Save the Lemmings from Islam and America: Majid's 'A Call for Heresy'

There’s a haunting television commercial in rotation these days. Thousands of nondescript people are bustling across a heavenly green meadow toward a gaping, bottomless hole where, like lemmings, they plunge into nonexistence. With their arms at their sides and their complicit legs still pumping, mass mentality, according to the ad, deprives them of a sizzling hamburger. It’s supposed to be funny.

Instead of making you laugh, though, the spot tunes into some newfound hardwiring of the American brain. For the last six years, out of the mainstream has meant you’re out of your mind.

According to a new book, at least now we have one thing in common with the Muslim world. Anouar Majid’s provocative new tome, “A Call for Heresy: Why Dissent is Vital to Islam and America,” argues that both Islam and the U.S. must look critically at history and propose serious alternatives to the injustices that globalization breeds today, the most damning and destructive of which, according to Majid, is Islamist terrorism.

“I am interested primarily in the ways [Muslims and Americans] are increasingly being subjected to religious, political and economic orthodoxies that suppress the intellectual legacies that once gave both traditions, however briefly, their greatest cultural élans,” Majid writes. At least in the U.S. today, it’s tough to argue with him — these years will prove to be anything but our finest cultural, political or spiritual era of our history.

During the Inquisition in the 13th century, heretics were burned at the stake. Today you can stand in front of the White House, call George W. Bush a war criminal (or worse, as some do), and police officers will walk right past you. When you are free to say anything, as the old adage goes, nobody listens. At the same time, remember what happened when Salman Rushdie committed what some considered blasphemy by writing a novel critical of the Prophet Muhammad? It earned Rushdie a fatwa from Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini that called for good Muslims to kill the author.

Neither the meaningless cacophony of the U.S. nor the reactionary repression by some radical Muslims ought to silence anyone, because Majid makes it clear that Islam and the U.S. have a lot more in common than we think. Both need to summon the courage, brilliance and wit to usurp the rapacious rules we’re all following, or it’s straight into the big hole we go.

(Also published in Metro. Majid will be reading Wednesday, October 10th at 7pm at Bluestockings in New York.)

Comments

[alex]

Andrew, please take a moment and update me to the injustices that globalization breeds today.

...and please, not the usual ill-informed guff about the links between terrorism saccharine and poverty, eco catastrophe and so on, but your conclusion shines out by itself as a monument of simpering, nothingness.

[josephus]

Australia has set an example for other western nations on embracing traditional Western values rather than apologizing for them as so many on the left would have it. The Australian Treasurer Peter Costello has sharply criticized "mushy misguided multiculturalism", going on to state, "Before entering a mosque visitors are asked to take off their shoes. This is a sign of respect. If you have a strong objection to walking in your socks don't enter the mosque. Before becoming an Australian you will be asked to subscribe to certain values. If you have strong objection to those values don't come to Australia."

[Melissa]

In the history of mankind, the only thing that has ever ended Despotism are those who stand and look evil in the eye. The courage, brilliance and wit for which you are searching is Vaudville.

[josephus]

Hirsi Ali is filled with courage, brilliance and wit and because of it she is hunted down by Islam. The only thing globalization has to do with this is that she has to use the whole globe to escape the killers.

When you have coffee with Anouar at the reading, ask him to get someone from their side who has wit, brilliance, and courage. Maybe we can chat.

[reductio]

As Tocqueville put it, in a land of equality, where everyone's reason is as good as anyone else's, we no longer have to think for ourselves when we can have someone else think for us....

[Picasso]

Hirsi Ali may be the first refugee from Western Europe since the Holocaust. As such, she is a unique and indispensable witness to both the strength and weakness of the West: to the splendor of open society and to the boundless energy of its antagonists. She knows the challenges we face in our struggle to contain the misogyny and religious fanaticism of the Muslim world, and she lives with the consequences of our failure each day. There is no one in a better position to remind us that tolerance of intolerance is cowardice.

[Rudy]

The uninformed and the insane will react with "the polite clapping of hands" upon being told that these years will prove to be our worst cultural, political and spiritual era of our history.

Andy, I find your absorption to be somewhere between calculated ignorance and destination of lemmings.

That is, off a cliff.

[chefboy-r-d]

Lemmings are those mindless "caughtups" who blindly follow. Andrew is close to the big hole.

