Between
December 11 and 15, the American University in Cairo hosted renowned author,
scholar, and ex-nun Karen Armstrong, who gave a series of four lectures to an
enthralled audience whose numbers far exceeded expectations. In each lecture a
different theme was addressed: “The Axial Age: The First Millennium BCE,”
“The Future of Islam in the West,” “Christian Fundamentalism in the United
States,” and “History of God: Common Threads of Monotheism.” Her lectures
were simple, accessible to all, yet articulate and deeply profound, reflecting a
lifetime experience and a sincere quest for religious truth. Armstrong’s
pursuit set her on the path of religious life when she became a nun at 17. Years
later she was to leave both nunnery and her belief in God behind, only to
rediscover a “sense” of God through studying the history of religions. She
has since authored many books including the bestselling A History of God, The
Battle for God, Muhammad, and recently, her autobiography, The Spiraling
Staircase. She has lectured extensively on religion and appears in the
popular media on a regular basis.
All
of Armstrong’s speeches were made with the intention of creating more profound
understanding between different faiths. She spoke at length about the notion of
compassion; not compassion as pity, but compassion in its original Greek meaning
of feeling with the other. Compassion that involves “making an
imaginative jump into somebody else’s psyche and leaving your own behind,”
where “you look into the depths of yourself and find what gives you pain and
refuse to inflict it on others.” This kind of compassion involves implementing
the golden rule in its ultimate sense: “Do unto others as you would have them
do to you” (Luke 6:31). Armstrong lamented that secondary issues have replaced
this sense, and act as a shield from the “sharp discipline” of this
self-purifying, refining compassion. She mentioned her personal experience as a
nun and “spending a long time trying to get rid of the self through crawling
on the ground and kissing people’s feet,” a process in which thinking about
the humiliation itself got in the way of a true purification of the self.
Armstrong
argued that all great religions teach compassion in its true sense, which
reduces the egoism of the self—an egoism that is in fact the cause of all
violence. All the teachings of the great sages were about transforming the
personality to improve humanity, to prevent a clash of egos. Armstrong implored
that it is only when we let go of “the needy, greedy, potentially violent
self” that humanity can coexist more peacefully; and this is as true at the
personal level as it is on the global. Whether neighbors in the same street, or
international neighbors in the same world, the principle applies. The latter is
all the more crucial at a time when the world is brought closer together than
ever before, a time when economic depression in Africa immediately resonates
elsewhere, in the same way that “injustice in Afghanistan will echo in
Washington.”
Acquiring
compassion ultimately involves knowing the other, knowing what hurts them and
what brings them joy. It is from this perspective that Armstrong perceives and
explains the various religions. In her discussion of the way Islam is understood
in the West, Armstrong argued that the earliest stereotypes of Islam as the
“religion of the sword” came about during the time of the Crusades, when the
West itself was the aggressor. Islam was projected as the “shadow-self of the
developing West”; a “fantasy” that has subconsciously persisted and
requires lots of effort “to unpick.”
Armstrong
also emphasized the distinction between a clash of civilizations and political
dispute. She quoted Muhammad Abdu, who, despite hating the British occupation in
Egypt, felt at home with Europeans and is known to have said, “In Paris, I see
Islam but no Muslims; in Cairo, I see Muslims but no Islam.” Political
differences did not blind him into accepting the idea of a complete culture
clash, which is in essence what Armstrong’s message is about—inviting us in
Cairo to see another face of the West and Christians, just as much as she
continuously invites the West to see another side of Islam and other religions.
While
defending Islam against accusations that link it with terror, Armstrong also
argued that the United States is a very religious country, encouraging her
Cairene audience to find common ground with Americans as religious people rather
than seeing them as complete atheists. She continued to explain that while
Europeans have a sophisticated understanding of politics but are “obtuse”
when it comes to religion, it is vice versa with the Americans. Part of her
objective was to encourage a sharper vision of the West: “The West needs to be
reconstructed. It is not the monolithic block we often think it is.” Although
media images of torture in Abu Ghraib or hostage-killing in Iraq are reinforcing
old monolithic stereotypes on both sides, we need to create a more complex and
realistic understanding of cultures.
In
her attempt to see the wider picture, Armstrong discussed the phenomenon of
fundamentalism; not Islamic fundamentalism, as one is used to hear about, but
Christian fundamentalism. She started by explaining that Islam was the last
religion to develop a fundamentalist movement and devoted the rest of her talk
to the phenomenon of Christian fundamentalism. She explained how the roots of
this movement developed in America following the conflict between religion on
one hand, and secularism and the growing supremacy of science on the other. With
the advancement of science, religion became discredited. The application of
reason to the Bible in the 19th century led to ideas that were alarming to many
traditional believers, and by the 20th century the assault on religion
intensified as scientific theories on the creation of the world started to
contest the Bible. The intensifying attack on religion created a sense of
inadequacy and failure among some Christians, which ultimately led to resentment
of the modernity that had created the clash between Scripture and science.
Thus,
a religious movement stirred by an intense feeling of humiliation and lack of
prestige was born; a faction moved by a fear of annihilation. Evolution became a
key issue and Evangelists tried to ban it from being taught in schools. Another
major cause was abortion, which came to symbolize “the murderous nature of
modernity.” Armstrong asserted that many followers of this movement hold
alarming notions of the eventual Divine destruction of the federal government,
upon which they plan to take over. In their vision Islam is the new enemy that
has replaced the former Soviet Union. They support the State of Israel because
they believe all Jews must gather in the Holy Land in anticipation of the return
of Jesus, upon which everybody who is not Christian will be slaughtered,
including the Jews who were there guarding Jerusalem for them all that time!
Armstrong’s
aim, however, was not to alarm her attentive audience. She clarified that not
all Americans are fundamentalists and that many American citizens also feel
threatened by these extremists. She sealed her message with an eloquent personal
anecdote: Following a presentation she had once given, a member of the audience,
who was a fundamentalist, rose and severely condemned her. Armstrong spoke of
the pain this assault caused her; but she realized that his attack was merely a
reaction to the pain he had felt at her criticism of what he stood for. She
realized that these fundamentalists, too, feel pain when they are assaulted, and
moreover, become more virulent when attacked. Armstrong argued that almost all
fundamentalist movements are motivated by a sense of humiliation and degradation
that causes them to lash out and lose sight of compassion. “They must not be
attacked nor should they be dismissed; they must be decoded, understood, and
handled in with compassion.”
On
the whole, Karen Armstrong’s lectures were a solace as well as a much needed
reminder. Instead of all the good things about Islam and Muslims that I had
smugly expected to come away with, I came out with a deeper and more
sophisticated understanding of the relationship between “East and West.” She
reminded me yet again that things are not all black and white, and that gray
consists of more shades than one can ever imagine.
