Interview

‘You can’t deny the historic nature’: Wales’ Vaughan Gething aims to become first black leader of a European country

Economy minister says he is best candidate for top job and Senedd ‘needs to do more to look like our country’

Welsh politics
Steven Morris
Wed 14 Feb 2024

Vaughan Gething knows that whenever he discusses his skin colour, he is accused of playing the race card and opens himself up to a torrent of abuse on social media. Nevertheless, he does not fight shy of discussing the significance of what he will achieve if he becomes the leader of Welsh Labour, and thus the first minister of Wales, next month.

“You can’t deny the historic nature of it. I think I should win because I’m the best candidate. I’ve got loads of experience. I’ve got values rooted in our movement. I was a trade union shop steward, Wales TUC president, had 10 years as an employment lawyer and I have a vision for the future. But if I win, the fact that I’ll be the first black leader of any European nation is a matter of historic significance.”

Gething, who was born to a Welsh father and a Zambian mother, is used to being a trailblazer. In 2013, he became the first black minister in any of the devolved UK administrations, and he remains the only minority ethnic Welsh Labour politician elected in either the Welsh or UK parliaments. “That’s not because other people didn’t want to do it or weren’t capable or determined,” he said. But they didn’t have the opportunity or the breaks.

His importance as a role model was highlighted in September last year when he made an emotional visit to Birmingham, Alabama, to represent Wales at the 60th anniversary of the racist bombing of the 16th Street Baptist church in which four black girls died. The people of Wales raised money for a stained glass window depicting a black Christ to be installed as part of the church’s restoration.

Gething said that when he got up to speak (having rehearsed for the daunting moment in a Greek Orthodox church in Cardiff), there was an audible gasp. “Even in Birmingham, Alabama, a very black city, they didn’t expect someone who looked like me to stand up from Wales,” he said.

As part of his leadership campaign, Gething has pledged to set up the Mari Rees fund, named in honour of a black Welsh Labour candidate for the Senedd elections in 2011.

“She died a month before the election. She would have been fantastic. The fund will pay for training and development for black, Asian and minority ethnic members to help them progress within Labour and stand in elections,” he said. “I think our Senedd needs to do more to look like our country.”



Gething was speaking to the Guardian at the Butetown community centre, in a deprived, richly diverse area of Cardiff where he served as a councillor. He said that what he had seen here – child poverty, people living in substandard housing, a lack of role models – had inspired him to strive for high office to try to make a difference.

He remembers one woman he had helped to move from overcrowded conditions waiting for him at the end of a surgery to thank him. “That motivates you to want to do more.” Making sure people have a decent place to call home is one of his key pledges and he has said he will prioritise speeding up the planning process for green, social housing.

Another key aim is to help children in the first 1,000 days of their lives. “Investing in those early years gives you the biggest return in terms of ambition, aspiration and achievement,” he said.

Gething’s first government job, 11 years ago, was as the deputy minister for tackling poverty. He was the health minister during Covid and now holds the economy brief. So hasn’t he had time already to tackle issues such as child poverty?

He said the devolved government had been hampered by funding cuts from the UK government but Welsh-only initiatives such as the Flying Start programme, which helps families with children under four in disadvantaged areas, had helped to protect the most needy.

“You definitely see the value in what we’ve done. You also see the harm done by choices made in Westminster.” A Labour win at the general election would help hugely, he said. “I’d like to be able to do more with a government that is on our side throughout the UK.”

Vaughan Gething at the Butetown community centre in Cardiff. 

Photograph: Dimitris Legakis/Athena Pictures/The Guardian

One of the most contentious current issues in Wales is the widespread introduction of 20mph speed limits. Gething admitted that mistakes had been made.

“We got some of the messaging and communications wrong. We didn’t take people with us though the change. I want the policy to succeed because I want to know my son’s got less chance of being hit and more chance of getting up if it happens. We need to show we are prepared to listen and not just lecture.”

Unlike the current first minister, Mark Drakeford, and Gething’s rival for the top job, Jeremy Miles, Gething is not a Welsh speaker but he is learning. “I think it would be great to have a learner in the first minister’s office. We have this target of reaching a million Welsh speakers. To get to a million we need more people like me, people who are learning, showing the language is really there for all of us, it’s not there to exclude people. It’s something for all of us to be proud of.”

Miles has said he would offer Gething a job if he wins and offer to serve under him if he loses. Would Gething do the same? “I’m here to win,” he said. “I’d happily offer Jeremy a job in the government. I’ve got real respect for him. We’ll need all our trade union colleagues and allies to fight together against the Tories. We’ll need a united Senedd group and government to fight for Wales.”

Academics in US, UK and Australia collaborated on drone research with Iranian university close to regime


Exclusive: work by researchers from western universities and counterparts at Sharif University considered potentially ‘very dangerous’ by experts

Jonathan Yerushalmy and Johana Bhuiyan

Wed 14 Feb 2024 

Academics in the UK, Australia and the US collaborated on research related to drone technology with an Iranian university that is under international financial sanctions and known for its close ties to the military, the Guardian can reveal.

The collaborative research was described by one security expert as having direct military applications, while another called it potentially “very dangerous”. Iranian-made drones have been responsible for a number of deadly attacks in the Ukraine and Middle East conflicts, and their development is known to be a top priority for the government in Tehran.

The Guardian has seen no evidence that the research contravenes any sanctions or breaks any laws.

The research was published in 2023 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a global platform which hosts peer-reviewed studies. It examined the use of drones – known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) – in wireless networks and as communications hubs.


Deadly, cheap and widespread: how Iran-supplied drones are changing the nature of warfare

“There are direct implications of the technology presented in this paper for military use,” said Conor Healy, the director of government research at IPVM, a US publication focused on security technology.

They include the ability to establish “new communication channels when an adversary deploys jamming, which is directly relevant to drone warfare in Ukraine”, Healy said.

Robert Czulda, a professor in international and political studies at the University of Łódź in Poland, said the research was potentially “very dangerous.”

“It is not a good idea for any university to engage in these projects,” he said. “Any system relating to communications or repeating signals could easily have military application.”

The study was co-authored by researchers from the University of Southampton, the University of New South Wales in Sydney, the University of Houston and Sharif University of Technology in Tehran.

Among the funding agencies listed on the published study are government-backed research councils in the UK, EU and Australia.

