—–

The long struggle in the United States for racial equality, which has thrown up memorable and impassioned phrases, such as “We shall overcome,” “I have a dream,” and “Black lives matter,” has sought procedural equality for minorities, who systematically have been treated differently from the white majority by police. In this light, it has struck me that the Qur’an is remarkably uninterested in any distinction between the self and the barbarian, or between white and black. 

The world of late antiquity, to which the Qur’an was preached, was on the whole hostile to the idea of equality. The rise from the fourth century of a Christian Roman Empire under the successors of Constantine did nothing to change the old Greek and Roman discourse about civilized citizens and “barbarians.”¹ In Iran’s Sasanian Empire, Zoroastrian thinkers and officials made a firm distinction between “Iran” and “not-Iran” (anīrān), and there was no doubt for Sasanian authors that being Iranian was superior in every way.

(The Conversation) – Mark Raphael Baker began writing his final book, A Season of Death, from his hospital bed, in the wake of his terminal pancreatic cancer diagnosis. His second wife, Michelle, would later observe: “More than a comfort or distraction, in him it was a need.” The renowned Jewish Australian author and academic died a year later, after 13 months of illness, aged 64.

In 2022, after nearly four months of misdiagnoses and inaction from doctors – despite persistent complaints of unbearable abdominal pain – an MRI had finally revealed the grave news. Cancer would claim his life, as it had his first wife Kerryn in 2016 (aged 55), and his brother Johnny in 2017 (aged 62).

He wrote:

I kept thinking, this can’t be happening. I was invulnerable. The odds of another person in one family being hit by terminal cancer seemed impossible.

How does one write the essence of a life once it has come to an end? Baker was no stranger to this question.

Review: A Season of Death – Mark Raphael Baker (Melbourne University Press)

His first book, The Fiftieth Gate: a journey through memory (1997), is an exploration of his parents’ Holocaust survival, told through the eyes of a son grappling with his connection to their trauma. When it was reissued for its 20-year anniversary in 2017, it had sold over 70,000 copies. His second book, Thirty Days: A Journey to the End of Love (2017), was written after his first wife, Kerryn, lost her ten-month battle with stomach cancer.

Death shaded much of Baker’s life. Writing was his salve, a window to understanding and hope.

Baker was director of the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation and associate professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Monash University. Religion, which was central to his family and intellectual life, is woven throughout the memoir.

Liminal grief

A Season of Death is short, at 253 pages. It is structured in five parts: Regeneration, Remarriage, Re-Creation, Retribution and Revelation. The repeated prefix “re” (meaning again, or back) speaks to the cyclical nature of life as Baker lived it.

The book begins with Kerryn’s cancer diagnosis, seven years prior to his own. Baker writes, “That experience followed me; every breath I took felt like Kerryn’s last breath.” He continues:

Death and life became inextricably bound; I was unsure which world I belonged to, and in my dreams at night I danced with her spirit, sang the songs of our courtship, reanimated her in my mind and eventually rushed to write a version of our life story, which I completed in thirty days.

Baker writes beautifully and eloquently about the liminality of existing in grief after such a profound death. Less than two years after Kerryn’s passing, Baker’s brother, Johnny, also died of cancer. This death was particularly difficult for Baker’s parents, who both survived the Holocaust.

For many survivors of genocide – who’ve lost their family, their sense of place, everything – children become the centre of their universe. This was certainly the case for Baker’s parents:

What to say to these people whose entire existence revolved vicariously around the successes of their two sons? When my mother was asked about her idea of revenge for what she had suffered, her answer came back without hesitation, “You, my children, are my revenge.”

‘Something was seriously wrong’

The book is written in a fragmented style, traversing past and present, shimmering between early childhood memories and life as an adult.

We are with Baker through his courting of Michelle Lesh, who he had first known as the stepdaughter of his close friend, Raimond Gaita. Their relationship transformed and deepened through their shared intellectual and political interests, particularly concerning Israel-Palestine, and centred around travel and their respective careers. They were married in 2018 and in 2021 welcomed a daughter, Melila.

“Fifty Gates,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3, 2024

We are with him as he reflects on his parents’ survival of Holocaust Europe and the trauma they experienced. (Baker’s father died in 2020, three years after his brother Johnny. Baker’s mother, Genia, was 88 when he died in 2023.)

And we are with him in the doctor’s office as his worst fear becomes reality.

The best word for my reaction was one of bewilderment. Something was seriously wrong. We’d talked about pancreatitis but that was different from pancreatic cancer. I was numb. It didn’t feel possible, but I immediately pictured my death. The only question in my mind was if I would last as long as Kerryn and Johnny.

For anyone touched by cancer, this feeling of bewilderment is familiar. Few diseases have a more profound physical and psychological impact. Baker observes, often with searing clarity, his own corporeal degeneration and his thoughts as he confronts his own mortality.

“While no number of deaths could make me indifferent to what awaits me, watching a sequence of deaths in the family has made me more prepared,” he writes.

