On Priests and Imams

Here’s what it’s come to: the banner headline in today’s printed version of El Nuevo Día quotes the Secretary of Justice saying, Quedan protegidos los pederastas (Pederasts Remain Protected).

And here’s what’s worse…

My reaction?

That’s news?

The Supreme Court of Puerto Rico has decided to cave in to the Catholic Church, specifically the diocese of Arecibo, and allow the church to withhold documents requested by the Justice Department related to abusive priests. Why? Because some of the victims chose to tell the church, and all that communication is “confidential.”

Here’s what happened, or at least what I presume happened: some kids got abused, walked around wounded for months or years, and finally got the courage to go to the church and complain. Not surprising, because listening for fifteen minutes to the morning radio shows in Puerto Rico will tell you exactly what you don’t want to have happen to you. And that’s being the topic of the day.

If you know anything about the dynamics of sexual abuse, you’ll know that the victim, paradoxically, usually feels responsible or guilty for his or her own abuse, and that it takes a level of maturity not often seen in kids to have the strength to confront the adult world, especially when that adult world is wearing a Roman collar. So the likelihood is that most of the victims were kids, and most of the victims coming forward were young adults who reported abuse years after it happened.

So the Supreme Court has ruled that a lower court judge has to look at all the documents, determine if the complainant is an adult, and then ask the person if he / she wants the documents released to Justice.

Guys? We’re talking about crimes here.

However, so loopy is our need to “protect” religious freedom, covering up abusive priests may be perfectly legal; here’s Wikipedia on the topic:

A communication is "confidential" if made privately and not intended for further disclosure except to other persons present in furtherance of the purpose of the communication.

Yeah? So if I sit in an office and tell the bishop that the parish priest had his hand on my crotch four years ago, that’s confidential?

Yup, and that’s why we have seven priests in Arecibo who have been defrocked, and who are all walking around, or perhaps lurking outside school playgrounds, reenacting all those lurid 1950’s educational films. And does anybody think out there that those priests got defrocked for something that wasn’t illegal?

It doesn’t stop surprising me, the stuff that religious people get themselves up to, because who knew that the largest chain of charter schools is run—maybe—by Fethullah Gülen, an Islamic Imam from Turkey, now living in the Poconos?

Here’s what the website for the chain’s Texas branch has to say:

Our mission at Harmony is to prepare each student for higher education by providing a safe, caring, and collaborative atmosphere featuring a quality, student-centered educational program with a strong emphasis on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. 

In Numbers:

            40 Campuses (24 T-STEM schools) 

            25,000 Students

            2,276 Faculty and Staff

            Student-to-Teacher Ratio of 14-to-1

            100 percent Graduation Rate for Seniors

            100 percent College Acceptance Rate

Umm… 100% college acceptance? 100% graduation rate?

Well, if true, that would account for the waiting list of some 30,000 kids—more kids than are currently enrolled in the system. And in the video below, the kids certainly look happy, and the school is a knockout. True, most of the teachers are Turkish, and some of them are substantially less fluent in English than I am in Spanish. Which is odd, since some of them are teaching…English.

And that 100% Graduation Rate? Well, here’s one less-than-gruntled account by a teacher fired by a Gülen school:

When it came time for OATs, as they were called then, testing was a disaster. Several Turkish men arrived and pulled “at risk” students from their classrooms, taking them to the moldy rooms in small groups, despite the lack of written documentation allowing accommodations. The week after testing, I went to school on a Saturday morning in order to keep ahead of my planning, and I saw a dozen Turkish men sitting in a classroom with stacks of OATs on their desks. The current principal brought a cup of tea and a plate of cookies to me while I worked alone in my classroom. He said that the men were simply darkening in the answers for students who wrote too lightly.

Right—we all know that kids have an instinctive bent for delicacy, which undoubtedly accounted for those faint markings….

And there have been questions, as well, about how accountable these schools are. Reports have surfaced that at least the Turkish teachers have to kickback up to forty percent of their salary to the Gülen movement. Oh, and what about the question of immigration? Is there really such a shortage of American teachers?  And do these “teachers” have any formal training?

That said, it’s also true that, bar having done if for twenty plus years, I’m completely untrained too, and that didn’t stop me from fooling a passel of students and the world’s largest company into thinking I knew what I was doing.

Nor is Gülen, apparently, the most virulent of imams. Because his message was / is that the Muslim world doesn’t need more mosques and madrasas, but rather schools that focus on the sciences and math. And though virtually a recluse, his movement carries such weight that, in Turkey at least, his opponents fear that he may be planning a coup. 

