Can We Talk About God? Imam Zaid Shakir & Dr. Roger Scruton (Pt1)

assalamualaikum and good evening my name is Sofia Ahmed and it's my honor to welcome all of you on behalf of the Zaytuna Institute this tonight is part of the Zaytuna Institute contemporary issues series but real quickly what I want to tell you about that is this is an idea that we started about a year ago so we've done a couple of events so far there's more coming down the road the basic idea of the contemporary issue series is that we would like to have bring people of different communities together bring speakers from different parts of the world from different communities as well whose paths normally don't cross like the current speakers for tonight's program and engage in a public discussion of issues that we all care about regardless of what faith we belong to regardless of whether we're Muslims or Christians or Jews or Hindus or agnostics or atheists as well last year's a two-night sponsored a program that was with Chris Hedges and Sheikh Hamza Yusuf and this is another program we're doing tonight and I do want to I give you announcement about another program coming up in a minute but first I have a series of quick thank yous to some people who have been extremely supportive of this program but also of the Sunnah in general so we have four co-sponsors for tonight first of all KPFA radio and bob baldock Cody's books and particularly Melissa my finger we have the Near Eastern Studies department at UC Berkeley especially dr. hot and Bosnian and the religion politics and globalization program at UC Berkeley also Jessica and Sarah were they were grateful to now my last chore which is to introduce our moderator for the evening his name is Sandy Tolan sandy teaches international reporting and radio at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley his class of students who did work on climate change recently won actually a very prestigious award the George Polk award first time it's been given to students sandy has also done produced a lot of hundreds of features and documentaries for National Public Radio and for their marketplace program which gives back again this Thursday I understand and he's also reported from more than 30 different countries in Latin America and the Middle East from the Balkans and in Europe and sandy also is an author his second book the most recent one and was titled the lemon tree and and the subtitle was an Arab a Jew and the heart of the Middle East it's a great book about the humanity if you will on both sides of the palestinian-israeli conflict I highly recommend it ladies and gentlemen please welcome Sandy Tolan Thank You Sofia and thank you to the Zaytuna Institute and all the sponsors that you mentioned it's really an honor to be part of this evening and really looking forward to hearing from both of our eloquent representatives of very distinct points of view if not distinct world views and I'm just going to say a couple words and then and then turn it over to our program which is severe as described would be opening statements I'll give you a little bit more on that in a moment opening statements by each of our speakers but I don't think it after the break that will come back for necessarily a debate we're calling this a lively discussion and we may even have some agreement among our panelists although clearly they come from distinct points of view and I want to just give you an idea of some of the things we may be considering some of the questions is religion at the root of the so called clash of civilizations is there a clash of civilizations civilizations at all or it is is it in the words of one of our guests tonight a clash of the uncivilized what is the nature of the deepening crisis between the west and the Muslim world did this prompt the war on terror is the war on terror instead fueling the further divisions should the war on terror be between quotes what is the nature of Islam of Christianity these are small questions of course are either or both religions a threat to the other this Islam need to be rescued from extremists does Christianity in short can we talk about God so with that I'm going to introduce our first guest dr. Roger Scruton the foremost conservative thinker in Britain is a writer and philosopher who has taught both in Europe and in America he is currently a research professor at the Institute of psychological sciences in Arlington Virginia Scouten believes the values held by the West are distinct from those held by other cultures and that this creates problems of accommodation notably for Muslims in Western societies and with that I please ask you to warmly welcome dr. Roger Scruton good evening assalam alaikum they I'm speaking from inevitably from a European specific perspective and the first thing to be said about the many issues that are the far too many issues have been put on the table already is that in Europe there is a growing orthodoxy in these matters and matters of religion and it is in effect on atheist orthodoxy led by some of our leading intellectuals in Britain in particular by Richard Dawkins the biologist and supported by journalists like Christopher Hitchens who of course as a does most of his work over here and this orthodoxy has have begun to attract quite a following among journalists and among people who create the standards of public opinion generally we're being constantly reminded that religion is the cause of war and nobody who looks at the history of mankind can doubt that religion has certainly had a causal influence on war but the orthodoxy of course because it is explicitly severed from any ordinary understanding of religious practice has lost sight entirely of the peace that