Morning Star

Compare and contrast

John Paul II wrote of the beauty of the feminine vocation, which is rooted in Christian anthropology:

Let us enter into the setting of the biblical "beginning." In it the revealed truth concerning man as "the image and likeness" of God constitutes the immutable basis of all Christian anthropology."God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them" (Gen 1:27). This concise passage contains the fundamental anthropological truths: man is the highpoint of the whole order of creation in the visible world; the human race, which takes its origin from the calling into existence of man and woman, crowns the whole work of creation; both man and woman are human beings to an equal degree, both are created in God's image. This image and likeness of God, which is essential for the human being, is passed on by the man and woman, as spouses and parents, to their descendants: "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it" (Gen 1: 28). The Creator entrusts dominion over the earth to the human race, to all persons, to all men and women, who derive their dignity and vocation from the common "beginning" (Mulieris Dignitatem, 6).

Islam, however, has a different view, which begins with the denial of the fatherhood of God, and is followed by the belief that men and women are not equal:

A recent talk show on the Egyptian station Al Hafiz partially explains why it is that Islam’s clerics are staunchly against discussing Christian or biblical teachings in Egyptian schoolrooms—even as the teaching of the Quran is mandatory, for both Muslim and Christian students.

Discussing Christianity’s teachings concerning women, one of the guests, a sheikh dressed in traditional cleric garb, said they “truly stab the rulings of Islam.” To exemplify, he read from a text that said “the Christian religion does not differentiate between women and men, but it confirms their perfect equality: it gives them an equal share in inheritance, it bans divorce, and it bans polygamy.”

“Now,” said the sheikh, “if my son hears such things while he’s in school, he’ll come home and say to me, ‘Father why do you have many wives? You are unjust—unlike Christianity which is full of justice’!”

He went on to say that such teachings completely contradict “the religion of the prophet,” who of course had many wives—more than the Quran’s prescribed four—made divorce a simple matter for men, and decreed that females only inherit half of what males inherit.

The cleric complained that, based on such Christian teachings, Muslim men who try to exercise their Islamic rights—including polygamy, double-inheritance, and easy divorce (recent examples include via text-messaging)—become “criminals, and the religion [Islam] that taught them such things taught them crimes.”

The cleric concluded by saying it is impermissible “to produce texts that contradict the teachings of the Quran, or the practices we’ve been raising our children on for a million years.”

[While "a million years" may sound like an exaggeration, it is not to Muslims, who believe that everyone from Adam and Eve and afterwards were faithful Muslims. I don't know how long ago they believe man was first created, but although Muhammed was the most perfect Muslim and their revered prophet, he was not the first to live according to Qur'anic principles. According to Muslims, all Old Testament prophets were pious Muslims, as well as John the Baptist and Jesus.]

But back to the initial point, all Muslims are slaves of Allah (not sons and daughters) and the strict hierarchy among persons includes the precedence of men over women, not to mention Muslims over non-believers. Equality doesn't enter into it--only obedience and fidelity to the example of Muhammed.

No other comparative teachings could have a greater impact on the lives of women. Polygamy and the laws related to divorce--which the cleric reminds is are non-negotiable--reveal the lack of dignity enjoyed by Muslim women, for if they cannot find refuge in lasting, exclusive marriages, how can they ever find security?

Islam and modernism

This British newspaper gives a searing account of a woman who was married at the age of five and given to her husband when she was fourteen.

Dressed in a fancy new outfit, little Samina Shah thought she was getting ready for her birthday party.  Instead she was being married off — having just turned five.  The Islamic ceremony effectively ended her childhood and paved the way for years of abuse.

She used to dread evenings when she would have to tearfully face the advances of her husband. The marriage was eventually consummated against her will after she suffered a horrific beating. After three months it was decided she should live under lock and key back in England until she turned 16.

It is important to sift out the various elements and to try to understand what part Islam played in the arrangement. Her parents were clearly Muslims, the man who contracted the marriage (there is no account of his age) was also a Muslim. Pakistan, the cultural  home to them all (although the bride and her family lived in England) had been Muslim for well over a thousand years.

Sadly, when she tried one avenue of escape, she was propelled right back into her old life:

Samina breaks down and sobs: “I was so upset, I thought everyone had abandoned me.” Contemplating suicide, she started writing a text of apology to her daughter. She said: “Then I thought, how could I? She needed me — I couldn’t leave her.”

