New Position with New Zealand 'Islamic Studies Group'

It is no surprise that the study of Islam and Muslims is of paramount importance in the world today. Yet, with recent events in France, Belgium, Syria/Iraq, Yemen, Nigeria, and Australia (to name a few) the global understanding of Islam and its transnational, de- and re-territorialized, and local dimensions is evermore vital. 

Take for example the Maori agriculturalist living in the Hawke's Bay region of New Zealand. A respected man in the community and one of the world's "500 most influential Muslims," Te Amorangi Kireka-Whaanga recently declared his allegiance to the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) and "founded" his own "Islamic state" in the town of Hastings. 

Why did a Maori New Zealander state his fidelity with a jihadist organization in the Middle East? What was the reaction of the local population? His neighbors? The Muslim community he once represented? When did Mr. Kireka-Whaanga convert? What were the circumstances? What are the local dynamics of the community? Are there any connections between that community and Syria and/or Iraq?

These are just some of the questions that need to be asked. Just one of the instances of Islam in Oceania, and around the globe, that need to be studied, apperceived, and explained. 

It is in this context of exploration, and cognizance, of global Islam that I am excited to announce I have now been named a Corresponding Associate Research Member with the University of Waikato's Islamic Studies Group (UWISG). 

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The Islamic Centre of Palmerston North, New Zealand. 

The University of Waikato (Te Whara Wānanga o Waikato)  is located in Hamilton, New Zealand. With strengths in computer science and information systems, economics, education, law, and languages, the University serves not only the south Auckland populace, but also the central region of Aotearoa's North Island. The University has over 30 different research centers and groups, including the UWISG. 

The UWISG is "a non-partisan and a not-for-profit organisation committed to the objective of fostering academic insight and understanding on Islamic phenomena through interdisciplinary research initiatives." The group hosts seminars and presentations, publishes a bi-annual review, and provides public relations services and consultation in the public and private sectors. 

As a Corresponding Associate Research Member I am associated with the UWISG, but continuing my studies and work at University of Florida in Gainesville. I will contribute by writing for the Waikato Islamic Review via articles and reviews, present UWISG workshops, talks, and/or symposia at the discretion of the UWISG management, and provide commentary advice/support as and when called upon.

I am more than honored and pleased to join the UWISG as a Corresponding Associate Research Member and look forward to continuing my study of global Islamic dynamics and community and sharing some of that insight with you here at the blog. 

In the meantime, I encourage you to look into the University of Waikato, its Islamic Studies Group, and perhaps read more about Islam in New Zealand via the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand. 

Being an Apostolic fashionista

*A guest post from Megan Geiger. 

Thank God for winter.

Summer in Florida is not the easiest time to be Apostolic. With temperatures in the high 90’s and enough humidity to make the mosquitoes grumpy, the daily task of choosing an outfit becomes something of a test of ingenuity. 

As an Apostolic Pentecostal, I belong to a group of believers that adheres to standards of dress that promote modesty, based on scriptural interpretations of covering with a little Bible belt flavor and fashion thrown in. That means that my body is covered from my knees to my neck to the middle of my bicep in every season, no matter the heat index.

Today’s fashion world and shopping scene present some challenges to the Apostolic girl looking for modest clothing. Outfits are often feats of layering, pieced together from store-bought articles that would be considered immodest by themselves. Knee-length pencil skirts are often too tight to be worn alone, but are perfect for lengthening the hem of a cocktail dress that only falls to mid-thigh, sleeveless tops are only wearable under jackets or as a way to raise the neckline of another shirt, and thin, long-sleeved undershirts are worth their weight in platinum as all-purpose coverage under sleeveless dresses, tank-tops, and sheer materials. On any given day an Apostolic girl may leave her house wearing two or three tops and multiple skirts (never pants, by the way, as those are considered to be “the apparel of a man”). 

A solution to this problem of overdressing would be to revert to making our own clothing, sewing modest pieces from a single piece of fabric and leaving the layers for the snowbirds. But for us, an essential part of living our Christian walk “in the world but not of the world” is looking modestly stylish, approachable, and even attractive. It simply won’t do to just walk away from modern fashion and resort to homemade gingham shifts; there’s a great feeling of accomplishment that comes with taking a “worldly” aesthetic and turning it into something holy, and even haute.

That’s not to say that our style choices allow us to blend in. On the contrary, we’re supposed to stick out; as evangelicals with a world to save, the way we style our bodies is sometimes our greatest missionary resource, opening doors for non-threatening conversations with strangers. A big part of that is the hair. 

Oh, the hair. 

Based on several verses, 1 Corinthians 11 adjures women to enter sacred spaces with their heads covered and also say that long hair is a glory for females. The majority of Apostolic women choose to leave their hair uncut. While hair length depends largely on genetics and diet, many women sport tresses that fall well past their waists, some with locks that drag the ground, a living rebuttal to the myth that split ends prevent growth. For many of us, our hair is a canvas for artistic expression, a marker of our identity. 

And let me tell you, we’ve gotten good at fixin’ it. 

Anyone who believes that hair teasing died with the 1980’s has never set foot in an Apostolic rally or convention. While the days of using mini cereal boxes and paper towel rolls as structural aids to support massive beehive ‘dos are gone, big hair has never fallen out of vogue completely. Each stylist has her own set of tools and tricks to use in sculpting her Sunday silhouette. Even loyalty to particular brands of hairspray, mousse, bobby pins, clips, and volumizing products is fierce. At important events, like national conferences, women can expect to spend anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour on their hairdos, rendering striking results. Styles vary from couture, asymmetrical constructions of spirals and braids to slightly more tame arrangements that resemble something from a wedding magazine or a prom picture. Even the most ornate styles are tested before service to make sure they will stay in place throughout the vigorous worship that accompanies Pentecostal devotion; bobby pins make mean shrapnel if flung with enough speed during a good “shout song.” However, it’s expected that we’ll all leave service looking a little rough, since worship isn’t about looking pretty and the hair and clothes are less about looking good and more about being a part of the community.

