Milbank takes a shot at Ramadan

Wow! Well blogs that I often take a look at have been doing there best at taking shots at "Radical" Orthodoxy's head honcho John Milbank for his piece on Islam, the Enlightenment and Christianity.

What I find most interesting is how again Tariq Ramadan is framed as a poor academic; everybody seems to be attacking this guy. I haven't seen this kind of academic and frankly pseudo-academic attack since writers attacked the French Algerian philosopher Jacques Derrida. Milbank thinks "the scholarly inaccurate "Religious Studies" view of Islamic history put forward by figures like Tariq Ramadan" is what clouds the judgment of Christian leaders like Rowan Williams. Again, Ramadan is critiqued for 1)sugarcoating the dark elements of Islam and 2) being a closet supporter of the freedom denying aspects of Islam. I still wonder if anyone (like Milbank) has read his books?

Of course Milbank thinks the best Islam is a mystical form; if he thinks this of Christianity as well then he has bigger problems than Islam.

A Little Orientalism going on..

There are some wacky news stories that abound right now especially with regards toward Islam, but nothing seems to be as disconcerting as the way President Obama is seen in poll after poll as either a "closet" Muslim or at the very least a Muslim sympathizer. Again, this is ideology at its purest. Obama can firmly state time after time that he is a Christian, yet this is just another proof in the insanity that is in some perceptions of people who just frankly dislike him that he is a closet Muslim.

I noticed the same trend in those Muslim reformist (like Ramadan) working in the West who openly criticize radical, fundamentalist Islam. They are still often criticized by their foes in the West for being covert or closet radicals just waiting to push Sharia law upon their unsuspecting victims! How does anyone win when no matter what you say you are painted as a radical!?

Again, I refer to Edward Said and his work on Orientalism. There are plenty of generalizations that Said forces in his book that one can disagree with, yet I think Said is correct that we see the Orientalist view in the way certain Muslims are perceived by the West especially in the media. The above example works best. The argument goes that Arabs/Muslims are duplicitous and sneaky, so they may say you are their friend but they are just waiting for the opportunity to stab you in the back! Following this line of reasoning then how can you have an open debate or discourse with Muslims, Palestinians, or any other group seen as "Eastern"? Now the proper response is to sarcastically note that of course those in the West are always people of their word. A long history of broken treaties and useless wars beg to differ. This is ironic because one point that Ramadan makes in his works is that a good Muslim always honors contracts.

The main point again that Said is correct on is to actually get away from binary thought (there is really no such entity as an East or a West, or a Christianity or an Islam). We need to use the best of public reason to see the multiplicities that make up certain identities and join up with those that are good and attack those that are in fact bad. This can only happen when the best tools that modernity gave us is used in a critical way on all traditions whether they are political, social or religious...

Ramadan & Barth: Orthodox & Modern?

I am finishing up Gregory Baum's book on The Theology of Tariq Ramadan and have thoroughly enjoyed it. I really like the conversational style of the book and the openness the author has toward Ramadan while having his theology relate to specifically the Catholic theology of Vatican II.

It seems one of the problems that people have with Ramadan is that he seems to be (like Bruce McCormack labeled Karl Barth) both Orthodox and Modern. In other words, both Barth and and now Ramadan work within the breakthrough of modernity (they use context, history, critical thought) while at the same time being faithful to their tradition and its founding scriptures. In other words, they are part of the Reformist tradition. The point is not to destroy the faith of the fathers but continue to be faithful to it by always reforming.

Liberals, Fundamentalists and Radicals really despise this position because it is not "faithful" enough to their own perspective. For a fundamentalist, they are too "liberal" in buying into the modern framework. For Liberals, they are too conservative for being to faithful to the past traditions and interpretations and their religious communities (better to have a vague spirituality). For Radicals, they are too conservative because they haven't deconstructed the whole religious paradigm and embraced pure secularism or atheism.

Instead a reformist is always looking to reform the current faith to be both faithful to their sources and the community of believers while at the same time open to the voice of God for changes that should be made today especially when the tradition is either silent or not clear on a matter. For example, Barth wrote particularly to the Church because they are the witnesses of God while Ramadan targets Western Muslims; there is a clear particularity in their target audience yet not denying their general readership as well. The point is that they want to be faithful to the real communities of faith that ascribe to their faith. Thus, when it comes to modernity, it is a mixed bag of blessings and problems; it is up to the reformist to see where the faith can value modern ideas while at the same time be critical as well. It is to say, yes, some of modernity is good because of its liberating dimensions, yet modernity and secularism is not our God; there is only one God and God is one. This is what I see both theologians doing...

