On February 11, the Minister of Law and Justice Ravi Shankar Prasad informed the Rajya Sabha that Dalits who convert to Islam and Christianity will not be eligible to contest assembly or parliamentary elections from Scheduled Caste reserved constituencies, reported The Times of India.

Dalits taking to the above-mentioned faiths also cannot claim other reservation benefits. But according to a TOI report, the Law Minister clarified that those adopting Hindu, Sikh or Buddhist faith could contest from Scheduled Caste reserved seats and will be receiving other reservation benefits.

To the question asked by BJP leader GVL Narasimha Rao in Rajya Sabha, the minister said, “Paragraph 3 of the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) order outlines that…no person who professes a religion different from Hindu, Sikh or Buddhist religion shall be deemed to be a member of a Scheduled Caste”.

Further, the Union Minister also informed that at present, there is no proposal to bring in any amendment in the Representation of the People’s Act to disallow Scheduled Caste/ Scheduled Tribe converting to Islam and Christianity from contesting elections.

The Hindu also quoted Ravi Shankar Prasad saying that there were multiple judgments in place on quota to Dalit Muslims and that the Supreme Court had said that, “till the time you agree that you don’t face the same discrimination then benefits cannot be granted to you”.

This stance of the present government worsens the conditions of those Dalits who have converted to Islam or Christianity, the subject of a decades long Constitutional challenge, still pending before the Supreme Court. The root of this injustice lies in a 1950 Presidential (Scheduled Castes) Order, that specifically excludes Dalit Christians and Muslims from any schemes, affirmative action’s etc. that are allowed to others.

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Late Atal Behari Vajpayee was a strong votary of this, but could not carry his government on it as some notable ministers, including LK Advani, quietly but firmly opposed it as it infringed on basic liberties. But not surprisingly the sentiment within the Sangh Parivar was overwhelmingly for it, and when the Tamil Nadu ordinance was promulgated, RSS hailed it as a great achievement.

I expect this to be the next big initiative of the Modi government. Especially since the National Register of Citizens (NRC) has amounted to little except getting the poor and innocent entangled with the expensive process of proving their identity.

And with Kashmir now a boiling pressure cooker with a clogged valve, and the economic distress is another cause for political distress, we need another diversion. I expect a call for a debate on conversion soon, to set the fox into the chicken coop.

When Jayalalithaa issued the ordinance, not surprisingly, many Christian and Muslim organizations moved heaven and earth to get it withdrawn. To all these people religion was not just a matter about heaven and hell and who gets what, but about business. It is indeed unfortunate that religion and faith are no longer about goodness and decency, but that is not for discussion now. At stake is something much more important.

The acceptance of democracy as a way of life implies that we have accepted that we hold certain rights to be inalienable. The Indian Constitution therefore guarantees justice, liberty and equality. The rights emanating from these are considered fundamental to our being a free and democratic society.

These fundamental rights, therefore, are inviolable in the sense that no law, ordinance, custom, usage or administrative order can ever abridge or take away any of them. The preamble elaborates liberty to be that of `”thought, expression, belief, faith and worship” leaving little room for ambiguity.

Consequently, Article 19 guarantees the people of India seven fundamental freedoms. These are (a) freedom of speech and expression; (b) freedom of assembly; (c) freedom of association; (d) freedom of movement; (e) freedom of residence and settlement; (f) freedom of property; and (g) freedom of profession, occupation, trade or business. Article 25 guarantees “freedom of conscience and free profession, practice and propagation of religion.”

This very simply means that people are free to believe whatever they may want to, convert others to this belief and perform whatever rituals or ceremonies that are required by one’s faith. In even more simple words, people are free to be Christians, free to preach Christianity and convert to Christianity.

Or do the same with Islam or Hinduism or Sikhism or Buddhism and that matter even Marxism, which now is no different than a religion with its own depleted philosophy and mythology. So what is there to debate about conversion?

It is another matter that religions as we know them to be practiced are usually premised on irrational and primitive ideas. Noted psychologist James E Alcock wrote: “We are magical beings in a scientific age. Notwithstanding all the remarkable achievements of our species in terms of understanding and harnessing nature, we are born to magical thoughts and not to reason”.
 

 

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Doubting Thomas needed the proof, just like a scientist, and now is a cautionary Biblical example. Caravaggio/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

And so one sees claim after claim from believers, religious scientists, prestigious science organizations and even atheists asserting not only that science and religion are compatible, but also that they can actually help each other. This claim is called “accommodationism.”
But I argue that this is misguided: that science and religion are not only in conflict – even at “war” – but also represent incompatible ways of viewing the world.
 

Opposing methods for discerning truth

The scientific method relies on observing, testing and replication to learn about the world. Jaron Nix/Unsplash, CC BY

My argument runs like this. I’ll construe “science” as the set of tools we use to find truth about the universe, with the understanding that these truths are provisional rather than absolute. These tools include observing nature, framing and testing hypotheses, trying your hardest to prove that your hypothesis is wrong to test your confidence that it’s right, doing experiments and above all replicating your and others’ results to increase confidence in your inference.

And I’ll define religion as does philosopher Daniel Dennett: “Social systems whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought.” Of course many religions don’t fit that definition, but the ones whose compatibility with science is touted most often – the Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam – fill the bill.

Next, realize that both religion and science rest on “truth statements” about the universe – claims about reality. The edifice of religion differs from science by additionally dealing with morality, purpose and meaning, but even those areas rest on a foundation of empirical claims. You can hardly call yourself a Christian if you don’t believe in the Resurrection of Christ, a Muslim if you don’t believe the angel Gabriel dictated the Qur’an to Muhammad, or a Mormon if you don’t believe that the angel Moroni showed Joseph Smith the golden plates that became the Book of Mormon. After all, why accept a faith’s authoritative teachings if you reject its truth claims?

Indeed, even the Bible notes this: “But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.”