To be honest, a well-layered outfit and a well-coiffed hairdo has little to do with piety and more to do with identity. It would be easy to adhere to our standards of modesty without bothering so much with fashion, and some ladies do choose to stick to more low-maintenance styles. Still, for plenty of young women, experiments in Apostolic fashion are a way to stay separated from ‘the World’ while remaining tied in to a larger community of practitioners. It’s a marker of belonging, and a common aesthetic that we can be proud of, despite feeling different in the context of mainstream American culture.

All of us Apostolic girls have at some point lived the following scenario: a familiar silhouette catches my eye in a crowded mall or at a theme park. The woman walking towards me is wearing a skirt that falls well past her knee, a long-sleeved shirt, and a contrasting camisole that covers her chest nearly to her collarbone, despite the heat of the day. I quickly check her wrists and ears for jewelry; there is none. Another covert sweep confirms that she isn’t wearing any noticeable makeup. A slightly too-ornate bun at the back of her neck seals the deal; she’s one of us. If our eyes meet, we exchange a quick smile and perhaps a small wave.

Maybe it’s a sign of solidarity, of letting each other know that we’re not alone in the struggle to be different from the norm. Or maybe it’s just an appreciation of something in others that we see in ourselves. The Pentecostal “Namaste.” 

Either way, it’s assurance for each of us that our culture is being preserved and promoted, and that our distinctiveness has neither been swallowed up by worldly fashions nor succumbed to dowdiness. It reminds us that our bodies are the billboards of our faith. Even during long-sleeved Florida summers, it’s something we prize. 

*Thanks to Megan Geiger for her guest post. Megan is a fellow graduate student at University of Florida and received her B.A. in Spanish with a dual minor in Anthropology and English Literature from the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College of Florida Atlantic University, where she was chosen as the Stan and Renee Wimberly Scholar for the class of 2014. Her undergraduate thesis focused on the changes in the social discourses present in an archive of sermons from a Pentecostal church, and she aims to continue in that vein of research during her time in the Master’s program. Her other research interests include Pentecostalism and immigration, Pentecostalism in Latin America, American religious history, and the role of women in Christian fundamentalism. She is an active member of the United Pentecostal Church, International.

*This post is also available at Faith Goes Pop with Read the Spirit and Sacred Duty with Houston Belief. 

The problem with American Muslims

The problem with American Muslims is not, necessarily, that they want to enforce the shari’ah in the U.S. Nor is it that Islam is an inherently violent religion or that Muslims in the U.S. are some sort of secret "fifth column" lurking in our midst. It is not even that Muslims are not vocal enough in denouncing acts of terror perpetrated in the name of their faith. 

No, the problem with American Muslims is not their complicity in violence, their silence during crisis issues, or their religion in and of itself. 

Instead the problem with, or rather for, American Muslims are the categories and conceptions, from within and without, that are forced upon them and within which they are required to forge their identity, and make sense of the world, according to their faith. 

What are these categories and concepts? As Michael Muhamad Knight shared at the University of Florida last month, “American Islam is still fighting for its space and contesting false dichotomies of authenticity on all sides.” On one side, American Muslims are fighting to be considered truly “American” by the country they call home. On the other, they are struggling to be considered genuinely “Muslim” as they work out how to submit to God and country, knowing full well that they are shaped by the context in which they live.  

Furthermore, Muslims are constantly barraged with questions that force them, as individuals or as minority communities, to answer for every word spoken or every deed done in the name of their faith. Their responses immediately categorize them as either violent or peaceable, moderate or extremist, fundamentalist or progressive when, in reality, what Islam is to the people who believe and practice it is shaped by their own personal experiences, the historical thrust of their faith, their current context, and an interplay and tension with the global umma (Muslim community). In a word, there are numerous Islams — structurally and interpersonally. Thus, it is unfair of outsiders (or insiders for that matter) to point the finger at Muslims and demand a response for where they stand on major crises and for their response to be gauged as authentic or not, representative or not, Muslim or not, moderate or not, American or not, violent or not, fundamentalist or not, etc. 

Indeed, it also unfair of us to do so without concomitantly interrogating our own philosophy or religion’s history, words, deeds, and present posture on such issues. 

Abdullah’i An-Naim, the Chandler Professor of Law at Emory University and an activist engaged in human rights issues, Islam, and cross-cultural crises spoke to this topic in a convincing manner last week at the University of Florida in conjunction with its Center for Global Islamic Studies.

An-Naim argued that “religious identity cannot be framed by fixed modalities” such as the ones noted above. Especially not in progressive, modern, societies such as the U.S. 

Why? Contending that Islamicity is fluid, An-Naim posited that Muslims are constantly contesting and remolding what it means to be Muslim given their current context, geo-political trends, philosophical currents, and personal experiences. Unfortunately, he intimated, too often this debate, both internal and external, is overpowered by colonial discourses still shaped by former, or present, imperial powers (implicating the U.S. here and its continual involvement in the affairs of Muslim nations for its own ends). 

An-Naim even critiqued post-colonial confabulations, saying that while this discourse was, and is, crucial to the individual and collective understanding of Muslims in the modern world, Muslims must move beyond allowing colonial powers (and their concepts and categories) to define who they are or who they could be. 

Looping back to where we started, colonial forces continue to compel Muslims to justify and explain their viability as Muslims (or Americans, peaceable people, etc.) according to colonial discourse, not Muslim conceptualizations of what it means to be Muslim.

This is why al-Dawla al-Islamiyya (a.k.a. ISIS, ISIL, IS) is so compelling to many young Muslims seeking out an identity in a Westernized, globalized, and secularized world. Feeling isolated and de-centered, many Muslims see in ISIS an opportunity to establish Islamic sovereignty along Muslim lines and to buck colonial categories and constrictions.  

In place of the Islamist, post-Islamist, Salafist, or jihadist post-colonial projects An-Naim proposes a “past-colonial” program that serves as an alternative Muslim vision that encourages tolerant public space and ample room for dissent, discussion, disbelief, and dialogue. 

To do this, An-Naim argued, Muslims must come to terms with the post-colonial and legitimize and indigenize its concepts and imperatives in a vividly Muslim way so that they can uphold them as their own and not just as a matter of course or according to colonial philosophies. 

