Idolatry is the best we can do…

December 27, 2009 at 10:59 pm (Christianity, God, Islam, myth and metaphor)

… and we ought to just be honest about it.

I have read the first two chapters of Karen Armstrong’s “A History Of God” and I am already blown away. I was actually quite alarmed when I first started reading, because it begins with the words: “In the beginning, human beings created a God…” I suspect this, and my title, will alarm some of my readers too. But please bear with me. There is a very important point to this and while it may threaten religion, it does not in any way threaten belief in God.

It’s easy for us, with our modern fully-evolved theology, to say that the concept of a single transcendent creator is totally different from pagan worship of created things. I used to think that the knowledge of a creator is primordial and natural to our consciousness, but it turns out the early ideas about God(s) even in the Hebrew tradition actually had nothing to do with creation. I still think spiritual insight is natural and inborn. But it leads people to experience and express reality in very different ways.

The God that Abraham and his immediate descendents encountered was called El and was quite different in nature from the God Moses knew, who was called Yahweh. El appeared to Abraham as a man, and wrestled with Jacob as a man. Yahweh on the other hand was perceived on Mount Sinai in the midst of what seems to be a volcanic eruption, and in a burning bush, and could not be seen directly. It is suggested in this book that these ideas or concepts or pictures of God had different origins. In a sense they were different Gods.

Also, a huge news flash to me – early Judaism was polytheistic! They believed in the existence of the other gods. The whole point of the covenant Yahweh made with Moses and his people was that they would forsake all the other gods and worship only Yahweh. This only made sense in a polytheistic context. If they didn’t believe in other gods, there would have been no need.

I always wondered how those Israelites could forsake God as soon as Moses’ back was turned and worship a golden calf. But they were just doing what came naturally to them; different Gods had different roles, for example some were warriors, and some were for fertility, and so they turned to whichever one they felt would benefit them. And they weren’t worshipping the calf itself, but using it as a symbol to invoke one of the Gods they believed in, much like how Muslims use the Kaaba. There was never any worship of overtly man-made things.

It took some time for their conception of Yahweh to evolve to the God that we know today: tawheed, a single transcendent creator.

And so the idea of one single unchanging God who has revealed himself to every prophet from Abraham onwards has been blown out of the water for me. Karen Armstrong drives this point home in the first chapter: throughout history we have always “created” our Gods, in a sense. We have expressed our sense of the divine through our human ideas. This is what I think the word “idolatry” actually means in her writing. And she says (emphasis mine):

Despite the bad press it has in the Bible, there is nothing wrong with idolatry per se: it only becomes objectionable or naive if the image of God, which has been constructed with such loving care, is confused with the ineffable reality to which it refers.

This is where it gets really interesting. She goes on to tell how in around 622 BCE, when the idea that there really is only one God was developing, King Josiah violently suppressed worship of the other Gods. At this time an ancient manuscript was discovered which basically became Deuteronomy, part of the Torah. (It is hinted that this was not so ancient actually. 😉 ) The result of this discovery was that the history of the Exodus – Moses leading the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt and into the promised land – was revised, to include all the nasty stuff about wiping out the Canaanites because they worshipped Gods other than Yahweh. This new intolerant slant, this belief in being a chosen people favoured by God, was a reflection of the ethos developing at this time under King Josiah. She says about the violent events of the time:

This wholesale destruction springs from a hatred that is rooted in buried anxiety and fear.

Isn’t that fascinating?

It makes me think of, “the lady doth protest too much”. They hated other peoples’ expression of their sense of the divine, because in the backs of their minds, they knew that their own God was just that: an expression of their own sense of the divine.

Pagan polytheism was much more tolerant because the idea of another God did not in any way threaten a person’s own God or Gods. They could all be true. In the same way, universalism such as developed in Hinduism – the concept of an impersonal overarching reality that transcends everything including the gods – was very tolerant. In the first century CE monotheism reached that level of universalism too, in Jewish thought, where theology was considered a private matter and not dictated from some authority on high. But fundamentalism – the belief that your own particular ideas about God are totally right and that other belief systems are wrong – always tends to lead to intolerance and antagonism and ultimately, holy war.

Karen Armstrong suggests that it is perhaps a pitfall of having a personal God, that such a concept lends itself to the “election” of a chosen people. People can project their own egotistical desires onto a personal God in a way that they can’t for an impersonal ultimate reality. However, the concept of a personal God also seems to stimulate social justice in a way that didn’t happen in India for example.

