Kini kita ketahui bahwa Gerakan irshad manji kini terus menerobos berbagai belahan bumi dan keyakinan akan paham kaum homoseksual yang diyakininya..
Terlepas bagaimana tanggapan agama lain terhadapnya...sebagai kaum muslim kita harus membentengi diri dari faham2 tersebut.
===================================
A speech that I gave several years ago about why I believe God and gays are compatible. In this speech, I take an ecumenical perspective, not just an Islamic one.
“Why Coming Out is My Duty to God”
Speech by Irshad Manji
University of Western Ontario
October 1999
Gays and God: So often we’re told that there’s no hope in hell for reconciling them. It’s easy to believe. After all, among the most common reasons that queers don’t come out is violence born of religious conviction.
But I’m here to suggest that God and gays are not just reconcilable. We’re downright compatible.
Now, I can’t claim to be an expert on the Torah, the Bible, or the Koran. I tried learning Arabic as a child and, for all kinds of reasons, never got there – which may have been God’s merciful way of shielding me from those who, in my adult years, would want me to indulge in semantic arguments with them. Even if I could do that, I wouldn’t. Because to me, there is ungodly arrogance in certainty. Instead, there is revelation in fluidity.
What do I mean by the arrogance of certainty? I mean, in a word, fundamentalism. Listen to this message I received last year from a viewer of my show, QueerTelevision:
I am writing to inform you that the one and only real God, the God of the Bible, make its painfully clear that all Sodomites (meaning “homosexuals” or like deviants by your warped terminology) have forsaken their humanity for their deranged, perverted, evil lusts. Thereby, they have become abominations, no longer human, and are to be executed immediately according to Leviticus and Deuteronomy, among countless other aspects of the Bible.
The subsequent fate of anyone who commits these sickening acts is an eternity in an unbearable Hell. Contrived propaganda by your repugnant ilk can never prevail over the perfect word of God. Even Jesus Himself directly decreed that anyone so reprobate as to abandon all moral grounding to gratify his own despicable, insane lusts will burn in Hell unquestionably, Luke 17:43.
There are several verses I could cite, all direct and indisputable, because all succinctly condemn Sodomites in whatever context one purports to place them.
A final word: ‘If a man so lieth with mankind as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death and their blood shall be upon them.’ – God.”
Here’s how I responded:
Dear brother:
Thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed message. However, in your almost-thorough explanation of my disease-ridden immorality, you failed to mention what version of the Bible you’re quoting.
As everyone knows, there are several versions and some differ in wording. So, for instance, the final verse you cite has been expressed in other translations of the Bible as “if a man lieth with boys as with a woman…” – ie. a decree against pedophilia, not homosexuality. (Of course, to you these may be one and the same, but that’s another debate for another time.)
Similarly, in earlier (and thus less corrupted) translations of the Bible, sodomy referred to inhospitality towards neighbors, not to sexual deviancy. Ditto for German editions versus English ones.
We can disagree about the validity of one interpretation over the other, but the fact that alternate interpretations have been presented throughout Christendom is beyond dispute. See, for example, The Parallel Bible, which offers at least four differing translations for every verse in scripture.
If you have the definitive word of God, how do you explain these incongruities? And how do you know that YOURS is the most accurate interpretation?
You know what he wrote back? Nothing. I never heard from him again.
This tells me that fundamentalism is a false god. It’s based on the faulty premise that a literal reading is not an interpretation like all others, but that it is what it is: namely, the perfect word. Well, not only have Christians never been able to agree on what is the perfect word of God, but it’s not even clear that the Christian God wants perfection in his creatures.
Take the imperfection of Christ’s own life. Jesus was born to a poor, unmarried woman in an occupied territory. Today, arbiters of conservative morality would call him a bastard. A refugee criminal-to-be. Good with his hands but hardly leadership material. (And typical, isn’t it, that the son of a whore would hang around other hookers?)
By the same token, liberals should be reminded that Christ didn’t always live up to his compassionate billing. Consider his rocky relationship with his mother. In The Gospel According to Jesus, Stephen Mitchell observes that Mary of Nazareth is almost completely absent from Jesus’s life and words. The few times he does mention her, his words are chilly, even hostile. For example, after the exiled Jesus returns to Nazareth, he refuses to let his mother and brothers see him. When a woman in the crowd yells, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that gave you suck,” Jesus reportedly bristles, then rejects her sentiment.
He goes on to dismiss two others who wish to say good-bye to their families before following him. Here’s what Jesus says to them in the Gospel of Thomas: “Whoever doesn’t hate his father and mother the way I do can’t become my disciple. And whoever doesn’t love his true Father” – God – “and true Mother” – the holy spirit – “as I do can’t become my disciple. For my mother gave me death, but my true Mother gave me life.”
Remember my statement that there’s revelation in fluidity? Revelation number one: Christ had issues.These imperfections give solace, even inspiration, to anybody who struggles with trying to love a community that often shuns them. That, of course, includes transsexuals, lesbians and gay men.
But there’s more to Christianity’s acceptance of imperfection than just the life of Jesus. Indeed, Jesus’s chosen scorn for his mother leads to a second revelation: that God created human beings with free moral will, expecting that as a result of our freedom we will sin, but preferring struggling creatures to sin-free automatons. That’s because God wants to see us mature into loving Him and each other.
Maturing into love, as opposed to starting with it, gives that love meaning, authenticity, integrity. To be embraced by robots is not necessarily to be loved, is it? Though I can’t be sure, I think that’s what God figures, too.