Novelly, An-Naim suggested that the shari’ah is integral to this process of re-engaging Islamic agency in defining what it means to be Muslim in the modern world.

I ask you, in this moment, to suspend your preconceptions of the shari’ah and listen to An-Naim’s argumentation. From his perspective, the shari’ah is not a fixed institution, that it has no moment of foundation, nor is it internally or eternally consistent. Instead, he posits, the shari’ah is an evolving process of establishing Islamic law according to intergenerational consensus that seeks to make Islamic law immediately relevant to the formation of past-colonial institutions and spaces in countries where Muslims are either majorities or minorities. This means that, for An-Naim, the shari’ah cannot be enacted as a state law because, by its very nature, it denies formulaic notions in that it constantly needs to adapt to new contexts through constant consultation among numerous Muslim, and non-Muslim, constituencies. 

Certainly, An-Naim’s proposals are revolutionary for Muslims and non-Muslims alike. We are not accustomed, or at times comfortable, with this type of talk. 

The key here, to simplify his argument a bit, is Muslim agency in defining what it means to be Muslim and live in the modern world, as either a majority or minority. 

Still, I inquired of him that night, what is the role of non-Muslims (like myself) and scholars, or interested parties, in changing the conversation and creating spaces for Muslim agencies in this discourse? 

An-Naim suggested that Muslims and non-Muslims work hard at creating solidarities across religious boundaries and that non-Muslims stridently commit to not stripping Muslims of their right to decide what it means to be Muslim. 

He had this great quote for those of us in “the ivory tower of academia” that is not only applicable in this discussion, but in many areas of public dialogue and activism. He said, “academics are not just academics; they are humans too. Scholarship can never be neutral. Our feigned neutrality is in itself a position in favor of maintaining the status quo" (Islamophobia, violence enacted in the name of Islam). He continued, "we should engage this topic from our humanity and take a stance conditioned by our positioning, advocating for a change of the status quo and the need to engage in a past-colonial discourse.” 

In this solidarity and active dialouge, Muslims will need to deconstruct (and reconstruct) what it means to be Muslim and non-Muslims, especially those in the majority (in my case the U.S. as state power and Christianity as dominant religion) need to deconstruct, and reconstruct, what it means to be a hegemonic power and political force. 

Practically, where can you (myself included) begin? First, inform yourself. Take a position to correct the problematic approach we have toward the Muslim world, which, I would argue, is as much part of our American, and global human, story. Although we may pray to a different God or come from a different historico-cultural context, we share in our humanity and this must be our starting point for understanding and dialogue — not ignorant judgement, essentializing or “othering” Muslims by their very nature. 

Second, we must permit that Muslims may be changing the narrative in their own way and in a language and form we do not recognize as progressive. We should practice forbearance and trust that, from a Muslim point of view, that progress is happening. We cannot control it or coerce it according to our categories. While this may be a scary, or frustrating, proposition it is the most effective in the long run. Bombs, a barrage of insinuating questions, or anti-Muslim sentiment does not work. All it does it carve out space for Muslim post-colonial movements that set themselves up in the “clash of civilizations” (Islam v. the West) framework (e.g. ISIS, al-Qaeda, etc.). 

Informing ourselves and creating this space will involve reading, learning, creating friendships with Muslims, taking part in interfaith peacemaking, and bearing with others in patience, love, and hope. 

We cannot do nothing. While we may opine that Muslims continue to remain silent (even though they are not) or that the Qur’an says this or that (even though “texts are by themselves silent” [Michael Lambek] and require active interpretation) we cannot allow others’ inaction or failure justify our own. 

Instead, we must do what we can to create a space, specifically within the U.S., where Muslims can freely, openly, and by their own agency, determine what it means to be an American Muslim in the contemporary scene.

NEW Essays: Global Islamic Reformism & Religion in the Black Atlantic

What does conservative Islam reformism look like in Yemen? In South Asia? In Egypt? In the United States? Do they differ in significant ways? Or, is Islamic reformism an unstoppable transnational religious force that erases all signs of local adaptation and innovation in its wake? In this essay I present a mosaic approach to assessing global Islamic reformism as a way to balance the contestation and agreement between translocal and local expressions of Islamic neofundamentalism worldwide. 

Read it at Academia.edu

As is evinced by the above paper on Islam, approaches are important. The "Black Atlantic" is a diverse and wide-ranging, trans-Atlantic, and multi-hemispheric discipline that requires careful thought and various approaches to apperceive the various religious currents at work across it. In this paper, I examine four approaches to religion in the Black Atlantic, paying special attention to Candomblé, Umbanda, sorcery/witchcraft, and Vodou. 

Read it at Academia.edu

Can Christians celebrate Diwali?

The lights are hung, the candles lit, the feast prepared, the New Year is almost here, families gather and the children wait to hear the dramatic re-telling of stories from the ancient past. No, it is not Christmas, nor is it Hanukkah or Kwanzaa; steeped in mythical tales, religious devotion, and socio-cultural importance it is the Hindu festival of Diwali, celebrated in India and throughout its diaspora spread across the world.

*For more on religion & culture, follow @kchitwood.

Diwali is celebrated by several religious groups including Sikhs, Jains and even some Buddhists, but its roots are thoroughly Hindu. For Sikhs it is a commemoration of “the day of freedom” when one of their revered gurus, Guru Har Gobind Ji was released from imprisonment. Jains celebrate Diwali to mark Mahavira’s moksha (enlightenment) -- the last of the tirthankara (enlightened ones). For Hindus the festival is the beginning of a New Year, a time for prosperity and new ventures, a celebration of the brother-sister relationship and the prevalence of truth over falsehood and light overcoming the darkness.

This meaning for the five-day festival is derived from several Hindu accounts. However, it centers around the account of the victory of Lord Krishna over the demon Narkasura. Other gods and goddesses, including the goddess of wealth (Lakshmi), are worshipped during Diwali, but above all it is a celebration of the victory of life, light and lightheartedness over nefarious 'Narkasuran' forces. 