And the schools—are they really connected to Gülen? They—some of them—say no, others say yes. Why the confusion, or the secrecy?

Well, would you want to be a Muslim in America? And here, I have to say that however radicalized I might be as an atheist, I’d welcome an imam like Gülen who—if true—is a moderate and condemns extreme forms of Islam. We need these guys….

And the charter schools? With their reports of not accepting some students, of kicking out students who don’t perform, of shifting kids around? That’s the negative stuff. But what about all those kids you see in videos who are solemnly swearing that school is fun, learning is cool, going to school is a joy?

Don’t know. But this I do know: if I were a parent, I’d certainly check out the charter schools in my area….

The Mufti Speaks Out!

Yeah?

I can give you the standard line, because I’m a liberal, I’m (mostly) politically correct, and, besides, who hasn’t heard it? So here goes:

Islam is a religion of peace and love, there is no place either in the Quran or in the practice of the religion for violence against women or those who do not share the faith.

Then it goes further: Islam, unlike Christian religions, is non-hierarchical. There is no pope, no Archbishop of Canterbury who speaks for the believers. Rather, each Imam is the spiritual head and teacher of a mosque or university. Yes, some mosques for historical or theological reasons are more important than others, and thus some imams are more prominent than others, but no imam speaks for all.

How convenient!

I say this because the world has sat around for three weeks and watched as the Nigerian government did nothing about getting the 276 still-missing kidnapped girls freed from their captors, members of a group called Boko Haram. The group attacked the girls at bedtime in their boarding school, and the scene must have been horrific. And the head of the group issued a rambling-à la-bin-Laden speech promising to sell these girls in the marketplace. Oh, and that’s no idle threat, since Nigeria is a major…well, here’s NBC News on the subject:

The Global Slavery Index, an annual survey by the Australian anti-trafficking group the Walk Free Foundation, ranks Nigeria fourth on its list of nations with the highest number of people living in “modern slavery,” behind India, China and Pakistan.   

Right—so all the world has to sit around and watch this atrocity, but that’s not all. Because God forbid we should even breathe the suggestion—I’ll take a sledgehammer to the keyboard after I write this—that there’s something more than usually blood thirst about Islam. Readers, you’re my witnesses—I have more than once tsk-tsked the Catholic Church, and I refuse to comment on reports that this blog was more than a little responsible for the unprecedented resignation of Ben 16, or whatever the number was. My point? Not too many Christians out there are carrying out attacks on girls’ schools.

Oh, and there’s another thing. Since no one can speak for this religion, and since you, Dear Reader, are very likely doing other things, like working to pay your bills and raising children, then you have to assume that some imams out there are speaking out and decrying this atrocity….

Are they?

It’s hardly scientific, what I’m doing, but it’s more than I’ve seen anyone else do. I googled “top imams“ and got this link from ranker.com.

Are they really the top imams? Who knows, but I took each one of the top ten and googled his name (a curious lack of women in the group, by the way) and the words “Boko Haram.” And—perhaps unfairly—I gave them just one page of search, under the assumption first that it was a fairly narrow search and, second, that it was certainly topical.

So here it goes:

1. Abdul Rahmen al-Sudais is described in Wikipedia thus:

Abdul Rahman Ibn Abdul Aziz as-Sudais (Arabic: عبد الرحمن السديس‎ (ʻAbd ar-Rahman ibn ʻAbd al-Aziz as-Sudais), born Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 1960)[1] is the imam of the Grand mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and was the "Islamic Personality Of the Year" in 2005. Al-Sudais has called for efforts to combat terrorism,[2][3] preached Islam's opposition to "explosions and terrorism",[4] and has called for peaceful inter-faith dialogue.

OK—the Google search turned up nothing related to Boko Haram, but did, at the bottom of the page, have this:

Despite his sectarian, racist incitements that Jews are “scum…rats…pigs and monkeys,” the chief cleric of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Sheikh Abdul Rahman al Sudais, has been welcomed and invited to preach at the East London mosque in Whitechapel tonight, Tuesday evening, 4 August 2009.

Al-Sudais, who has close ties to the Saudi elite, has also insulted Christians and Hindus, referring disparagingly to Christians as “cross-worshippers” and Hindus as “idol worshippers”.

He has been banned from Canada for his anti-Semitism.

Guys? The imam of the Grand mosque in Mecca has been banned in Canada? Not looking good.

