The Dignity of Difference

Arches National Park - Utah

The Most Noble Sanctuary

"O Mankind! We have created you from a male and a female, and made you into separate nations and tribes, that you may know one another."

~ Qur'an 49:13

During the process of my philosophical reawakening, I made a surprising discovery; my love for Islam.  I know many westerners cringe at the thought.  Most only know Islam from what they see on television today.  The traditional homeland of the faith suffers from unremitting hostility fueled by extremist fundamentalism and totalitarianism.  The result has been some of the most heinous human rights violations imaginable.  Unfortunately, the very same was said of Christianity during Europe’s Dark Ages.  I tell you now, Islam is in its dark age.  If they are to be judged solely on today, it stands to reason Christianity should never have been allowed to survive to the modern day.  But we knew Christianity to have a solid foundation in Jesus and his chosen apostles.  Likewise, Islam has a foundation every bit as impressive.

It is a familiar and unfortunate human failing to discredit and malign our enemies.  Centuries of unremitting hostilities during the various Crusades, the Spanish Reconquista, the trade wars of the renaissance, and the Western colonial expansion period have left us with a confusing legacy mixed with lies and half truths intended to substantiate and strengthen the Western cause.  Western theologians and historians have only recently begun reexamining Islam in an attempt to separate fact from fiction.  Some of their “discoveries” are astounding and bare testimony to the continuity of the human spirit as our similarities far outnumber our differences.

Muhammad lived in a violent, desperately brutal society and he managed to bring peace to that world. Now this may come as a surprise to some, but he did it through peaceable means not by force.  Suffering persecution in his native Mecca, he was invited by the neighboring waring clans of the large agricultural oasis of Yathrib to mitigate an end to more than a century of devastating tribal blood-feuds.  Drafting the Ṣaḥīfat al-Madīna, Muhammad established a peaceable and diverse democratic federation encompassing the eight Medinan tribes and the Muslim immigrants from Mecca.  This alliance included Muslims, Arabs, Jews, Christians, and pagans... each vested citizens of this new society.

This was an absolutely astounding achievement for its day and did not go unnoticed by Muhammad’s rivals.  For six years, he fought a war of survival against Mecca.  The Meccans, who correctly perceived a threat to their long established power as droves converted to Islamic monotheism and trade began to shift to Medina, were intent on exterminating the Muslim community.  Once the tides of war clearly and irrevocably shifted to the advantage of Medina, Muhammad did the unthinkable.  Instead of bringing Mecca to her knees by an inevitable victory through violence,  Medina switched to a campaign of nonviolence that was not too dissimilar from that practiced by Gandhi and other inspiring leaders. For two long years, they persevered.  Finally, Muhammad rode into Mecca with a thousand unarmed followers and sued for peace... a peace favoring Mecca.  So shocking and contrary to millennia of tribal custom, word spread throughout the region, igniting a social revolution.  Within a few years, Muhammad and his followers were welcomed back into Mecca, not as enemies but as allies.

This isn't to say atrocities were not committed by all sides during the conflict.  They were.  But Muhammad had a lesson to teach.  Compassion was the only avenue open for lasting peace.  This set the tone for Islamic expansion for centuries to come.

Because he comes so much later and there is so much more documentation, we know more about the founder of Islam than we do of almost any other major tradition.  His first biographers really tried to document history, maybe not quite history as we know it today, but they certainly presented the prophet in the most realistic light possible.  The al-sīra and hadith collections are biographies and accounts of the verbal and physical traditions of the prophet... providing a very humanizing glimpse of the man who's name means "praiseworthy." 

They reveal Muhammad sometimes having very real and familiar trouble with his wives. People often assume that he had a harem selected for their beauty and subservience designed to cater to his every indulgence.  Far from it!  The wives were often a headache and undertaken for political reasons.  Many were vibrant, intelligent, and, dare we say, insistent.  Surprisingly, his views of family and marriage more closely match our 21st century ideal than what was common in the 6th and 7th centuries.  He attempted to bring more equality and security to women and tried to overturn millennia of tribal custom.  He viewed his wives as both a challenge and a blessing.  He felt it his duty to learn to love, cherish, honor, and respect them as he knew Allah did.

