Austin mosque offers free lecture series on Islam
This looks like a terrific lecture series for anyone (in the Austin area) wanting to get a solid understanding of Islam. And, if I may get on my soapbox for a moment, that should be EVERYONE. I mean, seriously, religious literacy is so important. Plus the lectures are free. PLUS Sheikh Islam — an Austin native and a UT grad — is a great guy, very sincere, very funny and very approachable. So get thee to the North Austin Muslim Community Center, Insha’Allah.
Here are the deets:
A series of lectures on the basics of Islam
We’re pleased to announce that NAMCC is offering a series of lectures on the basic tenets of Islam. The course is designed for non-Muslims curious about Islam, but is open to all including new and long-time Muslims interested in the fundamentals of Islam.
| What: | Islam 101: A series of lectures on the basics of Islam |
|---|---|
| Who: | Sheikh Islam – NAMCC Imam |
| When: | Wednesday evenings: 7:00-8:30pm Jan 25 – May 9 |
| Where: | NAMCC 11900 North Lamar Blvd, Austin, TX 78753 |
| Cost: | Free! |
Registration
Walk-ins are welcome, but if you do plan on attending, please register here so that we can make sure to have plenty of materials and refreshments for everyone.
Imam Islam Biography
Imam Islam currently serves as Imam for the North Austin Muslim Community Center. He previously served as Imam for the Islamic Center of Little Rock. He is a graduate of the University of Texas born and raised in the United States. His Islamic education came through sitting with people of knowledge and scholars from an early age until the present. He is a dynamic speaker who engages audiences and genuinely enjoys open and respectful discussion.
Syllabus
Each lecture will cover a different topic. Classes are designed to be independent, so don’t worry if you miss one or want to join in the middle of the series. Written materials will also be provided in-class and on-line to help those interested catch up on classes missed.
| Date | Topic |
|---|---|
| 01/25/12 | Welcome and Introduction to Islam and Muslims |
| 02/01/12 | The Shahadah (Testimony of Faith) |
| 02/08/12 | Highlights and Summary of the Life of Muhammad (Peace by upon him) |
| 02/15/12 | Salah (Prayer) |
| 02/22/12 | Zakah (Charity-Tax) |
| 02/29/12 | Sawm (Fasting) |
| 03/07/12 | Hajj (Pilgrimage) |
| 03/14/12 | ** No Class ** |
| 03/21/12 | Belief in Allah |
| 03/28/12 | Belief in Angels |
| 04/04/12 | Belief in Books |
| 04/11/12 | Belief in Messengers |
| 04/18/12 | Belief in the Last Day |
| 04/25/12 | Belief in Divine Decree and Measure |
| 05/02/12 | Islamic Spirituality |
| 05/09/12 | Contemporary Issues |
NYT’s slightly aimless story on religion in public schools
The NYT is taking the temperature of the prayer in school issue. How bad is it, doc? Well….
The story lists several recent incidents — some of them pretty outrageous — of Christian preaching in public schools. It also quotes Christian conservatives who claim the secular liberals are trying to rob students and teachers of their right to free speech, but it’s clearly slanted toward exposing the problem with religion. The examples of school-sponsored proselytizing are given top billing and presented more as facts rather than quotes/opinions of activists. The cases where schools have overreached in quashing religious expression are not listed by the writer.
(For what it’s worth, I’m on the secular side of this debate, BUT I think it’s important to look critically at the presentation of the information. And there is a lot of useful information here. Everybody, especially high school and college students, should know this stuff — the history of religion in American public schools, the landmark decisions on school prayer, the continued litigation and debates and the way the media covers the issue today.)
OK, down from my soap box. My main problem with this story is its lack of focus. Why are we reading this now? What’s new or different? I thought paragraph might hold the key:
Despite such disputes, legal religious expression is more present in schools now than it has been for decades, said Charles Haynes, a senior scholar at the First Amendment Center in Washington who advises school districts and helped develop teacher guidelines that are consistent with the law.
But a) I’m not sure what “legal religious expression is more present” means (how do you measure that? How does this guy know this?) and b) we never hear from Haynes again.
