Bismillah I am going to be the odd one out here and voice my concern and constructive criticism about this clip with Reza Aslan. May God forgive me if I cross any boundaries or am doing this just to be argumentative. Let me share first what I thought were the positive highlights for I really believe he means well. 1- As always Professor Aslan does a wonderful job of calling out the journalists for the assumptions in their questions and the clear bigotry they are manifesting in their insinuations. 2- He makes his central point clearly and repeatedly, Islam and Muslims are not a monolith nor are Muslim majority states a monolith. It is ridiculous to put Turkey and Saudi Arabia on par with one another on some of these issues. 3- He makes a second important point about people being the agents through which religion is expressed. If a person has violent tendencies that often colors his or her expression of the religion. Now here are some important criticisms: 1- Practicing what he preaches: The first and most glaring problem is that he does the same thing he is criticizing the journalists for doing... he lumps an entire group of people together. He says about FGM, its an African problem. Why is it okay for him to lump all Africans together, as people unfortunately often do, but it isnt okay for the bigoted journalists to do that to Muslims? He does pull back and say Central African later but not only is that not accurate I dont think he escapes the central problem; generalizations. 2-Factual inaccuracies: I am not an expert on some of these issues but I know for a fact that SOME of his comments about FGM practices and heads of state are simply not true. They were great ammo for his substantive points but the problem is they are untrue. If presented truly the facts wouldnt have worked against him necessarily but he was citing inaccuracies. Even if it seems like he *won* this debate he did so using mistaken information. I would never assume he did it on purpose but it is important to be aware of. 3- Being backwards: His referring to some of these issues in clearly binary modes is problematic. As though liberal progress is already assumed to be the good and the barbarism of the past is clearly evil. Even by using terms like FGM that is a position a person is taking. There are clear forms of abuse across the world of women and that is indisputable and it is a real problem. However, none of these issues is black and white. Any anthropologist worth their two cents or someone from that part of the world can tell you that. Maybe its the medium of television, you simply cant avoid the conversation being shallow. 4- And lastly the one that is closest to my heart is that his phrasing against certain things found in the sacred law was just disrespectful. I understand what he means, and I agree with him if I assume the best in his intent but we must be careful in how we speak about Gods law. I like the guy and I think what he is doing for the Muslim community is invaluable and I wouldnt have even brought this stuff up had not half of my facebook friends (exaggeration) re-posted it cheering him on. Our community often goes for the easy punch not realizing that we are substantively being knocked out.
Posted on: Wed, 01 Oct 2014 02:22:30 +0000
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