Demythologizing Islam April 24, 2022 Dr. Roger Ray
Reza Aslan in No God but God “Like so many prophets before him, Muhammad never claimed to have invented a new religion. By his own admission, Muhammad’s message was an attempt to reform the existing religious beliefs and cultural practices of pre-Islamic Arabia so as to bring the God of the Jews and Christians to the Arab peoples.”
The first time I heard one of my professors say that the Apostle Paul was a mystic, I immediately wanted to object. Sure, he saw visions, he spoke in tongues, he believed in his own “revealed” religious truths, but I didn’t think of him as a mystic. I thought of him as a legalistic, misogynist, homophobic, literalist who killed the message of Jesus by turning a message of love into a religion of guilt and fear.
But, at his core, Paul was a mystic. Listen to how he describes his conversion experience in his own words, in a letter he wrote to the church in Corinth: (2 Corinthians 12:2-4
I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows. 3 And I know that such a person—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows— 4 was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat.
Taken at face value, Paul’s description of his mystical experience is not much different from what we have read of other mystics, even those who are Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, or Catholic. What we tend to call the “unitive” experience; a powerful but typically indescribable feeling of being united with God. A kind of personal epiphany . . . a unique but always indescribable sense of being in the presence of God.
But, a generation or two after Paul was dead, one of his fans, someone who certainly never met him, described Paul’s mystical experience this way, in the book of Acts:
Acts 9:3- 9 3 Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4 He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” 5 He asked, “Who are you, Lord?” The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. 6 But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.” 7 The men who were traveling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one. 8 Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. 9 For three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.
The writer of the book of Acts, in an attempt to make Paul seem to be more impressive, more important, takes his experience which was entirely indescribable, Paul didn’t know if he was just having an out of body experience or if he was physically transported to heaven, but he heard things he couldn’t repeat and saw things he couldn’t describe. But, Luke, in a total work of fiction, concretizes Paul’s experience and literally gives it a street address and witnesses…. He was on the road to Damascus, there was a blinding light, Jesus speaks audibly to him, other people on the road also hear the voice, giving him instructions. Paul is blinded by the experience until he is healed by a Christian in Damascus.
Those of you who grew up going to a Christian Church probably remember the more concrete, fictionalized version of Paul’s experience and you may have no memory at all of his own description of the experience. It is not that you had never heard it, it is just that Luke’s version is more memorable. It creates a narrative movie in your imagination.
Paul’s own words don’t leave any muddy footprints on your brain and, in fact, they may just not make any sense, and yet, that was his honest account.
The task before me today is to say something about demythologizing Islam and I must apologize, once again, for using the Christian bible for my opening illustration but I trust that you can see how later generations, in a sophomoric attempt at polishing the credentials of a deceased saint, will try to add details that actually destroy the story, rather than illuminating it.
If you want to understand Paul, and mind you, I am not suggesting that would be a good use of your time, but if you do, you need to read the authentic letters that Paul wrote himself and try to ignore everything said about him in the book of Acts which is, honestly, just a bit of propaganda aimed at pumping up Paul’s resume.
My only point in bringing Paul up is to say that something very similar happened to the founding prophet of Islam, the sixth century Arab reformer, Muhammad. Muhammad was born in 570 a.d. in the city of Mecca, which had long been a religious and spiritual center of the Arab world.
He was orphaned at an early age and was raised by relatives and given exposure to both the ways of the Bedouin desert culture and the settled city dwellers. He was a product of his environment, influenced by the many Arab religions honored in Mecca as well as Zoroastrian, Jewish, and Christian faiths.
He was, however, illiterate and depended upon his wife to read and write for him. She was older and had some means as a merchant.
Muhammad participated in the common practice of robbing caravans that followed the merchant routes through what is now Saudi Arabia. But he kept up a practice of contemplation in isolation in a desert cave. It is said that while in prayer in that cave that he was visited by the angel, Gabriel, who gave him messages from God. Muhammad memorized these messages, given to him by Gabriel, and dictated them to his wife. These writing became, for Muslims, the actual literal word of God, collected into the Quran.
