Pew Research Center: Religious Knowledge in the US

Assalamu aleikum/G'day/Gutentag/Konnichiwa/你好,

Not to long ago the Pew Research Center conducted a survey in which 3,412 Americans were asked to answer 32 questions on religion. The survey found that:

" On average, Americans correctly answer 16 of the 32 religious knowledge questions on the survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life. Atheists and agnostics average 20.9 correct answers. Jews and Mormons do about as well, averaging 20.5 and 20.3 correct answers, respectively. Protestants as a whole average 16 correct answers; Catholics as a whole, 14.7. Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons perform better than other groups on the survey even after controlling for differing levels of education."

Predictably, the blogosphere was soon filled with significant amounts of self-congratulatory chatter. For instance, in response to an entry on the Guardian website about this topic (which contained a link to a 15-question sample survey), reader comments such as the following could be found:

"well of course the atheists know their stuff - we're the ones who have actually applied some thought and enquiry to the concept!"

 and

"Atheists do better in this quiz because we are better educated and better informed. We are interested in other people's points of view and take the trouble to learn about them before making decisions. As an atheist, I got 14\15."

Now, one of the fundamental concepts in academia is the acknowledgement of the difference between the hard data itself, and the interpretation of the data. It is very natural to infer from the results of the survey that the survey itself is a manifestation of a truth that atheists and agnostics benefit from inherent superiority in the field of intellect. However, such a conclusion fails to take into account the fact that the basic finding of this 32-question survey of 3,412 Americans was exactly that - that of a group of 3,412 Americans asked 32 questions, atheists and agnostics on average got the most number of questions right out of the 32 questions asked.

It is worth asking ourselves:

1. What exactly was the nature of these questions? Is this significant?
2. Of what significance is the number of questions asked?
3. Of what significance is the sample size?
4. How was it that the atheists/agnostics got the most questions right on average? What is the meaning of such a result?
5. It is stated that "Data from the survey indicate that educational attainment – how much schooling an individual has completed – is the single best predictor of religious knowledge." So, what is the relationship between lack of religion and educational attainment? Is there a relationship? And what kind of relationship is it anyway?
6. What reflection is such a high score of an individual's intelligence and wisdom?

So, do people like the writers of the above two comments have it in the bag? Or are they merely victims of the likes of confirmation bias and illusory correlation? After all, can't one also suggest that the study only goes to show the atheistic tendency for gathering of superficial trivia at the expense of any real sort of understanding?

Blind men, here is your elephant!

Intoxicating Salawat!

I found this absolutely wonderful recording on the website of a tassawuf group. It is the first entry on the page: "Salawat Damascus, recorded on site"

Enjoy!

The Donkey's Jihad on 'Sufism'

Greetings, my two-legged friends,

Long time readers (yes, plural!) would remember that one of the categories for labelling my posts was 'Sufism'. However,as of late I have deleted this as a category as replaced it with the term 'Tasawwuf'.

Though I was always aware of the superior appropriateness of this latter term, I was content to use 'Sufism', as it more or less served its taxonomical purpose, or so I thought, plus the fact that it is a much more familiar word with non-Muslims.

But this recent change is not just the outcome of pedantry. The words we choose to use have very real effects in life outside of the printed page or internet. I have noted as much in previous posts. Rather, my motivation comes from the realisation of the harms such careless use of language may produce.

The prevailing image of tasawwuf in the West is of whirling dervishes and fire-walking fakirs. Of the (often atrociously watered-down) poetry of Rumi (qaddasah Allahu sirrah, may God sanctify his mystery) and songs about love and wine. Tassawuf is seen as a kind of 'Islam-lite', a benign heresy, amusing distraction for spiritually-starved Westerners and happy-clappy solution to everything that is wrong with 'Muhammadanism'.

This is in complete ignorance of its central role in Islamic spiritual life. Tasawwuf is not some motely collection of eccentric practices. Rather, it is the internal dimension of worship itself.

