Roots…

The End of Ramadan

Paul Sprecher

Second Parish in Hingham

October 22, 2006

Today marks the end of the month of Ramadan, during which observant Muslims abstain from dawn to disk from eating, drinking, and engaging in sexual activity. Our reading suggested some of the benefits which might be obtained from such a fast; indeed, fasting has been used in many traditions for the same reasons: to enable us to focus on what is most important to our selves, free from the distractions of consumption. Gandhi, for example, called upon an ancient Hindu tradition of fasting to sharpen his commitment to Satyagraha, soul force, in his leadership of the Indian people in their struggle for independence. Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement in the Jewish tradition of which we spoke recently, is also a fast day. Our Puritan and Pilgrim forebears engaged in fast days as well.

We have heard recently that the level of violence in Iraq has increased in part because of the month of Ramadan. I suppose it could be expected that a time of religious devotion might increase religious tensions as well tensions resulting from the occupation of an Islamic-majority country by a non-Islamic coalition, whatever the stated intentions of the foreign powers.

We are living at a time of significant tension between Muslims and others. To cite just a few examples, conflict is growing in Western Europe over the number of Muslim immigrants in many parts of Europe; recently, for example, Jack Straw, formerly foreign minister of Great Britain, suggested that Muslim women wearing the niqab, a veil covering the face, hindered community relations. A Muslim leader responded by saying, “[A]gain we are being singled out by this government as the problem. Women have a right to wear a veil and this is just another example of blatant Muslim-bashing by this government.”[1] The Pope’s remarks at a lecture in Germany in which he quoted a 14^th Century Byzantine Emperor criticizing Muhammad resulted in a firestorm of protests including deaths in parts of the Islamic world. We have begun to hear criticisms of the religion of Islam and its followers in ways which can challenge our commitment in our first Unitarian Universalist principle to a belief in the inherent worth and dignity of every person.

As Unitarian Universalists, we have some historic beliefs in common with Muslims, and I think it is relevant at this time of high tension and prejudice to consider points where our histories cross and ways in which we might find common cause toward the broader goal of seeking peace on earth in troubled times.

Muhammad, like many great religious innovators, or prophets, lived in a violent society in which old values were breaking down. He began preaching his new religion in 610, almost 600 years after the death of Jesus. As Karen Armstrong puts it in her latest book, “Arabia was caught up in a vicious cycle of tribal warfare, in which one vendetta led inexorably to another. It was also a time of economic and material progress.”[2] Wealth was becoming vastly unequal and the poorer members of the society we unprotected from violence and hunger. Muhammad was clearly familiar with both Jews and Christians and, though himself illiterate, was undoubtedly familiar with some of the teaching of both the Hebrew and Christian Bibles. Like many Arabs, he may have experienced a sense of inferiority over the fact that the Arabs had never received a revelation such as the Bible in their own language. His own teachings, revelations from the angel Gabriel, were recorded in the Koran. He apparently believed that the Jews around Mecca had fallen away from the high moral standards taught in their Torah, and that the Christians had become polytheists with their doctrine of the Trinity, which the Koran denounces as a blasphemy. As a reformer, Muhammad was spectacularly effective; many of the abuses against which he preached were overcome and blood feuds were stilled for those who followed his teachings.

This would be a good time to consider how we ought to go about considering and evaluating the religions of others who share this precious world with us. It is very easy to find fault with someone else’s religion or culture by citing the worst practices of anyone loosely associated with that religion, or to interpret the beliefs of a whole religion by the behavior of a few of its adherents. The problem is that every religion has its bad apples and in every religion practice falls short of ideals. If, then, we wish to gain a real understanding of another religion, it would behoove us to compare our ideals with their ideals and our practice, both good and bad, with their practice. We need to be willing to consider our own shortcomings as religious traditions, ways we too have fallen short of our ideals, and make an attempt to understand other peoples’ religion in their terms, not in ours. Finally, we need to be able to consider what part of religious practice is cultural as opposed to what part is truly derived from the ideals of a religion. Thus, the Koran brought significantly greater protection to women than they had previously enjoyed and arguably made a stronger case for gender equality than Christianity or Judaism. Nevertheless, women are oppressed in some Islamic practices as a result of the cultures in which they live, cultures which naturally appeal to religion to support its particular practices. The need to look upon the other with more objectivity and with compassion was laid out by Jesus when he said:

3 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?

4 Or how can you say to your brother, `Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when there is the log in your own eye?

