Adveniat Regnum Tuum!
Back from Vacation
I've taken a bit of a hiatus in blogging since the end of the academic year. In that time I attended many ordinations of fellow Kenrick students, witnessed the eye-popping four-hour-long ordinations in the Classical Roman Rite performed by Archbishop Burke in our cathedral, and spent a week studying chant and immersing myself in monastic liturgy at the great French abbey of Solesmes. I am now happily embarked on the third week of my summer assignment as deacon at St. Margaret Mary Alacoque parish in south St. Louis County (pictured below). It is a large and very vibrant suburban parish, served by three priests and two permanent deacons, in addition to myself, and I have been very happy to finally embark upon ordained ministry in a parish setting.
As the summer months are fairly slow going, I will hopefully be able to post with a little more frequency over the weeks to come.
Thy Kingdom Come!
Mysticism and Islam
I have been reading the chapter on Sufism in Aslan's book, and it is rather striking that there exists a mystical strain within Islam, which seems in many ways so out of sync with the rest of the religion. It is interesting to compare the role of mysticism in Islam and Christianity. It seems that mysticism in Islam has flourished, but always in tension with the basic beliefs and authority structures of the religion. Christian mysticism takes various forms, but the ones which endure and are most fruitful are exemplified in mystics such as St. Catherine, St. Teresa, or St. John of the Cross, all of whom, despite their mystical experiences, had a high regard for the public and external character of revelation and the Church's teaching authority.
This does not mean that there are not forms of false mysticism, even in Christian circles, which lead people away from the truths of revelation; I believe it was an Anglican who quipped that mysticism "begins in mist, centers in 'I', and ends in schism." However, Christian mysticism at its best is in harmony with the tradition of the Church, while it at least seems as though Sufism has never been completely at home with Muslim orthodoxy. Perhaps this has in part to do with the differing approaches to God that flow from Trinitarian and Incarnational faith, on one hand, and a radically monotheistic, iconoclastic faith on the other.
Thy Kingdom Come!
First, a matter of business. I don't know if anyone else has yet scheduled the date of their presentation to the class. I would like to take 20-30 minutes on April 23 to present my material.
The second chapter of Beirut Blues makes reference to a hostage situation in which the narrator's correspondent has a friend involved. The narrator says that she has thought about the hostages, but that ultimately everyone forgets about such things and reverts to thinking about their own problems. "What can I do about the forgetting, the acceptance bred of repetition and habit, the thinking which leaps barriers and leads us inevitably back to ourselves?" (p.32)
The narrator then takes the situation of the hostages as an illustration of what her own life is like. "In short, I'm a hostage just like your friend, lover, fiance. What does it mean to be kidnapped? Being separated forcibly from your environment, family, friends, home, bed. So in some strange way I can persuade myself I'm worse off than them." (p. 34) The narrator feels she has been abducted, because while she is in her own city, she doesn't recognize it. She feels isolated, in a "bubble" in the midst of a once-familiar place, only occasionally running into other "bubbles" who turn out to be her old friends.
The description of the desolate city is somewhat reminiscent of the the Lamentations of Jeremiah, which I both heard and sang several times last week in the context of Tenebrae services. These biblical laments express a similar feeling of desperation and desolation in the midst of a devastated city, made even more poignant by the recollection of its past glory. "How lonely she is now, the once crowded city! Widowed is she who was mistress over nations. The princess among the provinces has been made a toiling slave...Jerusalem, Jerusalem, return to the Lord your God."
Thy Kingdom Come!
What A Mess
In an attempt to understand a little better the context of Hanan al-Shaykh's Beirut Blues, I decided to find out a little bit about the nature of the war in Lebanon which is the setting of the book. I, like most Americans at least of my age, am not terribly familiar with the details of this war, so I turned to the ever-handy and often-reliable Wikipedia. There is in fact a lengthy article in there under "Lebanese Civil War." I have not yet had time to read through the entire thing, but I was quite amazed by what I did find out. For one thing, I had no idea that this civil war had dragged on for about 15 years. It also seems to have involved quite a few different factions, often aligned in varying ways. The article's concluding section sums up the toll involved: "Lebanon still bears deep scars from the civil war. In all, it is estimated that more than 100,000 people were killed, and another 100,000 handicapped by injuries. Approximately 900,000 people, representing more than one-fifth of the pre-war population, were displaced from their homes." The article goes on to note that the recent conflict with Israel has "'rolled back the clock' on Lebanese infrastructure and recreated similar problems created by the civil war."
