d and and now you know one out of every four Americans
has some kind of Irish roots and Saint Patrick's Day is the biggest parade in
New York and Boston so good things happen if people work hard enough and are
willing to kind of take the blows in regards to the question of religious
liberty and religious freedom there's a intra Muslim debate that's taking place
about the extent to which religious freedoms and liberties should be granted
especially when it comes to for instance attacking Islam and we see sort of the
violence that erupts when cartoons are drawn her in the image of the Prophet
and and and there's this in in troublesome debate about that what are your
thoughts well I mean I would say first of all that the the the idea of
vigilante justice is totally prohibited in the Islamic religion no Muslim is
allowed to take extrajudicial action in in any situation so there are blasphemy
laws in Islam just like there were there still are blasphemy laws in some
European countries so it's not like these things have completely gone away they
just don't implement them anymore I mean the last person to be killed for
blasphemy was in Scotland you know in the late 17th century so it wasn't like
Europe didn't have these things also the Muslim tradition is a pre-modern
tradition and so it has many of the sensibilities of the pre-modern world view
in in in in today's current situation I think Muslims first of all need to get
used to to being offended the Quran has many about being offended was potala
may applaud and be patient about what they say that's my live you know Otsuka
time a company community no co-ed then kathira you're gonna hear from the
people that were given the book before you meaning the jews and the christians
and the policy is much odious or noxious statements and it says to be patient
and not don't get angry and and so there's a lot of things about just not
getting angry the Prophet once heard somebody call him with m-mom which means
it's the opposite of Mohammed it means blameworthy because Mohammed means
praiseworthy and he said isn't it interesting how God has removed there my name
from their tongues when they want to curse me and he said they're talking about
something you name with them them and my name is Mohammed you know in other
words they're not talking about me and so those cartoon anybody that says those
cartoons were the Prophet Mohammed as far as I'm concerned is not a Muslim you
know as a beautiful Magritte has a beautiful picture and it's it says this is
not a pipe and it shows a picture of a pipe because we forget that the image is
not the thing and so if you make an image of something it's it's not that thing
that those crucifixes it's not Jesus on the cross you know and so any image
that's made especially if it's a caricature it's certainly not our prophet as
now they do with our prophet and then Wilson's have to ask themselves have you
contributed to the drawing itself has your behavior contributed to the person
to the perception of this religion so when Muslims do heinous things
unfortunately the Islam gets blamed and with Christianity that's not the case
because we're in a society where Christians are fully enfranchised I know some
people would debate the war on Christianity and on Christmas and things like
that but Christians are enfranchised so when one Christian does a crazy thing
all the Christians aren't blamed for it but unfortunately we're not in a
situation where Muslims are fully in franchise din this country so when one
Muslim does a crazy thing Islam is blamed for it I mean a lot of these people
clearly have mental illness and in a man that the plane into the IRS building
after writing a serious political screed you know he was just considered a
crazy white guy but if his name was Mohammed that would have been a terrorist
act it's as simple as that so you know the Arab said your preposition works and
mine doesn't you know like you have different grammatical rules that night
Santa Clara University as you know is the oldest institution of higher learning
in California it's grounded in the Jesuit tradition of educating citizens and
leaders of conscience and compassion to build a more just and more humane world
can you reflect on your mission at Zaytuna College especially within the
context and rooted in Islam what are your hopes in achieving in embarking on
this I mean I would say that the Catholic and the Islamic traditions share a
lot of things the central thing that they share is a profound dedication to
education but but another thing they share is a profound dedication to the the
the instrumental arts and and I buy art here I mean power the ability to do
something historically that is from instrumental arts and both art traditions
were the language arts and the number arts the the qualitative and quantitative
reasoning and so in the language arts it was grammar logic and rhetoric there's
a wonderful fresco by Botticelli of a student being led into the other six
liberal arts by grammar and and it's personified as a beautiful woman and
overlooking them as Prudential or wisdom and and one of the things that we
don't realize is that that language is incredibly complicated when we speak I
mean I was in a hotel recently and and we asked for somebody who asked asked me
what I wanted I said an omelet with everything except the the meat and so the
omelet came with everything with nothing but the meat and the reason was is the
person's English was limited and and the concept of an exception using accept
is actually a complicated concept language like had they said no meat it's very
clear but to say except meat will confuse somebody who's not a native speaker
sometimes if they don't know the language so we we don't realize how
complicated languages and historically on Christian doctrine by st. Augustine
