Comment thread Synchronicity

Jill said, in the comments thread:

What I would like to hear more of, and I do think some of it's getting out there, is how do Muslims around the world feel? Is this what they want Islam to be identified with by non-Muslims? I know they don't - I know that there are Muslims speaking out about how their beliefs do not support suicide bombing. But what hasn't that group taken hold? What is preventing their voice from being the dominant one inside the more radically religious and conservative Middle Eastern governments? I saw the picture on the cover of the NYT just after the election, and it was a sea of men and boys. Not a single female face. Doesn't that alone speak to scary?

In the NYT this morning, this article declares:

To a degree specialists said was new in the conservative Muslim society of the Gaza Strip, Hamas used its women to win, sending them door to door with voter lists and to polling places for last-minute campaigning.

Now in surprise control of Palestinians politics, Hamas can boast that women hold 6 of the party's 74 seats in parliament — giving the women of the radical group, guided in all ways by their understanding of Islam, a new and unaccustomed public role.

Now, understand that I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian environment, where some hard "truths" were stated pretty baldly. I clearly remember, when it came up that I was planning to pursue a college prep course in high school, one church elder bluntly said, "What on earth for? Women have absolutely no business going to college except to find a husband."

Higher education giving women all those uppity feminist ideas, after all.

I remember my mother ruthlessly repressing her own rebellious feminist urges to tell me that there was no good reason for women to vote; their husbands should speak for both of them. Don't judge her too harshly for that. She's the one who made it possible for me to leave and go to the aforementioned college. While I didn't notice at the time, she began much of the eventual deprogramming that would culminate later, after a handful of logic, philosophy and theology classes.

So I understand all too well about women participating in their own subjugation.

It does make me wonder about the moderate Christians, too. I wish they'd get a whole lot louder. They're out there, though. They are apparently Christians who struggle to reclaim their religion, and the perception of their religion, from the extremist Christian right:

I am a Christian. I also grew up in the American South. "My people" -- both Christians and Southerners, according to my friend and many Yale students -- are changing our nation with a conservative agenda. That agenda is not mine. Many Christians, like myself, strongly believe in separation of church and state; are Democrats and pro-choice; support women in ministry as preachers and teachers; and believe that God loves all people, regardless of race, creed, color or sexual orientation. It is possible for Christians to represent such God-like views and not be radical judgmentalists. It is possible for Christians to be loving, kind, conversational and respectful of persons of different faiths.

Despite my vote in the presidential election, my identity as a Christian became associated with Christian conservatism more than ever after Nov. 2. "My people" appear to be part of the Christian right because voices from the Christian left are often stifled or silenced.

I do indeed wonder about the more moderate Muslims, out there--because I'm not hearing much on either a local or an international level. Jill's question has certainly been asked before; there just aren't very many particularly loud public responses.

Turns out, according to Islam for Today, even the terminology is somewhat problematic:

American media uses the term moderate Muslim to indicate a Muslim who is either pro-western in her politics or is being self-critical in her discourse. Therefore both President Karzai of Afghanistan and Professor Kahlid Abul Fadl of UCLA wear the cap with felicity, the former for his politics the latter for his ideas.

Muslims in general do not like using the term, understanding it to indicate an individual who has politically sold out to the “other” side. In some internal intellectual debates, the term moderate Muslim is used pejoratively to indicate a Muslim who is more secular and less Islamic than the norm, which varies across communities. In America, a moderate Muslim is one who peddles a softer form of Islam – the Islam of John Esposito and Karen Arm Strong – is willing to co-exist peacefully with peoples of other faiths and is comfortable with democracy and the separation of politics and religion.

It seem like we never do hear as much from the center, though. While certainly some of that can be blamed on our own media--because it's so much sexier to report car-bombings that to report sane and reasonable people calling for peace--maybe those of us closer to the middle need to get a whole lot louder.

What about bridges between Muslim and non-Muslim communities, on a grassroots level; Christian, secular, other. . . How do we do that?

We know how war starts. Now how do we begin peace?