The
Wisdom Traditions: Islam
Delivered by
Ilona Forgeng, October 26, 2008
At the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, New Bern, NC
Children’s Story
Do you know the legend of the birth of Jesus and the bright star of Bethlehem that led the shepherds and the wise men to the manger where the baby Jesus lay?
There is also a legend about the star that appeared on the night Muhammad was born.
According to the story, the king and ministers of Persia—that’s Iran today—were out looking at the night sky when they saw a star that was almost as bright as the sun. They looked at one another in amazement. “A great prophet has been born,” they told each other. The star shone over the city of where Muhammad was born at the very hour of his birth.
At the same time, the mountains began to dance and sing: “There is no god but God!”
“And Muhammad is his prophet!” the trees whispered.
All the birds flew to Mecca to sing their praises, and all the fish in the sea raised their heads above the water and shouted: “The time has come! The world has a new leader!”
That is what the legends say about the night Muhammad was born.
As-Salaam Alaikum
Worldwide there are more than a billion Muslims; in the US there are upwards of three million Muslims and over 1000 mosques. Which means that there are about the same number of mosques as there are UU churches, but thirty times as many adherents. About a quarter of these adherents to Islam are African American.
Today’s presentation is the second of a series we have planned on “The Wisdom Traditions.” If you look at the back of your order of service, you will see that our “Living Tradition” draws from many sources, including wisdom from the world’s religions that inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life.
There are some religions that are easier than others for a religious liberal to relate to. We don’t take kindly to being told what to think, we prefer the ten suggestions to the Ten Commandments.
It can be difficult for a religious liberal to find common ground with Islam. There are Unitarian Christians, Unitarian Buddists, and Unitarian Jews. I am not aware of any Unitarian Muslims. We admire the Buddha and his teachings, we are attracted to meditation and yoga, we honor the teachings of Jesus, but somehow we can’t seem to find commonality with Islam.
Perhaps if we can examine Islam with an open mind, we can find something of what inspired millions of Seventh Century Jews, Christians, Arabs and Pagans to convert to this religion of submission to the will of Allah.
Islam comes to the West with a lot of baggage.
The subtext of the election this year is the idea that Barack Obama is a closet Muslim. Last Sunday Colin Powell said that the correct answer to that is, he is not a Muslim; he's a Christian. He's always been a Christian.
But, Powell said, the really right answer is, "What if he is?" Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is no, that's not America.
But Islam comes with a lot of baggage.
There is no better an introduction to our long, difficult history with Islam than an abstract from Karen Armstrong’s biography of Mohammed:
When the Muslim empire was established in the seventh century, Europe was a backward region. Islam had quickly overrun much of the Middle East, which had been of crucial importance to the Church of Rome. This brilliant success was threatening: had God deserted the Christians and bestowed his favor on the infidel? Europe could make no impression on this powerful and dynamic culture: the Crusading project of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries eventually failed and, later, the Ottoman Turks brought Islam to the very doorstep of Europe. [Their] fear made it impossible for Western Christians to be rational and objective about the Muslim faith. Western scholars denounced Islam as a blasphemous faith and its Prophet Mohammad as the Great Pretender, who had founded a violent religion of the sword in order to conquer the world.
This inaccurate image of Islam became one of the received ideas of Europe and it continues to affect our perceptions of the Muslim world.
Instead of fearing Islam, we in the west should understand the debt we owe centuries of Islamic science, literature and philosophy. It was Islam that preserved the teachings of Greece that were lost to the west in the middle ages. From the 8th to the 15th century the Muslim world made huge strides in medicine, in physiology and especially in astronomy. Get out your star atlas. Most the names of the stars today are Arabic names: Aldebaran, Deneb, Fomahaut. Muslim mathematicians brought us the concept zero, they brought us fractions and, by the way, where do you think the word algebra comes from. And alchemy, algorithm, alkali, almanac, antimony, average, azimuth. Well, that’s far enough. We need to recognize that we owe a lot to Islam.
So where can we find common ground with Islam? What is there for us in the Qur’an and the Hadith?
Qur’an means recitation. In 610 Muhammad was on retreat in a mountain cave near Mecca, when the Angel Gabriel came and commanded him to “recite.” Like any good prophet, Muhammad refused, but Gabriel squeezed him tighter and tighter, till Muhammad began to recite the first words of the Qur’an. Muhammad was terrified, sure he had been possessed by demons. His wife, Khadijah, an older woman, a business woman, wealthy in her own right, helped convince him he had, indeed, received the true word of God. Over the next 22 years, Muhammad recited all the verses of the Qur’an. He also led a movement that took over the entire Arab world, bringing harmony to an area that had known only intertribal warfare.
The Hadith, the second of the Holy writings of Islam, include traditional sayings of Muhammad and later Islamic authorities. By the ninth century over 600,000 Hadith had been recorded; these were later edited down to only 25,000. And, of course, revelation was sealed at that point. No prophet can come after Muhammed and no further Hadith are possible. 21st century Islam is frozen in 9th Century understandings.
Mohammed took a tribal Arabian Society, a society where violence and conflict was a way of life, and introduced a society based on harmony.
The religion Mohammed believed he was called to proclaim came from the Arabian tribal codes of devotion, loyalty and submission. Muhammad took these codes and instead of submission to the tribe, required submission to Allah. Contending tribes were now joined in submission to this new, greater Truth.
Submission. That is how the religion got its name. Islam means submission, or surrender, but it means more than that. Salaam, the origin of the word Islam, means peace, and the submission of Islam is that peace that comes with submission to a greater truth, it connotes the serenity that follows self-giving.