I feel as though I have been trained or mentored in the art of dying. My fear is less the prospect of my ultimate demise than the pain I will endure reaching the end.

What is surprising is Baker’s persistent humour and palpable energy, despite the pain and despite the closeness of his ultimate demise.

An act of love

A Season of Death is not an easy read. It is an intimate, at times harrowing portrait of grief and of death. What Baker has written is a final observation of his life, offering a rare perspective on death – and life as it comes to an end.

To persevere with a writing project in the midst of such bodily trauma, to write through and towards death for his children, for his family and descendants, is an incredibly courageous feat.

“Over the course of his illness Mark wrote almost every day, despite the ravages and debilitating side effects of his treatments, which often left him weary in body and mind,” write Lesh and his friend Raimond Gaita, in the book’s postscript.

Baker passed away before the book was published, and Lesh and Gaita brought it to publication in his absence. In their postscript, they observe:

Writing the memoir was an act of love that took possession of him. It gave him comfort and energy. He sacrificed sleep, physical and mental rest, and refrained from engaging with people and aspects of the world to which he had previously given so much of himself.

What lingers with the reader is a sense of the fragility and miracle of being alive for the very short time we each have. We are all going to die, and whether or not this fact is a preoccupation, it is moving to witness, through writing, an at once introspective and philosophical mind work through his imminent death.

There is no linear story, or discrete chapters. There is no Before or After. There is only the projection of what was and what might have been: memory – fickle, pliant, circular, fragmentary.

Tess Scholfield-Peters, Casual Academic, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

(The Conversation) – In 1961, less than one per cent of Canadians identified as having no religion. In 2021, 43 per cent of those between 15 and 35 considered themselves religiously unaffiliated.

Organized religion — and especially Christianity — is in decline. Secularization is advancing apace. Most sociologists of religion agree on this. What they disagree about, however, is why.

In an article published in the journal Sociology of Religion, my co-author, sociology professor Sam Reimer, and I try to provide an answer to this question. We argue that secularization is sensitive to what we call the “religious imaginary” — how religion is viewed in a society.

The standard account of secularization

The prevailing account of secularization focuses on rationalization (the rising authority of science and reason), individualization (increased individualism and materialism) and pluralism (diversity is believed to weaken religious authority), as well as what are called the three B’s — belief, behaviour and belonging.

From this perspective, religion has declined in Canada because religious beliefs have been supplanted by secular beliefs and practices. Religious behaviours like praying or reading scripture have been replaced with secular behaviours like spending time with friends or exercising. In addition, religious identities rooted in tradition have been replaced by secular identities grounded in personal choices.

The standard account of secularization has a lot going for it. However, it also misses something important: the fact that the meaning of “religion” and what it means to be “religious” has changed over time.

As a result, it struggles to explain why Canada went from being a more religious country than the United States in terms of behaviour and belonging prior to 1960, to being, by 2023, much more secular.

It’s simply not the case that Canada has experienced more rationalization, individualization or pluralism than the U.S. — so the answer must lie elsewhere.

The religious imaginary

By religious imaginary we mean the shared assumptions people have about what religion is and does. We argue that countries have distinct religious imaginaries, which play a critical role in shaping the population’s relationship to religion. In essence, to understand religious change, we should also bear in mind a fourth B: branding.

To understand branding’s role in shaping views of “religion” we drew from recent survey data on young Canadians’ shifting sentiments toward the term, as well as our own interview data with 50 Anglo-Canadians born between 1980-2000 who identify as “spiritual but not religious” — a phrase claimed by around 40 per cent of Canadians.

Our findings indicate that the decline of organized religion in Canada is caused by a significant shift in the country’s religious imaginary: while “religion” was once widely seen by Canadians in positive terms, among younger people especially, it is increasingly seen in a negative light.

Many of the Canadian millennials we spoke to tended to view the word “religion” as:

(1) anti-modern;

(2) conservative;

(3) American; and

(4) colonial.

Religion is anti-modern

Among our interviewees, “religion” was generally seen as a holdover of a primitive pre-modern past. Terms commonly invoked were “anti-intellectual,” “cultish,” “ignorant” and “superstition.” For many young Canadians, then, “religious” and “modern” are seen as antithetical.

“Religious Right,” Digital, Midjourney, 2024

The notion that “religion” is anti-modern can be traced back to the Enlightenment, and is of longstanding provenance. However, it is only until recently that it became widespread in Canadian society.

We argue this discourse is most prevalent in the secular university, and that the ubiquity of this discourse in Canada is closely related to the post-1960s expansion of higher education. Canadians aged 25-34 are the most educated generational cohort across Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, and for many of them, religion feels at odds with the modern world.

Religion is conservative

It was common for interviewees to tell us they viewed the word “religion” as conservative, illiberal or at odds with social progress. Terms regularly invoked were, “repressive,” “conformist,” “dogmatic” and “intolerant.” Likewise, these young Canadians tended to view “religion” as a threat to individual freedom and personal authenticity.