I never really understood why in Islam associating partners with God is the biggest sin. Now it all makes sense. And this is why I am repelled from religion time after time: I prefer to express what I don’t know about God, than to be so sure of my own beliefs in unseen, unprovable ideas that I allow myself to feel superior or more enlightened than others.

I can’t wait to read the rest of the book!

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Quran and hadiths: the full picture and how it makes sense

December 22, 2009 at 9:38 pm (Islam, why I didn't convert to Islam)

The discrepancy between the contents of the Quran and the hadith literature was always a bit of a puzzle. Sure, the hadiths are less accurately preserved, but overall the picture they paint is probably pretty accurate. It doesn’t seem possible that women could not have ceased worship during menstruation, for example. That cannot all be fabricated.

I couldn’t come up with an explanation for why Muhammad would add to the words of God, or even apparently override them (e.g. wiping socks instead of washing feet in wudu). The best I could come up with was that the non-Quranic things were pre-existing customs that were allowed to continue.

Another thing that struck me was how different the two are in emphasis: the Quran is more philosophical and the hadiths are more legal.

Having accepted that Muhammad was not a prophet, it has all fallen into place in my mind. The Quran was not central to everything, but was just one part of the authority that Muhammad had. It contained those matters about which external verification was needed: it let other parties know where they stood with the Muslims and with Allah. It didn’t need to contain much law, or ritual, because the followers of Muhammad accepted this direction straight from him. There was no need for it to come from the mouth of God. In a way maybe the Quran was more often for non-believers than for believers. It was poetic and persuasive and tried to win them over.

I also no longer need to believe that Muhammad was always consistent, and so contradictions between the Quran and hadiths – and between hadiths – do not need to be explained away as “inaccuracies in preservation and transmission” (although I’ve no doubt that is one cause of inconsistency too).

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God’s love

December 22, 2009 at 8:53 pm (Christianity, God, Islam)

It is often claimed that God is not as loving in Islam as in Christianity. It’s not so obvious, though.

The thing is, love is a word in English that is not easy to define – it has a whole range of meanings. It could even be equivalent to rahma (mercy) in Arabic, in which case God is definitely loving in Islam.

The Quran has verses which are translated as “God loves…” or “God does not love…” followed by types of people. These always made me bristle because I previously assumed God loves everybody. But the Arabic word for love used here is yuHibb, which can also be used to mean “he likes”. This is just my uneducated opinion, but it seems to me that these verses may be talking about what pleases or doesn’t please God, as opposed to an equivalent of what we mean by “love” in English.

Real love is not necessarily gushing and emotional stuff. Real love could be more like, an honest, constructive and encouraging appraisal, with a commitment to never turning one’s back. God is something like this in Islam. A sinner can always repent and be forgiven.

There is also the aspect of caring for the welfare of someone… that is part of love too. I think this type of love is only extended to believers. (See this article.) That is probably the main difference in God’s love between Islam and Christianity, because in Christianity the caring love is extended to everyone. But in Christianity it is difficult to reconcile God’s caring love for sinners with their eternal punishment in hell (if they don’t believe).

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What are “messages from God” if they’re not real?

December 21, 2009 at 10:23 pm (Islam, religious experiences)

I have finally finished reading the Quran, and I have to say, the last juz’ contained some very beautiful short suras – I gather these are some of the earliest. Some of them are ones my husband has recited in prayer with me, and are poetically rhyming and sound lovely. I felt devastated all over again that I’ve severed this spiritual connection between us, which today he told me he felt devastated about too. I told him at the time that I wanted to still pray with him, but he never took me up on it. Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to say in this post.

Cornelius raised an interesting question in a comment – if the Quran is not a divine book, then what is it?

I could extend this question to make it relevent to everyone: there are a whole load of people throughout history that have claimed to be receiving messages from God – if they were not really, then what was it all about?

In each case, the possibilities are:

  • fully divine
  • partially divine
  • not divine at all

with other issues of preservation when the “messenger” lived in the past.

I have a theory that the size of a religion is a proxy for how much truth is in it. So the cults led by crackpots who sleep with their followers’ wives and announce ends of the world that don’t come to pass, will never grow very big because they won’t convince too many people.

Of course the amount of effort spent on converting others is another factor in the size of the religion. So religions that don’t actively missionise or conquer, e.g. Judaism and Sikhism, will stay comparatively small.

So basically I think there is significant truth in all major world religions, but it seems likely at least some of them must contain significant falsehood too. For example heaven and hell vs. reincarnation – can these both be true? Maybe… in some deep way that we can’t understand, they are both allegorical descriptions of aspects of the same thing? I don’t know.

