Islam: What’s Right About Submission

A sermon from

The Unitarian Universalist Church

Rockford, Illinois

11/28/04

Something I find fascinating about President Bush is the position he has taken on Islam since 9/11. He has been consistent in differentiating between the radicals who happen to be Muslim, and the faith of Islam. In his original address to the American people after 9/11, the President said:

I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith. It's practiced freely by many millions of Americans, and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah. The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself. The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends; it is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them.

These acts of violence against innocents violate the fundamental tenets of the Islamic faith, and it's important for my fellow Americans to understand that.

The English translation is not as eloquent as the original Arabic, but let me quote from the Quran itself: "In the long run, evil in the extreme will be the end of those who do evil, for that they rejected the signs of Allah and held them up to ridicule."

The face of terrorist is not the true faith of Islam. That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don't represent peace, they represent evil and war.

When we think of Islam, we think of a faith that brings comfort to a billion people around the world. Billions of people find comfort and solace and peace. And that's made brothers and sisters out of every race, out of every race.

The President has taken criticism from some of his supporters for the position he has taken on Islam. On the “BushCountry.org homepage, Jen Shroder insists that the President knows that what he is saying is not true, but he is being blackmailed by Saudi Arabia into allowing America to be converted to Islam. She writes:

The promotional endorsement that Islam is “peaceful” in the media, even as opponents of Allah are slaughtered on every border of Islam was already being consumed. Bush had little choice. To cut off oil supplies to the US would severely cripple the country. . . . The United States has a knife to its throat and Bush knows it. So he stepped up to the microphone and began to talk of a peaceful Islam, most likely choking on the words, praying and banking on the fortitude of Americans to remain in their faith and freedom.

People whom we usually associate as supporters of the president, like Billy Graham’s son, Franklin, have been clear about their understanding of Islam. Graham, who is seeking to participate inthe rebuilding of Iraq, referred to Islam as “a very evil and wicked religion.” The Rev. Jerry Vines, a former president of the Southern Baptists called Mohammed, “A demon-possessed pedophile.”

In trying to understand the courageous position the president took, one might point to the long term and profitable business links between his family and the Saudi royal family. That could be interpreted as meaning that he had a profit motive, but I am prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt and to suggest that his long term contact with Muslims has actually led to understanding on his part.

The truth is that the President’s experience is unusual for an American. Although there are estimated to be some 7 million Muslims in America (which is something like 46 of them for every Unitarian Universalist), most Americans are hardly aware of having met any Muslims, and are abysmally ignorant of what Islam is about. The media have done a poor job of helping Americans to see Muslims in any but a negative light.

For over a thousand years, Christians have been propagandized to see Muslims as a threat. While the Crusaders went into Muslim countries brandishing swords and demanding conversion or death, the message back home was that it was the Muslims who were into conversion by the sword – in psychology, that is called projection.

This morning, I believe, given our relative lack of exposure to Islam, it is useful to review briefly some of the salient details of the Muslim faith, and then to look at what the future relationship between the West and Islam might be.

As I noted in our newsletter, I was interested to learn that when the Unitarians were first disengaging from the mainline Christian community, or were being disengaged by it, one of the slurs that was hurled at them was being called “Muhammedans.” The reason for that is that Islam is a radically monotheistic faith. The term “Muhammedan” is a total misnomer, and in fact an insult, because Muslims do not in any way worship Muhammed. He is seen as a prophet, a leader, but he is not in any way confused with a deity.

You may remember the story. Muhammed was bporn in 570, orphaned at the age of six, and was raised by his grandfather, who died two years later, and then by his uncle. While Muhammed was not literate, he was a wise and honest businessman, and when he was 25, he was proposed to by Khadijah, his employer, a wealthy and powerful businesswoman, a widow 15 years his senior. They were married for twenty-five years until her death.

It was his practice to withdraw from the business scene from time to time to meditate for weeks at a time in a cave outside of Mecca. It was there, according to Muslim belief, that the Angel Gabriel appeared to him and told him he was to become a prophet and messenger to his people. He was afraid he was going crazy, but his wife, and then a Christian cousin of hers, assured him that he was ok and had obviously been chosen.

Because he could not write, Muhammed committed the revelations he experienced to memory, and later dictated them to scribes.

