Shared by Azeem Farooki

Subject: Muslim Brotherhood’s Words on Women Stir Liberal Fears – NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/15/world/middleeast/muslim-brotherhoods-words-on-women-stir-liberal-fears.html

An insightful and inspiring article by Sophia Chawala

Islam vs. “islam” –An Expat’s Perspective on Religion and Pakistan
When I came home for spring break, my father urged me to read a pile of novels. One that I am reading right now is called “Moving the Mountain” by Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf. Responsible for the plans to build a mosque three blocks away from ground zero, Rauf seeks to improve relations between the Muslim world and the West with his novel by speaking on behalf of disenfranchised Muslims in America and around the world and by calling for a progressive, pluralistic kind of religion as a bedrock of tolerance and understanding, one that would melt away hateful stereotypes like stubborn iced snow sliding off an onrushing car and collapsing into glittery dust upon impact.

Few nights ago, amid the bombastic syncopated beats from my sister’s drum playing, the hissing of the pressure cooker from the kitchen, and the belting of debaters from Pakistani news, I was particularly engrossed by Rauf’s first chapter, which explored two sides of the Muslim-based religion: capital “I” Islam and lowercased “i” islam. The former is the one Rauf believes many Muslims today inadvertently act upon: a proper noun that calls for a solid state-of-mind, a construct of mere belief to give followers that extra pizzazz of identifying themselves from the point of view of outsiders. The latter, conversely, is the one Rauf champions. It is a verbal noun, the more humanistic approach of the religion that consists of a set of actions people should utilize as a supplement to every sect of their life. To explain the actions needed in islam, Rauf sets up an interfaith dialogue between the actions and first two commandments of the Christian faith. To believe in one God and to love others as ourselves are the core principles and intentions Muslims should always keep in mind when doing any kind of action—religious or non-religious—to ensure the best spiritual experience as possible for not only themselves, but for others as well. We gain understanding through our actions and through understanding, we could finally achieve the entity of “us”, defined not by otherness, but by inclusiveness of believers, one that steers away from establishing differences between “us” and “them” as a cause of hostility, one that fosters communities of faith as opposed to sectarian hierarchies situated in a vacuum, tightly sealed from any kind of interfaith dialogue or interaction.

Now, I am new to the realm of questioning religion. Nevertheless, Rauf’s connection managed to dazzle me to a point where all the surrounding drumming, hissing and yelling lowered to a sedative hum. For a second, I actually imagined a scene of Christians, Muslims, Jews and other faiths convening and confiding in one another to create tighter-knit bonds, deeper understandings, new crucial layers of meaning to morality and righteousness. I thought of a scene where for once political disagreements did not trump relationships with faith, which runs much deeper than any opinion or fact. Even further, I thought of a religion not named Islam, Christianity or Judaism, but just a religion known as the Religion of God.

But all of a sudden, a glare fires up in the periphery. Caustic red font splashed across the flat screen screaming “BREAKING NEWS.” It was there when I learned about mobs burning over 40 Christian houses in the Badami Bagh area of Lahore in response to alleged blasphemy towards the Prophet Muhammad. From there, my sister’s drumming crescendos into a seismic tremble, my mother’s pressure cooker hiss turns into a deafening sizzle, the voices of the news anchors became more rapt with loud, chaotic excitement. Ears shot, I looked up and down frantically from Rauf’s words to the TV screen, from islam to an obnoxiously capitalized ISLAM plastered in front of me. Then I thought to myself, where do Muslims go from here? Or put generally, where do Pakistanis go from here?

Call this coincidence painfully convenient, but it shows something that I am trying to make sense of when it comes to Pakistan, to religion, to the ways of human nature in general. I am only an expat witnessing at the periphery, fathoming the land of my parents through limited media sources and a plethora of books. I am only the novice inspector under the bridge trying to see what beams are deteriorating. I can only say so much about these riots and religious hate-based attacks on Pakistan, for the arguments against such a crime is as implicit as the dangers of fire. But what I can say is that Muslims are not the only ones marginalized in this world. Muslims victimize themselves too much and accredit themselves too much pity. Culture and colonialism has infiltrated the religion, morphing it into a fuzzy adjective. No wonder non-Muslims also extend Islam to include terrorism. These terms hurt, but we Muslims are partly responsible for their creation.
This country was founded as an “Islamic Republic”, a place where Muslims could become the majority by basking in a land of the religious free and by creating ideas and fostering innovations they never had the chance to do in British India. But just by looking at this title—a title that hangs above Pakistani heads like a shrill fluorescent light bulb—Islam is indeed capitalized, not only orthographically but politically as well. Pakistanis need to regain the true grasp of faith. But in order to do that, they must de-capitalize literally and figuratively, their views of religion and most importantly, their pride.

Sophia Chawala