Interview with Karen Armstrong by Shaheen Salahuddin

[Music] welcome in tonight's program my guest tonight is Karen Armstrong one of the most famous scholar of a time Karen welcome to the show thank you she's one of the best scholars of a time she linked to religious writing about religion Slav Judaism Christianity I would like to tell you the bestsellers that she's written history of Jerusalem the battle for God Buddha and she is also been a nun for seven years and she wrote about her experiences as a nun through the narrow gate it was one of the best sinners we will be talking about fundamentalism we'll be talking about militant piety why she has written know she believes that although Western world has undergone a complete revolution of thought in recent century but it's mistrust of Islam is essentially medieval why so Karen as I said welcome to the show and a great honor to be with you how come you're so attracted to its Lomb and you research it based on this religion a lot and people really admire you even Muslims admire you more than anybody again well I have become more known for my work on Islam since 9/11 but I've written about all the world religions and and I'd like to keep that Universal focus Aslam appeals to me and always did appeal to me chiefly because of its pluralism the Quran is a very pluralistic document it has a great appreciation of other religious scriptures it sees all rightly guided religion is coming from God and the Sufis in to have a wonderful tradition set a wonderful president for appreciation of other people's faiths and and that I find most inspiring so in other words you're saying you find it a very tolerant religion and understanding religion towards have the depth of understanding for others potential it is but how come today it is associated with suicide bombings why well this is largely because of politics we really oughtn't to call this Islamic terrorism this is political terrorism that's often expressed in an in an Islamic framework but it's inspiration comes from politics you could call it a religiously expressed form of nationalism or identity politics there's an imbalance of power in the world and outstanding political issues have been left unresolved they bested they've become symbolic Kashmir Israel Palestine and people have begun to feel hopeless of the political situation and have resorted to violent means it's also true that much of the terrorism that we are seeing that has become so violent has taken root in areas where warfare and violence and conflict have become endemic in the Middle East Gaza in Afghanistan and that means that religion has got sucked into the general violence and become a part of the problem so how did the Europeans eat today or the American seeds or the West Tennessee Islam well Western people have always had a difficult relationship with Islam they see the they've seen it since the Middle Ages really as a faith that is violent and intolerant that is they used to see it is sexually permissive because the Prophet had so many wives and when the West was coming to birth Islam was the great world power it was like you in the United States today and Europe was like a third-world region and it expressed a great kind of resentment and jealousy of this faith which seemed a sort of younger more vibrant powerful version of their own faith so and now of course with since 9/11 unfortunately the actions of the terrorists seem to have confirmed their suspicions that Islam is a religion of the sort which of course it is it is not and Americans and Europeans differ in this matter and the West is not a monolithic entity any more than Islam is when you see the difference well Europeans are much more secular Europeans our religion is losing ground in Europe in my country only 6% of the population attend a religious service regularly and I wouldn't mind laying a bet that most of those six percent are Muslims in our country who bumped up our national worship average now so therefore many Western people see Islam as the worst kind of religion terrorism in you know oppression of women and that kind of thing but they have Europeans do have a better understanding of the political situation than Americans they understand about Palestine much more than the Americans do they Palestine gets a much better representation in the European press than it does in the United States you fundamentalism today killing of Jessica Robin and Israel and Oklahoma bombing in these well it's important first of all to distinguish what we call fundamentalism from terrorism fundamentalism is not violent and it's certainly not Islamic it's not confined to the Muslim world at all it's a militant form of piety that grew up in most of the world work face as a response to secularization in every region we're a modern secular style government has established itself that separate religion and politics on the Western model a religious countercultural protest has grown up alongside it in deliberate reaction and so you have fundamentalist Buddhists fundamentalist Sikhs fundamentalist Jews Christians fundamentalist Muslims and if even fundamentalist Confucians in China and their object is to bring back God and religion from the sidelines to wit the wings as it were to which they've been pushed in a modern secular culture and put them back on center stage now most of these fundamentalists are simply trying to live a good life a religious life in a world that they feel as hostile to religion every