religion brings and I don't I'm sure I don't need to remind many people in this audience or the fact that religion in the lives of those who are its adherents is a source of peace first of all and a source of war only when certain emotions and unusual emotions are excited now I don't endorse this atheist orthodoxy like many Englishmen I was brought up in the Anglican Church which is a wonderful institution which permits one to believe almost anything that one chooses to believe provided one in horses certain fundamental social principles prince was more of good behavior than a religious submission but I also think that the Anglican Church is a genuinely Christian institution which conveys a sure and accurate conception of what the world is and what God is and the Atheist orthodoxy in my country refuses to ask fundamental questions about the world and its relation to God Richard Dawkins imagines that by showing that we human beings are the product of evolution and as much determined by our genetic input as any other animal that by showing that he has somehow proved that God does not exist that that hypothesis has no authority for us whereas of course the question of the creative nature of the world is a completely different question to that of the evolved nature of humanity I am persuaded by the argument that was first properly formulated by a Muslim when we know as Avicenna and was known in the arabic-speaking world as even Sina and was an argument that was then taken up by a Jew Maimonides and by a Christian Aquinas which is sometimes known as the argument from contingent being the argument that the that the existence of a necessary I argue for the existence of a necessary being and for the identity of that being with the God who is worshipped by the three great Abrahamic religions at the time that this argument the argument from contingent being was developed those great religions were in close communication but they were also in conflict but the conflict was in a different at a different level from the intellectual harmony which United so many of their thinkers I think even if there is not a clash of civilizations today there was a classification of civilizations then but this theological argument is of course not for religion the god of the philosophers is not the one who stirs the heart of the ordinary person and I doubt that that most ordinary believers of any of the three great monotheistic religions has actually studied that particular argument or been persuaded by it but what persuades people is that a movement of the heart which can't be put into any words other than the words of liturgy and sacred texts but what the atheists in my country have reminded us of however is that the commandments of religion are there precisely because the feeling to which they are addressed is a dangerous one and I think this is something that that perhaps Muslims need to to take to heart more than many of them do that why is it that God is repeatedly commanding us in the Old Testament in the New Testament and in the Koran to the ways of forgiveness clemency and compassion if it is not that the feelings that lead us to worship Him and to submit to him are also tempting us in another direction and I think this is the the real question that we have to discuss today or have to consider in our lives in the modern world that religion does arouse passions which it also strives to quell and that faith as many of us have come to experience it in our lives is the cure for a disease whose name is also faith the disease of hating your neighbor because he disagrees with you so how do people of differing different faiths coexist there was a traditional solution which was that of the Roman law of the days of the Christian Gospels which was endorsed by Christ which is that we should live under a secular law as Christ put it render unto Caesar that which is Caesars and under God that which is God's conflicts of religion can't be resolved by religious laws because religious laws simply take one side in the conflict we need a that stands above religious law and then of course once you put it that way you have the question how can a secular law which is a merely human creation stand higher than the law of God aside quited thought that the very suggestion is blasphemous but I think one should see it not it in the set in that sense of the secular door stands higher than the law of God it isn't higher in the eternal scheme of things and certainly as of no higher authority but it is higher from the point of view of managing our earthly conflicts and I think that one of the lessons that that I have learnt is that we may indeed be under religious duty to obey laws that confined some of our religious duties to the private sphere now this is something that I think is perhaps easier for Americans to see than many others because America the Americans have built into their constitution the so-called no Establishment Clause that seems to require the state to stand back from religion not to take sides in religious conflicts and to enforce its rule of law independently of any particular religious edict so that there is a kind of commitment in this society to religious freedom but there is however a great difficulty in understanding quite what religious freedom amounts to in the modern world obviously if you have a religion that imposes upon you a duty to extinguish religious freedom it can't itself be granted freedom and there is a real problem because many religions do seem to impose upon their their members the obligation and to extinguish the freedom to live all and believe in another way but so there are huge possibilities of conflict here and that there's also the greater conflict that all