GHS208-05 Fall 2019 China and the Islamic Middle East

I found it hard to add to the discussion in class today because all we really talked about were religions, their similarities and differences. (something I don’t know a ton about).

Remember that day in class when we talked about what we should show someone who wasn’t from the U.S. to help them understand American culture? None of the stuff we talked about would truly help the person understand the culture fully, or really even at all, it would most likely be more confusing than not. This is kinda how I felt today in class, just reading the Quran didn’t necessarily teach me about it, just like reading the Christian bible isn’t going teach you everything about the Christian religion. I think it would be easier to start with the main focus of the religion, make sure we fully understand that, then we can compare it to other religions. Maybe this is just something that confused me, because I’m not super educated on Islam, but that is just my perspective from class today.

Don’t get me wrong, learning about the different religions is great, I just felt for me as if we were starting in the middle, that I was missing the foundation of understanding for what we were discussing in class, that was assumed to be gained from reading the Quran.

In an attempt to help my confusion I did use google to try and answer some of my questions. But, like Dr. McGrath mentioned doing our own research can be difficult because there are so many online sources and variations of religions and their beliefs. This is an example of one of those times where google didn’t really help me, it just brought up more questions.

Reading the assigned Surahs for class was the first time that I have read a religious text that is not the Bible. I know that may seem bad, or closed-minded, but I have always gone to Christian schools, and even though we learned about other religions including Islam, we never read their religious texts. I wanted to ensure that I did not read it wrong, or that I did not misinterpret what I was reading, so I looked into how to read the Qur’an. I found that, like the Bible, many people do not sit down and read it front to back. I found that this website recommends that you read the Qur’an with a commentary or complimentary book. I think that having a basic background of knowledge is useful when reading any type of religious text to better understand the religion and their beliefs. The prologue of the Qur’an had a footnote that I found interesting. The note described Allah as the same God as that the Jews and Christians worship. I had never really thought much about if there are different Gods or if everyone worships the same God, even if they have different beliefs. I have always found religion an interesting topic and enjoy learning about different religions. I am excited to learn more during this unit.

This was my first time ever reading parts of the Qur’an, and immediately I picked up one some similarities to the Bible and some points I found interesting. I like to focus on the last few chapters we were assigned to read, which are shorter, yet easier to dive into to truly uncover the meaning of the passage. The first sura I’d like to discuss is “Early Hours of Morning” which is sura 93. This passage expresses common seems we see within the Bible, such as trust, specifically a trust in our belief in “God” and that our Lord is our savior. Obviously it isn’t stated that blatantly, but the general meaning can be seen to be very similar to the more familiar themes of the bible, here and elsewhere within the Qur’an. Sura 103 which is titled “Time and Age” speaks directly towards the idea of belief, stating that “Man is certainly in loss, Except those who believe.” I think that again this is a very relatable idea to Christianity, that those who believe in a “God” and follow a “God” and His word are those who are ultimately saved. Something that I found interesting in both sura 93 and sura 107, which is titled “Things of Common Use,” is that orphans are discussed in both passages. In both cases, the Qur’an puts emphasis on the orphan and the idea of pushing away the orphan as a serious sin. We can connect from sura 93 that humans are viewed as orphans who were saved by the Lord, and therefore it shall be in our duty to help orphans as the Lord helped us. I just found it interesting that the orphan figure is used multiple times in the text, and possibly wonder what other meanings the description of an orphan plays within the Qur’an.

I liked that Professor McGrath was able to align chapter two of No god but God and the pages from the reader because they told the same stories about Muhammad with slightly different wording so we could really understand what was going on. Those stories including when Muhammad “cut open” and snow was put inside him which seemingly signified the removal of impurity and his first revelation when the angel, Gabriel, told him to “Recite” the words of the Lord. I thought it was more interesting that in No god but God, the author brings the controversies of what exactly happened to Muhammad during his first revelation with Gabriel as a man and how it might have affected him different with different perspectives that circulate the occurrence. I also liked the idea that women were a large chunk of his earliest followers. I was surprised by this because it seems as though women of this time and culture were more like property than anything else, and the author, Aslan, highlighted the fact that they had to go against whatever man “owned” her at the time (father, husband, brothers) in order to follow Muhammad’s teachings which would have been dangerous. I find myself enjoying the read of No god but God more than the reader just because it’s easier for me to understand, but as I said before, if the readings keep lining up it won’t be too bad.

Last Thursday, I attended the School of Music Convocation with Omar Offendum. The SoM Convo is a weekly meeting for every undergraduate music major at Butler, and we have a wide variety of topics, from different guest speakers to audition tips to music networking opportunities and lots of random things in between. Some of these Convos in the last 7 semesters have been more interesting than others, and Omar’s was one of the coolest in my time at Butler.

He began by telling us where he was from. His parents are Syrian, but they moved from Syria to Saudi Arabia before he was born. He lived in Saudi Arabia until he was 4, and then his family came to the U.S. He grew up in the Washington D.C. area and attended our country’s first Muslim school. He learned Arabic for at least 2.5 hours a day, in addition to the meeting all of the other educational standards of any American school. He is fluent in Arabic and has a pretty vast knowledge of Arabic poetry, which is what inspired a lot of his musical work.

Offendum didn’t start to really get into music until he was in college. He studied architecture and made music for fun, blending the musical elements he was surrounded by in American pop culture with the natural rhythm and flow of the Arabic language. While he finished his degree and began his work as an architect, he uploaded the work he was most proud of and started to get hits here, back home, and elsewhere around the world. He told us that all over the world, he is mistaken for the wrong ethnicity—he has been called dozens of things before correctly identified as Syrian. It’s not malicious or ill-intentioned, but people (like reporters and media outlets) don’t ask, they just assume, and often do so incorrectly.