[East River]

Andy,

The only way the Muslim world can truly reform is from within, oddly enough one of the few Muslim scholars speaking word of new perspectives is Tariq Ramadan. Though he is currently teaching at Oxford University the US feels he doesn't speak to its script. Ramadan had accepted a teaching gig at Notre Dame but was denied a US work visa.

That Ramadan is rejected by the US government is a true shame as he is a practicing Muslim scholar calling for changes in thinking within Islam. Ali and Rushdie have abandoned the religion. Rushdie a self-admitted atheist, while Ali has admitted to turning her back on practicing. Their words do not play to a Muslim audience, but to a non-Muslim audience with certain fears regarding Islam. Ali and other critics like her are not even calling for reform, but play up to the idea of Islam as a dark/evil religion whose values are not compatible with Western/European values. Of course classical Islamic thinking from hundreds some even a thousand years ago were very compatible with Western values. Those such as Al-Ghazali, Averroes (Ibn Rushd), and Avicenna (al- Ilahiyat min al Shifa) all had huge impacts on Western European thinking and even Jewish thinking. My point is that Islamic values are compatible with the West when it can get itself away from extremist thinking. But the reform must be from within.
Instead Ali and Rushdie fall into the fashionable trend of dishing Islam so as to be favorities of Western audiencies. Real courage will come from those who stay inside the masjid and speak to what real Islam is and how Muslim should live in a modern world true to its spirit but not ashamed to live some values and traditions in the desert.

[Picasso]

Eastriver, Your statement "Real courage will come from those who stay inside the masjid and speak to what real Islam is and how Muslim should live in a modern world".

Sounds all so nice and good...... until it dawns on you that Ali and Rushdie were "in the faith" when they at first voiced opinion. Because they went against Islam they are now hunted for death.

To discredit their courage is folly.

[chefboy-r-d]

That Ramadan is rejected by the US government is a true shame ????? Sakes Alive Eastriver. He has 10 + years of contacts with terrorists you fool. To say he doesn't speak to the US script???

[East River]

There has been a lot of misleading information put out about Ramadan. His family has roots in the Muslim Brotherhood that reaches decades back. He also listed on his visa application making a small donation years ago to a group that was later connected to a Hamas charity. I am not sure if his remarks stated that he knew it was an actual Hamas charity but he listed a group that was connected to Hamas. The fact that the man teaches at Oxford University in England the US's closest ally on the War on Terrorism and country constantly finding terrorist plots should tell you something about his so call terrorist connections. Being connected to terrorism is a crime in the UK and the US, so if he really had those connections I doubt the UK would allow him entry.

Picasso,

The haunted to death stuff, obviously the massive of Muslim people never took such declarations seriously. Muslims around the world are not trying to kill those 2. As to your statements about Ali and Rushdie speaking "against Islam" to say that means they are not for Islam. Why not make statements that disagree with certain practices within Islam? If they intended to only be critical they why say you are no longer Muslim? Instead both made remarks that condemn the entire religion as something that can not fit in the modern world. I can not expect those who have rejected the religion to be listen to and taken seriously as a voice of change in the religion. There need to be a debate inside of masjids across the world and people need to be able to voice their opinions w/o fear of death from extremist. But Ali and Rushdie have made complete blanket statements about Islam that do nothing but play up to fear and paint a picture that Muslims citizens of the world are inferior to other religions.

[Picasso]

Hunted to death, not haunted. Both Ali and Rushdie went underground to escape death by Islamics. I don't know if they are no longer Muslim. Do you? And how would it matter?

Islam isn't so much the enemy as religious bigotry. The fact that 99% of Muslims are religious bigots etc, is just a coincidence.

Of Englands many problems, some include professors at Oxford. Read eastriver, read.

[East River]

If you think Ramadan is a problem you are a bigger fool than our president. If think Islam and its Muslims are religious bigots then are just deaf, dumb, and blind.

Rusdie has stated he does not believe in a God period. Does it matter? hell yes! It means he believes religion should be gotten rid of. He is entitled to his opinions, but he believes he is morally superior to God fearing/loving people and especially Muslims.

Ali has said she no longer practicies Islam. She made that clear on WNYC on live air. For thsoe that want to quickly drink the kool-aid that Islam is bad and Muslims are all evil Ali's words are sweet music. But Ali doesn't want to really reform Islam, she really says it can not be, but she applies what happen to her and those in her culture as if it applies to all 1 billion muslims. I believe she has done this partially for her own gain. But Muslims can not allow her or those like picasso define who we are. We have to admit we have bad people and must show that the vast majority are just very good people. An those good Muslim people must take back the religion, that can't happen if you abandon the religion.

