"All I Need to Know About Islam..."

I don't claim to know a great deal about Islam. I've taken courses in college, I've read books, and (though this sounds as patronizing as "some of my best friends are black") I know a few personally.

What I don't know would fill a library. But I know enough to grasp that the actions of a few are the fruits of the same poison tree that nourishes fanatics of all stripes - from atheistic Bolsheviks who could only see Kulaks as obstacles in the way of the proletarian revolution, to Christians who blow up federal buildings and murder doctors providing abortions, to Muslims who allow girls to die horribly in a fire because they didn't have time to put on their "sacred" burkas, and the list of atrocities could go on and on and encompass every identifiable group of humans since recorded history began.

I was motivated to pen this blog because of two things I saw in the media recently. The first is this blog from the Alternet.org site, "When Stupid People don’t Know that They are Stupid: Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor Rally and the Dunning-Kruger Effect", by Chauncey de Vega. What particularly caught my ear was the comment by one of the interviewed that supplied the title of this post - "All I need to know about Islam I learned on 9/11."

The second is this news article on the San Francisco Chronicle site, "For US Muslims, a 9/11 anniversary like no other", the gist of which is that Muslim communities feel so threatened by anti-Muslim hysteria that they are going to great lengths to advertise their peaceful and charitable activities.

A New Revelation?

For your hands are defiled with blood,
And your fingers with iniquity;
Your lips have spoken lies,
Your tongue has muttered perversity.

No one calls for justice,
Nor does any plead for truth.
They trust in empty words and speak lies;
They conceive evil and bring forth iniquity.
They hatch vipers' eggs and weave the spider's web;
He who eats of their eggs dies,
And from that which is crushed a viper breaks out.

Their webs will not become garments,
Nor will they cover themselves with their works;
Their works are works of iniquity,
And the act of violence is in their hands.
Their feet run to evil,
And they make haste to shed innocent blood;
Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity;
Wasting and destruction are in their paths.
The way of peace they have not known,
And there is no justice in their ways;
They have made themselves crooked paths;
Whoever takes that way shall not know peace. (Isaiah 59:3-8, RKJV)

I transcribed the above not just because it's a pretty good invocation of these times (sad, isn't it, that something written c. 3,000 years ago still applies) but also because it shows that there is a fair amount in the Bible that's actually quite good (there's also a lot that's quite bad: And you shall stone him with stones until he dies, because he sought to entice you away from the Lord your God [Deuteronomy 14:10] and just plain irrelevant: He shall put the holy linen tunic and the linen trousers on his body; he shall be girded with a linen sash, and with the linen turban he shall be attired [Leviticus 16:4]).

I also mention it because it has come into my mind that we are ripe for - in desperate need of - another "revelation" along the lines of the great ur-revelations of the Axial Age (Abraham, Buddha, Laozi) and their successors - Moses, Jesus, Mohammad, any number of bodhisattvas. Lately, I've been reading histories and commentaries on various scriptures and it seems to me that we need another prophet to sweep the detritus that's accumulated over the last 2,000 years on the essential messages of our greatest philosophers.

We're at a point now where we can't afford to be the errant little children of a Father God (or a Mother Goddess, for that matter). It's time to grow up and start taking responsibility. We know how to behave ourselves - we've known for 3,000 years - but we've always managed to justify murder, rape, lies, selfishness, etc. in the name of that God (or Gods).

The factor that prompted this entry comes from an essay I caught on Alternet.org by Robert Jensen, where he sort of articulates what's been bouncing around in my own head: "To imagine a just and sustainable world, we need not just a politics but a theology that can help us face the delusional arrogance and disastrous self-indulgence of humans." (I like it when I find validation in other's musings.)

I wish I had the charisma (and belief) to be that prophet but I don't. Human beings seem to be constituted in such a way that an a-theistic view of the universe is almost impossible to imagine or sustain, and ultimately unappealing, so we have to hope for a man or woman of faith to emerge. And a person of real faith. Not an L. Ron Hubbard who was cynical enough to exploit human gullibility but didn't have the moral sense my cats were born with.

Sharing the wealth

Considering the latest hysteria from the Right about Obama's diabolic plot to "share the wealth" and steal hard-earned dollars from hard-working Americans and give it to lazy, shiftless, no-good welfare queens, I thought it'd be an appropriate time to remind them what Jesus had to say about the matter (especially as so many Rightists claim to be "Christians"):

"If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me." Matthew 19:21 (NKJV)

"Now the multitude of those who believed were of one heart and one soul; neither did anyone say that any of the things he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common.... Nor was there anyone among them who lacked; for all who were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of the things that were sold and laid them at the apostles' feet; and they distributed to each as anyone had need." Acts 4:32, 34-35 (NKJV)

And you remember what happened to Ananias and Sapphira - they held back and God struck them dead (Acts 5:1-11 [NKJV]).

Just sayin'

Risking the wrath of God

I can't discuss the company I work for because they're quite the fascists when it comes to the First Amendment, and in this economic climate I'd prefer not to risk my job. But I will say that we process and distribute press releases, and it is in that context that I wanted to share the following:

Last night, a release came in for a game called Blasphemy. Two to four players play wannabe Messiahs in the Holy Land. The first one to convince enough people that he or she is the Chosen One gets crucified.

Check it out here.

Book review: Discovering God

I just finished Rodney Stark's Discovering God. A wide ranging work that attempts to explain the emergence of "revealed" and/or "moralistic" religions beginning in the Axial Age of the 6th and 7th centuries BC, when many of the great religious figures and movements arose.

