Islam, in my own image

A close friend was mortified that I might have been asked — much less have accepted — to write about life as a Third-Culture Kid (“TCK”). “You’re a white male who lived exclusively in the United States until the age of 27!” he laughed. Guilty as charged, so why contribute here?

I may never win my friend over to my TCK bona fides, but I believe my life may in fact be characterized by some of the tensions inherent in the TCK experience — the precarious (hopeless?) balancing of competing commitments, traditions and values, for example, has dominated my life about the last nine years. I assumed somewhat, when I converted to Islam as a college sophomore, that I might live out the rest of my days in a state of blissful, spiritual self-confidence and inner tranquility. Not quite! I hadn’t the faintest sense of what I was getting myself into.

I grew up with Buddhist parents, went to Jewish preschool, occasionally observed Shabbat, and then, in high school, I nearly converted to Catholicism during a summer of going to Mass every single morning. I think it’s pretty clear there was a significant spiritual void that I was trying to fill.

In college, around the same age my hippie father had apparently first dabbled in Zen mysticism, I attended on a whim a lecture on Jihad and Just War Theory. What was said in that discussion I couldn’t tell you, though it certainly kindled anew my spiritual curiosity. I became quite enamored by this Muhammad fellow, so that summer I drove regularly the few hours across state lines to and from the nearest mosque. (Note, there was actually a mosque in my hometown I would later learn... their website just wasn’t up and running.) I felt at peace in the ritual prayer, addressing directly the Creator of the Cosmos in a way I had never known. By summer’s end, I converted to many a warm welcome, with offers of unconditional existential support and/or South Asian food, depending on the offeror.

I considered my life’s quest for ultimate meaning to have wrapped up by the ripe age of 20. I just had to adjust my sleep schedule — to be up for the 4:30 morning prayer — to donate 2.5 percent of my non-existent college student income, abstain from things like usurious loansharking and premarital sex, and travel to Saudi Arabia at least once if I ever did find a job.

This spiritual high lasted a solid month. At this point, I started contemplating the fate of my parents (and probably lightly evangelized them), reading about the problem of evil and suffering, and the incompatibility of human free will and divine determinism. Oh, and perhaps I had to decide what kind of Muslim I was (i.e., Sunni, Shi`i, or neither). These were questions which I was fantastically unequipped to answer.

I switched my major to religious studies, and I spent hours, days even, in the library. This is technically true; on one occasion, I refused to put down the text I was reading, and I got locked inside overnight. I’m confident that to this day, if blindfolded, I could still find my way to the Islamic studies section of Davis Library in Chapel Hill.

One strategy I adopted for answering my questions was to turn to the Qur’an. This was where things really deteriorated.

Prior to converting, I’d read mostly about Muhammad’s life; my firsthand knowledge of the Qur’an itself was limited to a few passages relevant to the ritual prayer. I was fairly confident I knew what “All-Merciful” and “All-Compassionate” looked like, and how these descriptions of God would play out in the pages of scripture. Yet, when I searched the pages of the Qur’an for this being, He’d apparently stepped out for tea. The more I read, the more unsettled, and at times revolted, I became. Scarcely would a page go by without some reference to hapless polytheists receiving merciless, grossly excessive torture (forever) in the afterlife. And the text’s speaker seems quite self-satisfied about doing so. There is no indication, either, that this fate is confined to “only the evil polytheists” — without proper faith, even a gentle, virtuous atheist or polytheist merits this agony of perdition:

“Garments of fire will be tailored for those who disbelieve; scalding water will be poured onto their heads, melting their insides as well as their skin; there will be iron crooks to restrain them; whenever, in their anguish, they try to escape, they will be pushed back in and told, ‘Taste the suffering of the Fire.’” (Qur’an, 22:19-22)

This is not “just punishment” for a crime; this is the consequence of a mere mistake of ontology (a philosophical belief about what exists). An eternity of physical agony is what the All-Merciful and All-Compassionate has freely decided should await these desperate souls.

I was still attracted to Muhammad, and I thought I must be missing something, but nonetheless, the Qur'an was not a text that I would have wanted my friends and family to read and think I agreed with. It did little good to consider these morally and emotionally painful passages “excusable” or “forgivable” based on the time period. This text was — by definition — supposed to be the greatest conceivable sum of words that could ever be put together, more meaningful and spiritually powerful than any work of poetry or literature past, present or future.

At precisely the same time, I was discovering the works of masters of logic and rational thought — Socrates and Plato, Spinoza and Mill, Rawls and Grayling — philosophers whose arguments, elegantly constructed and intellectually impactful, were, to me, objects of aesthetic beauty. They didn’t say, “You had better agree with this set of ideas or else you ought to be tortured.” The implicit claim of philosophy is that any idea, argument or perspective only has authority if it can be proven to be true (much like science, something of a popular spinoff of classical empiricism, I am told).