I feel that both the Bible and the Quran contain significant human elements – understandings that are reflective of the cultures they came out of. My readers may feel that – for example – the Sikh holy book contains human elements or even, is entirely human in origin. So my question is: how can a person believe they are receiving messages from God if they’re not really? (I am giving these messengers the benefit of the doubt and assuming they were not fraudulent.)

Not all people who claim to get messages from God – even those with modest followings – are crazy or evil people. For example Neale Donald Walsch seems fairly innocuous. So I do not take the person’s normalcy as proof of the message. If they all brought exactly the same message, then maybe. But they can not all be literally true. And to be honest, I could probably believe Muhammad was a messenger of God if I didn’t have to believe his message was the literal words of God. If it was just meant to be his divinely-inspired understanding of things, I could almost believe in it. (Some things, like his being “commanded” to marry Zainab to prove a point about adoption, are still questionable though.)

So what is it that causes sincere mystical experiences if they are not real? (Think Paul on the road to Damascus if you are Muslim.)

I do have some doubts about my conclusions on Islam – some things that make me think, hmm, maybe I can’t dismiss that.

  • Muhammad was really serious about prayer, and charity to the extent of living in poverty – he didn’t seem to be looking for worldly gains – so I think he was sincere
  • Quran is really consistent throughout, and its values about renouncing dunya really resonate with me and have had an effect on me
  • Long break in revelation after the first part – a troubling test for him – why would this happen if he was fooling himself?
  • Their early military success was against all odds
  • Quran apparently foretold a Byzantium victory

But there are many other things I can’t square up. It’s a puzzle.

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Historical story-telling in the Quran

December 20, 2009 at 8:47 pm (Islam, myth and metaphor, why I didn't convert to Islam)

I have been aware, for some time, that the Quran contains historical stories that compare to apocryphal Judeo-Christian sources. I do not think this was a coincidence.

I was always thinking that Muhammad knew those stories and God utilised the stories he knew already.

One possibility is that God was confirming only the parts of the story that were true – like including the angelic announcement to Mary, but not the part that said she actually conceived as a virgin (which I didn’t think made sense in an Islamic context). Leaving room for her to have married in the meantime and conceived naturally. The Quran often seems to subtly change the Biblical stories in ways that make them more credible. Having said that, I still have trouble with some of the stories, such as the ones that attribute apparent natural disasters to the wrath of God. I have written about that elsewhere and it is still not solved for me.

Another possibility is that the stories’ truth or falsehood didn’t really matter but they were being told in the Quran to make some other point. There are a lot of legends in the Quran, pre-existing legends, involving unrealistic things like talking birds, and Muhammad Asad interprets these as literary devices and not literal truth. But why wouldn’t God tell true stories, since He can? Why would He want to make it seem non-supernatural by using these popular legends?

The historical story-telling in the Quran is confusing and to be honest, seems like fragments of oral traditions. There seems to be only one continuous story and that’s Surah Yusuf. Why does that one get told in full and at length? I don’t know. Plus although it tells the story of Lot’s escape from Sodom and Gomorrah in several places, sometimes it says his wife was left behind, sometimes it says an old woman was left behind. Not a contradiction, but it makes it seem like these came from two different orally-transmitted traditional accounts.

It does not merely repeat pre-existing stories though – it definitely makes some changes. The major difference between the Quranic and Biblical accounts of the life of Jesus, for example, is the denial of the crucifixion (if indeed it is a denial – see my post on Jesus in the Quran for discussion on that). This caused me quite a lot of anxiety, because I don’t think there are any mainstream historians questioning the crucifixion event. We cannot build a time machine and go back to check if it really happened, but I definitely find it disconcerting that the Quran appears to depart sharply from the Christian accounts on this point. I could cope better if it said it was only the resurrection that didn’t happen, because this is disputed with the discovery of the Codex Sinaiticus.

Another thing that bothers me about the account of Jesus is that it claims the Injil (Evangel, or Gospel) was a divine book like the Quran, given to Jesus (which has now been lost). The fact is, the gospel is the “good news” that Jesus’ disciples preached of salvation. Again, a bit of mental gymnastics required to convince myself that God spoke to Muhammad through his own (albeit flawed) understanding.

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The unbelievers are the enemy

December 16, 2009 at 2:16 pm (Islam, moral issues, society, why I didn't convert to Islam)

I don’t know what I think about fighting to establish justice or eradicate oppression. I think that it could be OK to overthrow an evil dictator, but maybe only if it’s what the people of the country want. If they don’t want it, then I feel uncomfortable about the whole concept of establishing anything good through force.