For those who are skeptical about revelation from angels, there is reason to believe that Muhammed, in his position as a trader, had contact with both Jews and Christians and could have learned something about their traditions. You see, the revelation he received was that Abraham and Moses and the Prophets were spokesmen for the same deity who was speaking to him, as was Jesus. Jews and Christians were also recipients of divine revelation and were spiritual kinfolk of those who would follow Muhammed. The revelations he received were just the next in line, and were aimed at his culture.

For three years he was careful about those with whom he shared his revelations, and then he was told to go public. His new religion was not warmly received and, in fact, it lead to assassination threats which led him to relocate to a town two hundred miles north that became known as Medina - the Prophet’s City. After ten years of continuing struggle with the Meccans, his followers were victorious and he returned to Mecca, proclaiming “This day there is no vengeance against you, and you are all free.”

Unlike Jesus, who was killed for his teachings, Muhammed became the successful leader of a city as well as a religious movement. It is clear that he worked to remove distinctions because of class, gender, or economic status. Women were given rights that were unheard of in most of the world at the time – the right of inheritance, the right to divorce a man, the right to a voice in community decisions.

Mohammed and his followers stressed that he was not divine in any sense, just a good man who was presented with a message to deliver. His life was, however, exemplary and followers of his path do try to model their lives after his, since he was viewed as a perfected human. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, whom I have heard speak at Chautauqua, suggests in his book, What is Right About Islam, that:

All of Islam is, in effect, the effort to follow the Prophet’s normative example – to become a friend of the Prophet so that we, like him, may radiate the presence of God into the world.

The revelations the Prophet received, which were transcribed as the Quran, spell out how the follower is to achieve that goal. The fundamental assumption is that one must submit to the will of God. Islam is translated as “submission.”

It is hard for Unitarian Universalists to relate to such a concept because submission is probably the most foreign of any to our way of life. We find it virtually impossible to compromise, much less to submit. One of the powerful papers at the recent Prairie Group meeting at which Islam was the subject, was a response paper delivered by Danny Reed, our minister in Norfolk, VA. Danny began by quoting the ritual that precedes the sermon in the massive Lakewood Church in Houston, TX. The congregation of thousands rise and raising their Bibles above their heads say:

This is my Bible. I am what it says I am. I have what it says I have. I can do what it says I can do. I am about to be taught from God’s holy word. I will never be the same. I will never be the same. I will never be the same.

Danny wondered how many of our congregants come to church prepared to be changed by the experience. He thought we are more likely to declare to the heavens, “I need no change, I need no change, I need no change” or possibly, “Everyone needs change but me, but me, but me.”

It is tricky when we look at another religion and compare its “ideal form” with the reality of our experience of our own. Theoretical Buddhism is not the same as practiced Buddhism. Theoretical Hinduism is not the same as practiced Hinduism. Theoretical Christianity is not the same as practiced Christianity. As far as I can tell, the fundamental elements of Islam in theory are the same as Islam in practice – with some exceptions we will address a bit later. The reason for this identity between theory and practice is the totality of the submission that is required to call oneself a practicing Muslim. Islam is not a faith that adapts to casual commitment. It is not a one day a week, or two days a year (Christmas and Easter) sort of thing.

[During the service, I realized that I had neglected to follow up on getting the text I had recalled of what seemed to me the relevant Don Marquis poem on “the lesson of the moth”, attributed to Archie, the cockroach:

i was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into
an electric light bulb
and fry himself on the wires

why do you fellows
pull this stunt i asked him
because it is the conventional
thing for moths or why
if that had been an uncovered
candle instead of an electric
light bulb you would
now be a small unsightly cinder
have you no sense

plenty of it he answered
but at times we get tired
of using it
we get bored with the routine
and crave beauty
and excitement
fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while
so we wad all our life up
into one little roll
and then we shoot the roll
that is what life is for
it is better to be a part of beauty
for one instant and then cease to
exist than to exist forever
and never be a part of beauty
our attitude toward life
is come easy go easy
we are like human beings
used to be before they became
too civilized to enjoy themselves

and before i could argue him
out of his philosophy
he went and immolated himself
on a patent cigar lighter
i do not agree with him
myself i would rather have
half the happiness and twice
the longevity

but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself

I am not suggesting that submission in Islam is akin to pleasure seeking or suicide, but that there is, within many human beings, a desire to immerse oneself in something that is more important than just ourselves. The phenomenal growth of Islam can be attributed, in part, to the fact that it demands a lot of its adherents, that it offers something of importance to which to submit oneself. It is this same human trait that some say accounts for the growth of fundamentalist Christian churches]

The first pillar is the shahadah, the confession of faith which declares that “There is no God but God and Muhammed is His messenger.” In theory, all one needs to do to be a Muslim is to declare this belief.