fundamentalist movement that I've studied in Judaism Christianity and Islam is rooted in fear a fear of an annihilation they are afraid that the modern secular liberal establishment wants to wipe out religion and this isn't always paranoid so it is actually this idea of an elation actually false religion to bounce back because in the early 20th century people thought probably religion with the advancement of modern technology and things may not play a white or pivotal role in future but we are seeing it's the religion which is bounced back and playing the key role yes you can't suppress religion and when you try to do so then it'll come back and not always in a very healthy form and you're right in the middle of the 20th century we saw secularism as the coming ideology but since the seventies there's been a massive religious revival and people all over the world except in Western Europe have shown that they want to see religion reflected more clearly in public life but only a tiny tiny proportion of these people take part in acts of era and violence so one shouldn't associate fundamentalism with terrorism per se so what is your experience how would you like to analyze fundamentalism in the Islamic world today well it takes many forms and it didn't it was well Islam was the last of the three religions of Abraham - Judaism Christianity in Islam to develop a fundamentalist strain in the 1960s because as fundamentalism is a rebellion against secular modernity secular modernity has to take root in a region before there can be a reaction against it and in the late sixties many people in the Middle East felt that the secular ideologies that had been imported during the colonial period had failed them nationalism socialism they had no grassroots among the people people wanted to go back to their roots and the the whole idea of a nation-state for example which is not natural to Islam it's a modern Western European invention and it hasn't been a very good invention nationalism caused two major world wars in Europe and so people have been disturbed by the new secularism they don't understand the secularist institutions and so they've started to restate Islam often in a more traditional form than usual and very often if you look at the these various and fundamentalist movements that are take different forms in different parts of the Muslim world they usually reflect that what's going on in in the secular government of that time what does militant by t well they fundamentalists feel embattled they feel they're under attack and this isn't just paranoid when Ataturk in Turkey organized turkey he closed down all the madrassas and he abolished the Sufi orders and pushed them underground and this seemed an attack upon religion in Iran the Shah cease to make their soldiers go out with the bayit their bayonets taking off the women's veils and ripping them to pieces in front of them and on one occasion Shah Reza Pahlavi gave his soldiers orders to shoot at hundreds of demonstrators in Mashhad one of the holiest shrines of Iran because they were peacefully protesting against compulsory Western dress and hundreds of Iranians were killed this day now in this context secularism doesn't seem benign it seems lethal and some of the most extreme forms of Sunni fundamentalism developed in Egypt in the concentration camps into which President Nasser in imprisoned many of the Muslim Brotherhood often without trial and often they done nothing worse than handing out a few leaflets or attending a meeting of the Muslim brothers and there they were subjected to physical and mental torture and one of those prisoners was Saeed Cooper who went into the camp as a moderate reformer and when he looked around however at this horrible prison where he or his brothers being tortured executed he himself was tortured he was hung upside down by his feet he had terrible diseases in prison and when at the same time he heard NASA vowing to secularize Egypt on the Western model and privatize Islam and make is Egypt a secular state secularism didn't seem good to him so it is the wrong interpretation of secularism and by force implying secularism which has actually created differences between the interpretation of secularism in the West and Islam in when it's not necessarily a false perception of secularism because secularism has been violent the in in the Jewish tradition for example fundamentalism took two major steps forward one was after the Nazi Holocaust when Hitler had tried to exterminate all the European Jews and secularism has been imposed so rapidly in the Muslim world that it's often being violent and aggressive as we've seen with the chars with NASA and and it's felt as an assault so it's not a misperception of secularism it's just that secularism has attacked Muslims and it also Christians in the United States also feel attacked by the secular ethos of Harvard or Yale or Washington and their fundamentalism has grown out of a sense of humiliation of seeing their sacred beliefs trampled upon and sneered at by the establishment as relegated to old-fashioned nonsense and they fought back so in other words modern technology modern irrational explanations of these universities of intellectuals has actually forced no it's not rationalism that's done this this is the separation of secularism is nothing to do with rationalism it's the separation of religion and politics okay so that's taking the separation of government and politics pushing religion to the