st. Augusta argues that you have to learn the liberal arts in order to read
scripture one of the crises in the Muslim world is that the liberal arts are no
longer taught and so people are reading scripture without the liberal arts if you
don't know what a conditional sentence is you should not be reading Scripture
other than as a devotional practice but if you think that you can derive
knowledge or wisdom from it you're going to get in serious trouble and there
are many things in the Quran that are highly nuanced in in the Islamic
tradition the last book that you read in our scholastic tradition is a
two-volume work and I showed Graham wood this book who studied Arabic at
Harvard who wrote the article for the Atlantic it's a two-volume work just on
the particles and prepositions in in Arabic and how difficult they are there
are several just in Arabic in the Quran has several possibilities there's
something called phobia which is the causative there's you know there's a fad
that is related to it happens after time has transpired it's it's a conjunctive
that happens after time has transpired so every sentence in the Quran in in the
Catholic tradition they used to study the sentences which were the sentences
they studied this in in in seminaries for sometimes for 10 years this is a book
of sentences because there's so much sophistication in great writing especially
inspired writing by great theologians and so we've lost a lot of this and and
our complex compound sentences are diminishing in our writing you can see this
very clearly in modern writing we're losing the sophistication of language many
of our students are incapable of reading Melville I sometimes wonder if David
Foster Wallace really left the world just because of a kind of despair because
he he's a you know he's a very sophisticated writer that sometimes writes
sentences that last for a age and and he was teaching students English
literature and he said he would always begin with a crash course on grammar
because the students couldn't read and one of the things that I have done is
just give students the first sentence to the Declaration of Independence and
I've done this in several classes not just at say tuna but at other places and
out of 50 students on average three or four actually get the main Clause of
that sentence because they're unable to identify the difference between a
subordinate and a main clause we've had a war on grammar for about 50 years
it's literally been a war on grammar and grammar matters you know let's eat
grandma without that pause we could become cannibals right so commas are a
matter of life and death will open we had some questions that were written down
we can take some more as well if you had them please put them on the on the
cards someone asked please continue to express your thoughts on how Isis
revives or leverages medieval Muslim traditions and behaviors well I mean first
of all they they do not they aren't they are a real reflection of modernity
they're not they're much closer to kind of Maoist or or radical Marxist
tradition a lot of people are unaware of how profoundly impacted Marxist
thought has I mean even in our colleges and universities in the United States
critical theory which I mean we can trace it right back to Karl Marx and Karl
Marx who has undeniably some brilliant criticisms about capitalist society but
overall the end justifies the means is a Marxist concept it's not a religious
concept and so the idea somehow that you can just enslave people the Prophet
said that there's three people that he will be an advocate against on the day
of judgment and one of them was men by Horan you know that the one who sells a
free person you know and an alma wrote I would have been a toss about taking
people as slaves in Egypt he said Metis stabbed it to them and what it did to
Mahatma Harada when did you what right do you have to enslave people that their
mothers gave birth to them and freedom you know they're free people and so this
idea slavery is anonymity Islamic tradition there is undeniably a component in
historical Islam of indentured servitude which was largely a way of
reintegrating war victims and refugees into a society we have in our Islamic
law the ability of anybody who's in indentured servitude to get money from the
public funds to be freed if they so desire and so this idea of modern chattel
slavery has nothing to do with Islam at all and so what these people are doing
is not medieval in Dark Ages it is it is a gross distortion and I'm not going
to deny that within I've spent enough time in pre-modern books to know that
there's some really weird stuff in pre-modern tradition but I could take the
Jewish religion numbers 31 if you go into the the city kill every every male
even the little ones you know kill the the girls who have known intimately men
and take the girls who have not known men intimately for yourselves right which
was concubinage so that that's in that's in the Bible there's things that are
in in our pre-modern text but you you'll find in the Islamic Scripture you will
not find there's nowhere where there's racism and I would argue that the
Prophet Muhammad is the first human being in human history to declare the
Equality of human beings I have never found anybody prior to the Prophet
Mohammed where he said there's no preference of a white over a black or a black
over a white except in piety and I've never seen that articulated in any other
and the Quran clearly says we made you peoples and tribes to know one another
not to hate one another and even though that's an interpretation it's it is a
sound interpretation so I really feel that Isis in no way represents normative
medieval Islam there is a strain of radical Islam even in the pre-modern
tradition that gets pretty ugly the idea that women who were taken as
concubines could be coerced into Islam why did they want to coerce them because
