religion Archives - Page 4 of 4 - Ramblin' with Roger

"The Trouble with Islam Today"

I love librarians. They have such interesting people at their conferences. I was flicking through the channels a couple months ago and hit upon the American Libraries Association conference held in late June airing on one of the C-SPAN networks.

Specifically, I was watching a dynamic woman named Irshad Manji who seems to have created a firestorm with her speeches and books, including The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith. It was interesting to see a strong Muslim woman staying within the faith, yet noting its shortcomings.

Rather than trying to recreate her points, I’ll link to a blog report here from a “conservative” librarian, and this post, to give you a flavor of the talk.

At the end, she gave this five-minute recitation, from memory, of a poem from Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the Oompah Loompahs declaring the evils of television, a short excerpt of which you can see here and/or here.

One of the things I found on Ms. Manji’s MySpace page is the notion of ijtihad.

What is ijtihad?

Ijtihad (pronounced “ij-tee-had”) is Islam’s lost tradition of independent thinking. In the early centuries of Islam, thanks to the spirit of ijtihad, 135 schools of thought thrived. Inspired by ijtihad, Muslims gave the world inventions from the astrolabe to the university. So much of we consider “western” pop culture came from Muslims: the guitar, mocha coffee, even the ultra-Spanish expression “Ole!” (which has its root in the Arabic word for God, “Allah”).

What happened to ijtihad?

Toward the end of the 11th century, the “gates of ijtihad” were closed for entirely political reasons. During this time, the Muslim empire from Iraq in the east to Spain in the west was going through a series of internal upheavals. Dissident denominations were popping up and declaring their own runaway governments, which posed a threat to the main Muslim leader — the caliph. Based in Baghdad, the caliph cracked down and closed ranks. Remember those 135 schools of thought mentioned above? They were deliberately reduced to four pretty conservative schools of thought. This led to a rigid reading of the Koran as well as to a series of legal opinions — fatwas — that scholars could no longer overturn or even question, but could now only imitate. To this very day, imitation of medieval norms has trumped innovation in Islam. It’s time to revive ijtihad to update Islam for the 21st century. That’s why we’ve created Project Ijtihad.

A couple thoughts came to mind when reading that:
* Yes, Islam is more diverse than some people have been telling us
* There are some forms of Christianity that seems to have been captured by politics that could do with some “ijtihad”

I haven’t read Irshad Manji’s book yet, but if it is as dynamic as she is as a speaker, it should be fascinating.
***
Conversely, Ann Colter has made me an offer I can refuse:
Here is how to tick off a liberal…just subscribe to Human Events today! (And you’ll receive a FREE copy of The Truth About Muhammad – a $27.95 value.)
ROG

The Theological Implications of Doris Day QUESTION

My racquetball buddies and I were in the locker room, and someone said, innocently, “Que sera, sera.” Somehow, this led to some great theological/philosophical debate. One person suggested that the line of “whatever will be, will be” was a position of those Christians who believe that “everything is fixed, and you can’t change it”, while another opined that it was antithetical to the Christian tradition, because God is an active God. The fatalism of Nietzsche was invoked in the conversation, as were the impersonal gods of the ancient Greeks.

So, a simple question, and a more complex one. Please respond to either, or both:

1. What other purely popular songs suggest theological or philosophical meanings to you, and in what way?
Example: “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” by Bobby McFerrin may evoke the “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin” of Matthew 6:28.
Example: “The Word” by the Beatles. John 1:1, “the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Lennon/McCartney, “Now I’ve got it, the word is good.” The song also notes “That the word is just the way”; John 14:6, Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life.” Note also, John 1:1 and the first verse in the song start, “in the beginning.”

2. To what theology/philosophy do you think Que Sera, Sera belong? Does it belong to yours?
***
Anyone else, when they hear his name, sing “Dave Petraeus, Dave Petraus” to the tune of “Doctor Zaius” from the Simpsons? I thought not.
“The general came to shed some light
On why we needed to keep the fight.”
Of course, you can color the couplet to your personal political preferences.

ROG

By the Secrets

In anticipation of the first Sunday in Lent, which was last Sunday, my Bible group was reading Deuteronomy 26. It is a lovely piece about appreciation for God and how we need to offer our first fruits to God, which one could look up, in several versions, here. Deuteronomy, BTW, means “second law”. But scanning the page, I saw in the Bible something I’d never seen before.

I’ve read the Bible all the way through twice. Once was in 1977, seven months with the King James Version. The other was 1996-1997, 13 months with the New International Version or maybe the Revised Standard Version.

Anyway, here’s Deuteronomy 25:
KJV
(11)When men strive together one with another, and the wife of the one draweth near for to deliver her husband out of the hand of him that smiteth him, and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the secrets:
(12)Then thou shalt cut off her hand, thine eye shall not pity her.
NIV
(11)If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, (12) you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity.
New American Standard Bible
(11)”If two men, a man and his countryman, are struggling together, and the wife of one comes near to deliver her husband from the hand of the one who is striking him, and puts out her hand and seizes his genitals,
(12)then you shall cut off her hand; you shall not show pity.”

