Islam in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives - Islamic Books ...

Islam after Empire 4 3Egypt remain two of the closest U.S. allies in the region, despite the violent actionsof their citizens and despite the fact that neither has the democratic credentialsof Iran, against whom the United States supported Iraqi dictator SaddamHussein after his invasion of that country in 1980. In the years thatfollowed, the United States gave missiles and other military aid to the Afghanm u j a h i d i n (literally “those who engage in jihad”), encouraged the graduates ofmilitant Pakistani Islamic religious schools, and sold weapons to Iran, whichsupported Shi’ite groups who were kidnapping Americans in Lebanon. Whatdoes this twisted history say about the “us” and about the values we think “we”hold dear? The brutal play of international power politics in the region is inseparablefrom the ways Middle Easterners understand and debate their historical,cultural, and religious heritage, and it is inseparable from their understandingof their place in the world. And for virtually the whole of the last twocenturies, that play has held little benefit and more than enough pain andfrustration for many people of the Middle East.As you read this chapter, then, think not about a system of theology or a traditionallifestyle called “Islam,” lying like an ancient carpet from the AtlasMountains in the west to the Zagros Mountains in the east. Think insteadabout the historical events during which the experiences of Islam have beenformed, so that the image becomes one of a thousand looms weaving threadsold and new, tattered and whole, into a constantly changing pattern in whichno panel of cloth entirely matches the ones around it. The world wars of thetwentieth century; the anticolonial struggles of new nations; the sudden renaissanceof art, architecture, and literature in the Middle East; and the basegreed and conspicuous consumerism triggered by the late twentieth-centuryoil economy have all shaped the life, thought, and action of Muslims living inthe region. Think about what “civilization” and “tradition,” “duty” and “virtue”mean at the beginning of the twenty-first century, because these are the thingsMuslims in the Middle East and elsewhere have been thinking about, too. Islam,either as a religious tradition or as a personal experience, is about livingconcerns, about making sense of change and discomfort and fear as well as ofjoy and tradition, comfort and love.Also as you read this chapter, think about the institutional and cultural atmospherein which we apprehend Islam, the Middle East, and religion in general,because our own concerns and preoccupations shape our perception of the preoccupationsof others. This does not mean we are always looking into a mirror;r a t h e r, it means we are looking through a window in which our own reflectioncolors what we see beyond it. Many of us tend to be much less forgiving of thei m p e rfections of others than we are of our own, and one of the chief errors we ashumans make in viewing other cultures is to compare “our” own high ideals withother people’s very imperfect realities. Comparisons should, of course, harnessidentical types, comparing our realities with theirs, their ideals with ours.