It can be seen in the article that citations are still needed for the figures mentioned above (which is the unfortunate thing about the nature of this resource). I would be interested to hear some thoughts from our resident expert on Lebanon, Fr. Andre, regarding what this long and bloody strife was like, and what things are like in Lebanon today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanese_Civil_War
Thy Kingdom Come!
A War-Torn City
Hanan al-Shaykh's Beirut Blues is an interesting read so far. Written in the form of letters from a Lebanese woman to various individuals, it provides a somewhat impressionistic view of life in war-torn Beirut. The first of the letters is addressed to a former lover of the narrator, who has long since left Lebanon to live in Belgium. She seems to be somewhat resentful of the fact that he has left, and realizes that there is ever less that they have in common, as the reality of the war changes her daily life. At the same time, she seems to appreciate the fact that he is still concerned about the her safety, and that he continues to call her.
The style in which the book is written gives it a very "fly-on-the wall" sort of feel. We don't get a sense of the broad overview of what's going on in the war, but of how one individual is reacting to it day by day. I found particularly interesting her rhetorical question on page 3: "How can I answer your questions about the state of our country when my chief worry is the rat occupying our kitchen?" On the next page, she goes on: "Isn't it ridiculous to summarize what's going on in one sentence? The war is this, or the war is that. People are dancing, people are dying. I don't care."
Part of the sense of ambivalence that we see in this narrator comes from the fact that she has no stake in this conflict. "Belonging to some faction, however extreme or outlandish, might be preferable to this. If you make a commitment, however hard the consequences turn out to be, you can relax." (p.12) Being an uninvolved bystander caught in the crossfire of a warring city must be the worst situation of all.
Thy KIngdom Come!
Authority in Shiism and Catholicism
I have been rather intrigued, both last semester in our study of world religions and now in reading Aslan's chapter on Shiism, at the way in which similar questions and problems play themselves out in the Islamic and Christian traditions. One can perhaps detect some of the same sorts of questions which caused Western Christianity to split into Protestantism and Catholicism at work in the split of Islam into Sunni and Shiite. The difference historically would be that while Catholicism existed virtually unchallenged in the West for many centuries until the decline of the Middle Ages, the split within Islam goes has its origins as far back as the immediate successors to Muhammad.
One of the basic questions that divides the two camps, it seems, is that of authority. Who is responsible, after the Prophet's death, for the proper interpretation of his revelation? In Christianity, the same issue became a problem when the question of Scripture versus Tradition was raised in the time of the Protestant Reformation.
One can see the answers to these questions forming along different lines in the two different religions. In Christianity, the basic divide ended up being between the Protestant principle of Scripture alone, interpreted by the individual, and the Catholic approach of Scripture and Tradition, interpreted by the Church's Magisterium. In Islam, on the other hand, it seems that one could see both Sunnis and Shiites as claiming Scripture, but differing on the role of tradition and of a "magisterial" figure. The Sunnis rely on the traditions of the prophet, as well as the consensus which the community, and especially the Ulama, has arrived at over the centuries. They would thus seem to have "Tradition" on their side. The Shiites, for their part, seem in some way to have adopted the same line of thinking that leads Catholics to affirm the need for an infallible magisterium centered in a visible head. While the Imam is not seen by the Shiites as God's messenger, he is the one who translates the message for human beings. One could loosely relate this to our belief that the Pope, while not gifted with divine inspiration as the authors of Scripture were, is nonetheless given the charism of infallibly interpreting the Revelation given. And like the Imamate, the Papacy is a stable office that is passed from one individual to another.
Thus far, one could see the Shiites as leaning towards the Catholic approach to authority. However, there are of course significant differences: while the Imam position is a matter of hereditary descent, the Papacy is elected, and even more significant, the Imam is believed to be not only infallible but sinless, and in fact to be created from light. Catholic claims regarding the Pope are generally more modest, and no one has ever claimed he is impeccable. Furthermore, while the Papacy has continued to exist, amid ups and downs, the Imamate is now defunct, to all appearances, while the true Imam is hidden, to be revealed in the last days.
Finally, it should be noted that while Catholicism, like Shiism, recognizes one individual as a locus of authority, it also accommodates the idea of tradition and indeed of a consensus of the faithful, which Sunni Islam appeals to. It is in fact the union of the three pillars of Scripture, Tradition, and Magisterium which gives Catholicism a unique ability to hold on to the essential truths of the faith, while also being able to deal in an authoritative way with new questions which arise.