OK, forgetting the creepy payoff: yes, I had never seen “genitals” in the Bible, and it’s the fault of the lectionary. The lectionary is a mechanism by which the Scripture is read over a three-year period, each year featuring one of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke). If you go here, then click on the Index of Lectionary Readings by Biblical Books, you’ll see that Deuteronomy 24 and 25, which are full of all sorts of arcane laws, are not included. So, it’s unlikely that most church attendees will hear a sermon on this Scripture (though you’ll see it illustrated in LegosTM here), or that lovely story about a man refusing to marry his dead brother’s widow, so she gets to spit in his face, also in Deuteronomy 25 (and illustrated in Legos here).

So just how much of the Bible IS in the lectionary? I don’t have a definitive answer, but this report on the Catholic version of the Bible suggests that it’s most of the New Testament, but a very small portion (less than 15%) of the Old Testament, except for the Psalms.

Of course, ministers do vary from the lectionary at times, but I’ll be shocked the first time I hear this text as a basis for a sermon. I’ll be certain to be intrigued by how one could take that message and apply it to today’s world.

Also, this means that one of these days, I’m going to need yet another translation of the Bible all the way through.
***
And since I seem to be on the topic, I’m loving the controversy about the Newbery Award-winning book ‘The Higher Power of Lucky’ over the use of the word scrotum, referring to a canine’s private parts, which has propelled the book’s sales.
***
According to a new book, Americans are the most religiously ignorant people in the West.

More Sunday Random Meanderings

Day o’ rest:

RELIGION

I was reading my parents-in-law’s Guidepost magazine (March 2005) when I came across the name Len Wein. He was described as a “comic book writer and creator of the new X-Men.” I don’t have the magazine, but Googling, I found this quote attributed to him: “A friend is someone who is there for you when he’d rather be anywhere else.”

I saw spray-painted on the wall of a church parking lot last weekend: “Blinded by Patriotism, Silenced by the Dollar.”

On a church sign on Route 28 between Oneonta and Cooperstown: “There’s no point being a pessimist, because it won’t work anyway.”

TRUTH

A radio talk show pundit said on the air that he thought that the reference of Karl Rove as Turd Blossom in Doonesbury was verisimilitude, when in fact W actually DOES call Rove Turd Blossom.
Verisimilitude. I love that word.

Someone recently turned me on to the The Borowitz Report. Where else could you read:
July 28, 2005 KIM JONG-IL DEMANDS IPOD
Latest Twist in Nuke Talks Raises Eyebrows, Concerns
July 27, 2005 DEBRIS FALLS OFF CHENEY
Scientists Study Videotape of Vice President Disintegrating
July 24, 2005 SWIFT BOAT VETS MISS ATTACKING KERRY
Life Without Negative Ads Devoid of Meaning, Vets Complain
July 21, 2005 ROBERTS PROMISES STRICTER CONTROLS ON FOUR-YEAR-OLD SON
Child’s Rampage Through D.C. Prompts Nominee’s Conservative Stance
July 18, 2005 NEW HARRY POTTER BOOK DESTROYS PRECIOUS RAINFOREST
652-Page Tome Ignites Ecological Catastrophe, Sierra Club Warns
Of course, these are “humorous” stories, but they COULD be true! They have verisimilitude!

These postcards ARE supposed to be true.

SEX

I went on a “next blog” meanering. Usually, they’re new sites that pop up, but this week I came across the blog of Marshall Brain. He is the founder of one of my favorite websites, How Stuff Works. He has some insights into porn. And it’s clean! Honest!

NOT CLEAN: One of my least favorite people is U.S. Senator Rick Santorum. The readers of sex columnist Dan Savage came up with a new term, and they named it after the junior senator from Pennsylvania. You may find it crude, but it seems to have caught on.

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

I saw this on a news program, and then Brother IH sent me the info:
Store the word ” I C E ” in your mobile phone address book and against it enter the number of the person you would want to be contacted “In Case of Emergency”.
In an emergency situation, ambulance and hospital staff will then be able to quickly find out who your next of kin are and be able to contact them.

Remember that Mars is getting closer. If the Martians are going to launch the invasion, this would be a good time.

Blogger Greg seems to think the current President isn’t all that bright. I mean he REALLY thinks W is dumb. I don’t know how he could say such a thing. Just last month, he acknowledged that global warming exists and that it is at least partially a function of human behavior, only a year after his own administration had reached that conclusion, and only several years after just about everyone else had.
So this is what I’m trying to figure out:
If global warming is human-made,
and if global warming heats the oceans,
and since hurricanes thrive on warmer waters,
so that more hurricanes will occur,
are hurricanes still acts of God or, increasingly, acts of human insensitivity to our environment?

Which takes me back to
RELIGION, which is where I started this.