Muslim punks are just punks: Muslims in Europe and America

An Arab district in Brussels. Photograph by Flickr user Aldask (CC-usage).

In this editorial, originally published on neweurasia, I explore the differences, as I perceive them, between the American and European Islamic communities.  It’s clear to me that the United States has been far more effective at integrating Muslims into society than Europe, which risks descending into a dangerous ethnic clash.

It comes up in conversation all the time with colleagues at neweurasia: what do I think about the situation of Islam in the West?  I think Central Asians are really curious to know about it because they’re probably looking for insight not only into the West’s relationship to them and the larger Islamic world, but also for insight into themselves.  After all, Muslims living in the West are exposed to lifestyles and a quality of life little experienced in the umma.

Guessing the spiritual future

Spirituality has always been subject to trends.  Influenced by everything from geography to technology, the metaphysical inclinations of society can serve as evidence of the unseen processes and forces shaping the direction of human civilization.

Previously, it was possible to discuss and debate the spirituality of the human species in terms of its various societies.  However, we are now entering a new phase of civilization marked by the rise of a global society.

It is true that this global society is, to a great extent, simply a patchwork of individual nations and communities.  However, the same can be said for human consciousness: the mind is made up of all its many individual neurons — and yet it is also somehow, almost ethereally more.

In likewise manner, at some point during the next few centuries a true global society will emerge from its constituent cultures.  So, the question I put to you now is: what do you think will be the initial spirituality of the global society?

Leave a comment below or click here to take a poll.

The Religions of the Future?

A new religious movement (NRM) is a term used to refer to a religious faith or an ethical, spiritual, or philosophical movement of recent origin that is not part of an established denomination, church, or religious body.

Christianity and Islam were NRMs once upon a time.  My question to you, dear reader, is which of today’s NRMs do you think is the religion of the future.  Click here if you want to know what the heck I’m talking about and to take a poll.  }:-)

So long, Philly

Well, today is my last day in the City of Brotherly Love.  I’ve spend the better part of the last decade here.  So many memories.  My first love, my second and third (haha), La Salle University, the City Paper, East Passyunk, the Bahai community… 

Insha’allah, I will return.  But I’m leaving the future open, trying to embrace uncertainty.  I believe that existence and faith are the same; what binds them together — indeed, what defines them — is courage, the willingness to embrace change.   To sacrifice our fears as much as our hopes, to surrender our anxiety as much as our attachments, this is the quintessence of faith; if nothing else, it is the only way to evolve, survive, and thrive.

As I was with Moses, so shall I be with you; I will not fail you or forsake you.  Be strong and courageous…

– Joshua 1:5-6

No man shall attain the shores of the ocean of true understanding except he be detached from all that is in heaven and on earth.

– Baha’ullah, Kitab-i-Iqdas

It’s time to step away from the shore and swim, let the waves and winds guide me where they may.

Cylonic dreams of the eternal return

Wow. Well, I’ve got to hand it to the writers.  I heard rumors swirling for a while, but didn’t believe them.  Her? Nah, get real; what a lame choice.  But after watching the episode I now agree with the blogger at Galactica Variants: not only does the choice work, but it’s powerful.  And I think it’s only the beginning, since the LA Times reports that we should expect to see this character, somehow, some way, over the course of the final story arc.

In light of the revelation, I am further awe-filled by the sheer time scale in which Galactica as a story operates, especially the way in which it is conveyed so intimately, personalizing the effect.  There is truly something mysterious, terrifying, and enticing about the concept of eternal return, and the show manages to connect it to identity, history, and mortality in ways that never cease to evoke wonder and reflection.  Truly, this is more than masterful television: it’s nigh philosophy.

(If you feareth not the spectre of spoilers, click on the image above to see the big revelation, and “read more” for some more thoughts.)

To what extremes, O vegan? (part 1)

“May the entire universe be blessed; may all beings engage in each other’s well being.  May all weakness, sickness, and faults diminish; may everyone and everywhere be healthy, peaceful, and blissful. I grant forgiveness to all living beings. May all living beings grant me forgiveness. My friendship is with all living beings. I have no animosity towards any living beings.” — Jain prayer

“One day I was a happy-go-lucky vegetarian eating cheese and then realized that something was missing in my life and that it was about time I switched to veganism.” — Philadelphian vegan

In the pursuit of ethical living, how far are some people willing to go?  It’s a question a new vegan friend and I have been debating, and to which, in light of the passing of Proposition 2 in California, I’d like to now turn in this space.

The video above is of Rashtrasant Tarunsagar, a living saint of the ancient Jain religion in India. As some of you know, I’m personally acquainted with this community as I was once intimate with a young woman who was of the faith.  (On a side-note, because having dated a white man is more harmful to her health than eating beef, to protect her identity from now on in this blog she will be known as “Jane,” pun intended.   Of those of you readers who know her identity, I ask that you respect her safety and use this pseudonym in public comments.)

I must confess that one of the things I miss most about Jane was the feeling of being viscerally connected to a tradition of such antiquity (although in my buttheaded way I did not fully appreciate it at the time).  However, it was always fascinating to explore her point-of-view, not only with regards to nutrition, but also theology and ethics.

The first part of this post will be devoted to a bit of a digression regarding Jainism, which I think is in order here since historical veganism in the West, especially in the last 75-some years, was brought here by Indian missionaries during the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.    Additionally, its recent blossoming among the rank and file of the global anticapitalism movement is attributable to growing ideological and organizational links with religious and political movements within the Subcontinent, in particular ISKCON, the Tibetan government in exile, and the varieties of post-Nehruism. 

Should Islam have a Reformation?