But there are more. Anyone who claims to be a Muslim engages in salah, a ritual prayer facing Mecca five times each day – at dawn, noon, midafternoon, sunset, and when twilight has disappeared. It is a complex process which is preceded by the purification of the body – the washing of the face, hands, hair, feet, mouth and nostrils. It consists of cycles of standing, bowing, standing, falling to one’s face on a prayer rug, sitting, prostrating again, and reciting prayers .

The only religious practice I can relate this to is the practice in monasteries and convents where people who have devoted their lives to religion engage in such prayer cycles –and theirs are far less involved. But in Islam, this is not a practice for the elite. Every Muslim does this every day, week after week, month after month, year after year. They may do it at home, or at work, in the mosque, in a parking lot, wherever they are when the time comes.

Imagine what it would be like to believe something, anything, so strongly that its practice would so dominate your daily life.

The third pillar of Islam is contributing a minimum of 2.5% of your wealth – not your income, but your wealth, to good works. Now it is actually a but more complicated than that because the Quran makes it clear that income from mining, such as oil or diamonds, which you have not actually produced, is taxed at 20%. There is debate as to how the paying of income taxes in the United States relates to that obligation, since at least a portion of that money, if not all, goes to helping the community. This is not an optional, “give as much as you feel like,” deal. It is required.

The fourth pillar is also one which certainly intrudes on daily life. One month every year, each Muslim, except someone who is sick, must abstain from eating, drinking, smoking, and sexual activity from sunup to sundown for 28 days. Because the Islamic calendar is lunar, the month of Ramadan moves across our calendar from year to year. This is not viewed as a punishment, but an ́opportunity to exercise your spiritual self.

The fifth pillar is Hajj, performing a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in your lifetime, unless you cannot afford it or are not in good health. Those who have completed it suggest that it is a life transforming experience to be in the midst of a group of millions of pilgrims, circling the Kábah. All men wear the same clothes, so there is no distinction by class or national origin.

We are told that there is virtually no debate in Islam about beliefs or about the practice of the five pillars – where there is debate is where the rubber meets the road in other daily practices and how they match the laws that have developed within Islam that expand upon the basics.

The government that Muhammed established in Mecca was in many ways democratic, and his first successors followed that tradition. After only a few decades, however, power was assumed by Caliphs who decided that their families were chosen, and rule was passed down from generation to generation within dynasties. With that power came the exploitation of poor people and the gathering of wealth by the elite – all in violation of the principles taught and practiced by Muhammed.

It is clear that Islam is so pervasive in the lives of its followers that it does not have much room for the separation of religion from the state. This is hardly bizarre. We have rather quickly forgotten the unity of the Roman empire with the Christian church, the relationship of Luther to the German princes, Calvin’s Geneva, and the practices of the early European settlers of the United States who likewise saw the church and state as one. Many Americans were reluctant to elect a Roman Catholic president because of fear that the Pope would take control of America.

It is the contention of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf that as Muslims become more acculturated to America, that new ways of understanding the traditional expectations will evolve. He suggests that the American constitution is, in its spirit, completely congruent with the teachings of Islam, and established what can therefore be deemed a Muslim government.

One of the questions that is often raised is the role of women in Islam. I have heard lecturers in Chautauqua come to very different conclusions about that, each citing chapter and verse of the Quran. There is, for instance, much controversy in Western circles about the requirement that Muslim women cover their heads and in some cases, their faces. That is not a teaching from the Quran – it is a matter of custom in some countries, and therefore the practice varies among Muslims.

God has prepared a forgiveness and a great reward” for “the submitting men and women, the believing men and women, the pious men and women, the truthful men and women, the patient men and women, the humble men andwomen, the charitable men and women, the fasting men and women, the men and women who guard trheir chastity, the men and women who remember God frequently. (Quran 33:35)

We are told than Muhammed always helped with household chores, mended his own clothes, and consulted with his wives on community issues. He referred to wives as “partners and committed helpers.”