2. Abdul Rauf, whom you will know as the Ground Zero imam. In fact, the search was a bit problematic, since there are a basketball player and a Nigerian politician with almost identical names. So I added “Imam Abdul Rauf Boko Haram” and hit the enter button.

And I’m pleased to tell you, the Imam has been tweeting up a storm: “Six reasons the World Should Demand Action” he tweeted yesterday. But any public statements? New conferences? Op-Ed pieces? No, though there was this:

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf Accused of Embezzling Millions from Mosque Fund

Right—when a bunch of his guys abscond with over two hundred girls, what did this guy do? He tweeted!

3. Imam Abdul Wahid Pedersen is a Danish guy, and half of the search results were in…Danish. Right, but there didn’t seem to be anything much in the way of denunciations on the screen, though I dropped in on the Wikipedia article on him, and discovered that he was convicted and sentenced to over a year in prison for “buying and selling 5kg of hashish.” But look, he was 29 at the time (though he had converted to Islam a year earlier….)

4. No, there’s nothing recent about this guy from Queens—but I do give you this, from the Wikipedia article on him….

Ahmad Wais Afzali (b. 1972 (age 41–42)) is an imam, formerly from Queens, New York. He was deported from the United States in 2010 as part of a plea bargain after lying to the American FBI regarding a conversation he had held with acquaintance Najibullah Zazi,[1] a man later convicted of terrorism charges in the United States.

Guys?

5. Imam Ahmed Yassin—OK, this guy was a problem, though maybe it’s just that my brain has gotten dazed by so much ole-time religion. The problem? I kept getting results for Sheik Ahmed Yassin, and I didn’t think I wanted that. But I pursued the sheik, and he may be our man. And who was he? A founder of Hamas, who died in 2004.

OK—look, I was going to be fair. My father, I have no doubt, would have gotten all the way down the list of the top ten imams: he would have found some imam willing to step up to the plate and bat one for religious moderation. And in fact, I can report that the Egyptian mufti (and wouldn’t it be fun, by the way, to be a mufti? Just for a day or two, you know, kind of check it out…)....

Sorry, I was about to tell you that the mufti has come out and “slammed” Boko Haram! Hah! Take that!

I started out skeptical, but guess what? That’s fallen completely by the wayside!

Whew….

So, unable to endure any more, I have called my sports consultant, who happens to be my brother.

“Johnny, what do you call it when one team is getting slaughtered and nobody can stand it any more?”

“The mercy rule.”

Mercy, indeed!

Wow—Those Great Saudi Guys!

OK—it’s only been seen 5,595,531 times on YouTube in the three days that it’s been there, so it’s clear. Iguanas has to step in and lend a hand; check in on the video below, and help this video get this video out there!

So it’s hard to defend the Saudi Arabian treatment of women, but guess what? Here’s a Saudi woman with a defense:

In Saudi culture, women have their integrity and a special life that is separate from men. As a Saudi woman, I demand to have a guardian. My work requires me to go to different regions of Saudi Arabia, and during my business trips I always bring my husband or my brother. They ask nothing in return—they only want to be with me.

The image in the West is that we are dominated by men, but they always forget the aspect of love. People who aren’t familiar with Shariah often have the wrong idea. If you want stability and safety in your life, if you want a husband who takes care of you, you won’t find it except in Islam.

Wow—what a great deal! And what princes these guys are, who only want to be there for their women! The wonder is that—given that they must be exhausted, from all the care that they lavish on their women—they have the energy and desire to have two, three, or four wives. How do they do it?

And what, by the way, is wrong with our Western women, who can fail to see the obvious benefits of this good Sharia system? Consider—every woman has a guardian, who drives her, gives her “permission” to work, study, go places and even visit the doctor. Are our womenfolk so blind? Why aren’t they jumping at the chance?

And the best thing? Women get all this protection as early as nine, which most courts say is the youngest age for a girl to get married. Oh, and don’t think about marrying outside the tribe, because guess what? That’ll get you disinherited.

Even better, if you get a divorce? You won’t get stuck with the kids—who are the property of the father. Oh, and you’ll have to ask your son if you want to remarry. Oh wait—that may not even happen, since the groom will automatically be dealing with your guardian, not you.

Naturally, it takes some work to maintain this system; here’s Wikipedia on the subject:

In 2009, the Saudi Gazette reported that a 23-year-old unmarried woman was sentenced to one year in prison and 100 lashes for adultery. She had been gang-raped, become pregnant, and tried unsuccessfully to abort the fetus. The flogging was postponed until after the delivery.

