I along with many others have been mystified as to how such devout Muslims could be seen in a bar drinking rum and cokes the night before the attack. But traditional Islamic doctrine on the fate of the martyr or Shahid teaches that the Shahid will be able to save as many as seventy members of his family that would otherwise have gone to hell. The Shahid garners “merit” if you will by his act and has sins overlooked. So this justification could provide a basis for how the hijackers could drink the night before their martyrdom. It does not explain however their desire to drink, something else must account for that.
***
Within Islam as within Christianity, there is a debate about a “literal” reading of the Qur’an as opposed to what we could call an allegorical reading. Most of the Al-Qaeda type groups hold to a strictly literal reading, holding that the Qur’an is clear and easy to interpret.
Ralph Bodenstein was a student in Hamburg, Germany with Mohammed Atta, leader of the 9/11 cells in the United States. Bodenstein says of Atta:
“The Quran was the word of God. It must be taken as it is.”
Bodenstein asked Atta why, if the Quran was clear, had scholars been filling libraries with commentaries for centuries? He says that Atta became agitated at this:
“He cold not accept that there was more than one way of reading the Quran, one way of being a good Muslim. He could never concede that there were contradictions or difficulties. To acknowledge a single one would lead to the collapse of the whole.”
Monthly Archives: March 2005
The Islamic State
Majid Khadduri writes of the Arabian expansion following the coming of Islam:
The Islamic state, whose principal function was to put God’s law into practice, sought to establish Islam as the dominant reigning ideology over the entire world. It refused to recognize the co-existence of non-Muslim communities, except perhaps as subordinate entities, because by its very nature a universal state tolerates the existence of no other state than itself. Although it was not a consciously formulated policy, Muhammad’s early successors, after Islam became supreme in Arabia, were determined to embark on a ceaseless war of conquest in the name of Islam. The jihad was therefore employed as an instrument for both the universalization of religion and the establishment of an imperial world state.
praxis
From The Philokalia:
Often our knowledge becomes darkened because we fail to put things into practice. For when we have totally neglected to practice something, our memory of it will gradually disappear.
A connection from the lectionary
Last Sunday (Lent 4) was one of those times where the connections made implicitly in the lectionary readings were eye-opening. The OT reading was from 1 Samuel 16, the narrative of David’s being marked out and chosen as king by God via Samuel. Samuel brings his horn of oil to anoint the new king and of course God’s choice turns out to be based on criteria that men would not see.
The Psalm was then the famous 23rd, but I heard it in a new light based on the previous reading in Samuel. When David says “you have annotated my head with oil” it is as if he just returned to the field from the scene in I Samuel.
Those crafty monks (or whoever) who drafted the lectionary knew a thing or two.
The Treasure Valley
A post about where I live.
The Treasure Valley of Idaho takes in Boise and its’ surrounding environs. It was primarily an agricultural area up until the last decade or two. Sugar beets are grown here, along with mint, alfalfa, potatoes, and other crops. Strung along the road at different intervals from Boise are what were small towns based around farming or train depots. If you drive to the outer edges of the valley, near the mountains, you will see gorgeous scenes of plateau’s, canyons, foothills, and the Snake River cutting through the valley. If it wasn’t for irrigation canals that criss-cross the valley and are fed from dams and the mountain snow pack this valley would be a dustbowl. It is a high desert climate.
In the past fifteen years the Valley has seen an explosion of growth. As with everywhere in the west the population is growing rapidly. This same phenomenon occurred in Tucson and Phoenix, Denver and Salt Lake City, Las Vegas and Albuquerque. The rapid influx of population from all parts of the country, particularly California, has caused this population explosion. Additionally there is a large Mormon population here which tends to have more children on average than the non-Mormon population. And Mexican immigration is a big factor too. Many immigrants (I suspect illegally) work as farm hands in the fields. My guess is that this population is Catholic in the majority and they also tend to have larger families than the established Anglo population.