This idea can be traced back to the 1960s, and was popularized by movements like second-wave feminism and gay liberation, which were motivated by ideals of freedom and authenticity. Crucially, the real social progress achieved by these movements was discursively dependent upon the symbolic pollution of the word “religion.” In other words, religious dogma was coded by progressive and liberal activists in the 1960s as the “bad guy” against which they were fighting.

It can be argued there is nothing inherently conservative about religion, and historically, faith communities have been at the forefront of fights for social justice. However, since the 1960s progressive Christians have found it increasingly difficult to reconcile their “religious” and “progressive” identities, because the symbolic association between “religion” and “conservativism” has become widely taken-for-granted.

Religion is American

Many of the young Canadians we interviewed associated “religion” with the United States, and with the American Christian Right, specifically. Terms regularly invoked were “Westboro Baptists,” “the South,” and “the Republican Party.”

This discourse has its origins in the 1970s and 80s. Whereas the U.S. saw the rise of an assertive and politically engaged Christian Right in this period, Canada began forging its identity as a multicultural nation.

So, while Americans today remain divided over whether the U.S. should be a Christian nation, a majority of Canadians today embrace a “post-Christian” multicultural national identity.

Interestingly, because of its association with the U.S., rejecting “religion” was understood by some as a form of patriotism. By identifying as “spiritual but not religious,” interviewees contrasted themselves with the “un-Canadian” and “religious” U.S. Christian Right.

Religion is colonial

Although less common than the other three, references to Canada’s residential school system were reliably invoked in interviews. In these instances, feelings of shame and regret were on display, along with visceral anger at Christian churches for maintaining the colonial system.

This discourse became prominent in the wake of the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The TRC’s final report publicized the hideous conditions and crimes against Indigenous students at residential schools. Few other events have been as damaging to the Christian brand in Canada.

In 1950, being religious was widely considered an essential part of being Canadian. Of course, there are many religious affiliates in Canada, and it would be a mistake to assume the religious imaginary we’ve sketched is the only one. However, our findings lend support to sociologist Joel Thiessen’s observation that being “religious” in Canada is increasingly socially unacceptable, especially among the young.

Galen Watts, Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Legal Studies, University of Waterloo

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Donald Trump jumped to the conclusion that the New Orleans attacker, who killed 15 people and wounded three dozen more, was a career criminal and recent immigrant. In fact, he was an African-American veteran, born and bred in Beaumont, Texas. His conversion to Islam must have happened before 2004, when he tried to enlist in the Navy under that name. Instead, he ended up in the army, and deployed for a year to Afghanistan (2009-2010), as well as getting the training to become an IT specialist. He remained a reservist after his honorable discharge.

He was, in short, a patriotic American who did his part in fighting the war on terror. He was not an immigrant or a member of a foreign criminal gang.

That Mr. Trump persists in deploying the politics of hate and bigotry is a bad sign for the U.S. Even if Jabbar had been a immigrant, his actions would have said nothing about immigrants, who have low rates of criminality compared to the native-born population and whose productivity has been one key to American economic success. They don’t take jobs from the native-born on the whole, but do jobs that the latter typically won’t do.

Nor is Jabbar’s religion a reason to engage in Muslim-hatred. The NY Post‘s insidious and Islamophobic reporting ominously says that one of his neighbors in the trailer park in which he ended up only spoke Urdu. If that were true it would be because poor people live in trailer parks, including immigrants with limited English. However, it sounds fishy to me, since even poor Pakistanis of the sort who come to the United States tend to know English. It was the colonial language and still an essential language, like French in Tunisia. Then they say ominously that there was a mosque in the area. So what? Mosques are houses of worship where people go for solace when facing rough times.

The Post says ominously that Jabbar referenced the Qur’an, the Muslim scripture. D’oh. He was a Muslim. He also referenced the Qur’an when he was in Afghanistan as part of the US army’s fight against the Taliban.

The Qur’an forbids murder and urges believers to forgive and do good to their enemies. See my study of these peace themes in the Muslim holy book at academia.edu.

If this guy had been a white Proud Boy found with guns and explosives, would the newspapers imply that it is suspicious that he quoted the Bible and that there is a Baptist church near his house? It is 2024, New York Post. Islamophobia is a disgusting form of racism. (Yes, Muslims are racialized in this country.)

I admire the hell out of veterans. I grew up in an army family, just as Jabbar’s children did. Most veterans are admirable citizens who come back and contribute to their communities, building businesses and providing key services. But the job undeniably can lead to trauma and stresses that a small minority deal with in dysfunctional ways. The suicide rate is tragically high. I’ve lost people I knew that way. Some end up homeless. Some are radicalized. It is not an accident that the leadership of the Proud Boys, convicted of sedition, were disproportionately veterans.

