Hamza Yusuf – Islam And The Western World – Part 3

			where many Americans actually have their pictures painted in a turban and in robes and you it's very
common to see this motif.
		

			Many of Americans, at a certain point in the later 19th century began to go to the holy lands and
experienced Muslims firsthand.
		

			Mark Twain
		

			he went when he's got his
		

			I think it's Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn are flying in a balloon over Morocco. And and he and and he,
he says, Who are they down there, and he said, those are moslems. So there were that there were a
lot of people that were fascinated and interested in the Muslim world. And I'll give you a shake, if
I may. If you forgive me for my interruption, we do have Congressman Joe Wilson who's here who's has
to get to another meeting. So if you'd be so kindness, allow him to say a quick word to everyone. I
feel now I'm getting filibustered here. So
		

			I promise no filibuster.
		

			But Ladies and gentlemen, I just like to welcome you here. And I'm delighted to be here with
Congressman Ellison and and I wish you well, on interfaith dialogue, I come from South Carolina, and
I grew up in the city of Charleston, we call it the holy city of Charleston, because of all the
churches and indeed, I grew up in an environment which is somewhat unique in that. in Charleston, it
was the only enclave of Irish Catholics in our state, which now is, has spread throughout the state.
But it was unique when I was growing up. Additionally, Charleston was unique in that it had the
largest Jewish population of North America at the time of the American Revolution. And additionally,
		

			there was quite a few persons of Greek Orthodox faith, and so you wouldn't anticipate a city in the
south having that level of diversity. But indeed, it did. And so that's how I grew up. And then, in
my law practice, I work very closely with the Indian American community as they are so successful in
the state of South Carolina and incorporating the Hindu temple and cultural center. I am quite aware
of the Islamic Center in Colombia, which is been on main street of Jovi for nearly 30 years. So
there's a great presence and, and I saying, Keith, I wanted to point out that showing the diversity
where I came from, and the appreciation
		

			in the province of South Carolina, the first person of Jewish faith to serve in public office was in
Charleston, South Carolina. And so, first person of Islamic faith in Congress. So we were about 250
years ahead.
		

			And a real point I want to make is that I was honored to be present, as you were with the Dalai
Lama. And a point made by President Bush is that within virtual sight of the capital, or holy places
of so many different religions, some people would look at this as divisiveness. It's not its
strength. And so that's what you're reflecting my being here today. Thank you. And I wish you well
and honored to be here and best wishes for a very successful conference in dade. Thank you. Okay.
And I didn't mean No, that's right. Thank you, Congressman.
		

			So
		

			I'm going to try one more time.
		

			The anyway to speed it up as quickly as possible the historical stuff.
		

			When McKinley invaded the Philippines, and that was, in a sense, the beginning of
		

			imperialism in a lot of people's minds, although one could argue that I mean, certainly there, there
are a lot of historians that would argue that that America has had Imperial tendencies from very
early on, but that was certainly a period but McKinley sent a special Ambassador Oscar Strauss, who
was very well known Jewish diplomat, really extraordinary man. He sent him to,
		

			to Turkey to ask the Ottoman Sultan, this is a front page, New York Times 19
		

			article that you can look up on New York Times archives, how the Sultan helped America. Oscar
Strauss sent this it was sent there and he said in going there, he wrote
		

			with four administrations his autobiography, he said that he prepared the Treaty of Tripoli, the
article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli in Turkish, he had it translated into Turkish and he wanted to
take it to the ambassador and McKinley gave Oscar so he said, just try to do something for us so
that the Muslims of Mindanao do not oppose the American occupation of the Philippines because they
didn't want the Muslims to fight against them. And he said, You've got free rein, just do whatever
you can. So Oscar Straus went to meet with Hold on.
		

			But Hamid and what's extraordinary is in Article 11, he he showed it to him in Turkish, and it reads
in English, it says, because the United States of America is not founded in any sense on the
Christian religion, in any sense on the Christian religion, and therefore, it has no animosity
towards the Mohammedan peoples their laws or traditions, and never will hostility arise as a result
of religion between our nations. He said when soltanto de Hamid read, and I want to point out in
1796, when this was ratified, here, you know, in in, in the Senate, there was not one dissenting
voice, it was read out loud, the entire treaty, not one dissenting voice, it was Adams was so
		

			adamant about it, that he had it published in all the newspapers, the major newspapers, and there's
no public outcry. And this has been historically documented. Nobody was upset about that article 11
claws, which, oddly enough is not in the Arabic origin and and probably written, Joel Barlow, who
was another amazing and really great diplomat. There's there's, I think, a statue for him or there
should be he died in Poland from pneumonia on his way back from the Napoleonic he was trying to work
something out with Napoleon but George Washington trusted him immensely. And but there was a Muslim
American who probably put that clause in there. Although Barlow, who was a Christian early in his
		

			life became more of a deist and probably along the lines of a lot of the founding fathers. So when
Oscar Straus said that the Sultan read this, he said, his face lighted up, and he said to him, I
will gladly help you, for humanity and for the sake of the United States of America. And so he found
out he sent a special emissary to Mecca during the Hajj time. And he met with the Moro Sultan's of
who were making Hodge from the Philippines, and he asked them as the Ottoman Caliphate to not oppose
the American occupation and that their occupation had nothing to do with religion, and that they
would honor and respect the religion of the Muslims. Oscar Straus said McKinley wrote him a personal
		

			letter saying you probably saved 20,000 lives, because the Muslims did not oppose American
occupation of the Philippines. Now, I'd like to drive a point home about this. Every religion
developed in its tradition, what the Catholics call the magisterium. It's the idea of having an
interpretive body to understand the religion. Now when Protestantism emerged in the West,
challenging the magisterium, essentially, because this is what Luther did. Luther, one of the first
things that he did was he translated the Bible into German. He also had the Koran translated into
Latin. He was very interested in Islam. He was fluent in Hebrew, very brilliant monk. But when the
		

