English Class & More on that Osama bin Laden Book

So my Arab friend and I were talking the other day and I told him I'd gone to my mom's fifth-grade classroom that afternoon to grade a few papers. 

Me:  "English papers.  They had to mark the prepositional phrases."

Him: "English?"  (laughter)  "'They have to take English although they are English speakers?'

Me:  "Of course! You took Arabic!"

Him: "Yes, but written Arabic is different from how we talk. Our accents are different than standard Arabic so we have to learn to write it."

Me:  "So we have to learn to write properly."  (And speak properly as well, but I don't know that I told him this.)

Him: "I thought you'd just write the way you speak since you talk the same way that you write. Right?"

Well as I noted on my "Saying Stuff All Wrong" post, that is not always true!  What did he think? We just naturally knew how to write complete sentences? Knew how to make subjects and verbs agree?  When to use "is" and when to use "are"?  I even find myself saying "Me and Michael went to visit my grandparents," but I'd never write it that way as "Michael and I went..." is proper English.

Know what I mean? 

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I'm almost finished Growing up bin Laden and I've found reading Najwa's and Omar's perspectives very interesting! Of course one never knows how much of it is true (and how much of it is Jean Sasson's sensationalism), but nevertheless it's been fascinating to hear some of the stories of bin Laden family life from insiders' points of view. 

Several times I've found myself feeling sorry for OBL's wives and children. Truly they seem innocent pawns in this mad man's life.  Omar recalls a time Robert Fisk came to Afghanistan to interview his father. Omar went along with his father and remembered Mr. Fisk asking if he were happy.  Omar said he never recalled being asked how he felt and gave an answer "I am happy" that he thought Fisk wanted rather than honestly telling him what a "most miserable" life he lead.  Truly the months the family lived on Tora Bora - the mountain given to Osama by an Afghan leader - were truly awful. Can you imagine living on top of a mountain without modern conveniences such as electricity and running water and even worse very little heat in those notoriously-harsh Afghan winters? 

Omar always loved animals yet was sickened when he realized the puppies his brothers and he loved were being used to test how weaponized gas affected something living subjected to it!  He recalls a time in Sudan when a friend had a baby monkey that he later heard was crushed by someone following his father's orders.  He remembers a friend being raped and photographed by the men who raped him and then the friend was killed because they blamed the young man for this crime rather than the true perpetrators - some of his father's own friends!  So many awful stories that make me feel very sad for his children!  

I remember in Sudan when the boys eager to make friends of the neighborhood children, almost made the double mistake of playing with Christians and girls!  Thankfully the hawkish security guards Osama employed caught them before they could do such a dastardly deed.

I guess it shouldn't have been such a shock, but it was saddening how Osama fired up his trainees by telling them how much America hated Islam and wanted to kill Muslims. He told them this so much that they were wanting to make the preemptive strike so the Americans would be destroyed first.  Even Omar who had never met Americans and had heard this America-hates-Islam speech his whole life, thought it was true, though he didn't have his father's zeal for bloodshed. He was tired of war and wanted a peaceful, normal life. He craved his father's love and attention.

One of the many things I found disturbing is when Omar said mentally disabled children in Kandahar were often chained to trees or in chairs. I can understand having to restrain a person in a chair, but chained to a tree like a guard dog? Argh!

I'm at the point in the book where Osama has just been asked by the head Taliban ruler to leave Afghanistan after three and a half years.  Osama ended up playing "the Muslim card" by asking the leader if he could at least stay one more year and a half since Sudan had let him stay for five years. He said it was better to allow him, a Muslim, to do this than let the infidel West influence the Mullah's decision.  So Mullah Omar reluctantly agreed and Osama was given permission to stay eighteen months more.  I'll have to read the final pages to see what happened during this time. Omar said if Afghanistan expelled them, their father would seek refuge for them in parts of either Pakistan or Yemen.

Since the last wives/children total in this post, Osama divorced one wife (the second one, Khadijah; it seems she asked for the divorce and Osama agreed; he even let her take their three children with her back to Saudi Arabia -- I think they were the fortunate ones),  and had four more children.

Siham had Sumaiya.

Khadijah had Aisha prior to the divorce.

Najwa had Bakr (whom all called Ladin except Osama) and Rukhaiya.