Sharif University is subject to financial sanctions imposed by the EU and UK, and a senior official who works at the institution is sanctioned by the US. The speed with which Iran developed its UAV program was in part due to research support from Sharif, according to a report from the US-based Washington Institute.

The range and accuracy of the drones Iran manufactures was achieved by equipping them with “gyro-navigation devices developed by Sharif University”, the report states.

Iranian-made drones have become ubiquitous across battlefields over the past five years, changing the nature of warfare. They are known to have been responsible for attacks in Ukraine, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and against shipping in the Red Sea.

US officials have said Iran manufactured the drone that attacked a US base in Jordan in January, killing three American soldiers and injuring more than 40.

Iran is known to strategically use knowledge from national and foreign academics to strengthen its security priorities.

A decree from the government – issued in 2021 and reported on by the Jewish Chronicle and The Times – is said to have called for “collaborations with national and international [university] departments”.

Among the defence and security priorities listed in the document are “automated and unmanned equipment (drones)”.

Czulda, who at one time conducted research at a university in Iran, said: “If you work on drones in an Iranian university they will be used by the Iranian military.”

In recent years governments around the world have launched initiatives to block or hinder international academic collaboration that might help to further Iran’s program.

In June 2023 the UK government launched an investigation into allegations that a number of UK universities had collaborated with their Iranian counterparts on UAV research. No universities were singled out when the investigation was announced.

In January, the Canadian government unveiled new restrictions on research funding, to prevent the sharing of technologies deemed to be important to national security. UAVs were among the technologies listed by the government as sensitive, and Sharif University was among the institutions the government said that it believed posed risks to national security.


Iran becoming global drone producer on back of Ukraine war, says US

A University of Southampton spokesperson said it had “stopped all formal and informal research collaborations with Iran” since the publication of the research.

“This followed a review of our international research relationships prompted by significant updates to government advice,” the spokesperson said. The university “adheres to all UK government advice regarding working with countries, institutions and individuals subject to sanctions”, they said.

The University of Houston said that it had no record of the research, and the academics in question were not currently “employed by or affiliated with” the university.

“The University of Houston is fully committed to complying with all export control laws and regulations and has set forth specific measures to ensure that our research efforts are protected,” the university said in a statement.

The University of New South Wales said it took its security and compliance obligations very seriously and denied that the research had been directly funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC). However, the academic who conducted the research at UNSW had received funding from the ARC to conduct studies in the area of drone-based communication during the period that the research was published, according to public records.

A spokesperson from the university said any collaborations with “countries or institutions considered high-risk are thoroughly risk-managed, where appropriate registered with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) under the Foreign Arrangements Scheme (FAS), and undergo rigorous assessment as required under the Australian Government’s Defence Export Controls framework”.

 

Absence of Evidence: Israel’s Case Against UNRWA

by Binoy Kampmark / February 12th, 2024

Statistics are often given lanky legs that take their user far.  But how they are used, and how they are received, is striking.  The current figure of 27,500 dead is a blighting, grotesque fact.  But as they are Palestinians, the issue is less significant to certain parties than, say, 140 Israeli hostages being held in Gaza.

As with much in the noisy clatter of Middle Eastern violence, the value attributed to numbers alters in the shade of ideology and self-interest.  Massacres become acts of self-defence; acts of self-defence become unconscionable inflictions of murder.  It also follows that an organisation of 30,000 employees, working in the field of humanitarianism, aid and salvation, can be plastered as terrorist sponsors for having 12 individuals in their service allegedly involved in a murderous assault on Israel on October 7, 2023.  Despite the relative smallness of this figure, the entire organisation itself becomes a target.

What, then, of the evidence?  The state of Israel was initially adamant that 12 such individuals in UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) had participated in the October 7 attacks by Hamas, sharing the details on January 29 with several media outlets.  The accusations were made via a thin dossier amounting to no more than six pages.  Little by way of evidence was supplied, though Israel was content to make further claims that almost 10% of the agency’s staff had ties to Hamas.  As UN Crisis Group expert Daniel Forti writes, “Thus far, Israel has not provided evidence in writing to the UN to substantiate its allegations.”

For a gaggle of Western states and donors, that hardly mattered.  The mere mention of the Satanic Twelve had made their way into public and political consciousness, and something had to be done about it.  Funding to the aid body was swiftly suspended by the United States, Germany, the European Union, Sweden, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom.  The organisation was smeared and threatened with functional incapacity and prospective oblivion, an outcome that would also, inevitably, doom Palestinians.  Unchallenged accusations that the agency had long been a Hamas front – an article of faith among Israeli nationalists – were bandied about with abandon.

The United Nations, for its part, was unusually fleet footed in responding to the dossier.  Contracts were terminated.  Inquiries were announced, along with promises of stern self-examination, purging and cleansing.  On February 5, the UN Secretary General António Guterres announced that an independent panel had been created with the specific purpose of assessing “whether the agency is doing everything within its power to ensure neutrality and to respond to allegations of serious breaches when they are made.”  The panel will be chaired by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, who will work alongside a Scandinavian complement of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute in Sweden, the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Norway and the Danish Institute for Human Rights.

With the setting up of such heavy machinery, the picture started getting foggier.  Then a smiting report from the British news outlet Channel 4 took issue with the scanty material supplied in the document.  As the network’s Lindsey Hilsum stated, “We got hold of Israel’s dossier against UNRWA – why did the donors including the UK withdraw funding on such flimsy unproven allegations before an investigation?”

Channel 4 goes on to reveal that the dossier “contains no evidence to support Israel’s explosive new claim other than stating, ‘From intelligence information, documents, and identity cards seized during the course of the fighting, it is now possible to flag around 190 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihadi terrorist operatives who serve as UNRWA employees.  More than 10 UNRWA staffers took part in the events of October 7.”

Even the usually less than critical CNN network reported that it had “not seen the intelligence that underlies the summary of allegations”, going on to mention that the summary did “not provide evidence to support its claims.”

When Ophir Falk, an advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was asked by CNN anchor Anna Coren to provide evidence of the claims, he refused to do so.  When asked why the alleged culprits had not been arrested, he merely replied that “the first step is for them to be fired”.

