Author Archives: JoseM-L

Why Slam Islam?

Last February I received a e-mail from an old schoolmate who had forwarded a link to a Website that offered a video of a Marine officer who explained that Islam is a religion that encourages terrorism.  This is what it says:

“Check out AFA ActionAlert – For Veteran’s Day: A vet who understands the enemy.

” . . . the Qur’an (or Koran) itself, the holy book of Islam, contains over 100 verses calling for violence against Christians and Jews. To give just one example, Sura 9:5 says, ‘Slay the idolaters wherever you find them.’

“During a panel discussion sponsored by the Hudson Institute last January, retired Army Lt. Colonel Allen West, who did combat duty in Iraq, responded to a Marine who asked the question, how do you answer people who say that terrorists are following a ‘warped’ version of Islam?

“Col. West’s straightforward assessment: ‘This is not a perversion. They are doing exactly what this book (i.e., the Qur’an) says.

“If you’d like to see the full, unedited video of the exchange, which includes the Marine’s question . . . click here.”

Viewers are then asked to sign a letter thanking Col. West for speaking out, using these words, “We want to thank you for your honesty and directness in telling the American people about the threat that we face from the religion of Islam.” So the enemy is not merely Islamist terrorists, but Islam itself!

The AFA, or American Family Association, is apparently a right-wing Christian organization that is anti-gay, anti-Islam, anti-marriage-freedom, and anti-choice. Go to the Website and see for yourself.  (For instance, last August Bryan Fischer of the AFA wrote that “Permits should not be granted to build even one more mosque in the United States of America . . . for one simple reason: each Islamic mosque is dedicated to the overthrow of the American government.”)

Why am I so disturbed by the e-mail and the message it condones? It is because it is deceitful and misleading. In light of the events still unfolding in countries in the so-called Middle East, where even now more autocratic regimes are collapsing, I feel compelled to respond to the AFA and Lt. Col. West.

Before I begin, let me first set the record straight by making it clear that I am an atheist, albeit raised as a Christian—Episcopalian to be exact. I rejected my faith—all faith—in my early twenties. Years ago, as a teacher of history I had the good fortune to teach a high-school course call the Roots of Western Civilization, beginning with the Ancient Hebrews, then the Greeks, the Romans, Early Christianity, and the Rise of Islam. In each case the students read from the primary texts: the Bible (Old Testament), Homer & Hesiod, Plato & Aristotle, Pliny & Plutarch, the New Testament, the Qur’an, and others. The object of the course was not to proselytize one religion or philosophy over another, of course, but to see how each developed over time and understand why each evolved as it did to become one of the belief systems that we know today and how they have affected Western civilization (not to mention the rest of the world).

Let’s look at some of this history.

Islam arose in the Arabian peninsula in the early 600s CE. Its founder was a merchant, Mohammed, who according to the teachings of Islam, though illiterate, was deeply committed to the worship of God and profoundly troubled by the idolatrous, immoral cults of most of the Arab tribes, especially those that dominated Mecca, site of the Kaaba and the holiest city of the Arab world. Mohammed was a mystic as well, and eventually he had visions in which the angel Gabriel told him to recite. What Mohammed recited, according to Muslim belief, was what would become the Qur’an, the final word or revelation of God to humanity. When I say the “final word” I mean that Islam teaches that God gave exactly the same teachings of morality and belief to Adam (the first Prophet), then to Abraham, then Moses, and then Jesus. In each case, the followers of these prophets distorted the original words of God, so He, in his mercifulness, offered humanity a last chance to get the message straight, and that message is the Qur’an. As it was written in Arabic—in a script invented just for the purpose of preserving God’s word—there could be no authorized version of the Qur’an other than the Arabic version. (According to tradition, therefore, all translations are suspect—as the Italians put it, “traduttore, tradittore”.)

One of the chief reasons that Mohammed, chosen as the last and greatest of God’s prophets, would so zealously spread his faith was to end the immoral and wrong-minded idolatry of the Arabs of his time, especially in Mecca. (It was to these idolators that the sura quoted by Col. West was addressed, not to Christians and Jews.)  The Year One in Islam is, in the common calendar of today, 622 CE. It marks the year that Mohammed fled Mecca with his followers to Medina to avoid being slain by the idolaters. By 632 (or AH 10) Mohammed had returned to Mecca with an army, defeated his enemies, smashed all the idols that surrounded the holy Kaaba (according to Islamic belief, it was built by Adam and then restored by Abraham), and established Islam as the religion of Arabia.

