Ingrid Mattson – Engaging the Living Tradition of Islam
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
My name is Ian Wilson, and I serve
as director of the Chester Ronning Center For
the Study of Religion and Public Life here
at the U of A's Augustana campus, for
those of you, whom I don't know.
Welcome to the Gene and Peter Lockheed Performing
Arts Center.
This campus is located on land traditionally known
as Asinisca Sapisis or Stony Creek.
This is Treaty 6 territory and a traditional
meeting ground for many indigenous peoples.
The land has provided a traveling route and
home to the Muscogee's, Nehiyawak,
Niitsitapi,
Nakota, and Tsuut'ina Nations, the Metis, and other
indigenous peoples.
Their spiritual and practical relationships to the land
create a rich heritage for our learning and
our life as a community here.
In thinking about the land, the relationship between
indigenous and settler peoples on it, and the
ongoing process of reconciliation,
I'd like to make 2 brief announcements about
upcoming events before I introduce our guests today.
1st, next Monday Tuesday, February 3rd 4th, and
you may have seen some of these events
scrolling up here. This is not the event
I'm gonna speak about now, but, maybe you've
already seen the flyers for these events.
Next Monday Tuesday, February 3rd 4th, the Ronning
Center is cosponsoring
the visit of performance artist Adrian Stimpson.
Adrian is from Siksika First Nation in Treaty
7 Territory, which is just south of us
here.
He'll be the guest of Doctor. Aaron Sutherland
and will be giving a talk about his
his art,
and will be performing
some of his work, actually, right here in
this room.
And then, on Wednesday, February 19th,
the center is cosponsoring a screening of the
film,
Nipah Wistamassowin
We Will Stand Up, which is a documentary
about the death of Colton Boushey,
the young man from Red Pheasant First Nation
who was fatally shot on a Saskatchewan farm
in 2016.
The filmmaker Anne Colton's sister will be in
attendance,
and doctor Daniel Sims will dialogue with them
after the film. So we hope you'll be
able to join us for those upcoming events
here,
in February.
Today, our guest is doctor Ingrid Mattson.
Doctor Mattson is visiting the University of Alberta
this week as a guest of the North
Campus's Muslim Students Association.
She's very busy with events up in Edmonton,
so I'm delighted that she and the North
Campus MSA were able to squeeze in a
quick trip down to Camrose to spend time
with us here.
An expert on the Quran and on Islamic
ethics and interfaith relations,
Doctor. Matson is one of the foremost scholars
of Islam in North America.
She was educated at the University of Waterloo
in Ontario and at the University of Chicago.
She has held faculty positions at Hartford Seminary
in Connecticut
and at Huron University College at Western University
in London, Ontario,
where she currently holds the London and Windsor
Community Chair in Islamic Studies.
Outside the academy, Doctor. Matson has served as
president of the Islamic Society of North America,
notably the first woman to do so. And
she has consulted with US, Canadian, and other
world leaders in a variety of capacities on
issues of Muslim civil rights.
One of our mandates at the Ronning Center
is to promote interfaith dialogue.
Doctor. Matson is a leading exemplar of such
work.
Today, she will speak to us about the
living tradition of Islam. So please join me
in welcoming her to Augustana.
Alright. Good afternoon.
How you doing?
This is a great space. Wow. You guys
are very
fortunate. It's such a,
beautiful performance space and,
gathering space.
Lovely day coming down here. I saw the
sun for the first time in about 3
months. Southern Ontario, we don't we just sort
of get grey in the winter now, so,
I just love being here. I want to,
thank those who made it possible for me
to come here to the Chester Ronning Centre,
to Ian and Diane and all of those
who facilitated this, and then the students, the
Muslim students from
University
of Alberta in Edmonton.
Today,
I knew it would be an eclectic mix
of people, and
some of you may,
have no familiarity
with,
Islamic thought and culture and history, and others
may be very familiar. So it's always a
bit of a challenge to think about what
to present.
And so today,
really, when I talk about the living tradition,
what I'm
what I'm proposing to do is to explore
the ways that,
that
barriers are created
to
understanding each other, and also there are opportunities
for opening up knowledge
through the living tradition. What do I mean
by the living tradition? I mean the people
the people of a tradition,
the people who continue
interpreting that tradition and living that tradition and
passing it,
down to each other. It's
interesting that very often,
in
circles where we talk about interfaith
dialogue and also interfaith engagement,
we will hear people say that
the best way
to bring peace and harmony and understanding is
by the personal encounter, the person to person
encounter,
to get to know someone
from another tradition.
And I believe that's true to a large
extent.
However,
we also have to acknowledge that there is
no naive encounter.
And what I mean by that is that
even though we may
believe that we don't know anything about another
tradition or another culture,
nevertheless,
we all of us, each of us has
been formed by historical
traditions. We're passive
recipients of
news and information,
and,
whether we realize it or not, we already
have certain ideas about other people. And it's
through those
those ideas, those constructs, those filters
through which,
we may consciously or unconsciously
decide whether
to accept information,
whether to,
really embrace the personal encounter as something that
is authentic
or,
really imbued with a great deal of suspicion.
We hear a lot today about implicit bias.
Right?
And implicit bias, interestingly, is something that
not only affects how we look at the
other,
but it even affects
the very, you know, people within their own
tradition, because we are all,
while we're members of a community, we're also
members of the greater community, also subject
to all sorts of images
and and news and the way that it's
it's framed.
In the Islamic ethical tradition,
there's a distinction made
in,
epistemological
studies, so the study of how we know
something. Right? How do we know something's true
or right?