With a South Asian population of about 3 million, there are significant Diwali celebrations going on throughout the U.S. this week. Local Hindu and Jain temples and Sikh gurudwaras will host Diwali celebrations featuring hundreds of lights and lanterns, Indian curries and festive music played on harmoniums (keyboard), tablas (drum) and tambours (a stringed instrument). For many Asian Indians living in the diaspora, Diwali is not only religious, but steeped in socio-cultural significance and celebrations of South Asian identity.

With this in mind Pramod Aghamkar, Executive Director of Satsang Ministries, started celebrating "Christian Diwalis" a few yeas ago in Dayton, Ohio. The Christian Diwali in Dayton is an effort on his part to immerse himself in native Asian-Indian culture and add the concepts and ideologies of the Christian worldview.

“The festival of Diwali provides the necessary framework, structure and organic occasion to proclaim Christ as the light of the world” said Aghamkar. “It gives stepping stones, clues and redemptive analogies for cross-cultural witness.”

Drawing inspiration from those Christians who redeemed pagan festivals and symbols to make Easter (eggs, new life) and Christmas (the evergreen tree bedecked with lights) what they are today, Aghamkar hopes to redeem the symbols and practices of Diwali for the sake of Christian witness. For him Diwali “is a native tool that still remains undeveloped by Indian Christians.” To tap into this potential, Aghamkar hosts a Christian Diwali in South Asian family settings each year and now encourages other Indian Christian leaders to do the same in other cities.

One city where Indian Christian leaders are not so receptive to this idea is Houston.

Asked about the possibility of Christian Diwali celebrations in Houston, a South Asian pastor from The Woodlands demurred, “it is a major Hindu festival, Christ is not part of the celebration.”

“Whenever possible I seek the Scriptures for knowledge and direction” said the pastor. “I am not sure there is any place in the Scriptures where it talks about redeeming a heathen idea.”

Another Houston man, Vidyasagar Garnepudi, feels the tension and the temptation to celebrate a "Christian Diwali." He said, "every Indian child's dream is to participate in Diwali, it's a victory over darkness, a festival of lights, it's firing off the firecrackers."

*Read a personal account of the meaning of Diwali

Despite the desire to participate in the celebration, he lamented that "as Christians we should not celebrate Diwali. However, we do rejoice with our neighbor as India is a secular nation."  

Aghamkar hears and understands these objections, but believes the practice of  Christian Diwali is still a viable custom. “Non-Hindu accounts show Diwali to be a flexible, multi-faceted festival” he said, “the form of celebration is not intrinsically Hindu, Jain or Sikh….though the principles are ‘non-Christian,’ they are not ‘un-Christian.’”

He also cautions that while the music, lights, food and stories may be similar between Hindu and Christian celebrations, the traditional Hindu gods and Sikh and Jain teachers are not lauded, but instead it is Christ who is the hero of the story who dispels the darkness and brings light and life. “It is not shifting from radical rejection to wholesale acceptance” said Aghamkar, but it is a way for “the Indian community to experience Jesus in a native way.”

Some scholars of South Asian religion and Hindu traditions I spoke with offered some perspective as they debated the saliency of a "Christian Diwali." One offered, "it's one thing for a Christian to come to a temple and celebrate the ritual, taking away the nitty-gritty of the myth, just as a general celebration of victory of good over evil...it's another to use a Hindu tradition to advance Christianity." The same individual asked, "how would a Christian react if Easter was used to further Hindu ideas and motives?"

Another participant in the academic dialogue offered that since, in India, Christianity is a minority religion, "this might be an expression of having to find their way in a world that is primarily Hindu."

Perhaps even still, this is part of a wider dialogue on the secular and/or religious nature of Diwali and whether or not Diwali is losing its religious significance in favor of more secular or purely culturally mechanic communal practices and personal rituals. 

WHAT DO YOU THINK? CAN CHRISTIANS “REDEEM” DIWALI? SHOULD THE HOLIDAY BE LEFT FOR HINDUS, SIKHS AND JAINS TO CELEBRATE? WHAT ARE YOUR DIWALI TRADITIONS?

*For more on religion & culture, follow @kchitwood.

Of Mountains, Mary, & Sacred Fire: Revivication of Indigenous Voices

Today is Columbus Day. For some, it is Indigenous Peoples Day.

While Stephen Colbert may joke about, and some may be honestly offended by, the re-appropriation of Columbus Day by indigenous peoples, the reality is that Native Tribes and indigenous organizations feel ostracized and offended by the holiday.

The movement to re-claim "Columbus Day" (associated with cultural extirpation and colonial hegemony) is part of a wider context of the revivification of indigenous voices across the Americas.

In a recently written paper I address three examples of the tension, transculturation, and tribal aspects of indigenous religious subversion: in the mountains of California, in the shrines of Central America, and on Lake Titicaca in Peru. Read the rest of the paper HERE.  http://

Why "world religion Bible studies" are awful

The U.S. is suffering from a case of multi-generational and multi-cultural  religious illiteracy —what Stephen Prothero calls, “religious amnesia.” The United States, in spite of its established secularism, is a thoroughly pluralistic nation with robust expressions of myriad world religions everywhere from the wheat fields of Iowa to the buckled asphalt of Los Angeles. Yet, we are simultaneously “a nation of religious illiterates” who flunk the most basic of quizzes on religion — even our own. It seems, “[m]ost Americans remain far more committed to respecting other religions than learning about them.” 

To the rescue come "world religion Bible studies" that attempt to help Christians navigate their world's stunning religious pluralism.  The problem is, most "world religion Bible studies" are terrible. 

While most of the leaders of these studies start with the intention to help their parishioners learn more about the world's religions, the way they go about it usually leads to nominally increased religious literacy. Even worse, these studies often exacerbate pre-existing prejudices or presuppositions about studied worldviews. 

Granted, not all world religion studies are horrible, but many I've been to, or heard of (and, admittedly, some of the ones I've taught), were dreadful. While I confess that I'm a culprit of creating crappy curriculums for a "world religion Bible study" or two, I humbly suggest that I have learned the error of my ways (mostly) and want to propose some strategies to remedy the oversights of well-meaning pastors and educators.

