World Religions: Islam – Lecture 10: Women and Change in Islam

The following bits represent my notes and thoughts as I watch The Great Courses, “Great World Religions: Islam” by John L. Esposito.  A few things are worth noting:

1. I encourage those with an interest to seek out the original source material.  You can do that on The Great Courses website.  My notes are just a pale shadow of the whole course but they might whet your proverbial whistle.
2. These are just my notes and not an attempt to encapsulate the whole course.  As such, it should be painfully obvious that I’m no expert and at times prone to oversimplification and outright error.
3. There is no third thing.  I just can’t stand having only two things in a list.

Lecture 10: Women and Change in Islam

The West judges Islam’s treatment of women in terms of the extremes we see in the news.  In reality, the conditions are widely varied from country to country (Note that this lecture is somewhat dated and some of these may no longer be strictly true):

• Egypt – Women can serve in parliament, but can’t be judges
• Morocco – 20% of the judges in the country are women
• Saudi Arabia – Can own land, but are restricted to feminine professions and cannot drive
• Kuwait – Could not vote until 2005 (after this lecture was recorded)
• Iran – Wear chadore or hijab, but are professionals and serve in parliament
• Pakistan – A woman served as prime minister
• Afghanistan – Cannot attend school; must be accompanied by a male outside the home at all times

The veil or hijab, burqa or chadore is seen as a sign of repression by the west.  The practice varies widely from a simple head scarf to full body covering.  When the tradition started in early Islam it was seen as a sign of high rank within the community.

While the west sees it as a sign of submission, Muslim women for the most part view it as an act that allows them to be free from exploitation as sex objects.  Western women in short skirts and makeup are seen as the ones who are victims of a male society.  In fact, some modern Muslim women have taken up the burqa again despite the fact that their mother’s eschewed them just a generation before.  To the modern Muslim woman, wearing of the veil means that they are valued for who they are and what they have to contribute, not there mere physical characteristics.

Early in its history, Islam gave women rights they’d not had under previous systems.  The Quran is emphatic that men and women are equal in the eyes of Allah and both are equally responsible for upholding the five pillars of Islam.  It gave women the right to own property and restricted divorce and polygamy.  Even more importantly it ended the practice of child marriage.

If this is so, then why the inequality we see today?  It must be understood that even with the Quranic edicts in place to establish equality, the larger Muslim society was still largely patriarchal.  In the very earliest days of Islam many women leaders arose and were held up as examples to be emulated.  In fact, it was typical for women to be the first within a household to convert to Islam.  Over centuries, however, the older and more traditional patriarchal tendencies eroded this foundation to the more erratic one we have today.

Much disagreement about this continues even today as old rules are brought under scrutiny.  The law, for example, that in a trial the testimony of two women counts the same as one man still holds sway in over a dozen countries including Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.  The reasoning for this being that women, it is judged, are not of the proper “temperament” to make these judgments.

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Series Guide

View back-to-back on the YouTube Playlist
Lecture 1– Islam Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
Lecture 2 – The Five Pillars of Islam
Lecture 3 – Muhammad-Prophet and Statesman
Lecture 4 – God’s Word-The Quranic Worldview
Lecture 5 – The Muslim Community-Faith and Politics
Lecture 6 – Paths to God-Islamic Law and Mysticism
Lecture 7 – Islamic Revivalism-Renewal and Reform
Lecture 8 – The Contemporary Resurgence of Islam
Lecture 9 – Islam at the Crossroads
Lecture 10 – Women and Change in Islam
Lecture 11 – Islam in the West
Lecture 12 – The Future of Islam

World Religions: Islam – Lecture 9: Islam at the Crossroads

The following bits represent my notes and thoughts as I watch The Great Courses, “Great World Religions: Islam” by John L. Esposito.  A few things are worth noting:

1. I encourage those with an interest to seek out the original source material.  You can do that on The Great Courses website.  My notes are just a pale shadow of the whole course but they might whet your proverbial whistle.
2. These are just my notes and not an attempt to encapsulate the whole course.  As such, it should be painfully obvious that I’m no expert and at times prone to oversimplification and outright error.
3. There is no third thing.  I just can’t stand having only two things in a list.

Lecture 9: Islam at the Crossroads

This lecture, more than the others, doesn’t try to provide answers so much as it attempts to frame the questions that face Muslims in the world today.