sidelines of public life and that with with it as I'm afraid often come a certain contempt for religion as we have in my country there's great contempt for religion in in Britain Islam is the fastest growing growing religion in the United States also and also in Europe why people are attracted to its land well I think in the United States many of the african-american community have been attracted to Islam because of its first of all because it has its outside the Christian tradition which enslaved them in the first place which Christie and the Christians endorsed slavery for many years and had and and Christie a certain bad forms of Christianity made made set established a form of apartheid in some of the American States now Islam is talking about freedom and equality and social concern and justice and that is very appealing to black people it's so and in other parts of the world well Islam as an attractive religion I'm not surprised that it's gaining adherents though it's probably not gaining many adherents in Europe no no religions are gaining adherents in Europe we continue talking to Karen Armstrong we'll take a short break and we'll be back after a short break stay tuned to endless [Music] [Music] welcome back and I'm talking to Karen Armstrong one of the famous scholar of the time and we were very honored to have her with us tonight Karen women are empowered in Slough if I'm not wrong 1400 years ago women had the share in property mmm and she was authorized to look after her property it's not the mail was supposed to look after her property by empowering her with power and property and money and rights she had a place in society how can today me or men around the world things that Islam doesn't empower her well it has to be said first of all that no world religion has been good for women and some of them started out well for women Christianity did Jesus had women disciples and in the Gospels women get a very good press and the early Christians felt that there was no distinction between men and women and the emancipation of women was something that the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him felt very strongly about he was very he really appreciated women and wanted to give them rights and as you mentioned the Quran gives women rights of inheritance and divorce that Western women wouldn't have until the 19th century but it wasn't long before only a few generations after the Prophet that the men as it were hijacked the religion and dragged it back to the old patriarchy and exactly the same thing happened in Christianity it's the customs if the tradition tribal customs actually Hydrick religion to the old the old male ethos and it you must remember the many of the prophets companions even OMA for example did not understand his attitude to women patriarchy the male dominance is so deeply entrenched in the Arabian psyche that they they couldn't go along with their prophet and in my latest biography of mohamad I've tried to show how how this worked out in Medina at that time that the conflict that there was about the position of women at a very difficult time when when when the Muslim community was being attacked by Mecca so and the same happened in the Christian world despite this excellent start again male dominance was so entrenched that people just discounted the is it because most of the religious books are translated by men and not by women they don't understand women until very recently women have not really been educated and women's education has been has made a massive impact throughout all the world religions women are asserting the rights and pointing to the founders and pointing out that these men who think that they are second-class citizens are at fault here this is happening in Islam there you have some fine Muslim feminists and the Christian world where Christians and and Jewish women are training to be rabbis and and priests and against great opposition so it's a benefit of the religions to discount the voice of half the human race and it certainly wasn't what the Prophet Muhammad wanted do you think people are still interested in religion today around the world or do you think it's only the fundamentalist who keep on preaching and saying that this is the religion which should take importantly than this society no I don't I've been in Pakistan now for four or five days and my lectures have been packed we had to turn people away and we didn't think that in this particular political juncture of your country that when the people would have the energy to come to less lectures on religion but I think people are hungry to hear about religion not in my country in London nobody wants to about religion but in the United States there's and and in the Muslim countries that I visited certainly there's a real longing to for something deeper in life than simply the materialism saying there must be more to religion than these fundamentally are saying people who feel that the fundamentalists are taking their religion away from them and who want to see a more pluralistic wide universal we ought to handle this situation if the fundamentalist are taking every religion how to deal with this situation well it's no good attacking them okay because history has shown that when you attack these movements they become more extreme and that so it's counterproductive it's counterproductive for countries like France to tell women not to wear the veil for example history shows that when women have been