It is, however, true that over the years, in practice, oppression and teachings of female inferiority crept back in to Muslim practice in many, but not all, countries.

As with any religion, it is inevitable that differing sects have developed which, while centering on the same pillars, end up with some very different interpretations. The first split occurred between the Sunni’s, who believed that the Muslim leader did not need to be a descendant of Muhammed, and the Shi’ites who believed that was required. A major influence today is the Wahhabi sect which is traced back to Muhammed ibn Abd al-Wahhab who lived from 1703-1787. He decided that there was a need to go back to basics, rejecting all the developments of the previous 1100 years. He advocated a return to a “classical Islam that was pure, puritanical, simple, and therefore vigorous.” He made an alliance with Ibn Saud which proved significant in the second half of the 20^th century as the House of Saud became more powerful as Arabian oil became increasingly important. As is often the case, religion and tyrants work hand in hand, keeping each other in power.

A word needs to be said about Israel, which is the fundamental presenting symptom in the strained relationship between Muslim and Western nations. For centuries, Jews were far better off in Muslim lands than in Christian ones – there is no fundamental religious hostility between Muslims and Jews.

We find it difficult to put ourselves in the place of Arabs who suddenly had a foreign nation carved out of their midst. It was not an entirely new experience. The Crusades are remembered in Arab lands. Western nations carved up the Ottoman Empire following World War I and created bastard states that had no rhyme or reason, beyond the claiming of their resources by the Western nations. Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran were given arbitrary boundaries that ignored cultural traditions, and leaders beholden to the West were imposed. Woodrow Wilson tried to stop the process, but could not. His advisors pointed out that future wars were in the making. Following World War II, the Western nations decided to solve the “Jewish problem” by giving them a state carved out of Palestine. It is not shocking nor even surprising that a state of war would emerge. It is not shocking that people who have been so badly defeated would resort to terrorism as a means of trying to get their presence and needs acknowledged. None of that justifies what has been happening – it may be understood, but it cannot be justified. It does not justify it to point out that several times as many Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israeli security forces as Israeli’s have been killed by terrorists.

People who seek to end the conflict agree that there are two essentials in the process: Israeli’s must be guaranteed the safety and security that they need to live in peace; and the Palestinian people must also be allowed to live in dignity, freedom, and increasing prosperity. Those ends can only be achieved through the active intervention of the nation which pays most of the bills of the Israeli state, and is therefore seen by the Muslim world as supporting the oppression of their brothers and sisters.

Achieving peace there is complicated by the religious beliefs of many of the President’s supporters who are anxious for a cataclysm in the Middle East because they believe that will usher in the second coming of Jesus. World peace is dependent upon the resolution of the conflict in the Middle East, which is not at its heart a religious but a political struggle. The death of Yasser Arafat may provide the symbolic opportunity for dramatic progress.

There are people who ask why it is that Muslim moderates do not speak up – why do we hear only from the Osama bin Ladens. The fact is that moderate Muslims have not been reluctant to take a stand against terrorism, but our major media do not consider that newsworthy.

We have two powerful tools with which to bridge the chasm separating the United States form the Muslim world: faith in the basic goodness of humanity and trust in the power of sincerity and dialogue to overcome differences with our fellow human beings.. This faith and this trust are taught by all the Abrahamic traditions. They define the Abrahamic ethic, which lies at the core of our American Declaration of Independence, and America needs to rely more heavily on them, as do our fellow actors on the stage of history.

There are significant differences between the practices of Islam and the practices of Unitarian Universalism – they could hardly be less similar. And yet, when one turns to the core, there are dramatic similarities when one describes the nature of the life we would like to lead.

Our congregation has a history of friendship with the Muslim community in Rockford – we often welcomed them to use our space before they acquired their own. But that is history and not something that has been active since they found a home. I have been delighted to meet and begin a relationship with Shpendim Nadzaku, the new Imam for the Muslim Association. He was raised in the United States and is hungry for establishing deeper relationships between his community and the larger Rockford community. I will be pursuing this goal with him on our behalf.

There are two choices we face: living with our fantasies of one another and the misunderstandings to which these lead – or deepening out relationships and experiencing the commonalities. Our commitment is clear; it is time for us to bring our practice into congruence.