Here is a study in contrasts. Two Muslim scholars review my book and come away with strikingly different conclusions -- or at least, emphasizing very different aspects. That's not surprising, since, as one reviewer wrote, it's really three books in one. This in itself supports what I've been writing about regarding hermeneutics: the same text can look vastly different, depending on the reader!
First, Riad Nourallah (PhD, Cambridge University) is a Senior Lecturer at the Diplomatic Academy of London, University of Westminster. His review is published in the Muslim Education Quarterly (Vol. 24, #1, 2, 2011).
Second, Mahan Mirza (PhD, Yale University) is Vice President for Academic Affairs, Zaytuna University, Berkeley, California. This is a new Islamic university (first of its kind in the US), which is not yet accredited. His review appeared in the latest issue of the American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences (Vol. 28, #4, 2011).
Amina Wadud, though one of many contemporary Muslim feminists, is certainly the most contraversial. This is mainly due to her activism over the years, which culminated in her leading prayers at a jumaa prayer service in Washington, DC in 2005. It was covered by the press all over the Muslim world and even elicited some death threats against her (you can look up a YouTube interview in which she speaks about this).
This is a section of a longer article that in the end was published without this section.
A cautionary word: Muslim women all over the world are pushing for a rethinking of many traditional gender norms that still impeed them from fulfilling their calling as God's trustees on an equal footing with their brothers, fathers and sons. And no, you don't have to go as far as Amina Wadud to make a good Islamic case for that. My point in this essay as an outsider, and in line with my arguments in Earth, Empire and Sacred Text, is simply that she has worked out a theology that is more consistent and compelling than many others. And also, I don't think people of faith can ignore the postmodern intellectual context of today. I believe it can work for us and enrich our understanding of how God wants us to live out our faith in today's world.
I'm a patriotic American, grateful to God for the many achievements of our nation -- its democratic ideals of freedom and equality, the prosperity it has afforded so many immigrants over the last two centuries, and its willingness to engage in self-criticism (think of the Civil Rights movement). If you've read Earth, Empire and Sacred Text, you will know how much I opposed the Iraq invasion before it happened and the war there and in Afghanistan as they progressed.
Our last troops pulled out of Iraq this week (Dec. 17, 2011). I wished our President had not declared the war a success -- he of all people! But this is the logic of empire. With almost 1,000 army bases worldwide and a defense budget that nearly equals the combined military budgets of all other countries, we project massive, indeed colossal power. As a follower of Jesus, I take the phenomenon of human sin seriously, and huge concentrations of power terrify me. Yes, power can be used for good; but look around you today and throughout human history. Evil can so easily infiltrate it, and often hijack it entirely.
This is a small vignette of an instance in US history when power was badly misused (an excerpt from my book, Ch. 11). I bring this up because humantrustees is about building on global networks of faith and peacebuilding. In the ensuing dialogue, therefore, we must be be honest with ourselves, ready to recognize our own faults before we attempt to highlight anyone else's. As Jesus said, "take out the log from your own eye before mentioning the speck in your brother's eye." This works for us individually; but it's also good to remember while we interact as citizens of many different countries.
Steven P. Blackburn, scholar and librarian at the Hartford Seminary, wrote the first review of Earth, Empire and Sacred Text. It came out in October 2010 in the International Bulletin of Missionary Research. I will be posting three other reviews shortly.
This is a small excerpt from Chapter 10 of Earth, Empire and Sacred Text, which seeks to trace the Christian and Jewish exegesis of Genesis 1 and 2 over the centuries, particularly on the issue of humanity in the image of God (often referred to in Latin: imago dei) and God's mandate for humankind to rule over the earth in his stead. For the Jewish side, I was blessed to discover the following book:
Cohen, Jeremy. "Be Fertile and Increase, Fill the Earth and Master It”: The Ancient and Medieval Career of a Biblical Text (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Universtity Press, 1989).
Then in a conversation with ethicist Glen Stassen (Fuller Theological Seminary) a few years back I found out that he had written about the Puritan roots of the human rights concept. By the same occasion I want to recommend his pioneering work on "Just Peacemaking" -- a concept now that has caught on in several parts of the world.
This is an excerpt from Earth, Empire and Sacred Text, found in Ch. 2, "Beyond Modernism: Time, Space and the Self." I believe Muslims and Christians, in order to make their dialog more productive, must take a serious look at the intellectual, economic, social and political context of our contemporary world. Since Muslims live predominantly in poorer countries (Arabian Gulf Arabs are a small minority!), they are naturally more concerned about the disparity of power between rich and poor states, and about how the current "neoliberal" capitalist system on a global scale works to maintain the status quo rather than to empower the weak.
Hence, my book leans on a multi-disciplinary approach that seeks to bring the social sciences and the humanities to bear on how best to understand the challenges ahead of those who want to make the world more just and peaceful. Here I use one of the most quoted authors in the humanities, British geographer and social theorist David Harvey, now Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York CUNY.