Dear Mr. Shepherd: What are Unity's views on the evil and hatred emanating from the entire Arab Islamic culture? I am stuck in a stage of repulsion, anger, and contempt for a culture that raises their children to kill themselves as a means to murdering as many people as possible, a culture that gives nothing to humanity except oppression and destruction, a culture whose heroes are mass murderers. If I were a young man instead of a middle-aged woman, I would probably become a soldier so I could fight this scourge with my entire being. I think it is strange that Unity is so silent when evil is so prominent. I wish Unity Magazine contained articles that address these issues.
P.G., Bronx, NY
Dear P.G.: Well, I am fairly certain your letter has my readers leaning forward in their chairs. I don’t think I’ve ever reproduced anything more strongly worded in the fifteen years I’ve been writing my (Unity Magazine) column. Yes, I believe Unity people should address current events, especially those which are divisive and painful. Conflicts which lead to shouts of trembling rage cannot be resolved without first acknowledging these emotions exist. Let me I reiterate that I am NOT speaking for Unity, just giving my theological-political analysis...so here goes.
You mention being “stuck in a stage of repulsion, anger, and contempt...” Let me begin by acknowledging that your epistle comes from deep inside my storage vault of worthy-yet-unpublished correspondence. Since it is something you wrote several years ago (2003), it may not represent your current viewpoint. (You might be un-stuck by now.) However, this old letter has raised some new issues which I want to address today.
From unpublished parts your two-page letter, I surmise you are a native New Yorker, a strong supporter of Israel, and a woman of the Jewish faith. These three factors make it somewhat easier to understand the distress you must have felt when events of 911 hit home, literally. Many Americans, indeed many people around the world, are sympathetic to the struggles of the Jewish people and are strong supporters of a free and independent State of Israel. Certainly, the torrent of violence from hostile neighbors, which Israel has endured since its creation by United Nations mandate in 1948, has not shown any signs of abating. There are deep and bitter sources of this conflict, as I am sure you know.
After what the Hebrew people suffered through history, culminating in the Nazi Holocaust, the United Nations decided that Jews deserved a place to settle down and raise their families, and the ancestral home of Israel was the logical choice. However, the battle over that 60-year-old decision still rages today, and there are complicated religious and political overtones to the ongoing struggle. Westerners tend to see Israel as the re-established biblical homeland for Jewish emigrants to return after the Diaspora. However, most Middle Eastern Muslims see Israel not as an ancient land reborn but as a European colony not unlike the Crusader kingdoms of the Middle Ages.
Commentators have frequently noted how odd it is that a land considered so holy by many religious faiths continues to be the focal point of so much antagonism. Much of the ongoing unrest is fed by a fatal combination of high unemployment and religious fanaticism in the Palestinian communities, coupled with endless armed clashes between Israelis and Arabs. Although I agree with your assessment of the outrageous brutality which radical Islam has brought to the world, I don’t see how this makes all Muslims equally guilty agents of hatred and violence. The problem stems not from ordinary believers but from a rather small percentage of extremists who have hijacked Islamic tradition and gotten way too much media coverage for their frankly heretical point of view. Violent opposition to Israel and Western society comes not from ordinary followers of Islam but from the Islamists, which apparently is the culturally preferred Muslim word for their radicals.
Historically speaking, your comment that Islam is “a culture that gives nothing to humanity except oppression and destruction” is simply untrue. Muslim scholars in the Middle Ages saved much of Greek and Roman literature and sciences; Islamic civilization invented algebra (an Arabic word) and the university system. Arab traders opened routes to Africa and Asia. In fact, some historians argue that trade with the Muslim Near East inaugurated the European Renaissance movement which subsequently revitalized slumbering Western Civilization. During the five hundred years when Spain was a Muslim country under the Moors, Islamic culture promoted a remarkable degree of religious tolerance on the Iberian Peninsula. Jews and Christians and Muslims lived together in a reasonable measure of harmony, because the Prophet Muhammad had told his followers to respect “people of the Book,” i.e., those whose religious traditions flow from the Jewish and Christian Bible. Unquestionably, those who chant their hatred for Jews and Christians in the streets of the Arab world are not in harmony with the teachings of their great Prophet, any more than the KKK is showing its Christian character by burning a cross on someone’s lawn.