5 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye. [Matt. 7:3-5]

Islam, like Unitarian Universalism, is more concerned with right practice than with right belief. Whereas Christians have often been preoccupied with the exact statements of creeds which represent right belief, and plunged Europe into bloody wars based on what now seem minor points of disagreement, Islam has the simplest of creeds: “There is no god but God [or Allah], and Muhammad is the Messenger [or Prophet] of God.” This avowal is to be made at least once in the devout Muslim’s life, and is indeed included in the daily prayers, which constitute the second Pillar of Islam. The Koran instructs adherents to pray five times daily, upon arising, when the sun is at its zenith, its mid-decline, at sunset, and before retiring. The story is told that Muhammad was taken on a Night Journey to Heaven:

On a certain night in the month of Ramadan, he was spirited on a wondrous white steed with wings to Jerusalem and upward from there through the seven heavens to the presence of God, who instructed him that Muslims were to pray fifty times each day. On his way back to earth, he stopped in the sixth heaven, where he reported the instruction to Moses, who was incredulous. “Fifty times a day!” he said in effect. “You’ve got to be kidding. That will never work. Go back and negotiate.” Muhammad did so and returned with the number reduced to forty, but Moses was not satisfied. “I know those people,” he said. “Go back.” This routine was repeated four more times, with the number reduced successively to thirty, twenty, ten, and then five. Even this last figure struck Moses as excessive. “Your people are not capable of observing five daily prayers,” he said. “I have tested men before your time, and have labored most earnestly to prevail to prevail over the sons of Isra’il, so go back to your Lord and ask Him to make things lighter for your people.” This time, however, Muhammad refused. “I have asked my Lord till I am ashamed, but now I am satisfied and I submit.” The number remained fixed at five.[3]

The prayers involve prostrations, which, as Armstrong points out,

…was hard for the Arabs, who did not approve of monarchy and found it degrading to grovel on the ground like slaves. But the posture of their bodies was designed to teach them at a level deeper than the rational what islam required: transcendence of the ego, which prances, preens, and postures and continually draws attention to itself.[4]

The third pillar of Islam is the one of which we have spoken, fasting during the lunar month of Ramadan. It has a function something like Lent in Christian practice, though of course much more self-denial is involved. It should be noted that the lunar calendar processes through the seasons, so that sometimes the month of Ramadan falls in winter, sometimes in summer, and sometimes like this year in the fall or perhaps in the spring. The difficulty of the fast thus varies year by year, particularly the lack of water in the heat of the summer.

The fourth pillar is the Zakat, or poor due. This should not be mistaken for charity, because everything one possesses belongs to God, and the poor therefore have a rightful claim to a portion of the wealth which has fallen to some of us. In some ways, this is similar to the tithe (or tenth) in the Jewish and Christian traditions, except that it is given directly to the poor or agencies serving the poor rather than to the church or synagogue. It is also assessed on wealth as well as on income depending on ones means, and often amounts to 2 ½% of ones possessions.

Finally, all Muslims whose means permit are expected to make a pilgrimage, or hajj, to Mecca,

… suspending one’s worldly activities, one’s pride and ego, and surrendering one’s whole being to God. The hajj is a physical demonstration of Muslim notions of human equality and unity—it is the personhood of Islam in action.[5]

It is these practices, these pillars, which constitute the heart of Islam. While the Koran and subsequent elaborations of Islamic law, as well as local cultural practices around the world where there are Muslims have elaborated on these basics, here we have the heart of a religion of submission and caring and I believe that on this basis we can find ways to reach out to Muslims as Unitarian Universalists. One cautionary note might be added here: unlike most other religious leaders, Muhammad triumphed in his lifetime and became leader of a state and of an army. Hence we find in Islam lessons on statecraft and war which are missing from the teachings of the founders of Buddhism or of Christianity. Notions of just or holy war in these traditions would repay a closer study, but when considering the rules of war as laid out in the Koran, it would be only just to compare them to the rules of war as laid down by later Christian rulers such as the Emperor Constantine of Rome, since of course Jesus was executed as a criminal rather than coming to power in his own state, as did Muhammad.

From its base in Arabia, Islam flowed out over North Africa, conquering what was then the larger part of Christendom, flowing all the way into Spain, known as Andalusia, coming to a high water a century after the death of the Prophet at the battle of Tours in France in 732. Within the area of Muslim dominance, the arts and sciences flourished, great libraries were built and trade flourished. Not only did this civilization preserve the wisdom of the Ancients at a time when Europe was lying in darkness and stagnation, but new discoveries were made in science, which were also part of the flowering of Europe which came centuries later with the Renaissance. Here Algebra was developed, significant advances in astronomy were made, and the circulation of the blood in the body was discovered (though later claimed as a discovery of Europeans).

The Christian world responded at last with the Crusades launched first almost 500 years after the founding of Islam, in 1095. This holy war took as its aim regaining the city of Jerusalem, but even before arriving in Palestine the crusaders set in motion the earliest mass persecutions of the Jews in Europe as they swarmed across the continent. One Christian observer gives this account of the taking of Jerusalem in 1099:

“Our people have exaggerated in spilling blood at the temple of Solomon, and the corpses of the dead used to float in the open area here and there, and the severed hands used to swim as if it wanted to join corpses foreign to itself. The pious crusader knights did not stop at that, so they held a council by which they decided to destroy the inhabitants of Jerusalem: Muslims, Jews and apostate Christians (probably referring to Jacobites and other non-orthodox sects) who numbered 60,000. Thus they were exterminated totally within eight days; none was left of them: neither a woman, nor an infant nor an old man.”[6]

In the course of the crusades, Christian cities en route were also despoiled, including the sack of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire and the Eastern Orthodox Christians in 1260. If you have ever been to Venice, you will have seen many of the treasures in the Piazza San Marco which were captured as part of one of the crusades from other Christians.