Outlets such as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal were less than concerned by the gaping lacunae and skimpiness of Israel’s case.  Instead, the latter could even go so far as to claim that the dossier provided “the most detailed look yet at the widespread links between the UNRWA employees and militants.”  The ABC World News Tonight was clumsy enough to suggest that the UN had “not denied the claims”, implying a veneer of veracity.

Now, other countries are finding absence of evidence from the Israeli side more than awkward.  Australia’s Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, had to also admit that she had not been furnished with much in the way of evidence.  “We have spoken to the Israelis and we have asked for further evidence,” she told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s 7.30.  When asked why she did not ask UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini about the subject, she simply reiterated the point that she had asked the Israelis directly and was not aware if Lazzarini had evidence.  “He may, I don’t know what he has.”

With trademark oiliness, Wong countered that the allegations were what mattered.  “I think it is clear from UNRWA’s own actions that they regard these allegations as serious.”  They had done so by “terminating the employment of a number of employees and putting in place an inquiry – in fact, there are two inquiries.”  Effectively, the agency was to be punished for its own enterprising efforts to investigate the claims, leaving the accusers free to level whatever charges they saw fit.

In the meantime, Lazzarini has been scrambling to fill the funding void, making visits to the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Kuwait.  The dying and starvation in Gaza continue with the prospect of even more horror as Israel’s armed forces prepare their offensive on Rafah.  A fine thing, then, to see donor countries for UNRWA, some of whom continue funding Israel’s military efforts, to moralise about terrorists and the agency.

It’s Not Personal… Just Business!

by Philip A. Faruggio / February 14th, 2024

Just watched a 2020 documentary entitled Dirty Money that covered a slew of scams perpetrated on American consumers. The segment on Scott Tucker really got my goat. Here’s a bit of a background on this character and his disgusting shenanigans:

In 1991, Tucker was convicted for his illegal activities, including mail fraud, associated with a bogus lending company he operated, Chase, Morgan, Stearns & Lloyd, which he falsely claimed was associated with each of the four major banks whose names he included in the name of the company. He served one year in prison.

In 2001, Tucker founded an online business, AMG Services, that made payday loans even in states where these high-interest, low-principal loans were restricted or illegal. The business, which generated over $3.5 billion in revenue from just 2008 to June 2013,^[1] ultimately made loans to at least 4.5 million Americans.^[1] When state regulators tried to shut down his operations, Tucker made deals with Native American tribes to claim ownership of his business and invoke sovereign immunity from state courts.^[2] In February 2016, Tucker was arrested and indicted on federal criminal charges filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in relation to his ownership and controlling role in various payday lending operations that were found to have charged illegal interest rates in violation of RICO and TILA statutes.^[3][4] Tucker was convicted of making illegal payday loans and of racketeering in October 2017; he is currently serving a sentence of 16 years and 8 months in federal prison.^[1]

In the documentary the director interviewed Tucker while he was awaiting trial, while still in his multimillion dollar home. When asked if he considered himself Moral Tucker paused and then answered “I’m a businessperson”. When the filmmaker interviewed that chief of the Indian tribe in Oklahoma about the deal they made with Tucker to use their name and status, he showed NO remorse and added “We didn’t do anything illegal.” This is the essence of why our current capitalist system is so skewed and downright EVIL! All of those poisoned by this so called “Free Market” seem to adhere to the famous words from the Godfather films “It’s not personal. It’s strictly business.” So, what Tucker and his minions did was nickel and dime loans (average $ 300) to over 4 million consumers who were desperate for the cash, and then charge them higher interest than even a street corner loan shark. He had a myriad of lackeys working as office staff to handle the tens of thousands of customer phone complaints from 2001 to 2013. Having been a “Phone man” myself, I have a great animus for those Judases who obviously knew what was going on in the scam. You see, most underhanded schemes like Tucker’s can never succeed without an army of collaborators. Disgraceful how some working stiffs can do such a thing to earn a living.

This writer knew people I once called friends that sold their souls to scam artist businesses. I recall a guy I worked under at ADP ( Automatic Data Processing) in the late 1980s. With all its faults at least ADP played by the rules and did not have their sales force play such games. Yet, my sales manager, as straight an arrow as can be, confessed to me how, in a previous sales life as a “Tin man” ( aluminum siding sales) he bent the rules and took advantage of low income home owners. He actually laughed when he told me how he and his coworkers would lie and outright gouge the customer with higher prices. He used the old Godfather retort of it not being personal… just business. Another old friend got himself into the subprime mortgage loan business as a salesman during the housing boom of the mid 2000s. Once again, they preyed upon low income and low credit rated customers, knowing that there was NO way the new homeowner would be able to pay off that mortgage at those rates etc. He himself got so tied into the whole boom that he began doing what I personally abhor, that being ‘ Flipping houses’. He was doing so well right before the 2008 bust that he leased himself a $600 a month BMW coupe and travelled to Russia to find himself a wife through one of those mating services. The bust came, he got evicted from his own home and saw his lovely blonde haired young wife skip out on him.

Modern day capitalism has become a joke. For every tale of well run Mom and Pop small business there are hundreds about  corporate predators choking Main Street America. Then you have the outliers whereupon low level hustlers do psychic damage to straight and true Mom and Pops by their antics against consumers/customers. If only our present local, city, state and federal governments would follow the adage of the late, great Mark Twain that the purpose of government is to protect us from the crooks and scoundrels.  Nuff said!

Philip A Farruggio is regular columnist on itstheempirestupid website. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn NYC longshoremen and a graduate of Brooklyn College, class of 1974. Since the 2000 election debacle Philip has written over 500 columns on the Military Industrial Empire and other facets of life in an upside down America. He is also host of the It’s the Empire… Stupid radio show, co produced by Chuck Gregory. Philip can be reached at paf1222@bellsouth.net. Read other articles by Philip.

 

Islam and Jesus as Jewish Messiah

by Eric Walberg / February 7th, 2024

If anything proves the validity of Occam’s Razor,ⁱ it’s contemplating the astounding attempts over two millennia to square Christianity’s circle, or rather triangle. Trinitarianism: one God existing in three coequal, coeternal, consubstantial divine persons: God the Father, God the Son (Jesus Christ) and God the Holy Spirit, three distinct persons (hypostases) sharing one essence/ substance/ nature. The ‘what’ is one, the ‘who’ is three.