Najwa is pregnant with another and Omar is wanting to get his mother out of Afghanistan for the birth partly because her health seems poor.  Eleventh child and she is past forty so ...

The Rise and Fall of the Islamic Caliphate

For all that Muhammad contributed to his growing community -- and by the volumes of hadith you'd realize that's a good plenty -- he failed to prepare the ummah for continuing after his death. So when Muhammad died the community was in disbelief and then suddenly the thoughts of who would fill Muhammad's leadership role overwhelmed them.  Although some believed Muhammad's son in law Ali should be the rightful successor, others didn't want the tribe of the prophet having both political power (such as the caliphate was) and religious "power."  By power, I mean since Muhammad was the channel for the divine revelation and that made his tribe well thought of. Something like that anyway.  Nothing much was written down except some parts of the Revelation that were considered especially valuable or needed for community affairs.  If people had a problem, they'd simply go ask Muhammad. But once he died, who would they now seek for answers? Muhammad had divine discernment and insights, but what about a new leader?  Could he do the same?

In chapter 5 of No God but God, Reza Aslan speaks of the successors of Muhammad - the "rightly-guided ones," although three quarters of the way through this chapter I chuckled at how these people didn't seem to have high doses of rightly-guidedness.  Granted Aslan fit many many years of history into about thirty pages so I know this is not the complete story. It's just one man's thoughts based on his reading and understanding of history.  Not to mention this man is Shi'ite so I just get the impression his views of certain people aren't the same as what a Sunni might think.  :-)  You'll probably understand what I mean as you continue reading this post.

After Muhammad's death, Abu Bakr was chosen as his first successor. One thing I found worth noting of him was the fact that he supplemented his income by milking a neighbor's cow!  The Caliph's role was more secular - tribal shaykh, community war leader and chief judge, "upholding the institutions of the Muslim faith, but [not playing] a significant role in defining religious practice" (which would be the job of religious scholars and is the subject of the next chapter.)

I found the discussion of why Aisha disliked Ali interesting and it made more sense to me why Abu Bakr stripped Muhammad's inheritance from Fatima and Ali and gave it to Muhammad's wives once I found out Aisha was the new Caliph's daughter!  Bad blood plus long-held grudges made the whole Battle of the Camel make better sense when it came to Aisha leading the fighters in this Islamic civil war years later.  But I'm ahead of myself.

The shocking (hey, even I was shocked) inheritance stripping aside and the fact that Abu Baker handpicked his successor (which totally disregarded tribal tradition and Muslim precedent), Reza Aslan didn't have much else negative to say about Abu Bakr. And the next Caliph he seemed to admire as a great warrior and even better diplomat, however, before reading about Umar's rise to this leadership position, I had written in my notes:  author does not like Umar.  Although I'd not made note of it in the post where I discussed hijab briefly, I remembered how Aslan made me think Umar was misogynistic.  And then today I felt Umar a great big bully in how he threatened Fatima, Ali and the rest of the Banu Hashim if they didn't accept the decision of the tribal council or shura.  (pg. 117)

But Umar seemed a great caliph from the little shared in this chapter. Unfortunately he met his untimely death at the hands of a "mad Persian slave."

The next Caliph - Uthman - was painted in a very unfavorable light. So much so that I asked myself why people actually used this name for their sons!  Yeah, it was bad.  Uthman dipped from the public treasury and gave much money to his family, he put his family into powerful positions across the Islamic lands and he even authorized a Quran burning!  Well, all the copies that differed from the version canonized under his rule that is.  All these things made him very unpopular, according to Reza Aslan.  He was eventually killed by rebels as he was reading the Quran.

Finally!  Finally Ali, the golden boy who some thought should have been the first Caliph and was passed over each time - was made the ruler. He thought Uthman had permanently tainted the "caliph" title so he went by another name, one Umar made famous, Amir al-Mu'manin, "Commander of the Faithful."  Since he didn't seek to punish Uthman's murderers he alienated a sizable number of tribes bent on retribution. Aisha never liked Ali since the time she was falsely accused of adultery and Ali insisted Muhammad needed to divorce her to get away from the taint of this scandal.  She lead an army against Ali and though her side was defeated, the ummah continued to splinter.  