Jacqueline Sweet was able to screenshot some of Jabbar’s postings at Twitter / X:

In the first posting, from 2021, he says that a “scarcity mindset” is unhealthy in an environment of abundance, and that if you can’t turn off that scarcity mindset it becomes a kind of trauma. In the second, from the same year, he complains about the lack of Black protagonists in films after Marvel’s The Black Panther (2018) who are not “submissive, immoral or immature/ silly.”

pic.twitter.com/ZpOQlLVupU

— Jacqueline Sweet (@JSweetLI) January 1, 2025

Then in 2022, everything went to hell. His wife divorced him, he went deeply into debt, and The Post says he ended up living in a trailer home with chickens and sheep in the lawn.

Everybody goes postal in their own way. White nationalists try to invade the capitol and hang the vice president. Kahanaist Jews in Israel shoot up mosques and commit atrocities in the Occupied Territories. A handful of Muslim Americans have declared themselves ISIL (ISIS, Daesh), even though that organization barely exists and has no command and control. It is like a white supremacist declaring that he is acting in the name of Adolf Hitler even though the Nazi army was long ago defeated and Adolf died in his bunker.

It should go without saying that the fact that a tiny number of disturbed individuals act this way does not reflect on the four or five million Muslim Americans, who are our physicians, accountants, and local business people. Tarring a whole group with the actions of a few is the definition of prejudice. Likewise, the Proud Boys don’t reflect on all white people.

I’m not a psychiatrist and don’t play one on television. I therefore cannot pronounce on Jabbar’s state of mind. But I do know that if a white guy lost his family and his business, went tens of thousands of dollars into debt, and ended up living in a trailer home with livestock in his yard, and then went postal, sympathetic white reporters would be eliciting regrets from his white parents that he was suffering from mental problems. As I pointed out over a decade ago, however, the US media treat white terrorists differently.

French Quarter, New Orleans, February 2024. © Juan Cole.

As a reminder, here are my Top Ten Differences between White Terrorists and Others:

1. White terrorists are called “gunmen.” What does that even mean? A person with a gun? Wouldn’t that be, like, everyone in the US? Other terrorists are called, like, “terrorists.”

2. White terrorists are “troubled loners.” Other terrorists are always suspected of being part of a global plot, even when they are obviously troubled loners.

3. Doing a study on the danger of white terrorists at the Department of Homeland Security will get you sidelined by angry white Congressmen. Doing studies on other kinds of terrorists is a guaranteed promotion.

4. The family of a white terrorist is interviewed, weeping as they wonder where he went wrong. The families of other terrorists are almost never interviewed.

5. White terrorists are part of a “fringe.” Other terrorists are apparently mainstream.

6. White terrorists are random events, like tornadoes. Other terrorists are long-running conspiracies.

7. White terrorists are never called “white.” But other terrorists are given ethnic affiliations.

8. Nobody thinks white terrorists are typical of white people. But other terrorists are considered paragons of their societies.

9. White terrorists are alcoholics, addicts or mentally ill. Other terrorists are apparently clean-living and perfectly sane.

10. There is nothing you can do about white terrorists. Gun control won’t stop them. No policy you could make, no government program, could possibly have an impact on them. But hundreds of billions of dollars must be spent on police and on the Department of Defense, and on TSA, which must virtually strip search 60 million people a year, to deal with other terrorists.

Jewish oral tradition, developed after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, often interprets allegorically the Biblical verses that mention the instruments of war. Thus, the sword and the bow used by Jacob the Patriarch against his enemies (Genesis 48:22) become prayer and supplication (Bereshit Rabbah 97:6); the victory of Benaiah over Moab (2 Samuel 23:20) now stands for Torah study (BT Berakhot, 18b). Tradition locates Jewish heroism in the house of study, not on the battlefield. This partly explains the refusal of thousands of observant Jews to enroll in Israel’s military.

Yet, Hanukkah, which, incidentally, is not mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, but can be found in the Christian one, seems to be a story of war. A comparison of Hanukkah with another popular Jewish holiday – Purim – reveals something important about traditional Jewish attitudes to collective threats, spiritual and physical.

The holiday of Purim, related in the Book of Esther, provides a peaceful model for conflict resolution. The story is as simple as it is prophetic. Haman, the Persian vizier, has planned a total massacre: “to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate, all Jews, both young and old, little children and women, in one day” (Esther 3:13). The response of the Jews was to proclaim a fast of repentance, but at the same time to find a way to influence the king and thereby circumventing the vizier and his decree. Queen Esther intervened, revealed to the king her Jewish origins, and convinced him to stop the planned genocide. But it did not occur to any of the Jews to organize self-defence units against Haman. And the violence of the Jews against their enemies mentioned in the finale has been explicitly authorized by the king who only recently acquiesced to his vizier’s idea of exterminating the Jews.

But the resolute recourse to force is central in the story of Hanukkah, which, like Purim, also celebrates deliverance from a collective threat. The difference between the two threats to the Jews explains the differing relationship to force expressed in the stories. Haman’s threats of physical destruction induced the Jews to fast and repent. However, when King Antiochus outlawed Judaic practice and forced the Jews into idolatry, he sought their spiritual destruction. Under such a threat the use of force becomes legitimate: a Jew is duty-bound to sacrifice his or her life rather than worship idols.