How do we,
legitimize it or say that this is this
is not true or inauthentic?
So there's a distinction that's made between two
kinds of ignorance,
called, one is called Jahal Borsit and Jahal
Moraqab.
Jahal Borsit is
is simple ignorance. It's where we we say,
you know, I really don't know anything about
this topic.
So for example,
I don't know anything about,
growing soybeans. You know, I could just say
so if I met a farmer
who grows soybeans, I could say, well, that's
really interesting. So what is the cycle, and
what what kind of environmental
conditions do you need? And, I'm pretty much
a blank slate when it comes to soy
farming.
But Jahal Morakkab, complex ignorance is where we
already believe we know something.
We think we know something about it,
and even if we haven't studied it. So
admitting a bias that I have,
when I encountered,
the first time I encountered a person
who is from Colombia,
from the nation, the country of Colombia,
you know, immediately in my mind, I couldn't
help it. What popped into my mind? You
know,
coffee, cocaine,
and cartels.
And and there's this this you know, these
these ideas kinda pop in your mind. I'm
just thinking, oh my god. What's wrong with
me? You know, I'm trying to to push
it back as I'm just having trying to
have this individual personal encounter,
with this with this lovely woman. So,
you know, the the
we are not necessarily
responsible
for those implicit biases or those
frames that come into our mind,
but we are morally responsible for what we
do with them,
so that
we have an ethical responsibility to understand
how impressions are formed, how we gain knowledge,
where we gain it from, and then what
we should do when we realize that that
perhaps,
our impression
is being really distorted.
I mean, you are you are people who
live in Western Canada, and I don't have
to tell you that that people who live
in Ontario have stereotypes about people who live
in Western Canada.
And,
you know, where does that come from? Different
news and all all sorts of things.
And it's the responsibility,
of any adult mature,
person, moral person, to really try to recognize
that and then deal with it. So when
we talk about the living tradition
of Islam
and how you know, today, I'm really looking
at
how do we,
together, especially in an educational environment, especially in
an environment
of knowledge and research,
how can we
we bring in the living experience, the living
tradition,
to academic study, to academic institutions?
And to begin with, we need a little
bit of history.
So,
it's quite interesting. When I I hear when
people talk about political conflicts, for example, very
often, they very loosely
use terms like, oh, these people have been,
you know, in conflict for 1000 of years
or something like that. And the the
the the the story of human history is
that,
there are always
tensions,
but there
also
are many stories of positive encounters,
where,
the encounter between different cultures or different traditions,
can lead to great synthesis,
can lead to new learnings.
So, when we look at the pre modern,
the perception of pre modern Islam and the
encounter
between Muslim peoples and the primarily Christian peoples,
of Europe,
we find some very good stories. So, for
example,
that we have people
like, Averroes,
who,
whose Arabic
name is Ibn Rush. So Averroes is
someone who was very respected by the medieval,
Christian philosophical tradition.
He was a philosopher and a physician,
mathematician,
and,
continued to be studied in,
European academies
for the not only for his preservation and
transmission and interpretation
of the Hellenic tradition,
but also for his own,
his own developments
and unique ideas that he contributed to that
tradition.
We see that in the the premodern tradition,
there was really, in many cases, very productive
exchanges,
intellectual and academic exchanges
that
came through
the pre
pre modern universities or colleges and universities, so
this is a typical
it's this building is still not in use
as a
as a college, but a one of the
great, premodern Islamic colleges.
And even
the,
the structure of the European Colleges,
the first universities of Paris, Bologna, and then
Oxford and Cambridge,
a lot of research has been done to
show that,
those who founded those universities
took many of the models from
the medieval Islamic
world, which had universities that preceded Europe. So
the idea even of the the academic chair,
for example,
It was a literal chair that was, was
placed for the profess professor
in, medieval Islamic academies,
and then that was transferred
over, by the Europeans. Interestingly,
most of that knowledge and encounter came through
the wake of the crusades, so you have
a kind of negative encounter, but you also
have
positive
cultural production from that.
We know that in those pre modern encounters,
it's not only knowledge, but art, music, learning.
So, for example, the the guitar or the
stringed instrument
originally comes from
West Africa and medieval Spain and was transferred
over.
And,
the music, the scales, many of them came
from this encounter. So this is a very
positive thing.
And interestingly,
here we see these, you know, these 2
gentlemen sort of jamming together.
Looks looks good. They could almost be playing
in a space like this, while people are
sitting around in their cafes.
Now you see they're wearing distinctive dress, and
even one has lighter skin. The European has
lighter skin,
than the,
the mulsome,
who has brown skin, but it's a it's
a positive encounter.
But we see the beginning
of a difference that's not only
religious differences these are people coming from 2
different,
religious traditions,
but also have some physical differences.
But it's there's a there's a a neutral
attitude, really, in this depiction
towards those differences. Right? It's just they're they're
together jamming, and,
they look a little different, but there's a
there's a equality, there's a mirroring of their
body language.
Really, it's it's
really at the time of the Reconquista,
that we begin to see a deep racialization
of Islamic identity.
And in fact, while many people will say
that the crusades
sort of were the the the encounter that
was that created sort of a lasting negative,
political identity
between,
sort of Muslim majority countries and Christian European
countries.
I, I really believe that's not the case.
The crusades were simply,
you know, political conflicts that went up and
down, and you don't really see in the
Islamic literature that it had a kind of
really lasting negative effect in the way that
the Reconquista did. Because the thing about the
Reconquista was that it was the first time
that we saw
a,
an empire or a dynasty
insist that all of their citizens
had to follow the religion of the king.