forbidden to wear the veil they have rushed in ever greater numbers to put it on and if I just say don't tell us what to do and and quite right I don't think a woman should be told what to wear whether either forced into her hijab or told she must not wear it I wore a veil myself for many years as a nun and in some senses found it quite an empowering experience for all those years my young girl but I never once had to think about my hair or my makeup or my clothes well not my face was I don't know here you put the same thing on every day I didn't have to fill my mind with the trash and rubbish and triviality that are sculptures all encourage women away and that helps us to keep us back from serious achievement - I think we concern ourselves too much with frippery of that sort so what does your research say that it is compulsory in all religions to cover head no it isn't not at all what verses love Islam does not the Quran does not say that all women should be baled in the Koran it's simply the prophets wives that should wear some distinguishing mark veiling came in about two or three generations after the death of the Prophet largely because the people in the in these regions the Greeks the Persians they bailed their women for a long time and for many centuries baling was a prerogative of the upper classes it was a sign of an upper class woman to wear a bell I'm not talking about a head covering in the Sun in the fields these are worn by men and women but veiling became a hot issue in the Muslim world largely as a result I'm afraid of the British in Egypt for example Lord Cromer the Gulf consul general and the late 19th century said that bailing was a disgusting habit and that until Muslims gave up the practice of bailing their women the Muslims the Egyptians would need the West to help them into the modern world and our Lord Cromer didn't give a fig for the emancipation of women he was a founder member in London of the society that was designed to prevent women getting the vote but he used this feminist imagery to promote the colonial project and predictably Muslims in Egypt said don't tell us what to wear don't tell us about our culture and the veil became a symbol of authentic Islam as opposed to Western influence and it's often remained so more women today in the United States are putting on the veil to dissociate themselves from the Bush administration and its policies so what about colonialism has colonialism actually left a great impact on the people who take certain lines which we today call fundamentalist I think a lot of the problems in say the Muslim or indeed the African world for that matter sprang from the colonial period it was a massive disruption and [Music] a lot of people want to go back to their roots before the British and the French came in and transformed their society and and colonialism goes on it doesn't just disappear when the colonialists go home go back to Europe it continues in people's minds and indeed control is still coming out of Washington in one way or another there's still dominance here now this has made it very difficult for that colonized countries to come to modernity one of the hallmarks of modernity is freedom and independence in Europe the modern society was established by declarations of independence religious when Luther declared independence of the Catholic Church political social economic inventors and scientists a must never give us freedom to think so that we can become productive and and advance knowledge now the the new modern economy came however to countries in the Middle East or India we're not with independence but with colonial dependence and that a skewed thing that's a great deal so I think yes the colonialism it's noticeable that countries that weren't colonized like such as Turkey or Japan which was never subject to colonial or even foreign influence of any sort they may have had a rough ride modernizing their societies everybody does Europe did too but they've been able to make a much more easy transition to the modern world and Japan in particular had its own particular brand of the modern economy which has been remarkably successful and they weren't colonized they didn't have that disruption in their history and that sense of being a second-class citizen and Islam had the humiliation of being a major world power reduced overnight to a dependent see a subjugated race will continue on this will take a short break and we'll be back after a break [Music] [Music] welcome back I'm talking to Karen Armstrong famous scholar for teens Karen you were nun for seven years and then you got lifted what happened how does transformation in you came if you would like to talk about well I left my order because I wasn't supposed to be a nun very few people can live that life successfully and I entered the religious life far too young I was only 17 too young to make up my mind about such massive issues as lifelong celibacy for example but I don't regret my time in the convent I wouldn't be here with you today if I hadn't been there because my life has been in some sense a continual quest as it were to find out what is God what is sacred and I didn't find God in the convent for many years I went right away from religion and I wanted nothing whatever to do with it and it's been my study of the other traditions including Islam that has given me a wider perspective of what religion is about did you find anything common in three religions that you just stopped Judaism