Many theologians emphasize religion’s empirical foundations, agreeing with the physicist and Anglican priest John Polkinghorne:
 

“The question of truth is as central to [religion’s] concern as it is in science. Religious belief can guide one in life or strengthen one at the approach of death, but unless it is actually true it can do neither of these things and so would amount to no more than an illusory exercise in comforting fantasy.”

The conflict between science and faith, then, rests on the methods they use to decide what is true, and what truths result: These are conflicts of both methodology and outcome.

In contrast to the methods of science, religion adjudicates truth not empirically, but via dogma, scripture and authority – in other words, through faith, defined in Hebrews 11 as “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” In science, faith without evidence is a vice, while in religion it’s a virtue. Recall what Jesus said to “doubting Thomas,” who insisted in poking his fingers into the resurrected Savior’s wounds: “Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”

Two ways to look at the same thing, never the twain shall meet. Gabriel Lamza/Unsplash, CC BY

And yet, without supporting evidence, Americans believe a number of religious claims: 74 percent of us believe in God, 68 percent in the divinity of Jesus, 68 percent in Heaven, 57 percent in the virgin birth, and 58 percent in the Devil and Hell. Why do they think these are true? Faith.

But different religions make different – and often conflicting – claims, and there’s no way to judge which claims are right. There are over 4,000 religions on this planet, and their “truths” are quite different. (Muslims and Jews, for instance, absolutely reject the Christian belief that Jesus was the son of God.) Indeed, new sects often arise when some believers reject what others see as true. Lutherans split over the truth of evolution, while Unitarians rejected other Protestants’ belief that Jesus was part of God.

And while science has had success after success in understanding the universe, the “method” of using faith has led to no proof of the divine. How many gods are there? What are their natures and moral creeds? Is there an afterlife? Why is there moral and physical evil? There is no one answer to any of these questions. All is mystery, for all rests on faith.

The “war” between science and religion, then, is a conflict about whether you have good reasons for believing what you do: whether you see faith as a vice or a virtue.
 

Compartmentalizing realms is irrational

So how do the faithful reconcile science and religion? Often they point to the existence of religious scientists, like NIH Director Francis Collins, or to the many religious people who accept science. But I’d argue that this is compartmentalization, not compatibility, for how can you reject the divine in your laboratory but accept that the wine you sip on Sunday is the blood of Jesus?

Can divinity be at play in one setting but not another? Jametlene Reskp/Unsplash, CC BY

Others argue that in the past religion promoted science and inspired questions about the universe. But in the past every Westerner was religious, and it’s debatable whether, in the long run, the progress of science has been promoted by religion. Certainly evolutionary biology, my own field, has been held back strongly by creationism, which arises solely from religion.

What is not disputable is that today science is practiced as an atheistic discipline – and largely by atheists. There’s a huge disparity in religiosity between American scientists and Americans as a whole: 64 percent of our elite scientists are atheists or agnostics, compared to only 6 percent of the general population – more than a tenfold difference. Whether this reflects differential attraction of nonbelievers to science or science eroding belief – I suspect both factors operate – the figures are prima facie evidence for a science-religion conflict.

The most common accommodationist argument is Stephen Jay Gould’s thesis of “non-overlapping magisteria.” Religion and science, he argued, don’t conflict because: “Science tries to document the factual character of the natural world, and to develop theories that coordinate and explain these facts. Religion, on the other hand, operates in the equally important, but utterly different, realm of human purposes, meanings and values – subjects that the factual domain of science might illuminate, but can never resolve.”

This fails on both ends. First, religion certainly makes claims about “the factual character of the universe.” In fact, the biggest opponents of non-overlapping magisteria are believers and theologians, many of whom reject the idea that Abrahamic religions are “empty of any claims to historical or scientific facts.”

Nor is religion the sole bailiwick of “purposes, meanings and values,” which of course differ among faiths. There’s a long and distinguished history of philosophy and ethics – extending from Plato, Hume and Kant up to Peter Singer, Derek Parfit and John Rawls in our day – that relies on reason rather than faith as a fount of morality. All serious ethical philosophy is secular ethical philosophy.

In the end, it’s irrational to decide what’s true in your daily life using empirical evidence, but then rely on wishful-thinking and ancient superstitions to judge the “truths” undergirding your faith. This leads to a mind (no matter how scientifically renowned) at war with itself, producing the cognitive dissonance that prompts accommodationism. If you decide to have good reasons for holding any beliefs, then you must choose between faith and reason. And as facts become increasingly important for the welfare of our species and our planet, people should see faith for what it is: not a virtue but a defect.
 

Jerry Coyne, Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Pope Francis will not ordain women to priesthood. L’Osservatore Romano/Pool Photo Via AP

However, Francis has drawn the line at extending full priesthood to women. Devout Catholics have spoken out boldly on both sides of this issue. But, that door, Francis has repeatedly said, “is closed.”

As a scholar specializing in both the history of the Catholic Church and gender studies, I believe Francis’ refusal comes from his unwillingness to challenge a foundational Catholic doctrine known as “apostolic succession.”

The Catholic Church has historically been unwilling to violate this doctrine.
 

Development of the priesthood

Based on the Gospels of Mark and Luke, it is apostolic succession that specifies how the Catholic Church acquired its authority and its ability to save souls. God gave the power of salvation – to “bind and loose” souls – to Christ who shared it with 12 male apostles. When the apostles chose their successors, the first bishops, they passed the power of salvation to those bishops through the sacrament of ordination. Through ordination, bishops have endowed priests with God’s authority up to the present day.

The origins of apostolic succession can be traced to the first centuries A.D. – a time when Christianity was illegal. Jesus had left his followers with no obvious blueprint for any type of formal church or priesthood. Christians were, thus, free to worship in their own ways, trying not to get caught.
This troubled Christian leaders such as Clement, a first-century bishop of Rome, and Irenaeus, a second-century bishop of Lyon. They believed it unlikely that such a diversity of practices could lead to heaven. Jesus, they wrote, must have left one true path to salvation. In the absence of clear direction, they traced this one path through the apostles and their recognized successors, the bishops.