The year 1492 marks a turning point in the relations between the Christians of Europe and Islam. In that year, celebrated here because of Columbus’ journey to the Caribbean, the last Muslim city in Spain, Grenada, was captured by the Spanish rulers. In the same year, the Jews of Spain were ordered to convert to Christianity or flee the country. In 1499, a similar edict was declared against the Muslims, and the Spanish Inquisition was instituted to ensure that Christian Orthodoxy would reign in a country which under Muslim rule had been a center of learning which welcomed and allowed freedom of thought and religion for Jews, Muslims and Christians. At the same time, the Spanish carried their religion to the Americas where they attempted to convert the natives by force and enslaved them to grow crops and to extract gold.

During the following century, all of Europe was divided by religious strife, with citizens forced to follow the religion adopted by their princes and rulers regardless of their own beliefs. In one part of Europe, however, tolerance reigned. Not surprisingly, it was at the other end of Europe, in Transylvania, just 40 miles north of the city of Buda, the northernmost thrust of the Ottoman Empire into Eastern Europe.

I mentioned in my first sermon here the story of King John Sigismund of Transylvania, the only Unitarian king in history, whose greatest legacy was the Edict of Torda of 1568, the first declaration of religious tolerance in modern European history. Transylvania at the time was under the suzerainty—or protection—of the Islamic Ottoman Empire. Twenty years earlier, in 1548, the Turkish ruler of the city of Buda was asked by the Roman Catholic authorities to suppress the teachings of a Lutheran and to kill the preacher or drive him from the city for heresy. Not only was the request denied, the ruler, or Pasha “also issued an edict of toleration which states in part that ‘preachers of the faith invented by Luther should be allowed to preach the Gospel everywhere to everybody, whoever wants to hear, freely and without fear. All Hungarians and Slavs who wish to should be able to listen to and receive the word of God without any danger. Because- he said- this is the true Christian faith and religion.’”[7]

We may then say that the religious tolerance which we have done so much to promote in our own history has also been, at least in Eastern Europe, one of the fruits of our association with Islam. Not surprisingly, Martin Luther claimed that Muhammad came from the sect of the Unitarians and blamed them for spreading Islam![8]

So when we consider the Pope’s recent quotation from a dialog held in 1391 by Manuel II Paleologus, emperor of Byzantium, who said to his Persian dialog partner, “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached,” it might be well to consider the broader context of religious practice during the period in question.

The emperor was under constant attack from the Turks, and Constantinople was conquered some sixty years later. It should be remembered, however, that the city—now renamed Istanbul, remains to this day the center of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, an expression of the real tolerance of Islam for its sister faith. Not surprisingly, we Unitarian Universalists side in our tradition with the Pope in his advocacy of Reason in religion; but in fact it would be foolhardy to claim that a religious tradition such as Islam, which so readily embraced the practice of science during its own period of triumph, is adverse to the practice of reason.

Great passions have been aroused in the world on matters of religion. These passions contain patriotic and religious strands all wrapped up together. I suggest that we as Unitarian Universalists have a role to play in helping to soothe these passions and in reaching out to all sides in such conflict, calling on the best in each of our traditions to strive for peace rather than conflict. Today happens to be United Nations Sunday as well as the End of Ramadan, a day to remember our sixth principle, “The goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all.” We have a role to play in the quest for peace. I’m reminded of a story told by Mark Morrison-Read, one of our ministers:

In the most recent edition of the "UU World" Bill Sinkford, the President of the UUA, writes: "On a plane ... my seatmate was a young woman traveling with her ten-month-old son." When she discovered who he was she said "she'd heard of Unitarian Universalism. 'Didn't you make a statement against Arab profiling after September 11?'" "She was a first generation Palestinian immigrant, a Muslim, married to a Lebanese Christian. 'Where will my baby find a church where he can honor all of his heritage?" she asked, and Bill told her that we were such a community. We "value the wisdom of all the great traditions," he said, and as "tears welled up in her eyes" she said, "It is not just for my son that I cry ... I need a religious home."[9]

I believe we can learn from our neighbors as well. As the author of this morning’s reading puts it in speaking of how we might apply the wisdom of the fast of Ramadan:

What could you do, symbolically or literally, to make more space, to open up your life, to reflect, to connect, to question, to listen, to act?

Is there something you’ve been holding onto, something you could let go of?

Is there a confession you need to make, to yourself or to another?

Is there something or someone you need to forgive?

Is there something or someone you need to seek forgiveness from?

Is there a truth you need to admit?

Is there a drink you should put down?

Is there a celebration you can plan?

Is there an invitation you could give?

Is there a long past-due phone call you might make?

Is there a decision you can make?

Is there an appointment you can cancel?

Is there a walk you can take?

Is there a nap you could profit from?

Is there a sunset you can enjoy?

Is there a hand you can hold?

In this holy season of celebration, reflection, repentance, and sacrifice, may we create the spiritual and emotional space our lives so desperately need. Let us take a lesson from our Muslim sisters and brothers. Let us make our own fast, make our own emptying, so the Spirit of Life can enter into our lives.

Amen