This history of the Maccabees is often used to draw political conclusions. According to a contemporary commentary, clearly at odds with the traditional vision of the event : “For any thinking Jew, Hanukkah is nothing more than the day of commemoration of the heroes of Jewish self-defence. No miracle fell from the sky…. But the sword had created one: a dead people had been resurrected. The Torah could not save from the fist; it was the fist that saved the Torah. The sword, and not the skullcap, will protect the Jew in the blood-soaked lands of his enemies.” Today, this lesson resonates with many Jews who believe in the primacy of might.

Ironically, such glorification of force reverses the significance of the holiday, which celebrates allegiance to the Torah against Hellenistic influence. What is the Judaic reference to Hanukkah? A passage from the daily prayer reveals its meaning:

“Maccabees,” Digital, Midjourney, 2024

“In the days of Mattisiahu, the son of Yochanan, the High Priest, the Hasmonean, and his sons — when the wicked Hellenistic kingdom rose up against Your people Israel to make them forget Your Torah and compel them to stray form the statutes of Your Will — You in your great mercy stood up for them in the time of their distress. You took up their grievance, judged their claim, and avenged their wrong. You delivered the strong into the hands of the weak, the many into the hands of the few, the impure into the hands righteous, and the wanton into the hands of the diligent students of Your Torah.” (Complete ArtScroll Siddur)

The war that the advocates of the use of force tend to invoke turns out to have been, in Jewish ritual, a victory of God and not of humans. Tradition emphasizes that the decisive factors were loyalty to the Torah and moral purity, rather than the number of soldiers and the fighting strength of the army. With regard to Hanukkah, the Talmud relegates the hostilities to a secondary position and emphasizes that the strong were the Hellenizers and the weak Jews loyal to their religion. Tradition focuses instead on the miracle of the oil that burned for eight days in the Temple that the Maccabees had liberated and purified. It links the purity of the oil untouched by the Hellenizers and the purity of heart all Jews must keep in order to fight idolatry.

Thus, even when violence is legitimate, as in the case of Hannukah, it is definitely downplayed in rabbinic Judaism. “Who is the mightiest of the mighty? One who turns an enemy into a friend.” (Avot de rabbi Nathan, 23) Conversely, new values, promoted by some followers of National Judaism (dati-leumi) as the Torah of the Land of Israel, encourage reliance on the use of force. The eight days of Hannukah should allow us to ponder the issue of recourse to violence, which has undergirded the Zionist settlement in the Holy Land for over a century. While it has led to death, dispossession and dislocation of hundreds of thousands of people, it has failed to ensure peace and tranquility.

Reprinted from The Times of israel with the author’s permission.

The great Persian poet Nezami (1141-1209) was from the city of Ganja in northwestern Iran when it was ruled by the Seljuk Empire. That was the era of the Crusades and Richard Lionheart, though the Crusader kingdoms were far from Iran and Nezami only once left home, to see the king. In his Treasury of Mysteries, this Muslim poet refers to Christian themes several times.

The most famous reference is an anecdote clearly rooted in folk culture, though it captures something of Jesus’ love for the despised humble folk (courtesans and tax-collectors). Here is my hurried, loose rendering:

The feet of Christ, which traced the world,
passed by a small market one day.
A dog big as a wolf lay fallen.
Like Joseph, the coat of its beauty was bloodied.

A crowd of spectators gathered at the scene,
like vultures circling the carcass.
One said, “This gruesome sight poisons
the mind, the way a breath blows out a lamp.”

Another said, “It is a pure blight —
It is blindness for the eye, a plague on the heart.
All expressed their own opinion,
heaping scorn each in turn.

When came the turn of Jesus to speak,
he eschewed blame and went straight to the truth of the matter.
He said, “How fine was its bodily form,
and no white pearl can compare to its teeth.”

Unlike the others around him, Jesus is here depicted as finding something to admire even in the disgusting, putrid carcass of a dead dog, according to this mystical teaching story. Nezami goes on to advise people not to focus on the faults of others and preen about their own virtues. He warns against being too full of admiration for yourself when you look in a mirror. He says that decking yourself out in finery fresh as the spring is dangerous. Fate is out there, looking for prey to devour, and you don’t want to attract attention to yourself.

Here is an Iranian artist’s rendering of the scene from the Safavid period, early 1600s:

“Folio from a Makhzan al-asrar (Treasury of secrets) by Nizami (d.1209); verso: Jesus and the dead dog; recto: text: The tenth article.” National Museum of Asian Art . Creative Commons 0.

Nezami adds in Sufi fashion,

The entirety of this world, old or new,
is fleeting, and not worth two barley grains.
Do not grieve for this world, but rise, sir,
and if you do grieve, pour out some wine for Nezami.

Nezami’s story is an illustration of Matthew 7:3-5

3 Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye but do not notice the log in your own eye? 4 Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye. (New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition).

