Hi everyone- welcome to 40 Minutes of Faith. My name is Barbara Cox and I host this weekly podcast to explore God's word and our relationship with God. Today is part two of an introduction to Islam with my professor, Dr. Gulsum Gurbuz-Kuchuksari. I'll be introducing her in just a minute and wanted to catch you up on the episode that was released last week.
Why would a Christian podcast have two episodes about the Muslim faith? I have a few reasons for you, and I want to invite you to have a cup of tea with me. I don't think I've ever invited you to sit down and have a cup of tea with me on this podcast, but it's a cultural way of spending time with each other, getting to know each other over conversation, which I have mentioned before is something that not all Americans are good at. I think there's even cultural differences within the United States, but at least in new England where I'm from, we pretty much get down to business. And this is an international cultural way of spending some time with each other.
So why is it on my heart that we are having this conversation? Many times in podcast episodes to date, we have talked about loving your neighbor and we've talked about who is our neighbor? And to my understanding, our neighbor is in the very broadest sense of the word.
It's not just the people who live right there across the street. It's the folks in my community, in my county, in my state, in my country and truly in the whole world. Now you're thinking, okay, they don't live anywhere near you, but they're our neighbors in God's creation. And there's room for fear in our lives of the unfamiliar.
So maybe you don't have a lot of fear of the unfamiliar, but when I saw my course listings last year, when I was signing up for classes at my seminary, which is Wartburg Theological Seminary, and I saw an elective called Introduction to Islam, I felt right away that this was something that I needed to learn more about- that there's a lot of information out there that may or may not be accurate.
And now some of it definitely is the truth. Sometimes we see bad news and we believe it to be fact-based. And one thing that I did learn in this class that I already knew before, but it really brought it home to me, is that sometimes there's other information out there that we're not being told about.
And you can't know everything, but how can I educate myself so that there is room for facts? And so that my fear is well-placed and not generalized or too big, like for the whole population? I don't need to be afraid of all Muslims or all people who practice Islam. And that's actually a nuance that I learned about.
Also, when you see the news, you assume the worst of someone. Well, maybe you don't, but a lot of people do, and you think, Oh, this person is fanatical about their faith or something like that. And that may not be the case. So there is research out there- I'm not going to spend tons of time on statistics right now, but just to let you know that not everyone who does something that may cause fear is doing so out of religious reasons.
And another example of what I'm talking about, I wanted my mind to be opened. And you kind of forget, or at least I sometimes forget is that there are also plenty of occasions to be afraid of people who might look just like me. So say for example, just to pick one from a long time ago, the Oklahoma city bombing was perpetrated by white men.
So there's a bunch of statistics out there about the proportion of incidents that happen from people of different ethnic or racial backgrounds and then also religious backgrounds. And there are people of the Christian faith who also perpetrate crimes, who kill people, who murder people and that's in the news, but then what stays in your mind more?
So I wanted to be open-minded first of all, and I want to invite all of you to be open-minded, and we're going to get to our content in just a minute. And then I also believe that getting to know our neighbors helps because there is an interfaith component, I believe, to our relationship with people. And so to that effect, I just have two statements to read to you from my Lutheran faith body, which is the ELCA, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
I'm going to be putting a bunch of links on the podcast website for this episode right now. And then also I want to highlight for you the resources that are already on there from last week in case you didn't listen to it or haven't seen it. So I'm going to be putting up elca.org and then also the specific link to this document, which is a declaration of inter religious commitment.
And this was published in 2019. So I just want to read a couple of sentences to you about why I believe that this is important and right to have this conversation with my professor: on page three of the statement, they say: “in a deeply divided world, and as a faithful response to Christ's message of reconciliation, we seek right, peaceful, and just relationships with all our neighbors, including those of other religions and worldviews.” And then it goes on for a couple of more pages. It's all important stuff, but that's not why I'm here to read you the entire statement today.