There are four Muslim orientations towards faith and the greater world:

1. Secularists – They believe that the Muslim faith is a personal engagement and that it should have no impact on the larger governance of the world.  “Keep Islam in the Mosque”
2. Conservatives – Wish to follow tradition and allow for no change over time.  They rely only on past doctrine under the argument that these laws were specifically laid down by God and therefore should be immutable.  Leaders of conservative Muslim groups tend, therefore, to be high-ranking clerics.
3. Mainstream or Fundamentalist – Beliefs based on Quranic teaching but more flexible and prone to interpretation in view of the world as it is now.
4. Reformers – Liberal Muslims that borrow heavily from Western thought.  Beliefs are still rooted in the Quran but they draw a distinct line between divinely proscribed law and those rooted in man’s interpretation of those laws.

These groups, and even subgroups within these groups, vary wildly on a few key questions:

1. What is the role of women?  In some countries, women can’t drive but in others women hold high-ranking political offices.
2. What is the role of the democratic process in governing?  Some countries hold free elections while others are theocracies.
3. Where is the separation, if any, between the role of the church in society and that of the government?
4. What is the status of non-Muslims, or dhimmi?  In some countries, non-Muslims are treated as second class citizens forced to pay a head tax to remain in the country.  In others, they are treated as equals in every way.
5. Does the hudud, Quranically proscribed punishments such as amputation and stoning, have a place in Muslim culture?
6. At its heart, all these questions seem to boil down to one: Is the law of God mutable over time as circumstances changes or is it written once and for all time never to be changed?

So while Islam is monotheistic, it is far from monolithic.  There is much diversity and disagreement within the Muslim faith and debate continues daily on these and dozens of other points of view.

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Series Guide

View back-to-back on the YouTube Playlist
Lecture 1– Islam Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
Lecture 2 – The Five Pillars of Islam
Lecture 3 – Muhammad-Prophet and Statesman
Lecture 4 – God’s Word-The Quranic Worldview
Lecture 5 – The Muslim Community-Faith and Politics
Lecture 6 – Paths to God-Islamic Law and Mysticism
Lecture 7 – Islamic Revivalism-Renewal and Reform
Lecture 8 – The Contemporary Resurgence of Islam
Lecture 9 – Islam at the Crossroads
Lecture 10 – Women and Change in Islam
Lecture 11 – Islam in the West
Lecture 12 – The Future of Islam

World Religions: Islam – Lecture 4 – God’s Word: The Quranic Worldview

The following bits represent my notes and thoughts as I watch The Great Courses, “Great World Religions: Islam” by John L. Esposito.  A few things are worth noting:

1. I encourage those with an interest to seek out the original source material.  You can do that on The Great Courses website.  My notes are just a pale shadow of the whole course but they might whet your proverbial whistle.
2. These are just my notes and not an attempt to encapsulate the whole course.  As such, it should be painfully obvious that I’m no expert and at times prone to oversimplification and outright error.
3. There is no third thing.  I just can’t stand having only two things in a list.

Lecture 4: God’s Word: The Quranic Worldview

According to the Muslim faith, The Quran is the literal and uncorrupted word of God; it was sent to the world as a correction to the Bible which had become tainted by the hand of man.  Primary among the Quran’s concerns about the Bible is that it allows for idolatry in the form of the worship of Jesus Christ.  Christianity is not considered to be properly monotheistic because of its recognition of the Trinity.

Finally collected in written form in 650, the Quran was written in Arabic and has been preserved verbatim.  From a textual standpoint, it is considered the single greatest written work in the Arabic language even today and stands as a perfect literary example.  It has even been said that some people have spontaneously converted to Islam after hearing and understanding it even once.  The Quran is the only miracle of the prophet Muhammad.  In Muslim countries reciters of the Quran are viewed as great celebrities and have been known to fill stadiums.

The Quran is 114 chapters or suras and designated as either Meccan or Medinan depending on where the prophet happened to be living when he uttered them.  The arrangement is not chronological but basically lists longer suras first followed by shorter ones.  Typically the Meccan suras cover religious practice while the Medinan ones revolve around daily life non-religious aspects of the faith.

Islam recognizes a few different classes of beings.  In no particular order:

• Allah – God, the center of creation.  His nature is revealed through the world around us and he is merciful and just but souls will be judged.  The only truly unforgiveable sin is idolatry unless you repent before death.
• Angels – Recorders and messengers between Allah and the rest of the world.
• Jinn – Spirits with free will that are either good or evil.
• Devils – Fallen angels who have been disobedient to God
• Humans – Have special status and have been given the Earth in trust from Allah.  While Muslims believe in The Fall they do not believe that every person born since has Original Sin but that each person is judged for his or her actions in life.  Humans are therefore not saddled with guilt for past misdeeds but encouraged to simply repent and return to the path of righteousness.