Islam teaches that the Arab people were the descendants of Ishmael, son of Abraham and the Egyptian Hagar. (For the story of Hagar, read Genesis 16:1-16, 21:9-17 and 25:12)

As is evident from the fact that the prophets of Allah include Adam, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, Mohammed was very familiar with the Jewish and Christian faiths. He didn’t so much spurn them as build a new faith on their foundations, though with the culture and civilization of the Arab peoples in mind. For Mohammed, and in the Qur’an, Jews and Christians are People of the Book, for they too have learned of God from Abraham (the Scrolls of Abraham) & Moses (the Torah), and in the case of the Christians, from Jesus (the Injit or Gospels). (Indeed, Jesus and Mary are mentioned several times in the Qur’an—always with respect.)

Thus, the following suras:

• And do not dispute with the followers of the Book except by what is best, except those of them who act unjustly, and say: We believe in that which has been revealed to us and revealed to you, and our God and your God is One, and to Him do we submit. [Qur’an 29:46]

Also:

• Verily! Those who believe and those who are Jews and Christians, and Sabians, whoever believes in God and the Last Day and do righteous good deeds shall have their reward with their Lord, on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve . [Qur’an 2:62]

As People of the Book, Jews and Christians were permitted to live in Muslim society, adhering to their Abrahamic faiths, as long as they paid a special tax to the Muslim authorities. Indeed, Christians and Jews sometimes rose to very high positions in the Islamic societies in which they lived.

There are Five Pillars of Islam:

1. Sahalat, or the profession of belief in one god only, by reciting the words, “[I believe] there is no god but God and Muhammad is His messenger.”
2. Salat, or praying five times a day, always facing Mecca; a believer should always wash before prayers.
3. Sawm, or fasting, especially during the month of Ramadan
4. Zakat, or alms-giving (usually 2.5% of one’s income or the equivalent)
5. Hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca by a believer at least once in one’s lifetime.

For most Sunni Muslims, these are the only five Pillars that are admissible and to add another would be to change the faith, which is heretical, because God established Islam directly through Mohammed, the last and greatest of His Prophets. But there are some Karjite groups that have splintered from the main body of Islam and argue that there is a Sixth Pillar, Jihad. The Taliban and Al Qaeda subscribe to this belief, while the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni organization, does not. For the Shi’ia, Jihad is one of the Ten Practices of the Religion.

Jihad, or struggle, by the way, is an obligation of all Muslims, but it can mean any of three things: “an internal struggle to maintain faith, the struggle to improve the Muslim society, or the struggle in a holy war”, according to the Wikipedia article on the word, and, “It can simply mean striving to live a moral and virtuous life, spreading and defending Islam as well as fighting injustice and oppression, among other things.” For the Shi’ia, Jihad is “the struggle to please God.”

So much for Col. West’s so-called expertise regarding Islam.

The events of the last months, which has seen the overthrow of dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt, and strong protest movements in Bahrain and Yemen, as well as the current attempt to topple Kaddafi in Libya, have been conducted largely by Muslims who seek not an Islamic government but a secular one. The Islamist movement has not played a significant role in any of these struggles against tyranny, oppression, and injustice. It can certainly be said, then, that these events are all a form of Jihad, though no one is using the term, perhaps because it usually connotes the meaning, in the Western mind, of Jihad as warfare against the West.

Indeed, just what is this Jihad waged by some Islamists against the West? Aren’t Christians and Jews people of the Book, after all? Well, for that minority of Muslims who wish to destroy America, wipe out Israel, and punish Western Europe, it all has to do with the idea of Jihad as a war against oppression and injustice by the West over the course of the last century-and-a-half. After all, who have been overthrown or protested against so far? Dictators and Kings that the West supported, going back to the time of the Cold War. Oppressive and unjust rulers all. We even overthrew Sadaam and his government, but bear in mind that we not only helped put him in power to begin with but also helped him during his unprovoked war against Iran. We were indifferent to his well-known depredations against his own people and only turned on him after he invaded Kuwait, and we claimed that we were liberating Iraqis from his oppressive rule after we’d trounced the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

The vast majority of Muslims are engaged in a different kind of Jihad and are not anti-Western or anti-American per se; they just want us to stay out of their lives.  It is the Muslim extremists who, like Col. West, fail to understand that the Q’uran calls for tolerance with the “People of the Book” and that the enemy who must be defeated were the idolators who controlled Mecca when Mohammed began his war against them.