Wow—postponing the flogging until after the delivery? Is there no kindness these guardians won’t shower on their women? Amazing!

Still people carp. For example, according to Wikipedia, “the World Economic Forum 2009 Global Gender Gap Report ranked Saudi Arabia 130th out of 134 countries for gender parity.” And even in Saudi Arabia, there are critics: here’s Wajeha Al-Huwaider:

The ownership of a woman is passed from one man to another. Ownership of the woman is passed from the father or the brother to another man, the husband. The woman is merely a piece of merchandise, which is passed over to someone else—her guardian ... Ultimately, I think women are greatly feared. When I compare the Saudi man with other Arab men, I can say that the Saudi is the only man who could not compete with the woman. He could not compete, so what did he do with her? ... The woman has capabilities. When women study, they compete with the men for jobs. All jobs are open to men. 90% of them are open to men. You do not feel any competition ... If you do not face competition from the Saudi woman ... you have the entire scene for yourself. All positions and jobs are reserved for you. Therefore, you are a spoiled and self-indulged man.

I’ve a friend, Harry, who once worked for an organization for Latinos. In his time there, the organization was asked to come out in support of a Mexican guy who had started a brawl in a bar. “Fighting in public,” said the lawyer defending the man, “played an integral part in the cultural life of the Mexican male,” or some such thing. Everybody thought about that for a bit…

…until Harry began to sing, “oh give me a home, where the bottles are thrown…”

Which is the way I’m starting to feel about Islam, at least Saudi Arabian-style. Come on, guys, I do my best to be respectful but…

..couldn’t you guys make it a little easier?

Passports to Many Countries

OK—first off. I tremble to write this post, because if Irshad Manji reads this it, and troubles to respond, she’ll wipe me off the map. She’s both smarter and tougher than I.

And who is Irshad Manji? Well, many people in the Arab world have an answer—she’s an infidel, a heretic, a traitor. Or, some would say, she’s a person who’s finally had the guts to speak some unpleasant truths.

Some months ago, I was trying to write a review in Amazon.com, since a number of Iguana readers were having trouble uploading their reviews. Not having read anything recently, I decided to review the King James Bible. (It seemed fair—I had read it, though years ago, and it’s a text that has survived for a substantial amount of time. I doubted anything that I could say would seriously hurt it….) I went to the page, scrolled down, and was startled to find that 46 people had give it one star, Amazon’s lowest level. Here’s my favorite:

444 of 534 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars

Far too pornographic for a Christian home!, October 6, 2012

By 

Mrs. Betty Bowers "Mrs. Betty Bowers, America... - See all my reviews

This review is from: Holy Bible: King James Version (Hardcover)

I simply refuse to poison my Christian children's precious minds with lascivious tales of daughters getting their father drunk and having sex with him (Genesis 19:30-38) - or harlots lusting after penises that are the size of donkeys' (Ezekiel 23:20). It is, however, excellent for cracking nuts and slapping bottoms.

I tell you this story because a surprising number of Christians are treating the Bible as…well, a sort of supplemental text. Or perhaps additional reading, if wanted.

Right, you say. But what does this have to do with Irshad Manji?

Well, to put words into the lady’s mouth—something certainly unnecessary and probably dangerous—it’s interesting that Christians can do that, and yet a Muslim doing the same with the Quran? In Canada, yes—but how about Saudi Arabia? I bring you The Australian:

A FAMILY row that developed into a televised debate in Saudi Arabia has ended in disaster for a young activist now facing seven years in jail and 600 lashes, as the kingdom continues to crack down on online dissent.

Raif Badawi, 30, founder of a liberal website, has been sentenced by a court in Jedda - convicted of insulting Islam and denouncing the kingdom's feared religious police. A charge of apostasy that could have carried the death penalty was dropped.

Tacked on to those offences was a charge of "parental disobedience", stemming from a bitter dispute between Badawi and his father. The row became so ugly that among those denouncing his son as an apostate was Badawi's father himself.

I read about it at the time, and then considered writing about it. I didn’t, partly out of politically correct fear of playing into Islam / Muslim bashing, and partly because, well, what is there to say? It’s ridiculous and outrageous; now, what about the other 998 words in my post?

It’s a problem I’ve had with the some parts of the Muslim world for some time. A Danish cartoonist draws an offensive cartoon—embassies burn and 100 people die in Nigeria alone in violence related to the affair. This we have to take seriously?

