Humanism and Islam

By Geoffrey Cook, Muslim Media News Service (MMNS)

Berkeley–Your author has gone back several times to the marvelous Conference of over a year ago at this city’s famous University.  Your scribe will converse on some of the comments there as well as his own personal analysis.

Our culture has taken the designation “Semitic” away from the Arab, and transferred it solely to the ethnic Jew.   This is incorrect:  Both Arabs and Jews come from the Semitic group of peoples, but this denial of the Arab’s Semitic roots and the assertion of the Jew’s sole determination of such creates the propaganda that the Palestinians are Anti-Semitic.  They both share an historical ethnic root that may even be the basis to solve the crisis, but first both groups must acknowledge their common ancestral origins.

Islam dominated Spain for eight hundred years, but loss of its foothold on Southwestern Europe was a great blow to the Ulema, and it is felt to this day.  Your writer remembers reading a Nineteenth Century Indian novel that was no more than a lamentation for its loss. 

The founder of Christianity, Joshua-Ben Joseph (i.e., Jesus Christus in the Latin) during the two centuries following the (his) death of this second most important Prophet (i.e., Issa in Arabic) of Islam was transformed from a Mediterranean peasant into the Christos (in Greek), “the anointed one” which is close to the Hebrew Messiah.   The attempt by early Christians to remake the Subaltern Prophet Issa into a “god” created great problems for the followers of Joshua in the Middle East, and made it easier for the Muslim preachers to convert the predominant Christian population due to the fact that the formulas of the Church Fathers were too confusing to the actual worshippers.  On the other hand, the tenants of Islam were simple enough for the common man, but deep enough for the more profound thinkers.  Further, horrible schisms had developed in the Primitive Church that had no relevance to the common worshiper.

In the Fifteenth Century, Islam had a presence from the Atlantic to the Pacific that lasted for five hundred years.  Unfortunately, for the Ulema, the European “discovery” of the Atlantic (through superior sailing technology) they had developed, had shifted the Center of the World.  With it came a Capitalistic society which created a Euro-centric vision.

In the contemporary period, we are leaving the Euro-centric vision.  (Even Globalism is now being questioned because of the recent economic crash.)  Yet one speaker claimed, as far as the European Union, the traditional nation-State system is breaking down. 

The question was poised on how do we deconstruct Islamaphobia that has developed in Western Post-Colonial Europe especially?  Although the historical fact is that the Islamic Arab Empire was more modern than Europe’s society from the Ninth Century (CE) onward in the terms of their time.  Truth during the “Islamic Renaissance,” came from the Koran and science (a sort of an itijihad).  This openness to enquiry gave the impetus for the great Arab philosophy of the period that had such an impact upon the West.  This was a period of enlightenment for especially the Arabic-speaking world!

Curiously, Latin America received its intellectual vigor through the lingering Islamic traditions of Spain!  One speaker voiced his opinion that European Islamaphopbia will fade with the shifting demography.  There will have to be a dialogue among the various peoples upon this globe. 

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