This became a pivotal development in early attempts to organize a uniform Christian “church,” creating a formal clergy. Only ordained priests were authorized to celebrate the sacraments, a key source of God’s grace.

Anyone, for example, could pronounce ritualistic words over bread and wine, but unless that individual had been given the authority of the apostles through ordination, that bread and wine would remain mere bread and wine. There was no true sacrament, no saving grace. Such unauthorized persons, Irenaeus charged, were thieves, stealing the chance of salvation from the Christians they duped.
 

A matter of divine will

The Catholic Church excludes women from priesthood. Here, Pope Francis during his audience with bishops. Stefano Rellandini/Reuters

Approximately when and under what circumstances certain disciples were designated as the only “apostles,” numbered as 12, and selected as all male is a subject of much historical and theological debate. The church’s justifications for excluding women from apostolic succession have varied over centuries.

Before the 20th century, explanations for refusing women a place in the hierarchy of apostolic succession ranged from women’s inherent sinfulness to their divinely created inferiority to man.

Although the church no longer supports such reasoning, it does still exclude women from the priesthood by virtue of their sex. In its 1976 declaration, “Inter Insigniores,” the church proclaimed its loyalty to the model left by Christ to his followers – in other words, apostolic succession.

Since Christ was incarnated as male and all 12 original apostles were male, the church declared that God meant for males alone to exercise the priesthood. The church, in other words, does not consider the extension of ordination to women to be an issue of human rights but one of fulfilling the divine will, with which there can be no compromise nor accommodation.
 

What change-makers say

Representatives of the Women’s Ordination Conference. AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito

Many devout Catholics, even priests, disagree. Women’s Ordination Conference and Women’s Ordination Worldwide, two of the largest global organizations advocating for women’s ordination, count clerics, monks and nuns among supporters of their cause. As Benedictine nun Joan Chittister charged,
 

“The Church that preaches the equality of women but does nothing to demonstrate it within its own structures … is … dangerously close to repeating the theological errors that underlay centuries of Church-sanctioned slavery.”

These Catholics allege the refusal to ordain women is not God’s intent, and neither scripturally justified nor the original practice of the church.

These modern change-makers point to a body of credible scriptural, archaeological and historical evidence that women served as priests, deaconesses and even bishops alongside Jesus and during the first centuries of Christianity. Indeed, reputable evidence exists that it took centuries for male clerics to gradually exclude women from these positions.

This evidence suggests it could actually be a return to tradition to welcome women to the priesthood. The fact is that the church has changed its position on women and church roles in the past, such as when, in 1900, the church reversed its 600-year old mandate that nuns live and worship isolated behind convent walls. This freedom made new and diverse forms of religious life and service possible for women. The church could alter its position on women again, critics argue. As Roy Bourgeois, a priest defrocked for his support of women’s ordination, maintained, “There’s always the opportunity to change.”
 

What the pope can do

Yet the field on which such battles are fought is far from level, and those on the side of apostolic succession have the upper hand.

Pope Francis. Alberto Lingria/Reuters

Although Francis is unlikely to allow women into the priesthood, it is within reason that he could lead in ordaining women to become deacons, as this would not necessarily violate apostolic succession. Deacons – along with bishops and priests – are one of the three ordained “orders” of ministers in the Catholic Church. Deacons are not priests, but they may preach, teach and lead in prayer and works of mercy.

The diaconate is often a stage on the road to ordination to the priesthood for men. During the Vatican’s Synod on the Family in 2015, Canadian Archbishop Paul-Andre Durocher of Quebec encouraged his colleagues to expand women’s opportunities for leadership, including ordination to the diaconate, “to clearly show the world the equal dignity of women and men in the Church.”

Pope Benedict XVI suggested this almost a decade ago. Durocher, like Benedict, was careful to clarify that deacons are directed “non ad sacerdotium, sed ad ministerium,” meaning “not to priesthood, but to ministry.” While Francis has been firm in protecting doctrines such as apostolic succession, this is a move he could legitimately make.

Lisa McClain, Professor of History and Gender Studies, Boise State University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Credit: Pixabay/Stocksnap. CC0 Creative Commons.

“Were Christians to be in a position to exert enduring cultural influence, the results would likely be disastrous or perhaps mostly so.” This is the judgment of University of Virginia sociologist James Davison Hunter, who coined the term “culture wars” in the 1980s, but it’s a sentiment that’s shared by many on the left.

Given their flawed thinking about public life, says Hunter—“based on both specious social science and problematic theology”—there seems to be little future for the Christian faith as a motivating force in progressive politics in the USA and beyond. But is this judgment correct?

To put this question in context, the American Century is over. The institutions that sustained the modern industrial world (including many of the mainstream Christian churches) are rusting out, their legitimacy crisis dragging on like a festering wound since the Sixties.

Whether we like it or not, we are emerging into a different world. It feels strange to us. We can’t see it clearly at this point, or even know what to call it. But whatever the emerging world will become it will need a new consciousness to guide it, especially if we want that world to be a good one.

Finding and articulating that new consciousness in order to re-imagine our societies is one of the central challenges of our times—supporting the growth of a wider, public sensibility and a progressive way of life in which peace, justice, love, hope and human flourishing can grow. To meet this challenge, I think we’ll need to draw on imaginative resources wherever we can find them.

So it’s at least worth taking another look at Christianity’s faith and practice, history and global diversity, theological ideas and spiritual traditions in order to see whether any of these things might offer us these kinds of resources. Can Christianity be critical enough of itself and of society to be a productive source of change? By this I don’t mean that Christians should simply criticize. We’ve had enough cranky, reactionary rhetoric from the uniquely American religious right in recent years to last a lifetime.

