LATELY, there has been a huge public debate over the decline of the standard of English among students. Generally, it is accepted that a good grasp of English is vital as it is the lingua franca of the day.
In the field of religious studies, too, the language has played a major role. Throughout modern history, led by English, the Western texts, both fiction and non-fiction, have touched on Islam and the Muslims.
Scholars, such as the Orientalists who specialise in the religion, and eminent writers who may have had a brief contact with Muslims, have tried to portray certain aspects of Islam in their work.
Some of these, unfortunately, have had a negative impact on readers who do not have a clear understanding of Islam.
For instance, for more than a thousand years through an acclaimed poem Western children have been indoctrinated with the false notion that the chivalric Chanson de Roland’s enemies were the Muslims instead of the Basque bandits whom he and his men actually fought at Roncesvalles.
In literature, Islam and the Muslims are two of the most misrepresented subjects. The “evil” Moors and “sinister” Turks conveniently became the standard demons of Western folklore.
William Shakespeare had Othello boast of smiting “a malignant and a turbaned Turk… the circumcised dog who had traduced a state”.
In his Anatomy of Melancholy, Robert Burton referred to the Holy Prophet of Islam as “the lying perjuryose Machomete (Muhammad)”.
The Dean of Norwich’s biography in 1697 had the title The True Nature of Imposture for the description of “The Life of Mahomet”. Barthelemy d’Herbelot was similarly derisory in his Bibliotheque Orientale published in 1697.
Later in 1718, in A Complete History of the Turks David Jones had the section on Islam simply titled, “Mahomet the Impostor”. Mark Twain, too, could not help making fun of the Muslims.
In his piece entitled Abroad he related his meeting the sword of the crusader Godefroy of Bouillon with these words, “I tried it on a Muslim and clove him in twain like a doughnut.”
In his Inferno, Dante describes “Maometto” (Prophet Muhammad) as “The occupant of the eighth of the nine circles of Hell, the place for those referred to as “seminator di scandola e di scisma”.
Callously, the misunderstanding of Islam is also captured in Herman Meville’s classic Moby Dick, published in 1851.
In the chapter entitled “Ramadan”, Melville tries to explain the art of fasting as practised by his shipmate, Queenqueg.
“As Queequeg’s Ramadan, or Fasting and Humiliation, was to continue all day, I did not choose to disturb him till towards night-fall; for I cherish the greatest respect towards everybody’s religious obligations, never mind how comical.”
First, he described Queequeg’s fast by “squatting on his hams, and holding Yojo on top of his head”.
“He looked neither one way or the other way, but sat like a carved image with scarce a sign of active life… But as soon as the first glimpse of sun entered the window, up he got, with… grating joints, but with a cheerful look; limped towards me where I lay; pressed his forehead again against mine; and said his Ramadan was over.”
Melville’s understanding of fasting is that it entails deep meditation, almost to the point of being in a trance that precludes worldly activities, and fasting goes on through the night till sunrise.
Then, “I laboured to show Queequeg that all these Lents, Ramadans, and prolonged ham-squattings in cold, cheerless rooms were stark nonsense; bad for the health; useless for the soul; opposed, in short, to the obvious laws of hygiene and common sense.
“I told him, too, that he being in other things such an extremely sensible and sagacious savage, it pained me, very badly pained me, to see him how so deplorably foolish about this ridiculous Ramadan of his. Besides, argued I, fasting makes the body cave in; hence the spirit caves in; and all thoughts born of a fast must necessarily be half-starved.
“This is the reason why most dyspeptic religionists cherish such melancholy notions about their hereafters.
“In one word, Queequeg, said I, rather digressively; hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling; and since then perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans”.
Melville’s highly superficial and misconstrued knowledge of Islam clearly shows when he attempts to equate Queequeg’s faith (which might have well been Islam) with paganism and cannibalism.
It also typifies many of the Western writers’ ignorance of Islam as a religion revealed by God the Almighty.
Charles Dickens is reported to have contemplated this: “I wish I were commander in chief in India.
“The first thing I would do is to strike that Oriental race with amazement _ should be to proclaim to them, in their language that I considered my holding that appointment by the leave of God, to mean that I should do my utmost to exterminate the Race upon whom the strain of the late cruelties rested (referring to the soldiers’ uprising of 1857 in the name of the last Mughal ruler); and that I begged them to do me the favour to observe that I was there for that purpose and no other, and was now proceeding, with all convenient dispatch and merciful swiftness of execution, to blot it out of mankind and raze it off the face of the Earth.”
The portrayal of Islam as a “curse for the world” in Western literature persisted into the 20th century. Quoting Dr Philip Lewis who is the inter-faith advisor to the Bishop of Bradford: “Liberal writers and academies alike displayed a culpable religious ignorance.”
Fay Weldon, for instance, brushed aside 1,500 years of Islamic civilisation with her jibe that the Quran is “food for no thought. It is not a poem on which society can be safely or sensibly based”.
Peregrine Worsthone, too, writes: “Islam must be destroyed as Carthage was destroyed.”
It seems that to these Western intellectuals there is available an historical repertoire of anti-Islamic imagery and vocabulary, freely drawn upon to vilify any system alien to their own.
Ikim is organising a discussion to review that treatment of Islam in English fictions such as William Beckford’s Vathek, E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India and J.P. Sasson’s The Princess, at 10am on Jan 30.
For details please call Shahriza Sulaiman at 03-620 10889/620 19741 or e-mail to shahrizaikim.gov.my.
Writings on Islam are not limited to Arabic and Bahasa Melayu. Many are in “foreign” languages such as English.
Having a good command of these languages provides the key to discovering the religion from a multi-cultural perspective. It also gives Muslims a golden opportunity to know what others think of, and feel about, Islam.