However, like Paul, his initial experience in the cave was not quite so cut and dried. He had some kind of a mystical experience, possibly brought on by fasting and dehydration, but real or imagined, he certainly didn’t call it a conversation with Gabriel. In fact, he panicked. Like most people of his era, he believed that the desert was inhabited by evil spirits, call jin. He believed that he may have become possessed by an evil jin and he wanted to commit suicide.
In his distress, his wife, Khadija, sent him to visit her cousin, Waraqa, who was well versed in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, and he convinced Muhammad that what he had experienced was a visit from the angel Gabriel. It was Waraqa who announced to Khadija that Muhammad had been chosen to be the prophet to his people.
Muhammad’s progress, however, was rather slow. His own theology was evolving. The sura of the Quran are not organized chronologically. In fact, they are organized loosely, not by topic but from the longest to the shortest. But when you read them in the sequence in which they were actually written, it becomes evident that he started out with a more polytheistic world view and evolved into an adamant monotheist.
His early, more poetic works, were very similar to others in his culture but he gradually grew into his own style. It should be clear that he had no intentions of starting a new religion but to reform the faith of his peers and unite the embattled tribes around a faith in one god, Allah.
I have no reason to doubt Muhammad’s sincerity even if I do doubt his orientation to reality. I am reminded of what Scott Peck said about St. Joan of Arc, “You might say that she was schizophrenic, but you would be wrong to say that she was merely schizophrenic.” There was a greatness of character about Muhammad, even if he was also somewhat delusional.
He reinterpreted many Jewish and Christian narratives from his distinctly Arab perspective and elevated his followers to become confident of their importance to a generous and loving God. Though not neatly expressed in a succinct way in the Quran, Muslims everywhere, from the time of Muhammad to the present, acknowledge five fundamental pillars of what it means to be a Muslim:
All five were already in practice before Muhammad in Zoroastrian, Jewish, and Christian communities but Muhammad sharpens each and gives them a distinct monotheistic focus.
The first is the declaration of faith, there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is god’s prophet.
The second is the obligation to pray five times a day. Earlier in his career, Muhammad was telling people to pray 50 times a day but he eventually whittled that down to something that could actually be done… 5 times a day.
The third is a binding obligation to charity. The fourth is obligatory fasting during the month of Ramadan. And the fifth is a requirement, if at all possible, to make a pilgrimage to Mecca.
Sadly, religions always seem to become institutions. The five pillars are guides to living a life in surrender to God in peaceful harmony with others. However, religions are rarely simply a belief system. They become identified with an ethnicity, a government, and authoritative and competitive view of the world. And, as an institution, religions become inflexible and oppressive.
Westerners are often deeply offended by the way that many Muslim women are expected to, or who choose to, cover themselves entirely in a burka, or almost entirely with a head scarf, along with all of the debates about whether women can drive or travel alone. I get that. I find it offensive. However….
while we accuse them of absurdly repressing the sexuality of women, they are not wrong to point out that westerners go to horrible extremes in pushing women to be objects of constant sexual exploitation.
I don’t think there is a defensible position on either extreme, in fact, it often seems that our cultures cannot seem to find a sane center between pornography and Puritanism, but clearly, we cannot say that Islam is alone in being wrong on this point.
As with other world religions, even though Islam is the most modern of the major religions, it is still mired in myth and superstition. Obviously, Muhammad did not split the moon nor did he ride a winged horse/mule to Jerusalem and then to heaven to meet Adam, Moses, John the Baptist, and Jesus, as well as God. And, more importantly, Gabriel did not dictate the contents of the Quran to Muhammad. Islam is a human invention, like all of the other religions of the world and like all of the other religions, there are good things and there are things that are in desperate need of reform.
Although about 20% of the world claims to be Muslim, we associate the religion the most closely with the governments and peoples of the Middle East. Holding onto the myths associated with certain “holy sites” and disputed real estate claims, primarily focused on Israel but not exclusively so, keeps leading the Arab world and the western world into bloody confrontation.
This year the Muslim observance of Ramadan coincided with Easter and Passover when the temple mount in Jerusalem is so packed with pilgrims from all three faiths, tensions quickly became incendiary with the same old stories of rock throwing and Israeli police over reactions.