But keep in mind that as recently as the Sixties, Christian public identity in the US was claimed by the moderate-to-progressive Protestant ‘mainline’ denominations—the religious center-left. Progressive theologians including Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich and Harvey Cox, and activist clergy like Martin Luther King Jr and William Sloane Coffin, were all well-known, consequential public figures.

Their intellectual and moral tradition was rooted long ago in the eighteenth-century in what historian Amy Kittelstrom calls the “American Reformation” in her recent book, The Religion of Democracy. Kittelstrom describes this period as one of fascinating intellectual ferment during which New England pastors and theologians started to mix Reformation Protestantism with the values of the Enlightenment.

This experiment produced a new liberal faith; a new liberal intellectual culture fostering democratic values such as liberty of conscience, equality and social progress; and the first stirrings of protest against slavery and in favor of women’s rights. These church leaders, says Kittlestrom, “were the first people in the world to call themselves liberals.” Their ideas were crucial to the development of social consciousness in the USA well into the twentieth century.

Kittelstrom connects distinctly American traditions like Transcendentalism—white America’s first truly new spirituality; Pragmatism—its first unique philosophy; and Progressivism, fueled by the Social Gospel, to the spirit of the American Reformation and its fusion with democratic society. The American Reformation’s intellectual influence, writes historian David Hollinger, “was—and continues to be—a world-historical event, or at least one of the defining experiences of the North Atlantic West . . . from the eighteenth century to the present.”
This diverse, open and inclusive mainstream version of Christian faith has faded out in the last 50 years, to be replaced by an inexperienced reactionary rump with neither the historical memory nor the cultural skills to articulate a coherent public faith, or even to grasp how society is changing. The now long-forgotten ‘death’ of the Protestant mainline churches, as Catholic sociologist Joseph Bottum reminds us, is more consequential than we might think. Bottum laments losing a venerable, crucial, moderating voice in civil society as “the central historical fact of our time”—and a significant source of our present political and cultural confusion.

But can Christian faith today offer a critique of our current way of life, in the same way that, say, feminism or critical race theory can? Is it able to provide a progressive resource for creating a new public consciousness and form of life as societies sail into uncharted waters?
Nearly everyone outside the white, Euro-American dominant society feels written out of history, but where do we turn for an alternative point of view to correct this situation? We turn to post-colonial writers certainly, including Christian theologians from Latin America, Africa and Asia. We look to the East for new varieties of religious consciousness, and to pre-colonial indigenous cultures for alternative modes of life. And we look to pre-Western pagan values that underpin eco-spiritualities and new religious movements.

But all these resources only go so far in helping us with our own critical self-understanding. How can we in the West understand ourselves—on our own terms—from the perspective of our own history? One way to do this is by re-telling our own story from our own beginnings, without prejudice to the ancient and Medieval Christian roots that predated the modern period.

This is already being done by some of the most influential philosophers of our generation. For example, Charles Taylor, an early leader in multicultural theory, has helpfully traced the rise of modern consciousness from theological as well as philosophical roots in his magisterial Sources of the Self.

Italian political philosopher Giorgio Agamben (a radical leftist, and an atheist as far as I know) is another. He argues that to understand Western thinking we need to pick apart modern thought to uncover its theological underpinnings, and he publishes copious theological writing. “I think” he says, “that it is only through metaphysical, religious, and theological paradigms that one can truly approach the contemporary—and political—situation.”

Another voice in the mix is Slavoj Žižek, the Slovenian philosophical rock star of the Marxist left who publishes frequently with theologians, even claiming that “to become a true dialectical materialist, one should go through the Christian experience.”

These are not endorsements of actually-existing Christianity by any means, but they represent a rich intellectual search for philosophical alternatives that are rooted in the ground of Christian theology and practice.

In addition, the Western perception of Christianity is more than a little myopic. It’s easy to forget that 33 per cent of the world’s people—2.4 billion individuals—identify as Christians. Jesus still has more followers than Facebook, and most of them live lives far different from those in the West. Pentecostal Christians alone now outnumber Buddhists worldwide. As Philip Jenkins pointed out some years ago in his seminal book The Next Christendom, to overlook the rise of Christianity in the global South—which  now constitutes 60 per cent of world Christianity—is to miss the most profound social revolution of the twentieth century.

Why don’t we see this clearly? In part it’s because many of us live in an ‘already-been-Christian’ context. Christian tradition has been in our background for so long that it’s almost second nature to be critical of it, and many of us assume that it’s on its way out anyway.
But that ignores the fact that in ‘never-before-been-Christian’ societies, Christianity might provide progressive resources, social as well as spiritual. Some choose Christian faith as a means of assimilating liberal Western values, some to connect with a global religious consciousness. Many others see in the faith solutions to personal problems as well as intellectual tools to understand their own cultural traditions. We do the same thing in the West when we borrow non-Western spiritual practices like meditation or yoga.

For whatever reasons, individuals around the world who are concerned about their spirituality are asserting their free agency to choose these resources in order to address their own developing consciousness. They do this in large numbers even now in a post-colonial period of extensive criticism of the West and its religion.

What can be made of this enormous, global community of different and often clashing Christian identities? It’s certainly a testing ground for just about every social problem and potential solution. To take an example from Africa: the Anglican Communion ranges from homophobic bishops to progressive civil rights heroes like South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former Ugandan Bishop David Zac Niringiye. How tensions between conservatives and progressives play out will have an enormous influence on African society—as well as demonstrate whether or not Christian faith can mobilize its resources to support human flourishing for everyone.

Whatever you decide to make of it, the Christian movement will be with us for a very long time, warts and all. In spite of its many problems—and they are manifold—it is important to take another look to see how rich it might be in terms of the resources we need to guide the world into a new way of being, and a new form of consciousness, where peace, justice, love, and hope may prevail.

Gregory Leffel, Ph.D., is a missiologist working on collective action, social movements and theo-politics, and is director of One Horizon Institute in Lexington, Kentucky. He is author of Faith Seeking Action: Mission, Social Movements, and the Church in Motion; and is past president of the American Society of Missiology.  