One of Uthman's relatives in Damascus set out to control some of the tribes and eventually Ali's army and Mu'awiyah's (the guy in Damascus) army clashed.  The fight ended when Mu'awiyah thought his forces would lose so he told them to put copies of the Quran on the end of their swords.  Ali took this as a sign for "surrender for arbitration" so a hakam was brought in to mediate between the two sides. This proved to be a disaster for Ali as part of his allies the Kharijites (who were the al Qaeda types of those times) abandoned him. Ali was forced to deal with his former allies "in what was less a battle than a massacre" and then with Mu'awiyah who had reassembled his troops, captured Egypt and later pronounced himself Caliph in Jerusalem while Ali's attention was on the Kharijites.  Before heading into battle against Mu'awiyah, Ali went into a mosque to pray when a Kharijite pushed his way through the crowd and struck Ali on the head with a poisoned sword.  The poison killed Ali two days later.

Shi'ite Muslims remember Ali as the first imam: "the Proof of God on Earth."  (pg. 136)

So then the ummah was no more a Caliphate, but kingdoms (Aslan notes that Arabs hated absolute monarchies) and the author spoke briefly of the Umayyads in Damascus  (and I think it's neat now to remember that I was in the huge Umayyad mosque last year -- it's the one with the shrine to John the Baptist), the Abbasids in Baghdad, the Fatimids in Cairo and then the rise of the Turks which eventually ushered in the long-reining Ottoman Empire.


After Muhammad's death, some tribes stopped paying the tithe tax because they thought Muhammad's death annulled their oath of allegiance.  Abu Bakr dealt "ruthlessly with the rebels" because he knew their defection would cause political instability and their money was needed for the small Muslim community in Medina.  These campaigns came to be known as the Riddah Wars and I took note of them because this is where Aslan says apostasy equals treason came into play. Although "apostasy and treason were nearly identical terms in seventh-century Arabia," he says this relationship has endured in Islam until today and is why the death penalty is imposed in some Muslim countries if you convert out of your Muslim faith. (see pg. 119)  I find this extremely unfortunate since I'm all about freedom of choice as I believe one's relationship with God is something a person needs to decide for herself. It's not mom's, dad's, grandfather's or the community's decision to make for me as I alone answer to God on Judgment Day.

In the last two chapters Aslan has mentioned in passing that at this time in history one had to become a "client of an Arab" in order to convert to Islam. Does anyone know what this means?

This chapter ends with quotes from reformer Ali Abd ar-Raziq who argued basically for the separation of mosque and state. While the religious arguments were settled by God through Muhammad in the revelation, he claimed the Caliphate was a secular, civil institution that "all Muslims felt free to question, oppose and even rise up against."  On the other hand, you have Sayyid Qutb who argued one could not separate the religious from the secular, "therefore, the only legitimate Islamic state is that which addresses both the material and the moral needs of its citizens." (pg. 138)

Note: I talked to Samer about this chapter and got the Sunni version of many of these stories.  It's amazing how history is very different depending on what side is telling, huh? 

I welcome your thoughts.

Wives, Kids & Two Stories from the Life of Osama bin Laden

Remember I told y'all I was reading a book about Osama bin Laden written by his first wife, fourth son and Jean Sasson?  Well, I've read about 100 pages and have found it rather interesting to go inside their private world. They have shared anecdotes that they recall from early years of marriage and growing up in Jeddah, summers in Pakistan, Medina and now Sudan.  Anyway, I started keeping a list of all the children since I'm kind of a name nerd and just wanted to see how many children were born to each wife. So far 14 kids from his four wives, but I think Omar said he was one of twenty so I'll keep my eyes peeled for who has children next and record them!  The current list is below.

Omar shared a cute story from when he and his brothers were young.  Three veiled women came to their door collecting money during a religious holiday.  The boys didn't realize this, however, and were unsure what to do about these women at their door. They knew their father liked women -- since they had their moms plus 'aunties' at home -- so they invited them inside to become wives of their father. They thought it would be so nice to get three wives at once for their dad!  As the women hurriedly left, the boys ran after them and tried to convince them to stay.  (see pg. 69)  I enjoy visualizing things so this was very cute taking place in my mind!

