A Student's Comments on our Mosque Visit

Caveat

These are comments made by a student (albeit an aging one). I am not a scholar of this complex subject. But if, as a fellow-student, you are interested in comparing these reactions to your own, feel free to browse. Maybe you will have more answers.

Contents

• Comments on our visit to the Oshawa mosque
• A Digression on the Relationship between Arabs and Islam
• Islam in Concept

Comments on our visit to the Oshawa mosque

• this was a very worthwhile trip -- not, of course, from the point of view of mosque architecture -- but simply to hear practising Muslims describe their faith -- it was wonderful that Dr. Ritchie arranged it for us
  
  
• the leaders from the Oshawa Mosque seemed very kind, gentle, and considerate people
  
  
• all the more reason to be surprised by the occasional unreflectiveness of some of their comments -- the gates of itjihad (rational thinking) seem certainly to be closed, at least some of the time
  • for example, 'everyone knows' that Jews are tricksters ('everyone knows' usually translates as 'here is one of my unexamined prejudices')
  • 9:30 The Jews call 'Uzair [Ezra] a son of Allah, and the Christians call Christ the son of Allah.... They imitate the saying of those who disbelieved of old.... How perverse they are! [Yosuf Ali translation]-- N.J. Dawood (the Iraqui Jewish translator of my copy of the Qur'an) comments: "This charge does not appear to have any basis in Jewish religious teachings." -- but clearly this lack of evidence is irrelevant for the devout Muslim -- if the Qur'an says it then our duty is to believe it without question and all Jews (and Christians) will burn in hell
  • 'everyone knows' that Islam is the only religion of God because all other religions are named after a person or a tribe (true enough for Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, -- but not, for example, true of Taoism)
  • Shias are a deviating sect of Islam and are quite wrong and not true Muslims -- Sunnis are the only true Muslims
  • the Oshawa Mosque leaders talked the normal party line that all the early revelations of Allah (the Torah and the Gospels) have been changed and perverted over time and only the Qur'an preserved in its original purity
    • however, I must say it's hard to see the Gospels as a revelation via the Prophet Jesus -- the Qur'an is primarily in the first person (Allah's words conveyed by Gabriel to Muhammed) whereas the Gospels are a collection of Jesus' sayings and activities (more parallel to the Hadith than the Qur'an) -- it is hard to see what direct revelations were given to and then 'recited' by the Prophet Jesus -- the analogy does not seem to hold very well
    • also one can wonder when Uthman (the 3rd Caliph) pronounced in favour of Zaid's collection of the Qur'an and ordered all other versions destroyed 20 years after Muhaamad's death whether this process of human decision-making was completely infallible (not to get into the whole 'Satanic verses' issue)
  • the Oshawa Mosque leaders seem clearly to believe in the authority of men over women -- whereas sometimes Muslims argue that non-Muslims are mis-translating 4:34: "Men have authority over women because Allah has made the one superior to the others ... As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them." (Dawood translation) -- but I take it that the Oshawa group believes that the woman should be in the home, preparing the meals, and teaching the children while the man should be the breadwinner (was the merchant Khadijah [Muhammad's first wife] then to be the last of Mulsima business women?)
  • I am not clear who defines who is a Prophet and who not? -- in Christianity the term is used for pre-Christ figures -- however, the conversion of Paul (Saul) on the road to Damascus sounds like a direct revelation that made him into God's 'Apostle to the Gentiles' -- so why does he not qualify as a Prophet? -- the Oshawa folks seem to consider that he simply messed things up and changed and perverted the revelations given to the Prophet Jesus
  
  
• I have a continuing uncertainty in understanding the term "unbeliever"
  • for example, consider 98:1 "The unbelievers among the People of the Book [Jews and Christians] shall burn forever in the fire of Hell. They are the vilest of all creatures." -- I had hoped that in a period of tolerance (say, in Andalusia) this would be interpreted as something like: 'we each have our own terminology but at the core we all are monotheists with a consistent morality -- however, those among the People of the Book who do not even believe their own scriptures (i.e., backsliding Jews and Christians) will burn in hell although devout Jews and Christians will, like devout Muslims, have a place in paradise' -- but clearly this is not the Muslim interpretation -- Christians and Jews are, by definition, unbelievers (non-Muslims) and so will all burn in hell (whether they are faithful followers of their own religions or not)
  • listening to the Oshawa people talk it sounds simply as if an unbeliever is one who does not believe in the unity of God (which is held to include all Jews and Christians -- see above) -- but in many places the Qur'an calls someone an unbeliever if they do something wrong (e.g., "He is not a believer who eats his fill when his neighbour beside him is hungry") -- which makes me think that "unbeliever" has become simply a synonym for "sinner"?
  • Andalusia was a wonderful time of peaceful coexistence -- but it would seem (unless my interpretation is wrong) that Muslims were peacefully coexisting with those (Jews and Christians) whom they knew were going to go to hell -- they were not forced to convert to Islam (for 'there is no compulsion in religion') but, nonetheless, if they did not convert they were damned forever -- this seems to be a very restricted type of 'tolerance' -- like being kind to a 'dead man walking' -- though the story is touching of Muhammad weeping at a Jewish funeral because it meant another soul had not been saved

A Digression on the Relationship between Arabs and Islam

• this can be a puzzling one -- obviously the teachings of Muhammed began in the Arab world and the Qur'an was revealed by Allah in Arabic and many people converting to Islam adopt Arabic names (such as Cat Stevens becoming Yusuf Islam)
• and yet some Muslims seem very quick to point out the vast differences today between Islam and the Arab world (only 20% of Muslims are Arabs)
• indeed, some non-Arabs argue that the Arab world is the source of the extremism giving Islam a bad name
• an Iranian Shia Muslim friend points out that Iranians are white aryans not Arabs -- of course, "aryan" itself is an ambiguous term and (since Hitler) a loaded one -- the contrary presumably is "semitic" which, from a language point of view, includes Arabic, Amharic, Hebrew, and Tigrinya (even though 'anti-semitic' is commonly used to mean anti-Jewish not anti-Arab) -- philologically named as the descendants of Noah's son Shem
• the predominantly Arab countries today are, of course, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, and Jordan though substantial Arab minorities exist in Egypt, Libya, and Morocco and smaller Arab minorities in Iran and Turkey
• there are of course many millions of Arab Christians and Arab Jews in the Middle East today -- along with the larger number of Arab Muslims

Islam in Concept

At the conclusion of our visit to the Oshawa mosque we were each handed a small booklet, Islam in Concept. For what they're worth here are my brief notes and comments on that booklet.