So this is why all of the Jews
and all of the Muslims who were in
Spain
either had to convert or leave.
And so this multireligious,
multicultural, it wasn't, it wasn't a utopia.
No human place is.
No dynasty. No empire is a utopia. I
don't wanna romanticize that, but there certainly was
there was never a sense that,
that the ideal
state is one in which difference is erased.
Yes, there may be hierarchies,
there may be some who
were the preferred group,
but they shouldn't be erased. So really,
it is at the time of the Reconquista
in Spain that that that view
that all of those
who are under the,
one sovereign should follow the same faith. And
then we know that many Christians suffered as
well,
in the inquisition.
And then we have this, you know,
reformation and counter reformation
encounter.
But one of the things we see here
and I I could have shown you many,
pictures of you know, famous pictures
of great paintings, European paintings, Spanish paintings, showing
Santiago,
Saint James, who's the patron saint
of, Catholic Spain,
slaying the Moor, which is the the typical
paradigmatic image of Santiago.
Santiago slaying the Moor, which is a Mauritania.
The Moors, it's an area of North Africa,
so it's a region of North Africa.
But in the Christian west, it became
a a a title applied to Muslims generally,
Just like in in sort of the Eastern
Europe,
all Muslims were called Turks because they were
the the ethnic group that they encountered.
So here we see Saint James is trampling,
a Moor
under his feet, and we see also
the skin color difference.
And and it really is at this time
there there's a racialized element
to the that that sort of added on
top to the element of the religious,
difference. This is actually just a I I
found this this picture as a as a
little kind of,
lovely souvenir that is sold
as a
as a,
for those, who want a little sue souvenir
of Santiago, whose
whose name full name is is
Santiago
Matamoros,
which means the Moor killer.
Right? So,
negative
encounter, and what's really important here is that
the the time of the Reconquista,
I really think, is we all have to
acknowledge that this is really the beginning of
the modern world because it was Ferdinand and
Isabella who who then sent Christopher Columbus
on his exploration of the New World and
really opened up that chapter in history.
And what's very interesting is to read about
how
the Spanish,
when they encountered indigenous people and this is
relevant for us as Canadians and with our,
ethical obligation to engage in truth and reconciliation,
is that when the Spanish encountered
indigenous people,
that they very often or most commonly saw
them through the frame of their experience with
the Moors.
And so they even sometimes, they would call
their temples mosques,
so they described the
the temples of indigenous people in the in
the, sort of Central American lands as mosques.
And they they applied
many of the same frames in in to
them in trying to understand
their belief system,
their religious practices, their spiritual practices.
So right away,
there was
we think we try we think, well, here
are Europeans who are coming and encountering indigenous
people for the first time, again, as if
it's a naive encounter.
But in fact, they were encountering the indigenous
people
through
their experience,
their previous experiences of the other, and really
imposing those frames in many ways
on the indigenous people. Here's a map of,
Drake Frances Drake's map
of, different trade routes,
and and one thing that we can see
here is this this,
what,
scholar of this
period, Nabil Mothar, calls the renaissance
triangle,
which is the
the,
movement between England,
West Africa, and North America.
And it is through this triangle of trade,
exploration,
discovery,
and exchange
that, again, we find we
find this,
kind of conflation
between
Muslims and indigenous people and many of the
same
kind of stereotypes
or
forms of othering applied,
to both indigenous peoples of the North of
North and South America, of the Americas,
and, Muslim people.
This opens up a whole period of time
of of study
of the other.
And in this the the few centuries
when
European colonialism
and exploration
is ongoing
throughout the Americas, so we have the indigenous
people being encountered,
and then also
European colonization that is expanding
across
Africa
and Asia,
we see the same kind of,
frames that are being used to understand and
encounter the people. So the idea of the
exotic, this is a very famous
study by Edward Said called Orientalism,
which was published over 30 years ago and
really helped helped show
what these frames were and that continue to
operate over time. So the idea
that the people are exotic,
that they are irrational, and, of course, rationality
in a philosophical
tradition, certainly
reason
by the Greek philosophers was considered to be
the defining characteristic of a human being. This
is what does what distinguishes a human being
from all other
living creatures? It is reason.
So by applying the
the the
the judgment of irrationality
to indigenous people, to Muslim people, you are
making them less than human, you know, more
childlike,
for example, in need of governance, in need
of direction,
in need of education.
Also, sexual deviate deviance is something that was,
constantly being applied
to both indigenous people and and Muslims,
and they were considered to be not capable
of studying themselves or explaining who they were.
So this is where this intersects with the
idea of living tradition versus textual tradition. Who
is the expert in what a people's
spirituality teachings are.
And what's very interesting is we find that
this
at the
in these periods in early modernity,
it is a very strong attempt
to say these people are incapable of being
objective about their own tradition.
So so the
the native informant, the person who's living the
tradition,
has no
role in actually teaching about that tradition or
explaining what it is. It's the other who
is rational,
who is going to explain,
what that is.
Women have a big part in this.
Among those who are the most exoticized
are are the women
of the other culture,
and so, we see there's a whole orientalist
tradition of painting,
poetry,
literature
that sees, certainly, the Muslim woman, the Chinese
woman,
as someone who is and also indigenous women
as being very sexually vailable,
loose,
do not have, good morals,
and then this whole idea of, well,
a kind of voyeuristic language that's applied to
it. So
you'll find all of these books, you know,
beneath the veil, lifting the veil, under the
veil, unveiling, you know, to be uncovering the
truth. So this idea that
beneath,
there's something else. So this kind of voyeuristic
view. What's interesting is that with this normative
judgment of sexual deviance, it changes depending on
the culture.
