May, 2004 (Vol. 19, No. 7)

A recent surge of Hindu activism is being felt in academia, with scholars facing protests and even violent threats over non-Hindus interpreting religious texts.

The Washington Post (April 10) reports that 19 years after a professor at Emory University used sexual imagery in writing on the story of Ganesha, the revered Hindu God with the head of an elephant, an Internet campaign was started by Hindu militants that included death threats. In January, Macalester College professor James W. Laine provoked similar violent outbursts over his book on Hindu king Shivaji.

One of Laine’s collaborators in India was assaulted, a mob destroyed rare manuscripts where Laine had done research, and the professor was even threatened with extradition and trial by the Indian government. Other academics writing about Hinduism have encountered similar hostility, often fueled by the view that only Hindus have the right to speak and write about the religion.

University of Chicago professor Wendy Doniger, who has been at the center of these controversies and protests, says that the wave of protests is being fueled by Hindu nationalism (known as Hindutva), which charges that Hindus are denigrated by the West imposing a Eurocentric worldview on a culture they do not understand.

Others say that it is not so much Hidutva but just ordinary Hindus who are behind the new activism (though not the cases of violence and threats). They are borrowing a page from black civil rights activists and are claiming their own identity and history from what they see as a closed circle of American scholars who control the Hindu research and publishing field. But many Indian scholars have defended the American writers, saying these incidents are part of a larger pattern of attacks against scholars in India.

Although the plot runs counter to Islamic teachings, Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ has become a box-office hit in the Arab world, reports the Christian Science Monitor (April 9).

Islam forbids the depiction of a prophet and the Koran denies the crucifixion ever occurred. The Passion has been banned in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, yet since being released on March 18, the film is posting record sales in Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Qatar, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates.

While the film is particularly popular among the Maronite Christians in Lebanon, both Christians and Muslims in the Middle East see in the movie’s depiction of Jesus’ agony their own hardships. Christians marginal identity in such countries as Syria and Lebanon and Islamic hostility toward Israel are both validated by images of Jesus suffering under the Jews, with Muslims identifying Israel’s recent attacks on Palestinian leaders as an example of such suffering.

Such sentiments have alarmed Israeli and other Jewish leaders who accuse Gibson of fanning the flames of anti-Semitism.

While little attention is paid to them by Western media and intellectuals, there are many reformist thinkers in the world of Islam, writes Rachid Benzine in an article on “Islamic Modernity”, published in a special issue (April-May) of the French progressive magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, devoted to “The New Thinkers of Islam.”

Benzine cites such thinkers as Abdul Karim Soroush, Mohammed Arkoun, the late Fazlur Rahman, Amin al-Khuli, Nasr Hamid Abu Zayed, who all consider themselves fully Muslims, but are also well versed in secular academic disciplines (such as anthropology, history, linguistics). They do not want to reform Islam, Benzine emphasizes, but to develop a new way for Muslims of thinking about Islam in order to help an “Islamic modernity” emerge. According to Benzine, who has written a book on the subject and is the editor of a Muslim intellectual website, those thinkers represent the hopes of “many Muslims,” although no statistical evidence is provided.

One of the key elements in their approach is the attempt to put the Quran, the hadith and their interpretations in a historical context. According to them, this has been too often neglected by Islamic thinking. While they consider the Quran as a revelation, they acknowledge that it has been expressed in a human language, with its cultural and linguistical peculiarities.

According to Mohammed Arkoun, a retired professor from the Sorbonne University (Paris), in an interview published in the same issue, Quranic exegesis is currently being monopolized by “clerics” who are not trained in modern techniques of interpretation and threaten those who question their interpretations with excommunication.

What emerges from the contributions published in this 100- page long special issue is that the reality of Islamic thinking today might be much more diverse than most people usually think: both conservatives and modernists are actually engaged in new readings of Islam. Philosopher Abdou Filali-Ansary suggests that there is a historical process at work, which may lead the world of Islam to democracy and modernity, although it might follow in paths different from those of the West.

However, Filali-Ansary adds that demographic pressure, poor economic circumstances and political failures won’t make this way an easy one.

