Taking a Class on the Qur'an and People Who Ask Why

Why? People are asking why I would be taking a course on the Qur’an.

First of all, I’m taking the class because it’s being offered by the Nonstop Liberal Arts Institute, the little do-it-yourself college being set up by the alumni and former faculty of Antioch College. Its efforts are intended to keep the unique spirit of Antioch alive. I want to be some little part of that effort because Antioch was so important to the person my wonderful daughter has become, and because Antioch’s graduates have made a real difference in our world – and I want that to continue.

So, I went through the proposed courses, and found four on Saturdays (the only day I can attend, since the campus is 70+ miles away):

A History of Jazz (A one day workshop, which I may also take, next month)
The Qur’an, Muhammed and Islam
Principles of Photography
A History of the American Civil Rights Movement (taught by a distinguished retired Antioch professor, whose brother was one of three white civil rights workers murdered in Meridian, Mississippi in 1964)

The last two classes ended up not being offered, so here I am, reading the Qur’an.

As to why this should interest me, why not? Had the class been on Zen, or the Tao, of Shinto, I would have been equally interested.

What I really find interesting is that so many people ask me why I would want to do this. The simplest explanation is that I think it's important to understand my fellow man.

First, some background:

They say that there are three subjects that, in order to avoid conflict, should never be discussed in polite company: politics, sex, and religion. I’m going to talk about the last one now, so be forewarned. Here goes:

Let me first say that I respect the right of people to hold their own beliefs, whatever they may be. I am a tolerant person. The stories of my Puritan and later, Quaker, ancestors taught me about the freedom of religion and its honored place in our American history. One ancestor signed the Flushing Remonstrance, the first North American document that prescribed religious tolerance and freedom of worship. I have a rich heritage to honor.

Let me also say that as a respecter of the rights of others to their respective religions, that I hope others would exert the same tolerance in my direction. I do not believe in the right of anyone to proselytize unless the recipient of the proselytizing has given consent.

At the age of five or six, I came to the conclusion that the bible stories I was being taught in Sunday school were really nice stories, with lessons to be learned from most of them. I did not, however, differentiate them from other stories, such as Aesop’s fables, or Grimm’s fairy tales. At the same time, I was reading a lot of mythological stories , such as the story of Pandora’s box, Beowulf, Perseus and the Gorgon, and so forth. I was enthralled with them all.

I didn’t understand what all the fuss was about in church. Why did the minister and Sunday school teacher confine themselves to just the biblical and Christian history stories (Luther, Calvin, etc.)? The other stories were valuable, too.

Eventually, all the talk of God and Jesus finally got through to me, and I understood the concept of divinity. There was something supernatural about many of these characters—as there was about the ones in the other stories. However, for some reason, the supernatural characters in the bible stories warranted worship, while the gods in the Greek and Norse tales were described as being only the amusing stories of primitive peoples.

Then there was the Catholic church in the next village. For some reason, it was located on a back street near the cemetery, out of sight. The protestant churches stood proudly on the main street. Somehow, the Catholics were something to be ashamed of. Children at school giggled when Catholic children couldn’t read the books the rest of us were reading, because they were on “the list.” Those Catholic children couldn’t even understand their minister, who they called a “priest,” because he conducted services in another language.

The Jewish family in the next village was well-liked, but their Jewishness set them somewhat apart (although, oddly enough, not as far apart as the Catholics).

I chewed on these thoughts for a long time—and still do. Why was it that our community had so many different groups: Baptists, Presbyterians, Jews, Church of Christ, Disciples of Christ, Catholics, Dutch Reformeds, Methodists, Presbyterians? We even had a “Federated” (Presbyterians and Baptists) church and a “Union” church (Disciples of Christ and Dutch Reformed). How interesting it was that people were one or the other because their families were one or the other. Democrats and Republicans (the other local religions) didn’t necessarily have the same familial connection. Why was that?

What if you decided to be a Jew and were born a Presbyterian? Of course, no one I knew did anything like that. Catholics were what they were, and didn’t change. Protestants didn’t either.
It seemed interesting to me that an accident of birth determined one’s religious path for life. Since each denomination was convinced that their way was the right way, it was sort of unfair that the rest of the world was accidentally being led astray.

Who was right? Was anyone right? Did the Bible, or Aesop, or the Norse, or the Greeks, for that matter, have a lock on correctness? Were these the only answers? What was the question?

My conclusion was that religion is a feeble attempt to answer universal questions.
And, you may ask, what are those questions? Here is a list, by no means exhaustive:

1. Where did we come from?
2. Who/what is the creator of this universe?
3. Does this creator still exist?
4. Does this creator care about us?
5. Is this creator all powerful?
6. What can we do to appease this creator so that life here will be better?
7. What happens after we die?
8. What can we do to appease the creator so that “life” in the hereafter will be good?
9. Are we alone in the universe?
10. Are we really as insignificant in the universe as we seem to be?
11. Are we really as important in the universe as we seem to think we are?
12. Do any of these questions matter?

My cat has some questions, too:

1. When is dinner?
2. Where is it warm?
3. What is calculus?

Neither human beings nor cats can answer most of these questions. For the cat, dinner is when it’s there. There is no concept of specific times in a cat’s life. It’s warm where it’s warm. Calculus is beyond any cat’s ability to understand, and there is little point in any cat spending any time worrying about it.