A funny story happened when Najwa, Osama's first wife, and his fourth wife, Siham, were pregnant at the same time.  Siham was due two months later, however, she went into early labor at the same time Najwa went into labor with her eighth child.  As Najwa recalls:

Had I not been feeling so poorly, I would have smiled watching my husband struggle to settle two pregnant women into the backseat of his new Mercedes. ... As might be expected, there was a bit of bedlam at the hospital as the staff dashed about trying to admit two women into labor rooms at the same time. There was such a commotion that several of the nurses had no idea that we were all together. The most humorous moment arrived after a bright-eyed nurse witnessed Osama dashing from my room into Siham's. The woman was a dainty Filipina, yet she was very bold, scolding my physically large husband, telling him that he must remain in his wife's room. That little nurse warned him, "You will get into serious trouble for peeking at another woman!"  (pg. 75)

Here are the wives and kids so far.

Wives

1.  Najwa - co-author of the book
2.  Khadijah
3.  Khairiah
4.  Siham

Children in order of birth - mom's # is beside them

Abdullah - 1
Abdul Rahman - 1
Sa'ad - 1
Omar - 1  - co-author of the book
Osman - 1
Ali - 2
Mohammed - 1
Fatima -1
Kadhija - 4
Khalid - 4
Hamza - 3
Amer - 2
Iman - 1
Miriam - 4

I'm working on another post from No God but God.  This time it's the "rightly guided ones" I've learned more about. Thanks to all who have contributed to the discussion on my notes. I've enjoyed it!


Quotes/stories from Growing up bin Laden by Najwa bin Laden, Omar bin Laden and Jean Sasson

Aslan on Jihad and Muhammad's Rise to Power

Chapter 4 of No God but God discusses the meaning of jihad and describes how Muhammad gained power in the region and was later welcomed into Mecca, the city he previously fled. This transition occurred due to a few things:  fighting with the powerful Quraysh tribe which ruled Mecca, declaring Yathrib (also known as Medina) as a sanctuary city (thus making it a site for pilgrimages and opening it up to commerce and diverting funds from Mecca) and raiding caravans in order to acquire wealth.  To my surprise author Reza Aslan matter-of-factly states that this raiding of caravans was not considered stealing, but acceptable practice and the way smaller clans benefited from the wealth of larger ones.  Though annoying to those raided, it was basically par for the course while traveling through the desert. The caravan raids not only gave the Ummah more property and wealth, it gave caravan drivers more of an incentive to travel to Medina instead of further along the unprotected desert to Mecca (more miles to travel equaled more opportunities for raiders to steal.) 

The author discusses the Battles of Badr, Uhud and The Trench and Muhammad's acceptance of the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah and how each of these events contributed to the decline of the powerful Quraysh and the rise of Muhammad.  Although Muhammad's followers didn't understand why he accepted the unfavorable conditions of the treaty, according to Aslan this "decision to to accept the cease-fire and return the following year turned out to be the most decisive moment in the battle between Mecca and Medina.  For when ordinary Meccans saw the respect and devotion with which their supposed enemy and his band of 'religious zealots' entered their city and circled the Ka'ba, there seemed little incentive to continue supporting the war."  (pg. 106)  Indeed a year later when Muhammad returned to Mecca with ten thousand men behind him, "the city's inhabitants welcomed him with open arms."

Perhaps there is a lesson in this about respect going a long way in changing our enemies' minds? Like maybe overcoming evil with good really works!  That's what crossed my mind anyway.

I really enjoyed Reza Aslan's thoughts on jihad and what it meant in early Islam. While he admits that radicals have abused it to justify indiscriminate killing of women, children, noncombatants and so forth, he shared the way jihad was understood in the beginning and by the majority of Muslims today. First, the greater jihad - which does not mean 'holy war' [a Crusader term], but 'to strive, struggle' - is "the struggle of the soul to overcome the sinful obstacles that keep a person from God."  (pg. 81) I've heard people liken it to our Christian fight of faith - a spiritual battle which Paul writes about in Ephesians 6:10-17 when he reminds us to put on the whole armor of God (prayer, faith, truth, the Word of God) so we can resist the devil's schemes.

There is a lesser jihad in Islam which Aslan says "is best defined as a primitive 'just war theory'" where Muslims were allowed to fight in defensive battles with very strict rules: no killing of noncombatants, no raping, no torture of prisoners, no destruction of houses of worship or medical institutions and so forth.  Aslan said that people who claim to kill in the name of Islam yet blatantly break these Islamic rules of war show proof that they are not followers of Islam. They are followers of their own rules!  I think we can agree that all religions have people who do this. Like people who say they are followers of Jesus yet hate and kill and break every single teaching he ever gave.