*For more on religion and culture, follow @kchitwood

So, below are THREE REASONS WHY WORLD RELIGION BIBLE STUDIES SUCK and a few accompanying action points to make them better:   

1) Unschooled teachers 

The number one issue with the vast majority of these studies is those who are teaching don't know much about the world's religions in the first place. Furthermore, they are not in the least bit trained in how to properly engage in religious studies, which is a topic altogether distinct from the task of theology.

While teaching can be a wonderful way to learn, we should not feign being an expert when we really have not spent the time to gain expertise in one religion other than ours, let alone multiple world religions. And do not, for a moment, think that because you read one book, watched a movie, or visited a temple that this makes you an expert on Buddhism, Islam, Scientology, etc.

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This is the cover of a book I wrote on "twenty major world religions" in New Zealand. It isn't the best, but what was great about it was that I submitted every chapter to a practitioner of that respective belief system. They corrected much of what I got wrong and provided deep insight into how to (re)present religion. 

Admittedly, several pastors confessed to me that they do not know much about the world's religions, but decide to teach on them anyways because, "my parishioners are asking me to." Granted, you, as a pastor or teacher, are in a tough place when people ask you to lead a study in an area you feel you know little about. I feel for you. But then there are other pastors who took one class on world religions, watched one documentary, or read one book and decide, "My people need to know this!" and like a crusader gallivanting off to slay the pagan hordes they announce a study to equip their congregants for the spiritual battle at hand. #Facepalm. Maybe you are the former, maybe you're the latter. Either way, you aren't an expert — I implore you to stop acting like one. 

Nonetheless, I feel for you. The problem is that we pastors and teachers are expected to be weekly experts on a wide variety of topics. Every Sunday a pastor is meant to churn out a sermon wherein he/she expounds on a relevant topic from a deep knowledge of the biblical text. People listen to the pastor as if he/she is an authority on the given topic (marriage, parenting, politics, etc.). While most pastors (certainly not all) are adept at interpreting Scripture, they are not mavens in every field. It's unfair to expect them to be an expert on everything — especially religions they were not trained in. Too often we pressure them to act as if they are. Likewise, teachers and educators are expected to cover a broad range of topics week-in and week-out, even if their knowledge on some of these topics is exhausted within the confines of the text they use to teach. This problem becomes paramount in teaching on world religions.

With untrained teachers and unqualified pastors diving head first into a study where they are presumed to be specialists, but are effectively faking even basic facility, what most world religion Bible studies become are cesspools of collective religious ignorance not classrooms prepped for increased religious literacy. 

Sometimes, in an effort to sidestep an educator's insufficiency for the task, an ex-member testimony is favored. Oh Lord have mercy, this is even worse. Certainly, ex-members have a voice to bring to the table and their perspective is a valuable one to appreciate in our study of religion. But it is only one voice and an extremely biased one at that. Ex-members are ex-members for a reason. While they may not "have an axe to grind" they will most definitely present a prejudiced perspective on a religion they now eschew. 

Imagine this -- an atheist meet-up group wants to learn more about Christianity. To do so, they bring in a former evangelical who no longer believes in God to talk about their former faith. Would you, as a Christian, say that the atheists in that group necessarily got a fair picture of Christianity? Would you want them to perhaps balance out their learning with some supplementary teaching or a current member's testimony? If not, you should. Relying on ex-member testimonies or teaching is a sure way to get a skewed impression of a world religion.

So, how do we fix this? Three ways:  

The fix: Get an education. Take a class, keep reading, enroll in a master's program. Become the expert you are pretending to be. Even a few classes on one religion will equip you to better teach that topic. However, do not think that taking one intro class on world religions or reading one book is enough. Dive deep into one religion before you endeavor to teach it. Enjoy that process? Keep going deeper or expand your knowledge to include other religions. Repeat as necessary.

The fix: Study in the presence, or even under, the "religious other." While I do not like the fertile terrain for prejudice that "othering" a people group creates, the reality is that most Christians feel that Muslims and Mormons, Jews, Jains, and Jedis are "the religious other." They feel uncomfortable talking about these other faiths in the presence of "the other" (cue creepy sci-fi music here). So, they round up the wagons, close the parish hall doors, and "study" them from the safety of their own sanctuaries. As an educator, your task is to bust those doors down and make the learning environment an uncomfortable one. Bring in a Muslim to team-teach on Islam, invite an atheist to present their non-religious ways, visit a local mosque, temple, or place of worship to engage in experiential education, make your study public, or at the very least ask a Buddhist to sit in on your teaching to call you out or offer further food for thought. Yeah, it will be awkward, unsettling, and a bit "weird," but that's a good thing. In that environment learning is probably going to take place on all sides. 

The fix: Bring in the experts. f all else fails, ask the experts. Bring in a local professor or your denomination's resident religious scholar, anthropologist, or sociologist. As mentioned before, bring in a Buddhist monk to share their practice, an imam to elucidate their beliefs, etc. Shameless plug: invite me to come and speak. While I can't speak to EVERY religion with expertise, I can at least point you in the right direction or start you off with the right tools/perspective. 

2) The category of "world religions" is problematic anyways

Even if a pastor/teacher is schooled in the ways of the world's religions, what is a "world religion?" Most studies pick out a few heavy hitters among the sundry spiritualities that are held and practiced around the globe. There are some usual suspects that pop up in almost every world religion study. Here's an example from the table of contents of a self-titled "world religion Bible study" curriculum: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Confucianism, Bahai Faith, Spirit Religions, Atheism, New Age Movement, and others. This is a generous list. Another "world religion" study I saw recently (at a Lutheran church) sought to teach the following: Catholicism, Islam, Anglicanism, Pentecostalism, Buddhism.... Yikes. 

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This was a fun study that we did at a local brewery in Houston, Texas. While I taught this one solo, I had people who were Christian, agnostic, atheist, "spiritual, but not religious," Confucian, and Buddhist come to the study. They called me out when I needed it. And then we had a beer together, so it was all cool. 