So
while
from the premodern
European Christian perspective,
indigenous women and Muslim women
were too sexual,
that in modern times, the view is, oh,
no. They're sexually repressed.
So this is, how many of you ever
watched, the series Homeland?
Homeland is a popular HBO
series. Right? So this was an advertisement for,
I think, season 5 or 6 of Homeland,
and it's that that typical view, well, while
the, you know, the Muslim woman is under
these, you know, completely covered, faceless,
black veils.
It is the,
white American woman who is control her face
and is colorful. So you have a complete
flip
of the view
of
what is the sexuality
of of this tradition and of these women,
but with the consistent that it is it
is deviant or,
deficient in that sense.
Interestingly,
I took this screenshot through a Google search
of Muslim women
a couple years ago,
And and, again, what comes up is just
this,
you know, all of these,
and not to say, yeah, there are women
who wear all black. There are women who
cover their faces,
certainly not the majority of Muslim women, but
to have a a a Google image search
be,
completely dominated by this. But then what's really
interesting is if you look at the categories
at the top,
what are they so what's interesting about women?
It's all about how they look. So you
can you can have the subcategory of without
hijab,
with hijab,
abuse,
most beautiful, and clothing. So it's you know,
the focus is so much on the appearance.
You know, nothing about
famous Muslim women or Muslim women scientists or,
it's
it's so focused on
this superficial
impression, and it shows us that even if
we're trying to search for good information. Right?
You know, someone you get a neighbor or
a new friend. You say, Oh, you know,
I want to learn something about their their
faith, their tradition. You go on the Internet,
type in something,
and here,
there's a this is being set for you,
the frame. How you should perceive
is really quite,
remarkable.
This,
the image of Muslim men also is is
not, very good. So this is the cover
of a Polish magazine from a few years
ago. This is a popular,
you know, Polish language magazine.
And as you'll see, this,
European,
it it it's about, the the cover story
is about the Islamic threat to Europe,
and as you see, this woman who is
being attacked is not only being you know,
ripped apart by these hands, but these are
all brown hands
who are
pulling apart, you know, attacking this this, white
woman.
So
this racialized element, it shows that Islamophobia,
again, has this very strong
racial element. People will say, Well, Islamophobia is
not racism. It's just I don't like Muslims.
But there is a very, very strong
racist element that is part of this.
So this is kind
of the bad news. Just another added part.
One of the things that is very,
that was very interesting is that when
early missionaries were looking at
at Muslims and at indigenous people, one of
the very common
criticisms from a theological point of view this
is an article by Samuel Zweymer,
who was one of the very prominent, missionaries
and,
publishers
of the editors of the Muslim World Journal,
which is the oldest English language journal devoted
to the study of Islam,
which is the journal that I co edited
a 100 years later at Hartford Seminary when
I was there. So so it shows that
things change. We're not all gonna stay in
the in this sort of difficult
area,
but this this claim of animism.
So this was a very strong critique of,
of the missionaries who studied Islam and also
studied the beliefs of indigenous people, that they
were superstitious,
that they were animus.
So the the
the
the beliefs of of Muslims and indigenous people
that that all things are living,
that there's an integrate integrity
and harmony,
and unity of life to all things was
characterized
as animism,
a a form of
a a kind of form of polytheism
or,
disbelief.
But this idea, and that animism is
difficult period,
10 years ago when, unfortunately,
pope Benedict, because of his,
his eagerness
to to really reclaim your you know, because
faith,
was really dropping off in Europe. I mean,
the the the levels of belief of people
who are practicing Christians in Europe is very,
very low. Now,
he was trying to convince Europeans that that
faith is part of European identity,
which I think is so is
is true. I mean, when we when we
see
what Europe was built up on,
Christianity is so important to the development of
Europe and
he was saying, but these other faiths are
not. So there was this kind
of he was saying, but these other faiths
are not. So there was this kind of
attack on Islam,
saying that,
that Christianity
is a rational religion, a rational faith, and
so European scientism and rationality and intellectual tradition
is really,
due to Christianity,
unlike Islam, which is not rational. And again,
it's interesting because I began this talk showing
a picture
of Averroes. So the medieval
philosophical belief was that Islam had contributed a
lot in terms of reason and logic and
philosophy.
It was a very unfortunate incident, and I'm
going to show you at the end how
it all turned out well in the end.
I met pope Benedict.
There were,
initiatives taken after, and many positive things came
out of this encounter.
So hopefully, I'm done from the difficult,
things, and this is really
our our deconstruction work. This is our our
work of saying you know, really trying to
understand that we cannot
believe that we will have a naive encounter.
We first have to acknowledge
the past and then being able to say,
Well,
what is the other view?
What's very interesting is that at the founding
of America,
by the the founding fathers of America, Benjamin
Franklin and all of the others,
they generally had a very positive view of
Islam.
They view they believed that Islam had contribute
had been one of the great contributors to
world civilization,
and they saw America
as being a country, a new nation,
that would take the best learning from every
nation of the world,
and,
and would build a new society.
And so this is in this is,
just a shot of the, dome
in the Library of Congress. Have any of
you ever been to the Library of Congress?
Yes.