Palestinians carry within them a huge burden of rage left over from centuries of colonization by European powers, which has only been made worse by the land theft that created the state of Israel and the way in which Israel confines and oppresses the Palestinians within their borders. So, sure, there is agitation from the Palestinians…. Every year, rock throwing, stabbing, and I have personally been on the receiving end of threats and a shoving match in the Palestinian quarter of Jerusalem when some young boys in the 1980’s assumed that because I am an American, that I was a supporter of Ronald Regan. I was saved only be being able to assure them that I hated Regan more than they did. . . which I did. Let me know if you need further details.
Still, even though there is Palestinian agitation, at the end of every season of conflict, the casualty count is always ten to one, injured Palestinians over Israelis. There is fault on both sides, but it is not an equal situation. It may not be that the Israelis hold all of the cards, but they at least start every hand holding three aces.
There are those in the Muslim community who insist that the word, “Islam” means peace. I am anything but an Arabic scholar, but I know enough to know that is not true. “Islam” means “surrender” as in a total surrender to God. But the net effect is to say that Islam should be a religion of peace. And while the over whelming majority of the world’s nearly 2 billion Muslims are peace loving, decent people, they are not the Muslims we hear about in the news.
We hear about Muslim terrorists who attack the west, and Muslim factions who fight each other. You cannot blame all of the internecine fighting on Islam, and you can’t blame all of the terrorism on the religion.
There are, as I have mentioned, centuries old colonial resentments, and anger about cultural domination of western fashions, products, music, movies, and language, all of which threaten their culture with extinction without even mentioning western military bases in their lands which is a source of constant irritation.
And the fighting between the major factions of Islam, Sunnis, Shi’a, and Kurds, which, at times, is religious, but it is also racial, geographical, and financial. Our nation’s longest wars have been in Afghanistan and Iraq and neither of them, in my opinion, are the major global offenders.
Forgive me if I am talking above my paygrade here, but, in my opinion, Saudi Arabia, the home of Mecca and Medina, is the worst, exporting both terrorists and internecine battles among Muslim states. They export the extremist form of Islam, Wahhabism, with all of its insistence on a literal interpretation of the Quran and militance against anyone who differs from them.
There is no pretense of a separation of church and state in Saudi Arabia, their flag contains the Muslim confession, “There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is God’s prophet.” But there is also a sword, and the sword is not symbolic.
We are focused right now on the war crimes and genocide of Russia in the Ukraine. People like me have been decrying the “kids in cages” on our boarder and our overall mistreatment of immigrants; but all the while, the Saudis maintain the practice of public beheading with a sword.
In March, the Saudi’s beheaded more than 80 men in a single public execution.
More than 40 of those men were from the minority Shia population. The Saudis labeled them terrorists, but I am afraid that their real crime was just being Shia. This is barbarism at an intolerable level, and it goes on year after year, while they remain in the good graces of oil burning Western democracies. In fact, we are currently asking them to pump more oil so that we can stop buying Russian oil and that is, if I may say it plainly, hypocrisy and it should stop. I will be speaking to this issue more fully in June… I know that you can hardly wait, but as Soren Kierkegaard wrote, “This must be said, so now let it be said.” Or, at least, let it be said in June.
The 2018 torture, murder, and dismemberment of the American journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, is all the evidence we should need to say that this flavor of violent Islam must be reformed and in spite of Donald Trump’s defense of the Saudi prince, the civilized world must stop looking the other way. You cannot claim this is not, in important ways, connected to Wahhabism, and this cannot stand in the modern world.
I believe that the execution of prisoners is always wrong, whether it is in Missouri, or Texas, or Saudi Arabia; but public execution by beheading is taking pride in violent and cruel execution and we should be outraged by this policy. And, it should be obvious, this sermon would get me beheaded in Saudi Arabia.
Islamic scholars will insist that this is not true Islam, and I agree, but the religion that promotes peace needs to be a part of the obvious reform that is needed here.
I would like to conclude this series on demythologizing religion by quoting, once again, the famous scholar, Karen Armstrong, who said, “If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, of self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God's name, it was bad theology.” The 21st century must be the century when good religion takes the stage as we usher all bad religion into the pages of a dark and shameful past.
