[scholarship] [international-scholarship] [Islam and Muslim] Medieval prejudice still influences West's view of Islam

  • From: "A. Fatih Syuhud" <fatihsyuhud@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: international-scholarship@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2006 13:37:15 -0800 (PST)

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By Karen Armstrong, DAWN, 21 June 2002
LONDON: On July 15 1099, the Crusaders from western Europe conquered
Jerusalem, falling upon its Jewish and Muslim inhabitants like the avenging
angels from the apocalypse. 

In a massacre that makes September 11 look puny in comparison, some 40,000
people were slaughtered in two days. A thriving, populous city had been
transformed into a stinking charnel house. Yet in Europe, scholar monks
hailed this crime against humanity as the greatest event in world history
since the crucifixion of Christ. 

The Crusades destabilized the Near East, but made little impression on the
Islamic world as a whole. In the West, however, they were crucial and
formative. This was the period when western Christendom was beginning to
recover from the long period of barbarism known as the Dark Ages, and the
Crusades were the first cooperative act of the new Europe as she struggled
back on to the international scene. 

We continue to talk about crusades for justice and peace, and praise a
crusading journalist who is bravely uncovering some salutary truth, showing
that at some unexamined level, crusading is still acceptable to the western
soul. One of its most enduring legacies is a profound hatred of Islam. 

Before the Crusades, Europeans knew very little about Muslims. But after the
conquest of Jerusalem, scholars began to cultivate a highly distorted
portrait of Islam, and this Islamophobia, entwined with a chronic
anti-Semitism, would become one of the received ideas of Europe. Christians
must have been aware that their Crusades violated the spirit of the Gospels.
Jesus had told his followers to love their enemies, not to exterminate them.
This may be the reason why Christian scholars projected their anxiety on to
the very people they had damaged. 

Thus it was, at a time when Christians were fighting brutal holy wars
againstMuslims in the Near East, that Islam became kno wn in Europe as an
inherently violent and intolerant faith, a religion of the sword. 

At a time when feudal Europe was riddled with hierarchy, Islam was presented
as an anarchic religion that gave too much respect and freedom to menials,
such as slaves and women. Christians could not see Islam as separate from
themselves; it had become, as it were, their shadow-self, the opposite of
everything that they thought they were or hoped they were not. 

In fact, the reality was very different. Islam, for example, is not the
intolerant or violent religion of the western fantasy. Prophet Mohammed
(PBUH) was forced to fight against the city of Makkah, which had vowed to
exterminate the new Muslim community, but the Quran condemns aggressive
warfare and permits only a war of self-defence. 

After five years of warfare, Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) turned to more peaceful
methods and finally conquered Makkah by an ingenious campaign of
non-violence. After the Prophet's dea th, the Muslims established a vast
empire that stretched from the Pyrenees to the Himalayas, but these wars of
conquest were secular, and were only given a religious interpretation after
the event. 

In the Islamic empire, Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians enjoyed religious
freedom. This reflected the teaching of the Quran, which is a pluralistic
scripture, affirmative of other traditions. Muslims are commanded by God to
respect the people of the book, and reminded that they share the same
beliefsand the same God. Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) was simply bringing the old
religion of the Jews and the Christians to the Arabs, who had never had a
prophet before. 

Constantly the Quran explains that Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) has not come to
cancel out the revelations brought by prophets Adam, Abraham, Moses, or
Jesus(peace be upon them all). Today, Muslim scholars have argued that had
Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) known about the Buddhists and Hindus, the native
Americans or the Australian Aborigines, the Quran would have endorsed their
sages and shamans too, because all rightly guided religion comes from God. 

But so entrenched are the old mediaeval ideas that western people find it
difficult to believe this. We continue to view Islam through the filter of
our own needs and confusions. The question of women is a case in point. The
Quran gives women legal rights of inheritance and divorce, which western
women would not receive until the 19th century. y The Quran does permit men
to take four wives, but this was not intended to pander to male lust, it was
a matter of social welfare. It enabled widows and orphans to find a
protector, without whom it was impossible for them to survive in the harsh
conditions of 7th-century Arabia. 

There is nothing in the Quran about obligatory veiling for all women or
theirseclusion in harems. This only came into Islam about three generations
after the Prophet's death, under the influence of the Greeks of Christian
Byzantium, who had long veiled and secluded their women in this way. Veiling
was neither a central nor a universal practice; it was usually only
upper-class women who wore the veil. But this changed during the colonial
period. 

Colonialists such as Lord Cromer, the British consul general of Egypt from
1883 to 1907, like the Christian missionaries who came in their wake,
professed a horror of veiling. Until Muslims abandoned this practice, Cromer
argued in his monumental Modern Egypt, they could never advance in the
modernworld and needed the supervision of the West. Yet again, westerners
were viewing Islam through their own muddled preconceptions. 

We can no longer afford this unbalanced view of Islam, which is damaging to
ourselves as well as to Muslims. We should recall that during the 12th
century, Muslim scholars and scientists of Spain restored to the West the
classical learning it had lost during the Dark Ages. We should also remember
that u ntil 1492, Jews and Christians lived peaceably and productively
together in Muslim Spain - a coexistence that was impossible elsewhere in
Europe. 

At the beginning of the 20th century, nearly every single Muslim
intellectualwas in love with the west, admired its modern society, and
campaigned for democracy and constitutional government in their own
countries. Instead of seeing the West as their enemy, they recognized it as
compatible with their own traditions. We should ask ourselves why we have
lost this goodwill.-Dawn/The Guardian News Service. 

--------------------------
Islam Muslim Islamic banking finance insurance marriage clothing fashion
software qurban Makkah Madinah.


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Posted by A. Fatih Syuhud to Islam and Muslim[1] at 11/28/2006 04:36:00 AM
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=======================================
Situs Lowongan kerja dan Beasiswa - Free Job Vacancy and Scholarship Info

1. Job Vacancy Indonesia
http://karirkerja.blogspot.com

2. Situs Info Lowongan Kerja Indonesia
http://infokerjas.blogpsot.com

3. Free Scholarship info for international students
http://scholarshipz.blogpsot.com

4. Scholarship info for Indonesian and international students
http://informasi-beasiswa.blogspot.com

5. Informasi Beasiswa Indonesia dalam negeri dan luar negeri
http://beasiswas.blogspot.com

6. Cara Membuat blog - Tutorial blog
http://kolom-mario.blogspot.com
=======================================

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  • » [scholarship] [international-scholarship] [Islam and Muslim] Medieval prejudice still influences West's view of Islam