Offendum was given the honor of being a Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Fellow, which he finished up earlier this year. During his time working with the Kennedy Center, he wrote and performed a one hour show about the Little Syria neighborhood in NYC, in which he mixed English rap, the Arabic language, live instruments, and electronic beats. The project “uncovers what life in the heart of Arab-America was like over a century ago; while informing much of what is (still) happening today in terms of immigration, xenophobia, Syria & the ever-evolving notion of an “American dream”.” (From the video description of this eleven minute medley he shared with us). It was awesome to hear his story and even cooler to hear his music. Check it out!

The Qur’an is the religious and cultural text behind the Islamic faith. When we began reading this for class it took me back to many discussions I’ve had in the past about the religion because for some reason it has been a polarizing political topic for some time. I feel that sometimes the Islamic faith is misrepresented in American culture and most importantly American media. The result of this misrepresentation is a lot of unnecessary hate towards Islam or anyone from the Middle East for that matter. A couple acts by people who don’t represent Islam and that becomes what Americans think of that religion and people who come from that area of the world. It really is a sad reality, but I feel it should be addressed going into this unit and especially when we’re discussing the Qur’an because it gives all the historical background that is needed.

Allah is who they worship and turn to for help. Jesus is mentioned in the Quran and the word “infidels” is mentioned. What is an infidel? God’s love is mentioned and is said to be given to those who place their trust in him. They believe in Hell and the Day of Reckoning is being mentioned multiple times. A man is worth more than a woman (one man= two females). Women are considered virtuous if they obey God. Men are not supposed to molest women. The also believe in sins and idols. They believe Jews and Christians have wandered away from the “correct” teaching of God. They have taken a pledge against them and they think that God will inform them of their wrong doing during the Day of Resurrection.

When I was buying the books for this class back in August, I was delighted to see that we were reading a book by Aslan. Two years ago, I took one of the special topics religion classes, and that semester it happened to be about religion and politics, so we read one of Aslan’s other books, Beyond Fundamentalism. Aslan wrote this book about religious warfare, and the most interesting topic I can recall is about how the 9/11 hijackers believed they were acting in the name of God when they did what they did to America, even though us Americans think the opposite. I wish that book wasn’t a rental book, so I could refer back to it right now, but my memory will do for now.

Since the book we are reading right now is basically the story of Islam explained in a less academic and a more theoretical and technical way, it is still slightly related to the book I previously read, because that seems to be a theme in Alsan’s writing style. (by less academic I mean Aslan doesn’t necessarily use textbook language that everyone will be able to understand, but he tells the exact history and talks about the religion as it is in the real modern world).

When I’ve been reading No god but God, I have continuously thought back to his work that I previously read. While I am positive I would be fine if I did not have a history of reading Aslan, I like that I at least have a little insight into his writing style and the topics he writes about. I have noticed that being a religion minor has helped me out a number of times in this class, and this situation is definitely one of them.

I saw that another classmate already posted about this incident, but it popped up on my phone as a news alert and was very interesting to read bout. In a Washington Post article from today, October 27th, it states that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State commander, was caught by an American Special Ops team and blew himself up before being captured. The article talks about the importance of his death as he was a man that the United States had been tracking for a number of months, months where Baghdadi brought violence and terror throughout the middle east. This incident connects well to our course in connection with current events in the Middle East, and although Baghdadi is now dead, Trumps plan to pull troops out of the Middle East is still in action. It will be interesting to see how Baghdadi’s death impacts Middle Eastern culture and the relationship with the United States and will definitely be something to look at going forwards. I will post the link to the lengthy Washington Post article here.

Earlier today, it was announced that one of the most wanted terrorists in the world, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was killed in a US military raid in Syria. Of course, this is a huge deal, not only for us as Americans, but for those affected in the Middle East as well. Because of the fact that this is kind of a big deal, I am not too fond of the ways President Trump addressed the situation.

I am going to preface this with the following: I do not hate Trump. I do not like him very much, and I do not think he is fit to be our president at all, but I also recognize that he deserves to at least have a little bit of respect, because he is still our president and I try to be a decent human most of the time. That being said, I am not writing this to hate on him for anything, I just want to highlight how unprofessional and clueless he often seems, even in this situation.

If you follow Trump on Twitter or are even just up to date on current events, you may notice that he does not have the largest vocabulary, or at least doesn’t use one. He also tends to use a lot of filler words and words that are exaggeratory, such as very, totally, and so on, likely to fill up space, make his statements and speeches longer, and to make himself sound smarter than he is. I find it hard to take him seriously because of this, especially when talking about how al-Baghdadi’s body was identified with “immediate” and “totally positive” tests. I am no scientist and I do not do research that involves testing anything, but I would never call any tests that I would ever run “totally positive.” I think it makes it sound fake, and this definitely sounds like something Trump would say to make himself sound smarter.

In addition, I think Trump could have been a little bit more respectful of the situation. Yes, al-Baghdadi was not the greatest person, and yes it is a step in the right direction that he has been killed, but he was still human and his death still deserves respect. The way that Trump described his death, by saying that the final moments were spent “in utter fear, in total panic and dread, terrified of the American forces bearing down on him.” While this may have been actually true, there is no way for Trump to know this for a fact. He was not there, and even if he was, how would he have known? He likely said this for dramatic effect, to make it look like big bad America did something so scary and everyone else should look out. The news article linked above even said that Trump “described in sometimes brutal terms how Baghdadi died.” No matter who it is, I would most definitely not be describing brutal details of someone’s death.

All of this just goes to show the type of president we have. No hate, I am just trying to share the facts and look a little bit deeper into the reaction of Trump and his statements to the public about al-Baghdadi’s death.