few verses from the Quran to argue that Islam is a religion of peace or, vice versa, point to other verses suggesting it to be a religion of war. Others, upon hearing Pope Francis’ teachings on the environment, demand Catholic politicians’ adherence yet ignore the more authoritative teachings on abortion or same-sex marriage.

Left to the private sphere, as a spiritual belief, such mistakes would be the burden of the individual and the business of an imam or priest. But when public policy is being shaped it is incumbent upon public figures to be better versed. The below list responds to common mistakes that emerge when discussing Catholicism and Islam.

Roman Catholicism

  1. Quoting scripture in an effort to reinforce your argument.
  2. Referencing a pope’s encyclical as dogma for all Catholics.
  3. Quoting the Old Testament as a reference for Catholic dogma.

Islam

  1. Generalisations.
  2. Reading the text outside of the context.
  3. Confusing ideology with religion.
  4. Talking in a vacuum.

How to correctly engage with Catholicism and Islam in public commentary.

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What Does Islam Say About Being Gay? – The New York Times

2015/07/31 Leave a comment

Mustafa Akyol on interpretations of what Islam says on being gay:

The real Islamic basis for punishing homosexuality is the hadiths, or sayings, attributed to the Prophet Muhammad. (The same is true for punishments on apostasy, heresy, impiety, or “insults” of Islam: None come from the Quran; all are from certain hadiths.) But the hadiths were written down almost two centuries after the prophet lived, and their authenticity has been repeatedly questioned — as early as the ninth century by the scholar Imam Nesai — and they can be questioned anew today. Moreover, there is no record of the prophet actually having anyone punished for homosexuality.

Such jurisprudential facts might help Muslims today to develop a more tolerant attitude toward gays, as some progressive Islamic thinkers in Turkey, such as Ihsan Eliacik, are encouraging. What is condemned in the story of Lot is not sexual orientation, according to Mr. Eliacik, but sexual aggression. People’s private lives are their own business, he argues, whereas the public Muslim stance should be to defend gays when they are persecuted or discriminated against — because Islam stands with the downtrodden.

It is also worth recalling that the Ottoman Caliphate, which ruled the Sunni Muslim world for centuries and which the current Turkish government claims to emulate, was much more open-minded on this issue. Indeed, the Ottoman Empire had an extensive literature of homosexual romance, and an accepted social category of transvestites. The Ottoman sultans, arguably, were social liberals compared with the contemporary Islamists of Turkey, let alone the Arab World.

Despite such arguments, the majority of Muslims are likely to keep seeing homosexuality as something sinful, if public opinion polls are any indication. Yet those Muslims who insist on condemning gays should recall that according to Islam, there are many sins, including arrogance, which the Quran treats as among the gravest moral transgressions. For Turks and other Muslims, it could be our own escape from the sin of arrogance to stop stigmatizing others for their behavior and focus instead on refining ourselves.

What Does Islam Say About Being Gay? – The New York Times.

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Getting past victimhood starts with an honest look in the mirror: Sheema Khan

2015/07/28 Leave a comment

Another good piece by Sheema Khan:

While Canadian Muslim leadership is evolving, there are still too many who ascribe to victimhood and conspiracy theories. Such self-defeating attitudes do not serve the community well; blaming others prevents much-needed self-introspection, thereby allowing flaws to fester.

Islamophobia is real and must be addressed. This week alone, a London mosque was vandalized and a video surfaced of an anti-Muslim verbal attack on a Calgary cab driver. But Islamophobia should not be used as a cover to mask wrong behaviour.

A parallel theme weaves through Saul Bellow’s novel The Victim, in which a Jewish protagonist blames his misfortunes on anti-Semitism without much introspection. Gradually, he takes stock of his own shortcomings, and with a renewed moral compass takes on life’s challenges (including anti-Semitism) with a confident, balanced attitude.

This type of fresh outlook is evident in the next generation of Muslim leaders, such as physician Alaa Murabit, who was raised in Saskatoon and moved to Libya at the age of 15. Shocked by widespread gender discrimination in her new environment, she eventually founded the Voice of Libyan Women (VLW) to challenge the prevailing norms.

