The objectives of this course are: -To introduce participants to different concepts of love, to empower them to be conscious of the power of love and the possibility of practicing it in everyday life, and to highlight in particular the idea of love as a force for social justice. -To communicate a sense of personal strength and empowerment by actively learning from each other and beginning to define how participants can apply their learning in service to society. This course will explore the concept of agape love (compassion/kindness) as a force for social justice and action and as the inspiration for service and the application of knowledge to positive social change. Biological, psychological, religious, and social perspectives of love will be discussed, drawing on the expertise of people from a variety of disciplines. During the six-week course, the following topics will be raised and discussed: kinds of love/defining love; non-violent communication; love and the biology of the brain; love as a basic concept of religious and ethical beliefs (e.g., Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Gandhian); love applied in action, and poetic expressions of love as a social force. This curriculum aims to foster a sense of the importance of love as a key phenomenon in creating community, connection, and functional societies among humans. Course materials will draw from a variety of sources. One of the goals of the class is to provide participants with some knowledge of the literature of love, and readings for the course are listed in the outline of the course on the pages that follow.
Video: Islam - Ameena Jandali in Conversation with Anne
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Del curso dictado por Stanford University
Love as a Force for Social Justice
78 calificaciones
De la lección
Love and Monotheistic Religions
Conoce a los instructores
Anne Firth Murray
I am very happy to welcome Ameena Jandali here to speak about love and Islam.
And I am interested to know how central the concept is in Islam.
How it's defined.
How people express it.
So I hope we can have a conversation about these issues.
>> Absolutely, so love is very important in Islam, and
I'll can go into kind of the different types of love.
Whether it's love of God, love of family, love of humans, love of the world.
But first and foremost as the servant of God, is that love for God.
And in turn, God is seen as the source of all love.
So loving God then enables people to take that love and
distribute it to God's creation.
Every chapter of the Quran except one, begins with "Bismillah ar-rahman ar-raheem":
In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful.
>> And that jibes directly with what we're trying to talk about primarily in
this class.
Which is agape love, love of mankind, love of God, love of the planet, and so on.
>> The spiritual path that has
really emphasized the love of God is known in Islamist Sufism as tasawuf.
And here you find, divine love is really the central goal for the Sufi for
the lover of God, and the word mahabba conveys that type of love.
It's obviously different than the love of a human.
Although, in a lot of the Sufi poetry, they will talk about that love
similarly to how you talk about the lover and the beloved.
Part of that love that is unique for God, and
that is kind of the epitome of love is that it is unconditional.
It's not based on any kind of reciprocity or getting anything in return.
You don't get disappointed and that doesn't diminish your love.
And achieving that love is gained through closeness to God.
So the Sufis have all sorts of steps that take them closer to God.
And those will enable that person to then almost
be able to see the world through God's eyes.
There's a famous and very commonly quoted saying that the Sufis love,
that it's from an authentic tradition.
That my servant continues to draw near to me through supererogatory works so
that I love him.
And when I love him, I become his hearing with which he hears, his seeing with which
he sees, his hand with which he strikes, and his foot with which he walks.
And were he to ask anything of me, I would surely give it to him.
If he were to ask me for refuge, I would grant it to him.
And so this is the relationship of the lover to the beloved.
And that takes a central place in Sufi writings.
>> When your colleague spoke to my class, she quoted the version of,
do unto others as you would, the Islamic version of that, and
how closely it mirrored the Judaism and Christianity.
>> That love then takes on,
love of God, becomes love of humanity or love of the neighbor.
So there are many prophetic sayings known as hadith that emphasize that love,
love of the stranger.
So obviously, you're going to love your child, you're going to love your family,
you're going to love your friends.
But it's more challenging to love those who you don't know,
who you don't have any interaction with.
And in terms of the neighbor actually, there was so
much emphasis put upon goodness to neighbor, that some of the companions of
the prophet actually asked him, are they also going to inherit from us?
[LAUGH] >> [LAUGH]
>> And there's discussions as to what is
considered a neighbor.
