Misconceptions about Islam

[qatarperegrine]

A few weeks ago, at Student Affairs' first "Food for Thought" guest lecture, Dr. Bilal Philips gave a presentation to the CMU-Q community (students, faculty and staff) about misperceptions of Islam. Here is a reconstruction of his points, based on my compulsive notes:

1. Reasons for misunderstandings:




1. deliberate misinformation: In ancient times, to promote the Crusades; today, to promote a particular political agenda.


2. inadvertant misinformation: Mistaking the customs of Islam with the customs of Muslims


2. Misperceptions of Muslim beliefs




1. "Allah is the god of Muslims"
   To the contrary, Arabic is just the Muslim word for God. Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews also call God Allah, and since Jesus spoke Aramaic he would have called God Allaha.


2. "The five pillars of Islam are exclusively Muslim."
   The pillars -- belief in God, prayer, fasting, charity and pilgrimage -- are not "weird" or "cultish"; they are universal religious ideas that have been practiced and preached by all prophets. Islam didn't invent these ideas. Bilal said, "This is what Islam claims for itself: not newness, but only purity."


3. "Islam opposes Jesus"
   Islam recognizes Jesus as a true prophet, but not as the Son of God. Muslims honor Jesus and are, in fact, much more likely than Christians to believe in the virgin birth and the miracles of Jesus. (Dr. Bilal says that denying the virgin birth is enough to put someone firmly outside the Muslim tradition.)


4. "Muslims worship the Ka'aba"
   While Muslims face the Ka'aba during worship as a symbol of the unity of religion, they are not praying to it but only praying in its direction. Dr. Bilal points out that this is what pagans say about their worship -- that they pray to their god "in the direction of" their idol but not to it. He says that this is comparison is invalid, because an idol-worshipper cannot worship without an idol, whereas Muslims continued to pray during times when the Ka'aba was closed for restoration.


3. Misperceptions of religious practices




1. polygamy
   Islam didn't invent polygamy; men have been engaging in multiple relationships since the beginning of time. Dr. Bilal says that the difference between Islam and monogamous cultures is simply that "Islam is honest" -- it requires men to take responsibility for their secondary relationships, giving the women their full rights and acknowledging the children of those relationships.


2. hijab
   Westerners can't get their minds around hijab because of the pervasive "If you've got it, flaunt it" principle. We don't recognize that hijab is simply a function of Islam's general separation of sexes and a symbol of piety for women who choose to mark themselves as sexually unavailable -- which is odd, because we do recognize hijab as a symbol of piety in the case of nuns. Also, hijab is for women's own protection. Dr. Bilal says that "women are bound to be harmed if placed in daily contact with men," and that this fact is beginning to be realized by non-Muslim countries such as Japan, which recently started providing women-only train cars.


3. oppression of women
   Let's face it: women are oppressed everywhere, not just in Muslim countries. And Islam gave women the right to inherit and to own property 1300 years before these rights were acknowledged in the Western world. Islam favors the liberation of women, and the fact that a majority of modern converts to Islam are women illustrates that women recognize this.


4. Islam is spead by the sword
   Most Muslim countries converted through trade; Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country, has never seen a Muslim army. Also, Islam is the world's fastest-growing religion TODAY, which proves that people convert for non-military reasons. Dr. Bilal does say that "the sword has a place" in the criminal justice system and in defense, but that Islam strictly forbids offensive wars and forced conversions. ("There is no compulsion in religion," says the Qur'an.)


5. brutal criminal law
   Muslim criminal law is often called "medieval," which is a reminder that we in the West used to subscribe to the same ideas of just retribution. The difference is that Islam teaches that the rules of punishment have been revealed by God and should not change over time. While the West has gotten soft on crime by seeing criminals as products of society and focusing on reform rather than punishment, Islamic law continues to focus on human choice (what we'd call "free will") and on punishing and deterring crime. Reformation of criminals, from this perspective, is the job not of the penal system but of society at large.


4. Misperceptions of social practices

(These are practices that occur in some Muslim countries and therefore have been associated with Islam in the West, but Islam does not actually condone them. Dr. Bilal stressed throughout this section that the customs and practices of some Muslims in some places is not reflective of the teachings of Islam.)



1. honor killings
   An honor killing is when a family kills one of its members -- usually a woman -- for dishonoring the family. Islam is accused of supporting honor killings because in some Muslim countries society chooses not to prosecute honor killings. (He mentioned Jordan, Turkey and Pakistan; Turkey and Pakistan have since overturned their honor-killing-friendly laws, though it seems to have made little practical difference in Pakistan.) However, Dr. Bilal says that Islam requires that perpetrators of honor killings be executed like any other murderer.


2. intolerance of other religions
   Islam has traditionally been among the most tolerant religions. Moorish Spain, Mughal India and Ottoman Palestine were much more tolerant of Christianity and Judaism than those three countries were of Judaism and Islam under Christian rule.


3. female genital mutilation
   FGM occurs in rural parts of Egypt, Sudan, Kenya and Somalia. In all these locations it predates Islam (it's called "pharaonic circumcision" for a reason) and is dying out with increased education. It is not a Muslim practice, though Muslims practice it.


4. terrorism/fundamentalism
   In a sense all Muslims are fundamentalists, says Dr. Bilal, since all must believe in the fundamentals of the faith to be Muslim. However, fundamentalism in this sense is unrelated to terrorism. Killing noncombatants is un-Islamic, and creating terror for political gain is unconscionable. However, Dr. Bilal cautioned us not to confuse freedom-fighters (who are legitimately seeking their rights) from terrorists. He also believes we need to address the root causes of terrorism.


5. Summary


• What ALL Muslims do everywhere is likely Islam.
  
• What SOME Muslims do some places is likely custom.
  
• Islam is what Muslims should do, not necessarily what they do do.

If anyone else who was there remembers something more/different, please comment!

There was also a brief question-and-answer time afterwards, the most memorable part of which was an argument about whether the Arabian peninsula is failing to live up to Islam's standards of tolerance since visible non-Muslim places of worship are not allowed here (as they were in Moorish Spain, etc.). Dr. Bilal argued that this situation is simply an extension of the masjid haram -- since the whole Arabia peninsula is the sanctuary surrounding the Ka'aba, it's reasonable to be more strict about the practice of faith here. Not everyone in the audience agreed.

All in all I thought it was a very good and well-thought-out presentation. Ten points to whoever can pick out which of his outline points pushed my buttons, though. (David figured it out IRL.)