In her recent TED talk, “What my religion really says about women,” Ms. Murabit is unapologetic about her love for Islam, her source of strength. She readily acknowledges the discrimination faced by women in Muslim cultures (rather than blaming news media for reporting on real-life horrors). She seeks to address the “crooked foundation” by advocating that women reclaim their religion by looking to examples of Muslim women in early Islamic history, to the authentic example of the Prophet Mohammed and to the Koran itself.

The Noor Campaign, a VLW program, has used this approach to combat violence against women in Libya and abroad. It is gruelling work. Criticized by the right, the left, the fundamentalists and the secularists, Ms. Murabit marches on with honesty, humility and compassion – because she believes in forging positive societal change.

Canadian Muslims do not need to wait for leadership from traditional institutions to evolve to this level of dynamism. They can independently forge initiatives that address areas of neglect, such as family dysfunction, substance abuse and mental health. Or they can participate in wider campaigns on issues such as poverty and the environment. They should also demand a seat at the table at Islamic centres, since women and youth are stakeholders.

Getting past victimhood starts with an honest look in the mirror – The Globe and Mail.

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Islam in UK: Losing my religion | The Economist

2015/05/09 Leave a comment

Interesting trend even if the numbers are small as well as observation that many British Muslims have become more religious as a response to feeling that their faith is under attack:

Former Muslims’ reluctance to admit to their lack of faith rarely stems from a fear of violence, as in countries such as Sudan where laws make apostasy punishable by death. Rather the worry in Britain is about the social stigma, moral condemnation and ostracism that follows, says Simon Cottee of the University of Kent, who has written a book on the subject.

Many do not divulge their unbelief to their families, let alone the wider community. At events organised by the CEMB, some come straight from the mosque. Women say they continue to wear their veil at home to conceal their change of heart. Those who are openly godless often use the language of gay rights, talking about “coming out” to those close to them.

Despite such difficulties, the internet is making life easier. Muslims questioning their faith can talk to others online. The CEMB’s forum has over 4,000 users, says Marayam Namazie, the group’s founder. In the past would-be atheists had to sneak off to libraries to explore their doubts. Doing so online is easier and more discreet. Nonetheless the CEMB also offers guidance on concealing such activities, advising those with doubts to erase e-mails and search histories and to use a computer to which others do not have access.

Ibrahim Mogra, an imam in Leicester, says that he has heard of only a handful of cases of Muslims who have openly renounced their religion over the past 30 years. More common, he says, are those who abandon many of the practices of Islam—regular prayers, the dietary laws and dress codes, for example—but still identify as Muslims. This group, which is culturally but less spiritually committed to Islam, is getting larger, suggests Mr Mogra. Growing up in secular Britain leads people, especially the young, to drift away. But many grow out of their doubts, he reckons, and return, especially when they have children.

Religious leaders certainly try to draw them back into the fold. Sermons on Friday, when more backsliders may appear, are an opportunity to boost their faith. Ramadan is a chance to recharge the spiritual batteries of people who will only return again 11 months later for a top-up, says Mr Mogra. But a culture in which youngsters could express their uncertainties openly and discuss them with scholars would be good, he argues. “If, after that, they still have doubts, that’s up to them.”

The difficulty for Muslims with misgivings, at least in revealing them, is the politicisation of Islam. Many British Muslims have become more overtly religious as they perceive their faith to be under attack. Islam has become a greater part of their identity. That makes it harder for doubters to come out—and leaves them in a quandary. Some interviewed by Mr Cottee were wary of putting their testimonies online, anxious to avoid giving ammunition to those who would vilify Islam. Until Muslims feel more at ease in Britain and Britons more relaxed about Islam, the number coming out will be small.

Islam: Losing my religion | The Economist.