Manji wrote a book, The Trouble with Islam Today, in which she provides the answer—the Muslims. And I saw her defend her beliefs in a great show from Al Jazeera English called Head to Head; it was filmed in temperate waters of the Oxford Union.

Well, she was bright and articulate, as well as quite passionate. And I had come to her through music, specifically through Daniel Barenboim, the pianist and conductor. Barenboim spent ten years in Argentina before his parents moved to Israel in 1952. And speaking of courage, he’s fully the equal of Manji—would you have the balls to break a decades long prohibition of playing Wagner in Israel?

Here’s Wikipedia on the subject:

Barenboim, who had been selected to head the production of Wagner's operas at the 1988 Bayreuth Festival,[40] had since at least 1989 publicly opposed the Israeli ban. In that year, he had the Israel Philharmonic "rehearse" two of Wagner's works.[41] In a conversation with Edward Said, Barenboim said that "Wagner, the person, is absolutely appalling, despicable, and, in a way, very difficult to put together with the music he wrote, which so often has exactly the opposite kind of feelings ... noble, generous, etc." He called Wagner's anti-Semitism obviously "monstrous," and feels it must be faced, but argues that "Wagner did not cause the Holocaust."

Said was Muslim, and went on to become friends with Barenboim, and later to write a book with him.

Oh, and the two also dreamed up the idea of an orchestra that would have both Jewish and Muslim members. So they started the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in 1999, and it was not always smooth—discussion between the players could get very heated.

Barenboim is believed to be the only person who holds citizenship in both Israel and Palestine. What would happen if all of us did?

A Man of the Word, a Man of the Lab

I used to feel bad about it—taking 45 minutes to watch a documentary, or—in this case—a debate. Why waste that time—shouldn’t I be writing? And even if what I’m watching will eventually turn into what I’m writing, I still felt guilty.

But I found the clip below riveting at all times, and especially because the “presenter” (as he is described in Wikipedia, Medhi Hasan, a devout Muslim, really takes the atheist Richard Dawkins on. In fact, it’s by no means certain who won the debate.

Highlights: at about 14:30, the following exchange takes place:

Dawkins: Do you actually believe that Mohammed split the moon in half? Do you actually believe that Mohammed flew to heaven on a winged horse?

Hasan: Yeah I do, I believe in God, I believe in miracles, I

believe in revelation.

Dawkins can’t get it—he is so absolutely committed to the scientific method and the supremacy of reason that he cannot conceive of any rational person believing the above or, later on when talking to a Christian monk, the reality of the transubstantiation.

Confession—neither can I. Although I’ve always admired Flannery O’Connor’s comment on the transubstantiation: “well, if it’s just symbolic, I say to hell with it!”

It’s clear—the debate in the video clip is 47 minutes of high speed, high-powered super trains racing in opposite directions on parallel tracks.

A little later, Hasan takes on Dawkins on the following quote:

Horrible as the sexual abuse in the Catholic church was, the damage was arguably less than the damage of bringing them up Catholic in the first place.

Dawkins adduces a letter he had gotten from a victim of sexual abuse from a priest, who had also told her that her 7-year old friend, who had just died, was then in hell, since her friend had been Protestant. The woman claimed that the sexual abuse, though bad, had not been as bad as the nightmares she had had of her friend burning in hell for all eternity.

Hasan nails him, saying that Dawkins is an empiricist—would he accept one instance of something as proof that it were generally true? The two lock horns, with Hasan pounding him with the question, at the end, “is teaching my daughter about religion and the prophet Mohammed flying to the heavens on a winged horse child abuse?” At last, Dawkins gives in: “no, it’s not.”

At the end, at about minute 42, Dawkins is asked “Would the world be a better place if religion disappeared tomorrow?”

Dawkins replies, “Ah, yes!”

Well, Hasan gets the last word, saying “goodbye and, dare I say it, God bless.”

Well, Dawkins doesn’t mind getting into a scrap or two. Yesterday, he got into a scrap by tweeting, “all the world’s Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge. They did great things in the Middle Ages, though.”

And Wikipedia states that his animus against religion is grounded on two beliefs; that religion breeds conflict, and that it encourages or justifies belief without evidence. In the case of pseudoscience—such as whatever they are calling creationism nowadays—being taught as something as valid as science, I’m totally with him. And yes, religion has brought us a bit of conflict, in the past.

And Dawkins argues—the fact that religion may inspire a person to do good is no justification for the existence of God. Ditto for the argument that it feels good to be religious, to have rituals, to meet together as a community.