(Le Nouvel Observateur, 43 rue Vivienne, 75002 Paris; – Benzine’s website, in French, at: http://www.etudes-musulmanes.com)

— By Jean Francois Mayer

Converts to Islam are being singled out by Al Qaeda as potential weapons in carrying out terrorism, reports the New Republic magazine (April 26).

Of the 212 individuals implicated in major terrorist attacks around the world since the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, 18 were converts. But now the use of native born (often women and light-skinned) converts for terrorist purposes in order to evade post-September 11 security has increased enough to worry European investigators. A French convert, David Courtailler, allegedly has ties to a suspect in the Madrid bombings and to a group assisting terrorists in Belgium.

According to French Islam expert Olivier Roy, a new breed of “protest converts” are emerging in Europe who embrace Islam “to stick it to their parents, [to] their principal. They convert in the same way people in the 1970s went to Bolivia or Vietnam [as part] of a very European tradition of identifying with a Third World cause.”

That does not mean that most of such converts turn to terrorism, but a few may be attracted to the anti-imperialist message of radical Islam. Such converts “want to show other Muslims their worth. They want to go further than anyone else. They are full of rage and they want to prove themselves,”according to French intelligence official.

Osama bin Laden’s now jailed chief of operations, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, regularly deployed Europeans to in order to elude post-September 11 roundups. In France, surveillance is focusing on radical converts, often young people, with family and adolescent problems.

“From Boston to Berkeley Unitarian churches have opened another front in the liberal crusade to expand the definition of marriage and family in America.It’s the new polygamy,” writes Don Lattin in the San Francisco Chronicle (April 20).

At the forefront of the movement is the Unitarian Universalists for Polyamory Awareness, which advocates the “philosophy and practice of loving or relating intimately to more than one other person at a time with honesty and integrity,” says Sally Amsbury, an official of the group. A spokesman for the 183,000-member Association of Unitarian Universalists, says the views of polyamorists are not necessarily endorsed by the denomination’s board of trustees.

Polyamorists themselves are divided over whether to push for formal recognition from the denomination and create their own ceremonies for partnerships, or to lobby for some of the same rights granted to heterosexual couples. “We’re where the gay rights movement was 30 years ago,” Amsbury said.

Some polyamorists are concerned that their cause will be used by opponents of same-sex marriage. Rebecca Parker, the president of Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley, says many Christians find polygamy even more sinful than homosexuality. Many of the students and faculty at Starr King see the polyamory movement as a threat to gay and lesbian couples. “In the Protestant denomination, the movement to accept same-sex couples was built on the idea that they, too, can have lifelong monogamous relationships,” Parker said.

Few polyamorous Unitarian Universalist ministers are “out of the closet,” since they fear it will threaten their chance of finding or keeping a job with a congregation. Jim Zacarias, interim minister at the First Unitarian Church of Albuquerque, recently came out to his congregation as bisexual. “Some people in polyamory are bi, and some are homosexual, some are heterosexual. We are serving their needs,” said Barb Greve, a transgender person who is a program associate with the Association of Unitarian Universalists’ Office of Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Concerns in Boston.

Worship and praise music, which has replaced traditional hymns in many evangelical and charismatic churches, is finding a place in concerts and the recording world.

The New York Times (April) 17 reports that praise music, usually consisting of prayers and praises repeated to contemporary melodies, has become a booming business in the Christian music marketplace and through “worship gatherings” that draw crowds to sing along with worship leaders. Sales of praise and worship albums have doubled since 2000, to about 12 million in 2003.

The trend is viewed as a way that people dissatisfied with Christian rock and pop are searching for more depth and meaning in their music. Although praise music has been criticized by theologians for its “me-centered” approach to faith (most of the lyrics are phrased in the first person), the article adds that “praise music writers are asking deeper questions and turning to scripture.”

A recurring theme of a national participatory praise concert series known as Passion is the diminuation of the individual and the glory of God.

Recent scientific challenges to the Book of Mormon are reshaping the self-understanding and identity of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, reports the independent Mormon magazine Sunstone (March).

