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Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 2007, pages 55-56 Muslim-American Activism Karen Armstrong Looks at “Islam: The Misunderstood Religion”
KAREN ARMSTRONG, a former nun who now is a brilliant writer, speaker, teacher and commentator on religious affairs in the United States and England, launched the Mosaic Foundation’s new lecture series “Re-Discovering the Arab World” at a standing-room-only event at the National Press Club on Nov. 20. The Mosaic Foundation is a charitable, educational and cultural organization founded in 1998 in Washington, DC by the spouses of Arab ambassadors to the United States. Rim Abboud, wife of Lebanon’s Ambassador Farid Abboud, welcomed guests and Christ’l Safieh, wife of Ambassador Afif Safieh, head of the PLO Mission, introduced Armstrong. The author of such books as Jerusalem, A History of God, and her latest, Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time (Eminent Lives) said she began to learn about Islam when she lived in Jerusalem and watched “three religions jostling around their religious sites.” She saw antagonism and affinity, she recalled, and said her study of Islam and Judaism brought her back, at last, to her own religion. Trained to see both sides of every question, Armstrong is offended to see Islam portrayed as a violent religion. “It’s just not true,” she stated. “History shows it was bigotry in Europe that led to death camps. And we haven’t seemed to learn from that catastrophe.” Armstrong traced the history of Islamaphobia from the Crusades to the present. Since 9/11, she said, Muslims have become the new bogeyman, child slayers, violent Jihadis. After every crisis, like the cartoon controversy or the pope’s lecture, “all the old skeletons come out of the closet and we have to start all over again teaching that Islam is a religion of peace,” Armstrong lamented. “It’s like the game Snakes and Ladders. We go sliding down a ladder and have to start all over again.” One by one Armstrong demolished each of the old chestnuts or arguments regularly used to convince Westerners that Islam is a violent religion. As for Islam’s treatment of women, Armstrong pointed out, “None of the great world religions has proved to be very great for women.” The term “fundamentalism,” coined by Christian Protestants to describe their reform movement, “doesn’t translate well” when it comes to Islam, Armstrong said, especially as it has come to stand for a militant movement. There is a fundamentalist strain rooted in every religion, she argued, and it’s based on a profound fear that secular Western society wants to wipe them out. “Fundamentalists want to drag God from the sidelines back to center stage,” she said. Nor are fundamentalist reform movements inherently violent, she added. Rather, they are a new form of nationalism or patriotism, Armstrong said, which become violent when warfare is chronic in a region, such as in Israel and Palestine, Afghanistan and Pakistan. “If you see soldiers shooting everyday it affects your dreams and your religion gets distorted,” she explained. And that goes for Jewish fundamentalists, too. Armstrong called upon all sides in today’s conflicts to learn to respect other peoples’ narratives and to look critically at themselves. She encouraged Muslim Americans to throw themselves into local and national politics. She called for gifted young men to become mullahs and she also encouraged women to study Islam and speak out for justice for all. “Go into dialogue ready to be changed,” she concluded, advising her listeners to “move past tolerance toward appreciation.” For more intellectual stimulation read Karen Armstrong’s books, several of which are now available from the AET Book Club. —Delinda C. Hanley |
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