And am I wrong—from a casual reading of The God Delusion seven years ago—in thinking that Dawkins sees religious belief as a cultural meme, and that it may have developed because, as children, we have an innate instinct to be obedient. That’s useful, in evolutional terms, the offspring that stays closest to the mother has a greater chance of survival than the offspring that explores, wanders, exposes himself to predators or a harsh environment.

“Give me the child until he is seven, and I will give you the man,” is attributed to the Jesuits, no slouches in the education department. It’s true, in my case. Nobody got to me in the religion business in any serious way, and it’s unlikely now that anybody will.  

OK—that’s Dawkins. What about Hasan?

Well, he’s a Shia, he believes that the path to tread is secular, not Islamist, government, and he has written, “The Iraq war was a strategic disaster – or, as the Tory minister Kenneth Clarke put it in a recent BBC radio discussion, ‘the most disastrous foreign policy decision of my lifetime […] worse than Suez.’”

OK—so far so good. He also condemned the September 11 attacks, and wondered why British Muslims are so passionate about foreign affairs, but relatively uninterested in domestic issues.

Now comes the thorny part; consider this remark in a speech from 2009:

The kuffar, the disbelievers, the atheists who remain deaf and stubborn to the teachings of Islam, the rational message of the Koran; they are described in the Koran as “a people of no intelligence”, Allah describes them as not of no morality, not as people of no belief – people of “no intelligence” – because they’re incapable of the intellectual effort it requires to shake off those blind prejudices, to shake off those easy assumptions about this world, about the existence of God. In this respect, the Koran describes the atheists as “cattle”, as cattle of those who grow the crops and do not stop and wonder about this world."[19]

Cattle? Ouch! Nor is the explanation much consolation:

“The Quranic phrase 'people of no intelligence' simply and narrowly refers to the fact that Muslims regard their views on God as the only intellectually tenable position, just as atheists (like Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris) regard believers as fundamentally irrational and, even, mentally deficient."[21] The Islamophobia Watch website argued Hasan was the victim of a "witch-hunt", writing that these allegations of extremism were "aimed at getting him dismissed from his job."[22]

As always, I’m split. I have a hard time believing in transubstantiation as a physical reality, and if I really believed that I had the flesh and blood of a Jew two thousand years old, I’d be on the church floor wretching. Can you imagine the taste? And would it have been cooked? And would the priest be offended if I asked for some ketchup with the host?

I’ve also been in the room and at the bedside when my mother died. Was it a spiritual experience?

Certainly it was powerful. It changed my life, as have other experiences not spiritual. I would call it a moment of mystery, a moment when time stopped, the world stopped—for me, at least—and some power or reality beyond anything I knew came into the room, delivered death to a woman who wanted and deserved it, and left us all stunned with wonder.

The Missing Voice

It was my shrink who posed the question: where are the Imams? We can do things, he felt—install more video cameras, get better surveillance, collect intelligence better—but look, that’ll never be enough. These two kids—who everyone describes as polite, outgoing, typical young adults—couldn’t have been more Americanized. So why aren’t the Imams saying this: anyone who kills an innocent bystander is not Muslim, he has violated the religion, he is out of the church.

Well, that was something to think about, on the bus on the way home. And interesting to reflect on the people I had seen, since the tragedy unfolded. There were the family members: the mother fiercely defending her sons; the father, incredulous and also insisting on the innocence of his children; both uncles, one who voluntarily came forward, the other who had deferred to (presumably) the elder. There were the neighbors: the woman who heard Tamerlan’s angry wife shout at him late on summer nights; the car mechanic who asked how much Dzhokhar’s fancy shoes cost. There were former classmates and teachers, as well as boxing and wrestling coaches. In short, anybody who had passed one of these brothers on the street and said hello was getting up and telling the world about it.

So who didn’t phone in?

The Imam of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center (ISBCC).

Who is not, according to him, a coward. Instead, he’s a six-foot-five-inch guy named Suhaib Webb who started life out Christian, lost his faith and joined a gang, got tangled up in a drive-by shooting, and emerged Muslim from it all in 1992. So he gave up being a DJ, went to the University of Oklahoma, got a degree in Education. Then, from 2004-2010, he studied at Al-Azhar in Cairo. He has been the Imam of the ISBCC since 2011.

And there’s stuff to like about him. He joined, in 2010, a group of Imams who went to Auschwitz and then denounced those who refused to believe the existence of the Holocaust. He raised 20,000$ for widows and children of firefighters after September 11.