Just wanted to highlight on page six. The statement says: “when we engage our religiously diverse neighbors, we can expect both a new understanding of the other and a deeper understanding and appreciation of our own Christian faith. Mutual understanding involves moving from factual knowledge of commonalities and differences to grasping coherence and even glimpsing beauty. In discovering how others love and cherish their religious traditions, we more deeply love and cherish our own. We empathize with the challenges and struggles others face in their religious commitments, as well as appreciate their joys. Mutual understanding opens the possibility of friendship and accepting responsibility for each other's well-being.”
So that's an example of what I'm talking about when I say that our neighbors are everyone, even though that's a really lot of people.
Certainly listen to the other episode, if you have a few minutes; you don't have to listen to it before listening to this one, but just to let you know, this is part two of the conversation that's coming up in just a minute. The professor talked about a movie that we were assigned to watch, a short documentary, for one of our class assignments, Real Bad Arabs. And that's about how Hollywood depicts Arabs in general, which you probably will admit is typically pretty bad. How is that realistic? Is it not realistic?
Is it really stereotypical and racist? I brought up one of the required textbooks for the class, which is called The Fear of Islam by Todd Green. And I cannot recommend that book highly enough. If you have some time to take a look at some further information. If it makes a difference to you, Todd Green is a Christian pastor and has a doctorate degree. So very well educated, experienced, and in my opinion explains this information in. What I perceive to be a fairly neutral and unbiased method; it seems to me to be pretty fact-based and very informative.
We also talked about single stories. There's a link to an article online. You can also Google it yourself about how we sometimes make too broad assumptions of things. So the example that my professor had brought up is a lot of people think of the gigantic continent of Africa as being poor.
And that's just not true. There is poverty on the content of Africa, but not the whole content of Africa is poor, or other assumptions that we make about people in a certain region. And that also was an example highlighted in the textbook that I just mentioned, The Fear of Islam. We assume things about other places, but those things might be true in our own places. So it's easy sometimes to criticize another place. We're going to be continuing the conversation now about women's rights in just a minute coming up. One example might be, the women in this place are treated horribly.
They're abused, they're oppressed. That might be true. And are there also women in this other place who are not being treated horribly and oppressed, and I'm not minimizing that the women are being abused. Give me one second for the second half of the sentence, which is, there are women right here where I live, where you live, who are being treated horribly, oppressed and abused.
And is it easier for us to think about all those people over there? They treat each other really badly, when in fact we treat each other really badly here, too. So it's a universal issue. It's not just, Oh, this one corner of the world, they treat people really badly. Because that happens here as well.
We also talked about a Muslim theologian named Said Nursi, who wrote a great deal about faith. And my professor spoke about Sufism, which is part of Islam. So she explained what is Sufism all about? What is mysticism? Kind of a way of approaching faith that's about relationship with God.
And as part of that conversation, we talked about the poet Rumi, who you may have heard of. I read one verse of a poem, and then we talked a little bit about that poem, which was about Moses, and Moses talking with the shepherd. And then God talking to Moses, that I thought was really meaningful to me, as a Christian. I felt like I could pull things out of that poem that were meaningful to me, especially when talking about relationship with God, between God and people.
Barbara: today's guest is Dr. Gülsüm Kucuksari, who was one of my professors this past semester at Wartburg Theological Seminary. She has served as faculty at a number of academic institutions and also as a chaplain in Arizona and Massachusetts.
She holds a master's of arts in Islamic studies and Christian Muslim relations from Hartford seminary. And her PhD is in near. And middle Eastern studies from the university of Arizona. Welcome. How are things so far for you this year?
Gülsüm: Thank you, Barbara. It is a challenging year, like for everyone else and me as well, but it's going okay.
Barbara: Yes. Challenging. And then some. I'm very grateful that I took your class, Introduction to Islam, because I didn't really know very much about it. And I learned that my impressions of the Muslim faith from the news and media was often based on misinformation.