The Old Testament has been interpreted as referring to the Trinity in many places. One of these is the prophecy about the Messiah in Isaiah 9. The Messiah is called ‘Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.’ Some Christians see this verse as meaning the Messiah will represent the Trinity on Earth. This is because Counselor is a title for the Holy Spirit (John 14:26), the Trinity is God the Father, Jesus, Son, the Prince of Peace, the Counselor Spirit.

But this trinitarianism is very different from the Hindu Brahma (creator), Vishnu (sustainer), Shiva (destroyer), or the Roman Diana.

It was only formulated in the 3rd century by Tertullian, based on the New Testament (NT) writings from the late 1st century early 2nd century. They contain several Trinitarian formulas, including Matthew 28:19, most clearly in 1 John 5:7. But modern Biblical scholarship largely agrees that 1 John 5:7, found in Latin and Greek texts after the 4th century and found in later translations such as the King James translation, cannot be found in the oldest Greek and Latin texts. Verse 7 is known as the Johannine Comma, which most scholars agree to be a later addition by a later copyist. This verse reads: Because there are three in Heaven that testify – he Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit – and these three are one. This verse is absent from the Ethiopic, Aramaic, Syriac, Slavic, Armenian, Georgian, and Arabic translations of the Greek New Testament. Ditto Matthew 28. The debates later moved from the deity of Jesus Christ to the equality/ inferiority of the Holy Spirit with the Father and Son. Need I say more?

A perusal of Wikipedia page Nontrinitarianism (i.e., non orthodox Trinitarianism) identifies close to a hundred variations on the theme, trying to convince that 3 really is 1. My favorites:

*Arianism, popular until the Council of Nicaea, argued that the pre-existent Son of God was directly created by the Father, before all ages, and that he was subordinate to God the Father. Arius’ position was that the Son was brought forth as the very first of God’s creations, and that the Father later created all things through the Son.

*The Adoptionist theory was perhaps the most popular in the 2nd-3rd centuries, which holds that Jesus was adopted as the Son of God at his baptism, his resurrection, or his ascension, but this theory died out when it was declared a heresy in the 4th century when the 4th century Nicene Crede was agreed in Constantinople, the capital of Christianity.

*Ebionites (1st-4th centuries) observed Jewish law, denied the literal virgin birth and regarded Jesus as the Jewish Messiah and the greatest prophet of God. Period.

*Socinianism taught that Jesus was the sinless Messiah and redeemer, and the only perfect human son of God, but that he had no pre-human existence. They interpret verses such as John 1:1 to refer to God’s plan existing in God’s mind before Christ’s birth, and that it was God’s plan that ‘became flesh’, as the perfect man Jesus.

*Unitarianism holds that Jesus was inspired by God in his moral teachings and that he is the savior of humankind, but he is not equal to God himself.

*Many Gnostic traditions held that the Christ is a heavenly Aeon but not one with the Father. Docetists asserted that Christ was born without any participation of matter and that all the acts and sufferings of his life, including the Crucifixion, were mere appearances.

Christian heterodoxy flowered throughout the Middle Ages despite Pauline police. The democratic egalitarian spirit-filled Jesus movement slowly atrophied into the repressive, bureaucratic Catholic Church, culminating in the 6th century Gelasuis Decree, a list of distrusted and rejected works not encouraged for church use, which banned 60 books including 9 gospels, 4 sets of apostolic acts and 3 revelations, as well as 35 heretics.

Underlying this debate through the centuries were real questions:

*Is Jesus God?

*Was it Jesus who was crucified?

*If so, then did he physically resurrect as apostles claimed?

The above nontrinitarians are all closer to Islam than the official Pauline creed. Most claim Jesus as ‘son of God’ in some sense, but with God supreme, using Jesus as intermediary. Ebionites Jewish Messianism is probably closest to Islam, where Jesus is the ‘greatest prophet’ only. And the Unitarians, a 17th century offshoot of the 16th century, the Radical Reformation, and which gave birth to Anabaptist groups like the Hutterites, Amish and Mennonites. The Ebionites and Unitarians are ‘Christianity without Paul’ or ‘Islam without Muhammad’, though the Unitarians’ actual beliefs are so lax that it’s fine to reject pretty well everything (virgin birth, miracles, resurrection), making it more a liberal humanism.

Interestingly, later Protestant heretics, the Anabaptist Hutterites and Amish, were rediscovered during Covid, as they refused vaccines, relying on (medieval) herd immunity. While infections were high, death rates from the virus are lower because their older people live with family and extended family and not in old people’s homes, and usually maintain a healthier lifestyle. Lev Tolstoy was a big fan of the Anabaptist Mennonites and gave the income from his final novel Resurrection to them so they could emigrate to North America, freed from serving in the Russian imperial army.

In The Gospel in Brief: The life of Jesus (1881), Tolstoy asks:

What is it to me if Christ was resurrected? The questions important to me are:

*What should I do?

*How should I live?

Man is the son of an infinite source not by the flesh but by the spirit. Therefore man should serve this source in spirit … True life is outside of time, exists only in the present.

Tolstoy was excommunicated by the Orthodox Church for his heretical thoughts. The New Testament is stinking filth with buried jewels. But he sees himself as a true believer: the Jesus message transcends all answers from other cultures. My study is like reassembling a broken statue. The teachings of a great man must express clearly that which others only expressed unclearly. Socrates is clear. Christianity is not. The dogma — trinity, pentecost, seven sacraments for salvation, the communion ritual. They are not in Jesus’ teachings. Why did people turn Jesus into God? Tolstoy’s answer: The teachings were so transformative, they mistook the messenger of it as a God. Don’t look for inner peace from my study, he warns, but truth.

Tolstoy knew and respected Muslims. They recognize Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, who made clear meaning of Moses and Jesus’ revelations. The Muslim looks at teachings of Jews and Christians for what agrees with his mind and heart.

Islam’s roots in Christian heterodoxy

There were many Christian and Jewish stories circulating during Muhammad’s lifetime, and hadiths relate how the Prophet spoke with Christians and Jews. Muslim apologists argue that any overlaps between the Quran and such sources hark back to the original Truth behind them and that that Truth is what the Quran reveals. Fair enough, but it is still interesting to see how close to the Truth various popular narrations or actual Christian or Jewish texts came, as precursors of the Quran.