There’s something else. In a YouTube clip about “Yes, There can be an American Islam,” he seems to come out as a centrist, not an extremist. It should be about synthesis, he tells his kids, it should be about being in the center. And certainly he comes across that way on a “Face the Nation” clip that I watched, also on YouTube. There, he appears with three or four religious leaders, and he’s quick to establish his credentials—his love of the Celtics, his Oklahoma roots. Then he throws in a little nugget—his is the fastest growing faith in the US, with 2 million members, 65% of whom are young. That’s as big as the Episcopalians.

Right—so am I being fair to this guy, when I make the charge that every clerk who sold a pair of sneakers to one of the brothers was on TV last week: where was the (presumed) spiritual leader of at least the elder brother?

Well, I’m a son of a newspaper guy…I had to balance this out.

And today, in fact, I read his “No Room for Radicals” post on his website, SuhaibWebb.com. Originally published in the New York Times, it is not much, despite its title, of a condemnation of the Tsarnaev brothers actions. Webb’s point is that there is no need, as Peter T. King, the Republican Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence is asking for, for increased scrutiny of the Muslim community. Why? Because the younger Tsarnaev apparently never stepped foot in a mosque, and the older found the moderate views expressed there “unpalatable.” In short, the mosque didn’t “radicalize” the brothers; blame the Internet.

It’s a point of view.

And there’s more. You know, of course, that I had to check out the guest post entitled “Gay Muslims: The Elephants in the (Prayer) Room.”

Well, it’s painful to read—no, not because it’s hateful or even condemnatory. It is, in fact, a plea for tolerance by a man, still in the closet, who has clearly struggled with being gay and Muslim, and who (sorry to drop the news here) is not quite out of the woods. “The number of times I have wished I weren’t gay…” he writes, and I remembered a time when I myself would have written the sentence.

About 30 years ago….

So I applaud Webb for taking it on, for addressing the issue. The question does rise to the surface, though—has American Islam made the progress that the Episcopal Church has on the issue? Do we have gay Imams, as we have gay bishops? (By the way, I am capitalizing “Imam” following the style of Webb’s website—why am I not capitalizing “bishop” in the same sentence?)

And I also could applaud the Imam’s reluctance to give Tamerlan Tsarnaev a proper burial; check out this quote from an article in the Christian Science Monitor:

Adds Yusufi Vali, executive director of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, in an interview with CNN: “I don't care who or what [the alleged] criminals claim to be, but I can never recognize [them] as part of my city or my faith community.”

In fact, at least one Boston cleric, Imam Talal Eid, has refused to bury the elder Tsarnaev according to Islamic rites. “I would not be willing to do a funeral for him," he told The Huffington Post. "This is a person who deliberately killed people. There is no room for him as a Muslim.”

Hey—good words! And to answer a question raised by my shrink, there is no excommunication in Islam; it is theologically impossible for a group of Imams to get together and decide when to kick out an errant member out of the faith.

Another point—it might not be possible for a group of Imams to get together and speak out. Here’s what one website had to say about Islam:

There is no formal clergy, no ordaining body, and no hierarchy. The relationship between the individual and God is a direct one. No one besides God can declare what is lawful and what is sinful. No created being can bless another. Each individual is directly accountable to his or her Lord and Creator.

Right—so where are we left?

Not, to me, in a particularly good place. Even if the Tsarnaev brothers had no or minimal contact with the ICBCC, Webb is still the preeminent Muslim in the city. He’s perfectly justified in distancing himself and his organization from the brothers—in fact, that’s exactly what I want him to do.

There’s something else, and I’m gonna say it. Readers of this blog know that I am a very bad Buddhist, and also that I am as tone deaf to spiritual matters as my brother was to the trombone. So what do I know?

Right—here goes.

Each day, I take my walk, in the middle of which I come to the end of the path. To my right, the centuries-old walls to the city of San Juan soar up, to my left the mouth of the harbor is receiving cruise and cargo ships. In front of me is the ocean, which is battering the rocks, hurling spumes of white, frothy water to splatter on the blue sky. Mozart or Monteverdi or Mahler is filling my ears and brain. I stop for several minutes, I ponder, I contemplate. Mostly, I just…am.

I turn around and walk home again.

That’s as close as I can get.

The problem?

I look at the videos below, and I feel nothing of the peace, the serenity, the awe, and the joy of water leaping against a sky, of a breeze whispering across my skin, or of a mind meeting and melting into a trumpet.