So then, where to go from here? Atheism? Not quite. My belief in God persists (most of the time) with a vision of a morally perfect, metaphysically necessary being; I just don’t think the Qur’anic description of God works in any straightforward way. So then, leave Islam for a rival religion? I’m quite certain this same tension exists between contemporary moral philosophy and any of the descriptions of God that developed in antiquity.

Since those early years as a Muslim, I’ve done the only thing I know how to do: fill my apartment with books, converse with friends and hope to God that, somehow, my affection for Muhammad and his family can be reconciled with a non-negotiable commitment to rationalism. I am also blessed to teach classical and modern Islamic political philosophy, and thus I get paid (minimally) to continue to reflect on some of these issues. (Some readers may balk at the notion — reflected self-consciously in the title of this piece — that I have just distorted "true Islam" into something I am comfortable believing in. If there is, however, any uncontested truth in Islamic studies, it is that there is in fact no "Islam out there" (reified or hypostatized, as they say); we all create our own, unique Islamic metaphysics. There is simply no vision or idea of Islam that is unshaped, unqualified and unimpacted by the believer in whom the idea subsists.)

Every once in a while, moreover, I am delighted to study a figure in Islamic history who doesn’t fit with traditional expectations. Ibn Tufayl, for instance, wrote the philosophical novel “Hayy ibn Yaqzan,” wherein the protagonist discovers all Absolute Truths with his reason, and without any aid from divine revelation, thank-you-very-much. Or even Ibn Sina, who could enjoy a good glass of wine and saw nothing contrary to the divine will about it.

I’m sure some restlessness in my psychology will never permit me to rest with any final conclusions about the meaning, relevance or authority of the Qur’an in my life. I will probably never understand exactly its relationship to the divine will. The belief that God chose very specific words in Arabic and narrated them (through Gabriel) to Muhammad is a belief that has gone for me and I am quite sure will never return. For some time, I have inclined optimistically toward a metaphor offered by Sa`id Nashid:

“The Qur’an is not the speech of God, just as the loaf of bread is not the work of the farmer. God produced the raw material, which was inspiration, just as the farmer produces the raw material, which is wheat. But it is the baker who turns the wheat or flour into bread according to his own unique way, artistic expertise, and creative ability. Thus it is the Prophet who was responsible for interpreting the inspiration and turning it into actual phrases and words [of the Qur’an] according to his own unique view.”

This is a vision of the nature of the text that at once begins to resolve some of its more uncomfortable passages and simultaneously makes its spiritual flourishes all the more sublime — emerging in some sense, if this vision is true, in the person of Muhammad, in the windswept desert of the Hijaz, in a humble corner of late antiquity. I look to the Qur’an not as the be-all and end-all of my thinking about God, but rather as one waypoint, and I try to hold fast to the intellective tools of history’s greatest philosophers as the brightest lanterns for the conceptual paths ahead.

John Miller teaches Islamic political thought and political theory in Connecticut. He has degrees in law and Islamic studies from the University of North Carolina. He lives with his wife and their cat, Tiramisu.  

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We don't hit even animals the way they beat up my father: Alwar victim's son

“I am lucky to be alive. We somehow managed to escape because didn't seem to have noticed us. Otherwise who knows I too would have been dead like Pehlu Khan. How can someone beat another human being so badly that he dies and that too for cows that have been purchased legally for running dairies,” said Yunus.

“Have you seen how they have beaten these young boys? Their families couldn't even recognise them when they came home for Pehlu's funeral. Is this what your religion teaches? I am grateful that I am back with my family and cannot even imagine what Pehlu's family must be going through. Is a cow worth all this? Now I am afraid that I would never buy a cow,” he says as he tries to control the tears welling up in his eyes.

Yunus is yet to recover from the incident that occurred on Saturday wherein a group of Gau Rakhshaks attacked two vehicles and mercilessly assaulted the occupants alleging that they were illegally transporting cows. When the occupants provided them with the legal documents, they tore them up and started to beat them with sticks. All five men lost consciousness until the police came to their rescue. Three days later 55-year-old Pehlu succumbed to his injuries becoming yet another victim of cow vigilante groups that are thriving under the patronage of Hindutva outfits.