Courtesy: Open Democracy

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Photo credit: www.shutterstock.com

It is a practice that has become all too familiar in recent years: in the wake of a terrorist attack Muslims scramble to distance their faith from the violent acts being carried out in its name. They feel compelled to defend Islam from accusations that it is inherently violent or anti-modern.

This tendency to explicitly connect Islam with violence has had very real consequences, most recently with Donald Trump’s executive order banning refugees and immigrants from multiple Muslim-majority countries from entering the US. This act has caused outrage among Muslims across the globe as they again reiterate that Islam is not the cause of extremism.

But this phenomenon is hardly a recent one. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, writers from across the Islamic world felt the need to defend Islam to a European audience.

This period saw the popularisation of supposedly scientific explanations for the racial and cultural superiority of Europe. Muslim writers of the time vigorously challenged the prevailing sentiment among many European thinkers that Islam was backwards and incompatible with reform.

These Muslim writers were part of a generation of modernisers that emerged across the Islamic world in the 19th century who believed that their societies would benefit most from reform along broadly European lines. Yet they maintained that this did not require a rejection of their Islamic identities. Like their counterparts today, these writers knew that whatever their personal beliefs about religion, to accept this narrative of Islam’s inherent backwardness would be to accept a narrative of European supremacy.

One of the most well-known examples of this was an article in May 1883 by the Muslim thinker Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani in the French Journal des Débats. It was in response to a lecture delivered by the French scholar Ernest Renan in which he stated, among other things, that Islam was incompatible with science. In his response, al-Afghani pointed to the scientific advances of the early Islamic period, arguing that rigid orthodoxy could be overcome through education and development.
 

The answer isn’t always Islam

But this was just one example of a common trend during this period as Muslim writers worked to respond directly to European writers who were critical of Islam.

One such figure was the Ottoman intellectual Ahmed Rıza, a member of the Young Turk movement that opposed Sultan Abdülhamid II in the late 19th century. Rıza was a positivist who believed in the supremacy of rational and scientific knowledge, but strongly defended Islam and its compatibility with reform. He criticised those European writers that blamed Islam for all of the problems of the Islamic world. He felt that the Ottoman Empire could fully embrace reform without rejecting its essential Islamic character.
 

Rıza echoed many of the same points made by commentators today in an 1896 article La Tolérance Musulmane. He asked why European writers insisted on solely blaming Islam for violence in the Ottoman Empire, but refused to see Christianity as a cause for violence in their own countries. He also blamed the European press for fanning the flames of anti-Islamic prejudice to serve their own interests.

Like many of his contemporaries, Rıza highlighted the accomplishments of Muslim scientists and intellectuals and the important contributions made by Islamic civilisation over the centuries. He also pointed out the Islamic roots of consultation and representation that underpinned many Ottoman reforms in the 19th century.
 

The colonial context

In French North Africa in the early 20th century similar defences were presented by the Algerian essayist Ismael Hamet and the Tunisian writer and politician Abdelaziz Thaalbi. Both refused to accept that their countries’ Islamic character presented a barrier to full equality with France.

In his 1905 book, L’Esprit Libéral du Coran, Thaalbi declared that the idea of tolerance was the leitmotif of the Qur’an. Like commentators today he stressed the importance of the political context that produced certain actions done in the name of Islam. For him, the “wars of early Islam had purely political reasons”. Islam itself was not inherently violent or opposed to modernisation and was, as he showed, perfectly compatible with the values of pluralism and tolerance.

Hamet held the same beliefs and saw education as the key. In Les Musulmans Français dans le Nord de l’Afrique in 1906 he stressed that Islam was not the problem. Rather, the problem lay in the manipulation and distortion of Islam by certain religious leaders. Superstition and ignorance had warped Islam beyond recognition. Only through education and equality could these elements be eliminated.
 

Talking in circles

All of these writers sincerely believed in the benefits of societal reform and they refused to accept the characterisation of Islam as fundamentally opposed to this aim. A final quote from Thaalbi highlights how, in many ways, we are still having the same conversation today as we were in 1905:
 

At the moment when the railroad, the post and the telegraph create bonds between all peoples, at the moment when men are sympathetic to the pains of other men, at the moment when universal peace is demanded and demanded by society as a whole, to bring all the elements of humanity closer together, will this hateful, intolerant, anti-liberal and fanatical interpretation of the Qur’an be a cause that will prevent this universal rapprochement?
 

Perhaps it’s time that we appreciate the exasperation that many Muslims feel when they are constantly called upon to defend the decency of their faith to the West. They have been doing it for a very long time.

(David Beamish is PhD Candidate, Modern Middle East History, SOAS, University of London).

This article was first published on The Conversation.

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Zakir Naik’s Saudi-supported ‘Peace TV’ is preaching Islam to the world. Meanwhile, Muslim refugees from war-torn countries who are unwanted by the heartless Saudi monarchy but have found shelter in Europe are opting out of Islam, hundreds at a time

Whatever else he may or may not be, as a preacher of the supremacist, intolerant Wahhabi brand of Islam, the Saudi Arabia-backed controversial televangelist Zakir Naik is in the business of converting non-Muslims to Islam. Going by anecdotal accounts and stray facts, Naik’s converts may be counted on finger tips.  In an interview to The Times of India published on July 15, former police commissioner of Pune (and later Mumbai), now a BJP MP, Satyapal Singh, has claimed: “In October 2008, I was apprised of a ceremony of Zakir Naik [in Pune] where 12 young Hindu and Jain kids were converted to Islam. He apparently recited the kalima to those kids of tender age”. An organisation under FCRA is not supposed to indulge in religious conversions in India”.