Like I said, there’s some useful information on an extremely important topic. But a clearer focus, more balance and depth would help.
Revisiting the beautiful life of David Gentiles
Hard to believe it’s been two years since David Gentiles, a pastor at Journey IFC, left this earth. If you didn’t know him or haven’t heard of him before now, please read this column I wrote almost two years ago. I hope it will inspire you.
Perry’s ad reveals misunderstanding of prayer in school
People are up in arms over the new Rick Perry ad in which our Texas governor and presidential hopeful picks a religious fight. He blasts Obama and liberals for allowing gays to serve openly in the military while forbidding kids to pray in school or celebrate Christmas. Huh?
Jim Wallis is calling for an apology, and several other Christian leaders are expressing their disapproval.
Perry’s argument is weak, to be sure. But it’s not surprising he’s taking this approach. The belief that Christianity is under attack by liberal secularists is a pretty common one among conservative Christians. I heard it again and again when I was a religion reporter.”The liberals took God out of school,” they would say. But nobody can stop students from praying or believing. The courts ruled that mandatory prayer and Bible readings and displays of the 10 Commandments were unconstitutional. That’s hardly a war on religion, Governor.
The challenge of taking an American Jewish head count
This Houses of Worship column by Brandeis professor Jonathan Sarna in the WSJ highlights a very real problem: We don’t have a solid grasp of the Jewish population in the U.S. Maybe most folks aren’t too concerned about whether we have an accurate count of American Jews. Maybe most American Jews aren’t even too concerned. But as a religion reporter, having real numbers always seemed very important. Some people are surprised to learn how large the worldwide Muslim population is or how few Episcopalians there are in the U.S. Having these figures helps reporters provide their readers with some perspective.
And of course, other folks have their reasons for wanting a good religious head count.
The problem is that religious organizations have different ways of counting their people. And some tend to pad the numbers. A problem particular to the Jewish population, as Sarna notes, is the lack of consensus on who should be counted as a Jew.
Whereas many Christian churches calculate membership as the sum of all those they have baptized or who have made public declarations of their faith, Jews see themselves as a people embracing religious and nonreligious members alike. Thus life-cycle ceremonies and synagogue membership are insufficient proxies for membership in the Jewish community.
Exactly. One might self-identify as Jewish even though he or she is not religious. And with the rates of interfaith marriages in which the offspring are raised with two religions — or no religion — how do we label those children? And what of the more traditional matrilineal view — that children born to a Jewish mother are automatically Jewish?
As a reporter, I always used the 5-6 million figure for American Jews. That was the generally accepted statistic. But according to Sarna, the last Jewish “census” (conducted 10 years ago) was considered by many to be inaccurate. And today, the challenges of obtaining reliable information are even greater.
Methodologically, the challenge of surveying the small Jewish population scattered across the United States remains formidable. Even if every American responded to a random survey of home telephone numbers, it would still require some 50 calls to find a single Jewish respondent. Owing to caller ID, “survey fatigue” and the growing number of people who don’t possess home telephones (but only cell phones), locating Jews in this way is less and less practical. And a survey conducted via “random digit dialing” also threatens to be highly unrepresentative, for young professional Jews are far less likely to be located through such techniques than older retired ones.
Proposed Osteen reality show … sigh
Reality shows often have little to do with reality. They tend to be carefully staged and edited versions of people’s actual lives. And I suspect this Joel Osteen project will be no different. The concept, which the Houston gigantichurch pastor is working on with “Survivor” producer Mark Burnett, is brilliant marketing for the Osteen brand. He and his wife and church members will be doing their poverty tour, helping out folks in need, flashing their megawatt smiles for the camera, etc., etc. Did I just write megawatt smiles? See it just feels so contrived I can’t even come up with original language to describe it.
Guess I’m feeling particularly cynical today.
A more generous take on this from a media expert quoted in the Chronicle story:
“I can’t imagine a better way for someone like megachurch pastor Joel Osteen to reach beyond one’s audience than to do a reality TV show,” said Diane Winston, the Knight Chair in Media and Religion at the University of Southern California. “The genius of evangelicalism is to use whatever media is most popular at the time, and now they can exploit reality TV for their message.”
