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Dr. Carl Ernst's Following Muhammad, a highly apologetic text, has won Egypt's Shaykh Muhammad Salih Bashrahil Prize for Outstanding Cultural Creativity. And it is indeed a very creative book. Ernst, of course, is the Zachary Smith Distinguished Term Professor at the University of North Carolina, my alma mater. Oh, the pain! From The Outer Banks Sentinel, with thanks to Teri:
Dr. Carl W. Ernst, professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a leading scholar of Islam, received a major new prize from an Arab cultural organization in Cairo on July 4.The Distinguished Prize in the Humanities, with a $30,000 cash award, was presented this year by the board of trustees of the Shaykh Muhammad Salih Bashrahil Prize for Outstanding Cultural Creativity.
The Bashrahil Prize program comprises several awards: four for literary creativity or humanistic studies, in juried competition; and distinguished prizes for an Arab recognized for accomplishment in Arab culture or "a notable figure, Arab or foreign, whose role has been effective and influential in the fields of social and humanistic activity."
Ernst, UNC's Zachary Smith Distinguished Term Professor, won for his recent book "Following Muhammad: Rethinking Islam in the Contemporary World" (University of North Carolina Press, 2003). The book introduces readers to Islam's ethics, practices, spirituality and culture while clarifying diversity and debate within the tradition. It concludes with an overview of critical debates on important contemporary issues such as gender and veiling, state politics and science and religion.
Ernst was the only American among eight winners this year of the distinguished prizes and juried awards. Other winners included Amre Moussa, secretary general of the Arab League.
The prizes, established this year and just awarded for the first time, are intended to parallel the Pulitzer Prize in the United States or the Booker Prize in the United Kingdom as a recognition of literary and cultural achievement. The prizes honor the late Shaykh Muhammad Salih Bashrahil, a philanthropist in Mecca. Awards will be made every other year -- always in the four juried competitions and in the distinguished category when the trustees believe one or more applicants deserve such a prize.
Posted by Robert at August 2, 2004 8:37 AM
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It goes without saying that a pro-Islam book written by a non-Muslim would have to be very "creative," - Alice in Wonderland creative.
Perhaps Robert, you could provide us with a synopsis or review of this book.
Posted by: Tziona![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at August 2, 2004 10:00 AM
One would like to know how Professor Ernst handles the matter which, above all other matters, is the one that concerns Infidels: what Islam teaches about Infidels, about the proper attitude toward them, toward their practice of their religions (churches and synagogues, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Jain temples), about the goal toward which all Muslims are supposed to work -- the spread of dar al-Islam until it covers the globe -- and whether or not he deals seriously with the Sharia's imposition of a host of disabilities, economic, political, and social, on the "dhimmis" -- that is, those non-Muslims who are not killed or do not convert immediately.
One would like to know, for example, whether in the book that earned Professor Ernst (who comes from the same university that has recently been forcing its incoming freshmen to "learn about Islam" by reading a sanitized, abridged, Michael-Sells version of the Qur'an, called "An Approach to the Qur'an" (yes, it's quite an approach -- the precise approach that Yusuf al-Qaradawi or the good doctors of Al-Azhar would thoroughly approve of, but not Schacht, Margoliouth, Bousquet, Fagnan, Dufourcq, Bernard Lewis, A. K. S. Lambton, or Antoine Fattal, not to mention all those highly articulate ex-Muslims who are perfectly acquainted with the real teachings, attitudes, and atmospherics of Islam -- from the inside) this highly-tendentious prize (can an "Islamic Nobel" be far behind, with awards for "Islamic Physics" and "Islamic Economics" and "Islamic Medicine" and "Islamic Peace" -- no the last will not be necessary, since the regular Nobel Committee has been quite good at awarding Peace Prizes to the likes of Yassir Arafat and the stout-defender-of-the-mistreatment-of-Muslim-women-whose-mistreatment-has-nothing-to-do-with-Islam-and-don't-ever-blame-wonderful-Islam-for-anything Shirin Ebadi), this Shaykh Muhammad Sahih Basharil Prizewinner, Carl Ernst -- well, how does he stack up, in his study, to that list above, to Schacht and Margoliout, to Bousquet and Fangnan and Dufourcque and Lewis and Lambston and Antoine Fattal? No doubt he is a giant in the earth compared to Karen Armstrong or John Esposito, but how does he stack up against real scholars? How about comparing him to Michael Cook or Patricia Crone or Bernard Lewis -- to limit ourselves only to the vicinity of Princeton? What, really, can those wishing to find out about the essence of Islam, and not some apologetics, discover from this book?
One cannot be certain. Perhaps, in a fit of candor, the likes of which has never been seen in Islam, a prize named for, and paid by, a Saudi, and therefore a Wahhabi, has been awarded to an Infidel scholar who actually tells the truth about Islam.
Lewis Carroll must be invoked, and not for the first time even at this website. "I can believe six impossible things before breakfast," said the White Queen to Alice.
Well, I can't. Can you?
Posted by: Hugh at August 2, 2004 10:30 AM
One wonders how our good professor managed to be an apologist for Sharia Law? Especially practice of stoning women,amputations and beheadings.Expect this was explained as 'cultural
diversity'.
at August 2, 2004 4:27 PM
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