Whether an FCRA registered organisation is permitted to engage in religious conversions is one question. The other question that needs to be asked is this: What kind of Islam – Wahhabism, Saudi Arabia’s state religion – is Naik promoting which is so heartless as to shut its frontiers to refugees from war-torn Muslim countries? What kind of ‘business model’ is this in the ‘soul harvesting’ business?

What is one to make of Naik and his benefactors gloating over the conversion of stray Hindus, Jains, Buddhists or Christians – after an ‘investment’ of lakhs per convert –, while unwanted Muslim refugees now in Europe are opting out of Islam, hundreds at a time?    

That the outgoing far outnumber Naik’s reported incomers is obvious from several news reports published by the media in Europe in the last few months.

A June 5 news published by The Guardian, UK reports: ‘European churches say growing flock of Muslim refugees are converting: Anecdotal evidence suggests rising pattern of Muslims becoming Christians, with some churches conducting mass baptisms. The multiple reasons for Muslim refugees marching out of Islam include “heartfelt faith in a new religion, gratitude to Christian groups offering support during perilous and frightening journeys, and an expectation that conversion may aid asylum applications”.

According to the Guardian:

At Trinity church in the Berlin suburb of Steglitz, the congregation has grown from 150 two years ago to almost 700, swollen by Muslim converts, according to Pastor Gottfried Martens. Earlier this year, churches in Berlin and Hamburg reportedly held mass conversions for asylum seekers at municipal swimming pools.

The Austrian Catholic church logged 300 applications for adult baptism in the first three months of 2016, with the Austrian pastoral institute estimating 70% of those converting are refugees.

At Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral in the UK, a weekly Persian service attracts between 100 and 140 people. Nearly all are migrants from Iran, Afghanistan and elsewhere in central Asia.

In another report the neo-converts spell out the reasons for their embracing a new faith:

"I've been looking all my life for peace and happiness, but in Islam, I have not found it," Shima, an Iranian refugee, told Stern magazine. "To be a Christian means happiness to me," she added.

"In Islam, we always lived in fear. Fear God, fear of sin, fear of punishment. However, Christ is a God of love," another Iranian refugee, Solmaz, told the German daily.

A Google search on ‘Muslim refugees converting to Christianity’ takes you to many more reports on how and why they are ‘flocking to Jesus’.

Some church leaders are doubtful about the bonafide of the new stream of conversions, which they feel may be undertaken under subtle — or not so subtle — pressure.
 

Pastor Scholte’s qualms about mass conversion are laudable. Not so laudable are the motives of those who splurge petro-dollars aplenty on ‘Peace TV’ and other such ethically-challenged enterprises in search of souls to harvest but who are unmoved by the plight of fellow-Muslims forced to flee their home and country.

“We are brothers, we are children of the same God,” said Pope Francis as he washed and kissed the feet of 12 Muslim, Orthodox, Hindu and Catholic refugees during the Easter Mass Week in end-March.  

Between a Pope such as this one and the current we-couldn’t-care-less Saudi monarchs – the self-proclaimed ‘Khâdim ül Haramain ish Sharifain’ (Servant of the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina) – for the Muslim refugees in Europe it could be a difficult choice to make.

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leppo, Mosul, Tikrit, Acre… Until just a few years ago, these names meant little to the average American. Now they are all too familiar, as are the atrocities being committed there in the name of religion. Eight hundred years ago the situation in that region was much the same, except then, Christians were committing acts of cruelty no less numerous or shocking than Muslims. Both did so during the course of Holy Wars that came to be known as “the Crusades.”

Of all the warriors who fought in those wars, none cast a larger shadow than the Sultan, Saladin, who died on this day in 1193 CE. His exploits eclipsed even those of his most famous adversary, Richard I (“the Lionheart”). It was Saladin who annihilated King Guy’s army at the Horns of Hattin in 1187 CE and reclaimed Jerusalem for Islam after it had been ruled by Christian Franks for nearly a century. And when Richard and Philip II of France came to Palestine at the head of a third Crusade, it was Saladin who met them, denied them Jerusalem, and forced them to abandon their quest to free the Holy Land from Muslim dominion. And yet, Saladin became a source of myth and legend more for his image as the “noble enemy” than for his victories on the battlefield. For he, more than the Christian knights who opposed him, exemplified chivalrous ideals in his conduct both as a military leader and civil servant.

After taking Jerusalem for Christendom in 1098 CE, Godfrey of Bouillon had its Muslim defenders massacred by the thousands. When Saladin reclaimed the Holy City for Islam in 1187 CE, he responded not in kind, but spared the lives of its Christian defenders in return for a modest ransom and bondage for those who were unable to pay. Later, he permitted Christians to visit Jerusalem without paying tribute and also granted them free access to the other holy places under his control.Equestrian statue of Saladin in the Citadel, Damascus, Syria by Graham van der Wielen. CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

On Wednesday, 4 March 1193 CE Saladin died. The cause of his fatal illness though uncertain had features consistent with tuberculous meningitis. At the time of his death, only one Tyrian gold piece and forty-seven pieces of silver remained of the vast wealth he had amassed during his conquests, so irresistible had been his impulse for giving while he lived. Unfortunately, none of his 17 sons inherited either his generosity or his statesmanship. No sooner was their father gone then they began fighting amongst themselves, and in just a few years had reduced the empire he had created into a fragmented patchwork of powerless states.

In 2005, Ridley Scott released an epic film, The Kingdom of Heaven, loosely based on the life and legacy of Saladin. Near the end of the film there is a poignant scene in which Saladin, having just entered Jerusalem at the head of his victorious army, picks up a cross that had been knocked to the floor during the siege of the Holy City and respectfully places it back on its table. According to journalist Robert Fisk, when he saw the film in a Beirut cinema, that particular scene brought the Muslim audience in attendance to its feet applauding. Their reaction gives hope that after nearly a thousand years of unrelenting religious strife in the Holy Land, a formula for peace may yet be found in the principles of the “noble enemy” that motivated Saladin throughout his life.