According to some definitions, 40 houses on each side,
which can be a whole neighborhood.
So one of the famous prophetic sayings about the neighbor is none of you as
a believer who eats his fill, who goes to bed full while his neighbor is hungry.
Whoever believes in God in the last day should be good to his neighbor.
And you think about your neighbor,
throughout our life we may not pay attention to them.
But they're the ones who, if something goes wrong, or if you're in need,
they're going to be the first person to respond.
And so that obligation makes a lot of sense.
Now, beyond neighbor there's also love of the stranger.
And loving the stranger means doing good towards people that you might
just pass on the street or you might not even pass, but you may hear about online.
And there are many verses in the Quran that emphasize that.
And of course I think the first one is, none of you is truly a believer until you
want for others what you want for yourself.
But particularly, for those who are in need, the indigent, the poor, the hungry.
There are numerous Quranic verses about that, such as, and they feed for
the love of God, the indigent, the orphan, and the captive.
Saying we feed you for the sake of God alone.
No reward do we desire from you, nor thanks.
So this is again the unconditional love,
where you're not looking to do it in order to get something in return.
And it is the love of God that inspires those kind of actions.
>> Very current example I think was the situation where Muslim
people [COUGH] turned out to help Jewish
people repair the cemeteries and vice versa.
>> Right, there's been a lot of interfaith solidarity, and support.
Yes, after the desecration of cemeteries, they raised about over $100,000 -
far exceeding what they planned in support of their Jewish brothers and sisters.
And we've also seen Jews, Christians, and
other faiths come together to do a circle around the mosque.
We've seen some locally very recently in Santa Clara, San Ramon.
So there's a lot of really wonderful interfaith work that is happening as
people are seeing that we are our brother's keeper.
We're all in this together.
And if they come after me, they're going to have to-
>> Yes.
>> If they come after my neighbor,
they're going to have to come after me first, so that's really beautiful to see.
>> It's inspiring.
>> And that's really the core teaching of all religion.
>> Let me ask you a question that may be very difficult to answer, no doubt.
And that is, what happened to have Islam be so
misunderstood in the world now, as I see it?
>> Right.
>> And not just now, but for many years.
>> Centuries.
So I mean, I think if people study history they will see that the Muslim world in
it's golden age, which according to some accounts, extended from 7th,
8th century until as late as the 17th century
was really a beacon of civilization.
We think about common things like coffee, tea, algebra, architecture.
You have to walk through this campus to see commonalities with what
is known as moorish architecture.
And so I think people often forget that history.
And that history is clouded with a little bit of, obviously,
misunderstandings between Europe and the Muslim-majority world.
But we know that in addition to negative events like the Crusades,
there was positive interaction through trade.
The silk route.
The spice route, bringing things like peppercorns into Europe, bringing
some of the fine fabrics, bringing something like glass blowing, chess.
So I think part of the reason is that Islam and Muslims were not really
in people's minds to a great deal until very recently with events like 9/11.
And so all you had was that as your starting point.
You don't have that knowledge.
And there's been polls then that show that more than half of
Americans don't know anything about Islam.
They may not have Muslim friends.
So if you're starting point is a negative action like 9/11 and
then all of the events that have taken place since then it's not surprising.
When you talk to people who have studied Islamic history,
who do interact with Muslims, who have studied Islam,
polls again have found it they have much less in terms of misconceptions.
Interestingly there's a lot in Islamic
narratives as well as kind of theology about kindness to animals.
I think that's an area that many people are not aware of.
Including, the prophet Muhammed is known to have deeply loved cats.
He used to share his bowl with cats.
But stories about people who were not necessarily very righteous people, but
in one situation she lowered her shoe to bring up water for a thirsty dog.
And the tradition is that she would be rewarded with paradise for that.
So kindness is not just to the poor and the needy, but
even to any living creature.
Categorically prohibited to treat an animal poorly.
>> Your comments about animals lead me to ask about the approach to
the environment in general.
>> So absolutely, there are specific saying such as when you are washing.
And Muslims are obligated to wash before they pray.