I really enjoyed his earlier book, On the Rise of Christianity, where he applied sociological techniques to explain the appeal and success of Christianity. Above and beyond that, his description of life in an ancient city (in this case Antioch) was breathtaking and horrifying. It's amazing the conditions in which human beings will consent to live.

Lately, alas, his books have tended to be Christian apologias that detract from the force of his objective arguments regarding why religions appeal to people and how they effect conversion, diluting the power of his insights.

This is true of the last third or so of Discovering God. The first two-thirds, where he deals with non-Christian/non-Islamic religions, argues persuasively for his theory that a "free market" of religious ideas creates a population that is more intensely religious and committed to "discovering God," however that concept may be defined since many East Asian traditions can dispense with god figures entirely, and that such situations occurred during the Axial Age, under Roman rule before Constantine, and in America. The last hundred pages of the book, focusing on Christ and Mohammad, clearly show his pro-Christian bias and are the weakest part of the book. In the conclusion, he drops all pretense of neutrality and asserts that what he's been chronicling is a "discovery" of God, not an "evolution" of the concept of deity. He even has the gall to dismiss all East Asian religions because they don't "reveal" god, and Islam is inferior because it's a regression from the Christian advances made in understanding God.

I'm with Stark when he argues that the concepts of "sin" and "salvation" successfully helped instill a superior form of social control during a violent era in world history (Karen Armstrong makes much the same argument in The Great Transformation, highly recommended) . I also agree that these concepts arose on the peripheries of the ancient civilizations (Egypt and Sumer) because all transformative movements start at the margins, in relatively "chaotic" environments. He makes the point nicely when he writes: "[b]ecause these once-great civilizations [Egypt and Sumer] took no part in this historical turning point, `we are infinitely closer [culturally and religiously] to the Chinese and Indians' than to Egyptians and Mesopotamian..." (p. 389)

On the other hand, Stark's cavalier dismissal of the Buddha's, Laozi's and Confucius' spiritual insights two pages later is insulting and uncalled for. Simply because Gautama, the Old Master and Master Kung may have dismissed the questions Stark considers important and appropriate doesn't render them irrelevant.

In the introduction, Stark says that his argument can be used by believers and nonbelievers alike since it "works" whether God actually exists and humans are simply discovering his nature or whether the idea of "God" is a human attempt to make sense of our world. This pretense is dropped when he argues that only a religion that can claim to be "inspired" has any claim to legitimacy. Thus, "truer" religions must satisfy three criteria:

1. They must be revelations
2. They must be logically compatible
3. They must be progressively complex

As to the first, there is no need for a conscious divinity to construct a morality. It appears to help immensely in getting people to accept it (after all, it's easier to believe "God" has more insight into what constitutes moral behavior than Joe Schmo, your neighbor) but from my perspective that's about all it does. My attraction to the more intellectually rigorous forms of Buddhism (i.e., Zen) arises from that severance of dependence upon an external source to enforce "right action."

The second criterion simply baffles me. If religions arise in response to perceived spiritual needs that are not being satisfied (which is what Stark argues for earlier in the book), then whether God or gods is invoked is irrelevant. Monotheism may ultimately be the most logical/rational explanation of any divine existence/plan for the universe but why is the "golden rule" any less legitimate if promulgated by an Olympian Council, Taoist Immortals, the Son of God or Islamic mullahs?

The third criterion also seems nonsensical. Islam may have begun as a relatively uncomplex revelation geared to the understanding of Bedouin tribesmen but many, many imams and philosophers have elaborated upon it in the interim. And the same is true of Christianity. The early Church Fathers turned somersaults developing Christian theology from the sketchy sayings of the Jewish carpenter. The first three centuries of the Christian era were a "Wild West" of competing and increasingly complex theologies. Even after it became Rome's state religion, the educated elites continued to dispute (viz., the controversy over "homoousias" vs. "homoiousias").

And, let's face it, only a small minority of any religious faith really get deeply involved in such disputes (at least on their merits, plenty can be convinced to spill blood if their leaders tell them to). Which is not to detract from the worth of nonacademic/nonelite spirituality -- just that it's not as well thought out and coherent as your typical Jesuit's or imam's or lama's. (Actually, one of Stark's strengths is his insistence that humans have always been intensely spiritual; it's just that, for much of history, that religious fervor has been private and unrecorded.)

Stark goes off the deep end starting on p. 394, where he asserts, with no proof (of course, since it's a matter of faith) that "Christianity epitomizes revealed religion and offers a substantially more complex and nuanced vision of God...." He condemns Islam for its support of theocracies, repression of innovation, and belief in an ultimately irrational and unpredictable God. Examples with which Christianity also abounds. But the faults he lays at Islam's feet seem to be endemic to the "human condition." Anytime a faith, or a polity or a corporation gets a monopoly or near-monopoly it then goes about stifling the competition. Democracy developed in the West despite Christianity, not because of it; we have the utterly pagan Athenians to thank for the seeds that eventually grew into the Western democracies.

As an afterthought (or so it seems to this reader), Stark tacks on a final argument for the existence of God by invoking the specious arguments of the Intelligent Design movement, whose theories about the irreducible complexity of organisms like the eye or wings have been demolished time after time in the scientific literature.

In sum, Dr. Stark reaches some very convincing insights in the development and propagation of religious ideas but his otherwise worthy effort is undermined by his obvious bias toward Christianity as the definitive answer to man's search for meaning in the universe.