religious people feel as they see the gradually extending secularization of modern notice that values which say in their hearts cannot endorse nevertheless not just legitimized but given a kind of legal authority by the secular order for instance we are called upon by our secular society this is particularly evident now in Europe to recognize and normalize relationships of a kind that our religions seem to forbid we're all obviously are familiar with the conflicts over gay marriage and gay adoption and so on but our laws in Europe imposed by a secular Authority of the European Union forbid discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation and these laws therefore compel adoption agencies to treat homosexual couples in the same way as they treat ordinary heterosexual married couples something which Christian churches cannot do and I doubt that Muslims can do it either it's not it violates their fundamental sense of what giving a child to an adult to in care consists in and this is one just a very small example of the kind of conflicts with the secular order which are bound to emerge and cause great problems in the part of believers in such conflicts Christianity reaches out for his due its traditional refuge which in my view is the state of mind which the Greeks called irony the irony is exemplified abundantly in the Gospels you make a joke of the thing that is afflicting you but a joke of the highest seriousness an example which I think is of some significance is Christ's response to the case of a woman taken in adultery for which the religious punishment was stoning to death asked what what should be done with this woman after a hair a period of meditation drawing in the sand he looked up and said let him who is without fault cast the first stone a famous remark said with tongue-in-cheek obviously because what it implied is that all you who wish to stone this woman have in your heart already committed the act for which you are punishing her and of course she be she was let off the Christian idea is that that you must recognize that the good of human society of orderly government and peace between opponents is a far greater good than anything you could achieve by insisting on your religious principles in the public sphere it when these conflicts emerge you cultivate therefore a kind of double vision now people wonder people in the in the West do wonder whether Muslims can go along with this can they cultivate the same kind of double vision when even more assured whom we know as avi Rose advocated something similar he was exiled from the the Spain or Andalusia of his of his birth and had to spend his days alone in Morocco but this is a vital question I think for us today however can Muslims cultivate the same kind of ironical detachment as Christians and Jews have had to do in confronting the growing secularization of the society around them and I think I'll leave you with that question but I would like to just to put in the context of the Koran itself there is a a great question in everybody's mind as to how we were brought up in scientific communities should respond to the idea of Revelation if I look at the Old Testament for instance I'm told by on the authority of my religion that this is the Word of God and I read the book of Joshua and I say if that's the Word of God I don't want to have anything to do with him and I think there are serious difficulties in many sacred texts of this kind does it is it possible that that something could be a record of a genuine revelation from God and still be subject to qualification and amendment in the light of our own historical experience I think yes I think the old testament tells the story of the jews becoming more and more conscious of the of the fact that they had misinterpreted a great deal of god's message to them and i wonder to the extent of which it is possible to carry out that kind of revising exegesis of the koran recognizing that it is a revelation as it clearly is from the whole the stammering style of the the arabic and that this is obviously given from outside yet also recognizing that a human being can still make mistakes will still give a partial vision of something that must be amended in the light of our ongoing experience however whatever we say about that it seems to me that the muslims are right in one respect that the modern the modern world is running away from something it's refusing not merely the thought of or belief in revelation it's even refusing to see the possibility of such a thing the possibility that the world might actually be a vehicle for genuine revelations granted from a higher power and that we should be listening for them and trying to accommodate our experience to them but exactly how we accommodate that experience i don't know let me just conclude with a slightly conciliatory note Avicenna my authority for the argument for the existence of god was one of the greatest of muslim scholars but he like me was also reconciled to a great extent to the secular world and had his best thoughts after a good glass of wine thank you dr. Scooby alright without further ado I want to introduce our our other speaker tonight and then again we all have a break after that and come back for a conversation Imam Zayed chakra is a resident scholar at the Zaytuna Institute and he's among the most respected Muslim voices in America previously an imam and an inner-city mosque in New Haven Connecticut he remains deeply concerned about social justice and insists Muslims not dilute their theological theological heritage while negotiating their Western context so please join me in welcoming Imam Zayed shocker so now Malik welcome I wish there was more light so I could see you