Samina found herself outside a church where she knew the priest. She said: “I was so disheartened I wanted to abandon everything I had been taught in childhood. “I thought the best thing I could do was to convert. Maybe being a Christian would give me peace.”

But the priest told her Islam had not let her down — people had. He contacted a Muslim woman who gave Samina a bed for the night and a shoulder to cry on.

This is the crux of the matter: who defines Islam? Nice people can say that the unpleasant parts are unjustified and that they must be purged from the faith. But who has the authority to do that? Faithful Muslims are entirely correct: if Mohammed is the penultimate prophet of Allah (the one true god) and the model for Muslims, then no one can tinker with the "deposit of faith."

It is an all or nothing equation, just as in Christianity. Either Muhammed is the model (and child marriage is completely licit) or Jesus Christ is the model (and marriage has an entirely different meaning). Modernism is just as wrong for Islam as it is for Christianity. If God spoke, then man must comply, if God didn't speak, than no one needs to comply -- and it's abominable to try to recreate a more palatable religion in "his" name.

Muslim feminists have worked hard to say that Islam is the one true religion but that its cultural accretions must be changed. What they cannot explain is how the culture of Muhammed was incorporated into the faith from its very inception and codified through shari'a law as the most perfect expression of Islam. Just as you cannot have Christianity without Jesus, you cannot have Islam without Muhammed. Modernists in both case try to dismiss the lives lived by those two as "victims of their own times and culture," and subsequently work to "sanitise" each religion of the parts they don't like.

Christians take Christ at his word; Muslims take Mohammed at his word. The bottom line is: Which word is true, and which faith honours the true dignity and vocation of woman?

Rick Warren's clarification

Earlier this week, I read with dismay that Rick Warren said he believed that Muslims and Christians worship the same God, a view with which I heartily disagree. Insisting that his view had been completely misrepresented, he clarified his approach in a three page white paper today, stating firmly that he does not share that view.

When asked by [The Christian Post] about the [Orange County] Register's lead paragraph that states he "has embarked on an effort to heal divisions between evangelical Christians and Muslims by partnering with Southern California mosques and proposing a set of theological principles that includes acknowledging that Christians and Muslims worship the same God," Warren stated: 
"First, as I've already said, Christians have a fundamentally different view of God than Muslims. We worship Jesus as God. Muslims don't. Second, while we urge members to build friendships with Muslims and everyone in our community ("Love your neighbor as yourself"), our church has no partnership with any mosque. For example, I know that some of our members have led Bible study with Muslim friends, which I applaud. But I've never been to it, and it certainly isn't any kind of partnership or merger. It's crazy how a simple Bible study can be interpreted by some people as a plan for a new religion!"

While there is confusion over the fact that Muslims believe in the virgin birth of Christ, and that he was a legitimate prophet, the fact that they insist he was a Muslim, that he believed what is found in the Qur'an, that he didn't die on the cross but was taken to heaven, and that he will return at the final judgment to smash the cross and confirm Muhammed as the ultimate prophet indicates that Christians and Muslims worship two different gods.

The God of the Christians--the way, the truth and the life--is one who promotes humility and sacrifice, oblation and love of all; Allah--who is called the "all merciful"--is also called "the greatest of deceivers," endorses brutal killing of his "enemies" and tells his followers to love only Muslims and hate all others. Unless this one god is schizophrenic, they cannot be the same. And since the Christian God is simplicity and truth, Allah is something/someone else.

The Persecuted Church

I have a piece posted on Catholic Lane, related to a conference I attended over the weekend here in the Boston area.

Most riveting were the firsthand accounts of two young women, Juliana Taimoorazy, the Executive Director of the Iraqi Christian Relief Council, and Cynthia Farahat, an Egyptian political activist and writer. They testified to daily harassment and oppression by police and radical Muslims. They spoke bravely about the constant fear and the innumerable political obstacles to living freely in societies predominated by Islam.

One of the most poignant comments was made by Ms. Farahat, who explained that she was forced to live as a fourth-class citizen in Egypt. (Christian women rank behind Muslim males, Muslim females, and Christian males in such objectively stratified cultures. Surely, that reality is a far-cry from the constant grumbling about “patriarchal values in our own society, where females outnumber males in most post-graduate studies.)

As the article notes, there was great good in being there, seeing how many people see through the media distortions about the real victims around the world, but there was a significant disconnect as well, related to the Larger Narrative in which we're privileged to participate. [Read it all.]