Alsan told how Muhammad thought his revelation was just a continuation of the ones God gave to the Jews and Christians. That, in essence, we were all one big ummah and his message was just the one meant for (then) current times. Although as the "seal of the prophets" or last of them, his message would be for everyone born for the rest of time on earth.

Aslan notes that Muslims then read the Torah and also that Muhammad considered Orthodox Trinitarians to not be "People of the Book."  We are unbelievers since we associate partners with God (which is the greatest sin in Islam.)

I really enjoyed the explanation of Aslan about every religion being a religion of the sword at the time that Muhammad came on the scene. He said with precious few exceptions, people's religion was their identities, even their citizenship!  (see pg. 80) That part was quite interesting to me and made me think how glad I am to stress relationship with God over religion.  I do believe religion is man-made, but relationship is God made and that's why relationship is far and away superior!  Man is only capable of making chaos of the world. Look at history.  Look at the world today!  Westerners gripe about countries that have inferior human rights and who mistreat their people and oppress them.  Yet we have a whole slew of evils that have made our countries miserable.   So much discord.  So much fighting and shouting and downright hatred! You can almost feel it in the air sometimes. 

Is this the result of people who love God and have the peace of God ruling their hearts and lives?  I think not.

Jesus stated, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God." (Matthew 5:9)

If you are not a peacemaker, are you in relationship with God?

Religious Rituals, Feasts and Pilgrimages and Becoming Part of the Story

"Only by entering the story ourselves can we truly understand its meaning." (pg. 420)

"Let my people go!"

Remember the story of Moses and the Pharaoh and how it finally took ten plagues - the last one truly awful - for the Pharaoh to allow the Israelites to leave Egypt?   While discussing how many people try to explain the ten plagues by natural reasons (e.g., it wasn't really blood, but an unusually high flood caused more topical red soil to color the water so it only appeared as blood),  Bruce Feiler admits he often read the Bible this way. He wanted natural explanations for things claimed by the Bible writers to have happened supernaturally.  He enjoyed the history, the places, the characters, but not the deeper thinking about the characters like what they meant to the story and what they meant to him.  As he began reading Exodus while Walking the Bible, Bruce finally realized how futile this deliberate attempt was and how he was missing a "principal storyline of the Bible: the relationship between humans and the divine."

"As it happens, the text itself reveals precisely what causes the ten plagues. God caused them. To miss that point is to miss the essence of the tale, the battle between the god of the Israelites and the gods of the Egyptians, the battle that Eliezer Oren referred to as 'My god is stronger than your god.'  Biblical storytellers clearly understood this struggle, because the plagues expressly attack the things that Egyptians held most sacred: the sun, the animals, the river.  As the Bible says, summing up the experience, 'The Lord executed judgment on their gods.'"   (pg. 183)

The author then goes on to show how this judgment of God upon the Egyptians and the Israelites escape from slavery was "a significant break" in the Bible.  "Up to now, the Israelites have been wandering, from Mesopotamia, through Canaan, to Egypt, and absorbing elements from all these places.  They are now ready to break away and begin forming their own culture, their own empire.  They must now become active participants in their own story: actors, not just reactors."


God declares what the Israelites must do in order to escape the final plague that He was going to mete out on the Egyptians: the killing of the firstborn!  Each family had to sacrifice a lamb and put the blood over the doorpost of their house. 
 When the Angel of Death came through, he would pass over* each home where this blood was present.  God instructed the Israelites on what to eat and how to prepare it.  He also set up this reenactment for the Jewish people to do each year as a remembrance.   Each generation would  now remember what God did to save their nation from slavery and make them a people prepared for Himself.  This is how the Israelites of old and Jewish people today keep in mind the faithfulness of God in delivering them from their oppressors.  (see page 184)

So entering the story - being actors - is helpful in understanding. I suppose this is why Muslims perform hajj and reenact many events that Abraham, Hagar and Ishmael experienced according to the Islamic faith.  And by sacrificing the lamb they are remembering God's provision to Abraham so Abraham wouldn't have to sacrifice his son.


