Shakespeare and Islam at The Globe this week
 

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No matter that the bard was white, Christian and has been dead for nearly 400 years -- this week he is at the center of Muslim Awareness Week, a bid to highlight the contribution Britain's 1.8 million Muslims have made to society.

As part of the campaign, colorful images of Islamic culture are being projected on to the outer walls of The Globe, the open air Shakespearean theatre on the banks of the River Thames.

The theatre, a replica of an Elizabethan playhouse, will host an Arabic souk and a reading of a rare version of "Othello," Shakespeare's great tragedy about a Moorish nobleman who fights for Christian Venice.

"Shakespeare's plays are not about good versus evil, not about a world in which you are either 'with us or against us,"' said Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, a Muslim scholar who is lecturing on Shakespeare and Islam at The Globe this week.

"Shakespeare refuses to indulge in those cartoon caricatures of right and wrong. His plays are too complex for that."

Yusuf says young British Muslims would do better to heed the subtle words of Shakespeare than the more strident messages sometimes thrown at them by politicians and religious leaders.

"Poets have an immense amount to teach us," he told Reuters in an interview at The Globe. "We listen too much to our social engineers and social scientists and not enough to our poets."

At first glance, Shakespeare would seem an unlikely figurehead for a campaign of religious tolerance.

His voracious money-lender Shylock in "The Merchant of Venice," for example, is often blamed for reinforcing stereotypes of Jews and fueling anti-semitism.

The bard's plays, written in an age of religious strife and long before the advent of political correctness, are packed with characters who display all the mistrust of foreigners one would expect from the average Elizabethan.

Nobel Moor
But Yusuf, an American convert to Islam who heads an Islamic foundation in California, says Shakespeare's depiction of Muslims is not altogether hostile.

Othello is a noble, righteous soldier who leads the Venetian fight against the Muslim Turks before being fatally deceived by the nominally Christian villain Iago.


Images of Mulsim culture are being projected onto the Globe Theatre.
The Prince of Morocco is a dignified suitor to Portia in "The Merchant of Venice" and even Aaron, the wicked moor in "Titus Andronicus," is granted some redeeming features.

Yusuf, who converted to Islam as a teenager, says Protestant Elizabethan England took a relatively benign view of Muslims, seeing them as natural allies in their fight against Roman Catholic Spain.

"It's interesting that the two villains in Othello -- Iago and Roderigo -- have Spanish, not Venetian, names," he says.

"I really think Shakespeare was arguing in that play for an alliance with Morocco against the Spanish."

Whatever Shakespeare's intentions 400 years ago, organizers of this week's events feel his legacy can help improve relations between Muslims and non-Muslims -- relations which have taken a battering due to fallout from the attacks of September 11, 2001.

"Shakespeare is part of our heritage," said Shafeeq Sadiq, national coordinator of Islamic Awareness Week.

"His plays remind us of the global communities that we live in and the need for respect and goodwill