Pauline ‘pagan Christianity’ became a strict orthodoxy by the 2nd century, but alternative versions of Jesus’ message were strong until the 9th century, surviving in the eastern sects with a colorful array of gospels and apocalypses. Ironically it was the Reformation and the printing press that proved lethal for Christian heterodoxy. Colorful was ou,t and it was much easier to control what was read when everything was now printed (and approved).

The apocryphal works were prompted by the need of alternative narratives to fill in blanks or mull over theological problems not adequately explained. Things Jesus should have said or done if he had the time. ‘What would Jesus do?’ The theological need produced the required texts.

Philip Jenkins, in The many faces of Christ: The thousand-year story of the survival and influence of the lost gospels (2015), shows how the James/Jacob version of Jesus’ Messianism through the years was trying to keep the central monotheistic legacy in tact. That kind of ‘Christianity’ would not have made Jews the outcasts of Europe (and the monsters of today in Israel) as happened.

Rejecting Paul’s innovations offends Christians, as Tolstoy warned, but it is necessary to overcome the bigotry that came with dubious dogma and unending communal strife.

That said, we can marvel at the blossoming of monotheism in the Middle Ages, and thank the heterodox Christian cultural milieu of the time for some of the most striking images in the Quran.

In the 2nd century pseudo Infancy gospel of Thomas,ⁱⁱ boy Jesus fashions a bird from clay and then blowing on it, bringing it to life as it flies away. Surah 5:110 Thou makest out of clay, as it were, the figure of a bird, by My leave, and thou breathest into it and it becometh a bird by My leave.

Muslim apologists argue that, yes, the original Bible contained the apocryphal story of Jesus making and animating clay birds, and that the Quran was actually correcting a wrongful exclusion of this apocryphal from the canon. Fine. Oscar Wilde thumbed his nose at such nitpicking: talent borrows, genius steals. If ‘the Church’ had had its way, this delightful and profound story, an enduring symbol of belief, would only have appeared in the Quran. Given the plethora of gospels in circulation in the 7th century, especially in outposts like Arabia, who knows what other ‘caves of treasures’ have survived only because of the Quran?

left: Jesus raises the clay birds of his playmates to life. right: The Cave of Treasures recounts the lineage of Man from Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Moses, Jesus, popular in eastern Christiandom in the 6-7th centuries. Like many other priceless treasures, it survives only thanks to an Arabic translation.

Jenkins brings the time of the Middle Ages from the 2nd century to the Reformation to life. The medieval period is fascinating, strikingly similar to today’s mostly visual society, with bible epics and a secular heavenly kingdom courtesy of Cecile B de Mille and Walt Disney. Austere Islam arose at the height of this imaginative time, which ended with the extreme austerity of the Reformation and the rise of scientism leaving Islam as a fascinating time capsule for reimagining Christian civilization at its peak, minus Paul’s dogma.

From the birth of Islam in the 7th century, it has existed in dialogue with Christianity. For much of Muslim history, Christians composed a large proportion of the population of the Muslim world, Egypt, Syria, Iraq. Muslims were living in Europe by the 8th century, in Spain, later Sicily, the Balkans. Christian subjects under Muslim rule were free to practice their faith and read old texts that were suppressed in Catholic or Orthodox lands. What an era! Medieval society was full of religion, with successive waves of conversion zeal.

Similarly, after the sudden burst of zeal and the expansion of Islam across the known world, Islam too spread peacefully. The key difference being Christianity as the religion of empire, and Islam as the conqueror of empire, born free in the desert.

As Christian civilization slowly came to pagan Europe, next door Islamic civilization was already flourishing. Lots of learning, translating, debate. As late as 649 a Nestorian bishop wrote: “These Arabs fight not against our Christian religion; nay, rather they defend our faith, they revere our priests and saints, and they make gifts to our churches and monasteries.” At the same time Islam was influenced by diverse Christian traditions. And as religious rivals, Muslims would have welcomed any dissidents from the Pauline mainstream. The apocryphal/ Islamic Jesus was proclaimed in Quranic recitations across much of Europe, in mosques of Toledo and Palermo Seville and Sofia, Athens and Budapest, Belgrade and Bucharest.ⁱⁱⁱ (Too bad about the Crusades)

Muslim gospel

Sayings of Jesus recorded by early Muslim commentators resemble Q source’s collection of aphorisms. Some sound like Manichean Dualist:

*The world is Satan’s farm and its peoples are its plowmen.

*The world is a bridge. Cross this bridge but do not build upon it.

*Do not examine the sins of people as though you were lords, but examine them as though you were servants. critique Kharijite movement.

*Just as kings have left wisdom to you [scholars], you should leave the world to them. largely supportive of government because any government is better than none at all.^iv

*Jesus addressing a self-proclaimed worshipper: What is your brother doing? Caring for me. Your brother is more devoted to God than you.

*Blessed is he who sees with his heart but whose heart is not in what he sees.

*Console me, for my heart is soft and I hold myself in low esteem. emphasizing Jesus’ human weakness.

*Be in middle, but walk to the side.

*Be at ease with people and ill at ease with yourself.

*Those among you who sorrow most in misfortune and the most attached to this world. Jesus as fierce ascetic. also

*A pig passed by Jesus. ‘Pass in peace.’ How can you say this to a pig? Jesus: ‘I hate to accustom my tongue to evil.‘^v

It’s eerie how the Jesus hidden away by Pauline orthodoxy managed to resurface in Islam 7 centuries after Jesus died. A Jesus ‘resurrected’ in an environment where he becomes a Muslim prophet. Belonging to a common age-old fund of wisdom found in the rich traditions of near eastern cultures. Also with roots in Hellenistic civilization.

Their attribution to Jesus reveals a lot about both an unknown Jesus and how Islam sees Him. When Islam arrived, the Church had not yet enforced its dogmas in the near east, i.e. there were mutually hostile Christian communities. The Church only cemented its dogmas in the 10th century, by which time many ‘heretics’ often found in Islam a better fit.

Some likely founded Sufi orders. Jesus is one of the major spiritual heroes of Sufism. Basra was an important base for the Church of the East and the earliest center of Islamic Sufism. Syria’s Alawites follow several Gnostic ideas, including the transmigration of souls, to the point that many orthodox Muslims do not consider it Islamic. True Gnostics, both Alawites and Druze are famous for the extreme secrecy of their faith. Islam offered a message appealing to the old Dualists who were hostile to priests, institutional churches.

