We are Lucky to Have Karen Armstrong

This article was previously published in Indonesia at 2/8/2004

When the 11 September tragedy occurred, the Muslims in the US got worried. They worried that the anti-terrorist force will turn into a hatred for Muslims. There is indeed an explanation that the terrorists, although they were Muslim and used Islam to legitimize their attitude, did not represent muslim. However, people often forget to act calmly at that time.

I was studying in Ohio and experiencing various reactions. I lived in housing subsidized by government and lived in by poor people. Once, a neighbor asked: “aren’t you Muslim?” Next, my wife who wears a head scarf, was humiliated by a man who pointed his middle finger upward. In other states, we heard that several shops owned by Arabs had been burned. In Columbus, the capital of Ohio, the Islamic Center was attacked by unknown people.

However, we also know that in many places, many people or specific places of Muslims were protected by non-Muslims. In Athens, a small city in Ohio, for instance, a day after 11 September, the Islamic centre was visited by religious figures who asserted that Muslims should not be worried. Since they failed to meet the board of the Mosque, they attached notes on the Islamic center’s door asserting their intention.

We were lucky to have a writer such Karen Armstrong especially in such tension. This British author is recognized as a very productive writer of religious books that are bestsellers. Besides writing about certain themes in Christianity in which she specialized in (she had formerly been living as a sister), she wrote about the comparative history of religion, a biography of Muhammad and Buddha, and a brief history of Islam. Centered in her home in London, she is invited across the world, disseminating spirituality that to her should not be based on particular religion. She calls herself a freelance monotheist.

Armstrong’s works is actually not so special. In her biography about the prophet Muhammad for instance, there is no new perspective or knowledge at all. Her work is incomparable to the works of other scholars such as Martin Lings, Montgomery Watt or Maxime Rodinson. It is clear that she did not master the Arabic language hence several mistakes appear in her book (for instance madrasahs is written madaris). She synthesizes the previous works and writes it in a popular and simple way.

The readers like her emphatic approach. She is interested most in the concrete aspects within Islamic life, for instance, and tried to understand the motives inside. In her brief history about Islam, for instance, she discusses various modern fundamentalisms without relating it tendentiously with Islam. She tried to understand fundamentalism from inside, picturing its activists as adherents of a faith who feel threatened by secular authoritarianism dominating Islamic world. We are carried into the deepest thought of people who are ready to die, carrying bombs on their body and made desperate by ruler’s tyranny.

She said that her attitude is formed by Marshal Hodgson, ex-teacher of Nurcholish Madjid and Amien Rais from the Chicago University, who introduced her to the science of compassion. With it, she said, we will feel the others’ feeling, so we will have space within to accept them. Wilfred C. Smith, who established Islamic Studies Institute in McGill University in the end of 50s, also impressed her. In order to understand Islam, this Indian Islamic expert required that the institute in McGill be occupied by at least 50% of Muslim students. She also has principle: what I talk about Islam will be valid as long as the Muslim say “amin” to her.

With such mental attitude, Armstrong wrote her books. Her biography about Muhammad becomes the Muslim’s favorite. Akbar Ahmed –a prominent Muslim from Pakistan in the US- said to her, “Your book is a love story. If only you met the Prophet, you will definitely want to be his 15^th wife!” due to that book Armstrong was invited to deliver speech in the celebration of the Prophet’s birthday! Yet, she never found any Muslim figure invited to deliver a speech on Christmas day.

In US, Armstrong’s work is a significant comparative to other works like Bernard Lewis, who is also the best seller in US. On the contrary, Lewis is an essentialist who observes Islam from the fundamentalist’s perspective. It is only one Islam to him, and it is the “hard-line” Islam. His most typical work is What Went Wrong, which is written before 11 September, but published after that. Here he said that Islam has been and will always be in clash with west except if the fundamental change occurred in the Muslim world (which he doubts). There is no qualification about Islam, or west: all are monolithic and will not change. That work occupied the desire of some US people: as if they are sure of why “Islamists” attack them.

Due to Armstrong’s works, Lewis has no longer stood on the bestseller author’s line alone. Their works are even found in franchise shops like Wall Mart, and at low prices. Armstrong’s works indicate frequent discussions about Islam outside the campuses in the US.

Those works are not academic ones, but its simplicity is useful for the wide public. Those works also formed the perspective that Islam is colorful and that the so-called fundamentalist has the reason that make us understand why they were ready to commit suicide. Armstrong criticized the 11 September tragedy, but also understood why many people in the Muslim world dislike the US government.

Indonesian Muslims should also learn much from Armstrong, by reading her works that are translated and published here. Her attitude should support us to be more emphatic upon other’s opinion, Muslim and non-Muslim. There must be space within our heart to understand the attitude, thought and choice of others. There must be internal and external relativism inside us, so that we should not be focused on certainties we hold: who knows there is a little truth in others? Islam has taught us that the absolute truth (al-

aqq) is only Allah.

Reading Armstrong’s works, and also Hodgson’s and Smith’s who inspired her, I would be disappointed to meet Muslims who simplify other parties. For instance, they only mention the free sex etc about the life in west. As if all westerners do so or as if it has become the common phenomenon there.

To me, Armstrong “saves” the Muslim from their anxiety in US. I wish her works also inspire Muslims in other places as well so that the world would be filled by more people who want to open themselves to understand others and do not want to be egoistic with absolute certainties so that the world will be peaceful for everyone.

Ihsan Ali-Fauzi, candidate of PhD at Ohio University, America.

(Translated by Lanny Octavia, edited Jonathan Zilberg)