It can be said that Islam consists of three parts, each with its corresponding science. The first, most basic element is Islam itself, used in its sense as a verb, meaning the act of submission to the Will of God. The science of Islam is fiqh, or religious jurisprudence. The second element is iman, or faith, a confidence in belief which comes as a logical outcome to the act of submission. Its corresponding science is aqidah or creed. The final element is ihsan, the perfection of worship. There is a hadith in the collection of Sahih Muslim which states this beautifully:

As we sat one day with the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace), a man in pure white clothing and jet black hair came to us, without a trace of travelling upon him, though none of us knew him.

He sat down before the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) bracing his knees against his, resting his hands on his legs, and said: "Muhammad, tell me about Islam." The Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace) said: "Islam is to testify that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, and to perform the prayer, give zakat, fast in Ramadan, and perform the pilgrimage to the House if you can find a way."

He said: "You have spoken the truth," and we were surprised that he should ask and then confirm the answer. Then he said:
"Tell me about true faith (iman)," and the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) answered: "It is to believe in Allah, His angels, His inspired Books, His messengers, the Last Day, and in destiny, its good and evil."

"You have spoken the truth," he said, "Now tell me about the perfection of faith (ihsan)," and the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) answered: "It is to worship Allah as if you see Him, and if you see Him not, He nevertheless sees you."

~ Sahih Muslim, 1.37, hadith 8

(Incidentally, this man in pure white clothing was actually the angel Gabriel alayhissalam). And what is this corresponding science to ihsan? Yep, you guessed it, tasawwuf.  How tasawwuf is performed can vary greatly, from endeavouring to improve one's concentration during prayer to performance of the famous sema ritual. Regardless, no one can deny its status as the heart of the religion. This heart cannot exist without its body, and the body cannot exist without the heart.

The use of the word 'Sufism' suggests the externalization of tasawwuf into a seperate sect of its own. The heart is ripped out of the body and zombiefied into a kind of fringe-cult which exists in contradiction to Islam. It is held that a 'Sufi' cannot possibly be an orthodox Muslim, and that an orthodox Muslim cannot possibly be a 'Sufi'.

And what is the result of this? Muslims are killing each other over supposed deviancy, and centuries-old spiritual heritage is being erased in the name of purifying the religion. Neoconservative think-tanks advocate the cooption of 'Sufism' to use in a divide-and-conquer strategy to serve the interests of their political masters. And some Muslims play straight into their hands by setting up 'Sufi' organizations defined in opposition to the mainstream, claiming to represent the 'real Islam' as if everybody else's 'Islam' is fake and labelling everybody who disagrees with them as 'Wahabi'.

Screw all this, man.

Sufism is dead, long live tasawwuf.

Recommended reading:

The Place of Tasawwuf in Traditional Islamic Sciences

Hitler has something to say about Eid!

HAHAHAHA I nearly wet myself watching this!

The West, Iran and the Death Penalty

Memo to the Western world: humanity starts at home

Guy Rundle
September 12, 2010

We need to remember that Iran does not have a monopoly on barbarism.

IN AN isolated prison cell, a woman sits, waiting to be executed. The method is one laid down by tradition. Reports say it can be excruciatingly painful and terrifying. There are doubts as to whether she received a fair trial, and most people regard the system under which she was convicted as hopelessly compromised. She is unlikely to receive mercy because the person who could grant it believes deeply that such punishments are ordained by God. Barred from sustained contact with the outside world, she waits, and waits.

Many readers might assume that I'm describing the case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the Iranian facing death by stoning for alleged crimes associated with adultery. In fact, the woman in question is Teresa Lewis, now in a Virginia prison in the United States and scheduled to die by lethal injection on September 23.

Ashtiani's plight is horrific, but Lewis's fate should give anyone of conscience pause to consider the contradictions and hypocrisies of much human rights campaigning these days.

Lewis's case would be easy to pass by. In 2003 she was convicted of conspiring with two men to murder her husband and stepson, for a share of $250,000 insurance and sexual favours from her and her 16-year-old daughter. Though she pleaded guilty and gave information that helped police arrest the killers, she was sentenced to death, while the men got life sentences.

