Heaven on Earth

            I’ve been thinking a lot about Islam lately.  It’s hard not to here, it pervades everyday life so much in a way that no religion does in New York and New England.  A couple of weeks ago I finished reading a translation of the Quran.  As with every other holy book I’ve read there were things I really liked about it, and things that I didn’t, but it’s not my place to discuss my impressions of a religious text from another culture which I can’t even read in it’s real language.  At least not perched here on my cyber soapbox.  So I won’t.  In the next few days it’s very likely that I’ll write about those impressions, and if you have any interest in my semi-informed musings feel free to e-mail me and ask for them.  What I will talk about, and gladly since it’s important to understanding Morocco, is how some—but by no means all—Moroccans conceive of their religion and how my reading the Quran was perceived here.

            The first thing I have to say is that actually reading the Quran, even in translation—which, it is important to note, does not count as reading the Quran to most Muslims—is a very, very different experience than reading about the Quran.  I took one course all about Islam in college, and a bunch of others where Islamic theology and philosophy came up, and I’ve been reading pretty voraciously anything about the Quran and Islam that I could since finding out I’d be coming to Morocco.  I knew how it is organized (by length of Sura (chapter), loosely, rather than by chronology or topic), I knew not to expect sustained story telling, even the Sura of Joseph, which tells that prophet’s whole story in one place, is told with frequent breaks and digressions, and I knew some of the important verses, but despite all that I knew I was expecting a text much more like the Jewish and Christian Holy books.  I didn’t expect so much repetition, and I didn’t expect all the time devoted to denying the divinity of Jesus, while confirming his important role as a prophet.  What I didn’t expect the most was how invested some people in my town got in how my reading progressed.

            As people started to learn that I was reading the Quran it would come up in conversation even more than it had before.  “You know, the Quran says this in Arabic, is that what your book says?”  “The Quran is beautiful, yes?  Even in English?  Ah, very good!”  “This is very important, because it is all true.”  People would ask me what I’d read that day.  Sometimes I’d know the Classical Arabic name for a Sura, more often I wouldn’t, or would only know a Darija word that obviously came from French.  My host mother burst out laughing the day I read the Sura of the Table, which, knowing full well I was wrong, I called Tabla.  She then taught me the classical Arabic word for table, but since I didn’t have a notebook on me I promptly forgot it.  Not that it matters; everyone here uses tabla.  Perhaps the most impressive moment came when one of my café owner friends asked what I’d read that day.  With no idea of the Arabic names I could only tell him that I’d read three Sura in a row, the middle of which is called Sad after the Arabic letter which begins it.  He immediately named the other two, and showed me them in the Quran he keeps at the back of the café.  He has the order memorized.  He’s not particularly religious, but he has the order of Sura memorized.  I think it’s from pre-school here, which seems to largely consist of repeating the Quran.  Other café owners would sometimes waive my bill when they saw I was reading the Quran in their café, and they’d almost always come over and talk about it a bit.

            Needless to say, the question of whether I would convert came up a lot.  Without fail I answered “God willing, but I need to study more,” which they think is a sensible approach.  People here generally believe I’m a Christian, though not a particularly devout one, and unable to give a more precise answer in Arabic I stick with that.  I’ve tried to explain the concept of secular Deism (not using that term, obviously) to a couple of people who speak English, as something closer to what I actually am, but I think that still just comes out as, not particularly devout Christian.  People here accept a non-devout Christian, though many of the people who care most about me say they worry about my soul.  There are plenty of non-devout Muslims in town, so they get the basic idea.

            Since I finished the Quran I’ve started reading a book titled Heaven On Earth by Sadakat Kadri.  It is a history of Islamic jurisprudence since the prophet and an analysis of the modern schools of thought about Islamic Law.  It’s an absolutely fascinating read, and now, armed with my fuller understanding of the Quran, what I’ve learned therein is a great conversation continuer with people who like to talk with me about Islam.  I mention things I learned from the book to show what I know, and then ask about their thoughts, and the responses have been even more interesting that what I learned about town from the Quran itself.

            In medieval Baghdad there was a fierce debate over whether God created the Quran or whether it was co-eternal with him.  And when I say fierce debate I mean fierce.  Thousands of people died over this as the competing positions won the ears of different caliphs and regional authorities.  Eventually the debate was settled when the last guy willing to say the Quran was part of God’s creation was executed (it’s a lot more complicated and interesting than that, but you get the point).  For people who care deeply about theology there was actually an important point here, if the Quran was part of creation it was mutable, just like the rest of creation, whereas even God wouldn’t edit a co-eternal Quran.  This then translates to whether religious laws are immutable or not, a debate that modern Muslims—and, for that matter, modern Christians, Jews, Hindus, and everyone else—are still having.  It’s something of a strange position, because many Muslims believe that verses of the Quran sent to the prophet later in life which contradicted earlier verses were the more correct versions.  The two views don’t completely contradict each other, because an eternal Quran would eternally have been meant to slowly ease people into Islam, but it’s a bit of a logical jump.