Finally, it doesn't seem that the Protestant principle of authority (Scripture alone interpreted by the individual) has much traction in the Muslim world, at least since the "closing of the gates of ijtihad" which Aslan speaks of as occurring around the end of the tenth century. The Protestant principle in Christianity is in fact a uniquely modern idea, and it seems that Aslan, who advocates an "Islamic Reformation", would like to see it enter the picture in Islam alongside the authority of tradition and of scholars.
Thy Kingdom Come!
Faith and Reason
I found Aslan's chapter on Islamic theology and law ("This Religion Is a Science") to be very interesting, especially seeing how some of the discussions that are present there are remarkably similar to problems that Christian theology has tackled over the years. One such area, which both Muslims and Christians wrestled with in the Middle Ages, is the relationship of faith and reason. Aslan, in a few pages which I'm sure don't do justice to the subject, talks about this in terms of the historic debate between the "Rationalists" and the "Traditionalists." It seems pretty clear, at least in Aslan's treatment, that the Traditionalists won the day, and that reason cannot play much of a role in Islamic theology.
This was also a point which Pope Benedict XVI addressed in his now-famous Regensburg lecture. While everyone reacted strongly to the words he quoted from Michael Paleologos regarding Muhammad and violence, the main thrust of the speech was the need for a rapprochement between faith and reason. To the extent that Islam has exhibited violent tendencies, the Pope suggested, it may be because of a lack of appreciation for human reason in Islamic theology.
It is interesting, therefore, to read about other Muslim thinkers, the "Rationalists", who took a more positive view of reason. One wonders if this debate will be renewed in modern Islam, and to what result. It is a question which the West had to deal with in the thirteenth century, precisely in response to Aristotle as interpreted by Ibn Rushd (Averroes). Ibn Rushd's "two truth" theory came to be held by some Christians, such as Siger of Brabant. It was St. Thomas' achievement to demonstrate that while both faith and reason can lead to truth, the truth is ultimately one, and cannot contradict itself. It has been said that while both Christians and Muslims have used Aristotle in their theology, the Muslims who did so wound up not being very good Muslims, while the foremost Christian to do so, St. Thomas, is still the Common Doctor of the Church.
Thy Kingdom Come!
Project Bibliography
Below is the bibliography for my project regarding Jihad.
Aslan, Reza. No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam. New York: Random House, 2005.
Bonner, Michael. Jihad in Islamic History: Doctrines and Practice. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.
Hoffman, R. Joseph, ed. The Just War and Jihad: Violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2006.
Kepel, Gilles. Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam. Translated by Anthony F. Roberts. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2003.
Lewis, Bernard. The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror. New York: Modern Library, 2003.
Partner, Peter. God of Battles: Holy Wars of Christianity and Islam. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997.
This may very well grow as I proceed with the project; thus far it only reflects what the Souvay Library here at Kenrick has to offer. But it's at least a start.
Thy Kingdom Come!
A Thought-Provoking Interview
As I was perusing the latest issue of Crisis magazine in the library a few nights ago, I came across an interview on pages 41-46 entitled "Knowing the Enemy: Dinesh D'Souza on Islam, America, and the Left's Responsibility for 9/11." The magazine's editor, Brian Saint-Paul (whom I met many years ago, when he worked for Envoy magazine) interviews Dinesh D'Souza, whose latest book is entitled The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11. The interview has a lot of interesting points about modern Islamic perceptions of the West and how they got that way.
What I found most striking was D'Souza's treatment of why radical Muslims have the hatred for the West which resulted in 9/11. D'Souza rejects the claim that this is primarily a reaction to colonialism, since the United States itself did not have much of a historical colonial presence in Muslim countries. At the same time, he also rejects the oft-heard claim of American conservatives that radical Muslims "hate us for our freedom." D'Souza doesn't consider this to be fair: "For the past three or four years, I've been studying radical Islamic thought--specifically, the thinkers who have influenced contemporary radical Muslims. When you read their work, you find that there are no denunciations of modernity, no condemnations of science, no condemnations of freedom. In fact, their whole argument seems to be that the United States--through our support of secular dictators in the region--is denying Muslims freedom and control over their own destiny." D'Souza goes on to note that, in the wake of recent electoral successes in Algeria and Palestine, radical Muslims aren't even necessarily opposed to democracy.
What, then, DO they hate about America? D'Souza clarifies: "It's more accurate to say that they do not hate us for our freedom, but they condemn us for how we have used our freedom. The thrust of bin Laden's argument is that America has become a pagan, immoral society. That's bad enough for him, but he also sees the United States foisting its paganism on the rest of the world--both through its foreign policy and through its culture. And he believes that it's the duty of all good monotheists to rise up in rebellion against it. That's the real root of Muslim rage."