It is just a fantastic building. It is
it is amazing. It is the library for
Congress. It it collects
comprehensively.
If you go to their website, if you
ever wanna research something, you go to their
website. They do comprehensive collection.
And in the dome, they have this beautiful,
painting
of 9 different, what they characterize as civilizations
who who contributed
to the development of human knowledge.
And you see Greece. You say,
you see,
Judaism,
Egypt, Rome, Islam.
Here, the contribution of Islam is in physics,
for some reason.
On the in the place right now where
they are,
the US legislature and the Congress and the
capital,
where the
politicians,
legislators
are debating laws and voting on debating bills,
all around that building, if you go in
the inside
and you watch the debates, just have a
look, and all around the the room on
the wall
are,
about 30 different medallions
that are on homages to
people in civilization
who have contributed to the development of law,
of law and legislation, and that America, you
know, wants to take the best from that.
And one of them is Suleiman here, Suleiman,
known as Suleiman the Magnificent
or Suleiman al Khanuni, the lawgiver,
for his contribution to,
reforming
military and civil laws.
And then on the US Supreme Court,
all at the at the top of the
US Supreme Court, there are freezes at the
top
that show
those
people throughout human history who have
contributed to the development of justice,
and the symbol of justice always is the
sword,
because justice,
it you know, it can only be upheld
if the person is held accountable. Right? So
there always has to be some force behind
it, so we have
Alexander and Justinian,
and in the center is the prophet Mohammed.
So I think it's surprising to a lot
of people that at the very founding of
America,
Islam was considered to be
one of the great contributors
to global civilization,
and that shows us
that we can tell different kinds of stories.
There are stories where we can pull out
simply
conflict,
we can also tell stories that show
harmony,
show mutual learning, and mutual benefit.
And I think it's important to remember, especially
these last three slides,
when we see about some of the things
that are happening, and, unfortunately, in the United
States today, it's going through,
you know, countries go through their ups and
downs, and
United States, like some other countries, many other
countries is going through a
populist
period where many people
are finding themselves pushed to the outside, but
it's not
necessary for that to be the story.
Unfortunately,
in the last couple decades, there's been so
much extreme forms of violence,
and what we find is rather than learning
from each other the best
things, sometimes and I'm sorry. This is a
very shocking image. I should have given you
a trigger warning.
Is that we find that that,
there's a mutual
learning about how to be more and more
extreme
in the violence.
So we have on the top left, we
have prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and then at
the bottom,
about 10 years later,
we have,
these,
Muslim,
terrorists
who are who have also
right, in in a kind of homage to
Guantanamo
Bay, who have clothed their prisoners in the
same orange jumpsuits.
And so,
what happens is that there is there's always
learning, and the and the learning can be
in
the about doing things that are beneficial or
not.
Just another
point of what makes
it challenging
these days to really have
that that authentic
encounter. You know, most of us, at least
with young people, all young people,
the way the first thing they'll do if
they wanna learn about something, as I said
earlier, is to Google
Google it. And unfortunately,
the Internet is not,
we've come to know, just
a neutral source of knowledge,
that it is through
that people can really play with it so
that certain things
come up in searches,
and
they can create websites
and integrate them in a way
so that so that when someone searches something,
they're going to find something
that really is
is tailored towards
their greatest prejudices.
So we have something,
there's been really important studies by American
progressive institutions, research institutions,
about
how this has affected,
the Internet
and the availability
to search for authentic information.
It's really interesting that just recently this is
from the FBI,
has verified that
we hear a lot about Facebook
these days. Over the last few years, it's
Russian bots have have weaponized,
so that
that Russian controlled accounts
and bots and trolls and everything that affects
the social media, what comes up in your
Facebook news feed
is really controlled by these by these bots
and trolls that are automated
to directly target people's
curiosity
and prejudices.
So it makes it very challenging, and then
the question is, well, then who speaks for
Islam and Muslims? How can we actually have
an
have a positive encounter?
And I'm going to move into the last
part of my
my talk so that we have lots of
time for discussion.
What I wanna say is that
I, you know, I am a Muslim
who greatly benefited from my studies at the
University of Chicago,
studying in the Oriental Institute,
tremendous building,
facing some of those challenges where
where the question was asked,
alright,
who who how do we know what Islam
is? And we had a very,
strongly textual tradition, so what we learned
were the languages
know, I was in the department of Near
Eastern Languages and Civilizations,
had to write 5 different language exams,
learn how to read manuscripts,
how to do this kind of research was
very beneficial,
but it was somehow a little bit detached
from my life as a Muslim living in
a detached from my life as a Muslim
living in a faith community.
And so
over time, things started to they moved from
things like this is a Harvard Center For
Middle East Studies,
that
Islam started to be taught in the seminary's
divinity schools and theology schools, and that's where
we started to see the living tradition come
through.
So when I graduated, I was hired at
Hartford Seminary, and it was really very liberating
in the sense that I was able to
engage both with
knowledge and also my knowledge of the living
tradition.
And then that expanded
University of Chicago Divinity School and other divinity
schools added,
Islamic studies,
and we saw that Muslims in academia
increased. So they started to be the the
people who started teaching,
Islamic studies in academia were Muslims themselves and
began
publishing more and more.
But but we were together. It's not just
you have to be a Muslim to teach
Islam, but you certainly shouldn't be excluded from
teaching Islam if you're a Muslim. So we
started to have
a real,
enrichment
of the curriculum
that included knowledge from insiders
that interacted
with the,
the research methods and protocols of the academy
to really have some very vibrant and interesting
research that was happening.