I think the early Muslims did some good in uniting tribal Arabia under tawheed, and in later spreading what was at that time probably the most equitable, just civilisation that had existed, across a third of the world. But I think that in doing that, at some point they must have voided the Quranic injunction not to commit aggression. Perhaps the instructions can legitimately change over time and with circumstances; as I have said before, the Quran does not have to be viewed as a universal life manual. Maybe at some point it became appropriate to conquer. What do you think?

I think the reason I feel uncomfortable boils down to the stark categorisation of people into believers and unbelievers. I think professed belief is an inadequate and overly simplistic way of judging and defining people. It is just one more way of dividing humans and breeding prejudice and de-humanisation of the “other”. I find it hard to imagine that God views us that way.

I was actually quite impressed that Muhammad signed the treaty of Hudaybiyya and didn’t charge into Mecca, and then eventually conquered it without much bloodshed, along with mass conversion to Islam and amnesty granted. I thought this demonstrated wisdom, as per Tariq Ramadan “The Messenger”. They had held back from fighting the unbelievers, and in doing so, turned many of them into believers – which is better.

But then I read the Quran verses about the Hudaybiyya incident and I changed my mind. God apparently said that if it weren’t for the presence of believers in Mecca, He would have had the Muslims fight their way in. It sounds like it was God’s concern for the plight of believers that caused the restraint, rather than God’s desire to cause more hearts to believe and His foreknowledge that this would happen. If there hadn’t been believers in Mecca He would have had the Meccans killed at the hands of the Muslims rather than give them that chance to come to faith. This upset me quite a lot.

48:25 [It was not for your enemies sake that He stayed your hands from them: for] it was they who were bent on denying the truth, and who debarred you from the Inviolable House of Worship and prevented your offering from reaching its destina­tion. And had it not been for the believing men and believing women [in Mecca], whom you might have unwittingly trampled underfoot, and on whose account you might have become guilty, without knowing it, of a grievous wrong: [had it not been for this, you would have been allowed to fight your way into the city: but you were forbidden to fight] so that [in time] God might admit to His grace whomever He wills. Had they [who deserve Our mercy and they whom We have condemned] been clearly discernible [to you], We would indeed have imposed grievous suffering [at your hands] on such of them as were bent on denying the truth.

Maybe it’s my Christian background, but I like to think God sees the potential in every person and isn’t quick to write them off.

When I see people posting scholarly articles banning Muslims from congratulating the kuffar on their festivals, and other things like that that are extremely separatist and have an undercurrent of hatred, I get upset and tie myself in knots trying to convince myself this attitude is not authentically Islamic. And maybe it isn’t. This is a weird period of time that we’re in. However, as much as I’ve tried, I can’t find much support for being loving and merciful towards unbelievers in the Quran. Polite, yes, and respectful; but all your most loving qualities seem to be for the believers only. Perhaps I am missing something here?

48:29 MUHAMMAD is God’s Apostle; and those who are [truly] with him are firm and unyielding towards all deniers of the truth, [yet] full of mercy towards one another...

5:54 …God will in time bring forth [in your stead] people whom He loves and who love Him – humble towards the believers, proud towards all who deny the truth…

58:14 ART THOU NOT aware of those who would be friends with people whom God has condemned? They are neither of you [O believers] nor of those [who utterly reject the truth]: and so they swear to a falsehood the while they know [it to be false]. God has readied for them suffering severe [in the life to come]…

58:22 Thou canst not find people who [truly] believe in God and the Last Day and [at the same time] love anyone who contends against God and His Apostle – even though they be their fathers, or their sons, or their brothers, or [others of] their kindred…

A related question is why belief is so important in the first place. I’ve always understood the Quran to be saying that wrong beliefs are the basis of all badness. In other words, the pagans were wicked and unjust precisely because they didn’t have correct beliefs about God.  But there are many people who have wrong beliefs according to the Quran and yet are very good people.

Any thoughts?

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Tentative conclusions

December 14, 2009 at 4:38 pm (Islam, why I didn't convert to Islam)

I am in two minds about posting on why I arrived at a lack of belief in Islam. I do want to record this for myself (that’s what my blog is for), and I think some people will want to read it. I am also still open to any answers Muslims might be able to give me, so that is another reason to write it on the blog. But I hesitate because I don’t want to destroy anyone’s faith. Maybe it’s big-headed of me to think my problems with Islam are big enough to impact on anyone’s faith, though; and people can decide for themselves whether to read it or not (I will not be offended if anyone decides not to). Another thing I am a bit worried about is the threats others have experienced when criticising Islam (admittedly they probably did so with less respect than I am going to do). I don’t know how worried I need to be but I’m going to do this in parts and see how it goes.