Honor?

I gotta be honest—there are some concepts I just don’t get.

Take my first three years at Wal-Mart, for example. My supervisor changed jobs in my first week of work. Then the director of the department quit. It was all a muddle, and they left me blissfully alone, never bothering to “evaluate” me.

Well, that was perfectly fine. My old boss, Ofelia, had never really evaluated me. Or rather, she was always evaluating me.

“How are you liking your classes,” she’d say in low tones and with a you-can-tell-me-anything look.

“Wonderful,” the student would whisper.

“Ofelia, you pumping the students again!?” I’d boom….

So I was nicely under the radar—the best place to be in corporate America. Had I stayed there, I might still be there….

“That’s a lack of respect,” cried one of the students. “You have to demand an evaluation!”

Why? Would it help me? Did my boss know anything about what I was doing? (Answer—no, which she cheerfully admitted. So she did what Ofelia did, and figured all was well….) They gave me a raise every year, evaluated or not, so there was no financial motive.

But respect is a big thing down here—and the phrase una falta de respeto signals serious annoyance and hurt. And I am as deaf to it as Beethoven was to his last symphony.

In the first place, if I perceive that someone has dissed (seriously expected that to get red-squiggled, but no, it passes!) me, is it true? A boss irritably asks for a report that is overdue, the student comes in the very highest dudgeon to class and reports this assault on her dignity. Time for an open-door! (Read, jump one level over the supervisor and complain….)

I would be delicate. Wasn’t the report overdue?

Right—so maybe the supervisor was having a bad day and his supervisor was riding him for the report—or the information in it—and yes, he should have been nice. Maybe.

Or maybe not?

The second problem I have with all this respect stuff is that I can’t figure out how someone’s bad behavior to me diminishes me. My boss at Wal-Mart told me the shocking story of a boss at another renowned company—3M. She had submitted a report. And he threw it on the floor, denouncing her and it.

In a staff meeting.

Not the classic example of Minnesota nice.

Right—that truly is an assault. But did anyone in the room think that the report was bad? Did anyone think that the boss was anything but a pathetically weak, rude and petty tyrant? His behavior diminished him, not my boss.

OK—now we come to honor. Susan, in perceptive comments, rightly points out that “honor killings” predate religions, and are not endorsed in the Qur’an. In fact, just the opposite.

And she sent me to an interesting—however chilling—Wikipedia article on the subject.

Well, well—the old problem sticks its head up again. Because whatever the Qur’an says or doesn’t say on the matter, twenty percent of Jordanians—in one survey—think it does.

And it may be that I am just as ill-informed as those twenty percent. I didn’t know, for example, that there are a dozen or so honor killings in Great Britain, every year. I vaguely knew that there are honor killings of guys engaging in homosexual acts. Nor did I know that honor killings in the United States both exist and are probably under-reported, since people want to be politically correct and respect “cultural differences.”

Did your blood pressure just rise?

Should have. But apparently some people value correct over life. Here’s one citation from the Wikipedia article:

Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, an anthropology professor at Rhode Island College, explains how honor killings can be viewed in cultural relativist terms. She writes that the act, or even alleged act, of any female sexual misconduct, upsets moral order for the culture of interest and bloodshed is the only way to remove any shame brought about by the actions and restore social equilibrium.[9]

Yeah? You know, I’m not sure if this “explanation” has crossed the line and joined into “justification.” I also don’t see that we get much from this point of view.

The real truth—in my view—comes from another writer, also a woman. Try this out….

As noted by Christian Arab writer, Norma Khouri, honor killings originate from the belief that a woman’s chastity is the property of her families, a cultural norm that comes "from our ancient tribal days, from the Hammurabi and Assyrian tribes of 1200 B.C."[31]

More like it, hunh? And could we add that 3212 or more years have passed, and men are still valuing women only for their ability to make more men? Or more chattel that might later produce more men?

There’s cold reasoning and hot reasoning, the social psychologists say. Cold reasoning is what you imagine you’d do in a given situation. Hot reasoning is what you think and do in the situation itself. In other words, it’s easy to look on in indignation at the American soldiers torturing guys in the prison in Iraq. You’d never do that!

But you weren’t there. You didn’t see the mine blow up, the body parts of your best buddy fly past you, feel your bowels turn to water as you shit on yourself. You don’t know terror.

And it may be that it’s easy to think about cultures relatively in Rhode Island. So maybe Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban should watch the clip below.