I suppose. But I would much rather see Christians who live their mission day to day in a way that more closely resembles Jesus. I can think of a whole bunch of folks here in Austin who have eschewed the comfortable big church lifestyle for a much more challenging one. Many of them have moved into poor neighborhoods, taken enormous pay cuts and given up their second cars. They are much more engaged with the world now than when they lived in the church bubble. And it would be really nice to see that model broadcast to television audiences. That, to me, just seems so much more real.
Sex (as in gender) and altar servers; reflections on a WaPo story
I’m slow on posting this. Such is life with two children 2 and under. But those children — both girls — are part of the reason I find this WaPo story so distressing.
Michelle Boorstein explores the reactions among parishioners at Corpus Christi Catholic Church in Virginia where the pastor, the Rev. Michael Taylor, has banned girls from serving as acolytes, or altar servers. Jennifer Zickel, a mother of two girls, was outraged and pulled her family out of the church. But, as Boorstein notes, many Catholics support the boys only rule. In this case, even girls who are grandfathered are made to demonstrate that they aren’t the real deal:
Girls who had already trained as altar servers at Corpus Christi were allowed to continue, but they cannot wear the new black, priestlike robes the boys began wearing. People who oppose girl servers see the task as priest-like and note that the church teaches priests must be male because they model Jesus.
Of course, the task is priest-like. And of course serving in this capacity could be early training for the priesthood. I still don’t understand why women are banned from *that* either, so I guess I’m going to struggle mightily with the notion that sex should be a factor at the acolyte level.
And we are talking about sex. Or gender. Whatever you prefer. And one has to ask what sex has to do with modeling Jesus. Seriously. How does the sexual identify of Jesus factor in the Gospels?
Now, not surprisingly, the folks at Get Religion had something to say about this piece. Mollie Hemingway argues here that the story lacked balance and should have featured comments from those who support male-only altar servers and male acolytes themselves. And yes, it would have been nice to hear from those people. Boorstein tried to interview the pastor, but he didn’t return calls. Surely, though, she could have found other conservative voices (aside from the links to Catholic writers who oppose girls on the altar). In that way, this story felt rushed and unfinished.
STILL …. it’s an important piece, one provokes questions all Catholics should ask themselves. Why are girls (and women) not allowed to participate in certain aspects of the church? What does sex have to do with a person’s ability to serve a priest during Mass or to lead a congregation? What message is the church sending its children — especially its girls?
Finally — what you’ve all been waiting for: Q&As on The Grand Scheme. (You *have* been waiting for this, haven’t you?)
First up, the incomparable Becky Garrison, satirist, keen observer, and a bit of a troublemaker. Which some would argue is exactly what the church needs right now. She’s the author of several books, including one of my faves “Jesus Died for This?” Her latest, “Ancient Future Disciples: Meeting Jesus in Mission-Shaped Ministries,” looks at congregations (here in Austin and other U.S. cities) that are pushing the boundaries on hospitality while operating within or next to a more traditional Anglican ministry. How does it work? What difference are they making? How are they reaching people? Some fascinating discussions on race and sexuality here.
And Garrison is taking those issues to the fore, criticizing “progressive” and “emergent” Christians for their attitudes on sexuality — in particular how they are treating gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered folks.
Lots o’ links below and all worth checking out.
Here she is:
You’ve traveled extensively in the U.S. and abroad looking at different expressions of Christianity. What makes the communities you visited in this book unique?
Culturally specific to region – can’t import them like a cookie-cutter Acts 29 church plant. For example, St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery has a hip-hop, blues flavor and an LGBT welcoming culture that’s strongly influenced by its position two blocks from St. Mark’s Place. In the Pacific Northwest, a Celtic rhythm informs the spirituality of Church of the Apostles and Saints Peter and Paul located in Seattle and Portland respectively.
