I tried my best to get to see this lecture from beginning to end, speeding past cops (it's a long way to Everett) and struggling to find parking (for an event open to the public, visitor parking spots were few and far between). Due to the inadequacy of the later, I got there for only the later part of his lecture (questions and answers), but what I did notice from the later part didn't make me feel in the slightest that it was worth the drive. In fact, this lecture was more likely a disservice to the student body at the college. The handful of things I did hear him speak about were flawed so deeply and displayed such an ignorance of everything the man is purportedly an expert of, down to basic 'Arabic, that he shouldn't be teaching an Islam 101 course let alone a topic as critical (Muslims in the West) as this one.
(1) He was asked by one guy if he could provide any evidence to suggest that the vast majority of Muslims held the ideas he ascribed to them. And that sure, he was able to give a handful of incidents, but that no credible academic could say "I saw these things happen - therefore this is true about the entirety of group X or a sizable portion of group X" . The man insisted that in order for something to be generalizable about a group (i.e. that a disturbing percent of Muslims believe the things Raymond Ibrahim had proposed), it ought to be supported by the statistics, and Raymond Ibrahim was unable to bring that. Basically, in the back and forth question that Raymond made every effort to avoid properly answering, the questioner would raise concerns over how Raymond's presentation wasn't grounded in science and couldn't be statistically applied to a significant percentage of Muslims and Raymond's response would be
I NO KNOW MATH, No numbers in humanities, har har har - something I consider highly irresponsible to suggest in any academic field.
(2) Another one of the good questions he was asked (by Ronald J. Young, consultant to the
National Interreligious Leadership Initiative for Peace in the Middle East) was why the vast majority of Muslim Scholars condemn al-Qaeda if in fact his speech is accurate. He replied that this is just strategic on the part of the majority of Muslim scholars, that they adhere to the same ideology deep down but do not openly share it under the pretense of Taqiyya.
- Taqiyya is a Shi'i practice, most people that claim to be Muslim condemn it including the majority of Islamic scholars. Muslims generally are allowed to break certain Islamic laws in the face of physical danger. For example, if a Muslim store-owner was being robbed, it would be well within his rights (as a Muslim) to lie to his assailant if the lie gave him the ability to, say, alert the authorities or find protection. Another instance where a Muslim is allowed to break an Islamic law is in the event that no provisions are accessible aside from those which are forbidden (such as pork) - the Muslim can than eat the pork in spite of this meat being prohibited in general.
- Those scholars who he alleges only condemn al-Qaeda for strategic purposes use the very same Islamic material he was casting in a negative light to condemn them! This is problematic for the general theme of Raymond Ibrahim's writings in multiple ways. It suggests that whatever material he did use was deliberately taken out of context in order for his argument to be in contradiction with the vast majority of scholars.
In support of his allegations he proposed something along the lines of (totally paraphrased): "
c'mon, if you're a scholar living in America, what are you gonna say? Viva al-Qaeda?" Besides failing to respond to either of the issues above, this proposal also fails to contend with the reality that the vast majority of Islamic scholars are NOT American and reside OUTSIDE of the US in countries that would not have responded particularly harshly to pro-al-Qaeda statements immediately post-9/11. After 9/11, because of the role the US has played in the Middle East, particularly as it pertains to Israel, there were some Muslims who weren't particularly sickened by the event - even jubilant, that we Americans tasted something that they live with day in and day out. So clearly, the governments in these societies would not have brought down a hammer of punishment against any scholars that showed their support for the attacks like some of the unlearned people who only know that America is in some way associated with their deplorable living conditions. And yet we find the biggest Islamic scholars condemning the people involved in this attack, calling it heinous and un-Islamic, though they ought to have feared no repercussions (and would thus have no reason to lie).
What's more important to note here is that
Raymond Ibrahim didn't object to the assertion that most Muslim scholars do condemn the attacks. And in spite of the data contradicting his contentions, he suggested that the data was wrong as he, Raymond Ibrahim, reader of hearts and minds was able to ascertain the true diabolical objectives of the lying scholars of Islam. Statistics really mean nothing when you can read into them something that isn't even there. It just goes to show that with bigots like Raymond Ibrahim, it wouldn't matter if all the Muslims in the world came out to condemn al-Qaeda, people like this will still see in it what they want to see, not what's unmistakably evident.
(3) He was also asked why he thought Muslim society was incapable of change, as it relates to their legal system in particular. He said that Muslim society is different from Western society because Muslim's believe in God's law, and as a result, their laws are unchangable. The questioner responded that Shariah is a human interpretation of God's law - so how can it be unchangable? He responded by avoiding the question and asked how can you change, for example, that Muslim men may have four wives?