It’s a shorter step from Christian to Muslim than from Jewish. Apocryphal texts were alive and well among Eastern congregations long after their formal exclusion from the NT canon in the 4-5th centuries. Quranic images of Jesus and the Christians echoed a living—not imaginary—Christianity, reflecting some of the lost Jesus as Christianity became the religion of empire, caught up in intrigues with secular power.

When Muslims occupied the eastern Christian territories they were intensely exposed to the writings of ancient centers of Christian heterodoxy as Syria Egypt and Mesopotamia. The Islamic world became a treasury of writings otherwise lost or suppressed in Latin Europe. Muslim scholars preserved priceless documents from the earliest church, texts that were lost to Christendom.

A Muslim Gospel of Prophet Jesus would be anti-Pauline for sure, but not anti-Christian like the Toledot yeshu (life of Jesus), the nasty Jewish version. Written in the 9th century prior to the 14th century it would have been available in any large town in Europe where Jewish communities existed. After the 14th century Black Death, the Jewish center of gravity shifted to eastern Europe. Based on a deceptive Jesus, Christianity was depicted as at best a parody religion, a pallid imitation of authentic Judaism.^vi Luther was appalled by it; it poisoned his attitude to Jews and Judaism, which in his early years had been relatively tolerant. By 1540s he was urging that Jews be expropriate and their faith utterly forbidden. In Germany his anti-Jewish fury had a long and hideous afterlife.

In fact, there is such a ‘gospel’, the 14th century Gospel of Barnabas, which more or less follows the canonical NT, with the addition of the prophecy of Muhammad. Jesus: and the mesenger of God when he shall come, of what lineage? Disciples: of David. Jesus: you deceive yourselves. The promise was made in Ishmael, not in Isaac.^vii It is Judas that is mistaken for Jesus and crucified. Evil men, pretending to be diisciples, preached that Jesus died and rose not again. Others preached that he really died, but rose again. Others preach that Jesus is the Son of God, among whom is Paul deceived.

The Gospel of Barnabas, probably written by a convert monk, has been rediscovered periodically, lauded as an explosive demolition of Christian orthodoxy. Deist skeptic John Toland found a copy in Amsterdam and wrote Nazanernus, or Jewish, Gentile and Mahometan Christianity (1718). He saw it as an account of primitive Christianity without the Trinity and the canceling of Jewish law. Jewish Christianity. The original plan of Christianity. Toland was popular in enlightenment circles. When a scholarly English translation was published in 1907, it created a sensation in Islamic lands, especially India.

But the real thing would simply be Jesus’ actual sayings which Muslims have incorporated into their faith. The Muslim Jesus. Such a work has been immanent all along, scattered in hadiths, works of ethics and popular devotion, Sufism, wisdom anthologies, histories of prophets and saints, from the 2nd/ 8th^viii century to the 12th/ 18th century. Muslims in the first century of Islam were generally quite receptive to the religious lore of Judaism, Christianity and other religions of the new Muslim empire. The first such ‘gospel’ was only complied in 1896 a collection of 77 sayings. This was supplemented and published as 225 sayings (in Latin) in 1919. A new version The Muslim Jesus: Sayings and stories in Islamic Literature, with 303 sayings, was published by Tarif Khalidi in 2001.

In The Muslim Jesus, Khalidi offering a Jesus quite different from that of Christian Europe. The Jesus of Muslim tradition is a fierce ascetic, not the figure of the canonical gospels. A 9th century commentator Ahmad ibn Hanbal reported a saying of this Jesus: I toppled the world upon its face and sat upon its back. I have no child that might die, no house that might fall into ruin. The Muslim Jesus is Sufi, his parables and aphorisms like Zen koans. Jesus points to the birds of the sky and speaks of how God cares for them. He urges his followers to lay up treasures for themselves in heaven, to fast and pray in secret, unlike the hypocrites. Repay cruelty with kindness. He who has not been born twice shall not enter the kingdom of Heaven.

The only direct quotes from either the OT or NT in the Quran are ‘an eye for an eye’ and ‘rich man and the camel passing through the eye of a needle.’ Muhammad knew many Jews and Christians and honored Jewish and Christian scriptures, but it is wrong to suppose that anyone had any direct role in inspiring revelation. There was no ‘Arabic Bible’ at that point.

The language of the Quran is a kind of eternal present. Past, present, future laid out in a continuum. The structure is a typology of Quranic prophets, the model of prophecy recognizable by the manner in which a particular prophet sets about his mission of warning, rejection, vindication as retribution. A Christian or Jew today would be okay with the manner in which Moses, Joseph, David are presented. Not Jesus. The Quran was free to use, indeed, to preserve any nugget of Truth in the apocryphal infancy stories and miracles, gospels, as well as Syriac, Coptic and Ethiopic literature.

More emphasis is on the miraculous birth than Jesus’ Passion. Jesus is almost always ‘son of Mary’. There is no Sermon on the Mount, parables, teachings on law and spirit, no Passion. There are faithful disciples, humble and pious, God’s unity. The Quranic style is argument and counter-argument in the face of sneers from unbelievers and quarrelsome religious communities.

Jesus’ image is shaped by the Quran’s own corrective message, pruning, rearranging of an earlier revelation regarded as notorious for its divisive and contentious sects. It is a trustee of an inheritance, not a relative of the testator.^ix i.e., Muhammad inherited the Christian (and Jewish) books, canonical and noncanonical, but it is a new, distinct religion, not beholden to quarrelsome, misguided relatives. Islam claims to be the true version of the underlying treasure (the true monotheistic path), not some wayward child of Christianity.

Examples of Quran and popular Christian imagery of the time:

*When Muhammad received his first revelation, he feared that he may have been visited by an evil spirit. He ran home to his wife, Khadijah, saying, ‘cover me, for I fear I may be possessed by an evil spirit.’ Khadijah did not believe Muhammad was possessed by an evil spirit, and she took him to her cousin, Waraqah ibn Nawfal, a Christian, who was well versed in the scriptures. It was this Christian who first suggested to Muhammad that he may have been visited by the angel Gabriel, and therefore, may be a Prophet.^x It is believed that Waraqah ibn Nawfal belonged to a group of Ebionite Christians, who maintained the Jewish laws of circumcision, avoidance of pork, and emphasized God’s Oneness.

