{"id":22400,"date":"2015-07-30T00:01:04","date_gmt":"2015-07-30T07:01:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=22400"},"modified":"2015-07-30T00:01:04","modified_gmt":"2015-07-30T07:01:04","slug":"does-islam-scare-you-if-so-heres-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/does-islam-scare-you-if-so-heres-why\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Islam Scare You? If So, Here’s Why"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ceiling<\/a>
Mosque in Instanbul. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Note: In August, 2016, the New York Times published a terrific report on the influence of Wahabism and Saudi money on Islam around the world. Check it out.<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n

Does Islam scare you? Does it feel like an aggressive religion is trying to take over the world, subjugate women, persecute the LGBT community, and cut off your hand if you’re caught stealing?<\/p>\n

Well, you’ve got good reason to be scared — but not of Islam. Islam is a fine old wisdom tradition with millions of kind, reasonable, neighborly\u00a0adherents in the US and around the world.<\/p>\n

It’s the fundamentalist, anti-modern Wahhabi brand of Islam that is scaring you.<\/p>\n

Scaring you because it does indeed want\u00a0to proselytize the world.<\/p>\n

And scaring you because it has had the money to do so. Barrels of it.<\/p>\n

Thanks to the Wahhabis’ centuries-old alliance<\/a> with the Saudi royal family (and all that\u00a0Saudi\u00a0oil money, barrels of it), they\u00a0can — and they have been — spreading puritanical Islam\u00a0in the US and around\u00a0the world. (Some observers trace ISIS’s roots back\u00a0to Wahhabism; others assert that ISIS is a political movement<\/a> with but a tenuous connection to Islam.)<\/p>\n

Wahhabism and the Saudis<\/h5>\n

Writing in the July 29 New York Times op ed page,\u00a0Thomas L. Friedman\u00a0says i<\/span>t all started back in\u00a01979 during\u00a0the takeover of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by Islamist extremists.<\/p>\n

\"Sumbul
Sumbul Ali-Karamali is the author of “The Muslim Next Door”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Those extremists, he writes, “challenged the religious credentials of the Saudi ruling family, accusing them of impiety. The al-Sauds responded by forging a new bargain with their religious conservatives: Let us stay in power and we\u2019ll give you a freer hand in setting social norms, relations between the sexes and religious education inside Saudi Arabia \u2014 and vast resources to spread the puritanical, anti-women, anti-Shiite, anti-pluralistic Sunni Wahhabi fundamentalism to mosques and schools around the world.”<\/p>\n

The result has been a great leap backwards for the Saudis and for Islam around the world. That we are seeing a\u00a0backlash against Islam in the US and Europe should come\u00a0as no surprise.<\/p>\n

One of my writer friends, Sumbul Ali-Karamali<\/a>,\u00a0a\u00a0mainstream Muslim who doesn’t wear hijab, complained to me recently that people assume she is\u00a0a “progressive” or “secular” Muslim, “because\u00a0I don’t\u00a0look\u00a0or act\u00a0oppressed.\u00a0I tell them that I practice Islam the way my mother does and the way my grandmother did.”<\/p>\n

(Sumbul, btw, is the author of The Muslim Next Door<\/a><\/em>: The Qur\u2019an, the Media, and that Veil Thing. <\/em>Check it out.)<\/p>\n

\"Muslim<\/a>
Muslim for Progressive Values activist Ani Zonneveld. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
A Progressive Muslim<\/h5>\n

If you are looking for a\u00a0progressive Muslim, that would be Ani Zonneveld.<\/p>\n

Ani is the Malaysian-born daughter of a diplomat; she’s one of the interviewees in my book, “Wrestling with God.” A southern Californian, she co-founded a recently formed\u00a0organization called Muslims for Progressive Values<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Progressive — to Ani and to her MPV colleagues — means inviting women to preach,\u00a0to make\u00a0the call to prayer, and to pray\u00a0alongside men — not at the back of the mosque. It means welcoming the LGBT community and celebrating same-sex marriages.<\/p>\n

Muslim culture\u00a0has changed radically in recent decades, Ani tells me, and not for the better — thanks to the proselytizing,\u00a0puritanical\u00a0influence of Wahhabism.<\/p>\n

“I\u2019m in my early fifties now,”\u00a0she\u00a0says. “And unfortunately the Islam of today\u2014in Malaysia and around the world\u2014is very different from how it was twenty-five years ago. My perspective of Islam is much more open-minded and loving in expression, more celebrative, than the conservative Islam we are seeing in so many Muslim countries.<\/p>\n

“Even Malaysia has become very conservative,” she says. “Sunnis are in the majority there, and because of the events in the Middle East, anti-Shia sentiments have become acute. Some people are even saying that you can\u2019t wish your Christian neighbor a merry Christmas or a Buddhist a happy Vesak. ‘It\u2019s haram<\/em>, it\u2019s forbidden.’ That\u2019s the sad condition in Malaysia right now.”<\/p>\n

Sumbul says that in many parts of the world the conservative Saudi version of Islam has been getting pushback from more moderate Muslims in recent years. Vast women’s movements are having an influence, she says. So are\u00a0scholars who are reevaluating the tradition “after hundreds of years of colonization under which Islam was not allowed to develop and modernize.”<\/p>\n

As for me, does Islam scare me? Yes, some of the forms of Islam that are out there right now do worry\u00a0me. Wahhabism\u00a0with its close-minded rigidity is one. The brutally violent ISIS — which most of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims would say is not even\u00a0Islam — is\u00a0another.<\/p>\n

But Ani and Sumbul\u00a0— they give me hope. Lots of it.<\/p>\n

If this post resonated with you, you might like “The Hagia Sophia, Where Christianity and Islam\u00a0Coexist — and Clash.”<\/a>\u00a0If you’d like to know more about Ani Zonneveld, there’s an entire chapter in my book, “Wrestling with God<\/strong>: Stories of Doubt and Faith,”<\/a>\u00a0about how she responded to\u00a0the emotional trauma she experienced as a result\u00a0of\u00a09\/11.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"Intricate<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s the puritanical Wahhabi Muslims and their global proselytizing efforts that are giving Islam a bad name. Here’s how. Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22421,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1394,1515,562,1516,1517,1518,1519,1520,1521,1522],"class_list":["post-22400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-rocky-spiritual-journey","tag-ani-zonneveld","tag-fundamentalist-islam","tag-islam","tag-muslims-for-progressive-values","tag-new-york-times-op-ed-page","tag-saudis","tag-sumbul-ali-karamali","tag-thomas-l-friedman","tag-wahhabis","tag-wahhabism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22400\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}