Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Critiquing Muhammed, the Founder of Islam: Between Intellectual Exploration and Blasphemy

toyin, a very brief comment here is in order. christian forces are pretty active in central africa fighting against muslims. you can call that an anomaly if you'd like but if you were here in the states at the time of 9/11 and bush, you'd have heard plenty of rhetoric about combatting islam, coded as terrorism, in the name of christian values. he backed off after it became blatant when he said "crusade," but the preachers of the land did not, and you can be sure than very large numbers of people took the war in iraq as a version of holy war.

the language used nowadays against islamic militancy is "cleverly" disguised so that instead of calling them muslims, or even islamsists, the usual term in the news is terrorists. so now, our violence against them is supposedly secular; they are religious fanatics.

i can't tell you how often that formulation is used repeatedly in the accounts of the sahel. until you get to reporters who are actually there, who are actually describing conflicts that are local, that at times are taken up under the umbrella of the al qaeda of the maghreb or some such version, but that typically are entailing fulani or dogon or tuareg or other groups, no longer effectively protected by their govt, attempting to protect their resources against other predators. the same goes in east congo.

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

harrow@msu.edu

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, August 22, 2021 4:26 AM
To: usaafricadialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Critiquing Muhammed, the Founder of Islam: Between Intellectual Exploration and Blasphemy

 

Thanks Moses.

Taken to it's logical conclusion, there would be no scholarship at all.

Is Toyin Falola, Professor of the Humanities, scholar of Yoruba spiritualities, operating within the bounds of valid scholarly ethics when he asserts that his scholarly platform should not be used for a comparison of Sunday Igboho and prophet Muhammed in terms of patallels between the challenges they experienced beceause, according to him, Igboho is a human being and Muhammed was not?

That is a substution of arealistic, fundamentalist thinking for the critical thought that his profession is centred in.

I also made a comparison between Muhammed as militant empire builder, contemporary Islamic militancy and Jesus and Buddha as pacificists, comparisons based on publicly known history, unavoidable comparisons particularly strategic to the self questionging necessitated for Islam by the fact that it remains the only religion where militant, terroristic politics is still promiment, centuries after the other Abrahamic faiths have left such orientations behind. 

We are all suffering the horrors of this orientation so to argue that these issues should not be discussed beceause some people could be offended is not a viable claim.

I also referenced Muhammed's marriage to Aisha when she was a little girl as likely to be feeding the destructive practice of child marraiges in Nigeria's Muslim North, a live practice discussion about which cannot be avoided.

Falola responded by claiming that critique of religious figures is equivalent to insult, a view that negates his own scholarly vocation.

The issue is about the grounds for Falola's position.

Is he responding to lampooning of Muhammed, to mockery of the prophet?

Is he responding to such ridiculous stances as denying the Holocaust, denying slavery etc

No.

He simply launches a claim that has no basis in any logic execept that of the most fundamentalist of Muslims- that Muhammed was not human and that any kind of critique of these religious founders who were biological creatures like you and I is abuse, and in the case of Muhammed, blasphemy.

The victory of Islamic and other arealistic religious fundamentalisms in the academy?

May that never be.

Thanks

Toyin

On Sun, Aug 22, 2021, 04:09 Moses Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com> wrote:

Not here to defend Oga Falola's moderating decisions, but Toyin Adepoju, you make it sound as if scholarship is without responsible, ethical self-censorship. You make it look like scholars don't wrestle with ethical questions about what can be ethically critiqued and if so how such a critique can be executed without causing offense, endangering people, or deepening injuries and fissures, with attendant tragic consequences.

Scholars routinely weigh the potential cost of launching certain critical inquiries. Universities themselves have human agent rules and other kinds of ethical protocols governing research that investigators have to accent to before they can begin certain inquiries.

Not only that, in North America where I teach, there are several unspoken and unwritten research guardrails and limits as well as taboo subjects of critique. They are taboo not because academics are barred from critiquing them, but because everyone knows that it is irresponsible to do so because of the hurt and offense such a critique could cause to millions of people or the insult that would be deduced from it.

Of course, part of it is that the academic and his/her institution could pay a steep price as.

But the bigger issue is the ethical responsibility upon the scholar to resist the temptation to launch a critique that has the potential to cause offense to groups and faiths. And in this consideration, you must step out of your natural scholarly bubble of curiosity and inhabit the perceptual possibilities of members of particular groups or faith communities. How would they perceive the critique regardless of your intention and the scholarly curiosity that underpins the critique?

In other words, to use a biblical logic, certain critiques may be possible but are they expedient or wise or responsible or even ethical?

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 21, 2021, at 4:56 PM, Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com> wrote:



Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju,

Just witness how seriously I take you. If I didn't take you seriously, or if I ignored you completely as if you did not exist, that would be a sign of great disrespect.