Secularism: Not a Friend

At the current moment the idea of the public/private split that we "enjoy" in the West is something I have been musing about especially as I get ready to teach World Civ. courses at Biola this Fall. The Enlightenment is a period I focus on for a number of reasons, but especially because I want my Christian students to really wrestle with what this period has meant for world history in general.

What I often find is a mixture of appreciation and distrust in the Enlightenment project from evangelical Christians. This period ushered in a form of naturalism that led intellectual society to distrust supernatural explanations and the idea of a personal God. However, the freedom of choice and worship is also something that supposedly came form this time as well. In a nutshell, the idea of choice is good but the idea of the secular is bad.

Moving away from the academy and to the world in general, people are still and always have been very religious. This goes for Southern hemisphere, but also Muslim countries as well (just the idea of a "Muslim" country betrays that idea). I am also suspicious that the freedom of worship and choice popped up all around the world at different times in countries with a religious basis before and after the Enlightenment.

What I also suspect is that when secularists denounce the wearing of head scarves because of freedom for women or things like a public display of crosses it is because it is infringing on the public sphere. In addition, I also suspect that if secularists really had the monopoly of things like they think they had, they would also try to enforce public law in the so-called private sphere as well. More on this later....

The Bible and Empires

As I have been reading a book on the theology of Jon Sobrino, it was pointed out that the Bible shows that God is on the side of the poor, the slaves and the outcast. Fair enough, but what is really interesting is that two of the central stories in the Bible occur during the reign of two of the greatest empires in human history: the Egyptian and the Roman.

One can get lost in the grandeur of these ancient civilizations, but the Bible could care less about them. Instead, it focuses on God's people Israel and the way Moses delivers them out of Egypt and on God's Son Jesus as he ministers in Palestine ultimately to be murdered by the Romans. God's judgment in fact is against these systems of power that have abused God's people; in both cases, someone is sent to be a deliverer (Moses/Christ).

The Exodus story is probably the most referenced story in the Bible and some would argue that Jesus is a type of Moses in the Gospel of Matthew. Moreover, when one reads the judgment in the book of Revelation, the judgments mirror the 10 plagues of Egypt and those who are unrepentant tend to respond like Pharaoh did to Moses. That being said, one should note that if God is consistently on the side of the oppressed and ultimately humbles human empires then where will God enact deliverance and deliver judgment today...?

Dream Weaver

I am a huge fan of Nolan's movies, so seeing Inception Saturday night was a real treat. The greatness of the story is the way the film has me questioning what was reality and what was not in the movie. In fact, this leads to the big question Zizek poses in light of the movie The Matrix. Zizek's point is not that there is the real reality and a fictional reality out there; we are all living in a world that we see through fictions (in other words, the 3rd pill). Symbolic fantasy is what makes us work and live in the symbolic universe.

How does Inception deal with this argument? For starters, the critics are right that this movie is one that needs to be viewed multiple times in order to get it. In light of that, what I immediately pulled out of the movie is the way Leo's main character may be simply seeking wish fulfillment throughout the entire movie; family and guilt are at the center of his world and by the end of the movie he has moved from his wife to his kids as the object of desire that he has attained. Or has he? The whole picture and all the characters throughout the movie may be one elaborate dream sequence he sets up in his mind (or at least is subconsciously put there) in order to get his "dream" children again. One of the funny things about his character is when someone probes too much into his memory of the real reality (non-dream world), he begins to freak out and his defenses go up. The ending was very neat and tidy, which makes myself (and my fellow audience at the AMC) give a collective "Oh....ahhh" at the last scene of the film.

Besides this not so very deep reading of the movie, the special effects were out of this world. I especially loved Joseph Gordon-Levitt's fight scenes (awesome actor) in dream layer number 2. It was just an awesome scene.

Said: Seeing from Engaged Eyes

It took me a while to finally finish Edward Said's classic Orientalism. His claim is that Western philologist's/historian's writings depict the people of the Middle East in a way that makes them a mythical Other. In other words, the Orient becomes an enchanted place to the Western viewer. A good example is the Aladdin story of genies and magic carpets.

Anyway, as I have begun to read current strands of philosophy and theology of the engaged follower of the Event, I am left wondering, with Said, that perhaps there is a time to suspend engagement and to try to open oneself to a universal, rational public world where the East/West views will no longer become clouded by engaged eyes. This view is obviously a little naive in light of the postmodern turn in the academic world or the multicultural turn to the celebration of a plurality of narratives. However, perhaps we should double the attempts to temper our engagement with a little indifference. Blind engagement for the sake of a cause is the ultimate betrayal of justice to a good cause.