better but welcome and I'd like to thank the organizers Zaytuna my employer cody's KPFA University of California and others who were involved in the program and also I'd like to thank dr. Scruton squattin Scruton for his brilliant lecture and I hope that we get to address some of the things that he raised during the discussion I'm going to start from a strictly American perspective because being born here raised here growing up here and living most of my life here that's the perspective that I'm most familiar with and most comfortable with I think there's a lot that we definitely have in common in terms of the assault of those who don't identify with religion upon those who do and then certain assumptions that are brought to the public square in terms of whose ground is this and I just wanted to remind myself and remind anyone who needs reminding that if we consider the title of tonight's program can we talk about God this really is a moot question in the sense that in America we've always been talking about God and a lot of that discussion has taken place in the public square this too by where reminder the very Declaration of Independence reminds us that in the view of the framers that it is God our Creator who bestowed upon us certain inalienable rights from George Washington onward every president and we'll look at the leaders of the country in this segment every president who has taken the oath of office concluded it with the solemn plee plee so help me God and his Thanksgiving a date Thanksgiving Day address in 1917 Woodrow Wilson urged all Americans to render thanks to God the great ruler of the of nations shortly after that FDR short just before his death made the following statement we hold to the Ten Commandments and accept the Ten Commandments as the fundamental law of God not to be undone or outdone Dwight Eisenhower opined without God there is no American form of government nor an American Way of life recognition of the Supreme Being is the first and most basic expression of Americanism so these sort of statements hasn't been made throughout our history and they really didn't ruffle very many feathers now one could rightfully argue that these are statements and they really aren't expressions the world with all that's involved in the bump and grind the nitty-gritty of the political movements that have defined our country but again if we consider many of the most significant political movements that have been definitive in informing who we are as a people we see the presence of God this land was conquered by people who felt it was their manifest destiny or their god-given right for over or almost 100 years Africans were kept in bondage in this country by many people not all but many people who felt that their bondage was justified because they were the cursive descendants of hem and reference Genesis 9 18 through 26 and making that argument similarly or related to that then the ending the abolition of slavery was undertaken primarily by the Quakers and other religious groups who are very much inspired by God and what God had to say about human freedom and human dignity the Civil War was fought and which advocates of the war on both sides very publicly and very fervently mentioned that God was with them so we find this throughout a century after the Civil War the beragon brothers William Sloane coffin dr. Martin Luther King jr. and others based their opposition to that war on their religious conviction so religion is is there in these movements God is there not missing in action finally and we could go on of course the civil rights movement in this country is inconceivable without the inspiration without the singing the spirituals the organizing and the foot soldiers that were provided by the black church and the signature moment in that movement was the Reverend dr. Martin Luther King jr. standing up in a very public space in Washington DC and literally preaching a sermon in which he concluded and what he referred to as the words of the great Negro spiritual free at last free at last thank God Almighty we are free at last so God is there and again God is very visible in the discussion God is mentioned as being the principal motivator and inspiration for many of the people involved in those discussions and those movements throughout our history so the title of this lecture tonight or this program very well have been not can we talk about God we do talk about God we have talked about God and if current political events and occurrences are in the indication we will continue to talk about God here in America I think the more relevant question is how will we talk about God and I'd like to mention three issues in that regard and I think we can move on to the break and then the subsequent discussion the first issue where we let others talk about God when that talk about God and the politics associated with God don't reflect our politics so this is a very important question what am I talking about many of the people who felt that the Reverend dr. Martin Luther King jr. had crossed the line when he based on his religious convictions as he stated on many occasions very strongly opposed to the war in Vietnam many people will condemn him for that and said he went beyond the line that separates church from state he should keep his religious views to himself and leave the war alone those same people had no problem with dr. Martin Luther King jr. preaching against and organizing against the evils of segregation in the south and we could put at the head of that list President Lyndon Baines Johnson now to be fair the same point could be made about those who criticize many aspects of religion in the current Republican agenda and consistently ignore the political