Learning about this medieval debate, I thought, might be a Godsend.  As the town Christian, some people ask me to explain the Trinity (or, I should say, to defend myself as a polytheist).  Well, here I had an answer.  In Sunni theology the Quran is God’s co-eternal word, separate from both Him and Creation but part of them both at the same time.  If that doesn’t sound familiar go read John 1:1.  It’s basically the same theological relationship as that between the Father and Son in Orthodox, Catholic, and many Protestant theologies, and just as many, if not more, people died arguing this fine point in Christianity.  To make sure I really got it (and to try out this defense of the thing I don’t believe which I still constantly have to defend) I worked out a suitable translation of how this debate works and went to ask a friend whose deep knowledge of Islam and the hadith (stories of the life of the Prophet) has always impressed me.

            I told him the truth, that this debate confuses me to no end.  He apologized, but said I can’t ask him about theology because he doesn’t really understand it himself.  He explained further that it’s not really that he doesn’t understand, it’s that he thinks these debates are meaningless, something that only God can know.  This actually is another medieval position, and one that makes me very glad my friend wasn’t in medieval Baghdad, because this group was oppressed too, despite being able to claim a fairly important founder.  The prophet Mohammed.  There is a hadith which says that a group of Jews in Medina asked the new prophet about his views on several theological conundrums.  I forget the first two, but the third was about the number of the sleepers—a group of true believers claimed by all three monotheistic faiths who are said to have fallen into a deep sleep in Roman times to be protected from persecution.  Mohammed replied that it didn’t matter if there were 3, 4, 5, 7, or 9 or whether or not their dog counted as one, that this knowledge was for God and that man should not debate theology.  It was a clever answer, because those particular numbers were the ones held by different major sects, proving that he was aware of the nuances of the debate but chose to stride above it.  Unfortunately in later years the people who actually chose to listen to him and ignore theology were summarily executed.  In defense of the people interested in theology they could also bring up hadiths where Mohammed does debate it.  Or point out that the Quran is full of it.  Regardless, I think Mohammed would have preferred we debate it calmly over tea, as my friend and I do, rather than by hacking each others’ heads off in the street.

            The conversation with my friend continued, and I argued that while I agree that arguing over theology is fundamentally pointless it is important to know about past arguments, and their implications, so as to understand modern thinkers with whom we may or may not agree.  Shifting then, he said he agreed, because only by understanding the others viewpoint could we hope to eventually talk with them and find a consensus, the closest point of view, he thought, to knowledge known only to God.  As he said this I couldn’t remember if it was Jesus or Mohammed who said “My community shall never agree to an error,” but in any case the sentiment was echoed in both religions for centuries.  The discussion soon shifted out of the theological realm and into doing social good—around this time it also shifted from an Arabic-English patois to just English.  In the end we decided that sometimes finding the consensus was the easy part, it was the arguments that led there that could be an issue, as in the case of providing easy access to contraception as opposed to promoting abstinence and fidelity.  Both groups want to see a reduction of the spread of STDs and unwanted pregnancies, but their methods are diametrically opposed.  It was quite the conversation!

            A few days later I had to go to Khenifra to do some work (I think I’ll devote another blog post in a few days to how work is going, quite well is the short version!) and as I was walking back to the taxi stand an older man I know from my town hailed me over to where he and a bunch of his friends were talking in a café.  This group doesn’t really have any real English abilities, but the man who called me over wanted to ask about one of the few expressions he knows in English.  Justice is Blind.  I was shocked he knew the expression, but as he explained it in Arabic I realized that he (and possibly the whole country) actually understands it as the opposite of how we understand it in the West.  To him it means justice is blind to the legality of a cause, though it can feel when money gets slipped into its palm.  He soon had me translate another favorite adage of his into English.  If you deserve peace prepare for war.  I think he meant only in a metaphoric sense.

            I didn’t press him, but from what I gathered some judge had decided against him in a civil case because the other party paid a bribe.  He was understandably upset, but his rant changed its flavor pretty early on.  We started to stroll around town (and fortunately ran into my tutor, because while I did understand everything the older man said to me I don’t think I’d post it without the confirming translations I got), and he told me that he’s jealous of American and European society, where people can advance according to their merit, rather than their birth.  This was, of course, not the time to disabuse him of his ideals of social mobility in the West, and in any case comparatively that myth is entirely true to a Moroccan.  He then told me that the Muslim world has a problem where it does not take enough care of its people, neighbors may be friendly to each other but they can’t afford to help each other in hard times and the governments won’t step in to help.  In America and Europe, he said, if people get badly sick, or fall on hard times they’re lives aren’t necessarily ruined forever.  Again, my own thoughts on the inadequacies of American public health and the social safety net have nothing compared to what is here in Morocco.  He went on to say that he thinks in the Muslim world a person is actually discouraged from reaching their potential, a competitor’s bribe or a superior’s apathy will mean that most people’s best work won’t be rewarded.  Then he said something which I don’t think I’ll ever forget.  “You Americans, you care about each other, your family and neighbors, and you reward people for trying their hardest and reaching their potential.  If you would just accept that there is no God but God and that Mohammed is His prophet you would all go straight to heaven, because you act more like Muslims should than most Muslims do.”  If people the world over, including and especially Americans, adopted his idealized America as a goal it wouldn’t matter what faith you were, because heaven would be on Earth.