(The author is  an Emeritus Professor of Medicine and Carolyn Frenkil and Selvin Passen History of Medicine Scholar-in-Residence at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. He is also the author of Diagnosing Giants: Solving the Medical Mysteries of Thirteen Patients Who Changed the World)

http://blog.oup.com/2016/03/saladin-islamic-state/#sthash.N1aPzBjU.dpuf

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Modi to address the principals of RSS run schools

Image: The Hindu

Today. India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, will create history of sorts. He is scheduled to address principals of 1,100 RSS-run senior secondary schools at Delhi’s Vignan Bhavan flanked by his aide and MHRD minister, Smriti Irani. Not an outfit that reveres India’s foundational document, the Constitution, we appeal to Narendra Modi, “Please Teach The RSS the Constitution, Mr Prime Minister.”

We also reproduce here a detailed critique(s) of the texts used and taught by the Vidyabharati schools run by the RSS. This substantive critique of the RSS-run Vidya Bharati schools was conducted by the NCERT (National Council for Educational Research and Training) a central body that is today filled with men and women sworn to an un-Constitutional vision. The RSS’s BJP incharge Krishna Gopal, NCERT director Hrushikesh Senapaty and CBSE Chairman Y S K Seshu Kumar. RSS had told the Indian Express (on January 22, 2016) that February 12 was chosen for the PM’s address as the day will be observed as Vasant Panchami and Saraswati Puja this year.

On November 27, 2015 a comment made Modi in the Lok Sabha (Parliament), while responding to sharp, countrywide criticisms of growing hate crimes and intolerance had sworn that the “Indian Constitution was the only holy book to which his government was committed.”

The series of hate driven crimes all across the country since August-September 2015 especially [1] had however been led by the very outfits that are the ideological bedrock of this government, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its new avatars, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal (BD). This is before the “institutional murder” of Rohith Vemula that has revealed an unseemly interest by the same central, MHRD ministry in student politics and their affairs, hastily dubbing students who challenge the narrow worldview of the RSS and its student wing, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) as “casteist and anti-national.”

It is therefore relevant that the content of texts taught in RSS-run schools becomes central to the current debate.

References:
PM Modi to address principals of 1,100 RSS-run schools on Feb 12; http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/pm-modi-to-address-principals-of-1100-rss-run-schools-on-feb-12/
‘India first’ only religion of government, Constitution its only scripture: Modi; http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/india-first-only-religion-of-government-and-constitution-its-only-scripture-says-modi/article7923917.ece

Breeding Bigotry

Communalism Combat carried this NCERT Committee report in October 1999. It is a frightening exposure and analysis of how young minds in India, within the RSS schools, are poisoned. We bring our readers this report that has relevance today

The NCERT’s National Steering Committee on text-book evaluation found that the RSS-run Vidya Bharati schools are being clearly used for the dissemination of blatantly communal ideas

We reproduce below extracts from National Steering Committee on Textbook Evaluation, Recommendation and Report II, NCERT (National Council for Educational Research and Training).
Publications of Vidya Bharati (Section VI of the report): 

The Committee shares the concern expressed in the report over the publication and use of blatantly communal writings in the series entitled, Sanskriti Jnan in the Vidya Bharati Schools which have been set up in different parts of the country. Their number is reported to be 6,000. The Committee agrees with the report that much of the material in the so–called Sanskrit Jnan series is “designed to promote bigotry and religious fanaticism in the name of inculcating knowledge of culture in the young generation”.  The Committee is of the view that the Vidya Bharati schools are being clearly used for the dissemination of blatantly communal ideas. In its earlier report (January 1993), the Committee had commented on publications which had been brought out with similar objectives by the Saraswati Shishu Mandir Prakashan and Markazi Maktaba Islami and had recommended that they should not be allowed to be used in schools. The Sanskriti Jnan series are known to be in use in Vidya Bharati schools in Madhya Pradesh and elsewhere. The Committee recommends that the  educational authorities of Madhya Pradesh and other states should disallow the use of this series in the schools. The state governments may also consider appropriate steps to stop the publication of these materials which foment communal hatred and disallow the examinations which are held by the Vidya Bharati Sansthan on the basis of these materials.

Appendix:
The Vidya Bharati Akhil Bharatiya Shiksha Sansthan is stated to have been set up in 1978. It has been producing materials which are used in Saraswati Shishu Mandirs and other schools which have been set up by this Sansthan in different parts of the country. A large number of these schools have been set up in Madhya Pradesh. The Vidya Bharati schools in Madhya Pradesh had earlier been permitted to have their own examinations up to class VIII as well as to have their own teacher training programme. These schools are used for the propagation of blatantly communal ideas. Some of the textbooks used in Saraswati Shishu Mandirs in Uttar Pradesh had been evaluated in 1993.

A series of booklets which is being used in the Vidya Bharati schools has been published under the general title of Sanskriti Jnan Pareeksha and Sanskrit–Jnan Pareeksha Prashn–ottari (Culture–Knowledge Examination and Culture–Knowledge Examination Questions–Answers). These books are in the form of questions and answers which are meant to be taught by teachers and memorized by students. They are also used for assessing children in an all–India examination which is conducted by the Sansthan. The Sansthan claims that during 1993–94, 3,55,282 students appeared in the examination based on this question–answer series. The total number of schools run by the Sansthan is claimed to be 6,000 with 12,00,000 students and 40,000 teachers.

The Vidya Bharati Sansthan claims to be engaged in providing to the young generation education in religion, culture and nationalism. The catechistic series is part of the Sansthan’s effort in this direction.

‘In one booklet, the RSS is given the status of divine power’.

Each booklet in the series comprises questions and answers on geography, politics, personalities, martyrs, morals, Hindu festivals, religious books, general knowledge, etc. Much of the material in these books is designed to promote blatantly communal and chauvinist ideas and popularize RSS and its policies and programmes.