And then in terms of women's issues. I just wanted to point out two things: not only the book by Green, but also many other articles that we read, talked about women's rights are not consistently either upheld or denied throughout the world. So there are many middle Eastern countries where women have high amounts of education and say, for example, in the United States or other Western places, there are many women who are abused and oppressed. So it's not fair to say, Oh, let us white people go rescue these Muslim women in a stereotypical way.
Yes, people all around the world need help. Men and women of all different skin colors, including in the United States. And that there are also places where women are not being abused and have education and have rights and have even government leadership positions. So I was glad to learn many different aspects of that.
Gülsüm: we haven't talked about the time of the golden ages for the Muslims. I think it is important to mention here briefly because in Islamic tradition, there's a high value traditionally, to education. And as you talked about Muslims in the United States, for example, when you look at the ratio, the Muslim women graduate education in the U S is higher than American women. And even in countries like Iran, which actually has human rights abuses, they actually have more women having undergraduate education than men. I'm from Turkey, which is very similar. It is a mixture of Western and Eastern, I think I would say.
And of course there are abuses, but I think I can really compare it to western context because, you can easily have education.
Barbara: I have a practical question for you: how can ordinary people respect other ordinary people who might be different from each other, even perhaps an invisible way? So say for example, I think I know the answer, but I'm just going to say it anyway:
Is it respectful of me to say, Oh, I'm so sorry. You have to wear a headscarf. You shouldn't have to wear that. You go ahead and take it off. How can we respect each other? How can I respect you?
Gülsüm: Yeah. Good question. Definitely not, right?
Barbara: I was pretty sure you were going to say that. And I apologize that the example is kind of stringent, but you had mentioned France, if I'm hiring you, your brain is brilliant. It doesn't matter to me if you wear a headscarf, but can we talk about just showing that basic respect for your values, your beliefs, and in this case, visible attire?
Gülsüm: Yeah. Most important, I think we should just respect each other, whoever we are. But I think one of the reasons of respect, our shared traditions, because Muslims did not invent the modesty codes for men and women.
It's an Abrahamic tradition. I mean, I asked my students, can you imagine Amish women in bikini's and they would all laugh at this.
And I said, it does the same thing, right? So it's modesty codes, and even today in the middle East, we had Christian women and Jewish women wearing very similarly with Muslim women, like wearing the headscarf, some of them are even wearing burquas, the face coverings, which is more traditional than religious.
I personally had an experience of something similar. I remember an older lady when I was a chaplain in a hospital, she was telling me, and she was a sick lady that I visited. And she told me like how sad she is for me, that my husband might be oppressive.
And I understand her, like, what can I say? Like, this is what she knows. And I didn't want to hurt her or anything, but that was sad. I wish I could explain that to her in a second, but it is not possible. And this is what is so frustrating for us, it is so hard to explain all of this briefly because politics getting played, history gets in play.
If you're not well-versed, if you didn't get that education, it is so hard to explain all of those things to people, and you just stay silent.
One stereotype for women wearing the headscarf I experienced was “you're uneducated”. And the first time I remember when I applied to for a chaplaincy in a hospital, they asked to come in and then I think they were doing flu shots or something. I don't remember exactly, but she asked me if I was the school custodian? I no longer get angry because I some people don't do it on purpose. But it is also a frustration because you wish you could explain it. But you can't explain it very easily. You can just say, no, I am not.
And this is all about, you can just change that perception because she will, I mean, probably she would do the same thing to another person that isn't the same.
Barbara: Yeah. But if I came in wearing a cross, she probably wouldn't ask me if I was the custodian, which is totally unfair because I could be what the probability. I'm so sorry to hear that.
Gülsüm: Maybe an example from some Americans, that would be helpful for them to be aware that we come from that racist backgrounds. I mean racist, meaning we have in contract that small margin outliers. In a country like Turkey that I'm coming from, although it's an Eastern country, because of the west and hegemony, was never colonized, but the mentalities are so colonized.
Like there is this understanding of if you are more European, if you think like them, then you have more value. And the reason I came to US was because of the ban against head scarves in my own country.