Much more could be said, but I think and hope that what I’ve written represents a clarification of what Islam is and is not. It is a great monotheistic faith, like its kindred religions, Judaism & Christianity. It is not, in and of itself, a terrorist religion any more than are the other two, yet all have engaged in warfare in the name of religion. As for Christian terrorism? Well, think of the Crusades in which thousands of Muslims were murdered for their faith, for example, or the internecine warfare between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland. What about the institution of slavery, which could be and was justified by references to the Bible? Is Zionism about justice for anyone who is not an Israeli Jew? Ask the Palestinians; they know.

It’s not difficult to understand why there is so much hostility towards the West.  The Islamist extremists feed on this resentment and anger, but the point is that they are extremists, and represent a very small minority of the Muslim world as a whole.  Clearly, Col. West’s interpretation of the Qur’an aligns very nicely with that of Al Qaeda; focus on the sutras that tell you what you want (ignoring the context for which they were written, and dismiss all the others that don’t reinforce your prejudices.  Hm, aren’t there Christians who do that with the Bible?  Think of John Brown, an American terrorist if ever there was one.

The world is not a simple place, and there is nothing straightforward about human institutions either, including religious ones. It shouldn’t take an atheist to know that.  Let us have no more slamming of Islam.

“Resolving Archaeology,” a talk given at the Archaeological Society of Staten Island

Distant view of Palais de la Cité, including Ste.-ChapelleThis paper, “Resolving Archaeology:  Tenets and Technology,” was delivered at the Archaeological Society of Staten Island, on the campus of Wagner College, on 21 March 2010, by José Moreno-Lacalle, at the invitation of the President of the Society, Linda Gilbert.  It consisted of a talk supported by a PowerPoint slide presentation.  The PDF version of the paper incorporates most of the images of that presentation.

http://blog.riversrunby.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Resolving-archaeology-blog.pdf

Poems by Trần Dương Tường: Đan

Trần Dương Tường is a Vietnamese intellectual, art critic, and poet. My wife, Vals, and I met him and his wife Trinh (who'd just retired as a curator the National Museum of Vietnamese History) at their home in Hà Nội in 2004 and we found him to be a most extraordinary individual, a man of great intelligence, thoughtfulness, and humanity. During the war against the French occupation, he was a Việt Minh soldier. He told us how, after he and his fellow soldiers had overrun a French outpost, he found a trove of French literature, and he took as many of the books with him as he could carry. This was the beginning of his lifelong love and appreciation of literature.

He was, of course, opposed to the American War in Việt Nam and he was a member of the Vietnamese War Crimes Commission investigating American crimes against the people of Việt Nam. When he came to the States in 1995, he wrote about some of his experiences in our country. I find them very moving and beautiful, especially the one that he wrote on his visit to the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC. (What I find remarkable is that he wrote them in English, which I believe was self-taught.)  So I share them with those of you who appreciate fine poetry . . .

By the way, as Vals and I departed, I left him a copy of Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carry, a fictionalized account of his experiences in the Vietnam War–an extraordinary work that was nominated for a Pulitzer and won the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger. I've long wondered what Dương Tường thought of it.

Trần Dương Tường: ÐÀN

Remembering Alejandro Robaina

Valley of Viñales

Just before Christmas 2000, I went with my wife and two New York friends to visit the famous Las Vegas de Robaina (in this case it was Finca la Piña, located in Cuchillas de Barbacoa.)  We had traveled from Havana to Pinar del Rio in a rented Peugeot, stopping en route to visit one of the sugar mills that had been owned by the company that my father had worked for BC, once known as Central Merceditas and now called Central Sandino.  The less than friendly response to our visit there led us to go immediately to the tobacco fields further West in Cuba’s westernmost province.  We stayed at a hotel with a fabulous view of Viñales, a verdant valley punctuated by massive limestone escarpments that seemed to rise out of the valley floor like dragon’s teeth.  In Cuba these were called mogotes, and they were especially stunning to view against the spectacle of an evanescent rainbow.