Although every faith has its fanatics, sometimes strong convictions can bring out the best in people, even among those with different religions. Corrie Ten Boom was a young Christian woman whose family decided to join the Dutch equivalent to the Underground Railroad. They began secretly housing Jews who were escaping from the Nazi’s. Corrie recorded their remarkable story in her bestselling autobiography The Hiding Place. Not all Dutchmen were as faithful to the teaching of Jesus as the Ten Boom family. After her pastor refused to risk helping runaways because the fugitives were Jews, Corrie’s father, Casper Ten Boom, dryly evaluated this “Christian” minister by observing that just because a mouse lives in a cookie jar doesn’t make him a cookie.[1]
Having said that, it is important to recognize that a major disconnect exists between Islamic and Western societies. Historian Karen Armstrong has identified a reality which cannot be ignored, i.e., that religious fervor runs deep in the Muslim world and it can reach vituperative levels which are unintelligible to Westerners. Armstrong writes in a pre-911 book which now sounds prophetic:
Obviously, the religious passions in the Middle East are no longer always amenable to rational control. The area has become a tinderbox that could ignite into a nuclear holocaust, if this extreme spirit were allowed to get out of control.[2]
Some Islamic scholars argue that Muslims who hate all non-Muslims are not being true to the faith of Islam, any more than burning crosses in the night represents true Christianity. Both Jesus and Muhammad wanted their follower to live in peace and harmony with God and neighbor. As a Christian, I am outraged at some things which misguided and fanatical people have been done in the name of Jesus Christ, and I know from personal contact with American Muslims that they feel the same about radical Islamists who claim to be acting in the name of the whole religion but are just hiding under the mantle of a great world faith in order to spread prejudice, hatred and violence.
Unity is not silent on these issues, because the work which Silent Unity began over a century ago is today a network of praying and caring people around the earth. Prayer for peace and justice seems mandatory for people of good will. If humanity has learned anything from its great religious teachers it should be that peaceful cooperation is the only hope for a healthy and prosperous human society. The ancient debt to God and neighbor is not so much an obligation as it is the only healthy recourse for a world united by the Internet, facing global geo-political, ecological and climatological challenges, and reaching outward to the stars as one human family.
Unity believes in the Divine-within, that each sentient being is best understood as imago Dei, the image and likeness of God in a concrete, finite expression. And, yes, this includes even terrorists whose painful path has led them to choose a religion of hate. I do not presume to understand their motivations or their decisions; I certainly do not condone their actions. But I do believe we should pray for everyone involved while affirming that God works in and through every circumstance. Take a look at the next letter, also from the vault, written around the same time you took pen in hand, in which a woman twice your age has some advice for all of us.
Dear Tom: I apologize for not typing. I am 84 and physically handicapped, but I hope you can read this (on yellow lined paper). I recently read one your fine answer to someone who asked about non-Christians going to heaven. It strikes me that God is not Christian, or Muslim, or Buddhist, etc. God is spirit and to be worshipped in Spirit and Truth, as I think it says in the New Testament. It seems to me that all our human-made concepts about God, heaven, hell, etc. are for our convenience of communication, like Daylight Savings or Standard Time. Can you believe it, someone once asked me why God made Daylight Savings time? What do you think about that?
J.M., Yellow Springs, OH
Dear J.M.: You said it all: “God is not Christian, or Muslim, or Buddhist, etc..” (Usually, I’m Christian. But some days I find myself a firm believer in the faith of Etc.) I’m only sorry I didn’t publish your letter a few years ago when I received it and stuck it into my “goodies to hold for later” bag. People can distort the kindest sentiments into expressions of hate and discord, and the previous letter-writer was deeply troubled by this tendency in radical Islam. The best way to oppose such hatred is to hold to the truth of love and the basic goodness of all people, everywhere. This may be hard to see sometimes, but the sun never vanishes simply because clouds form in the earth’s atmosphere.
___________________________________________________
[1] Casper Ten Boom www.worldofquotes.com/author/Casper-Ten-Boom/1/index.html
[2] Karen Armstrong, Holy War (NY: Anchor Books, 2001), 538.
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