The course is philosophy, the paper should be done based on the two you tube video I listed below and the attached document, about Abdul Rauf multiculturalism, so you should read the attached file first and video before you start writing the paper. You have to answer all the questions listed!! Don’t plagiarize.
(54) Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf on Islam in America - YouTube
(54) Debate Turns Nasty on Ground Zero Mosque with RTV Anchor - YouTube
In his article, MULTICULTURALISMS: Western, Muslim and Future, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf
describes the exchange of paradigms between the middle east and western society. Rauf
argues for increased communication between various muslim communities, not only between
the muslim and non-muslim world, but between each other.
1. Analysis: Explain the paradigms and the exchange of paradigms between the middle
east and western society.
2. Analysis: Explain what Multiculturalism is in the context of Rauf’s article
a. What are some examples which Rauf gives of an MC society?
. How does MC apply to religion?
3. Opinion: Do you believe that people who inhabit the west (the US specifically) have an
accurate understanding of Muslims beyond the scope of the media?
a. Furthermore, do you believe it is possible for anyone to have an accurate
understanding of the members of any religion?
. Specifically, pick one of the eastern religions we covered and explain a teaching
or feature which surprised you. Don’t answer this question.
4. Analysis: How does your answer to (3) tie into MC?
a. Do you define MC differently than Rauf does?
. If so, how does Rauf’s definition of MC differ from your own?
c. If not, which aspects of Rauf’s MC do you find most illuminating?
5. Opinion: Should the ground zero cultural center be completed?
Suggestions and Requirements:
I. You MUST HAVE A THESIS!
II. Your paper must be 12 point font, times new roman, double spaced
III. Your paper should be around 5 pages in length
IV. You must answer each point in the ru
ic in a developed essay
V.
VI. If you
ing in outside sources from beyond the scope of this class, you
must include a works cited page.
VII. Don’t plagiarize, it’s not worth it, I will not let you Re-Do or re-submit a
plagiarized paper.
MULTICULTURALISMS: Western, Muslim and Future
MULTICULTURALISMS: Western, Muslim and Future
Author(s): Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf
Source: CrossCu
ents, Vol. 55, No. 1, CURRENT ISSUES IN INTERFAITH WORK (SPRING
2005), pp XXXXXXXXXX
Published by: Wiley
Stable URL: http:
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Μ U LT IC U LT U RA LIS Μ S
Western, Muslim and Future
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf
Ill e are accustomed to thinking of the West as open to and tolerant of dif
111 ference> and the Muslim world as being homogenous and violently
W opposed to cooperation with others. What we forget is the not-so-distant
history of the West as the site of profound xenophobia and the Muslim world as
the home of diversity and multiculturalism.
It is only in the past half-century that the West has evolved away from two
paradigms that led to extreme violence against people considered the "other":
1. The racist paradigm, euphemistically phrased as the "White Man's Burden,"
that led to a Western triumphalism that aggressively proselytized the rest of the
world into adopting Western culture and religion. The British, for example,
sought to create a race of'
own Englishmen' in India. The French Francophiled
their North- and West-African colonies (Algeria, Morocco and Senegal) while the
Spanish completely displaced Central and South American native cultures with
their own Hispanic culture and Catholic religion. It was this attitude that fueled
the discriminatory "White Australia" immigration policy until the mid-20th cen
tury and sanctioned other policies that permitted the ho
ible treatment of
Australian aborigines. It also explains the American genocide of the Native
American Indians and slavery of the black race, behavior neither countenanced
by any religion nor by the American Declaration of Independence.
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2. The nation-state paradigm, which aggressively sought to homogenize human
identities within a geographic boundary. When race was not different, ethnic,
linguistic or religious minorities were oppressed and treated as outsiders, alien
to the dominant culture. Where once wars were conducted by a wa
ior class o
by soldiers, wars between nation-states drew whole populations into participat
ing in national wars,
oadening the conflict to include non-combatants.
Pogroms against Jews in East Europe, the treatment of the Irish Catholics by the
Protestants, and the ejection of Jews and Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula
are examples of what happens when societies shift from a multicultural social
contract to a monocultural one.
These two paradigms ineluctably ushered a 'Clash of Civilizations' that reached
its most explosive apogee in the two World Wars of the 20th century and with
the Nazi regime, which sought to establish a purified white Aryan race and gave
us the holocaust. Monoculturalism weakened the European powers and almost
destroyed the human race.