We left the next day for the region known for Cuba’s (and perhaps the world’s) best tobacco, Vuelta Abajo.  In the late morning the four of us, using the Knopf guidebook that we had with us, made our way to the vicinity of the Robaina finca, and needing directions, pulled up at a bus stop with perhaps twenty people waiting patiently . . . for what else was there for them to do?  All but one, that is, a young man who eagerly came to my window and asked if we were looking for the Vega Robaina.  With my affirmative, and without further ado, he quickly took his place in the back seat—much to the discomfiture of our friends in back—as though we’d been expecting him to join us for the ride.  As it turned out, we never would have found the farm on our own, for there was no sign and no road of any kind, but Alexis (for that was his name) pointed out a cart track for us to follow.  Make that a bullock cart track, just to be clear.  So we bounced our way for about ten minutes until we pulled into a shaded parking space.

I had been smoking a contraband cigar that I’d purchased earlier in the day when a handsome Cuban in a panama hat came bounding up to greet us, asking when he saw my cigar if I were a professional smoker.  I smiled at the idea and simply told him that I’d bought the cigar and 50 like it on the way over (for all of $15.00 in American money).  When Alexis got out of the car he was greeted familiarly—we found out later that he was an itinerant farm laborer who’d done work there.

Alejandro Robaina & nephews

Alejandro Robaina & nephews

We all got out of the car—it had been a long drive—and stretched.  Then we were led to the veranda of a colonial-period home—a rather elegant structure to be the farmhouse, and there on the porch to greet us was none other than Alejandro Robaina himself.  Clearly, he was used to greeting visitors who dropped in unannounced, but it was a very warm welcome that he and his two nephews gave the four of us.

We introduced ourselves as Americans, I myself having lived in Havana as a youth until the Revolution.  I hadn’t been back to Cuba in more than 40 years, but my Cuban accent was still clearly apparent.  He smiled as I spoke, then turned to his older nephew and told him to go inside the house and retrieve his portable humidor, which, as it turned out, was an embossed-leather briefcase that held, in various compartments, perhaps a hundred cigars.  Still smiling, but with a certain grand air he said, “Not even the President of the United States can have these cigars unless I give them to him.”  Then he proffered us each a Presidente, for that was the name of the cigar—his, and Cuba’s, best.

We all lit up, and he went on to explain to us how the Robaina brand came about.  It happened suddenly and without his knowledge or consent.  He heard from friends in Havana that a new cigar brand was being sold by the government bearing his name!  The reason was quite simple, of course.  First of all, the tobacco grown at Las Vegas Robaina, some 200,000 corojo plants, was considered the very finest for the wrapper leaves—the most important ones—of the cigar.  Such was the reputation of the tobacco that someone in the government Agricultural Ministry (one supposes) came up with the idea of creating this expensive new brand of cigar.  Not that Alejandro Robaina needed to be asked, and not that they cared to ask him if they could use his name.  After all, this is Castro’s Cuba.

Vega Robaina, tilling with oxen

The old man smiled and shrugged, saying that it at least meant that he was now being used by the government as an ambassador-at-large for Cuba and for its cigars.  He was happy to travel and enjoyed it.  After all, before that travel abroad had been impossible for him.  We asked if he actually owned the vega (the Cuban term for a tobacco farm) and he explained that he did, indeed.  Back in the early 60s, when the Agrarian Reform movement was started, with the intention of taking land away from the foreign companies that dominated the sugar industry and from the latifundistas, or absentee landholders, the government also took the vegas away from their owners, but in this case it quickly became apparent that without the special knowledge and expertise of the former owners, the tobacco crop was going to fail, so specialized is the nature of the crop.  The land was then returned to the owners with the understanding that they could only sell the entire tobacco crop to the government at a price fixed by it.  (Consequently, given that the price paid to the growers by the government was so low, it is estimated that at least 15% or more of each year’s crop is made into home-made cigars sold on the black market for American dollars.)

The cigars we smoked were sweet, full-flavored, and easy on the throat (not that you’re supposed to inhale, but it happens).  I’m not a habitual cigar smoker at all nor enamored of the aroma of cigars usually, but these were different.  Perhaps it was the circumstances, but we all know that we’d had a very special experience.

We drove away, again with Alexis, for he was instructed by the Robainas to take us to the best paladar (family-owned restaurant) in the city of Pinar del Rio.  I took one last photograph of the farm, as the land was being turned by plows pulled by oxen.

All the above is as I remember it, ten years ago.  I may have gotten some of the facts and details a tad askew, but then, memory can fail us, but the essentials are nevertheless correct.

I was saddened to learn that Alejandro Robaina died this past Saturday (18 April).  But then, he was 91 and had led a full life, and a good one, I think.  I shall never forget his hospitality and generosity.