If you're even washing at a river, which is running and flowing,
you should conserve water.
Let alone if you're have the tap open [LAUGH].
There's a Quranic verse that actually acknowledges that all living
things are made of water.
So water is very central to our life.
And there are many verses in Quran that talk about the signs of
God in rain, and that then results in the growth of crops.
And that these are all signs of God's bounty.
But that we need to not be wasteful, not to go into excess.
And there is a term in the Quran that refers to human beings as
the vicegerents of this Earth.
So we're responsible for taking care of this Earth.
And, to some degree,
there are some verses that predict that we're not going to do a very good job.
[LAUGH] But if we don't do that act of stewardship.
So environmentalism is very much in line with Islamic teachings.
And unfortunately, we need to emphasize that more in today.
>> Bringing us rather up to date, could you comment
on activities relating to the refugee situation in the Middle East?
>> Yeah, so obviously, Syria is one of the sources of the worst refugee crisis.
And we know that Turkey has accepted about 3 million of these refugees and
have been extremely benevolent in their kindness, their hospitality.
And hospitality is really ingrained in Islamic societies and Muslim societies.
If you've ever visited a Muslim home, you cannot leave unless you drink some tea,
have some dessert, maybe stay for dinner.
They might even ask you to spend the night.
And so that has really been shown by the Turkish government
towards these refugees that are putting a strain on their resources.
In terms of giving them place to stay and food and.
Obviously, it's not perfect, but considering the situation in Jordan,
to a lesser degree in Lebanon as well.
So you do see Syrian refugee - in addition to, obviously, going to places like
Germany, which has been incredible - going to many Muslim countries in the area.
And speaking of Syria, there's actually a live example of people who
are putting others before themselves into practice every day in their life.
You may have heard of The White Helmets who,
their motto is actually to save a life is to save all of humanity.
Which is based on a Quranic verse and
they've saved the lives of about 80,000 people.
After any bombing in Syria, they will go immediately to that building and
look for human life.
And there's been so many different miraculous stories of them digging and
taking out sometimes babies, sometimes children alive.
And in doing so almost a 160 white helmets have been killed during these missions.
They were nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, they'd didn't make that.
But they actually there's a documentary on Netflix about them that received an Oscar.
>> And where do these people come from?
>> They’re Syrians.
They’re just regular people in Syria.
>> Within that country.
>> Within that country, who when the war broke out,
stopped what they were doing and joined this group.
So, quite remarkable.
>> One other question.
Anyone who knows me would be amazed if I didn't ask this question, [LAUGH] and
I was thinking of not asking it.
But that is a general view of people that
women are not treated as equally under Islam as others.
And I'd appreciate your comments about that.
>> So that's a huge topic obviously.
>> I know, I know.
>> But just to say there are numerous verses in the Quran, that particularly for
the time and place 1400 years ago, were extremely progressive,
extremely feminist almost.
Because they talk about the common and equal humanity of men and women,
that they all come from that same soul.
Remember I talked about the [FOREIGN] as the ego, but
it also means the origin of all human life.
And it goes through and also talks about equal obligations in Islam.
There's one verse in the Quran that talks about 11 characteristics and
obligations that are identical for men and women.
It also talks about the rights that women have to an education, to work.
The prophet Muhamed, in fact, his first wife was in fact his employer.
And she hired him and was then impressed by his honestly and
then proposed marriage to him.
Rights to learn, to gain knowledge,
rights to earn their own money and keep their own money, as well as to inherit.
And if we think about it,
it was not until quite recently that women in many countries,
many parts of the world, didn't gain those rights to marriage only with her consent,
which unfortunately you often see is not upheld because of cultural norms.
Rights to divorce, and other rights that in each society,
country, or family are very much impacted by the interpretation
of those particular rights as well as by other factors.
Such as culture, education, social, and economic influences.
And so it's important to understand that there's not one picture of what it means
to be a Muslim woman.
It's a multi faceted picture and it depends on a number of factors.
>> Thank you so much for being here.
I appreciate you taking the time, thanks.
>> Thank you for having me.
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