environment of those who speak of God but in terms that are favorable to the politics of the left the second issue will we keep God in the conversation in other words we listen to what people who speak in God's name have to say and then accept or reject their arguments based on the arguments themselves and not based on the fact that those arguments are put forward in the name of God and the thing this is very very important because oftentimes our views are tainted and we fail to consider the argument itself it's very important that we keep God in the conversation that we keep allowing the space for those who are motivated by religious principles to participate in the public discourse and again to accept or reject their arguments based on the strengths and weaknesses of those arguments and not based by on the fact that they're framed or presented advocated advanced in the name of God now should we exclude those voices from the public space which is argued by Stephen L Carter and is very insightful book the culture of disbelief then we push those voices and those advocates into a private space which is the breeding ground for extremism and the breeding ground for the sort of politics that will eventually reassert itself in the public square but on the turn terms of those excluded individuals and not on the terms that have historically defined debate and discourse in this country and that's potentially very very dangerous the third issue and final issue issue rather and I think very relevant to some of the things that dr. Scruton mentioned in his introductory mark remarks and that is how will we talk about Islam in the public square and there are three issues I'd like to mention in that regard first of all will we apply the same standards of fairness that we've applied to other faiths when their advocates have entered the public square fairness is a question today that many Muslims are troubled by we know the recent debacle with Don Imus and the comments he made concerning the women on the Rutgers University basketball team and his rifle in my view dismissal for those remarks which is a private affair between Don Imus and his employers but it did make a big ruckus in the public square now the reason I say that far far far more demeaning degrading damaging defaming and dangerous things are being uttered every day across this country about Muslims about our faith about our profit and little or nothing happens and even someone might argue well Don Imus didn't break any laws and there were commercial considerations that led to his dismissal there are people who are breaking laws who are violating Federal Communication Commission guidelines and calling for example for the open murder of Muslims so you might be driving down the highway and here's something like if there's another terrorist attack on America if you know any Muslims go kill them and nothing happens I think the implications of such a situation are extremely troubling to say the least and then in arguing or advocating that something needs to be done the issue is the usurpation of rights of law-abiding citizens who have done nothing but worked to strengthen and and advance the common interest of this country on the one hand on the other hand in terms of Foreign Affairs creating an environment for the entrants potentially while real and potentially into a series of very destructive Wars and I think that we have to work against the creation of such an environment the second issue will the process of negotiations that have always qualified the public square and this is related to what I mentioned previously between real a real or imagined mainstream an immigrant or and with newcomers be they Muslims be the immigrants in general will that process of negotiation be allowed to continue now there are those who argue that Muslims by nature must be excluded from that process as an unfit negotiating partner now in addressing that argument I would counter with two points the first is made brilliantly by dr. Richard Boulet and his recent book of 2004 can be considered recent the case for Islamic Christian civilization in that book he argues that there's far less incongruity between Islam and Christianity as a civilization or an historical level than between Islam or between Christianity Judaism despite that today we speak very comfortably in this country of a judeo-christian American heritage now and saying that I'm not arguing for the creation necessarily of a judeo-christian Islamic American heritage there are significant significant differences that might not make that a very realistic argument war to plead for that but what I am saying is that Jews who were once a very despised and demeaned minority in this country were able to negotiate into the the mainstream in terms that and to arrive at a very favorable favorable position in that mainstream and of course a lot of that is due to actions on the part of the Jewish community themselves my point is that we should not assume that the perceived incongruity between Islam and American society and civilization if you will or Western society more general should be necessarily the basis for any attempts at exclusion these are issues that have to be negotiated in the public square the second point I would make is that America has already demonstrated its ability to overcome its presidency prejudices and its apprehension concerning Islam and Muslims in specific cases and those specific cases serve as the basis of hope in terms of the general situation the most prominent case being the case of the great boxer Muhammad Ali in his case or his story makes an interesting case study in this regard in 1966 when Muhammad Ali stood before the television cameras in