I couldn't go to college with my scarf. I had to take it off. For four years. So first thing Americans should understand that it's a choice. Like I made that choice to something that's spiritual to me. And I think no one would understand me because I think as we get modest we get don't get distracted as much.
I don't know, Barbara, if you share with me, but we like to be relaxed, beautiful. And sometimes TV shows or this and that, can actually distract us from God.
I mean, this has been my experience. And I heard from some Christian students of mine saying, Christian women also are modest. So I think there's this sense of it's a choice that you actually find spiritual, you find is ritualistic.
Like I remember a friend of mine told me when her mother, who was actually a teacher, when she went with government's place and they asked her to sign, they automatically told her, you can just put your finger on. Probably don't know how to sign. And because people would earlier stamp on their finger.
And they automatically think it's very similar to what I experienced here. Like if you're a custodian. So very many examples of that.
Barbara: So don't assume that anyone is less educated or more educated or that they're oppressed- now they might be, but it's not automatic proof. I had to look up the word hegemony at the beginning of class, because I had heard about it, but I wasn't really exactly sure what it meant. This is like a pop quiz for me. I think it means the example was given of Europeans during colonial times coming in and basically saying we're better. Our way is the right way, the way we do things and the way the local people have the culture and the life is inferior. So we're speaking against that.
Gülsüm: it's not always very obvious. When I say western values, I don't actually mean Christian values, because Europe actually went through the crisis against religion and there's a lot of atheist philosophers that have been very influential in Europe, but also other parts of the world.
What we see in the movies, for example, they don't represent Christian values to us. So this is what I refer to- the western values have this hegemony all over the world today. And it is not like they are saying they're better than you, but of course women let's say women.
One of my students actually said that women who are being valued more in our societies today. Like, look the lives of these movie stars. I mean, it's just a given, like you should be that way.
And so the hegemony is not always like, they're better than you, but it's this idea that educate them on, they should not have a headscarf because this is what our media says. And maybe it is also another way of saying we don't have different representations of different women.
We only get to see one type of women all the time against the single story. I mean, even in Turkey, for all those years, we never had like a TV speaker in a headscarf. Like there is this image and it is a default. Like you have to be in this shape if you want to be accepted in this society. So I think media actually enforces us towards that. There's that unaccepted images in the media unconsciously accepted, even me as a person wearing the hijab for so long. When I first saw a TV speaker wearing a hijab, my first reaction was, I laughed. It was like, so unconsciously, we have bought into it. So it's very embarrassing. Why do I know that I'm one of them, because I'm not familiar with that image. Like the hijab, it is not acceptable to your mind, even if you are doing it.
It's so ridiculous, but it is true.
Barbara: I'm grateful that you point that out because it's easy for me to say, Oh, it's a problem that was in the past. And we're beyond that now. And we're not beyond racism. So then there's kind of subtle expectations.
So we do have some resources for folks that I want to make sure to mention.
And I also like to ask, are there any other elephants in the room that we haven't talked about yet today that you want to bring up? Is there anybody's voice that's missing?
I want to mention a website called shoulder to shoulder campaign.org, which is groups of people who are coming to support their neighbors. I don't believe it's explicitly Christian people supporting Muslim people. I think it's an interfaith organization. I'm not very familiar with it, but I was looking up different types of resources to recommend, and we have all kinds of academic books and the videos. That you had mentioned, but this one looks like it really is valuing human connection and human support.
And the author of the book that I had mentioned contributed to a study that is on the Lutheran social services of Minnesota website, their website is LSSMN.org, because not only are many refugees Muslim, or any other, or no other faith in particular, but it talks about my neighbor is Muslim.
And how can just regular people learn some information to have these supportive relationships and to not judge each other on misunderstandings? So I would love to hear any other resources that you have in mind, or if there's any other elephants in the room that we haven't talked about yet. Or anyone whose voice might be missing from this conversation?