The Gospels also show Jesus as reminding people that they are in no position most of the time to judge others for their flaws, as when he defended the woman accused of adultery from being stoned in John 8:7

7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” (New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition)

Muslim poets and story-tellers told lots of anecdotes about Jesus that are not in the Gospels. He was a figure of wisdom and self-denial, and the Persian mystics used him to symbolize the potential of the soul for spiritual growth.

This essay is part of my project on Islamic Peace Studies, an extremely neglected but very important field. Peace practices and movements have been very important in history, but they have been very little written about, as I pointed out recently in The Oxford Handbook of Peace History .

One of the morally more complex passages in the Qur’ān is Distinguished 41:33-35. It advocates responding to harmful actions with virtuous ones, suggesting that this approach can turn adversaries into allies or supporters. This passage echoes themes found in the Sermon on the Mount in the New Testament. Despite its significance, this and other verses promoting peace in the Qur’ān have not been critically examined by scholars, and little focus has been given to their reception in later Muslim commentaries. In this context, I investigate the commentaries on this passage by a renowned medieval Sufi scholar, who devoted particular attention to Qur’anic ethics and the spiritual growth these verses inspire.

I translate the passage as follows: “Whose discourse is more beautiful than one who calls others to God and performs good works and proclaims, ‘I am among those who have submitted to God’’ The good deed and the evil deed are not equal. Repel the latter with what is best, and behold, it will be as though your enemy is a devoted patron. Yet to none is this granted save the patient, and to none is it granted save the supremely fortunate.” The moral agent capable of carrying out this exceptional act toward harmful adversaries acquires the power to transform them into allies and supporters. This transformation is attainable only by those who possess boundless patience and are endowed with great good fortune. Responding to wrongdoing with acts of kindness is emphasized here as an extraordinary accomplishment for the faithful. The Qur’ān presents the idea that responding to hostility with kindness has a transformative effect. Some commentators have pointed out that the Christian teaching of “love your enemies” is less reciprocal, addressing only one side of the relationship.

The mystic Abū al-Qāsim ʿAbd al-Karīm Qushayrī (d. 1072) of Nishapur was a leading Sufi authority of his time. Britannica defines Sufi Islam this way: “Sufism, mystical Islamic belief and practice in which Muslims seek to find the truth of divine love and knowledge through direct personal experience of God.” His family, originating from Khorasan, claimed Arab lineage and provided him with an education in literature and martial arts. At the age of 15, he moved to Nishapur to study practical matters in hopes of reducing taxes in his village. However, he instead became a disciple of the spiritual teacher Abū ʿAlī Daqqāq. Alongside conventional Islamic studies, such as law, Qushayrī ultimately dedicated himself to the Sufi path. He later succeeded Daqqāq as the head of his seminary.

Qushayrī became entangled in the conflicts between the Ḥanafī and Shāfiʿī legal schools in Seljuk-era Nishapur around 1038. These disputes led to his exile, possibly to avoid imprisonment by Ḥanafīs, as Nishapur faced violent clashes between supporters of the two schools. He returned only after stability was restored. Some mystics envisioned Sufism as a spiritual movement that could transcend the divisions of legal schools, offering a unifying Muslim identity to end the sectarian strife. Qushayrī gained renown as the author of a significant Qur’ān commentary, The Subtleties of the Allusions.

He addresses Q. 41:34, “The good deed and the evil deed are not equal. Repel the latter with what is best . . .” He asserts that the verse counsels repelling the evil deed by the traits of character that are best, that is, by giving up on revenge and overlooking the past moral mistakes of others. Regarding “and behold, it will be as though your enemy is a devoted patron,” Qushayrī explains that this practice exemplifies proper spiritual conduct. It involves demonstrating patience and forbearance toward His creation out of devotion to God. Additionally, he highlights that in your interactions with others, it reflects a noble character to refrain from seeking personal revenge and instead to choose to forgive your adversary.

From the early eleventh century, Sufi lodges began to appear in Khorasan, initially funded by affluent Sufis or private patrons. Figures such as Sulamī, Abū ʿAlī Daqqāq, and Qushayrī were closely connected to these establishments, which served as spaces for spiritual retreats and accommodations for visitors. By the mid-eleventh century, Seljuk officials began extending state support to these centers.

“Dancing Dervishes”, Folio from a Divan of the poet Hafiz (1325–1390), attributed to Bihzad (Iranian, Herat ca. 1450–1535/36 Herat) ca. 1480. Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art . Creative Commons Zero (CC0).

Lloyd Ridgeon argues that the emergence of the Sufi center created a social venue for Sufis to engage in their rituals while also welcoming “lay affiliates” who sought to interact with more dedicated practitioners. These institutions often served charitable purposes, providing meals for the needy and lodging for travelers. Lay affiliates included a broad range of people, from peasants to urban laborers. According to Ridgeon, this environment fostered an expanded understanding of Sufi ethical conduct, aimed not only at training initiates but also at shaping the behavior of the general populace. Among those drawn to Sufism were urban trades guilds and groups adhering to a code of chivalry.