The issue here is that these lists, and most other scopes and sequences of world religions studies make three mistakes: 1) ignore religions and spiritualities on the periphery (e.g. Sikhism, Yoruba, Juche, etc.); 2) lump together multiple world views and practiced spiritualities into general categories that obfuscate more than they educate ("Spirit religions" covers a wide, diverse, range of religions/spiritualities ranging from indigenous religion to hybrid spiritualities, New Age and "others" is necessarily ambiguous, and "Islam" and "Hinduism" obscure realities that exist in the margins); 3) make divisions where they need not do so (is a "world religions" class the proper place to present the differences between Catholics and Lutherans?). 

*For more on religion and culture, follow @kchitwood

These categories, meant to help simplify the study or book (however well-meaning they are) betray a dangerous unsophistication when it comes to apperceiving and appreciating the wild diversity of religious beliefs and spiritual practice around the world. 

The fix: Teach the tools. For years, the archetypal format of religious studies tended to place different religious traditions, typically those deemed to be “the world’s ‘great’ religions,” in their respective silos and investigate them each according to some prescribed rubric based on the author’s own definition of religion. This pedagogical approach tended to dissociate individual traditions from the study of religion as a whole and, even, from the students themselves. Since, as authors George D. Chryssides and Ron Geaves noted, students “rarely come to study religion because they wish to be neutral social scientists or simply to describe religious belief and practice more accurately,” this method bequeaths a superficial knowledge of religion at best and exacerbated stereotypes of the spiritual at its worst. Hence, I suggest an initial approach that involves considering what it means, and looks like, to study religion from a disciplined, self-reflective, point of view rather than a theological one. In lieu of teaching the religions themselves, teach how to study religion in the first place. Teach how to ask questions, be a participant-observer, etc. The rules that apply to training apply here too. If you don't feel comfortable as a religious student, bring someone in who is. 

3) Straw man studies

Now, if untrained leaders and unrefined categories are bad, this problem is the Satan-of-world-religion-studies incarnate. 

I get what the leader of these studies is trying to do: help their flock better understand other religions so that they can witness to their neighbor, coworker, family member, or friend. Typically, the end game of these studies is to help the Christian better evangelize someone of another faith. 

Putting the issues of hegemony, colonialism, and arrogance involved in discussions of Christian mission and evangelism aside for a moment, such an approach in a world religion Bible study is bad for the simple reason that in the rush to get to "what's wrong with this religion" that we usually end up skipping over "what this religion is" in the first place. 

We either misapprehend, or misrepresent, world religions by presenting a "straw man" form of the faith  (a hollow, or sham, version of the worldview that is easily defeated in an artificial argument without "the other" present) or do so by seeking first to pinpoint error rather than attempting first to understand. 

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This shot is from an event called, "Interview with an atheist," in which I invited two local, prominent, non-believers to share their story in front of a Christian audience. We then had a Q&A session that was uncomfortable, challenging, and wonderful in every way. It was not a debate. It was not a "bash the atheist/Christian" fest. It was a charitable dialogue, and everyone walked away changed. 

Sabine MacCormack in her book Religion in the Andes: Vision and Imagination in Colonial Peru shared how missionaries in colonial Peru set out to comprehend Incan religion as it was practiced in both in the centers of power (i.e. Cusco) and in the rural Andes. In their accounts, they made two fatal mistakes: 1) by setting out with the primary purpose of extirpating (destroying) these beliefs and practices and 2) interpreting these religions through their own spiritual lenses. These approaches meant that the missionaries completely misinterpreted the religion as it was presented to them. They misconstrued myths, received a false impression about beliefs, and misread rituals.  All the while, the Andean beliefs and practices survived and even thrived, whether under the guise of Catholicism or out in the open, and often with greater emphasis than before. Setting out to eradicate the religion of the Andes, the missionaries misunderstood it completely. Too often, world religion Bible studies do the same. 

The fix: Study in the presence, or even with, the "religious other." Again, there is nothing better for our mutual learning and understanding than having a Muslim present when you teach on Islam. Give permission for them to correct you where they think you are wrong. Maybe you're not and they just don't like the way you put it. But, maybe you are. Have the guts to have a practitioner of the faith you are studying call you out. Assume insiders are the experts, you would expect the same from someone studying Christianity. Your study will be MUCH BETTER because of it. 

The fix: Seek understanding and relationship. The primary goal of your study should be understanding and bridge building, not apologetics or polemic. Before you call the heresy police, hear me out. While we often see our friendships with people of other faith as a means to an end, I am proposing that we see the relationships as ends unto themselves. Part of God's grand plan is a restoring of what was lost in our fall from grace. Part of Christ's redemptive work is to bring together that which was torn asunder. Understanding other religions, and building relationships with "the religious other," is part and parcel to the resurrective, restorative, and recreative kingdom of Jesus -- to bring unity and fellowship where there was disharmony and division. This does not mean forsaking witness, but it does mean not orsaking friendship for the sake of witness. Witness to the worldview, sure. Share your faith, certainly. But the friendship must endure, the understanding must be the primary goal, and the first step in evangelizing needs to be shutting our mouths, and opening our ears, to listen and learn.

*Was this post helpful? Hurtful? Have a suggestion? Want to accuse me of heresy or worse? This blog is meant to be a provocation toward deeper understanding. It's a beginning. There will certainly be revisions in my own thought -- additions, subtractions, and perhaps a crumpling of the entire project and a total re-write before we can, together, build a “strong, benevolent Christianity” (a la Brian McLaren) that can successfully engage other religions, spiritualities, and worldviews in a context defined by religious pluralism. So, please share your thoughts with me below or via e-mail. 

*For more on religion and culture, follow @kchitwood

The danger of crafting Muslim identities for our own purposes

*For more on religion & culture follow @kchitwood

The situation with ISIS/ISIL (Al-Dawla Al-Islamiya) continues to heat up. ISIS continues to post videos of atrocious beheadings of their Western prisoners (two U.S. journalists and a British aid-worker). These digital demonstrations have provoked the Western military powers into intense discussions of reprisals and concrete conversations about constructing a coalition.

*Read "Five Facts You Need to Know about Iraq, its Religious Minorities, and ISIS."

Amidst the flurry of emotion and geo-political crusading an interesting, misleading, trend has re-surfaced: the crafting of Muslim identity by non-Muslims for the latter's own purposes.

