Condemning Islam is the wrong course

WASHINGTON – Days after the video appeared of a Jordanian pilot horribly burned to death by an Islamic State death squad, President Obama told the National Prayer Breakfast that all faiths can be “twisted and misused in the name of evil” and that terrorists who profess “to stand up for Islam” are, in fact, “betraying it.” Critics found Obama’s timing offensive and his message about Islam naïve: He should avoid moral equivalence, stop playing the theologian and recognize that Islam has a unique problem with violence and extremism.

Days after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 – in which temperatures inside the collapsing World Trade Center reached 2,000 degrees and the bodies of many passengers on the airplanes were consumed by burning jet fuel – George W. Bush took off his shoes, entered a Muslim prayer room at the Islamic Center of Washington, spoke with Muslim leaders and made a short statement. “These acts of violence against innocents,” he said, “violate the fundamental tenets of the Islamic faith. ... The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam.”

On Sept. 20, 2001, speaking to a joint session of Congress, Bush called the teachings of Islam “good and peaceful.” “The terrorists,” he said, “are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself.”

Later in his presidency, when the charge came that America was fighting a war against Islam, Bush answered that it was radicals who had “spread the word that this really isn’t peaceful people versus radical people or terrorists; that it is really about America not liking Islam.”

“I believe that Islam is a great religion that preaches peace,” Bush said. “And I believe people who murder the innocent to achieve political objectives aren’t religious people, whether they be a Christian who does that – we had a person blow up a federal building in Oklahoma who professed to be a Christian, but that’s not a Christian act to kill innocent people.”

Those who long for greater clarity in describing the peculiarly Islamic nature of terrorism (see Bobby Jindal: “Let’s be honest here: Islam has a problem”) should also be clear about something else: They are proposing a fundamental shift in the rhetorical strategy of the war against terrorism. In the Bush/Obama approach, terrorism is an aberration that must be isolated. Critics believe it emanates from Islam and must be expiated. And some urge the president to declare that one of the Abrahamic faiths belongs in a special category of menace.

This picture is not real. 

There are, of course, consequential historical differences among faiths. It is harder to separate divine law from positive law in a faith where the founder was also a political and military leader – though it was hard enough even in a faith where the founder was killed by political and military authorities.

But those who wish the president to publicly explore these matters are the ones urging him to act as a theologian. Presidential rhetoric on this issue should not be theological but phenomenological. The vast majority of the world’s Muslims – and an almost unanimous majority of American Muslims – believe their faith to be inalterably opposed to putting people in a cage and setting them on fire, or employing the mentally disabled as suicide bombers, or burying children alive. This is the actual division that matters most, and the rhetorical division that best serves American interests: peaceful people versus the terrorists.

Most of those urging Obama to assert that Islam is somehow especially flawed among the great faiths have never been closer to power than a fuse box. There is no possible circumstance in which a president could say such a thing. It would cause a global firestorm, immediately alienating Muslim allies and proxies whom we depend on to help fight the Islamic State and other enemies. How would the king of Jordan, for example – a 41st-generation descendant of the Prophet Muhammad – be forced to react? How would the terrorists use such a critique in their own propaganda? Some of the president’s critics are blithely recommending a massive, unforced geostrategic blunder.

Obama’s speech at the prayer breakfast was cliche-ridden and historically shallow. But its basic framework – pitting true faith against nihilistic violence – will be adopted by every future president. Some of the intense reaction against Obama’s formulation is rooted in a broader fear that he is not serious enough in prosecuting the war against the Islamic State – a concern I share. But the answer is to prosecute that war more vigorously – not complicate it with careless and counterproductive rhetoric.

Credit to Michael Gerson

India bans polygamy for Muslims as 'not fundamental right in Islam'

India's Supreme Court has ruled out the practice of having multiple wives for Muslims arguing that it is not a fundamental right for those who practice Islam.

Judges TS Thakur and AK Goel said that article 25 of the Indian constitution guarantees freedom of conscience and free profession and practice of religion, but does not also guarantee the practice of polygamy.

"What was protected under Article 25 was the religious faith and not a practice which may run counter to public order, health or morality. Polygamy was not integral part of religion and monogamy was a reform within the power of the State under Article 25," they said during the ruling.

The court also upheld the decision of the government of Uttar Pradesh to fire an employee after he tried to marry a second woman while the  previous marriage was still in place.

According to some interpretations of the Quran, Islam allows a man to marry up to four women, only if he is able to deal with them justly. However, it is preferable for him to have only one wife.

Common Ground News Service (CGNS) - which aims to provide constructive articles to promote dialogue on issues such as Muslims in the West and race related conflicts - explains that the Quran discusses polygamy in terms of the needs of women and children "at the time" and never in terms of men's rights.

The Quran refers to polygamy in its fourth chapter, which tells about the migration of Muslims from Mecca to Medina and marks the start of the Muslim calendar.

"[This chapter] builds on the preceding one regarding the Battle of Uhud between early Muslims and the inhabitants of Mecca in which many Muslim men were killed, leaving widows and orphans," CGNS said. "This is the context which is crucial to any discussion of polygamy in Islam; polygamy was allowed in verse 4:3 because of God's concern for the welfare of women and orphans who were left without husbands and fathers."

Credit to Ludovica Iaccino

Florida father furious at school lesson: ‘Muhammad is the messenger of God’

Ron Wagner, a Florida father, said his son’s world history book has gone too far with a lesson that teaches Muhammad is the messenger of God.

One part of the book, for instance, reads: “There is no god, but God. Muhammad is the messenger of God,” he said, quoting from his son’s Lyman High School history book, WFTV reported.

“Students were instructed to recite this prayer as the first Pillar of Islam, off of the board at the teacher’s instruction,” Mr. Wagner said. “For it to be mandatory and part of the curriculum and in the textbooks, didn’t seem right.”

The chapter in the history book is called the “Rise of Islam,” and includes text of the faith’s prayers and scriptures, right from the Koran, WFTV reported.

Mr. Wagner also complained that the first 100 pages of the of the religious-based chapters that deal with Judaism and Christianity are missing — and the school district explains that omission by saying the defect, which impacted 68 books, is due to a manufacturer mistake, WFTV reported.

Credit to Cheryl K. Chumley