Having said that, I am finding some commonalities in the US-based communities that I visited over the past year. While a few of them use the term “emerging,” they do so in the context in the UK Anglican context. They don’t self-identify as missional, organic, emergent or whatever the evangelical church brand du jour might be. US emergent/progressive evangelical churches might talk up the need to affirm women and LGBT people but yet their funding streams, organizational leadership and author/speaker spokespersons remain almost exclusively white males of privilege who self-identified straight. But in the groups I profiled, over half of them are led by women with a sizable number of these leaders women of color. In addition, one finds LGBT people present at all levels of leadership within these communities along with those who self-identify as Republican.
There’s a great deal of angst these days over the direction of the Anglican church with leaders divided over issues of sexuality and theology. Do these emerging Christian communities transcend those debates?
The story of these communities parallels my own search for community. As a pre-natal Episcopalian (my late father was an Episcopal priest, you do the science and ecclessiology), I grew up with a hippie professor/priest father who was exploring reaching those for whom church was not in their vocabulary. As a young adult, I began searching the kind of communities my late father studied only to find the church starting to come asunder over the issue of human sexuality. All too often, it seemed to me that both sides on this debate were more concerned about scoring political points than trying to find spaces to welcome all as created in the image of God. (Genesis 1:26).But thanks to my spiritual director the late Rev. Judy Baumer, I found a community in St. Bart’s (NYC) in the ’80s that brought together people with differing political sensibilities to explore how we could put the Beatitudes into practice.
After she died in 1995, I continued my quest for similar communities, a journey that led me to the UK emerging church scene and select US communities who focus what it means to love God and one’s neighbor. In this quest, they try to fulfill the Baptismal covenant to welcome “all” at the communion table, and this radical inclusion extends to those excluded from my traditional communities such as LGBT folks.
There’s a very compelling quote from Christina Shinkle of the lay-led congregation Beloved in Washington. She says the mainline churches aren’t meeting “the spiritual hunger of our time.” That’s powerful. Does the church hierarchy hear this? And do they really get it?
In Ancient Future Disciples, I profile two bishops who seem to hear what Christina is saying. Here’s an excerpt from the Rt. Rev. M. Thomas Shaw, SSJE posted over at Killing the Buddha where Shaw talks about working on opening up the Anglican big tent to everyone.
This may be kind of a weird question, but I’m wondering if there are any folks who might not be inclined to read this book but who you think would really benefit from hearing these stories.
This goes back to a conversation we had when Jesus Died for This? came out when I confess I often have more in common with spiritual atheists than evangelical Christians. In the panel discussion we both participated in at Journey Imperfect Faith Community last fall, I outed myself as an “apophatic Anglican” noting that,“The more I continue to enter the cloud of the unknowing, the more I realize just much I cannot know a God that is outside the time/space continuum But something happens when two or three are gathered together in the name of Jesus. And the Anglican part is because I enter into the mysteries through the Anglican ritual. And Anglicanism is one of those traditions, where I can actually leave my brain intact. I don’t have to park my brain at the door when I come in to partake of the mysteries.”
I’ve walked away from the progressive evangelical scene after Sojourners rejected an LGBT welcome ad, and Tony Campolo compared the theology of the Red Letter Christians with that of the Family despite the Family’s well proven connections to the anti-gay legislation pending in Uganda and other atrocities. These moves coupled with the quasi-affirming but not really welcoming
Wild Goose Festival proved that when push comes to shove, this crew will side with their conservative funders instead of standing in solidarity with those who are marginalized. Heck, one of the US emergent church gurus is now a client of A Larry Ross Communications, a PR Guru and Dominionist denier whose client list reads like a who’s who list of Reformed Evangelical power players (e.g., Billy Graham, the Creation Museum, and Campus Crusade for Christ).
Over the past few months, I’ve learned the I am by no means the only person who has grown weary of this aforementioned unbiblical BS. As I’ve reported on sites like Killing the Buddha, we’re clearly at the start of a global grassroots movement that’s bigger than any one of us. I began picking up on this spirit in Jesus Died for This? and continued with my reporting in profiled in Starting from Zero with 0$ and Ancient Future Disciples. I sense that a number of spiritual seekers would find space to reflect, play, and explore questions in many of the communities I keep discovering in my travels. Just call it a strong hunch.