this country and declared publicly and openly that his religion slam and his scripture the Koran forbade him for participating in any way in the war in Vietnam and when he made that declaration this was before the anti-war movement had picked up a lot of momentum so it was a very unpopular statement that he made at that time the Nation of Islam the organization he was affiliated with was characterized by many of the stereotypes and perceptions that are generally applied to Muslims today the Nation of Islam was viewed as being unpatriotic the Nation of Islam was viewed as being potentially very violent the Nation of Islam was viewed as being extremely exotic in terms of its belief and its organization and the Nation of Islam was viewed as a very insular organization despite all of that the negotiations continued with the mainstream and they continued despite the particulars of Muhammad Ali's religious beliefs because he was able to appeal to two great universal principles that are fundamental in this country the freedom of conscience and the right to dissent and those negotiations can continue under the light of those two very powerful guiding principles and eventually Muhammad Ali was accommodated and was vindicated both in the court of public opinion and by the United States Supreme Court in 1971 in conclusion a lot of this focuses on specifically American issues and I think is very important that we do focus on those issues but a similar discussion is due concerning our foreign policy in that regard I think what happens here in this country more than anything that my have been outside of this country more than anything that any collection of Islamic mere lists or realistic thugs are how are you however you want to describe those who have a lot of ill-will towards this country and are willing to engage in violence to address some of their grievances no matter what they do it will remain marginal because the fact of the matter is the United States of America is the most powerful nation on earth the United States of America spends more on militarism military spending than the rest of the world combines and those realities have a lot more to do that with what will happen in the international system have a lot more to do concerning our collective security than anything that any Muslim or any collection of Muslims might do now believing that I think that religion definitely has a role to play in terms of shaping the moral consciousness of this country which in turn will impact hopefully on our foreign policy but that role can only be played by enlightened religion that role can only be played by religious thought such as the type articulated by dr. Scruton which is open and clear and not necessarily dismissive of others but seeks to unite us in a common social and political project in other words enlightened religion and not the type of religion that we see resurgent in some areas and some communities in this country religion that would seek to tear us apart and that understanding of religion is not confined to any particular community but I think what Christians do in this country being the overwhelming religious majority will be a lot more determinant in terms of the direction this country takes and the type of policies that we engage in and in that regard I that Chris Hedges is wrong when he talks about American fascism and it's Christian faith and he's not talking about all Christians when he makes his argument in terms of enlightened religion I'd like to close these comments with the quote from one of our most enlightened religious thinkers the great Reinhold Niebuhr and his book the irony of American democracy he makes the following statement and I will conclude with this statement because I think to a large extent it really says it all so he writes discussing strategies for disciplining the exercise of power in light of the tremendous amount of power this country inherited as a result of the second world war he says the third strategy of disciplining the exercise of power that of an inner religious and moral check is usually interpreted to mean the cultivation of a sense of justice the inclination to give each man his due is indeed one of the ends of such a discipline but a sense of humility which recognizes that nations are even more incapable than individuals of fully understanding the rights and claims of others maybe an even more important element in such a discipline a to confident sense of justice always leads to injustice and so far as men and nations are judges in their own case there are bound they are bound to betray the human weakness of having a live leaders live leader sense of their own interest than of the competing interest that is why just men and Nations may easily become involved in an ironic refutations of their moral pretensions genuine community rather between men or nations is not established merely through the realization that we need one another though indeed we do that realization alone may still allow the strong to use the lives of the weaker as instruments of their own self-realization genuine community is established only when the knowledge that we need one another is supplemented by the recognition that the other that other form of life or that other unique community is the limit beyond which our ambitions must not run and the boundary beyond which our life must not expand so I thank you and look forward to the discussion

Channel: Zaytuna College

Views: 19,054

Rating: 4.8490567 out of 5

Keywords: Islam, muslims, quran, hadith, zaytuna, college, zaid, shakir, roger, scruton, religion, Christianity, God, faith

Id: Km5oXGM2aSs

Length: 45min 17sec (2717 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 28 2010