A light in Syria

 

A little more about this extraordinary woman, Mother Agnès Mariam of the Cross:

When I was 13-14 years old I rebelled. I have somewhat of an extreme character and my rebellion led me to break with society. It was 1967: all the hippies – the Flower Power movement – were coming to Beirut because Lebanon had the best cannabis. I loved the hippies, they were free, original, and wore special clothing. One year later I joined them and the year after that I followed them to wander the earth. I crossed all of Europe, staying a long time in Amsterdam and in Denmark which were the hippie-capitals. During my journeys I had several conversion experiences.

One time I was in Amsterdam, after having travelled through all of Europe, India and Nepal, and I was telling myself: “I have lived everything, I have tried everything and nothing has made me happy. My life is a fiasco, it is better for me to die.” At that very moment of utter darkness and misery the Lord revealed to me the mystery of the human being, created after His image and likeness. I felt, at that moment, like a great light visiting me in my darkness. Being in the greatest misery, suddenly I found myself in the glory of God, I saw myself just like God sees me, in the original beauty, after the plan of the Creator.

Clearly, God will not want any of his lost sheep to perish, just as Our Lord promised here:

What is your opinion? If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray, will he not leave the ninety-nine in the hills and go in search of the stray? And if he finds it, amen, I say to you, he rejoices more over it than over the ninety-nine that did not stray. In just the same way, it is not the will of your heavenly Father that any one of these little ones be lost (Matthew 18:12-14).

Please look around the site of this community, the Monastery of Saint James the Mutilated*, founded by Mother Agnès Mariam and two other women in 1994.

For a more realistic explanation of what is happening in Syria under the aegis of the "Arab Spring," please read the account linked from this page.

And pray for these dear brothers and sisters in Christ!

* appears to be a Persian Christian, martyred by dismemberment in the 4th century under the rule of King Shapur II.

Child marriages justified

Raymond Ibrahim has pointed out a very troubling fatwa (Islamic ruling) from Saudi Arabia:

Muslim "child-marriage"—euphemism for pedophilia—is making headlines again, at least in Arabic media: Dr. Salih bin Fawzan, a prominent cleric and member of Saudi Arabia's highest religious council, just issued a fatwa asserting that there is no minimum age for marriage, and that girls can be married "even if they are in the cradle."

Appearing in Saudi papers on July 13, the fatwa complains that "Uninformed interference with Sharia rulings by the press and journalists is on the increase, posing dire consequences to society, including their interference with the question of marriage to small girls who have not reached maturity, and their demand that a minimum age be set for girls to marry."

Fawzan insists that nowhere does Sharia set an age limit for marrying girls: like countless Muslim scholars before him, he relies on Koran 65:4, which discusses marriage to females who have not yet begun menstruating (i.e., are prepubescent)  and the fact that Muhammad, Islam's role model, married Aisha when she was 6-years-old, "consummating" the marriage—or, in modern parlance, raping her—when she was 9.

The point of the Saudi fatwa, however, is not that girls as young as 9 can have sex, based on Muhammad's example, but rather that there is no age limit whatsoever; the only question open to consideration is whether the girl is physically capable of handling her husband/rapist.  Fawzan documents this point by quoting Ibn Batal's authoritative exegesis of Sahih Bukhari:

The ulema [Islam's interpreters] have agreed that it is permissible for fathers to marry off their small daughters, even if they are in the cradle.  But it is not permissible for their husbands to have sex with them unless they are capable of being placed beneath and bearing the weight of the men.  And their capability in this regard varies based on their nature and capacity.  Aisha was 6 when she married the prophet, but he had sex with her when she was 9 [i.e., when she was deemed capable].

Fawzan concludes his fatwa with a warning: "It behooves those who call for setting a minimum age for marriage to fear Allah and not contradict his Sharia, or try to legislate things Allah did not permit.  For laws are Allah's province; and legislation is his excusive right, to be shared by none other.  And among these are the rules governing marriage."

Since there is no single authority for all Muslims, they rely primarily on texts to explain what Islamic teaching should be. Thus, while interpretations vary, those that cling to the example of the prophet and the Quran reveal the real heart of the faith. Surely, there are some who might hold the prophet and the texts at arms' length, but it is hard for them to justify it without admitting that they're simply watering down Islam.

It would appear the such fatwas legitimately show that the pure faith is grievously harmful to women and girls.