Ingrid Mattson – The Story of the Quran its history and place in Muslim life,
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
So one of the things that has focused
this discussion
in, such a powerful way is, of course,
our daily habit of waking up to still
another story of some
insane
atrocity somewhere in the world,
almost always committed by some zealot. In fact,
in the case of Islam,
the question is often raised,
is there such a thing as a moderate
Muslim because these extremists, these crazy people in
our vernacular,
threatened to obliterate
the possibility
of a moderate
Islam.
So that's why I invited Ingrid Monson, who
is the first woman,
the first non immigrant, and the first
convert to be elected head of the largest
Islamic group for social outreach
in North America. Ingrid Maxine.
My statement of faith
begins with a negation which is that there
is no God
and then an affirmation but God.
The Islamic statement of faith is la ilaha
So it's impossible to embrace faith, it's impossible
to embrace God
without first refuting
what is not God and stating that
probably most of what we state is God
is in fact a delusion,
a self delusion,
and so we cannot
be faithful unless we first do that. What
I don't believe in is a simplistic
idea of creationism,
certainly.
The Quran, in fact, has a presentation of
the origin of life that many Muslims believe
is wholly consonant with evolution,
describing explicitly the transition of life from water
and then a creature on 4 legs and
then an upright creature on 2 legs.
So this is possible and that my argument
for
belief in God is not based on intelligent
design or creationism.
I'm an unbeliever
in so much of what I hear presented
as Islam,
as
what the Quran says, what God wants of
us.
In fact I spend probably most of my
time saying what I don't believe in these
days and
that's my responsibility.
I need to do that,
although I want to also tell you what
I do believe and I'm going to do
that.
But let me say that the challenge of
those
who use religion
to oppress others, to tyrannize others,
to commit violence is not a new one
but we have a special challenge today that
really we have to thank our scientists for
because there's a technical problem.
And to explain that to you, I need
to go back to the 1st century of
Islam, when there was a group of people
who believed that
you had to believe
a certain set of beliefs or you had
exited, you had left the community of Muslims.
These were known as the Khwararij, the secessionists
who left
the beloved caliph Ali ibn Abi Talib, who
was revered by both Shiites and Sunnis
when he agreed to arbitration,
when there was a conflict, and he said,
we have to submit to arbitration. I don't
want to cause bloodshed. And they said, no.
God has determined,
predetermined that you are in this position and
so by submitting to human
arbitration,
you have now become a disbeliever.
And Ali said
said to them, no.
You need to understand
that we, as a human community,
need
to work this out together. And they went
and in a literal,
extremely, completely
literal way,
held the Quran up on their spears and
said, no, we will judge by the book
of God.
And Ali said, but this book is just
some papers between two covers. It cannot speak.
We need to speak on its behalf.
And they weren't convinced and they went out
and they killed, and they murdered, and they
terrorized.
And they declared anyone who didn't agree with
them and agree with their political philosophy
to be an unbeliever.
Now, it sounds familiar,
very familiar
and there has always been a stream of
those kind of extremists, political extremists
throughout history
in my community and in others.
But what's the difference now? What we're facing
here is a struggle over ideology,
but not one that is particularly new,
just particularly
problematic and threatening.
And that's the same with terrorism
and it's the same
with our own military power.
The nuclear threat
that we, and I'm speaking from an American
perspective now,
that we present to the world, the
capability that we have
to defend ourselves in a way that would
destroy all life
is something
that is new to modernity.
And what that means is that it requires
a new ethics.
That
our
ancestors
in theology and law and the religious sciences
gave us some tools for, but we have
different answers
now.
Because the risk and the benefit
of warfare
and combat
and military operations is very different.
The potential for things spiraling out of control
when we take a military action
is so much greater now than ever before
that we have to say,
what really can we do instead?
And it's not an easy answer. It means
long term,
slow work of working together.
So it's a challenge.
We have the potential to repair or to
destroy the earth. That is a theological statement
on my part but it's simply the reality.
And so, we do have
this power to create
godlike
and a power to destroy which is godlike.
And my belief is that
God created us
with this potential to reflect
His attributes.
The Quran does not talk about God in
an anthropocentric way at all. It's not
a
But the Qur'an talks about God as
Creator
and Destroyer.
The
originator
and the ender,
the compassionate,
the loving,
the peaceful,
the giver of peace, the acceptor of repentance
all of these attributes.
And our humanity
is enhanced
and develops the more that we try to
capture these qualities
as individuals and as communities
in a way that is constantly
self reflective and balancing.
Knowing that,
it would only be arrogance to say that
we've captured it all.
And I believe
that there is an innate sense of God,
and this is where my belief in God
comes from.
The prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, said
that
every child is born with fitra,
an innate sense
of
the divine and right and wrong,
but it is their society,
their parents and communities
that shape them into be a particular
religious community or an understanding of religion.
What does that mean? What it means is
that as a Muslim
I am not surprised to find morality
in people who do not believe in God
because I believe that morality is placed in
us by God,
that it is, in fact, innate
and that is something that scientists now are
starting,
in fact, to discover.
That there is an innate sense of morality
and that people when they do
something good they even feel better.
Their immunity is better, it's good for us.
So, that awareness of God is something that
is in us
and we can either accept that as real
or as a delusion.
The fact that
there is an innate
sense of right and wrong,
a desire to do right means that
there should be no
impossibility
of the believer
and the unbeliever to live
in an ethically constructed society.
So, we have hope, we have grounds
for
cooperation,
for living civilly,
for living
productively and allowing
our beliefs
to be
both
shared in a way that benefits all of
us, but also so that we don't have
to give up the most dearly held beliefs
that
do not impact others in a negative way.
And that is the end of my talk.
Thank you.