The growing population has transformed formerly sleepy farm towns into expanding suburbs or bedroom communities. And it is not farfetched to think that the entire valley will be one large metropolis within ten to twenty years given the experience of other cities in the West. Across the Valley new subdivisions spring up almost overnight on former farmland. My own subdivision was on the edge of town seven years ago, but as each year passes the new construction moves another street west, chewing up farmland and placing our house towards the center of the expanding city. Fields that do not get developed immediately hold horses, goats, cows, and llamas; generally these fields sell when subdivisions and the green space surrounding them are filled in with more homes.
The Valley has a huge number of churches and the churches are of every stripe. The main presence here are the LDS churches which are constantly being constructed. Mormons operate on what could be called a parish model meaning that they have to attend the “stake” in their neighborhood. So as new subdivisions are erected, churches begin to pop up right alongside of them. The other major Protestant presence is the Church of the Nazarene which I knew nothing of until moving here. The Nazarene’s sprung from the Methodist church some time ago, as far as I can tell this was due to holiness teaching where the Nazarene’s felt the Methodists were compromising. Northwest Nazarene University, a major school in their chain of schools, is located in the Valley. It has a great reputation academically and is quite expensive. My own observation of the Nazarene churches leads me to believe that they are essentially church-growth oriented and are now virtually indistinguishable from Baptists, Methodists, or many non-denominational churches. Lip-service is still given to holiness, but the old strictures against dancing, card playing, movies, etc have disappeared and with them most of the uniqueness of this denomination.
The Spanish/Anglo divide is the most obvious sign of ethnicity in the Valley. Aside from the Hispanics the Valley does not possess large groups of foreigners. In the 90’s a lot of immigrants from the Balkan conflicts were settled here but not in enough numbers to stand out. And due to their European background they seem to be assimilated rapidly into American pop culture.
Watching the Hispanic influx first-hand is intriguing. There does seem to be a good amount of assimilation going on in that population, though there is also a strong cultural identity. Part of me thinks this will be good for America as the Mexican population is also European (Spanish descent) and shares common values. At the same time the influx seems almost endless and at some point I think needs to be put on hold to allow for some stabilization of the US population culturally. The Hispanic influx is helping the Catholic Church and revitalizing it. I think it is remaking the United States into a more Catholic Christian country as opposed to Anglo and Protestant. Perhaps this could help the magisterial wing of the Reformed tradition – notably the AMiA. If the AMiA plays its cards right it should be able to make inroads on a population that already values the liturgy and practice of the inherited church.
The Treasure Valley is another outpost of rapid growth in the American West and is really a place in its infancy time-wise. Economically and culturally it is changing rapidly and the land devoted to agriculture is being consumed by a tidal-wave of new arrivals.
imitatio Muhammadi
I am currently re-reading Malise Ruthven’s book Islam in the World.
Ruthven comments on the failure of Muslims to translate the ideal world of the Qur’an into reality, a failure which is inevitable. Because Islam began as a religion and a state, it inevitably failed to translate principles of complete justice into the expanding umma. These tensions are what always rouse faithful Muslims to violence as they seek to purge a corrupt state of non-Islamic influences. Ruthven says:
If imitatio Christi meant renouncing worldly ambition and seeking salvation by deeds of private virtue, imitatio Muhammadi meant sooner or later taking up arms against those forces which seemed to threaten Islam from within or without.
I would totally disagree with Ruthven’s characterization of Christian salvation and the Christian’s relation to the state, but I do see that following Christ leads to a far different paradigm from following Muhammad (or Jehu/Moses/etc).
Church discipline
What is the goal of church discipline? Is it ever OK to shun people? To avoid them in stores or in public? Isn’t the goal of such discipline restoration and shouldn’t we reach out to people -even people we think are wrong- in love along side of confronting them? I guess I am asking if there is ever a situation in which people should be shunned?