The first Surah, or verse, from the Qur’an, says “Guide us in the straight path.” Islam tells us in no uncertain terms what that straight path is, what God demands of us. There is that which is forbidden, there is that which is allowed, there is that which is required. The highest of these requirements form the five pillars of Islam, the things shared by all Muslims everywhere, the things Muslims devote their lives to, submit their lives to.
The first pillar is the shahadah, the creed. There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is His Prophet. Once said, correctly, thoughtfully, with understanding and conviction, one is a Muslim. And every Muslim must say the shahadah properly at least once in his lifetime. The shahadah is so much a part of a Muslim’s life that the first part of it, There is no god but God, can act like verbal charm. When one is in pain, trouble or has a problem, the recitation of the shahadah brings peace and calm, not only to the person saying it, but to all those around him.
The second pillar is prayer, the five-times-daily prayers, facing Mecca. These prescribed prayers help a Muslim to understand that he is here by the will of God and is not, after all, the center of the universe. It is God’s will, not man’s that must be served.
The third pillar is charity. Muslims who are able are expected to distribute 2½% of their worldly goods each year—not their income, their wealth. One is OBLIGED to help those less fortunate, sharing is required, greed is not tolerated. The faithful must reach out to each other.
The fourth pillar is the observance of Ramadan, the month of fasting. From first light to last light, a Muslim allows himself no food, drink or smoke. The fast is a time to reflect that this hunger and thirst is a way of life for many of our fellow humans, this self-denial encourages compassion with those less fortunate.
The fifth pillar of Islam is the Hadj. The Hadj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, is expected of every Muslim during his lifetime, as long as he is physically and economically able. The Hadj reinforces one’s commitment to doing the will of Allah. The Hadj also is a reminder of human equality, and equality is a major tenet of Islam. In Mecca all pilgrims wear the same garment, a simple white sheet, all pilgrims sleep together on the ground, all pilgrims, from whatever county, of whatever color, of whatever status, for those few days, they are all demonstrably equal.
Mohammad’s revelation of Islam stresses equality and justice. Islamic religious law insists upon ethical business practices and accountability. Money must be shared throughout society and not be hoarded by a few.
Muslims see the universe as ultimately moral. Good and evil matter. Our choices matter. Our choices lead to consequences, and we are responsible for those consequences, not God.
There is great fear in contemplating a God of unlimited power, but submission to the will of God brings the peace of knowing you have achieved salvation. With salvation and peace the chaos of the world is itself less frightening. Allah is not only all powerful, Allah is all compassionate.
Unlike Christians, Muslims see mankind as basically good. Muslims have no concept of original sin; Adam experienced no catastrophic fall. So Muslims naturally have a very different self-image than Christians.
Gratitude is perhaps the most important part of a Muslim’s relationship with God, gratitude for the gift of life. An infidel is one who shows no gratitude more than he is a non-believer.
So, what wisdom we can draw from Islam, we freethinking Unitarian Universalists.
Well, mercy, justice, compassion, take care of each other. Gratitude, equality, tolerance.
Okay, beyond that, what can Islam suggest to us?
I’d like to look at the five pillars and think about ways we might learn from them.
The Shahadah, There is no god but God. Have you found something that has as much power for you as the Shahada has for a Muslim? I have said often that religion is a search for truths worth living by. Have you found a truth that is honestly that central to your life? If your god, your truth is compassion, or justice, or health care for all, or concern for the future of the planet, what would happen if that God remained in front of you, within you all the time? Do you doubt that Sydney Barnwell lives by his god of love and compassion? There is no God but love, and Sydney is his prophet.
Prayer 5 times a day. Well, make it once a day. Maybe not a prayer, but a meditation. A time to think about things outside of ourselves, to think about what a wonderful world we really live in. A time, for just a few minutes every day to think about what really is most important.
Ramadan. We westerners seldom take time to notice what is really happening, to, like the Buddhists, “live in the moment,” live mindfully. Might we not take a similar day, not perhaps 30 of them in a row, but a day now and then. A day for fasting perhaps, or choosing some way that would help us really notice what we are doing throughout that day, when we could think about just how lucky we are, how blessed we are, how much more difficult life could be for us?
Charity. How revolutionary, that sharing is an obligation. That if we have been fortunate, our responsibility is to share that fortune. That Greed is not good. What could our food pantries do with a 2½% tithe from some of those golden parachutes we’re financing on Wall Street? I don’t think Mohammed meant that we were to take from the poor to give to the CEO’s of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
The Hajj is a pilgrimage, a journey to a holy place. A pilgrimage, well done, will connect us with something deep inside, so deep we may not even be aware it is there.
A Hajj is not necessarily a physical journey. It can be an opportunity for an interior journey. A meditation, or walking a labyrinth can be a pilgrimage.
Check your bucket list. There’s a Hajj in there somewhere.
So, we Unitarians do share values with the vast majority of Muslims, just as we share them with Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and others. We share love for compassion, mercy and justice. We are against poverty and repression. We believe in taking responsibility for our own actions. Many of us also share a suspicion of some of the grosser aspects of Western Culture.
I would like to close with a quotation from the Qur’an:
“And I have created peoples and tribes so that they could get to know each other.” “To each of you I have given a law and a way of life. If God would have desired He could surely have made you into a single people—professing one faith. But He wished to try and test you by that which He has given each of you. So excel in good deed. To Him you will all return in the end, when He will resolve that upon which you disagreed.”
Wa Alaikum Salaam.
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