Is Islam undergoing a “Reformation,” and if so, should it?  There’s been a lot of digital ink swirling around this idea ever since Salman Rushdie’s article.  I can think of at least two books on the subject (here and here), and the Islamic blogosphere (a.k.a., the “Islamosphere” or “Allahosphere”) have been intermittently abuzz with debate.

Arguably an “Islamic Reformation” is indeed occuring, to the point where we’re already in knee-deep, as Dale Eickelman points out (among other analogies he raises, the Internet may be to Islam what the Guttenberg printing press was to Christianity).   Recent events, such as the reforms instituted by the Turkish ulema, would appear to bear this view out.

A lot of commentators generally take the idea of an Islamic Reformation as a good thing.  But is it really?  Indeed, is the concept of “Reformation” even a useful framework?  Here are my thoughts on the subject as an historian and spiritual person…

The Super-Tribe and the City of Gods: Post-Human Christianity and Primitive Islam — the Real Clash of Civilizations?

Is the real clash of civilizations not really about civilization at all, but the past and future?

Since the World Wars, our species has been repeatedly confronted with the horrible visage of our increasingly godlike power. It grins at all of us from behind the emaciated ribs of starved Jews, Cambodians, and Darfurians, with the glare of Hiroshima shimmering across its jagged teeth. Now, what began as a severe crisis of faith in the Europe of the 1920s and 40s has quickly rippled out to encompass every culture and civilization, whether they realize it or not. Confucian and Buddhist peoples have laicized with shocking zeal, not to mention Jews, while Christianity and Hinduism have become hypercapitalist and contradict themselves. Mindbogglingly, all this has happened in the name of progress, virtue, and, most ironically of all, “family values” and cultural self-defense.

Let down as it has been by modernization and globalization, and severely betrayed by its own leadership, few in or out of the Muslim community would dispute that Islam has been particularly hit hard by the ever-expanding spiritual abyss. After all, is not most of the Third World Muslim? And in the few countries where Muslims have been able to prosper somewhat, it has either been in a position of dependency vis-à-vis the West (and now China), such as the bloated rentier states of the Persian Gulf and Central Asia; via dehumanizing authoritarianism, as in Egypt, Tunisia, Kazakhstan, and Malaysia; or in the form of a stuttering ascendancy fraught with ethnic strife, as in the fractious republics of Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Indonesia. If it is true that Islam has “bloody borders,” this condition is at least as much a result of the seepage of vitality from Islamic principles, like blood from a slit vein, as it is due to Muslims’ persistent failure to co-exist with kafirs.

I’m no fan of Muhammad b. Abd al-Wahab but he did have a crucial insight, namely, that the most important concept of Islam is tawhid توحيد (unity). Could it not be that in a sense Islam may point toward our species’ animal past while Christianity may point toward our post-human future? Existence for our primitive tribal ancestors was experienced as a unitary whole in which sacred and secular were one, the same, and visceral. But for sedentarized homo sapiens, existence is an experience filtered through instrumental consciousness, cookie-cut into categories and concepts. Hence the reason why Islam, the marauding super-tribe, and Christianity, the staid city of man-deities, have been historic rivals.

Could it be that as our species barrels toward a future so inundated with technology that not only the body but the very soul could become genetically alterable, the image of the resurrected Christ—more human than human—begins to seems very prophetic, and Islam, for all its brutality, may actually be calling us to remember where we came from and that we should be careful about lunging so quickly toward the Kingdom of Heaven?

The Historian’s Theodicy

“The problem of evil.” Theologians and philosophers couldn’t have found a staler term to categorize the spiritual and intellectual catastrophe that is the question, “Where was God…?”

Where was God during Deir ez-Zor, Auschwitz, Darfur, and September 11th? Where is God when everyday people suffer and die from the most banal of causes. A non-stick frying pan, when scratched and heated, releases brain-damaging lethal fumes — where the hell is God in that? Imagine! The creator of the universe’s very existence challenged by kitchenware, and the best response Mankind’s thinkers can conjure is the crossword puzzle-sounding “problem of evil.”

The term I prefer is “theodicy”; the word’s Greek origin has an appropriately menacing sound. Yet, when I take a moment to examine the word’s etymology I find it nearly as insufficient as “the problem of evil.” It comes from the Greek θεός (theós, “god”) and δίκη (díkē, “justice”), meaning literally “the justice of God,” but more accurately rendered as “to justify God” or “the justification of God.” It was coined in 1710 by the German polymath Gottfried Leibniz. You may recall him as the fellow who believed ours is “the best of all possible worlds.”

The problems with theodicy are immediately apparent, loaded as it is with innumerable assumptions. One assumption is the very goodness of God; another is whether it is the divine, not humanity, who is in need of justification. And of course the most fundamental assumption is that God even exists (but that’s a topic for another reflection — for the sake of this essay, and out of respect for my own spiritual experiences, I’m going with the belief that some kind of divinity does exist). However, the most problematic assumptions are (a) that there’s a flawless divine plan, much less total divine mastery over events, and (b) that events are assailable as either “good” or “evil.” At the root of both these assumptions are the ideas of certainty and necessity, and the question of the relation between suffering and divine intention.

For these reasons I propose that the entire concept of theodicy be gutted and rebooted. How? By dropping talk of “good” and “evil,” eviscerating the gibberish of what we mean when we say “God,” and then asking a new question, one about the relation of chance and divine decisions. In other words, let’s be historians about our faith, and ask: how do we reconcile belief in God with contingency and change? The answer I propose: God is a storywriter, and we are partners in the plot. This is the core analogy of what I call “post-monotheist theodicy.”