It’s the same principle of fluidity that operates in the coming out process: Strive for growth, not perfection, because perfection offers no room for improvement, no possibility for negotiation, no chance for creativity – and therefore no hope.
Unlike God, the need for growth is what fundamentalists deny. That’s also why I believe so many of them feel they must assert their influence – through cut-and-dried violence – rather than achieve it through love.
Which may spawn the question: But why wouldn’t a good God stop them from inflicting violence? I believe it’s for the same reason I just cited: that authentic and therefore enduring love can’t be imposed. Authentic love isn’t a destination; it’s a journey – like coming out.
(Which, by the way, means that the act of “outing” will never be a sincere strategy for loving gays and lesbians. Outing is not about celebrating love but about imposing an orthodoxy that calcifies the complexity of being queer into a tidy manifesto of Do’s and Don’t’s. In that way, outing mimics the religious fundamentalism that it brands as its enemy.)
Now for the good news: In both forms of gay-bashing – outing as well as inning (so to speak) – there is the possibility of redemption. In the best-selling book, Conversations with God, God is quoted as saying, “I do not demonstrate my love by not allowing you to demonstrate yours. And you cannot demonstrate love until you can demonstrate not loving.” Notice in that statement the hope for learning how to love.
If that strikes you as a lame excuse for God’s inaction in the face of, say, Matthew Shepard’s murder, remember: Shepard’s death resulted in new lives for many more. Because two people exercised their free will to do evil, thousands of others exercised their free will to come out.
Not perfect, but then there is no growth – and therefore no hope – in perfection.
All of which brings me to the faith into which I was born and with which I still identify: Islam. Its claim is perfection. As the third and last of the great monotheistic religions, Islam has supposedly improved upon its predecessors.
Devout Muslims will tell you that the Koran, having been revealed after the Torah and the Bible, reflects the culmination of humankind’s spiritual development and is consequently the infallible word of God.
They’ll add that Arabic, with its unique cadences and rhythms, can’t be translated into other languages. So, many Muslims will claim, the Koran has never lent itself to distorted interpretations like the Bible has.
And scholars will tell you that’s just the beginning of Islam’s perfection. The bigger deal is that what Moses introduced and Jesus embodied, Prophet Muhammad codified. In contrast to every other messenger of God, Muhammad systematized God’s rules into concrete and detailed prescriptions for your existence and mine. As such, there is no ambiguity. It’s all there. For that reason Islam is not just a religion; it’s a way of life.
As a result, most people are shocked to hear me argue that Allah and queerness are compatible. “No they’re not!” you’ll readily hear. “Islam is the straight path. The Koran is crystal-clear and unalterable. No reasoning by you, Irshad Manji, can change that!”
But if Islam is crystal-clear and unalterable, if Islam is the “straight path,” why is it practiced differently in even neighboring countries? If Islam is so powerful, why has it failed to penetrate the cultures of various places to establish a uniformity of custom and conduct? Why can my friend in Saudi Arabia call Islam the world’s most affirmative action religion – and back that up by citing fair inheritance laws and the opportunity to design her own hijab – while another friend sends me a postcard from Pakistan showing Muslim women clad from head to foot with barely a slit for seeing and breathing?
(The postcard ridiculously reads: “Greetings from Peshawar! Julie from the Love Boat, these gals ain’t…)
My point is that Islam is not as explicit – and therefore as perfect – as many Muslims would have us believe. Compared to other religions, it may be more easily prone to fundamentalism because it’s more prescription-oriented. But at the same time, Arabic is a richly symbolic language, so that each verse of the Koran lends itself to all kinds of meanings. Accuracy is as hard to come by in Arabic as in any English translation. That’s what the fundamentalists will never tell you.
Nor, given their focus on tribe, will the fundamentalists ever divulge Islam’s value on individuality. As a great Muslim philosopher has written, “This inexplicable finite centre of experience is the basic fact of the universe: All life is individual. God himself is an individual; He is the most unique individual.”
The philosopher goes on to suggest that we pay tribute to Allah’s creative powers by expressing our individuality --- that which makes us different from anyone or anything else. (Man, if that’s not an endorsement of coming out, I don’t know what is.)
And what this highlights is a crucial point made in the Koran that the fundamentalists will surely never address. The verses go like this:
If God had pleased, He would have made you all one people. But He hath done otherwise, that He might try you in that which He hath given unto you. Press forward in good works, unto God shall ye return. Unto you, your religion. And unto me, my religion.
Now, I recognize that Arabic can’t be accurately translated, so maybe I’m just picking the interpretation that best suits my biases. However, this comes from a 1950s translation – well before Western feminism’s rise.
What the passage shows is not just the virtue of tolerating difference, but that the diversity God created is deliberate! This is the aspect of the “God and gays” debate that never ceases to floor me: If we are the handiwork of a good and great God – an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving God – then how can queers be an abomination (to get back to that email I received)?
If God did not want to make me, presumably He would have made someone else, yes? My opponent might say: But He did make someone else – straight people! Sure, I would say, and He made brown people, and female people, and people with disabilities and people with IQs over 120. Does that mean God never wanted white people and male people and able-bodied people and people with IQs under 120?
And the fact that He did make me – does that mean God never wanted straight people?
In the end, both the Judeo-Christian tradition and Islam affirm that we are creatures of the Almighty, so that knowledge of the self and knowledge of God are synonymous. Which means denial of the self keeps us separated from God (otherwise known as sin).
We have a duty to grow into our faith by constantly revealing ourselves to our maker. Coming out to our creator, then, is not just an option. At a certain point, coming out might be an obligation.
And who am I to deny my duty?
No comments:
Post a Comment