*Early biographies suggest Muhammad had a sympathy for Mary. When his forces destroyed hundreds of idols in Mecca, he reverently preserved an image of the Virgin and Child.^xi

*Popular reading then would have been Christian or Jewish stories like The Cave of Treasures (590s) when Muhammad was a young adult. He travelled as a merchant husband of a respected merchant widow Khadija and such works were the HBO/ PBS of the day.

*The Trinity is rejected out of hand as a later invention and is never deconstructed except as denying God’s indivisibility. There is even a hint that the Trinity was Father, Son and Mary, not spirit. The Father-Son-Spirit triune does not appear in the Quran. One of the most dramatic moments in the Quran is God taking Jesus to task 5:116: And [beware the Day] when Allah will say, “O Jesus, Son of Mary, did you say to the people, ‘Take me and my mother as deities besides Allah ?’ ” He will say, “Exalted are You! It was not for me to say that to which I have no right. If I had said it, You would have known it.

It may be an allusion to heretical Arab Christian Collyridians, mentioned in the 4th century and possibly having survived into Muhammad’s time, so the Quran could be addressing their understanding of the Trinity. As to the purpose of verse 5:116, the most plausible explanation is clearly that it was a polemic against real or imagined Christian belief in the Trinity. Consider 4:171. Do not say “Three”. Stop it. That is good for you. Allah is the only One God. He is far too pure to have a son. Neither ayat directly addresses the ‘real’ Trinity, but it looks like Muhammad was criticizing not only the Trinity but the deification of Mary which had been proceeding apace after Paul (who hardly mentions Mary at all).

*In the Roman Catholic tradition Mariology is seen as Christology developed to its full potential (Paul would have been horrified). Veneration for Mary is based on the reference in the Gospel of Luke to Mary as ‘the selected handmaid of the Lord’. Particularly significant is Mary’s presence at the Cross, when she received from her dying Son the charge to be mother to the beloved disciple. The theological development of devotion to Mary begins with Justin Martyr (100–165) who articulated Mary’s role in salvation history as the Second Eve. While Jesus and Mary are central to the Quran, they are very different, Jesus is more ascetic and Mary a model of piety and courage, and the honored vehicle for Jesus’ appearance. Neither are part of a ‘salvation history’ of Jesus dying for our sins, and Mary as intercessor in this. There is no ‘original sin’ in Islam. Jesus came to add to the Jewish Covenant, with a universal message of love and compassion. 4:171: The Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, was no more than a messenger of Allah and the fulfilment of His Word through Mary and a spirit created by a command˺ from Him.

*Paul described the crucifixion as being to the Jews an obstacle that they cannot get over, to the pagans madness. 1Cor1:23. Did the Quran follow a Docetic form of Christianity? But the Jesus of the Quran is very much flesh and blood while in Docetism he is a mere shadow. In denying the crucifixion, the Quran is denying that the Jews killed him, and elevates him to God as part of his vindication as a prophet, reconciling him to the general typology of Quranic prophecy. It is the ascension rather than the crucifixion which marks the high point of his life in the Quran. There is no Passion, stations of the Cross in Islamic commentary. It is closer to the Docetists.^xii or the Gnostic Apocalypse of Peter^xiii

 *In the Cave of Treasures, probably the most popular religious work of the Middle Ages, which begins with the creation of the world and ends with the Pentecost, the devil‘s excuse for not bowing to Adam is that he was created from fire, while Adam was created from dirt. It is this tradition that is reflected in the Qurʾān: ‘I am better than he is. You created me from fire. You created him from clay.’ (Q 7.12; cf. 15.33; 17.61; 38.76). Cave of Treasures: When the leader of the lesser order saw the greatness given to Adam, he became jealous of him and did not want to prostrate before him with the angels. He said to his hosts, ‘Do not worship him and do not praise him with the angels. It is proper that you should worship me, for I am fire and spirit, not that I worship something made from dirt. The Life of Adam and Eve (Jewish apocrypha 200BC–100AD) would have been popular and is much like Quran 18:50 Kahf: We said unto the angels: fall prostrate before Adam and they prostrated, except for Iblis. He was of the jinn and departed from the command of his Lord.

 *Seven sleepers of Ephesus Quran 18:9. Clearly inspired by disciples being persecuted in the 3rd c, during the persecutions by the Roman Emperor Decius, around 250) and who hid in a cave, as related by Syriac Father Jacob of Serugh (c. 450–521). The cave was opened during the reign of Theodosius II (408–450)—in AD 447 when heated discussions were taking place between various schools of Christianity about the resurrection of the body in the day of judgment and life after death. Some Jewish circles and the Christians of Najran believed in only three brothers; the East Syriac, five, others seven, which explains the curious ayat 18:22: My Lord is most knowing of their number. None knows them except a few. So do not argue about them except with an obvious argument and do not inquire about them among [the speculators] from anyone. The pilgrim account De situ terrae sanctae, written between 518 and 531, records the existence of a church dedicated to the sleepers in Ephesus, also part of the Quran rendition. How long they slept is also debated but the Quran settles on 309 (lunar) years or 300 solar years.^xiv

The Seven Sleepers were included in the Golden Legend compilation, another popular book of the later Middle Ages, which fixed a precise date for their resurrection, 478, in the reign of Theodosius. The legend was rediscovered by Donne, and The Golden Legend may have been the source for retellings of the Seven Sleepers in Thomas de Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, in a poem by Goethe, Washington Irving’s Rip van Winkle, H. G. Wells’s The Sleeper Awakes.

 *The cosmography of the times, such as that of Syriac authors like Ephrem, explains the Quran ‘Go down!’ to Adam and Eve. Ephrem refers to paradise as being at a great height, beyond the world-encircling ocean, and was the source of the great rivers on Earth, as reflected also in the common Quranic phrase ‘gardens from beneath which the rivers flow’. Allah’s command to ‘Go down!’ in the Quranic verses reflects the cosmological vistas of Syriac Christian sources in which paradise is on top of a cosmic mountain, above the Earth, and thus has God cry out ‘Go down’.