they couldn't have sexual relations if they weren't Muslim so you'll find the
full kaha talking about these things but those things are relics of the past
and they should not be revived in in in in the modern world somebody asks it's
been said that Muslims and blacks are people that have been oppressed here in
the United States historically and Muslims are the target today do you think
there are currently any initiatives in which these two communities or two
groups work together now first of all I would say anybody that can make a
statement like that knows nothing about black history in this country the
Muslims have in no way any comparison to what the african-american people went
through or the Native Americans or even the Chinese Americans so you know I
just or Japanese Americans I mean I could go on but you know we're doing
relatively well let's face it you know I mean you know so you get some rude
remarks you know welcome to America you know I mean I'm sorry like I mean we've
got a front runner out there who just is as rude as can be and everybody loves
them so you know Americans like rude people sometimes I guess I don't know but
I mean I just think it's an odious comparison personally I really do what's
down the road I don't know like I'm troubled definitely by the rhetoric but I
think there's still an incredible number of very decent Americans that are
troubled by what's happening and I'm also very wary of polls because you know I
just my own experience I've been the bra I've had the brunt of of anti-muslim
thing but it's a good thing also to experience prejudice sometimes you know
because it gives you empathy I mean one of the things the Bible says is do not
vex the stranger or oppress him for you two were strangers in the land of Egypt
so it's sometimes to inculcate empathy we need to go through what other people
go through to be more appreciative one of the things that the immigrant
community failed to do is to really help the african-american Muslim community
that was I think an egregious shortsightedness ethically and pragmatically
Here's a question to you: personally could you share the story of your
own personal decision to convert to Islam for me?
You know I my mother raised me even though my great-grandfather built
the Greek Orthodox Church that's on Valencia and there's a plaque with his name
on it and I was actually baptized Greek Orthodox I went to Catholic schools my
father was Irish Catholic and but my mother did tell me that religion is
largely arbitrary you tend to have the religion that you were born into and so
don't think just because you were born into this religion it's the only truth
out there so she kind of raised us with that idea and she took us to various
religious communities I went to a mosque when I was 12 years old at in Redwood
City she took us to a mosque to experience you know a mosque I actually did
wudu and prayed with the congregation so she took me to synagogue she took us
to a Hindu temple so I read the Quran when I was 17 and after reading several
different scriptures and the Quran was the one that really resonated with me
because one of the things I really liked about the Quran was I got all the
prophets that I grew up with and and you know I I definitely I think the the
atonement story I never fully got you know and but I have incredible respect
for Christian tradition I have spent a lot of time in Catholic theology I'm
kind of an armchair Catholic theologian I would say I've read a lot of Aquinas
Agustin and Joseph Pieper is one of my favorite writers I you know I always
think the Catholics are just so bad at marketing because they they really do
have an incredible tradition and in terms of ethics there they are the most
advanced religious ethical tradition I think on the planet right now I really
believe that they're just so ahead of all the other religions in really deeply
dealing from a philosophical perspective a lot of the things that were
confronted with because people are there's a lot of shallow thinking out there
about what's going on and and we're looking at transhumanism which is
profoundly troubling CS Lewis who was really kind of a closeted Catholic CS
Lewis wrote a very very prescient book called the abolition of man which is a
very troubling book and I would add to that book a book by the big noob
residence key called between two ages and we're moving into a new phase I don't
know if people notice but a law firm just hired the first AI lawyer so it's
happening and it's happening at a very rapid pace and we're not really thinking
about the ethical implications of eliminating diseases this was called eugenics
in the Hitlerian project we had a eugenics movement in the 1920s where they in
this country they sterilized a lot of poor people and African Americans so it's
you know it's I think we really need Ephesus and we need ethicists that can
think metaphysically and philosophically and right now the Catholic tradition
is is one of the few that I really feel is deeply rooted in a sound of
philosophical tradition to be able to grapple with these things and in the way
that they need to be grappled with you had touched on this in your talk can you
provide some examples in history where Muslim majority countries did in fact
practice religious liberty Muslims were historically way ahead and I'll just
give you an example this is a recent book that just came out it's called when
Christians first met Muslims a sourcebook of the earliest Syriac writings on
Islam this is a very important book by Michael Phillip Penn the reason it's
important is because most Western Orientalism looked at Byzantine sources and
people forget that the Muslims defeated the Byzantines so most of those sources
were polemical and so they would attack the Muslims and say horrible things
about the Muslims in the same way that we said horrible things about the Huns