			Protestant Reformation takes off, we have incredible bloodshed because suddenly, Luther has his
interpretation. Calvin has his john Knox has his and suddenly all these sects started proliferating.
The Anglicans have their version of Christianity and the Catholic magisterium was, was basically
being confronted with dissenting voices that often were willing to be violent in their opposition,
because the Catholics did not want to lose that, that power and control. Well,
		

			the result of the breakdown of the magisterium in the Christian world led to the United States of
America, I mean, that our secularity is a direct result of the breakdown of this magisterium. And
I'd like to point out and people forget this, the most fanatic group of religious people in the
United States were the most adamant about the separation of church and state. Because the Baptist
were considered extremist according to the Episcopalians, and it was the Baptist that wanted
separation of church and state because they felt if there was not a separation, the Anglican or the
Episcopalian church would become the dominant Church of the United States, and they would be
		

			excluded. And so it was very important for them. And that's why the famous letter in which Jefferson
mentions the wall is is sent to the Baptists. And this is this is something it's a unique American
achievement, that we tend to forget that this country
		

			the the separation of church and state was a direct result of the breakdown of the magisterium. When
you have a magisterium, a religion can basically have state apparatus. It's possible and this
occurred in the Muslim world for centuries. Once the magisterium breaks down. If you don't have a
separation, you have persecution, you have oppression, you have religious intolerance. This is
simply the way it works. And so secularity was a brilliant compromise in dealing with this problem.
Now I want to point out a lot of people and I think we need to get rid of this whole
		

			vocabulary that we're using in talking about religion, extremism is as American as apple pie.
extremism is part of the American experience. We have extreme sports. Seriously, people jump off
things, we would never in a million years jump off, you know, with rubber bands tied to their shoes,
heading for a cement wall.
		

			There's extreme, you know, music, have you, you know, part of the torture process at Guantanamo is
playing heavy metal music to these guys. You know, we have extremism is part of our culture, we also
have extreme religion.
		

			We have Hasidic Jews, we have ultra Orthodox Jews in New York that don't, they won't watch
television, they won't read newspapers, it's hard to get a conversation going with them. I've tried
several times in airports, because I'm fascinated by them. But these are people that are very much
in close the Amish. That's an extreme group of people. They're driving around in buggies and horses
and believing that this is religiously mandated. So that is extreme religion for a lot of people,
not for the Amish, they think we're the extremists. And they might end up being proven right? You
know, when, when, when, when everything breaks down, and we go and try to learn how to farm again,
		

			from the Amish and how to grow our food. So my point is, is that you have extremism, and it's it's
part of the tapestry of this country, we have always had religious isolationists, always, we've had
people that do not want to be part of the the, the the society at large. They, they, they because of
their religions, they want to be apart from the society, the problem is violence. This is the
problem. The problem is violence. When you're trying to live in a civil society, the thing that you
do not want is violence, you do not and that's what we have to oppose, but the idea of, of labeling
people because they have a religious commitment as as potential extremists, you know, as potential
		

			they might be extreme I there's Muslims, I know that I consider extreme. And, and some of them
consider me extreme. Because you can be extremely liberal or extremely conservative. You know,
people tend to forget that extremes are about two sides of a continuum. So I think that it's very
important that we begin to really understand nuance our religions and and recognize that
		

			the problem that we have here and the problem that we're facing is violence. Now, with the breakdown
of the magisterium in Islam, this has created a major problem. It you know, the Quran is an
incredibly dangerous book, like the Bible, the Bible. I mean, if you've ever really read the Bible,
you know, I'm sorry, there's really frightening things in the Bible. There's frightening things in
the Koran, there's troubling things, if you're not troubled by them, you don't have an intellect.
But But the problem is that historically, these these things were filtered through the minds of
enlightened people. Somebody yesterday gave the example of Gandhi and and mentioned that the book
		

			that most influenced Gandhi in his nonviolent practice was the Bhagavad Gita. Well, if anybody knows
the story of the Bhagavad Gita, it's it's about a warrior. Arjuna, who doesn't want to fight and
Krishna, God incarnate comes and tells him You have to fight. And so here's a book about a battle
about going and killing people. And Gandhi is inspired to make it a non violent movement from that
same book. And and this is a thing there. I mean, I'll give you the somebody said to me, don't you
think there's things antiquated in the Quran? And I said, Well, what do you think about the
constitution? Well, it's survived 200 years, it's doing great. And I said, Well, what about letters
		

			of marque and reprisal? And what's that I'm section eight, read your constitution. What's a letter
of marque and reprisal? I said, the Congress has a right to issue letters of marque and reprisal
during wartime, which enables privateers to basically pirate commercial ships from countries that
were at war with. So that's in how do we how do we interpret that? Is that something of the past? Is
it a relic of the past? Should we just erase it from the constitution? That was part of the war the
world 200 years ago? So are there are things in the Koran or things in the Bible that were part of
the pre modern world? They're no longer part of the world when the Quran says that the steep ascent
		

			to God is freeing the slave during the time of
		

			the Prophet Mohammed, slavery was a legitimate institution that was lawful slavery. So the Quran
encouraged people to free the slaves. How do we interpret that today? Free the slave? There's plenty
of illegal slavery out there. We could look at it like that freeing women from sexual slavery,
freeing
		

			You know