*Re Muhammad as ‘illiterate‘, in The Quran and Bible: Text and Commentary (2018), Gabriel Said Reynolds points to Quran 3:20 as evidence that the word refers to those who do not know the word of God (similarly 3:75 and 62:2). Thus, Muhammad is described as an ummi prophet in 7:157-158 because he came from a people to whom God had not yet sent down revelation, not because he was illiterate. 29:47-48 denies that Muhammad wrote the Quran himself, yet this does not imply that he could not read. As a respected international merchant, it only makes sense that Muhammad had at least ‘business Arabic’.

Lost gospels

The ‘lost’ Gospel of Hebrews is considered by some as more important (or identical to) the lost biblical Q source. Origen quoted it in the 3rd c: Rays issued from Christ’s eyes, whereby they were terrified and put to flight. And Jerome in the 4th century cites a surviving fragment emphasizing the importance of James, the brother of Jesus and head of the Jewish–Christian movement in Jerusalem after Jesus’ death, thereby testifying to the Jewish character of the community of the Gospel. The theology of the Gospel is strongly influenced by Jewish–Christian wisdom teaching. The Holy Spirit is represented as a manifestation of Divine Wisdom who is called Mother.

The Gospel of the Ebionites is one of several Jewish Christian gospels, along with the Gospel of the Hebrews and the Gospel of the Nazarenes; all survive only as fragments in quotations of the early Church Fathers. Fragments of the Ebionites were embedded in a polemic by 4th century Bishop Epiphanius to point out inconsistencies in the beliefs and practices of a Jewish Christian sect known as the Ebionites. The Christology of the Ebionites was known to Irenaeus: Jesus is understood in this gospel as having come to abolish the sacrifices rather than substituting for them; thus it is unlikely that it contained the same institution of the Eucharist as practiced by Nicene orthodox Christianity. Jerome remarks that the Nazarenes and Ebionites both used the Gospel of the Hebrews.

There is also the gospel text known to Origen as the Gospel of the Twelve. Jesus as the Messiah but not divine. The twelve insisted on the necessity of following Jewish law and rites and they used only the Jewish–Christian gospel. Jesus’ message was not to proclaim the end of the Torah, but to make the Jews see that they can remain Jews by renouncing the sacrifices and admitting the messianic character of Jesus. In the cross-cultural process of constructing the Roman identity, the Judeo-Christians wanted to participate by Judaizing the Empire, for which they yielded a little in their Jewish beliefs, making them more lax.

And the Gospel of Thomas, found at Nag Hammadi in 1945, a collection of 114 sayings of Jesus, but it has disappointed researchers. Like all the gospels, it is a pseudo and 80% of the sayings are some variation on the canonical gospels. Khalidi doesn’t even mention it.

Last but not least, and never completely lost, the Gospel of Nicodemus or Acts of Pilot. Jesus in a nutshell: convicted of sedition and killed by the Romans with approval of Caiaphus (so the Romans could blame it on ‘the Jews’). The story was soon turned on its head, making the Jewish mob the killer and Pilot an honorary saint with his own gospell, a 4th century celebration of Christianity’s new role as Church of Empire. Eastern Churches such as the Coptic and Ethiopian churches even made Pontius Pilate and his wife saints. We can add Marx to the brew here: Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. So good effort, St Pontius.

Reza Aslan is a prominent contemporary Muslim writer, a convert to evangelical Christianity from Shia Islam as a young American immigrant, who ‘reverted’ to Islam. Aslan: It’s not [that] I think Islam is correct and Christianity is incorrect. It’s that all religions are nothing more than a language made up of symbols and metaphors to help an individual explain faith. A man-made institution. It’s a set of symbols and metaphors that provides a language for which to express what is inexpressible, and that is faith. It’s symbols and metaphors that I prefer, but it’s not more right or more wrong than any other symbols and metaphors. It’s a language; that’s all it is.

Aslan’s postmodern take on religion would grate on most Muslims’ ears. But religion is a language, even ‘pure language’, the Word. And as a perennialist, there is always a middle way. That’s what real diplomacy is all about. And that’s what Islam is about. The Jews had veered into tribal insularity and ritual gone mad, the Christians had landed in a solipsistic world of Paul’s creation, distorting Jesus’ message. The two monotheisms were bitter enemies as a result of Paul’s rejection of Judaism and hounding of Jews, with forced conversion always lurking as a ‘final solution’.

It was wrong push the Jewish Christians aside. They are special Christians. The good Jews. We must always look for the good Jews and work with them! Islam is the classic ‘middle way’. That’s what we must find now. This is 70AD. We are living a cosmic typology of empires. The Romans (Zionists) are destroying/ expelling the natives of Jerusalem, getting ready to flatten the sacred mosque al-Aqsa to build their Temple to Jupiter.

ENDNOTES

Part I: Pauline Christianity vs Jesus as Jewish Messiah

i If there are competing explanations, the simplest is usually the best.

ii Wikipedia calls this Childhood of the Saviour (second century AD; commonly, and erroneously, referred to as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas)

iii Jenkins, The many faces of Christ, 193.

iv Tarif Khalidi, The Muslim Jesus, 2001.

v Khalidi, 17.

vi Jenkins, op.cit., 214.

vii Jenkins, 191-192.

viii i.e., Anno hejirae/ anno domini

ix Khalidi, 17.

x Internet Sacred Text Archive, http://www.sacred-texts.com/isl/gbar/.

xi Ibid., 199.

xii Since the 1950s, evidence has been uncovered by archeologists of thousands of early Christian sects which were systematically wiped out by ‘the Church’ with the 4th century Nicene Creed, and continued ever since as soon as any heresies were noticed (or dreamed up by would-be Inquisitors).

xiii Jesus a laughing savior, a substitute on the cross being crucified.

xiv Their purported cave was identified in Afşin is near the antique Roman city of Arabissus, to which the East Roman Emperor Justinian paid a visit. The site was a Hittite temple, used as a Roman temple and later as a church in Roman and Byzantine times. The Emperor brought marble niches from western Anatolia as gifts for it, which are preserved inside the Eshab-ı Kehf Kulliye mosque to this day. The Seljuks continued to use the place of worship as a church and a mosque. It was turned into a mosque over time, with the conversion of the local population to Islam.

Eric Walberg is a journalist who worked in Uzbekistan and is now writing for Al-Ahram Weekly in Cairo. He is the author of From Postmodernism to Postsecularism and Postmodern Imperialism. His most recent book is Islamic Resistance to Imperialism. Read other articles by Eric, or visit Eric's website.