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My understanding is that a woman in a head scarf is much more likely to be asserting her own personal religious identity, like a Christian woman wearing a cross on a necklace.  I watched a seminar from Trinity Wall Street with a participant who is a feminist Muslim scholar, and had lawyer colleagues who only stopped wearing a head scarf when they faced persistent job discrimination from it. 

I do have a negative reaction when I see a woman in full burkha walking with a man wearing ordinary "western" dress.  It makes me angry, and I do think she is being oppressed.  (It is different when both a man and a woman wear distinctive religious dress, like Hasidic Jews.) 

But I have the same reaction when I hear the Pope reaffirming strictures against birth control, which I think deprives women of their moral choice, or when I go to a fundamentalist Christian wedding and hear a sermon on "wives being subservient to husbands."  I fear the power of oppression and reaction.  But I am trying to get over fearing Islam as such because of that, because I think fear of Islam is being whipped up for an agenda that is part of what I fear. 

posted 2 years, 5 months ago
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I'm sorry your experiences of people of religious faith have been so negative.  Sorry NOT because I think you should change your spiritual beliefs, whatever they are, but because it is an unhappy way to view the world.  But it is a false generalization.  For at least one corner of Christianity that doesn't think God will send you to hell for either "non-belief"  (although, as a one-time hospital chaplain, I would say "different belief," because everyone puts faith in something) or for being gay, see, e.g., http://www.goodshepherdberkeley.org/. 

I'm not trying to sugar-coat.  I know that your description of Christianity is accurate with respect to much of it in this country, and that Focus on the Family is a much more powerful organization than Progressive Christianity in an Episcopal church in Berkeley with gay priests as members. 

But one of our persistent logical fallacies is to think that because we can use a single word to describe something, that it therefore has an existential unity.  And then we compete for who gets to define that single reality.  And then we confuse "numerical majority" with "normative," and end up with ideas like "most people are disposed to love people of the other sex, therefore all people should love people of the other sex."  Or "most Christians believe in a divine judgment and condemnation, therefore all Christians believe non-Christians go to hell."  Which makes as much logical sense as to say "most dogs have four legs, therefore this thing that appears to be a three-legged dog isn't really a dog." 

And one of those Christians may well reply to this post to say that I'm wrong and that all "true" Christians believe non-Christians will go to hell.  Because that is the next step in this logical - or illogical - path.  If the word necessarily refers to a single "thing," then we have to compete over who defines "that thing."  But if we could see "Christian" as a term used in our language to refer to a field of beliefs and practices, with respect to some of which there is significant overlap and with respect to others of which there is significant divergence, then we wouldn't need to argue about who is a "real" Christian. 

posted 2 years, 5 months ago
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Of course, no one should "follow religion blindly." If a faith demands blind obedience you should avoid it.   Also, no one should assume that their own mind is infallible and that they could not benefit from hearing other people's insights in ultimate reality.  Including poetry, and including a space in which one can experience grief and fear and imaginatively make creative and healing connections.  And profit-making enterprises of churches are subject to tax:  the unrelated business tax.  In my own church, we would be happy some year to just break even!    

posted 2 years, 5 months ago
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I agree that person-to-person friendship is the best way to move from stereotypes to understanding.  But it should not be on the shoulders of Muslims to educate everyone and counteract the ignorance and lies being spread.  (Sharia law taking over London, for example.)  We all have a duty to educate ourselves, and not just by cherry-picking pieces of the Koran and thinking "I understand Islam."  As a Christian with an M.Div., I wouldn't assert a complete understanding of even my own faith!  And it is one of the principles of inter-religious dialogue that we not take the best parts of our faith and compare it to the worst of others.  A good place to start is with the statement by Islamic scholars in response to Pope Benedict, about those common principles held between Islam and Christianity.  There are passages in the Koran that appear to promote violent spread of the faith, and historically that was mainstream at some points, just as there are passages in the Bible that, taken literally, promote violence and genocide and, historically, that was mainstream at some points (the Crusades, for example).  But religions, like other parts of culture, change and mature.  We owe it to ourselves and our neighbors to acquire religious literacy. 

posted 2 years, 5 months ago
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