April 19, 2006
JOSEPH'S BOOK, NOT PHAROAH'S:
What Muslims Hear at Friday Prayers: Is there really a clash of the cultures between Islam and the West? SPIEGEL documents Friday sermons from mosques around the world. As imams guide their congregations, they praise the delights of paradise, sow the seeds of doubt in government authority -- and sometimes preach hatred. (Der Spiegel, 4/19/06)
Islam has many faces, and on the Friday before the Prophet's birthday, SPIEGEL correspondents visited mosques from Nigeria to Indonesia to listen to the sermons of the imams. They were there in part to look into a suspicion that has taken hold in the West, especially since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Have the mosques been transformed from a place of prayer into a hotbed of extremism and center of Islamist indoctrination? Is there truly a dangerous clash of cultures underway, as so many people in Europe and America fear? [...]Whereas imams in places like Istanbul and Jakarta tended to devote their sermons to theological exegesis, Friday prayers in Pakistan, Iran and the Gaza Strip were markedly more political. In these places, religious scholars whipped their listeners into a holy frenzy and drew a sharp line between the Dar al-Islam, or House of Islam, and the Dar al-Harb, or House of War -- the two spheres into which schools of Islamic legal thought have divided the world.
But at the same time, often in the same sermon, imams ask God for help in confronting everyday woes, issue moral appeals to their own political leaders and constantly return to the Islamic world's greatest lament: a comparison between the gloomy present and the glorious past. [...]
[D]idin Hafiduddin, the imam at Istiqlal Mosque in the Indonesian capital Jakarta, made no mention of the precarious geopolitical situation in his sermon, given in one of the world's largest houses of prayer. Titled "Professionalism and Honest Trusteeship," it sounded more like a presentation at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland than fiery religious rhetoric. Hafiduddin told the faithful in the most populous Islamic country about Joseph the Israelite, the man charged with running the Egyptian pharaoh's economy. He drew parallels between the story -- which is also mentioned in the bible -- and modern-day Indonesia's struggles with corruption.
"Place me in charge of the granaries of the land, and you will see that I am a clever custodian," Joseph advises the pharaoh in the Koran sura that bears his name. No one has ever been a more efficient manager than Joseph, at least according to the imam from Jakarta. Today's leaders ought to take a page from Joseph's book, he said, adding that "corruption, laziness and fraud bring about destruction." By contrast, said the Indonesian imam, God rewards professionalism and a "strict work ethic" with happiness and fulfillment.
The moral appeal to one's own political leadership is a leitmotif in the sermons of Muslim preachers -- but also a natural response to strict autocratic conditions in many Islamic countries. It was almost an understatement when Sheikh Ibrahim Abu Bakr Ramadan, an imam in the Nigerian city of Kano, said that the "injustice emanating from our leadership is the worst part of our society," in reference to President Olusegun Obasanjo's efforts to amend the constitution so that he can be reelected when his current term expires in 2007.
In Peshawar, Pakistan, Maulana Khalil Ahmad compared the world's monotheistic religions and -- perhaps not surprisingly -- praised Islam as being the most complete of them all: "Contradictions prevail, especially in Christianity and Judaism, as well as in Communism." But that was mild compared with the sermon his fellow local imam Abd al-Akbar Chitrali gave in the same spot a week earlier, when he derided Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's claim to have given Pakistan true democracy. Musharraf, the imam complained, is trying to introduce the "Western secularism" of his idol, Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. The founder of the modern Turkey, said Chitrali, was a man who "turned mosques into churches and had religious scholars murdered. Listen to me, Muslims! Kemal Atatürk is not our ideal. Musharraf is not just attempting to placate the West and the USA, but also to remain permanently in power."
It's no coincidence that Turkey has a GDP per capita of $8k. That's the psychic break that Islam faces--they can't escape from the gloomy present to a glorious future unless they reform along the lines of the Western separation of Church and State. Posted by Orrin Judd at April 19, 2006 10:13 AM
Church-State separation not only goes back to the early days of the Church, it's rooted in the teachings of Jesus. Church-State separation for Islam is much, much more problematic, as it goes against tradition dating back to and including Mohammed. I don't think it's necessary impossible, but it sure ain't gonna happen quickly, easily, or peacefully.
Posted by: b at April 19, 2006 10:30 AMb:
Why not? Turkey, Indonesia, Palestine, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Iraq, etc. have had no problem with it.
Posted by: oj at April 19, 2006 10:35 AMGee, I can't imagine a single reason for skepticism. Look, I am hopeful that the Arab world (and that's the bulk of the problem, isn't it? OK, the Sunni Arab world...) will develop over the next 2 decades in the same way that Latin America has over the last 2. If the Saudis decided to, they could make sure it happened singlehandedly. But let's not pretend it's a certainty.
Why? What option do they have?