Gülsüm: Barbara, it just actually reminds me of an Abrahamic traditions book club coming out. So I can announce the upcoming book club on the Abrahamic Traditions. So the book is written by a friend of mine, a Jewish scholar, a professor of history and emeritus. And his name is Charles Cohen and he's going to be leading the club. So he wrote the book. So if folks are interested, they're welcome to join us.
I think I mentioned it, but to emphasize, I think the elephants, you may not like to see is for our American friends is I think helping handle on sandal, the Muslim faith or Muslims.
And I think we have to come to grips with the fact that we have put Muslims into a box. And it is not a very nice box. So I'm saying let's open ourselves to hear what they had to say. Sometimes it may hurt us what they have to say, but it is not going to hurt us all the time. So let's open ourselves to also hear about these great Muslim thinkers, philosophers, mathematicians, for example, like that lived in in the middle ages, when the west was going through its dark times, the Muslim world was going through its golden ages.
Let's open ourselves to hear from these thinkers and I'm sure it's going to enrich us. So of course, Muslims have to focus on their own mistakes because I think they have to get rid of this victim mentality. It does not help Muslims - it's not taking them anywhere.
But for our American folks, I think our focus should be on our mistakes and let's try to understand who these people are and what they think tradition is also about and what are the similarities. And I think our present condition in America provides us many examples also to compare, like the issues of race and white supremacy.
Barbara: And just like you said to not paint all people with the same brush, that we have many nuanced differences in many different cultures. So I appreciate you saying let's listen to our siblings of all different faiths and different types of backgrounds, because I suspect that there may be some Christians, even who say my Christianity is not the same as this other one over here.
And some of it might be the rituals that you had mentioned, or the mysticism, the connection with God, but some of it is even, you had mentioned divorce previously, that's a hot button issue for some people, how different people may be accepted or judged or forgiven.
And that's just one example. So how about we listen to each other more and try to have an understanding and acknowledge not everybody's the same, which is really obvious, but we forget it.
Gülsüm: Barbara. I think one of the blessings that I see in my life is to come to a different culture. To a Christian culture, I should say because, I was born and raised in a Western society, 99%. And although I only remember one Christian friend in college who I was very reserved from, I didn't have the courage to be friends with her and then now, looking back, I wish I had the courage. But coming to this society, I think it's a blessing of God. I honestly see this as a blessing of God because you only see just one part of the entire creation of human beings of God in in your little local area.
But when you come to a totally different culture, I have experienced the beautiful spirituality of my Christian friends and I came out of the box of like, Oh, God only saves certain people. I am so grateful for that experience to God, because I see that compassion of God everywhere, not only in my land, which I followed.
So again, like we need to hear each other. I think this is fine because as we hear from each other, we see the compassion of God that we want to be so-called close. And this is a blessing of God, that we should cherish, I think, to talk to different people.
Barbara: it's very interesting to me that many people might think of the United States as a Christian country. And maybe some of that goes back to even the foundations of the country, but it was also partly fleeing from religious persecution and supposedly allowing people to live the way they wanted to.
And on behalf of our siblings who might be of the Jewish faith or Buddhist or no faith at all, I don't know if that's true, but maybe that's how the impression is. I just, I mean, for me, it's okay. But that's a perception. That's really what we're talking about is perception. Just how things come across.
Gülsüm: definitely. I agree with you more. Definitely. Yeah.
Barbara: Do you have any other resources in mind or anything else that you'd like to share with us today?
Gülsüm: I think this will be a good introduction. Thanks for having me.
Barbara: Thank you so much for your time and your wisdom, and I appreciate you sharing some of your experiences as well. Although I do feel terrible and apologize that some people have made incorrect assumptions about you or other people as well. So thank you for your time.
Gülsüm: Thank you.
Resources:
https://www.lssmn.org/services/refugees/my-neighbor-is-muslim
Said Nursi
“Real Bad Arabs”
The Fear of Islam by Todd Green
Poet Rumi
