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Ginan Rauf's "Homecoming" |
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Written by Ginan Rauf
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Wednesday, 09 November 2005 |
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Page 2 of 3
In fact, one takes great delight in the story of Yusuf but fears the
psychic habits of submission demanded by the great master. Iblis’s
refusal to prostrate himself before Adam seems perfectly sensible to me
given the master’s initial command; perhaps secular humanists need to
rehabilitate this demonized figure and do a contrapuntal reading of him
as a reasonable man of conscience who dared question the ultimate
authority, who detected a troubling inconsistency in the exercise of
power. Perhaps he can be our Caliban.
Yet one must remain attentive to how the energy has been and can be
sucked out of us as secular humanists. Life is short and hadith
collections long and the species is in a state of crisis. Much of one’s
life can be spent rebelling against authority figures like Adam and his
self-appointed representatives on earth. There is a very real danger of
getting stuck in a defensive stance and continually reacting negatively
to religious bigotry. So one turns elsewhere to a more positive space
and attends a conference that looks toward a new Enlightenment.
I turn my head and find that it is a joy to converse with a white man,
a very white man from Ohio who laments his estrangement as much as I do
mine. ‘’ There isn’t an atheist within a one hundred mile radius where
I live’’. He speaks proudly of his awakening at the tender age of
eight and cites his precocious awakening as a sign of exceptional
intelligence. As strangers we recognize a story of familiars. He is a
character who breaks the monotonous stereotypes associated with white
males from the Midwest and he starts a salafi contest to see who
amongst us awakened from the era of jahaliya first. And there are
others--male and female--from Georgia and New York and New Jersey and
Texas and China and Russia and India and Pakistan and Egypt and Israel
and England and France and Columbia and Greece and Serbia and Bosnia
and we are momentarily one in our commitment to secular humanism.
There is laughter accompanied by the recognition that the Enlightenment
is a living tradition with universal aspirations but a troubled past.
There are books to be bought, libraries to be built, institutions to be
established, great works to be studied and connections to be forged.
One searches frantically for Susan Jacoby’s book ‘’ Freethinkers: A
History of American Secularism’’ but alas they have sold out and there
is one more book to read and less time to fret about the exemplary
lives of the Prophet’s Wives as recorded in the traditional sources.
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