The Quran speaks at length about several key topics but among the most important:

• Society – The primary crux of the Quran is that of social justice.  All people are bound by Islamic law and as such are part of a whole that is responsible for care of the poor, widows and children.  Even charging interest is forbidden as its seen as taking advantage of the poor.  Muslims, therefore can neither earn interest from savings accounts nor pay interest on a mortgage, for example.
• Women – The Quran abolished the ownership of women and established their rights to own property and to be financially cared for in the event of divorce.  It also established rules for when divorce was appropriate and forbade infanticide.  The most telling of quotes on the status of women is: “The best of you is he who is best to his wife.”  Previously the status of women in Middle Eastern society was tenuous at best.
• Religious Tolerance – There is to be no compulsion for conversion of other religious faiths.  All were made different by Allah intentionally but the Muslims are to act as an example to other faiths on the right way to run a society.  Christians and Jews are “People of the Book” and therefore share a single God.  All who do right and live a righteous life will be rewarded in Heaven.  Non-Muslims living in Muslim countries are welcome but must pay a tax similar to the 2.5% that Muslims themselves must donate to charity.
• The Lesser Jihad is a physical struggle to right injustice.  For example, if you are kicked out of your homeland, you may fight to get it back.  The Quran is very clear though that fighting is only a means of last resort:
  “[2:190] You may fight in the cause of GOD against those who attack you, but do not aggress. GOD does not love the aggressors.”  It goes on to detail rules for the treatment of prisoners and other specific situations in which the Lesser Jihad is appropriate.
• The Greater Jihad is the struggle to stay on the path of righteousness and uphold the five pillar so Islam that have been previously detailed in another lecture.

Lastly, there is a brief discussion of what have been deemed the “Sword Verses” which many use to justify the categorization of Islam as a warlike faith.  The lecturer points out that these verses are taken out of context and incompletely quoted.

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Series Guide

View back-to-back on the YouTube Playlist
Lecture 1– Islam Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
Lecture 2 – The Five Pillars of Islam
Lecture 3 – Muhammad-Prophet and Statesman
Lecture 4 – God’s Word-The Quranic Worldview
Lecture 5 – The Muslim Community-Faith and Politics
Lecture 6 – Paths to God-Islamic Law and Mysticism
Lecture 7 – Islamic Revivalism-Renewal and Reform
Lecture 8 – The Contemporary Resurgence of Islam
Lecture 9 – Islam at the Crossroads
Lecture 10 – Women and Change in Islam
Lecture 11 – Islam in the West
Lecture 12 – The Future of Islam

Book Reviews: Married to the Military by Terry L. Rollins

As is so often the case I received this book from the author in exchange for a review. Despite that immense kindness I give my candid thoughts below.

The book is a collection of easily digested vignettes featuring, unsurprisingly, the wives of those who serve our country every single day. Topics range from the joys of birth to the tragedy of death. Pretty much exactly what you would expect given the title.

On the positive side, the book certainly does tug at your heartstrings. Though fictional, I suspect that much of what is written here is pulled directly or at least adapted from real life. The sacrifices that these women make every single day is not to be dismissed or forgotten and Rollins portrays their struggles in an emotional style that makes it simultaneously easy to read and hard to forget.

To the negative, it is worth mentioning that the book is written from a heavily female point of view which makes it a sure winner with wives and mothers everywhere. That said, the male gender may have a bit of trouble empathizing because of this. That’s not to say that it’s impossible but potential gift givers should be aware of this possibility. Also, I found myself disappointed that the author had to ‘create’ these women rather than drawing more biographically on actual wives in the military. While I’m certain that the women in the stories represent their demographic wonderfully, something is always lost from the fictionalization of a story that could be just as well done and probably contain much of the same content when you can say that this person actually does exist. Readers love to imagine that the characters they’re reading about are real people and this book just barely misses that mark.

In summary, this book is an obvious choice for any woman and particularly one who has some connection with the U.S. military or, honestly, any military in the world. Men will have less of a connection to it but it might help them see more clearly just what the struggles are that their wives go through every day.

The Different Girl by Gordon Dahlquist

The Different Girl by Gordon Dahlquist

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

First off and as usual, it should be noted that I received this book free from GoodReads in a drawing. Despite that typical and abundantly kind consideration my candid feedback resides below.

