Does God Love War?

I listened to a discussion, with Shaykh Hamza Yusuf and Chris Hedges the other day. Its not new, but its just great to listen to. I have always listened to Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, but I had never heard of Chris Hedges. I must say, he describes war and the worlds reaction towards it, very accurately. His unique experiences are reflected in his speach.

This is a description of the discussion:

Have the teachers of our religions failed us? Or have we not been listening? From leaders of America’s Christian Right seemingly forgetting that “Blessed are the Peacemakers,” to Jewish rabbis watching unflinchingly as collective punishment is doled out to Arabs in Palestine, to Muslim jurists ruling that civilian victims are acceptable under a Just War, the three great Abrahamic faiths are increasingly facing accusations of ignoring the sanctity of life. Some, pointing perhaps to Malcolm X when he famously advised a group of black nationalists to, “Leave your religion at home,” are not surprised, believing religion is best at dividing, not uniting; others argue, often just as persuasively, that this new penchant the religious have for the immediacy of violent solutions is bred from ideas other than those rooted in sound religious tradition. The same Malcolm X, after all, boldly argued from Mecca that only a belief in the Oneness of God could harmonize a discordant America. Can our current leaders-and some of us-achieve a similar understanding?

And so, does religion offer a way toward reconciliation? Or has it instead become part of the problem? Please join us for an enlightening conversation between two teachers worth listening to: Pulitzer Prize-winner and National Book Award-finalist Chris Hedges and the distinguished American-Muslim thinker and theologian, Hamza Yusuf.

Some Information about Chris Hedges:

Chris Hedges is a reporter for The New York Times and has spent 15 years covering crises in many conflict-ridden locations including El Salvador, Nicaragua, Algeria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Iraq, Sarajevo and Kosovo. His debut book, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, has been reviewed by the Times,The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and is a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Hedges has also appeared on a variety of radio and television programs such as “Charlie Rose,” “The News Hour,” “CBS Sunday Morning,” “Fresh Air,” “Talk of the Nation,” CNN and PBS’s “Religion and Ethics.” He has lectured at numerous colleges and institutions including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, University of California at Berkeley, The Council on Foreign Relations, Bates College, New York University and Colgate University.

In War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, Hedges addresses humanity’s love affair with war, offering a moving and thought-provoking perspective on the subject. He draws on the literature of combat, from Homer and Shakespeare, Erich Maria Remarque and Michael Herr. Hedges cautions that even for the winners, war unleashes unforeseen consequences. At a time when the US is girding itself for yet another military showdown, the message of this book is particularly timely.

Hedges holds a BA in English literature from Colgate University, a master of divinity from Harvard Divinity School where he was a Neiman Fellow, and taught at Columbia University. He then went on to teach at Princeton University in the fall of 2003.

Hedges was the Central American Bureau Chief for the Dallas Morning News and later the Middle East Bureau Chief for that newspaper, based in Jerusalem, from 1988 to 1990. He was the Middle East Bureau Chief for The New York Times, based in Cairo, from 1991 to 1995 and later the Balkans Bureau Chief for the Times from 1995 to 1998. He was a member of The New York Times team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for the paper’s coverage of global terrorism and he received the 2002 Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism. In 2005, Hedges published Losing Moses on the Freeway: The Ten Commandments in America.

Source: American Program Bureau

You can download the discussion from either of these sites. Just find “Does God love war?” and click on it. InshAllah, I will try to find better links soon.

http://www.azeemkhan.info/joomla/feed-me/aytuna-ikr-podcast.html

 http://feeds.feedburner.com/-ZikrPodcast/Wwwzaytunaorg-

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