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4 Guided Steps in the Quran for Self Transformation - Nouman Ali Khan

Violent misogyny is a common trait among extremists

The man who attacked Westminster shared a hatred for women with other mass murderers

We may never know what went through the mind of the perpetrator of last week’s attack in Westminster, London. That’s the opinion of the police who have been investigating why Khalid Masood, born Adrian Elms, drove a car into dozens of pedestrians, stormed into the Parliament and stabbed a policeman, leaving four people dead and at least 50 injured.

I am struck by one thing we do know about him: a history of perpetrating domestic violence against his wives and partners.

In the record of notorious attackers, he shares this feature with his heinous peers. Because if there is one thing that has become clear in their histories, it is that violence against women is an embedded feature of their lives long before they set out on their inglorious ends.

A relative of one of Masood’s former wives said that he was "very violent towards her, controlling in every aspect of her life – what she wore, where she went, everything".

Last year, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel killed more than 80 people when he drove a lorry into a crowd in Nice, France. He had a history of domestic violence.

The former wife of Omar Mateen, who killed 49 people in a Florida nightclub, last June reported that "he would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasn’t finished".

Before anyone cries that this is about Muslims or Islamist ideologies, let’s be clear: this misogynistic world view cuts across all religions, backgrounds and classes. Whatever the background of such men, domestic violence abuse is a clear factor in their histories. In some cases, the atrocities they perpetrate are even announced as revenge on feminists.

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Muslim Teen Hebh Jamal's Activism Rarely Sleeps

Hebh’s parents are naturalized U.S. citizens who emigrated from Jordan to Canada and then to the United States. Hebh was born in Canada but moved to the Bronx before she turned one. She’s reluctant to answer questions about her family. “They’re not involved in activism,” she says. “I had to be politicized from a very young age. When Bin Laden was assassinated, teachers were asking me, ‘What do you think about that?’ And because I’m Palestinian, they were asking me, ‘What do you think about the war in Gaza?’" During the Gaza War, which ran from 2008 to 2009, Hebh was just nine years old.

Islamophobia is woven into the fabric of her everyday life. She lists the precautions she takes on the subway against an Islamophobic attack as frankly as if she were describing how to cross the street. Don’t stand too close to the platform in case someone pushes you onto the track. Make sure your feet are planted firmly on the ground. If you’re carrying a large bag, make a point of opening it so the people around you don’t get suspicious. “It’s internalized and normalized in me,” she says.

With her expanded focus after Trump's election, Hebh and other activists planned the Foley Square protest entirely via social media and phone calls. Seeing it gain momentum on Facebook, “I reached out and said, ‘Let me do the permits for you,’” Hebh says. A totally self-taught protest planner, she also helped organize the list of speakers and the sound system.

The student walkout originated from a conversation at Beacon High School.

“I made a Facebook page, I invited everyone I know, and I got the permits again,” she says. The walkout’s focus was broad. “It was about Black Lives Matter; it was about the Dakota Access Pipeline; it was about the Muslim ban; it was about refugees. It was about a lot of things that came together well.”

Next, she cofounded the student coalition United Students of NYC to help young activists coordinate. “We didn’t just come to a protest to yell our lungs out; we came because we want to be a part of the story,” Hebh says.

New York City public advocate Letitia James spoke at the student walkout Hebh organized. “I love the energy of young people,” she said. “Hebh’s representative of a wider group of young people who are energized and angered by the state of our nation, and who want to be part of the resistance.”

“Each and every day I try to motivate young people to get involved with politics, whether that’s to run for office or to get involved at a local level,” James adds. She recommends that aspiring activists look into their local community boards, school boards, precinct councils, or block associations. “You can contact your local officials or Congress members. And you can get online — there are conversations going on on Facebook, on Snapchat. We’re all interconnected now — there’s no excuse not to get involved. This, too, is your country,” she says. “If you believe in freedom, if you believe in democracy, if you believe in the freedom of the press, if you believe that all immigrants are welcome here, you should get involved.”

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The terrifying rise of nationalist villains in India

Since he assumed national office, Modi has traded open incitement against Muslims for a posture of strategic ambiguity, communicating with his Hindu followers through pregnant silences. When BJP's Hindu "cow vigilantes" (Hindus regard cows as sacred) hauled out an aged Muslim man from bed and bludgeoned him to death for allegedly eating beef, it took Modi several days to issue a lame condemnation (Yogi Adityanath, on the other hand, vociferously defended the killing and even recommended that the dead man's family be prosecuted for possessing the meat). Modi has done nothing to squelch BJP's baseless claims that Muslim men are using "love jihad" to spread their faith by deliberately seducing Hindu girls. Nor has he done a thing about his party's efforts to browbeat Muslims and Christians into converting to Hinduism in large mass public ceremonies. He did, however, declare Christmas "good governance day" when government employees would be required to work while leaving all official Hindu holidays unmolested.

In Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, Modi ran a two-pronged campaign in recent state elections, emphasizing his message of economic prosperity for all before mixed audiences while whipping up Hindu grievances before Hindu crowds. For example, he accused the deposed ruling party of buying Muslim votes by giving free handouts to Muslims but nothing to Hindus. So diabolically effective was Modi's message that the BJP won 325 out of 405 seats in the state legislature simply by unifying the Hindu vote, till now deeply divided along caste lines.

Still, the hope was that after his resounding victory, Modi would start pulling back from his divisive rhetoric. But Yogi Adityanath's appointment suggests that the mask is finally coming off, and Modi is preparing to launch a much more aggressive phase of Hindu nationalism.

Adityanath, who commands a huge Hindu following in his state, has pledged not only to build a temple where the razed mosque stood but also place statues of Hindu gods in every Muslim mosque. But that's not even the worst part. He makes no bones about his ethnic cleansing agenda and speaks openly about the need to reduce Uttar Pradesh's 40 million-strong Muslim population — about 20 percent of the total — by at least half. Nor is he shy about how he plans to accomplish this. He reminds Hindus of their duty to "take out 100 Muslim girls for every Hindu girl they take out" and kill "100 Muslims for every Hindu they kill," and taunts those who have moral qualms as "eunuchs." Such incitement, which is by no means his worst, has landed the yogi, who obscenely ran on a law-and-order agenda, in jail a few times.

Trump's calls for a Muslim ban and "extreme vetting" have emboldened men like Adityanath, who has repeatedly recommended similar steps in India — except that he doesn't have in mind wimpy measures like creating a Muslim registry or barring Muslims from only a few countries. Indeed, within a week of assuming office, he had already embarked on a campaign of anti-Muslim harassment, shutting down and burning "illegal" slaughterhouses, and throwing 650,000 predominantly Muslim men out of work.

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8 LEVELS OF PERSONALITY - WHICH ARE YOU? - NOUMAN ALI KHAN - INSPIRATION

9 important questions we want to ask Pakistanis who hate women's rights movements

It’s no secret that a lot of people in Pakistan don’t support women’s rights movements. There are lots of people out there, men and women, who for some reason believe feminism and the desire to uplift women is evil, wrong or just plain unnecessary.

As social media becomes our dominant mode of communication, these people often take to the web to express their views. Recently one such person aired their views on a web platform. He posed a list of questions to desi feminists.

Well, we have some of our own – questions that we’re longing to ask everyone who has an issue with uplifting the status of women in Pakistan.

1) Do you really understand the movement you hate so much?

There appears to be confusion about what feminism means — and doesn't.

Simply put, feminism is the belief that women shouldn’t be discriminated against on the basis of their gender.

Maybe you believe the struggle to make this a reality involves depriving men of their rights. Well, actually, the opposite is true. Feminism is good for everyone. A society that upholds gender equality doesn’t just offer up benefits to women, it helps men too.

How, you ask? Well, feminism helps men by releasing men from strict gender roles that proclaim men can’t cry, can’t be artists, can’t be chefs, can’t be stay-at-home fathers, can’t do anything remotely ‘feminine.’

In our ever more costly global economy, a society that upholds gender equality will allow women to enter the workforce in larger numbers, adding to a household's income and easing financial pressure. In a just and equal society fathers won’t have to worry about their daughters being molested on the street. Friends won't have to guard doors for their female friends when they use public bathrooms, protecting them from assault. And deserving women will climb the corporate ladder just the same as men, and all genders will benefit from the expertise and experiences of the other.

2) What makes you think women already have the rights they're fighting for?

A lot of people who oppose women's rights movement believe women have 'enough' rights.

To these people who assume that women in Pakistan fully enjoy such basic rights as the right to study and the right to work, well, you need to wake up to the simple fact that having certain rights on paper doesn't translate to enjoying those rights in real life.

Here are two examples: first, the Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement (PSLM) survey states that the literacy rate for males in 2015 was 70 per cent and 49 per cent for females, a gap of 21 per cent. Second, at a mere 22 per cent in 2015, Pakistan has the lowest female labour force participation rate in South Asia.

Pakistan was ranked the second last country in the Global Gender Gap Index for the second year in a row in 2016. And these are just statistics - the anecdotal evidence that women, especially women from impoverished backgrounds, single women, divorced women and women from minority groups are treated as second-class citizens in Pakistan is staggering.

With this evidence, how anyone can suggest that women already have the rights they are demanding for is beyond comprehension.

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The Empire Files: Inside the Hotbeds of Israeli Settler Terror