Firstly, his example is flawed because there are less than 500 legal verses in the Qur'an (including those which have no pertinance to an Islamic state) of several thousand verses. So the number of set "laws" by God is limited (and this doesn't account for abrogation). Secondly, besides a handful of examples, such as the one he brought up, not all of them are exactly clear-cut and unopen to interpretation. And further considering the diversity of legal ikhtilaf (differences of opinion) amongst Muslim scholars in general, not just between madhahib (Schools of Thought) but also the ikhtilaf within a madhab, his reasoning is clearly flawed. Just one example that comes immediately to mind is the variety of opinions amongst Islamic scholars as to what sorts of meat are permissible for Muslim consumption. So his idea that Islamic legal practice is immutable and unopen to change is false on that account.
We constantly see changes in the legal systems throughout the Middle East, including in Saudi Arabia where women used to be prohibited from driving throughout the kingdom. Today, we see small referendums instituted by the government as well
as moves towards giving women more freedom to actually drive. Many of the laws, in fact, which signify shariah to the West are inherently cultural, a point easily missed when a bigot is speaking about Islam and will cherry-pick the handful of laws that are in fact unalterable. These laws were put in place at a time when the cultural norm demanded them, and as indicated in the article above, would feasibly be removed as society no longer sees the matter as an issue and even considers it an economic burden.
(4) Somebody asked him a question from the floor (which wasn't allowed), to which he responded: "Are you Sh'a? Do you believe in Ijtihad." This again displays ignorance of Islamic jurisprudence. Ijtihad is essentially a scholar's attempt at coming to a professional opinion about a legal matter in Islam - and the idea that Sunnis don't perform ijtihad is ludicrous. There are many Fiqhi Masa'il (Legal Problems) for which the voluminous texts of the past don't deal with - though the Muslim scholars have discussed and come to conclusions on many topics, new legal matters always arise in the face of growing technology. For example, the issue of space exploration inspired a short piece by Malaysian scholars about performing the daily prayer from outside of the Earth's atmosphere. Legal issues surrounding prayer on planes are also technically new matters which have required modern ijtihad, as have technologies like radio, Television, and so forth.
(5) One more issue I found troubling was that when he began to speak about "Wahabis" near the end, he wasn't able to display a strong control over the 'Arabic language. For somebody who's made it their career to badmouth a religion that they describe as an "Arab religion," I don't think it's too assuming of me to hope they have a good grasp of the language. And yet we see him referring to Mohammad Ibn Abdul Wahab as "Wahab" - something incorrect in Arabic for a multitude of reasons. Firstly, the man's name was Mohammad, not Wahab. Secondly, even the father's name was Abdul Wahab, not Wahab ("Ibn" means "son of"). And finally, there is a big distinction (especially religiously) between saying "Wahab" and "Abdul Wahab", whereas "al-Wahab" is a name of God according to Islam, "Abdul Wahab" means "Slave of al-Wahab" in Islam. This wasn't the only mistake when it came to 'Arabic language that this "translator" made (I don't know who employed him, but they were clearly wasting their money - Arab kids in a primary school would have a better grasp of their language than this man).
Some people might get the impression that the fact that Raymond Ibrahim misused a name (multiple names in fact), is not a big issue, nor does it reflect on his knowledge of 'Arabic. I'd respond by presenting a similar example in English. How much credibility would you give to the English of a man who picked up the Bible, and after reading about "Jesus of Nazareth," began to call Jesus as Nazareth? Comparably, if the same person read "Jesus, son of Mary" and began to refer to Jesus by saying "Mary"? This is the same exact thing. We have here a man, who worked as a translator, unable to differentiate between "Son of Abdul Wahab" and "Muhammad."
Suppose his supporters than argue that, even if his grasp of 'Arabic is rudimentary at best, his knowledge of Islam is tip-top. Raymond Ibrahim himself however suggested that Islam is an 'Arab religion, with it's primary texts rooted in the 'Arabic language - a religion where even the devout Indonesian must read the Holy Text in the original language. The fact of the matter is that Islam can not be stripped from 'Arabic, just as Shakespeare can not be stripped of English. And if the same publicly funded institution had hired a lecturer, with audible incompetence as far as the English language was concerned, to come speak about Shakespeare - there would be a lot more of an uproar than there is over EvCC's humanities director Joyce Walker's invitation to this ineffectual bigot.
Finally, he said that CAIR is a bunch of liars and that he exposed them. He said CAIR called him racist whereas he had said nothing about race in his entire speech (untrue as he did just minutes before suggest that Islam is an Arabic religion and non-Arab believers must give precedence to this Arab tradition over their own in order to be devout Muslims). That of course doesn't support the proposition that he's racist, and I wasn't there long enough to pick out any racially motivated comments on his part. However, he most definitely is a bigot from what I've seen myself. And before he singles CAIR out and tries to make it look like it was just a bunch of Muslims purportedly tied to Hamas (as he said) that opposed him:
http://www.cair.com/Portals/0/pdf/evccletter.pdf
The letter was sent to EvCC prior to the event, signed by 50 interfaith leaders from OUR community (contrast that against the numerous Facebook spammers, spurred on by "Act! For America" from around the country that have absolutely no connection to Washington state or EvCC).