Some reflections on “All-American Muslim” reality show
I watched the first episode of the new TLC series “All-American Muslim”, a reality show about Lebanese-American Muslims living in Dearborn, Mich., a city with the highest concentration of Arabs outside the Middle East and the largest community of Shiite Muslims in the U.S. Some thoughts:
1. The folks who are featured on the series represent a spectrum of belief and practice. Some are very devout. Some aren’t. Some women wear hijab. Some wear pretty racy outfits. One guy is a high school football coach. One lady is a glamorous party planner who wants to open a nightclub. The diversity among Muslims isn’t a shocker to me. BUT viewers who have little experience with Muslims — and especially viewers who are generally distrustful of Muslims or worse — could really benefit from glimpsing this diversity.
2. After I just praised the diverse representation of Muslims, I’m now going to argue that it’s not diverse enough. I’m sure it’s easier to film in one place, but, really, Dearborn represents a minority Muslim demographic here: Arab and Shiite. It would be nice to see Muslims of other ethnicities and to explore the differences between Shiite and the majority Sunni population. But I’m probably asking too much. This is TLC, the network that, as this Houston Chronicle blogger points out, brought us “Hoarders” and other examples of lunacy.
3. People in Dearborn sound a lot like the people I grew up with in Western Massachusetts. Wonder why those accents are so similar.
4. In the first episode, an Irish-Catholic man converts to Islam in order to get married (see the previous link for a critical take on that from a Muslim convert), and it just felt …. weird. Forced. Inauthentic.
5. This series will likely make Muslims appear more mainstream. More like typical Americans. (Whatever that means.) And on a superficial level, I suppose that’s good. But I hope we can eventually see a more sophisticated, complex portrayal of American Muslims. One that deeply explores beliefs and practices and highlights challenges Muslims face and provides more religious and cultural context. We may get some glimpses of that on on “All-American Muslim,” but I’m guessing this show will leave something to be desired.
Stay tuned.
In two columns on Baha’i faith, one feels lacking
Two columns on the Baha’i faith this weekend. One, a very serious report on Iran’s unrelenting persecution of its Baha’i minority (it ran in the WSJ, which doesn’t allow non-subscribers full access but can be read in entirety here); the other, a brief overview of the faith by an Austin woman who is trying to introduce her teen daughters to the world’s religions (on the Austin American-Statesman faith page).
The latter piece, by Anne Elizabeth Wynn, combined the family’s experiences with Baha’is AND Mormons. I can see pairing the two religions in a column given that they emerged around the same time and both are often reviled by the religious groups from which they sprang (Christianity and Islam). BUT they are, of course, very, very different faiths. AND I would prefer to see them each explored separately because it would be helpful to understand them in their current cultural and political contexts (Mormon presidential candidates and the claims of some conservative Christians that Mormonism is a cult and the oppression Baha’is are facing in Iran).
It was nice to see Wynn highlight the brilliant Khotan Shahbazi-Harmon (a dear friend of mine) in her column. But given that Khotan introduced her to a fellow Baha’i who had recently moved here from Iran, the omission of any mention of persecution is disappointing. Consider the horrendous situation for Iranian Baha’is as Firuz Kazemzadeh lays it out in his WSJ column:
While many Iranian citizens are targets of repression by the current regime, the treatment of Bahais, the country’s largest non-Muslim religious community, is a special case. Unlike Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians, who have certain limited rights under the Islamic Constitution, Bahais were declared unprotected infidels immediately following the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
Bahais have faced persecution in Iran since their religion was founded more than a century and a half ago, but it was never as systematic as in the last 30 years. Since the Islamic Revolution, more than 200 Bahai leaders have been put to death. The regime has outlawed Bahai institutions, confiscated their properties, desecrated their cemeteries, demolished their holy places. Bahais are subject to constant state-sanctioned pressure to recant their faith.
This is a key part of the Baha’i story today. Religious literacy is so important, and I applaud Wynn for her efforts. And I also realize she’s not writing as a journalist but as a mother attempting to illuminate herself and her kids about different faiths. But these religions don’t exist in a vacuum.
