Filed under: Religion
This post draws from the ideas in Chapter 2 of Professor Asani’s Infidel of Love: Exploring Muslim Understandings of Islam. Asani references American attitudes toward Islam in both sympathetic and antagonistic terms to highlight the misunderstandings that have arisen among outsiders. Consequently, he takes on the task of defining Islamic values and ideals, which he identifies as “peace and compassion, social justice, selfless love of God, and jihad,” in order to illuminate some ideas on the compatibility between religion and nation.
Americans can arguably find it easy to identify with at least some of the values identified by Asani, particularly peace and compassion, and social justice, regardless of whether they identify as Christian (the dominant religion in America). Meanwhile, their response towards the ideals of selfless love of God and jihad may be slightly farther from the American point of view. Nevertheless, even jihad as a term of describing group or inner struggle is not very far from the secular American understanding, nor Christianity, which contains teachings on inner struggle. As such, my post is a drawing of a stereotypical “American” and Christian man talking to a Muslim woman. Their conversation is devoid of content, but the man is pointing his finger at the woman accusatorily. Meanwhile, the man is oblivious to a mirror next to him that depicts him as a Muslim woman. The drawing is meant to show that, while the Muslim woman may look and express herself differently, her values are not far from his values, thereby emphasizing their similarities.