* Thus the Passover is remembered each year.  Also in the Christian faith, we see this as a type of Christ.  Christ is the perfect Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John the Baptist's words in John 1:29). Sin brings death, but when we accept Jesus' work for us on the cross and trust him as opposed to our own good works for salvation, we in a spiritual sense apply the blood of Jesus to our lives and when the "angel of death" sees us, he passes over us. No spiritual death for the one wearing the blood of Jesus Christ.  (Think spiritually here not literally.)

Thoughts?  If you are Muslim, what do you think is the significance of reenacting the events of hajj or Eid Al-adha?  If you are Christian, do you celebrate any reenactments? I know some churches have Palm Sunday and do Easter plays and Christmas plays in order to reenact some of the events of Jesus' life. And also there are baptism and the Lord's Supper which we do in remembrance of Jesus. Do you think it's important to become part of the story rather than merely read about them or observe from hundreds of years later?

Muhammad in Yathrib; Hijab, Creation, Women's Rights, Hadith

I finished Walking the Bible earlier today (enjoyed it!) and then started back reading No God but God and finished chapter 3.   Really enjoyed the brief history of settling Yathrib (now Medina) and the discussion of women's rights and the reason for hijab in the beginning. Author Reza Aslan is quite good at explaining things and makes a lot of sense to me.  I could better understand the marriage issues that I've often had a hard time understanding especially when he stated that Muhammad's 25 year monogamous relationship with Khadija was actually the most noteworthy thing! I suppose polygyny was just more prevalent in world history than I wanted to believe.  I'm glad we've mostly evolved past that!  ;)  Actually he claimed bedouin men and women had multiple spouses at one time.  Since lineage was passed mostly through mothers in that wandering society, there wasn't the huge concern for who fathered the children. 

While Aslan admitted that Islam did away with a woman's right to marry more than one man (and limited all men except Muhammad to four wives at a time), he argued strongly that Muhammad was very much focused on empowering women and orphans and redistributing wealth so there wasn't such a great divide between the extremely rich and miserably poor.

He did make me curious with his statement "beginning with the unbiblical conviction that men and women were created together and simultaneously from a single cell, the Quran goes to great lengths to emphasize the equality of the sexes in the eyes of God."  (pg. 60) The "unbiblical" part caught my attention because I assumed Muslims accepted the Adam and Eve story of God creating Adam first and later causing a deep sleep to come upon him and forming Eve from one of Adam's ribs.  Now I see that must not be true!

I found talk of Arab Jews in Yathrib interesting especially how they were having conflicts and Muhammad came in as a hakam or, I guess, a mediator of sorts to help them work through the issues.  Later he gained a lot of power and the city was basically the model of perfect Islam which Aslan notes is very moderate for today's moderates and very traditional for today's traditionalists. Basically you take from it what you want so I suppose even the "ideal Islamic state" (or what characterizes it) is subject to interpretation (which, by the way, is why some Muslims I've come across do NOT want to go back to that form of government. What if the leader's interpretation of "ideal Islam" is waaaaay different from yours?)

Aslan reminds us that Muhammad's biographers were living when the Muslim community was "an enormously powerful empire" thus "their accounts more often reflect the political and religious ideologies of ninth-century Damascus, or eleventh-century Baghdad, than of seventh-century Medina."  (pg. 53)

Aslan mentioned the Constitution of Medina "often celebrated as the world's first written constitution" and how it was a bit controversial because of how much authority it assigned Muhammad over the entire population including Jews. (pg. 55)

I found it a bit amusing that the first mosque was picked out by a camel although I didn't find it quite as amusing that graves were excavated in order for the mosque to be built directly on a cemetery!  (pg. 52)  Really?  It's that important to build a mosque in a place a camel chose so you have to disturb graves?  Eh, I guess it's not a big deal when the graves don't belong to your ancestors. 

I also learned that the word ummah is of questionable origin and meaning and was actually replaced later in the Quran by the word "tribe" or qawm in Arabic.  Aslan notes that unlike most tribes, the Muslim "tribe" was open to all who wanted to join.  They only needed to say their oath of allegiance which we today call the shahada (there is no God but God and Muhammad is his messenger).  It's what basically makes one a Muslim. (For any who grew up like me, think "sinner's prayer" which makes you a Christian according to some traditions.)

