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Understanding Islam by Louis Proyect 20 March 2002 14:56 UTC |
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Frontline, Volume 18 - Issue 24, Nov. 24 - Dec. 07, 2001 BOOKS The West and Islam A.G. NOORANI Muhammad in Europe: A Thousand Years of Western Myth-Making by Minou Reeves; New York University Press; pages 307; $34.50. URDU poetry is replete with reproaches at, and complaints to, the Almighty. Iqbal revelled in both. Faiz was not inhibited, either. But none would take liberties with the name and memory of Prophet Muhammad. Hence, the Persian couple: Ba khuda deewana basho, Ba Muhammad hoshyar (Play madly with God if you wish, but be careful with Muhammad). Unfortunately, few non-Muslims have understood his station in the Muslim psyche and in Muslim lives. The German scholar, Annemarie Schimmel is among the rare ones who do. Her work And Muhammad is His Messenger (The University of North Carolina Press; 1985) is not a biography but a deep study of "the veneration of the Prophet in Islamic Piety". The frontispiece has a moving Urdu quatrain by Sir Kishan Prasad, the poet-Prime Minister of the erstwhile State of Hyderabad who bore the pen-name Shaad: Kafir hunke Momin hun, khuda jaane main kya hun / Mai banda hun unka jo hain Sultan-e-Madina. (Be I infidel or true believer - God alone knows, what I am. But I know I am the servant of the Prophet who is the ruler of Medina). Minou Reeves was, until 1979, an Iranian career diplomat. At the time of the Islamic Revolution, she was Queen Farah's international secretary. She won note for her books Behind the Peacock Throne and Female Warriors of Allah: Women and the Islamic Revolution and is now a Fellow of the Institute of Linguists, London. She has not a trace of the rancour which members of the former ancien regime have for the new order; only understanding and empathy. This scholarly work renders high service in promoting understanding not only internationally but in plural societies which have a Muslim presence. There is, for instance, a Sangh Parivar outfit which churns out hate literature singling out the Prophet for attack. Minou Reeves surveys over a millennium's record of European denigration of Muhammad and explains why he was vilified. While early medieval polemicists felt a threat to the Christian faith, European rulers felt threatened by the spread of Muslim rule. The Church and the state cooperated in the campaign. An ideology of hate was evolved and its traces linger still, as recent incidents reveal. "Over the course of no less than thirteen centuries a stubbornly biased and consistently negative outlook had persisted, permeating deep levels of European consciousness. In the works of an overwhelming majority of European writers, Muhammad was portrayed as a man of deep moral faults. Churchmen, historians, orientalists, biographers, philosophers, dramatists, poets and politicians alike had sought to attribute to Islam, and especially to Muhammad, fanatical and disreputable, even demonic characteristics." Affinities between Christianity and Islam created problems for European polemicists. "They chose not to attack Islamic theology, which was too seductive in its simplicity and clarity, and which raised too many awkward questions about Christian dogma. Nor could they cast doubt on the pious practice of ordinary Muslims. Instead, anticipating the worst excesses of tabloid journalism, they personalised the issue and attacked the Prophet of Islam, dispensing with all but the barest knowledge of any facts and inventing falsehoods. Muslims could not reply in kind, since they are told by the Qur'an to revere Jesus as a holy prophet." Time did nothing to extinguish the hatred. It exacerbated it in the original site, gave it new forms and spread it among some of the historic victims. Full: http://www.flonnet.com/fl1824/18240760.htm Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
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