Qushayrī turns to Q. 41:35, “Yet to none is this granted save the patient, and to none is it granted save the supremely fortunate.” He emphasizes that these qualities of character can only truly be attained by those who are strengthened by patience and capable of transcending trivialities to embrace lofty moral virtues. Only those who endure hardships and challenges with perseverance can ascend to the highest levels of excellence.

These sentiments also resemble the medieval Muslim conception of chivalry. One principle of chivalry that Qushayrī mentions is “It means that you do not care whether the guest that you entertain at your table is a friend of God or an unbeliever.” A passage by this author in another work exemplifies the principle:

“I heard one learned man say: ‘A Magian [Zoroastrian] asked hospitality from Abraham, the Friend of God – peace be upon him. Abraham told him: “Only if you embrace Islam!” The Magian walked away. At that moment, God Most High revealed to him the following: “For fifty years I have fed him despite his unbelief. Couldn’t you have offered him a morsel without asking him to change his religion?” On hearing this, Abraham – peace be upon him – rushed after the Magian until he caught up with him. He then apologized before him. When the Magian asked him about the cause [of his change of heart], he explained what had happened to him, whereupon the Magian embraced Islam.’”

The Pope continued, in a clear condemnation of the Israeli government, “With sorrow I think of Gaza, of so much cruelty; of the children machine-gunned, the bombing of schools and hospitals… So much cruelty!”

He said, “Let us pray for a ceasefire on all war fronts, in Ukraine, the Holy Land, in all the Middle East and the entire world, at Christmas.”

On Saturday, he had been equally forthright on Israel’s atrocities in Gaza, saying, “Yesterday they did not allow the Patriarch (of Jerusalem) into Gaza as promised.”

“Yesterday children were bombed. This is cruelty, this is not war.”

The Pontiff underlined, “I want to say it because it touches my heart.”

(Latin Archbishop Pierbattista Pizzaballa did ultimately manage to visit Gaza City on Sunday to conduct mass for the Christian Palestinian refugees from Israeli bombardment there, in coordination with Israeli authorities. But apparently until the Pope spoke out, the Israeli military had denied him permission.)

Francis’s increasingly outspoken condemnation of Israel has caused several controversies this fall. In a new book first published in Italian in November, the pope called for a painstaking investigation of whether Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza. (See below for an excerpt from my earlier analysis of these passages.)

On December 7, artisans from the Bethlehem Christian community presented a nativity scene at the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall. The installation was headed by Johny Andonia, 39. At the last moment, he decided to wrap the baby Jesus in a keffiyeh, the patterned scarf that is commonly worn by men in the Levant, Iraq and Arabia, but which has come to symbolize the Palestinians in particular. He said the scarf was a symbol to demonstrate the “existence” of Palestinians. After an outcry from Israel and its supporters ensued, the scarf was removed after three days.

Bethlehem in Palestine has a population of 29,000 about 3,000 of them Christians. Palestinian Christians have suffered from Israeli colonial brutality like all other Palestinians.

I wrote on November 21,

Pope Francis has a new book, Hope never disappoints. Pilgrims towards a better world. . . The Pope mentions Gaza on several occasions in the book. At one point he expresses concern about migration crises around the world, colored as they are by “violence and hardship,” in the Sahara, the Mexican-US border, and the Mediterranean, “which has become a large cemetery in the past decade.” He adds, “also in the Middle East,” because of the “humanitarian tragedy” in Gaza . . .

The Catholic leader laments that so many Ukrainians have been forced to flee, and praises countries that took them in, such as Poland. He then turns to the Middle East, where, he says, we have seen something similar . . .

Francis said he was thinking especially of those who leave Gaza in the midst of the famine that has hit the Strip. Experts estimate that about 100,000 Palestinians from Gaza managed to flee to Egypt before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu occupied the Rafah crossing with Israeli troops.

Then Pope Francis dropped his bombshell. According to some experts, he wrote, “What has been happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide.”

He insisted that a painstaking investigation be carried out to determine whether the situation fits the technical definition formulated by jurists and international organizations. He is likely referring to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and the Genocide Convention of 1948, on the basis of which the International Court of Justice is deliberating on whether what the Israelis are doing in Gaza is a genocide . . .

“Pieta,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3 / Clip2Comic, 2024

His last mention of Gaza comes in a passage where he recalls a photograph of a Palestinian grandmother in Gaza, her face not visible, holding in her arms the lifeless body of her five-year-old granddaughter, who had just been killed in an Israeli bombing, along with other family members. He notes that the image has been called “The Pieta of Gaza.”

The Encyclopedia Britannica explains, “Pietà, as a theme in Christian art, depiction of the Virgin Mary supporting the body of the dead Christ. . . . the great majority show only Mary and her Son. The Pietà was widely represented in both painting and sculpture, being one of the most poignant visual expressions of popular concern with the emotional aspects of the lives of Christ and the Virgin.”

Michaelangelo, “Pietà,” Public Domain.