Aslan states that hijab was initially given to Muhammad's wives simply because their house was the mosque and people were in and out of there all the time.  Hijab was perhaps adopted from interactions with high society women in Syria and Iran who kept themselves hidden away because they were not needed as common workers in the fields.  Later hijab (wearing the scarf) became more popular as women sought to follow the fashion of the mothers of the believers (Muhammad's wives)  and still later it was adopted more widely when "a large body of male scriptural and legal scholars began using their religious and political authority to regain the dominance they had lost in society as a result of the Prophet's egalitarian reforms."  (pg 66)

Indeed, Reza Aslan puts much of the blame for unjust practices on male scholars who invented hadith to suppress women and basically call them "weak, silly, and in one sense like a child."  Whether hijab today is empowering or oppressive is, in his opinion, up to the women to say!  He mentions many women are now reading and interpreting the Quran from a feminine point of view and calls Amina Wadud's book Quran and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective by name.  (Are any of you familiar with this book?)


One final thing, yesterday I was reading the Chapter 2 End Notes and Reza Aslan wrote something that I found interesting concerning orphans.  (We had been talking of orphans and slaves in Islam on another blog.)

He said it was interesting to note that “the protection of orphans and widows has always been the primary criterion for just rule….Hammurabi….states that he conquered his enemies in order to give ‘justice to the orphan and the widow.’” (pg. 276)

And I also couldn’t help but remember that the book of James in the New Testament states:

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

Any thoughts or corrections or anything to add from what I posted from this chapter?  Let me know if you agree, disagree or have another side to the story than what Aslan or I have shared here.

Dry humor seems fitting for a book that has many stories from the desert, right?

I'm still mostly reading Walking the Bible by Bruce Feiler these days.  While I find Reza Aslan's No God But God interesting and informative, it's not a library book so I can take my time in reading it. For some reason I feel more compelled to read the other book mostly and I'm making good progress.  I keep finding words and stories that are either amusing, fascinating, interesting or make me stop and reflect.  (I shared a few of those the other day in my Pyramids post.) The author frequently gives some historical background - ancient and more modern - which I enjoy. He tells of people he meets and cultural experiences.  Definitely my kind of book!  And I love that little bit of humor he puts in there as well.

Like the day he and his archaeologist pal travel across the border from Israel into Jordan. He shares some background stories and then writes,

These days, peace is nominally at hand, and a visitor arriving from Israel is expected to come bearing cigarettes at least. Having made this trip many times, Avner knew the drill and presented our Jordanian guide, Mahmoud, with a red-and-white carton fresh from the duty-free.  "But they're not Marlboro," Mahmoud said.  "They're Gold Coast."  His disappointment at the cheap imitations was palpable, so Avner walked back through the security gate and to the border itself, only to arrive back fifteen minutes later, unsuccessful.  "Oh, well. It's all poisonous just the same," Mahmoud said, and we were on our way.  (pg. 353)

Love that line by Mahmoud there at the end!  

I remember seeing warnings like this in the Istanbul airport shops.

  
One day while they were climbing the narrow, rock-strewn path up a mountain in the Sinai, they were suddenly "joined by a swarm of hangers-on, a cluster of barefoot, eight-year-old boys who tugged at our shorts and reached into our pockets, parroting, 'Money. Dollars. Pepsi. USA!' We spoke to them, ignored them, sighed at them, turned them down, but still they continued to haggle with us for most of the way to the top.  'Money. One dollar.  Two dollar. Baksheesh!'  Eventually, after half an hour, they changed tactics and elected to hold our hands and sing to us.  'At least we have something to sacrifice when we get to the top,' I said." (pg. 216)

Don't worry kids. I'm sure he was just kidding!

 We stopped for directions. Then stopped again. We stopped a third time, and a fourth. Whoever popularized the theory that men don't ask for directions has never visited the Egyptian Delta. But the directions were often contradictory: left past the third mound of dirt, right at the fork in the canal; left at the tractor, right at the burning manure.  Eventually at a gas station we got directions that sounded right -- "Stay on this road, not left or right " -- if only because they sounded as if they came right out of the Bible. Within seconds, Avner produced a passage, Joshua 1:7, with the same instructions: "Turn not to the right hand or to the left, that you may prosper wherever you go." It's no wonder it took the Israelites forty years to cross the desert; they spent half that time just getting out of town.  (pg. 173)

Good luck getting outta there!