President Barack Obama's comments to this effect did not go unnoticed. He said on September 10, just a day before the 13th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks:

“...let’s make two things clear: ISIL is not “Islamic.” No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL’s victims have been Muslim. And ISIL is certainly not a state.”

POTUS's comments echo those of George W. Bush who famously quipped in the aftermath of 9/11, that Islam "is a peaceful religion" (Nov 13, 2002) and that:

“Islam is a vibrant faith. Millions of our fellow citizens are Muslim. We respect the faith. We honor its traditions. Our enemy does not. Our enemy doesn’t follow the great traditions of Islam. They’ve hijacked a great religion.”

— October 11, 2002

Obama used this language before moving on to say, "Our objective is clear: we will degrade, and ultimately destroy, ISIL through a comprehensive and sustained counter-terrorism strategy."

British Prime Minister David Cameron joined in with the ISIS ≠ Islam prose. In the wake of the execution of British aid-worker David Haines, Cameron remarked that ISIS "are not Muslims, they are monsters." He branded the ISIS killings and subsequent videos as acts "of pure evil" and vowed that the UK, "will do everything in our power to hunt down these murderers and ensure they face justice." 

Cameron, and Obama, made comments about what Islam is, and what it is not, that allowed them to justify their actions. Realizing that the "clash of civilizations" rhetoric (the "West" versus "Islam") is not popular sentiment, nor is it conducive to building a coalition that would include Muslim-states and Muslim majority nations, the two Western leaders made sweeping statements about what Islam is, and is not, in order to vindicate their aggressive, military-based, retaliations. 

Response to Cameron and Obama's comments has been mixed. Many from progressive Muslim communities praised them for drawing a line between their peaceful faith and practice and the brutal extremism of ISIS. Many on the far-right of the political spectrum (and even some from among the ranks of the "New Atheists," including Sam Harris) in the U.S. lambasted POTUS for his "ignorance" concerning ISIS and Islam, saying that he "isn't qualified enough to say what is and what is not Muslim." 

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Photo: Shibli Zaman, Loonwatch.com

At the same time, a Twitter handle by the name of "Ahimla Jihada" (@Ahimla2), which spouted seemingly supportive superlatives for ISIS from an "American-Muslim woman" was found to be a fake. Before the account was shutdown, the tweets of @Ahimla2, which declared her devotion to ISIS and love for terror (from within the United States no less!) produced strong responses calling for her death and the killing of many more Muslims in the U.S. Shibli Zaman at Loonwatch.com lamented:

“There are dubious forces from an increasingly belligerent political Right who are out to brainwash, by hook or crook, the American public into hating their fellow citizens of the Muslim faith and to justify a foreign policy in the ‘10/40 Window’ that has tarnished America’s reputation globally and needlessly puts our men and women in uniform in harm’s way.”

While Cameron/Obama/Bush may be lauded for trying to distinguish between ISIS and global Islam and this Twitter scandal may be mourned as an attempt to justify Islamophobia in the U.S., they are both examples of the same error: Western politicians or popular pundits cannot be the ones to say what Islam is and is not. 

*Read "Does ISIS = Islam?"

At issue here is the question -- who has the right to define what Islam is and is not? 

Language has power to shape opinions and to galvanize people to action. These leaders and culture shapers understand this. That is why they use essentializing terminology to declare what Islam is and is not. By becoming arbiters of Islamic identity, Western leaders seek to make essentialist claims in order to provide powerful, and useful, rallying-points for their own agendas. In these cases, attacking and destroying ISIS on the one hand, turning on Muslims in the U.S. on the other. 

While artlessly defining Islam may prove useful for political purposes, it is not conducive to helping non-Muslims understand what Islam is. Concepts such as 'Islam' are not static. There is no fixed form of Islam that can be found or defined, especially by non-Muslims. Instead, Islam is a diverse stream of various forces, persistently in process, forever in flux, consistently contingent on changing cultural, political, ethnic, religious, and economic realities. Really, the language of Obama, Cameron, @Ahimla2 and others who want to say neatly that ISIS is Islamic, or it is not Islamic, is hegemony at work again -- colonial powers attempting to define the "other" in order to exert their own influence or power in the Islamic world. 

My concern here is not political, it is not militaristic. Instead, it is one of religious literacy. Islam is one of the most multi-cultural, multi-generational, multifaceted, and misunderstood religions in the world, especially in the West. In order to understand Islam, we cannot apperceive it according to uncluttered constructs or uncomplicated categories. Instead, the messiness and miscellany of the Muslim world must be explored. This will often mean meeting with local Muslims, observing regional dynamics, and listening, and learning, their perspectives on global Islam. Especially in the West, we need to listen to Muslims speak about their own community, from all sides, before we begin crafting Muslim identities according to our own motivations -- be they benign or malevolent.  

If Western powers or Islamophobes want to say what Islam is or is not for their own political ends, so be it. What I don't want to see is the general population getting carried away with a vision of Islam that is founded more in Western hegemony than it is global Islamic reality. 

Does ISIS = Islam?

Does ISIS = Islam? Does Islam = ISIS? 

In the wake of rising violence and thuggish rhetoric, many are re-visiting the common accusation that terror groups and rogue states such as ISIS are Islam and that any discussion about the varieties of Islamic belief and ritual throughout the world is smokescreen. The assumptive claim is that if you prick Islam it always bleeds terror, hate, and violence. 

Dr. Terje Østebø, whose perspective on global Islam helped inspire this post, is involved in the launch of the University of Florida’s Center for Global Islamic Studies. After The Gainesville Sun published an article on the center’s launch, Østebø suffered vitriol via comments, phone calls, and e-mails. Although Østebø said, “There is an urgent need for a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the rich diversity and the complex dynamics of contemporary Islam," many of his critics found the need to point out to him — the scholar in Islam — that Islam is clearly typified by ISIS and that ISIS is at the core of this world religion.