Recent scientific DNA confirmations that the ancient Amerindian people are of Asian genetic origin has caused considerable controversy both inside and outside Mormonism. News of a challenge to the LDS teaching that Indian peoples of North, Central and South American continent are the lost tribes of Israel has “spread like wildfire among various Christian groups eager to win the souls of potentially disillusioned Latter-day Saints. More important, perhaps, is [that] the questions produced by these studies have also begun to reach Latter-day Saints in the pews.”

The article continues that “LDS scholars, particularly those in [the Mormon apologetic group] FARMS and BYU, have scrambled to educate lay Latter-day Saints on where Book of Mormon studies currently stand.” In the last 25 years, believing Book of Mormon theorists have increasingly moved to a “limited geography model,” where the references to events surrounding Amerindians in the text are reframed to mean they existed in a small locale in Mesoamerica rather than throughout North, Central and South America. Thus the actual Book of Mormon populations were much smaller than originally believed and through intermarriage with other Amerindians eventually lost their Middle Eastern genetic markers.

What is new is that the official church seems to be tactically endorsing the limited geography model and “its attendant implications for the identity of the Book of Mormon peoples.” Since Indian converts have been assigned a special place in the Mormon cosmology, the new findings have particularly alarmed these members. Brent Lee Metcalfe concludes that these findings may encourage doubts and even defections and that church apologists have an “arduous task ahead of them.”

(Sunstone, 343 N. Third West, Salt Lake City, UT 84103-1215)

They may be called “post-modern” churches or just gatherings and meetings without any ecclesiastical status, but there appears to be growing interest in alternatives to established congregational structures, including seeker and megachurches.

An article on the postmodern or “Gen-X” churches in the Christian newsweekly World (April 10) notes how they stress their differences from baby boomer-led megachurhes and their programmed, entertainment-based approach. The Gen-X churches have been around for almost a decade, but their emphasis on “authenticity” and community are now drawing large enough numbers to rival megachurches.

For instance, Mars Hill Bible Church in Michigan has grown to more than 10,000 weekly attenders in five years. But unlike seeker churches, marketing to age groups is discouraged in these congregations, and the trend is toward smaller and medium-sized churches with more of a participatory style. There is also an interest in more liturgical forms of worship among some of these churches.

Charisma magazine (May) reports that a new breed of the postmodern churches have left behind many “churchly” trappings. What is called natural or organic church growth is driving a movement of churches known as Awakening Chapel to spread mainly through new believers reaching out to people in their circles of influence.

The movement of 400 churches in 16 states and 12 countries can be found in homes, coffee houses, beaches and as offshoots of 12-step groups. Most of the gatherings are small but quickly branch out to start other groups. Several other similar groups of churches have also been launched, including The Refuge in Salt Lake City, Big Fish in Mesa, Arizona, and The Fountain, east of Los Angeles.

A very different kind of alternative religious structure has been created by the “meetup” phenomenon. Sojourners magazine (April) reports that the founding of Meetup.com during the Howard Dean campaign allowed Internet users to link up and meet with like-minded people by plugging in their locations and topics of interest. “Besides grassroots political organizing, some of the most popular meetups are attended by disenfranchised religious (or irreligious) types.” Jesse Holcomb writes that Meetup.com (there are now similar sites, such as Friendster.com and Lycos.com) carries listings of ex-Mormons, shamanists, pagans, and atheists hoping to find comradery.

“Interestingly enough, there are comparatively few evangelical or Catholic listings on the Web site.” He adds that “Mainstream politics and mainstream religion both face the perennial tendency to become more institutionalized and inflexible. Consequently, indivudiuals who feel alienated from these spheres are finding other ways to interact and participate in public life.”

The immidiacy of these meetups “almost remind one of church. Participants know that while they meet, a similar group is gathering on the same day, at the same time, in hundreds of cities all over the world to share similar interests and experiences, a koinonia for folks on the fringe.”

(World, P.O. Box 2001, Asheville, NC 28802; Charisma, 600 Rhinehart Rd., Lake Mary, FL 32746; Sojourners, 2401 15th St., N.W., Washington, DC 20009)