At the same time, the living tradition would
continue to go on in places like,
there are Islamic retreat centers, there are traditional
learning centers that are still outside of the
academy,
but nevertheless,
also are educating
students in a traditional sense.
This is this is actually a picture I
showed last night in my presentation on on
the Quran.
This is a picture of an American scholar
named Hamza Yusuf, who's teaching in the Great
Mosque
at Qader 1 and Fez, Morocco.
So he's teaching in the traditional style. You'll
see he's sitting on that kursi. Remember I
mentioned earlier the chair, right, a university chair,
chair of Islamic studies?
He's actually sitting on that elevated chair, the
literal chair, which is where the professorial
chair first came from.
Well, he was,
began in this very traditional setting. As an
American,
he decided he wanted to set up a,
an Islamic college or a Muslim college
that really drew from the best of the
Islamic tradition as well as the American Academy,
and Zaytuna College was established in Northern California.
And so you see here, what's
interesting is there's a beauty to both,
but part of the learning is
this is a a more democratic, in a
way, learning environment. You see the professor
is more still the professor, still at the
front of the class, but more on the
level with the students. It's more conversational.
There's teaching,
but there's also conversation and and,
and,
and and what began as an attempt to
sort of have a almost romanticized
idea of a traditional learning environment really
is is explicitly saying the best. You know,
study the Islamic and Western intellectual
traditions.
So so a real combination,
and this shows how,
there's a mutual
you know, it's possible to mutually benefit
from the best of
of both of those areas. Cambridge Muslim College
in Cambridge, the UK, is also a place,
that has been established,
10 years ago
that also has that interaction with Cambridge University
and the traditional Islamic knowledge
to really bring,
to integrate,
both modes of learning
and
fields of
knowledge, spiritual teaching,
in a way that is mutually beneficial,
to both.
Just to finish off, the the Internet can
also be a place that
is positive, that can help us,
and so there are
places now where
in the old days it used to be
distance learning, you used to get something in
the mail and study something and mail it
back,
But now, there are other places like Ban
Clermont, Southern California, that combines both in place
learning
and
distance learning. I've taught for them, where
I do some online teaching and then go
meet the students for a week in Southern
California,
and that's really beneficial.
It also can be a place,
where where women
can have,
the opportunity to really engage in scholarship led
by women. This is an amazing,
really global initiative led by an American Muslim
scholar,
Rob Alta,
which teaches
thousands of women
through this using,
the Internet and distance learning, but a sense
of community.
And so what I really like about that
is that you have people who are,
you know, it's open to anyone who's a
woman
who can engage in this learning.
And and that emphasis
it's quite interesting because Tamara
Gray, the scholar here, Sheikha Tamara
Gray, herself
spent over 20 years studying traditional knowledge in
Syria. She also calls herself a Muslim feminist,
meaning that she prioritizes,
women's
value and life and knowledge.
And so in that sense,
we have a true integration
of really the best of different approaches
to knowledge. And I'm just gonna end with
this because I did,
talk about this unfortunate
incident with, pope Benedict.
But the response to that, what happened was
a group of global Muslim scholars
got together and decided to to write a
letter to pope Benedict,
and to
to really rather than
simply react to something. You know? And and
we're always we we want to avoid the
cycle of of just reacting to each other's
things and saying, you know, sort of, well,
you started this. Well, I said this because
you did this in a both individual and
in a in a civilizational
model,
is there was an invitation to say,
look. Let's come to a common word between
us and our traditions.
We,
the core of our traditions is love of
God and love of neighbor.
And with that letter, which was,
signed and and brought together by scholars really
across the world,
both Christian and Muslim scholars
work together to frame the letter and then
the response to the letter.
In the last 15 years, we've had incredible
fruits from this initiative
that have provided educational
materials
and frameworks for encounter so that we have
both of these things. We realize that individual
encounter, you know, at the level of community
groups, church groups, civic groups, is important,
those encounters of getting to know each other,
but there also has to be a sort
of,
a sort of,
dealing with the misconceptions,
realizing that there aren't naive encounters.
The
Anglican Church of Canada and the Evangelical
Lutheran Church of Canada
have just I I I should've take taken
a screenshot and added it to this, but
I wasn't able to do it. But just
before I came here
on Tuesday, there was a major
celebration at my it happened to be held
at my university at Huron College,
where the Anglican Church of Canada and the
Evangelical
Lutheran Church of Canada,
launched a new website, a common word dot
ca. So it's the Canadian Common Word Initiative,
and it's that commitment
for Canadian Muslims
and Christians to
engage in dialogue, understanding, and also
working together
for the common good, you know, to demonstrate
that love of neighbor based on,
mutual respect
and understanding that that all things
come, through the knowledge of God. So,
so we reconciled with pope Benedict.
Unfortunately, he didn't
stay in the position, but pope Francis has
been a been a wonderful,
you know, really, wonderful ambassador, I think, globally
for so many initiatives. I was there 2
weeks ago,
in a meeting,
with about
20,
multi faith leaders,
Christians,
Jewish leaders, and Muslim leaders. We met with
pope Francis at his residence
to announce
the launch of a new multi faith initiative
that will bring
small groups of high level religious leaders
to intervene in places where there is,
where there is religiously justified violence.
So it's a really exciting new initiative,
and I'm I'm looking forward to, being involved
in that and bringing more of that knowledge,
and those models,
to my,
you know, to my students and also to
our community. So with that, I'm going to
end so that we have time for some
discussion.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, doctor Mattson.