Still, it's a brutal crime, compared to alleged adultery - except that Ashtiani was sentenced for the same crime: conspiracy to kill her husband. Nevertheless, this was based on undisclosed ''information supplied to the judges''. Lewis had a fair trial, right? Well, not exactly. As well as excluding evidence that Lewis had a mind-altering addiction to prescription painkillers, her IQ was found to be about 70, Virginia's borderline for intellectual disability. Several years after the verdict, one of the killers, Matthew Shellenberger, confessed the murders were his idea and that he spotted Lewis as someone who could be easily manipulated - but the letter in which he confessed this was excluded from appeals evidence.

The typical scenario of a low-life criminal duo? No. Lewis had no violent criminal record. The addiction developed from over-prescription. Shellenberger, a high-IQ sociopathic career criminal, picked her up in a supermarket. The judge, giving her death and the men life, called her the ''head of the serpent'' in the conspiracy, something of a clue to the uneven sentencing.

Like Ashtiani, Lewis is caught in a judicial system that uses death for political purposes - in the US, the re-election of state prosecutors amid a culture of fear. But why does Ashtiani's case engage our horror, while Lewis's simply makes us recoil from the grotesqueries of American law and order? The answer, I suggest, is that both are horrific - but Ashtiani's case is in a pre-modern alien way, while Lewis's is an impeccably modern and familiar process of barbarity.

Ashtiani was railroaded by a secretive court that may well have added the conspiracy charge to muddy the issue globally. But Lewis was flung into a system where money buys acquittal and a rigid appeals process gives the illusion of fairness while frustrating any attempt to consider execution as the singular, momentous act it is. Compared to the unthinkable process of stoning, lethal injection seems smooth and humane. But like stoning, it's a culturally determined idea of killing by ''right''. As Jeff Sparrow documents in his recent book Killing, it's the latest in a long line of American can-do, from Edison's electric chair onwards.

The chair wasn't ''humane'' and neither is lethal injection. We now know that, in many cases, the cocktail of drugs employed first paralyses the victim before subjecting them to excruciating, but silent, pain.

Whether lethal injection is better than stoning is a moot point, but it's certainly easier on the witnesses. And that goes to the heart of the twinned fates of Ashtiani and Lewis. For it's the very way in which the campaign to save Ashtiani has been constructed in terms of ''Enlightenment'' and ''modernity'' that ensures Lewis's fate can be written off as a freak occurrence - rather than seen as an expression of ''modernity'' in its most chillingly anti-human mode. It's the bandwagon for Ashtiani, with Bernard Henri-Levy, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and others climbing on, to protest against barbarity; it's the tumbril for Lewis, to demonstrate what backward societies should aspire to. Such small hypocrisies guarantee greater ones: an obsession in the West with the culture of ''honour'' killings, while the no less culturally determined slaughter of women by their partners is a paragraph on the crime page. Outrage at Taliban brutality, compared to the ''clean'' deaths visited by Western bombs.

Those who set these news priorities couldn't give a damn about Iranian women. Those who do need to ensure saving the life of Ashtiani does not legitimate the death of Teresa Lewis, and thousands of others.

Guy Rundle is the author of Down to the Crossroads: On the US 2008 Campaign Trail.

Eid mubarak!

Ahhh, Ramadan has passed here in Melbourne, and the celebration of Eid ul-Fitr begins tomorrow morning. Congratulations to all for their efforts!

These last couple of days I visited the masjid in which I took my shahada, and reconnected with a few old acquaintainces. Planning to go there for Eid prayers as well, apparently they'll be selling halwa puri for breakfast!

Ok, maybe it won't look exactly like the picture. But still, I've never had it before (closest thing I ever ate was chole bhatura) so I'm really looking forward to giving it a go! Will also be travelling to a muraqaba session in the evening inshallah....

Have a good one, dua's for all!