Some examples of the kind of ‘knowledge’ of sanskriti these booklets are disseminating are given below:
1. The booklets include information and questions and answers on the ‘geographical and political boundaries of India’. Besides Pakistan and Bangladesh, Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and ‘Brahmadesh or Myanmar’ are all supposed to have been earlier parts of India. There is a question on Sri Lanka which reads, “What is the name of the island in the south which touches the feet of Bharat Mother, and which reminds us of Sri Ramachandra’s victory over Ravana and which was a part of our country at one time?” Arab Sagar, according to these booklets, is supposed to be also known as Sindhu Sagar and Bay of Bengal as Gangasagar. These names are also used in the map of India which is printed as the back cover of many of the booklets under the caption Punyabhoomi Bharat. In this map, Indian Ocean is mentioned as Hindu Mahasagar.

2. India is presented in extreme chauvinist terms as the ‘original home of world civilisation’. One of the booklets (No.IX), for example, says, “India is the most ancient country in the world. When civilisation had not developed in many countries of the world, when people in those countries lived in jungles naked or covering their bodies with the bark of trees or hides of animals, Bharat’s Rishis–Munis brought the light of culture and civilisation to all those countries.” Some of the examples of the “spread of the light of Aryatva by Bharatiya Manishis” given are the following:
(i) “The credit for lighting the lamp of culture in China goes to the ancient Indians,
(ii) India is the mother country of ancient China. Their ancestors were Indian kshatriyas…
(iii) The first people who began to inhabit China were Indians.”

“The first people to settle in Iran were Indians (Aryans)”.

“The popularity of the great work of the Aryans — Valmiki Ramayana — influenced (Yavana) yunan? (Greece) and there also the great poet Homer composed a version of the Ramayana”.

“The Languages of the indigenous people (Red Indians) of the northern part of America were derived from ancient Indian languages”.

3. Many of these booklets have a section each on ‘Sri Ramjanma-bhumi’. They present RSS–VHP propaganda in the form of catechisms to be memorized by the faithful as absolute truths. Some of the questions – answers in these sections are as followers;

Q. Who got the first temple built on the birth place of Shri Ram in Ayodhya?
A. Shri Ram’s son Maharaja Kush.

Q. Who was the first foreign invader who destroyed Sri Ram temple?
A. Menander of Greece (150 B.C.)

Q. Who got the present Rama Temple built?
A. Maharaja Chandragupta Vikramaditya (A.D. 380–413).

Q. Which Muslim plunderer invaded the temples in Ayodhya in A.D. 1033?
A. Mahmud Ghaznavi’s nephew Salar Masud.

Q. Which Mughal invader destroyed the Rama Temple in A.D. 1528?
A. Babur.

Q. Why is Babri Masjid not a mosque?
A. Because Muslims have never till today offered Namaz there.

Q. How many devotees of Rama laid down their life to liberate Rama temple from A.D. 1528 to A.D. 1914?
A. Three lakh fifty thousand.

Q. How many times did the foreigners invade Shri Ramajanma-bhumi?
A. Seventy–seven times.

Q. “Which day was decided by Sri Ram Kar Sewa Samiti to start Kar Sewa?
A. 30 October, 1990.

Q. Why will 2 November 1990 be inscribed in black letters in the history of India?
A. Because on that day, the then Chief Minister by ordering the Police to shoot unarmed Kar Sewaks massacred hundreds of them.

Q. When was the Shilanyas of the temple laid in Sri Ram Janmbhumi?
A. 1 November 1989.

Q. What was the number of the struggle for the liberation of Ram Janmabhumi which was launched on 30 October 1990?
A. 78th struggle.

Some other questions which have been included along with answers are:

“When did Ramabhakta Kar Sewaks unfurl the saffron flag on Shri Ramjanmabhumi?” 
“Mention the names of the young boys who laid down their life while unfurling the saffron flag”.

4. In one of the books in the series (No.12), there is a section on the saints of the world and the sects/faiths founded by them. The statements made in this section are designed to promote contempt and blind hatred against other religions. One statement on the followers of Christianity reads as follows: “It is because of the conspiratorial policies of the followers of this religion that India was partitioned. Even today Christian missionaries are engaged in fostering anti–national tendencies in Nagaland, Meghalaya, Arunachal, Bihar, Kerala, and other regions of our country because of which there is a grave danger to the integrity of present day India”.

About Islam, one of the statements is as follows: “Thousands of opponents of idol worship, the followers of Islam, go to the pilgrimage centre of Islamic community at Kaaba to worship ‘Shivalinga’. In Muslim society, the greatest wish is to have a darshan of that black stone (Shivalinga)”. 

The state governments may also consider appropriate steps to stop the publication of these materials which foment communal hatred and disallow the examinations which are held by the Vidya Bharati Sansthan on the basis of these materials.

In another question, children are asked to fill in the blanks ‘rivers of blood’ as the means by which Prophet Mohammad spread Islam.

5. There are special sections in some of the booklets on RSS, its founder and its other leaders. In one booklet (No. 11), RSS, which is mentioned along with Arya Samaj and Ramakrishna Mission etc. as a social reform organisation, is given the status of divine power. It says, “Some divine power, whether it was Bhagwan Ram or Bhagwan Krishna, has always emerged for the preservation of the greatness of Indian culture. The Hindu organization Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh has arisen to end the present miserable condition and for the defence of the greatness of Bharatiya Sanskriti.”

6. The ‘knowledge’ imparted in the booklets includes such facts as Meghnath Saha, being the author of History of Hindu Science. Punjab University being located in Jalandhar, Jammu–Kashmir University located in Jammu, Annamalai University in Madras, and Andhra University in Hyderabad.

Much of this material is designed to promote bigotry and religious fanaticism in the name of inculcating knowledge of culture in the young which should be a matter of serious concern. 

Archived from Communalism Combat, October 1999, Anniversary Issue (6th) Year 7  No. 52, Cover Story 7

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