*For more on religion and culture, follow @kchitwood

Unfortunately, these verbal assaults are too often accompanied by physical attacks as well as just last week, a man chased a Muslim American woman into oncoming traffic in Brooklyn while threatening to behead her and her companion. Every time I post an article, like this one, I will undoubtedly receive comments like this from Cowboywill46:

“Once and for all, will someone with a grain of sense admit to the world that Islam is nothing more than a mind-control, anti-social cult bent on world domination. ”

— Cowboywill46

To be fair, Islam is a world religion with a unifying foundation. It may be the Qur’an, or the holy book’s common language — Arabic. The shahada, or profession of faith that “there is no god but God and Muhammad is his prophet,” is universal in form — all Muslims confess it, it is what it takes, and means, to be Muslim. Mecca, perhaps, as “the capital of Islam” serves as, in the words of Miriam Cooke and Bruce B. Lawrence, as “[t]he organizing principle of Islamic ritual and imagination.” As such, this Saudi Arabian city is “the defining node for a worldwide community of believers who are linked to the Prophet Muhammad and to Mecca and to one another through networks of faith and family, trade and travel.” Whether knit together by language, profession, text, orienting metropolis, or something else there is a unified, integrated, sense to global Islam and a shared cultural history. To be sure, there are not several, or even two, Islams, but one Islam. 

At the same time, Islam is, in the words of scholar Talal Asad, “a discursive tradition.” There is an ongoing debate, what Reza Aslan calls, “a civil war,” raging over what is orthodox Islam and where the boundary lines of Islam can be drawn. Islam, as a world system, is not static, but is always changing according to the various lines of its own “discursive traditions.” The tone of these various streams of thought about Islam are determined by local realities, Islamic networks, and by external global forces of economics, politics, religion, and culture. 

What do these localizations and various discursive traditions do to Islam’s shared cultural and textual heritage? Local Muslims, sharing in "global Islam," interpret Islam differently according to their socio-cultural, and historical, context. Sometimes accusing the other interpretation or lived religion as not “authentic” or “orthodox” Islam. This is why ISIS, along with killing Yazidis and Christians, also targets Muslims they deem kafir (unbelievers, or apostates) because of their extreme definition of takfir— those who claim Islam but are outside the strict boundaries of Islam that ISIS puts in place. 

*For more on religion and culture, follow @kchitwood

Today is the 13th anniversary of the terror attacks of 9/11. Certainly, it is a somber remembrance and one with potent emotions and visceral reverberations in our cultural psyche. 9/11’s effect on our the U.S.’s interest in Islam has been a double-edged sword. While more solid, scholarly, work has been done on Islam in the U.S. than ever before, we have also been seeking to essentialize Islam in an effort to have manufacture a clearly defined enemy to combat. We want a clash of civilizations — Islam v. the West — but it’s not that simple. Seeking a “clash of civilizations” we usually end up with what Edward Said called, “a clash of ignorance” wherein “unedifying labels” such as “Islam” and the “West,” “mislead and confuse the mind, which is trying to make sense of a disorderly reality that won't be pigeonholed or strapped down as easily as all that.”

So, is Islam to be represented by ISIS? In one sense, yes. ISIS = Islam. However, ISIS ≠ global Islam. ISIS ≠ Islam everywhere. Not every Muslim living in the U.S., in sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, or Southeast Asia is a secret jihadi with ties to ISIS, Boko Haram, or al-Qaeda. Instead, ISIS is an expression of Islam in its locality (Syria, Iraq, the Levant) forged out of a combination of contextual concerns, socio-cultural realities, and translocal forces of politics, economics, and religion. As such, it is competing to be the authoritative voice of Islam and, in many ways, wants pundits and cultural commentators to say that ISIS = Islam. 

Yet, to say ISIS = Islam is too simplistic. There are too many other Muslim communities and expressions of glocal (localized forms of the one global faith) Islam throughout the world. Islam is a diverse global faith, which takes on a different form, with varying interpretations of the Qur’an and the tradition of Muhammad where the local Muslim community deals with dissimilar concerns about local realities and contrasting views on religious violence and Westernization. This is why it is unsophisticated to simply posit that ISIS = Islam with no further discussion or clarification. 

After all, many Muslims claim that ISIS Is un-Islamic. Muslims in South Africa who fought for equality of all races after mistreatment and misrepresentation for centuries under Afrikaaner nationalism and apartheid and Muslims in Houston who advocate anti-gang initiatives and are actively engaged in inner-city education programs would not want to be lumped in with ISIS. They are engaged in a struggle, they share the same Islamic faith, but they are not ISIS. As Jaweed Kaleem reported for the Huffington Post, there is widespread disappointment among worldwide Muslims in how ISIS is often equated with Islam in popular media.

Even so, without any right or proper understanding, many will continue to try and declare what Islam is and is not. They will pipe up and declare that “ISIS is Islam” or ignore progressive understandings of Islam by countering, “but doesn’t the Qur’an actually say _______?” What the Qur’an says, not to be crass or offensive to my Muslim friends, is irrelevant. What is more relevant in this discussion is what Muslims say the Qur’an says. What ISIS says about what Islam is or what the Qur’an says is going to be different than a Muslim community in Miami or a Muslim organization in Indonesia. Muslims’ interpretation of their shared holy text is defined by their local context, their historical moment, their transnational networks, socio-cultural realities, and interaction with global forces.

If we are to understand Islam — and ever since 9/11, 7/7, and other terrible terrorist attacks, it is evident that we must in some way endeavor to do so — our shared starting point cannot be solely those groups that engage in terrorism, persecution, and barbarous bombast. Instead, we must approach Islam as a global phenomenon, with a certain sense of interconnectedness and unity. At the same time, we must come to appreciate and pay attention to its various localities as they wrestle with the shared international socio-cultural forces of Westernization, globalization, and transnationalism. 

Does ISIS = Islam? 

Yes, but it’s too superficial of us to say “yes” unequivocally. It has to be a nuanced affirmation, one that appreciates that as much as ISIS is Islam, it is also equally not Islam. In the end, we must listen to Muslims, and their various discourses about orthodoxy, Muslim boundaries, and authenticity, before we can come to any strong conclusions or make any serious political or religious decisions about Islam as a whole based on the actions of the few who take part in the violent actions of ISIS and its counterparts.  

*For more on religion and culture, follow @kchitwood