during World War one when they weren't like the Nazis and certainly the Iraqis
in Kuwait we know what they said about throwing the babies out of the and then
we found out that was a PR firm that coached that daughter of the Kuwaiti
ambassador to say that that it never happened the Iraqis didn't pull any babies
out but this is polemic you know in war the first casualty is the truth they
say and so in reading this book I was struck by how the Syriac most that
Christians loved the Muslims because they were liberated under them because
they were oppressed under the Byzantines and so they were saying how wonderful
the Muslims were and how incredible and also Fred Donner who is a world-class
historian it showed in Muhammad and the believers that there's no historical
evidence that Muslims destroyed any churches in in the conquest he said there's
no historical evidence and one of the things we have in assault is called if
sis haben Marcus which is is a it's a very sophisticated backward approach to a
current situation so traditionally look at precedent and how it affects the
pret the the present the so how the path but there's also a way that jurists in
Islam look at the present and how it informs us of the past the fact that these
great churches existed in Iraq for fourteen hundred years and the Christians
perceive the Muslims in those places is proof that the Muslims always honored
those so the destruction of these churches is completely alien to the Islamic
tradition the Muslims did not forget their religion for 1,400 years and then
this enlightened group called I see suddenly realized here's the true Islam
that we're going to implement it's just complete nonsense so these great
churches that have been destroyed this is one of the greatest crimes in our
history and and unfortunately they are a sect of people that claim to be
Muslims and it's going to be a blemish on our history just like the the the
burning of the church of the sepulchre was a blemish on the fought them it's
when they burned it down and 70 years later caused the Crusades but less people
forget Muslims immediately rebuilt that church and recently shed Mohammed paid
for the renovation of the of one of the great churches in Jerusalem so the
Muslims you know they they honored the Christians and I have a two hundred
years ago I have a book by Solly in Egypt where he says it's sad to hear so
many Muslims saying I wish I was a Christian because the perks that the
Christians got the Armenians in Ottoman Turkey were called The Omen favela you
know before the Armenian crises they were one of the most honored groups in the
ottoman tradition and the same is true with the Jews that Sabbath was a what we
would call a prime minister today under the ROM and a second so Christians and
Jews and even Buddhists of our Meccans were from a Buddhist shrine keepers the
the great Buddhist traditions of Central Asia so the Muslims you know they had
multicultural multi-ethnic civilizations this whole idea that were the first
multi-ethnic civilization history is it's just stupidity you know it's it's
just a hallmark of our ignorance and and they're undeniably I would argue that
America is probably the most progressive civilization in human history in terms
of legislating non-discriminatory law. I
think that would be a fair thing to say.
But for the Muslims for pre-modern records nobody compares to the
Muslims. And I say that objectively as a
student of the history of that of that civilization I don't think any society
and Toynbee and others would would also I think you know make that point as
well in terms of the context of what we see today both within many Muslim
countries as well as the tensions that exist in the United States in the the
amount of Islamophobia that continues to exist in this country and in many ways
is is getting worse what are your thoughts about this context and are you
hopeful for the future I think Islam phobia is is a problem globally I think
it's a problem in Muslim countries there's there's a lot of fear that the
rulers have of kind of awakening that comes from Islam because Islam has a
profound justice based element in its tradition but as far as I'm concerned I
think you know overall the Muslims are doing relatively well in this country I think
we have dropped the ball I think we dropped it over after 9/11 I made arguments
for pre-empting this study you were in that meeting we had 15 16 years ago yeah
where I made these arguments about having a getting you know a national
organization and to start dealing with the anti-muslim rhetoric that's going to
emerge in the coming years that's right and nobody listened to me at that time
so you know Cassandra was cursed with you know seeing the future but not being
listened to so it's kind of a bummer but that's the way things so in terms of
what I see I see if if Donald Trump gets elected I think it could could be very
problematic for the Muslims I think if Hillary gets elected Huma Abedin might
end up being the chief of staff at some point so I I wouldn't say I'm hopeful I
know enough about history to know how bad it can get but our religion is a
religion of optimism were challenged to be optimistic and so I'm probably an
optimist trapped in a pessimist body so let's hope for the best and expect the
worst and Shella we as you know we're taping this on c-span and so her time is
quite fixed and so I'll stop there please join me in thanking Sheikh Hamza she
hums on behalf of Santa Clara University we just want to extend our deep
gratitude for your presence with us and your thoughtful engagement and
reflection and entering into dialogue with our community and thank you for Reid
for your facilitation and also to all of you for coming today to participate
and for your thoughtful engagement please join me in thinking once more our
guests thank you
