'The dark side of Islam'
McCarthy, Abigail
Of several minds: Abigail McCarthy 'THE DARK SIDE OF ISLAM' IT IS ONLY ONE SIDE OF A BINDING FAITH COLUMNIST JOSEPH KRAFT created something of an uproar here when he wrote recently that the...
...Each year its number of converts is far greater than the number becoming Christians...
...Basic to Islamic thought is the concept of umma, a community of believers...
...Here in Washington, for example, the Islamic Center is one of the local landmarks...
...In part the response was probably the typical American reaction to anything which seems to criticize another's religion...
...But that does not negate the dream...
...Were it not for the great variety of costumes worn by the people at work and in attendance it would be just like any other church sale...
...Yakim Moubarac, a Catholic priest, hopes for a spiritual rapprochement between a renewed Islam and a Christianity strengthened to oppose the world of consumerism and of the exploitation of people and material resources...
...Racially, the mosque in Washington is the most integrated place of worship in the city...
...The dark side is only one side of Islam...
...the 3 July 1981: 393 women in the Egyptian and Turkish booths are indistinguishable from matrons in other Mediterranean countries like Italy or Spain, but there are also sari-clad Pakistanis and women in the more filmy robes of Indonesia...
...During late .spring and summer each year there is a veritable flowering of fund-raising church festivals up and down Massachusetts Avenue, which in its more fashionable reaches is called Embassy Row...
...John the Divine in New York, where he and his colleagues will attempt to define the religious dimension of international affairs...
...It is that, because to say that there are probably one billion Muslim believers in the world today is not like saying that there might be that many Christians...
...Flitting here and there are women in white trousers and tunics with faces half-veiled...
...Moorhead Kennedy, the State Department economic counselor who was one of the hostages held by Iran, gave a lot of thought during his captivity to how unprepared Americans had been for the revolution in Iran and what the Ayatollah Khomeini was trying to say.' "We were victims of a lack of sensitivity to the tremendous force that religion is in Third World countries, particularly in countries like Iran which have been forced into a modernization program for which they are not ready...
...The Church of the An-nunciation.(Catholic) has a spring carnival, the Washington Cathedral (Episcopal) holds its annual Flower Mart, the Greek Orthodox Cathedral has a three-day food fair, and at the Center, commonly called the mosque, the Muslim Women's Association has its annual bazaar...
...It binds together very different people in one faith...
...As Kraft himself put it, "censorious scrutiny of other people's religion is a kind of bad form...
...The president of the association (a Saudi) is chic and Parisian...
...The current Muslim revival in the world with all its revolutionary force draws on the religious resource of Islam...
...It is a great dream...
...Both Washington papers were inundated with letters defending Muslim culture and demanding to know whether Kraft would also say that the young man who shot President Reagan represented the dark side of Christianity...
...The religious revolution within Islam will be one object of his study...
...Add to the multiplying converts the population of the Muslim countries which has doubled in the last thirty years -grown from 350,000,000 to more than 750,000,000-and it becomes clear that the Islamic world is a world to reckon with...
...We (God) have made you nations and tribes so that you may know one another in friendship.' " Abigail McCarthy" Abigail McCarthy...
...The sheer weight and volume of the response was evidence that Islam has become very much part and parcel of our world without our knowing very much about it...
...Whether Mehmet Ali Agca is an Islamic fundamentalist fanatic or not is open to question, but there is no doubt that the fundamentalism he invokes is often laced with hatred and does have its dark side...
...There are no specifically Christian states but there are forty nations in the Conference of Islamic states...
...Of several minds: Abigail McCarthy 'THE DARK SIDE OF ISLAM' IT IS ONLY ONE SIDE OF A BINDING FAITH COLUMNIST JOSEPH KRAFT created something of an uproar here when he wrote recently that the alleged assassin who attempted to take the life of Pope John Paul II represented the "dark side of Islam...
...The religion of Islam is no longer too exotic to make inroads in the Americas...
...The reconciling of Muslims and Christians on the basis of justice for the poor could challenge the divided world "in which we are afraid to live.'' This seems also to have been the dream of John Paul II as he reached out to Islam during his visits to Turkey and Pakistan...
...He said the Libyans would be sorely missed because they had been so helpful to those propagating the Islamic creed...
...The religious character of Islam, Moubarac goes on to say, offers more than a vision: it offers the lived experience of a genuine unity...
...In consequence Kennedy is leaving the State Department to become director of a peace institution at the Espiscopal Cathedral of St...
...Muslims, once rare on the American scene, are gaining converts here-and not only among the black followers of Malcolm X and Mohammed Ali...
...Perhaps most interesting of all are the women in long blue robes and towel-like white headdresses, who, when asked what country they represent, answer in accents unmistakably American, "We're from right here in D.C...
...When the Libyan delegation was, asked by the State Department to leave this country, one of the most dolorous guests at the farewell party was reported to be a printer from Cedar Rapids, Iowa...
...The sellers, however, are a dramatic reminder of the variety of the Islamic world...
...And it is ironic in the face of it that the man who tried to kill the pope has been quoted as saying, "I shot at the pontiff because I considered him responsible for the Western reaction against Islam and the leader of the crusade that is being waged against my faith...
...Rich and poor gather for collective prayer on Fridays in the same mosque...
...Says Yakim Moubarac in the Spring, 1980, issue of Cross Currents, ". . . religion has never been an isolated sector of life in this (the Muslim) world, but has provided a traditional foundation for law, civil society, and the state...
...it is the fastest growing religion in Africa, and spreading in Asia...
...The visitor approaches through a marble courtyard where conducted pilgrimages and summer schools are advertised (although here the pilgrimages are to Mecca), and finds booths under a striped tent where food, plants, clothes, and white elephants are being sold...
...As one of the pamphlets distributed at the bazaar explains,' 'Islam calls for a united world under one God...
Vol. 108 • July 1981 • No. 13