[chefboy-r-d]

Try to understand my main point eastriver. Ali and Rushdie WERE Muslim and spoke out against the extreamism within their religion. For standing up and trying to be witty, couragious and brilliant, they are marked for death.

[Elam]

Muslims teach that our religion requires us to defend other Muslims who are "oppressed" or attacked, wherever they may be in the world.

This is the Mother of all entangling alliances, (and religious war) becoming its only natural and virtually inevitable outcome. It is both hypocritical and idiotic that they call on Christians -- who do not any longer build military alliances along confessional lines -- to end religious war when they themselves have not denounced Islamic leaders who declare that Muslims should owe a duty of defense to Muslims everywhere.

Religious war talk is a smokescreen. Islam believes it can take over the world and it is set on doing just that. Please continue debating free speach and understanding Islam. Oh, and please pass the halal.

[East River]

Chefboy-r-d

I hear your point, I RESPECT your point. But whether Rushdie or Ali were Muslims at the beginning they both have condemn the whole religion and have spoken as if their is no moderate Islam at all. Thats my problem with the both of them. The vast majority of Muslim people are moderate but the both of them act as if Islam can not exist in today's world. That they left the religion is their perogative but that doesn't help the moderate Muslim voice. Neither of them were exactly calling for the moderate voices to prevail when they spokeout as Muslims or as former Muslims. Both have made their fame (and maybe some money) by framing all Muslims as dangerous and not fit to be citizens in the modern world. Most people are not going to take advice from a person putting them down and making blanket statements about something they love. The both of them calling themselves no longer Muslims had made them heroes in the eyes of the West, but totally wiped out their creditability with Muslims.

Whereas, those like Irshad Manji, who is openly gay, and has had plenty death threats of her own. Have stayed within the religion and have worked with both progressive and moderate Muslim voices for the change she and others seek. Manji, unlike Ali and Rushdie, has used the Quran and other Islamic sources to justify her positions for moderate Islam. For me, I think moderate Muslims should push the debate this way, and not allow themselves to be dismissed as former Muslims who left the religion. Thats my point.

[Picasso]

What a curious thing, to blame Islamic Terror on globalization. How, exactly does one square with that? It seems so incredible that terrorism would occur to someone as a response to Globalization. I don’t see Allah commanding his worshipers to cut off peoples heads, slaughter children as policy, crush dissent, burn churches and synogogs, oppress women, hang homosexuals, kill Jews, Christians, in response to globalism??? ......All this evil, and terrorism, and to describe it by calling it “reactionary repression”. That term reminds me of what one does after a bee sting.

Maybe you could detail the economic numbers of the Middle East before and after Globalization started. That might tell a story, and while the questions are coming, when did globalization begin? Was it in the early 1980’s? You mention the source in passing, but never quite pinned it down.

Why is there more evil around now, then say 10 years ago? Maybe because evil has finally figured out that it doesn't need to hide in the shadows--it can walk around in broad daylight and still people will find a way not to see it.

[redball]

The most successful example of globalization is not Starbucks or Nike, but Wahhabism, an obscure backwater variant of Islam practiced by a few Bedouin deadbeats that Saudi oil wealth has now exported to every corner of the earth — to Waziristan, Indonesia, the Caucasus, the Balkans, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Toronto, Portland, Dearborn, and Falls Church. You can live on the other side of the planet and, when Starbucks opens up in town, you might acquire a taste for a decaf latte, but that’s it: otherwise, life goes on. By contrast, when the Saudi-funded preachers hung out their shingles on every Main Street in the west, they radicalized a significant chunk of young European Muslims: they transformed not just their beverage habits but the way they look at the societies in which they live.

[felice]

You can read through this entire book and never learn that there are Muslims all over the world currently interpreting their faith as a license to slaughter innocent human beings (very much including fellow Muslims). Moreover, the overall thrust of "the call for heresy" suggests that misunderstanding between Muslims and Christians, rather than problematic interpretations of Islam, is what threatens world peace.

[Picasso]

To the whole of human existence, the only question is "what is acceptable and what is not?"

The radical arm of Islam is saying " by divine right our standards are correct so you and your standards are irrelevant. If you do not adhere to my beliefs, you are irrelevant, and therefore I can kill you."

Again I ask, “is that acceptable or not”?
.
The choice is not ours to “listen” or “understand”. It lies with Islam to learn the truth of whether the West can be rolled.

No light matter, this. The next thousand years of human progress, to be exact.