Free Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender and Pluralism by Omid Safi Page B

Placed in the context of many other morally offensive events, such as The Satanic Verses and the death sentence against Salman Rushdie, the stoning and imprisoning of rape victims in Pakistan and Nigeria, the treatment of women by the Taliban, the destruction of the Buddha statues in Afghanistan, the sexual violation of domestic workers in Saudi Arabia, the excommunication of writers in Egypt, and the killing of civilians in terrorist attacks, this event seems to be just another chapter in a long Muslim saga of ugliness. This saga of ugliness has forced Muslims who are embarrassed and offended by this legacy to adopt apologetic rhetorical arguments that do not necessarily carry much persuasive weight. One of the most common arguments repeated by Muslim apologists is that it is unfair to confuse the religion of Islam with the deeds of its followers. The fact that the followers commit egregious behavior in the name of the religion does not in itself mean that the religion commands or sanctions such behavior. A similar, often repeated argument is that one must distinguish Islamic religious doctrines from the cultural practices of Muslims, the implication being that it is culture and not religion that is the culprit responsible for immoral behavior. Another more subtle argument, but one that surreptitiously betrays the same feelings of discomfort and embarrassment, is simply to remind the world that only a very small percentage of the Muslim world is Arab. Although this is factually correct, Muslims would not have been keen about reminding the world of this fact if the behavior of Arabs or their image was honorable. It is exactly because Arabs suffer from a troubled image in today’s world that many Muslims feel the need to distance Islam from the Arab identity or Arab culture. I call these arguments unpersuasive not because they are inaccurate – in fact,
    all the defensive points mentioned above are logical or factually correct. Nonetheless, I call them unpersuasive because they fail to take account of a variety of counter veiling arguments and problems. For instance, they ignore the role of history in understanding the present, and they also ignore the fact that it is not always possible to separate with surgical accuracy a system of belief from the social practices that have grown around it. Specifically, these arguments fail
    to take account of the role of human subjectivities in determining and acting upon doctrine. For example, it is true that Arabs constitute twenty percent of the sum total of Muslims in the world today. But it must be remembered that the very racial category of Arab was socially constructed and re-invented in different periods and places of the world. In certain times and places, whoever spoke Arabic eventually became an Arab, or, at least, came to be perceived as an Arab. The very classification of an Arab was the product of a dynamic and creative socio-linguistic process. The Arabic language, itself, demonstrated a remarkable ability to spread to new nations, and, eventually, to Arabize them. Consider, for instance, the complaint of the Bishop of Cordoba, Alvaro, in ninth-century Spain. He states,
    Many of my coreligionists read verses and fairy tales of the Arabs, study the works of Muhammedan philosophers and theologians not in order to refute them but to learn to express themselves properly in the Arab language more correctly and more elegantly. Who among them studied the Gospels, and Prophets and Apostles? Alas! All talented Christian young men know only the language and literature of the Arabs, read and assiduously study the Arab books. . . If somebody speaks of Christian books they contemptuously answer that they deserve no attention whatever ( quasi vilissima contemnentes ). Woe! The Christians have forgotten their own language, and there is hardly one among a thousand to be found who can write to a friend a decent greeting letter in Latin. But there is a numberless multitude who express