Christianity in Islam like all the major world religions have at their heart a concern with compassion you begin your any reading with the Qura of the Quran with the bismillah in the name of Allah the compassionate the merciful the constant message of the Quran is to look after the poor needy members of society that's what the Quran is teaching rather than a doctrine it's the same with the other religions Buddhism - Confucianism the Golden Rule is central to all the major world religions do you know what can I just finish do not treat other people as you would not like to be treated yourself now if we preserve if we observe that day by day hour by hour as Confucius recommended we'd have a better world has the word compassion being defined in a different manner modern context well because this is the modern world isn't very compassionate it may say it is but it's not it's a quite ruthless lot about it and they talk about it but they don't put their their actions where their mouth is because modernity the modern world has often enslaved and subjugated people from the from day one colonized people were one slaves of Africa we're another Native Americans another today you have the Palestinians also victims of modernization so it's it's not really compassionate that we do care about you know making sure the poor get enough to eat and that kind of thing as long as we're not inconvenienced ourselves but compassion is often interpreted as being sorry for people it doesn't mean that it means to feel with them it comes from a Greek Greek and Latin roots saying to feel with the other comprehend so you put yourself in the position of another human being leave your own self-interest behind take yourself down from the center of your world and put another there and all the religions say that that is the way you come to know what we call God today in the Islamic world there is a lot of confusion and there's a lot of different interpretation many interpretations of fundamentalism and fundamentalist do you think once there is a sensibility in the political order around the world for example they don't like Bush anymore President Bush because they think it is the American policies which have actually degraded Muslims in Afghanistan in Iraq and other do you think if there's a change of political philosophy or change of government in other country well this war of fundamentalist or when the war of Islamic fundamentalist be subsided I was part of a United Nations initiative called the Alliance of civilizations which was asked to look into the causes of extremism and in our report we said that the problem was politics there's tooten it's not religion people don't read the Koran and then rush off and bomb a London bus they decide to run bomber London brought all kinds of political reasons and they may find a couple of verses in the Koran which seems though of course does not to endorse that kind of behavior now there's too much power invested in too few people there are ongoing disputes that have been remitted unresolved Palestine Kashmir the problem in Afghanistan in a country that was simply left to fester after it had been a theater of the Cold War for many years Pakistan of course is on the front line there and this has soured people that people feel hopeless and angry because whatever they seem to do they know that because of the powers that be first in Britain then in the United States nothing will change and that's when they take two desperate actions people in Gaza for example feel abandoned by the world have turned very late in their sad history to terror and now what we that the only way in which we can combat this extremism is to write these in justices make them right put them right and that involves a major change of heart I'm afraid in the United States I'm not surprised that people are appalled by President Bush most of us are in Britain and Tony Blair lost completely lost his popularity in Britain because of his support for Bush in this miss named war on tech but it will need weather we have will have a different kind of presidency in the present upcoming presidential elections that will have the courage to check on policy on many of these contentious issues doesn't look very hopeful do you think people around the world can come closer on the basis of religion they should do if they don't use their religion to sneer at other people or say you're wrong we're right ego comes in to this this is not religion ego comes into this it is the task of every religious person as it is the task of every secular person to work for global understanding global harmony any ideology whether it's religious or secular that does not promote global harmony but instead preaches a disdain contempt hatred whether they're Muslim Christian Jewish American secular British they failed the test of our time and I think religion but all over the world had to make an effort what you call a jihad a struggle an effort to make that pluralistic a compassion an active force in the world to counter the terrorism violence and disdain that we're seeing in our politics today thank you very much with this we come to an end of this program thank you for joining us tonight good night [Music] [Music] a key program apke welcome

Channel: Video Library

Views: 201

Rating: 4 out of 5

Keywords: Aga Khan, Ismaili, Islam, Hazar Imam, Mowla, Imamat, AKDN, Aiglemont

Id: 8pmluUXTxbQ

Length: 37min 14sec (2234 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 30 2020