The multiculturalist paradigm now on the rise in Europe and the West was
the operational paradigm that ruled the Muslim world for thirteen centuries,
flowing from the teachings of the Quran and the Prophet Muhammad as unde
stood and implemented by his immediate successors.
How the Muslim World Lost Its Multiculturalism
Until the 20th century, the Muslim world operated under a multicultural para
digm, understood as flowing from Islamic theology, law and historical prece
dent. Until the First World War, Istanbul, capital of the Ottoman caliphate since
1453, was almost half Greek, with many cities and regions of modern Turkey
populated by Greek majorities. Smyrna, the modern Izmir, for example, was
two-thirds Greek until XXXXXXXXXX,000 Greeks lived in Alexandria, Egypt until the
mid-1950s. Today it has less than 3% of this figure. Armenians, Jews, Kurds,
Arabs, Turks, and Persians, reflecting the full variety of Jewish, Christian and
Muslim interpretations: Shia and Sunni with all the varieties of legal schools of
interpretation, lived and worked in intimate proximity with each other, as did
Hindus and Muslims in South Asia. Today the head Patriarch of the Greek
Orthodox Church is still based in Istanbul.
Starting with WW1, the Muslim world, under the colonial influence of the
West and legitimately enamored by the ideas that catalyzed Western prosperity,
uncritically adopted these two pernicious paradigms. The result was the rise of
SPRING 20 05 · 101
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MULTICULTURALISMS
triumphalist nation-state identities around ethnicity and religion.
Monoculturalist societies began to emerge around hardening ethnic and reli
gious identification. Arab nationalism was one, fueled by the British in the late
19th century as a means of
eaking up the Ottoman Empire. Traditional Islamic
systems of rule came to an end, systems that had hitherto ruled over multicul
tural groups of peoples, including the Islamic nation, the ummah, based upon
workable concepts of a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-lingual society
not defined by geography.
Geographically homogeneous ethnic nations were born, seeding ethnic
conflicts that continue to this day. Turkey now had no place for Greeks, who left
in large numbers. Armenians and Kurds suffered atrocities Islamic law fo
ids.
Pakistan and Israel were examples of geographies carved to accommodate reli
gious nationalisms that philosophically had no space for Hindus and Gentiles as
equals, violations of the very religious ethical principles of Islam and Judaism.
And when Arab nationalism failed to progress society, Islamic nationalism read
ily filled the vacuum, a concept completely alien to the traditional notions of
Islamic thought, theology or legal and historical precedent.
An Islamic version of the White Man's Burden evolved in the 20th century:
a "Muslim's burden" that sought both to defend the "House of Islam" from what
was perceived as militant secularism and militant Jewish nationalism. It also
sought to aggressively proselytize non-Muslims towards Islam, just as in the past
European religious groups tried to convert Muslims to Christianity, or at the
very least neutralize or secularize them. One unfortunate result of this was that
the historical em
ace and protection by Muslims of the varieties of Christian
churches in their midst, Christian communities whose histories trace back con
tinuously to the time of Jesus Christ, have withered, and non-Muslim commu
nities increasingly feel under attack by an Islamic militancy that was neve
allowed such prominence in the fourteen centuries since the rise of Islam in
Arabia.
The precedent established by the Caliph Umar b. Al-Khattab's in 638 CE, gra
ciously honoring the Orthodox patriarch in Jerusalem, granting Christians pro
tection, and inviting seventy Jewish families to immigrate to Jerusalem from
Tiberius to re-establish a Jewish community in the City of David, is hardly on the
radar screen of many young Muslims today. Gripped by their Islamic fervor, they
are often taken aback when reminded of this important legal precedent that
shaped interfaith relations between Muslims and non-Muslims, and of its
Quranic basis in injunctions like "there shall be no compulsion in religion," and
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FEISAL ABDUL RAUF
"tell the infidels, 'to you your religion, to me mine.'" These principles are firm
ly enshrined in Islamic law and historical precedent, which require Muslims to
honor and protect those who frequently remember God's names and hymn His
praises in "cloisters, synagogues, churches and mosques."
The Prophet's intention of creating an Islamic identity,