Over the past 20 books or so I’ve tried with great assiduity to accentuate the positive aspects of the titles that GoodReads is so kind to provide. Until this most recent submission, that mindset has been fairly easy to adhere to. Even the worst book provides an entertaining diversion if looked at in the proper light. This book isn’t really bad per se as much as it just seems to be missing something. Allow me to attempt to illuminate without unintentionally illuminating the actual plot. Or to put it more succinctly and more firmly in the vernacular, let me try to describe this without spoilers.

The nearest and simplest analogy I can draw for this book is to ask you to imagine an episode of the Twilight Zone, but limit yourself to only the middle third of it. “The Different Girl” lacks any real beginning as the reader is called upon to piece together what has come before through anecdote and implication. In general, this isn’t a bad way for a book to go because readers love to figure things out as they read, unraveling the Gordian Knot of character history tidbit by tidbit. Unfortunately, the history isn’t really all that surprising or unusual. Any fan of Serling or Bradbury or Bova or Asimov has read pretty much this plot already. If this had been written in 1954 it would have been marvelous but sadly we’re all much too attuned to this sort of plotline to be at all surprised.

Flipping to the other periphery of the book, it doesn’t really have much of a conclusion either. I found myself 10 pages from the end grumbling that things couldn’t possibly be concluded satisfactorily in the time left. As it turns out I was right because we didn’t actually reach any sort of wry twist. We just sort of…. well, ended. It was disappointing because the book has some real potential. In general, one can be happy with a book without a beginning. One can be happy with a book without an end. But one finds it difficult to enjoy a book which in fact lacks both.

On the positive side, the book is well written enough and does have a certain epistemological feel to it as our protagonists-four explore their world and try to unravel the mystery of their own existence. I (think) I can see where the author wants to go here. How do we learn to live in our world? How do we process divergent and contradictory inputs into some logical whole? How does our humanness shape those interpretations? There’s a great thread of philosophy here if you tease it out enough but it does take some teasing.

In summary, “The Different Girl” is fairly disappointing. I expected something fresh and got something stale and reminiscent of the 50s. Dahlquist’s skill as a writer is not to be doubted but there’s just a bit of something missing to make this into the mainstream. TDG is sure to inspire much thought and conversation but much of that will be somewhat disgruntled.

View all my reviews

On the Fairer, Daintier, Gentler Gender

Recently I’ve been spending some time reading a book from 1969 that centers quite specifically around how the male gender should conduct itself.  It details in long-form the recommended manner of performing many of life’s most vital processes: which silverware to use and when, how to conduct yourself if your phone is on a party line, which actors and actresses you should use as role models, and how much to tip the porter when you check into a hotel.  For the curious, the answer is $.25 per bag with a minimum of $.35 even if you only have one bag.  In today’s world, I’m pretty sure that a tip of such magnitude would be hurled back at you with all the force of a Nolan Ryan fastball.

On the whole, I’m surprised at just how little has changed in 40 years.  The expectations themselves haven’t changed much, but merely the determination with which they’re enforced.  A gentleman is still expected to pull out a lady’s chair for her in a restaurant, but where today this is seen as cute and quaint, in 1969 it was viewed as absolutely mandatory.  In years gone by, the man was expected to order dinner on the lady’s behalf and shield her from the waiter but in today’s world this might be viewed as absolute effrontery.  Yesterday’s mandates are seen as today’s curious and somewhat nerdy aberrations.

One somewhat shocking facet of all this is the assumed naiveté of both genders during this time.  In many cases the details laid out for the man’s benefit are stunningly ponderous and obvious.  Doubtless after 37 years on this Earth, I’ve forgotten the ignorance of youth and just how blessedly idiotic I was, but it’s hard to fathom a man who needs advice as simplistic as this tome provides.  Even more stunning is the image that is painted of womanhood.

There was a time in my youth when I firmly held with the belief that women, in addition to having divine powers, were absolutely moral and perfect in every way.  This book, written near the year of my birth, would seem to offer evidence of this fact.  I can easily draw the lines to conclude where I might have come across this simple truth.  Society at large during this time period seems to paint the same picture.  June Cleaver was still held as the absolute good of the American family.

It wasn’t until… well, to be absolutely humble and honest, it wasn’t until a few years ago that this image began to break down for me.  I realized with a rather large gulp that women, as fearsome a prospect as this might seem, were just as human as men.  While men suffer from certain ineffable drives and desires, women too are slaves to similar motives.  The crystalline purity of the female soul was shattered into a million pieces when I realized that biology enslaves us all.  Women are equally as petty, as sexual, as driven by base emotions as the male gender.  This, to me, was the greatest revelation of my adult life.  My entire vision of women as perfect snowflakes was sullied by the realization that in many ways, they are just as base a creature as is man.  In some ways, even moreso.