He says that the photo, taken in a hospital morgue, conveys strength, sorrow and the unimaginable pain inflicted by war. He ends by again insisting that innocents must be protected even in the midst of warfare, a principle, he says, that is engraved on the hearts of all people.

The consequence of the Pope’s comments throughout is a humanization of the Palestinians — a humanization of which US and British media outlets have largely proved themselves incapable. The only way they can be all right with over 17,000 dead children in Israel’s campaign against Gaza is that they do not see them as truly human. Otherwise, even the death of one little granddaughter would have us all weeping uncontrollably.

Not only does the Pope humanize Palestinian suffering, refusing to lose his empathy in the face of the magnitude of the slaughter and the sheer number of children in burial shrouds, but in a sense he even divinizes Palestinian suffering. The dead little girl in her grandma’s arms is a Christ-like figure — Christ-like in her innocence, which did not prevent her from being brutally killed. And the heart-wrenching mourning of her grandmother is like the grief of the Mother Mary over her crucified son, himself the incarnation on earth of the divine.

One Syrian source maintained that there was an uprising of anti-Assad Alawites in Latakia, and that HTS rebels had not entered the city. Other reports suggested that Alawites who had for years been oppressed and bilked by Alawite Baath officers were staging reprisals on them. Informed Comment cannot independently verify these allegations.

The fall of Latakia is significant for several reasons. Latakia is Syria’s major port and the new government cannot hope to run Syria without it. It is near to Tartus, the site of a Russian naval base. Apparently several thousand Russian troops are still stuck in Syria and will have to negotiate safe passage out.

Latakia’s naval and military significance led Israel to bomb some of its facilities on Monday, as well as to damage some of the war ships in the harbor. These strikes on Latakia came as part of a flurry of 250 such air attacks by Israel on Syrian military storehouses and facilities, in an attempt by the Netanyahu government to cripple the new government’s military capabilities during this transitional phase, when it is weak.

Then, the majority of the region’s inhabitants are Alawite Shiites, whereas the HTS is hard line Sunni fundamentalists. The heads of the Baath Party in Syria from 1970 had been the al-Assads, who hailed from an Alawite background, and they engaged in a great deal of nepotism. The best jobs went to Alawites, even though they were only 14% of the population. During the civil war in the past nearly 14 years, Alawite officers, infantry and militias (the Shabiha) put down the rebellion, with great loss of life.

In short, there are all the ingredients for sectarian reprisals and massacres. On Arabic social media, there are many calls for revenge on the Alawites now that the al-Assad regime has fallen. We saw this phenomenon in Iraq, which was a mirror image of Syria demographically and politically. There, the Shiites are a majority but were repressed by a Sunni-led Baath Party. When George W. Bush invaded and occupied Iraq and overthrew Saddam Hussein, the Shiites came to power in elections that they forced on Bush. In 2006-2007, and again in 2014-2018, there were numerous Sunni-Shiite sectarian clashes. The ISIL terrorist group, from which elements of the Syrian HTS hived off, committed numerous massacres of Shiites.

I can only imagine that the Alawite officers in the now-defunct Syrian Arab Army have disguised themselves and are trying to get out of the country any way they can. Some reports suggest they have fled to Lebanon.

On the other hand, I wonder if the threat of Israeli aggression will cause Syrians to pull together?

Al-Quds al-`Arabi reports that the elders (sheikhs) of the Alawite community called for “turning over a new page.” They met with representatives of the HTS at the former provincial residence of al-Assad, in a town called Qardaha in the hills overlooking Latakia. The elders issued a statement in which they called for a “general amnesty” and the safe return of everyone who had fled their homes “in the recent period,” and for an end to the carrying of guns except in accordance with the law.

The Alawite branch of Shiite Islam is an esoteric folk religion in which many of the verities are cultivated by the sheikhs, and the laity may not be steeped in them. They do not have formal seminary-trained clergymen or mosque worship. They are very different from the Twelver Shiites in Iraq and Iran.

After the meeting, the military operations HQ of the HTS issued a “general amnesty” for all conscripted troops of the former Syrian Arab Army, granting them security of property and person and forbidding attacks on them.

Since most people in the army had been conscripts, this amnesty would affect a lot of people. But it excludes those who volunteered for the military or who entered the officer corps through a military academy.

HTS-controlled state television broadcast images of captured Syrian soldiers in Damascus, Homs and Hama being pardoned. Of the 300,000 men in the Syrian Arab Army, probably 200,000 or more had gone AWOL or defected during the civil war. The remaining 50,000 to 100,000 were disproportionately drawn from the Alawite population. So, implicitly, this pardon of the grunts in the army has a sectarian dimension, and is an attempt to avoid sectarian tensions.

On the other hand, the military operations HQ said that military figures guilty of atrocities against civilians in recent years would be tried in the courts. If they can get hold of the officer corps, it appears that the HTS will execute large numbers of them.

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Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

Israel Conducts Air and Ground Offensive In Syria As Assad Regime Falls | India Today