They show Muhammad playing often with his adored grandchildren, even putting little Hassan and Hussein on his shoulders and running around with them.  They recount him weeping over the deaths of family and friends and speak of the comfort and advice given his beloved daughters.  In short, they detail his struggles, vulnerabilities along with the careful striving and literal sweating to craft and utter the astonishing words of the Qur'an. The poetry of the Qur'an is mostly lost in translation, but the Arabic, I'm told, is an exercise in absolute unsurpassed beauty.  Listening to it, I have no doubt.

Muhammad taught that not only Abraham, but Moses, Jesus, Adam are all revered great prophets.  You cannot be a Muslim and deny the truth they taught.  Your Islamic spirit must include an appreciation of these other traditions.  The People of the Book; Jews, Sabians, Christians, and Muslims are indelibly linked.

It is common for the mystics of Islam, the sufi, to exclaim in jubilation that they are no longer a Muslim, a Jew or a Christian; that they are equally home in a mosque, synagogue, temple or church.  They reason once we touch the divine such man-made distinctions become meaningless and we can leave them behind.  This is both extraordinary and inspiring.

Instead of seeing other traditions as, at best, a mistake, sufism inspires us to see them as positive and enriching.  True Islam can give us a blueprint to explore other spiritual traditions and to draw what inspiration we can from them.

"If God had willed he would have made you one nation. But He did not do so, that he may try you in what has come to you. So, compete with one another in good works; Unto God shall you return; altogether; and he will tell you the Truth about what you have been disputing."

~ Qur'an 5:48

Faith as Ethical Alchemy

The Bronx Zoo - New York City

Learning to Live Compassionately

The vase where this verbena’s dying

Was cracked by a lady’s fan’s soft blow.

It must have been the merest grazing:

We heard no sound.  The fissure grew.

The little wound spread while we slept,

Pried deep in the crystal, bit by bit.

A long, slow marching line, it crept

From spreading base to curving lip.

The water oozed out drop by drop,

Bled from the line we’d not seen etched.

The flowers drained out all their sap.

The vase is broken: do not touch.

The quick, sleek hand of one we love

Can tap us with a fan’s soft blow,

And we will break, as surely riven

As that cracked vase. And no one knows.

The world sees just the hard, curved surface

Of a vase a lady’s fan once grazed,

That slowly drips and bleeds with sadness.

Do not touch the broken vase.

~ The Broken Vase, By Sully Prudomme 

Translated by Robert Archambeau

The epistles of Paul, those actually attributed to him anyways, are filled with love for people.  He taught we can endure all manner of trial including being crucified as martyrs, have faith capable of moving mountains but if we lack charity, none of that matters.

Surprisingly, true religion is not about believing things.  It is said the Jewish rabbi, Hillel, an older contemporary of Jesus, was once approached by a group of pagans.  They said they would convert to Judaism if he could recite the entire Tora while balancing on one leg.  He responded with, “Do not do unto others what you would not have done unto you.  That is the Tora.  The rest is commentary.  Go and learn it.”  (Babylonian Talmud - Shabbat 31a)

Beyond the dogma, endless meetings, planning and herding the faithful, there is an underlying element in Mormonism, and many other religions for that matter, that often goes under appreciated; service.  I’m beginning to understand what religion tries to convey at its best.  It really doesn’t matter what you believe.  Religion is about doing things.  It’s about living in a compassionate way that changes you.  Instead of creeds and beliefs, Judaism and Islam place the emphasis on a collection of practices... like giving alms, prayer, fasting, worship.  These observances are designed to change our inner world.  Each is an opportunity to encounter God.

You also see this in the Gospels.  There is very little doctrine as we now know it.  Jesus isn’t going about giving dissertations on the Godhead, original sin, divinity, or other finer points of doctrine.  He’s going out visiting sinners, traitors, the nonbelieving and unclean... people beneath contempt.  He seemingly valued practice over ideas... much like Buddhism does today.

