Additional comments on Islam

After reviewing assignments or getting certain questions I often send out messages through Nicenet dealing with points that have come up.  For each section I am going to include some of these past messages and occasionally add to them.

UNDERSTANDING ISLAM

As you begin trying to understand the third of our Abrahamic traditions in the next couple of weeks, I'd like to make a point about how Christianity until the Reformation would be rather different from both Judaism and Islam.  Someone who is really observant as either a Jew or a Muslim  is expected to make his religious practices part of his daily life in a way that Catholic Christianity did not.  For the most part,  Catholic practices centered on the church--attending Mass, for instance--far more than on the home.  An observant Jew or an observant Muslim has daily prayers and severe restrictions on what can be eaten or how food is to be prepared.  For the Catholic tradition (like the Buddhist in this respect), only those who accepted a monastic lifestyle would be expected to live differently than the ordinary person, with long hours in prayer ("the divine office") a defining characteristic of what it meant to be a monk or nun.

With the Reformation something changed here.  Now much more was expected of the ordinary person: longer hours in church along with an emphasis on a personal reading of the Bible (something not really possible before the invention of printing) and often a stricter code of conduct that regulated dress and entertainment.   This same thing has characterized newer Christian movements, such as the Latter Day Saints and the Jehovah's Witnesses.  Entire communities could be expected to live a more strict lifestyle, and personal restrictions could begin to match something of what once would be expected just of those living in a monastery.

The assignments for coming weeks invite you to learn more about what it means to be an observant Muslim.  Keeping in mind that this course is intended as a comparative study, try to see the parallels with being an observant Jew or with being a someone belonging to what we might call a "stricter" Christian denomination.  As you do so, pay attention to the problem of how different religious communities interact.  For some, like the Hasidim in Judaism or the Amish in Christianity, the extreme is withdrawal so that there is minimal interaction.  For others, there are differing degrees of assimilation with the test often being whether intermarriage can be allowed.

Throughout, please try to avoid the stereotypes that are always going to come to mind.  This is especially true today when the popular image of Islam has been so strongly colored by what has been called "jihadism" and, since 9/11, prejudice against Muslims has often become as virulent as earlier prejudice against Jews.