Quaker author Michael Birkel felt that we aren’t hearing the whole truth about Islam, so he went out to discover it for himself.
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Resources:
Read Friends Journal’s review of Michael Birkel’s book
Qur’an in Conversation
Reviewed by Ellen Michaud
November 1, 2014
By Michael Birkel. Baylor University Press, 2014. 292 pages. $39.95/hardcover.
With Qur’an in Conversation, Michael Birkel—author, scholar, and professor of religion at Earlham School of Religion—has opened a significant conversation with 20 North American Muslim scholars, professors, and imams that illuminates the evolution of what Birkel terms a “distinctively North American expression” of Islam. Birkel writes:
While it is admittedly not an easy season to be a Muslim here in an age of such suspicion, distrust, and misrepresentation, at the same time it is intellectually and spiritually an extraordinary time and place to be a Muslim thinker and believer. Muslims from a great variety of ethnic and sectarian backgrounds meet here and respond to the particular challenges and opportunities of North America in the early twenty-first century. Political and social realities that created tensions among these groups in their places of origin often have less meaning in this new context, allowing for a vibrant coming together of people and ideas. Just as Muslims found unique and pertinent manifestations in other lands and cultures, distinctly North American expressions are evolving in response to contemporary needs and conditions.
Drawing together myriad voices that reflect this emerging Islam, Birkel reveals an Islam rooted in reverence for the Qur’an “as it is understood, and lived out in North America.”
The result is a significant gift. In a series of 24 reflective essays focused on verses and themes within the Qur’an, the voices Birkel has gathered—including those of nine women—speak with clarity, intelligence, passion, and devotion to God.
While too many North Americans tend to view Muslims as “backward people from far away” who practice a religion that is “oppressive of women, intolerant of other faiths, zealous to impose a tyrannical theocracy, and incapable of freedom of thought,” the conversations to which Birkel’s essayists contribute challenge that view and show us a completely different people. They reveal Muslims who are concerned with not just the “right” way to read the Qur’an, but with reading it in the light of its core messages—messages that emphasize mercy, justice, kindness, good deeds, care for others, and religious diversity as a divine intention.
The conversation Birkel opens among his contributors is particularly important because while American Muslims have been having these conversations among themselves for 50 years or so, the North American non-Muslim has generally not been a part of the dialogue.
This book invites us to listen in.
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Transcript:
There is within Islam a sacred saying called a “hadith,” in which God is speaking and God says, “I was a hidden treasure and I desired to be known.” This was one of the motivations of the act of creation itself. “I was a hidden treasure and I desired to be known.” If that desire— that deep desire—is imprinted on the very fabric of the universe, then our coming to know one another across religious boundaries is a sacred task and a holy opportunity.
Reading the Qur’an as a Quaker
We Quakers have a commitment—we call it a testimony—to truth telling. And it was pretty obvious to me that not the whole truth was being told about Islam or about Muslims. In the media we would hear about extremists who live far away and never hear about our Muslim neighbors who live here: what do they think?
Conversations About the Qur’an
So I traveled among Muslims who live from Boston to California, and I just had one question for them: would you please choose a passage in your holy book and talk to me about it? The result was a series of precious conversations, because what they brought to the conversation was their love for their faith, for God and for the experience they had of encountering God’s revelation through the Qur’an.
The Experience of Reading the Qur’an
One of my Muslim teachers told me, when I asked him, “what is it like to read the Qur’an?” and he said it’s this experience of overwhelming divine compassion. You feel yourself swept up into this divine presence where you feel so loved that nothing else matters. Any other desires you had in the world just disappear. You are where you want to be. At the same time, you feel this overwhelming sense of compassion for others. And he told me if you don’t feel that, you’re not reading the Qur’an.
A Diversity of Voices
I spoke with Muslims from many places that are within the spectrum of the Islamic community. I spoke to Sunnis, I spoke to Shiites, I spoke to Sufis, I spoke to men, I spoke to women. I spoke to people of many ethnic heritages. If there’s one thing I learned, it is that whatever you think Islam is, it’s wider than that.
One imam—who was by 39 generations removed a descendant of the prophet Muhammad himself—spoke to me and said that for him, one of the jewels of the Qur’an was this notion that you do not repel evil with evil. You drive away evil with goodness. And if you drive away evil with good, then you find that the person whom you regarded as your enemy can become your friend.
Another Muslim teacher taught me that according to the Qur’an, when we hear about good and evil, our task is not to divide the world into two teams—here are the good guys, here are the bad guys—but rather, our inclination towards evil is found in every heart and that is where the fundamental conflict resides. This to me sounded very close to the message of early Quakers.
Encountering the Qur’an as a Non-Muslim
I believe that for a non-Muslim, encountering the Qur’an for the first time might be perplexing. You might imagine being parachuted down into the book of Jeremiah. There you land: you don’t know the territory, here are these prophetic utterances (which is how Muslims see the Qur’an) and in Jeremiah they don’t always have names attached to them. They’re not in chronological order and they’re not thematically arranged. I believe the Qur’an can read like that to a newcomer. That’s why I think it’s valuable to read it in the company of persons who have been reading it their whole lives.
What is it like to read someone else’s scripture? I think it’s quite possible that it can change you in ways that I can’t predict for any reader, except to say that it will make your life richer. It will make your life better to know this. I am not a trained scholar of Islam. I did some preparation for this project, but mostly what I did was go out and talk to my neighbors, and it changed my life. And so I would like to encourage anyone who’s hearing these words to go out, cross religious boundaries, talk to their neighbors, because your life will be changed too.
Discussion Questions:
Have you connected with someone across religious boundaries? How were you changed by the experience?
Michael Birkel says that the Quaker commitment to truth telling inspired him to travel the country having conversations with Muslims in those areas. If you could embark on a similar project, what topic would you pick? How would you go about it?
The views expressed in this video are of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Friends Journal or its collaborators.
