Tuesday, January 20, 2004
Study the Koran? - article by Daniel Pipes
Daniel Pipes warns against a layman reading the Koran and expecting to learn too much useful from it. An example snip:
It seems to me the message ought not to be "don't read it," but instead, "go ahead and read it" but bear in mind, reading the Koran will give you no more definitive idea of what modern Muslims actually believe as reading the Old and New Testaments will tell you what modern Jews and Christians believe and how they behave.
Update: Via Lynn B., As a feminist, Meryl Yourish doesn't care for what Pipes says about the hijab. I read it differently. I read it that Pipes is simply saying the "some Muslims believe..." and using that as an example of evolving justifications, not necessarily Pipes's justification. I really doubt Pipes himself is a hijab advocate.
Solomon,
I agree totally with your restated version of Pipes' message as far as the value of reading the Koran is concerned. You actually said it much better than he did. This article wasn't one of his better efforts, IMHO, as I think he's always at his weakest when he's promoting his "moderate Islam in the answer" agenda. While it certainly is an answer, it doesn't help to whitewash the explicit exhortations found in the Koran, a scripture that many Muslims make it a point to memorize word for word.
Re: Pipes' comments on the veil, if all they were was an example of evolving justifications, it was a poor choice. You can always find a handful of women in any culture who basically say they find oppression liberating. As Meryl points out, in contrast to Pipes' usual scholarly research, the sources he cites for this "trend" are hardly good authority. In addition, he implies that Muslim women in the 20s found the veil oppressive but today they don't. If that's true, it's precisely because today, in some places, they feel they have a choice (see Meryl's title). That has nothing to do with evolving interpretations of the Koran and everything to do with the dreaded "Westernization" of the societies in which these women live.
OK, Lynn, I got ya, I think. I agree, as a scholar, one should expect Pipes to be a bit more careful with his citations and examples. I guess I just skimmed by that part with a "yeah, I see what you're saying" without worrying the details so much, whereas Meryl screeched to a halt at that point. To me, it just seems to be making much out of little and somewhat unfair to Pipes for ascribing an insensitivity I doubt he really posesses.
As for the final part concerning the evolving justification, isn't that really where much of religious evolution comes from? When static scriptural reading meets evolving external reality, at the very least some new justifications are necessary to dissipate the cognitive dissonance. In fact, looking at the Pipes piece again, that seems to be just what Pipes is saying - the headscarf bit goes under the "Static" heading and is really about evolving justifications - again, without Pipes taking responsibility for those same justifications - if that makes sense.
I guess to sum-up, I just feel it's one thing to get a good blog riff out of an article snippet (great!), but a little unfair to imply Pipes doesn't "get" feminism from same. (He may not, I just don't get that from the piece necessarily.)
BTW, there's an interesting head-scarf article today from Diana West here. Got that from Robert Spencer's site. (Will put up pointer later, but gotta go out now!)
Pipes is correct. SOME is a much better word than ALL. Too often we lump people into catergories, without realizing that this only restricts OUR understanding, not the person we label.
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