It was not one thing that broke the deal for me, it was a lot of little things that I was tying myself in knots trying to be OK with. I have been called a perfectionist, and often in life I give up with things because I cannot cope with imperfect situations. This is what has been happening lately with Islam and I recognised the familiar pattern. The discomfort and panicked wrestling has blunted my enthusiasm. My first thought was, I need to tolerate the uncertainty and the problematic elements, just like with other aspects of life – I can make it work for me. Nothing is perfect, even religion – we have to work with that and not just throw it out and start from scratch again.

With another religion that might be OK. But with Islam, it’s not OK to think the religion is imperfect. The Quran calls itself a book written by God, and so there’s really no room for thinking that it’s OK for some of it to be wrong.

I had already rejected the idea that it had to have been perfectly preserved. A year ago I read a book by scholar Farid Esack which spoke of “variant readings” of the Quran existing, and quoted historical figures from the first caliphates saying that no-one could be sure the whole of the Quran had been collected and none of it had been lost! I think what we do have of the Quran has been preserved pretty accurately and any variations were of limited impact. But because I couldn’t see God subjecting important detailed information to these flawed human transmission processes, I was of the opinion that the overall message is probably what matters – and is simple enough to have been well preserved – rather than any specific verses. So that’s not in itself an obstacle to faith in it.

But what is the overall message? It calls itself a reminder, which implies it doesn’t contain new information and need not be seen as a definitive guide for life. Indeed I don’t think it is. I saw it as more the product of a conversation between Muhammad and God in which he is instructed to warn and guide and remind people of God. As you read it, much of it is instructions or information regarding situations he was facing – how to deal with unbelievers, what to say to them, how to warn the hypocrites, and the Jews and Christians, how to argue for the existence of God and resurrection and judgment, how and when to fight, and to a certain extent what laws to put in place. It reads more as a book of guidance for Muhammad than a book of guidance for people everywhere. Of course there may be guidance in it that is relevant for people everywhere, but it is not structured as a life manual. There is no equivalent of the ten commandments, no place where it sets out exactly what moral conduct is. The other day I trawled through it looking for a verse to support the moral precept that lying is wrong, and it was harder to find than you would think for a divine “life manual”. Which can be OK – maybe that’s just not what it is, it’s just a reminder of the eternal principles of tawheed, delivered in the form of situational divine insights to Muhammad.

But it still has to be perfect. If any of these situational divine insights are flawed, then it throws the whole thing into doubt. Unless I am going to believe that Muhammad was divinely inspired some of the time, and mistaken some of the time – but by this point I would be so far from orthodoxy that there would be no point calling myself a Muslim. Or unless I can convince myself the questionable bits were inauthentic, like I do with the hadiths – but there is far less justification for that with the Quran, and it would also put me far out of the mainstream. So basically it has to be perfect. And this is why I have been putting myself through hell: worrying over so many things that don’t seem perfect, trying to hold on to Islam, making myself exhausted in the process.

I just want to say that although I don’t think God wrote the Quran, I do think there is truth in it, and goodness. I think Islam can be a path that leads people to God. I do think that goodness can grow even out of flawed origins. Islam has flourished and evolved as it’s become a world religion, and I know people do find meaning and truth and beauty in it; whether this is original or not perhaps doesn’t matter. I don’t know exactly what I think of Muhammad but I have never entertained the notion that he was a fraud, and I still can’t believe he was. I think he was sincere and I think the empire he started was, on balance, a force for good in the world. If I wasn’t such a perfectionist, I’m sure I could have converted.

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I have to break my silence

December 13, 2009 at 10:12 am (why I didn't convert to Islam)

I have realised I cannot be Muslim.

That feeling of certainty, of peace, has finally come to me – I didn’t want it to be like this, but I’ve been living a kind of hell for the past few weeks and it just feels so good to be out of it that I feel nothing but gratitude.

This whole long episode is like a fire that has refined me and I’ve come out purer, stronger, knowing much more clearly what I believe and what I don’t. I feel much closer to God and much more ready to trust God. I am not afraid of life any more at this point.

I am shocked that certainty has come so swiftly, but this is what happens when all the pieces suddenly slot together. When all is right with your head, then all is right with your heart too.

Not much has really changed, I still have much the same beliefs, and the same values. What was genuine has stuck. But I’m seeing life in colour again. It’s like when I left church – I can see beauty in the world again now.

I will explain more soon. My very next post will be about personal repercussions, and will be password-protected with a NEW password. If you would like the password, email me or leave a comment with your email address.

Peace…

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