This is why D'Souza lays the responsibility for 9/11 on the cultural Left in America. The breakdown of traditional morality brought about by cultural liberalism is seen by radical Islam as a threat to the traditional values of Islam. "The radical Muslim position is not that they want to take over the world and make everyone a Muslim. Nobody claims that. Rather, Muslims think they need to rise up to prevent the pernicious influence of American atheism and American culture from destroying traditional Islamic culture."
It is because of this, D'Souza says, that even non-radical Muslims are reluctant to condemn terrorism. "On the one hand, they have a violent faction, which they dislike, acting in the name of Islam. But on the other, this violent faction is pointing to America as a pagan, depraved society, and the non-radicals largely agree and don't want to be seen defending that kind of society. That's why they keep their mouths shut." In fact, D'Souza says, this is why it's not helpful to look for "liberal" Muslims to counterbalance terrorism. While classical liberalism ("the idea that we must have the freedom to vote or to assemble or be religiously tolerant") has much support in the Islamic world, there is virtually no support for the new cultural liberalism. D'Souza points out that there are basically two groups in the Muslim world: radical Muslims and traditional Muslims. "Both are religiously and socially conservative." He sees the only real way to long-term victory over terrorism to consist in putting a wedge between the two groups.
And so D'Souza gives his suggestions on how to achieve this, and gain support from traditional Muslims. First, Americans must avoid condemning Islam as a whole. "The clash-of-civilizations idea has a grain of truth in it, but it is both tactically and morally wrong. In fact, it plays right into bin Laden's hands. He wants to construe the war in exactly those terms. If you dismiss Islam as being inherently violent or say the Prophet Mohammed (sic) is the founder of terrorism, then you're pushing the traditional Muslims into the radical camp." Instead, D'Souza urges Christians and conservatives to find common cause with traditional Muslims on moral issues.
This leads to his second suggestion, which is to "fight the war on terror by fighting the culture war at home." Working to restore traditional moral and religious values in the public sphere in America can "help improve America's image worldwide." Thirdly, "the U.S. government and its private citizens should do more to highlight the other America." By this, he means to make it clear that in fact, despite the impression the Islamic world may have, America still is, in many quarters, a Christian society, made up of decent people. "If traditional Muslims could see that there are hundreds of millions of Americans who go to work each day, who look after their families, and who practice traditional values, it would go a long way in undermining the radical Muslim claim that the United States is the fountainhead of global atheism."
D'Souza addresses other interesting points as well, and gives a somewhat new take on various matters of U.S. foreign policy, especially our relations with Israel and how to address those. The article is well worth checking out.
Thy Kingdom Come!
The Caliphate and Its Difficulties
I have been quite struck, in reading Reza Aslan's chapter on the "Rightly Guided" Caliphs, at how quickly the Muslim community became fractured after Muhammad's death, and how quickly all kinds of political intrigue began to come into play. There are interesting comparisons to be drawn to Christianity in this regard.
On the one hand, just about every issue that the Muslim community has had to deal with regarding the relation of religious to secular authority, and who should possess each of these, has its analogue in the Church's history. One could look in the East at the "Caesaro-papism" of which the Byzantine emperors are often accused, and in the West at the long saga of the temporal power of the papacy, which included everything from the early eleventh century, when Holy Roman Emperors could impose popes at will, to the High Middle Ages, when popes like Innocent III were able, for a brief time, to truly be the dominant authority in a Europe where nation-states had not yet fully formed. Then of course there was the Renaissance, when the popes often seemed little different from any other Italian princes, and often found themselves engaged in wars with Christian kingdoms.
On the other hand, while both Christianity and Islam have very checkered relationships to temporal authority, it is probably fair to say that these issues are more foundational to Islam than they are to Christianity. For the first three centuries of its existence, the Church had no temporal status whatsoever, and was largely persecuted; it was only after her doctrine and her basic structure as a spiritual entity was already fairly well-established that the Church had to begin working out her relations with temporal powers, and even then, there was fairly early on a clear articulation by the popes of the "two swords" of temporal and spiritual power, which were quite distinct, though by no means totally separated. It seems to me that Islam was not so fortunate in this regard. From the very lifetime of the Prophet, Islam was a religion that possessed a certain temporal power, and it was impossible to separate religious and temporal matters. Perhaps this is why it seems difficult to distinguish religion and politics in the Muslim world even today: when the Prophet served not only as a messenger of God but as a shaykh, a military leader, and a judge, it is natural to presume that a true Muslim community must embrace all aspects of society. The chances of success or failure for our current ventures in the Mideast are closely bound up with this dynamic.
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