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Sex ed protest leaves 1 Toronto school almost empty

2015/05/06 Leave a comment

If memory serves me correctly (School prayer debate creates unlikely allies), this is the same school that allowed the Muslim Friday prayers at the school to combat Friday afternoon absenteeism among Muslim students, with gender-separate seating (girls at the back, not at the side):

A public elementary school in Toronto was left nearly empty on Monday as parents protested against the province’s new sex ed curriculum.

Between 200 and 300 protesters voiced their concerns with changes to the current sex ed system outside Thorncliffe Park Public School, said the CBC’s James Murray. Toronto District School Board spokesman Ryan Bird said 1,220 of the 1,350 Grade 1 to Grade 5 students are not currently in class.

Meanwhile, across the city, the Toronto District School Board recorded 34,762 elementary school absences.

That’s an increase of 144 percent compared to last Monday when there were 14,191 absences reported.

The board did not provide a breakdown of reasons for the absences, such as illness, etc.

In total, there are approximately 171,800 active elementary students at the TDSB.

A Thorncliffe parents’ group is currently running a Facebook campaign called Parents & Students on strike: one week no school is encouraging parents who oppose the 2015 sex ed curriculum to keep their kids at home.

“We are sending them to have their science, math and English and whatever … we are not sending them for sex education,” said parent Fatima Haqdad.

Sex ed protest leaves 1 Toronto school almost empty – Toronto – CBC News.

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Citing Religious Beliefs, Muslim Gitmo Inmates Object To Female Guards : NPR

2015/05/05 Leave a comment

I am with General Kelly on this, apart from his comment on whether the prisoners beliefs reflect Islamic teachings (Supreme Court of Canada approach of assessing whether beliefs are sincere, and whether they infringe on rights of others is preferred, rather than commenting on theology).

The right of prisoners has to be balanced between the right of the guards, and I suspect the prisoners are making more of a political point than a religious one.

Of course, in the overall context of due process and respect for human rights at Gitmo, this is minor:

Ruiz says his client refuses to leave his cell if women are on the escort team because Muslim men can only touch women they’re related to.

“It means that we are not able to meet, we are not able to speak with each other on legal issues, and therefore I’m not able to provide the legal services that I am required to provide and the advocacy that I’m required to provide on his behalf,” Ruiz says. “It’s an access to counsel issue.”

Today, no female guards are allowed to handle the defendants in the Sept. 11 case. The judge presiding in that trial, Col. James Pohl, has refused to lift his restraining order.

At a recent Senate hearing, New Hampshire Republican Kelly Ayotte criticized the judge’s decision.

“When the 9-11 attackers don’t want women guarding them, it’s absurd, and I don’t think we should be accommodating that,” she said.

Ayotte directed her remark to Gen. John Kelly, the head of the U.S. Southern Command, who’s in charge of Guantanamo. Kelly told Ayotte he disagreed with the judge’s order, but there was nothing he could do about it. He suggested the judge had been misled.

“Because the high-value detainees felt it was against their religion, which anyone that knows anything about the Muslim religion knows that it’s not against their religion,” Kelly said.

The general said the five Sept. 11 defendants and their lawyers were manipulating the court trying their case.

“And as soon as this is over, it’ll be, ‘We don’t want to be touched by Jews, or we don’t want to be touched by, you know, black soldiers, or we don’t want to be touched by Roman Catholics,” Kelly said. “It’s beyond me why we even consider some of these requests.”

Ruiz, the lawyer for one of the defendants, finds that comment telling.

“When General Kelly makes that kind of statement, it’s very clear that he doesn’t really understand what is happening in the detention center that they’re supposed to be supervising,” Ruiz says.

And that’s not the only issue, says David Nevin, who represents alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Nevin says it’s also a matter of showing respect for a well-established tenet of Islam.

“There’s a problem, a religious problem, protected under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, with having women touch men,” Nevin says. “It’s just something that’s not done.”

Citing Religious Beliefs, Muslim Gitmo Inmates Object To Female Guards : NPR.

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Inside the Qur’an — an author’s journey to the heart of Islam

2015/04/28 Leave a comment

Interesting interview with Carla Power, a former Newsweek journalist who studied the Qur’an over a year:

You describe movingly your father’s terrible and untimely death. How did that change your views on faith?