For us, most of our questions are analogous to the cat’s calculus questions. It’s highly unlikely that we’ll ever find these answers, and it’s probably just a waste of time to try to answer them.
Astrophysicists, string theorists and particle geeks are exploring the where did we come from question, looking backward in time to the nanoseconds at the beginning of the Big Bang. Now they’re even trying to recreate some of it under the Alps in Switzerland. The closer they get to that very first nanosecond, the more the “laws” of physics don’t seem to apply. Things start to look like calculus does to my cat—incomprehensible.

Our world view has been developed by virtue of the environment in which we live. The “laws” of physics, the concepts of a “beginning” and a “creator”—these all exist because those concepts are part of our experience here in this part of the universe.

Our experience doesn’t really allow for a universe with no beginnings. We think we understand the concept of infinity, but that’s all it is—a concept. It’s difficult to comprehend a universe with no boundaries that just goes on forever. Even the physicists understand the idea only with the aid of complex mathematical constructions. What if the “laws” of mathematics break down at some point, as do the “laws” of physics?

Do we really have the ability to grasp the knowledge we seek?

I think not. To change my mind, convince me that my cat can learn calculus. We’re not ready for answers to these questions until we’ve evolved considerably further. We don’t even know the real questions yet.

Speaking of evolution, who do we think we are, anyway?

We’ve only been around a short time, 2 or 3 million years, perhaps, and already have fouled our nest. There’s no guarantee that we’re going to last much longer. Other species lasted hundreds of times longer than we’ve been here, and managed to become extinct through no fault of their own. Would a species so all-fired important in the scheme of things manage to extinct itself? To me, it sure looks like we’re on the way to accomplishing that.

Are we really certain that we’re the apex of evolution, and that planet earth’s highest achievement has been to grow the human race? Could we perhaps be only one more evolutionary step to the next species, or the next, or the next—and could we be just a very low rung on the evolutionary ladder?

It seems to me to be the height of egocentricity (anthropocentricity?) to assume that the human race is at the center of the universe. It took us a while to realize that the sun and stars don’t revolve around the earth. Eventually we may realize that we’re just another organism in an outlying district of an insignificant galaxy in the backwoods of an infinite universe—and that we’re really not all that important.

Our sole responsibility is to make our lives as comfortable as possible for one another while we’re here. The Golden Rule is a good ethical precept for us to follow. As Jerry Springer says, “Be good to one another.” The reward for good behavior will be right here and now, not later in some heaven.

If it turns out that I’m wrong, it won’t matter. I try to follow the golden rule, and do the best I can to be kind to my fellow man. If there is a heaven, I’ll probably get there. But I don’t worry about it. As Cleo Laine sings, “The least you can do is the best you can.”
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Now that I’ve laid the foundations about my (very strong) opinions, I’ll attempt to respond to the questions I've been asked about why I'm taking a class about Islam:

There is a lot of prejudice in the west about Islam. I think that may be because we don’t separate the cultural from the religious. We hear of a woman sentenced to death by stoning after she was raped and immediately, because it occurred in a Muslim country, attribute the cause of the atrocity to Islam.

Why is it that when we heard of the torture death of Matthew Shepard in Wyoming in 1998 we didn’t blame Christianity?

Religion is most of the world is a part of a culture, but not all of it.

What I’ve learned about Islam, so far:

It is a continuation of the Judeo-Christian tradition. A series of prophets have been given revelations from god.

• Abraham established the idea of monotheism – one god, not many
• Moses was given the ten commandments
• Jesus taught us to love our neighbor
• Muhammed gave us the Qur’an, which tells us how to love our neighbot – a system of ethical behavior.

Islam does not believe Jesus is the son of god. They think we’re all the children of god and that god does not beget – he is way above that, and his ability to create is far and beyond mere begetting. He’s done more important things.

Islam has five “pillars:”

• There is one god, and Muhammed was his prophet
• Prayer – they tend to pray 5 times a day, but there’s not rule that you must – Muslims want to pray
• Charity – giving one-fortieth of all you possess (not just 10% of only your income)
• Observation of Ramadan
• Making a pilgrimage

The basic thing I’ve gleaned so far is that Islam permeates the lives of its adherents – being aware of god and being thankful/appreciative of his creation is something that Muslims try to be aware of all of the time.

The other basic thing that I’ve learned is that, as our professor said yesterday, god is a lot like Santa Claus. He’s “making a list and checking it twice, gonna find out who’s naughty and nice.” The Judgement will come and the graves will open and we’ll be sent off to heaven or hell according to how we’ve lived our life.

Heaven is a place of gardens and cool streams, where Muslims will have “pure spouses.” The claptrap about the 12 virgins awaiting martyrs in heaven appears to be just that – claptrap.

Women were not enslaved by Islam. On the contrart, Muhammed’s revelations from god elevated the status of woman and put an end to the orgiastic polytheism of 7th century Arabia. Sex became restricted to marriage. Women were no longer property. Women could inherit. Divorce was possible, and women could initiate it. Motherhood was made valuable.

Obviously, I’m just beginning my exploration and there’s a lot more to learn.

Islam, like any religion, is practiced according to the interpretation of the faith by its followers. Fundamentalists are often pretty zealous (as in Orthodox Judaism, Evangelical Christianity, fundamentalist Islam). Don’t condemn the faith because of the misguided actions of some of its adherents.