We have about
about 15 to 20 minutes
for questions.
We are on something of a tight schedule,
because as I said, doctor Matson is a
guest here at the university, and,
she and and our guests from North Campus
who came down have to head back up
to Edmonton for further events, that the Muslim
Students Association has have organized.
And, also, they plan to participate in Friday
prayers,
with the community here in Camrose, which start
at 1:40, and so we wanna make sure
we give them time,
to get there,
for Friday prayers.
So but we do have some time for
questions.
I know there's some students here.
I'd like to invite them, especially if they
have questions, to to speak up.
But we'll get rolling and to give you
an opportunity. And please do wait for me
to bring the mic just because, you know,
with the sound and things, it's best use
it. I I see Peter's hand shooting up,
so we'll start off with doctor Berg.
Hi there. I'm, Peter Berg, the chair of
the science department.
Two things.
One was the Google
you show the image of the Google search.
Right? Mhmm. Mhmm. It'd be very interesting to
see how that varies with the user Mhmm.
Because it's based on algorithm or previous use
of that browser, that machine, and IP address.
So that'd be I would encourage you to
start a project on that, actually. Mhmm.
Second thing this is a question, of course.
So when you said that,
Islam was related or correlated with physics, you
said, Mhmm. Is that physics or rather astronomy?
Do you know?
Well, in in on the,
on the dome there, it each one
says so it says Islam and it says
physics.
But what they meant by physics is yeah.
That's that's the question,
the artist that did it. But it is
absolutely true about the Google search.
When I did that before I took the
screenshot, I did, you know, clear the browser
and just to try to see what would
would come up, and and it would differ
according to country as well.
Now Google has worked on it since,
and,
so I I think those searches
will yield something different now. But we know
that this is a concept it's like an
arms race, you know, like,
to to be able to,
you know, to have these search engines
produce
a kind
of you know,
what kind of result it will it will
give is just constantly changing, and the technology
and the and the interference
in it is,
no one can ever really keep up, which
is why, of course, we always tell our
students
that it shouldn't be their 1st first place
to go.
Other questions?
Thank you. Thank you for your presentation.
One of the slides that you showed had
a number of books.
I I noticed one of them was Thomas
Jefferson's.
Was that a critique on the Quran or
what was that, a position at that time?
Could you say more about that
particular time in history and what,
that book might be about? Right. Actually,
Thomas Jefferson
owned a copy of Le Quran.
He was a educated person,
and
this book is a a book
by Denise
Spellberg, who's a a scholar,
about Thomas Jefferson's
Quran. So why did Thomas Jefferson have a
Quran?
What did the what was the their
what was the view of the founding fathers
of Islam?
And,
so so that's what that that book is
about, and it's very interesting because so Thomas
Jefferson's
copy of the Quran is in the Library
of Congress, so
it's in the collection of the Library of
Congress.
And,
when,
Keith Ellison was elected
to the congress. He's an African American.
He was the 1st Muslim
who was ever elected to the US Congress.
There were some, you know, some homophobic attacks,
like, oh, how could a Muslim be
be a member of Congress? Muslims don't believe
in democracy, freedom, whatever. You know, stuff like
this, kind of like when when Kennedy was
running for president. And how could a Catholic
be
be the president of the United States when
they owe their allegiance to the pope and
all this anti Catholic,
kind of view.
Interestingly,
it must have been one of the chief
librarians at the Library of Congress
drew Keith Ellison's attention to Thomas Jefferson's Quran,
so that when Keith Ellison took his
his oath of office,
there's a kind of there's a there's the
oath and then there's the
symbolic ceremony where the member of congress will
put their hand on the bible, usually.
So he actually swore his oath of office
on
Thomas Jefferson's Quran.
Right? So because we were saying, well, is
he gonna swear his oath of office on
the Quran, and what does the Quran say,
and what does that mean? So but he
he swore it on Thomas Jefferson's copy, so
people were like, oh, really confused. Like, the
for the people who were
who didn't like the idea of a Muslim
being a member of congress, it was very
confusing to them because how could they criticize
Thomas Jefferson?
So it's very interesting.
Yeah.
First of all, thank you very much. So
many
things I want to pursue and learn more
about. Mhmm.
I'm speaking just as a former Canadian diplomat,
and I started being a diplomat shortly after
the 911 attacks,
September 11th attacks.
And around the same time that the Muslim
Communities Working Group was first created at the
foreign ministry in Ottawa,
and kind of subsequently
died
a quiet death under the Harper government. But,
it was created originally with kind of 2
goals, I think. 1 was that they realized
after 9:11 that a lot of the diplomats
and others working in the foreign ministry knew
very little about
Islam and Muslim communities internationally.
And the second was actually to formulate some
ways of actually engaging,
better in diplomacy directly with
Muslim majority countries and and
Islamic communities more broadly.
And so
well, when I was a diplomat in the
Middle East, things like,
I forget who wrote the book, hockey and
hijab,
Sheema Sheema Khan. Mhmm. Khan. Yeah. You know,
she came and did a bit of a
talking tour and part of the idea was
to to
engage in outreach to Muslim communities internationally,
kind of talking about the experience of Muslims
in Canada and kind of describing what it's
like to be a Muslim in Canada as
a way to kind of promote
Canada
overseas in a sense that it's a can
be a very positive experience in some ways.