True: For me to have a civilised discussion with a gentle or gentle-man like you, I would have to be civilised, and as you know so very well, unfortunately, unlike you, I am not civilised, at least not in the sense in which you suppose yourself to be civilised or are supposed to be civilised, and here I'm thinking of the opening lines of Diop's The Vultures :

"In those days

When civilization kicked us in the face

When holy water slapped our cringing brows...

I am not into Modern Man in Search of a Soul and I am not one of the lost seed of the House of Israel in need of your kind of civilisation. I want you to be famous, so please help me if you can and whenever you can. An Islamic definition of God is He who helps and does not need help. This is slightly in contrast with the general Judaic understandingly which postulates that we have to help God - firstly through circumcision – otherwise we would have all been born already circumcised and we have to serve God, and to help him make this world a better place, not just in terms of mankind's new awareness taking responsibility for climate change as a religious commitment and for "bani Israel" what's known as tikkun olam...

The most important "thing" I want to tell you is that the laws of Lashon Hara also apply to whatever you may have to say about our Muhammad Ibn Abdullah salallahu alaihi wa salaam.

Hopefully, before making pronouncements about him and passing evil judgments on him you already know who and what you are, and even if you don't yet know who you are, at least you know that you are not the seal of prophecy and you should pray that you are not destined for the everlasting hellfire for the sin of vilifying Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala's beloved prophet to mankind.

My advice to you is to start digging deep, where you are standing - in no way am I implying that you should start digging your own grave , I'm only saying that it's up to you to stop playing the role of dilettante ( jackass of everything ( all trades) and master of nothing ( none)

Hopefully, you also understand that there is and must be a world of difference between reading 52 weeks a year for thirty-four years about e.g. Sufism and meeting an actual Sufi Master or becoming one yourself.

Now, as to the demands that you make on me :

" If you disagree with my views, please present a personal point of view, justified by logic and evidence. Please don't direct me to any links to read. It's also good if you are able to sustain your own views and not rely on Ken for help."

Are those your commandments to me, and if so why do you think that an unintelligent and uncivilised savage like me should listen to someone like you? Don't you think that you are overestimating yourself, getting too big for your boots? And who told you that I "rely on Ken for help"?

"Justified" by " logic"? Your kind of logic no doubt. Yours and Immanuel Kant's and I suppose goldilocks, Sir Isaac Newton too, after the apple that Eve gave to Adam fell on his head.. Should I also follow the obtuse inanities or configurations of Sir Franklin Per-Roguey before he gets knighted and then blighted by Her Majesty?

And you tell me all this after - as evidence - supplying us with some al-Jazeera links to read? Al-Jazeera as you source. Where else to get news, since we are not there? Do you find anything wrong with the news and views at Information Clearing House?

About The Taliban and women and Human Rights, you ought to be smart enough to know that we must be on the same side. Of relevance to my " position" - are the lessons to be learned from this Sabbath's Torah Portion Ki Teitzei (( The woman of Beautiful form ), what you would refer to as "war booty"

Last piece of sober advice of which the unrepentant had better beware is to be found in

Revelation 21:8

Dear Adepoju, if you don't click on that last link, you should only have yourself to blame about where you will be spending eternity. Don't say John didn't warn you...

On Saturday, 21 August 2021 at 16:16:44 UTC+2 ovdepoju wrote:

Why must some people insist they cannot carry on  a civilized discussion?

''Please feel free to wallow in your own dung, but don't think you are free to share the stench with us. We don't want any of it.

Understandably, our eniyan ti o kekoo would much prefer that you do not further corrupt our atmosphere and that's why it's advisable that you keep your putrid critiques to yourself...''

Cornelius

God have mercy.

toyin

On Sat, 21 Aug 2021 at 14:18, Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:

Tony Adepöju,

Please feel free to wallow in your own dung, but don't think you are free to share the stench with us. We don't want any of it.

Understandably, our eniyan ti o kekoo would much prefer that you do not further corrupt our atmosphere and that's why it's advisable that you keep your putrid critiques to yourself....

On Saturday, 21 August 2021 at 09:56:02 UTC+2 ovdepoju wrote:

Whenever my post contains critique of Muhammed, the founder of Islam, Prof. Toyin Falola, the founder and moderator of this group, refuses to approve the post, describing it as blasphemous.

I have tried to get him to express his views as to why critique should necessarily be seen as blasphemy but he has refused to defend his position, simply repeating  the same claim.

You are a scholar, not a right wing Muslim, I urged. Let's discuss this in public, as scholars do, I have suggested, to no avail.

Is he afraid for his safety when visiting the Muslim North, where he has friends, I wondered, beceause I am not able to fathom why a scholar like Falola would be advancing narrow views of religious conformity that most of the world has left behind but narrow minded Muslims still cling to, even kiling people for defying their tunnel vision about their religion.

Will he approve this post? I doubt it. He seems to prefer to keep his censorship hidden perhaps because it conflicts with his reputation as a scholar.

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