Posted by: oj at April 19, 2006 11:14 AM"Why not? Turkey, Indonesia, Palestine"
Separation of Church and State is easy for Palestine, they don't have a State yet.
Posted by: h-man at April 19, 2006 11:22 AMSo, the Iman was suggesting Jews run the country?
Emulate them?
Posted by: Sandy P at April 19, 2006 11:25 AMWhy? What option do they have?
Let's think this through with Mohammed...
Hmmm. We could go through a 'reformation' or we could wreak enough havoc on our enemies to bring them closer to our level.
At this point OJ, I'm not convinced that they (as a culture) have made the right decision yet.
Further, if the West "Frenchifies" as a response, radical Islam will win the 'long war.'
I see all the same reason's for optimism that you do, but I continue to maintain that we are only one Gore or Kerry away from France.
Sure, it will take longer, and the politcal realities here in the US will make our decline longer.
But here in the salons of Oprahfied suburbia, the soccer mom (and her emasculated husband) can't wait to surrender and start "demonstrating" for French style "protection" from the big bad world.
We will win, but only if we want to.
Posted by: Bruno at April 19, 2006 11:29 AMGore and Kerry are no different than Wilson, FDR, Truman, and LBJ who were only too happy to get their warfaces.
Posted by: oj at April 19, 2006 11:32 AM"What option do they have?"
It's what options do WE have that really matters--do we have the option to NOT let them reform? Which is why the whole "Iraq is a distraction from the WOT" needed to be responded to much, much more forcefully than it was, since it shows a complete and utter lack of strategic thinking. Too late now, of course. A pessimist will say that the Arab world won't reform unless we go crusading. An extreme pessimist will agree and say that we don't have the will to do so. (A realist will agree and say that we shouldn't do so.)
b:
To the contrary, all we're doing is speeding the inevitable. Nazism, Communism, & Islamism are failures in their own terms and therefore only temporary dead-ends.
Posted by: oj at April 19, 2006 11:48 AMRight. So do we have the option to let them flail around for a couple of decades? In the current world of nuclear proliferation, seems like the answer should be a resounding NO.
Posted by: b at April 19, 2006 11:56 AMSure, we have the option, that's just not who we are. We're Crusaders.
Posted by: oj at April 19, 2006 11:59 AMOJ, You place much stock in Turkey's secularism, which in the last three years has been on a slippery slope. They showed their cards in 2003 and it was the same hand as the EU's and the UN's. They knew when to fold and didn't hesitate.
Additionally, Gore and Kerry are more like Clinton than the group you compared them to. All talk; no big stick.
Posted by: Genecis at April 19, 2006 12:17 PMGene:
That's inane. We wanted to invade through Turkey to set up an independent kurdistan on their border despite their Kurdush separatist movement. It was like the Brits asking Lincoln for permission to invade Mexico through CA in order to set up a pro-slavery state there.
Posted by: oj at April 19, 2006 12:23 PM"What option do they have?"
The option of unreformed Shintoism, of course. That is, to wage hopeless, doomed war. Their idea.
Posted by: Lou Gots at April 19, 2006 12:30 PMHow'd that work out for Japan?
Posted by: oj at April 19, 2006 12:34 PMAu contraire, to quote Kerry, we planned to move south through the northern oil fields and the Sunni strongholds, approach Baghdad through Fallujah, and that advance would have shown the Sunni's what defeat really looked like. To have the rug pulled out from under us was oriental treachery (in the historic sense). cost us lives and left us with an unchastened Sunni insurgency.
Posted by: Genecis at April 19, 2006 1:07 PMMr. Judd;
Poorly. But that doesn't mean it's not an option. Doesn't France have basically the same issue, with the same options? Why can't Islam choose the same way France is?
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at April 19, 2006 1:18 PMIt worked out for Japan the way it shall work out for unreformed Islam. Hopeless and doomed, remember?
Posted by: Lou Gots at April 19, 2006 2:02 PMYes, that's the point. It isn't an option.
Posted by: oj at April 19, 2006 2:05 PMAlcoholism or other drug addiction isn't much of an option either, but people choose it.
Why should we assume that many Muslim societies won't be self-destructive ?
Plenty of Christian societies are.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://brothersjuddblog.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at April 20, 2006 5:46 AM
Ah, well. But the Japanese option was an option, you see. Hopeless and doomed, but an option nonetheless.
We would hold that a hopeless war was per se unjust, to kill and be killed for the sake of not having surrendered without a fight, but our ways are not the only ways.
Suicidal, hopeless war can have a kind of sad nobility to it--"Victrix causa placuit diis," and all that.
Posted by: Lou Gots at April 20, 2006 7:57 AMIf they commit suicide they aren't a threat. And suicide isn't a viable option for how to organize your society. They're escaping reality, not crafting an alternative to parliamentary democracy.
Posted by: oj at April 20, 2006 8:39 AM