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

how would things from the past come down to us?

if it was the time of my parents, i could ask them--but they are dead and so are my uncles and aunts, and now even my cousins are leaving us.

how about their parents? i have pictures, some memories of my grandparents. every account i share with my sister and closest cousin is met by their counter memories or alternative versions. even my wife and i disagree over what happened to our kids (the kids are now aged 54, 53, 41, 39.)

i have only pictures of two grandparents. a scattered set of pictures from when my mother was young, in the 1910s and 1920s.

i have nothing of the previous generation, except i know if they didn't get out, the chances are they died in the holocaust, coming from regions that were "cleansed" by the nazis and their sympathizers.

everything before that is blank, at least personally.

i studied texts from earlier periods. there were alternative versions of many. even shakespeare's have alternatives. the language is becoming foreign., .chaucer's english, you need a disctionary. there was nothing like real english before that.

there were famous people, and stories were crafted from legends and myths and oral tales, and each time they were told, there were changes.

some of you may not agree with me, but this is my conviction. whatever historical, real person might have existed in the past is transformed over time into a figure that fits the narratives and narrative understandings of a people. they become figures whose importance lies in the meanings they carry, not the reality they embodied.

They are there for us in the narratives. that doesn't mean they are unreal; only that the words real and unreal fail to convey their presence to us, a presence that has become 100% textual over the centuries. when precisely they lived, what they did and said, everything became shaped by the needs of the chronicler who recited their version. some insist the chronicler never changed a word. i'd argue there were changes with each performance. you can believe sundiata never changed, the bible never changed, the quran never changed, etc.

that belief might comfort you; just like the belief in the material and physical reality of these figures.

there is no sense in my trying to talk you out of your belief. i am simply expression my own belief about the historicity and narrative truths that convey to us figures from the past...starting with my own parents.

by the way, my name is kenneth wettroth harrow. i was born kenneth harrow, but married elizabeth wettroth and changed my name. my mother wanted my middle name to be joseph, but when the birth certificate was made, they omitted the middle name, so she had them go back and insert it.

i changed it when i married liz, and my kids now bear both my names. i even named my youngest son joseph, to get back what i lost.

which of the chroniclers of my life could ever have figured any of this out? even starting with a name we have long stories, which change over time, with repetition, with the limited knowledge of the teller.

you historians here on the list, what do you find in the past?

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: Saturday, August 21, 2021 11:11 AM
To: usaafricadialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Critiquing Muhammed, the Founder of Islam: Between Intellectual Exploration and Blasphemy

 

Thanks to Toyin Falola for approving this post.

The responses so far to this bold move by Falola in approving the post suggests to me that most readers here might  not be prepared to address the issues because they are coming from the much respected scholar, those respondents preferring instead to respond deflectively. 

I will therefore clarify my exchanges with the professor as they touch upon issues of the intersection between critical thinking and  religious faith in relation to Islam.

Falola refused to approve my post of some weeks ago comparing the prophet Muhammed to the Yoruba freedom fighter and Yoruba nation agitator Sunday Igboho.

 Why, I asked him in puzzlement.

His concluding response, after a series of exchanges, is that Igboho is a human being and Muhammed was not a human being.

I had to reseasses  my understanding of reality. This was Toyin Falola, polymathic scholar of Africa in the Western critical tradition, PhD Ife, Professor at the University of Texas, serial writer on Yoruba spirituality and diverse disciplines, not a graduate of a fundametalist Islamic institution or a cleric in some right wing Islamic establishment. 

Among the Muslim writers on Islam I admire, such as Seyyed Hossein Nasr, and the great writers on Islam whose religion is unknown to me, from Eric Winkel to Idriss Shah, would they hold such an unrealistic view? 

How would Abu Bakr, Muhammed's right hand man himself have reacted  in response to such arealist stance about  Muhammed, the same Abu Bakr described as having declared to the Muslim faithful after Muhammed's death, that, ''for those who worship Muhammed, know that Muhammed is dead, but for those who worship Allah, know that Allah is living and cannot  die" ?

Is such a deification of Muhammed as Falola in effect expressed not a form of the idolatory forbidden in Islam?

Falola did not respond to these urgings of mine and so I let it go. 

Islam coming  up again on account of the current Afghan crisis, I responded to a post by Cornelius Hamelberg quoting the English writer George Bernard Shaw praising Muhammed as an exemplary leader.

I responded to that post by comparing Muhammed with the Buddha and Jesus, who, as pacifists, I see as exemplary figures, in contrast to Muhammed, an empire builder whose colonising  imperialism I see as likely at the root of many problems with contemporary militant  Islam.

I also referenced Muhammed's controversial marriage to Aisha when she was a little girl, a subject thoroughly flogged in literature both  critical of Muhammed and defensive of him.

Falola again refused to approve the post, describing critique of the prophet Muhammed as blasphemy.

Was this an elaborate charade, I asked myself. What could be Falola's true motive, I wondered.

A professor of history who has edited a handbook on Islam in Africa-which, incidentally had no chapter on Islamic terrorism in the age of Boko Haram, Al Shabbab  and ISWAP, leading to questions about its editorial integrity, as I pointed out in my response to the book  published on this group, a post also approved by Falola, but a book which along with avoiding adequately  highlighting  such an ugly but politically and philosophically  strategic aspect of Islamic history also did not include a chapter on Sufism, Islamic mysticism, which, in the world of the verbal arts in relation to philosophy is one of Islam's  unquestionably   great contributions to global l civilisation, a contribution whose power penetrates everywhere regardless of religious affiliation or none-  such a historian is arguing, in the face of the universe of critical, exploratory literature on Muhammed, Jesus, Buddha and other founders of religion that critique of Muhammed is blasphemy.

Leave other people's faiths alone, he urged.

Is this a trick of some sort by Falola, I queried myself.

Prof, when did you become like this?! I challenged him.

In a world in which,  in the spirit of unity between empathetic identification and critical enquiry central to scholarship, most writers on particular religions are not practitioners  of those religions,a scholar such as Falola is toeing this line?

This group is a scholarly group, he responded as we argued. Its not for such critiques, he insisted.

If I post on human sacrifice in Ogboni, which i have done, on misogyny in Ifa as was once posted on this group in relation to Orunmila a divine personage in the Ifa system, these being institutions of your native Yoruba people, you will approve those posts as ''scholarship'' yet a critical examination of Muhammed is not scholarship to you?  

His response was that he was trying to protect me but since I insisted, I could insult Muhammed and Jesus if I liked.

When did critique necessarily become insult, I asked him. Is critique not vital to self reflexivity, to critical self examination in religion? I insisted.

I then challenged him to publicly present this stance of his. He must be keeping his censorship based on such strange views secret because it would contradict his reputation as a scholar, I concluded to him.

He has approved my post publicising this strange stance from him, a stance exemplifying the non-critical character of right wing Islam, and so here we are.

thanks

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

On Sat, 21 Aug 2021 at 08:56, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com> 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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