My father was murdered in Mexico in 1993. His death was the first time I saw the glimmering of the friendship that was going to happen with Sheikh Akram Nadwi. I ran into him in the office at Oxford and told him what had happened. He stood up and started reciting a poem from the Pakistani philosopher poet Muhammad Iqbal, an elegy to his mother. ‘Who will wait for my letters now? Who will wait for me in the night to return now?’ It was the most comforting thing I heard in the months of mourning. The notion that grief and death are universal and part of life was tremendously comforting. Later I realized what was holy to me as a secular humanist: connecting to other people who are different from you. If I do believe in something that is holy, it is that. The idea of recognizing and accepting differences is also a Qur’anic value.

Sheikh Akram has written a biographical dictionary of 9,000 female scholars in Islamic history. It seems extraordinary because I doubt most people can name even one.

The stereotype is a grey-bearded man in a mosque. But he found women who were riding across Arabia on camelback and horseback to do lecture tours. He found a woman in Samarkand who was issuing not only her own fatwas but writing fatwas of her less-talented husband. These are unthinkable freedoms for many women in this day and age. I thought that these women were forgotten for the same reason Western women had been until recently, that women’s history had been buried because it was mostly males writing about the corridors of power. But in the Muslim context there was another reason: Muslim notions of modesty and not putting women’s names in the public space.

What did the Qur’an reveal to you?

When I sat down for my first lesson with the sheikh I thought I would read the book and understand it like a good schoolgirl. But through the course of our lessons I realized it was so much bigger. We would discuss and debate the Qur’an and the hadith, the words and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad. To call the Qur’an a book would limit it to a human-made notion of what learning is. The only way I could see it in the end was a return, again and again, the 35-times-a-week prayers that many Muslims do. The Qur’an is a place you return to and learn of your God.

… You considered converting to Islam but didn’t. Can you talk about that?

A lot of my Muslim friends said, ‘Ah it starts by reading. You are going to convert, we know it.’ But I couldn’t make that leap. I found bits of the Qur’an were absolutely beautiful but I couldn’t make the interpretive leap that one has to. I admire it, I admire Islam but it’s not a bridge I can cross.

Inside the Qur’an — an author’s journey to the heart of Islam | Toronto Star.

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Inside Indonesia’s Islamic Boarding School for Transgender People

2015/04/22 Leave a comment

Reminder of the diversity among Islamic countries:

When Shinta Ratri visits her family in Yogyakarta, the Indonesian city where she still lives, she sits outside her family’s home and waits. She hasn’t been allowed inside since she was 16, when as a young boy she told her family she identified as a girl.

Today, Shinta, 53, is one of the leading transgender activists in the country. She runs Pondok Pesantren Waria, an Islamic boarding school for Indonesia’s so-called waria, a portmanteau of the Indonesian words for woman (wanita) and man (pria). The school, in Shinta’s own home in Yogyakarta on the island of Java, provides a tight-knit community for transgender women from across the country who may face discrimination at home.

“They come to Yogyakarta just because they know about this school,” says Fulvio Bugani, an Italian photographer who spent nearly three weeks living with the waria community at the school. “They know that there they can pray and live like a woman in a good atmosphere.”

Bugani’s powerful images depict the daily lives of the school’s diverse waria community, and one of his shots was awarded third prize in the World Press Photo’s Contemporary Issues category this year.

About 10 women live at the school, according to Bugani, though the numbers fluctuate. Many of them make a living as sex workers or street performers, unable to find work in other areas, but the school offers a comfortable environment where, Bugani says, they can be themselves.

It also provides a unique place for the waria to pray. In Indonesia, the country with the world’s largest Muslim population, mosques are typically segregated by gender and the transgender women are reluctant to join or barred from participating in either group. But Shinta has ensured that the women can pray together at the school.

“She is very proud to be a woman and also to be a Muslim,” Bugani says. “She wants to help the other waria to become like her.”

Inside Indonesia’s Islamic Boarding School for Transgender People | TIME.

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