So part of my question is kind of,
is there still room for that sort of
diplomacy? Is there a need for it? But
then also
part of it is and you touched on
it at the end is,
the experience of being Muslim in Canada and
in the United States, perhaps, is leading to
us to different,
Muslims in those traditions have new and different
things to offer to the broader traditions of
Islam internationally as well. So the idea of
a slightly more democratic
you you called it,
teaching
setting, for example.
Are there ways in which, you know, being
Muslim in Canada is offering new things
to,
Islam internationally?
Right. Yeah. Thank you for that question.
So I was in I was in the
United States at that time, and,
and the United States had many
US State Department had those kind of initiatives,
as part of their cultural diplomacy or soft
diplomacy
and would have American Muslims who were going,
on some of their tours and talking about
being a Muslim
in the United States. And what was in
what was interesting there is that
what happened is a lot of the Muslims
in
the Middle Eastern countries said, yeah, that's fine.
We have no problem with,
you know,
it's fine. What we're talking about are political
problems and the problem of you know, occupation
or other things.
We don't have any problem with America generally.
And and for Americans
also I think with American diplomacy, there is
a kind of
idea of American exceptionalism
that sometimes was just people found very offensive.
I do think, however, though,
those kind of exchanges, if they're mutual,
can
be helpful to break down false dichotomies,
like the idea like Islam versus the West.
Those are those are 2 different categories of
things. That's like saying
apples versus,
apples versus basketballs.
You're
talking about fruit on one hand and sports
on the other.
You know, there are lots of Western Muslims.
Right? So that's not those are not 2
separate categories.
You could be a Western Muslim. You could
be an Eastern Muslim. You could be a
Middle Eastern Muslim. You could be a South
American Muslim.
So just
as Canadian,
you know, Canadians who are Christian,
will have a very different,
you know, culture, maybe even interpretation of the
religion, the relationship between religion and politics than
Christians in
Mexico
or Christians in,
Central African Republic or Christians in,
you know, India.
So I think I think that's where those
things tend to go wrong. But I do
think that that more encounter,
honest encounters, are very helpful
for breaking down, like, false
false dichotomies.
That definitely is important.
But I think that one thing that is
what's more effective is just simply making sure
that
that your government and your administration and bureaucracy
represents the diversity of the country. And we've
certainly seen that in Canada now, is that,
that I think there are I mean,
just Canadians of all different faiths and backgrounds
are increasingly better represented
in parliament
and also in the government. And I think
that that does the most
to really counter,
a kind of,
you know, any kind of ignorance that that
might be, built in a system where where
the
where the chief diplomats are, you know, all
from a particular
social class or educational background.
Thank you.
Very briefly,
there's extremism
in all religions.
And, of course, in recent decades,
Muslim extremists has have gotten a lot of
attention.
I guess if I would like your comment
on how
what relationship do you see between extremist behaviour
in all faiths
and, and their actual religious beliefs, if there's
a connection there or if it's other cultural
factors. What are your thoughts?
Yeah.
I it is I mean, we live in
a really
I think there have always been extremists,
and there have always been people who have
who have used
used religion or patriotism
or racial superiority to justify violence against others.
It's a very complex issue. There are psychological
factors. There are social factors.
I would say that,
from a historical
perspective,
this kind of violence is is not necessarily
new, But what we do see today,
it's it's
in a way, it is like our our
our challenge with the Internet is that our
technology
just heightens everything.
Right? Our technology heightens the our ability to
connect
in a positive way.
It heightens our ability to learn more, to
expand,
but it also allows,
misinformation
to spread more quickly.
It also allows for,
violent ideology
to spread quickly.
And even with military technology, it's nothing new
that people have engaged in warfare or terrorist
attacks. You know?
I mean, you know, Caesar was killed in
a terrorist attack, you could say. But there's
a big difference in the amount of
people you can kill with a dagger,
as opposed to, you know,
dynamite strapped to your body.
So we live in an age where
because
the technology
has made
even if the risk is low, the consequence
of
of,
an attack in this area is so high.
It just in in my mind, this is
one of the reasons why we have a
moral obligation
to put more work
into
understanding each other
and into figuring out ways to counter
misinformation,
to counter
the acceptance
of violent ideology,
and the spread of extremism.
So even when it comes to this issue
of, you know, free speech,
we don't wanna regulate the Internet,
well, it's true. We I mean, we want
the free flow of information, but when the
the technology
is set up in a way to prioritize
and really,
like like, accelerate
misinformation
and hate speech, then I think at that
point, there need to be
some,
technological
solutions
and maybe legislative
solutions,
to be able to prevent that, because it's
not a normal situation. You know, it's
it's like,
yeah. I mean,
you know, a bomb drops on
on people and something happens. A nuclear bomb
drops, and we're talking about generations
of life that are damaged.
So so I I think that in many
ways,
a lot of our our,
you know,
issues that are just perennial and being a
human being, that
that differences can be the source of tremendous,
you know, vitality and growth and synthesis,
or differences can be exacerbated for violence.
They've always existed,
but but our the technological
element just makes things so much more heightened,
and the consequences
of of the negative,
you know,
of the of the negative and violent and
hateful views,
so
so I do think that we we have
more of a responsibility
to pay attention and figure out
how we can,
work to prevent these things.
Thank you so much, doctor Mattson. Let's, give
her another round of applause.
Thank you for, sharing with us, for your
graciousness.
It was, it is a very special treat
to have her at Augustana today.
We do have to run,
so I apologize, but please be respectful. We're
gonna, rush out of here so that they
can make it to Friday prayers. And thank
you again for coming. Please grab some extra
food on your way out if you like,
and we'll see you at our next event.