Religion is a form of ethical alchemy.  As we strive to behave in compassionate ways, it changes us.  Egotism and greed keep us from a knowledge of the divine.  It's not the believing of creeds or the undertaking various sacraments but compassion that allows us the perspective to apprehend the sacred.

The Buddha said that the practice of compassion can introduce us to Nirvana. Jesus said that on the last day, it's those who have visited people who are sick and naked, hungry and in prison, looked after them, who will enter the kingdom of God.  They are the ones who enter God's presence, not those who necessarily have the "correct" theology or the "right" sexual ethics.

So many different faith traditions have come to the conclusion that compassion is the test... it’s the key to exaltation.  I do not believe they all came to this same conclusion out of happenstance.  They came to it because it really does work.

We are at our most creative and wonderful when we are ready to give ourselves away... when we are in the service of others.  Equally, we are the most dangerous, the most unimaginative when we only seek ourselves and our own benefit.  It is in the service of others that we ultimately find ourselves.  When we find ourselves, we find God... not the other way around.

Pursuing Happiness

Along State Hwy. 6 - Near Green River Utah

The Greater Jihad

The Universal Tenet of Happiness

I just finished listening to an incredible conversation hosted by Krista Tippett of American Public Media's "Being" on stage at Emory University.  The panelists included His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama - the exiled head of state and spiritual leader of Tibet, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks - Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth, The Most Reverend Dr. Katharine Jefferts Schori - the 26th Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, and Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr - Professor of Islamic Studies at George Washington University and one of the world's leading experts on Islamic science and spirituality.  The night’s topic; “pursuing happiness with the Dalai Lama.”

I found it especially applicable to the evolving purpose of this blog... a purpose I am still struggling to properly quantify.  I left contemplating two related considerations that I currently find especially pertinent and personal as I fuel my pursuit of happiness.

One of the most commonly used words in Arabic for “happiness” literally means “expanded or enlarged.”  In her closing comments, Ms. Tippett said, “In the 21st century, all religious people must feel themselves enlarged rather than threatened by the presence of religious others.”  This begs two questions; “Do I feel enlarged?” and “Do I enlarge others?”  In pondering these questions and reminiscing personal situations, I came to the not-so-astonishing conclusion that one can not be accomplished without the other and that happiness requires both.

Because my Mormon upbringing tends to view life and faith in rather black and white terms, I haven't felt particularly enlarged as I insist on the shades of gray more common among pluralists.  Understandably, I often feel threatened by rigid sectarianism.  Intended or not, I find much of their common jargon, phraseology, and dogma to be depreciating, condescending and exclusionary.  Unfortunately, in these moments of instinctive partisanship, I too find it difficult to enlarge those outside my defined understanding.  I become defensive and I miss opportunities for open dialog by choosing to be equally uncompromising.

I can firmly say I still do embrace many intrinsically Mormon philosophies yet I seem to seek out sources outside the more traditional Mormon paradigm in my efforts to advance my thinking on such topics.  With rare exception, I tend to view Mormon opinion with far more skepticism.  Tonight's conversation touched on why.

“...thou shalt not abhor an Egyptian; because thou wast a stranger in his land.”  

~Deut. 23:7

Having left Egypt, Moses counseled his followers.  To be truly free of Egypt, they must also leave behind their hatred for their enemy.  I thought my enemy was having my ideas and beliefs considered a betrayal; meritless and damaging in the eyes of those with whom I had once communed.  But as Moses points out, my enemy is much closer and much more personal than that.  My enemy is any hurt and disappointment I allow such considerations to cause.  It is the resentment caused by judgement, real or otherwise, to which I give credence.

I long for the serenity and consistency exemplified by the Buddha.  It is that enlightenment or exalted state which we should all strive and it can only be achieved through the introspective battle of self-betterment... addressing those inner shortcomings preventing us from reaching true and sustainable happiness.

“One of my Muslim friend explained to me one interpretation of Jihad, not only sort of attack on other, but real meaning is combative attack your own wrongdoing or negativities.  So in that sentence, the whole Buddhist practice is practice of Jihad.”

~ the Dalai Lama