Too much innocent blood has been spilled in the name of Islam. It is time the madness came to an end, writes Aijaz Zaka Syed.
Al-Ahram Weekly (Egypt)
21-27 January 2010
Terrorism, they say, is the weapon of the weak. But in our case it has become the weapon against the weak. The use of suicide is not something invented by Muslims. It's perhaps as old as homicide. Japan's harakiri comes to mind. But perhaps no people have suffered from it, and because of it, as much as Muslims have in recent years.
So what drives a suicide bomber? And what kind of cause, however noble, makes you kill innocent people peacefully going about their day-to-day business — people who haven't harmed anyone and pose no threat to anyone? And how can these faceless men, whatever their motives, ever think they would be forgiven, let alone rewarded, in the next life for their despicable acts against the defenceless?
Is this what Islam really preaches and stands for? If not — as we all know it doesn't — why aren't our religious scholars, leaders and wise men raising a storm and doing more to stop these mad men bent on tarnishing the image of a noble faith and its billion plus followers?
I have struggled with these questions every time innocent people are killed in a terror attack or suicide bombing. And these questions have been troubling me again since the mind-numbing attacks on a Muharram procession in Karachi and a volleyball match in Pakistan's north last week.
The unparalleled scale of the attack on the Ashura procession in Karachi — Pakistan's financial/commercial capital and political nerve centre — has shaken a country that has long been used to daily mayhem of this kind. Nearly 50 people were killed and 500 injured in the Karachi attack. But more than the loss of lives, it is the devastation wreaked on the country's biggest city that day that will haunt Pakistan for a long time to come.
Thousands of businesses, shops and commercial establishments were destroyed in no time, incurring losses worth billions of dollars. And the attack on the heavily attended volleyball match in the troubled Northwest killed 75 villagers, and left scores maimed.
None of those watching the match or attending the Muharram procession had anything to do with the Western wars in Afghanistan-Pakistan or Iraq. They had no sympathy or affiliation whatsoever with the United States and the West. Then why have they been targeted? More importantly, what have the planners and perpetrators of these devastating attacks against unsuspecting bystanders achieved?
But whoever said there is any higher purpose or noble objective behind all this madness? There's no method in the madness. This is an all-consuming monster that does not distinguish between friends and foes. In fact, paradoxical as it may sound, more Muslims than non-Muslims have been killed in macabre attacks carried out in the name of Islam.
As regular readers would know, this humble hack has been doing his bit — for what it's worth — to question, critique and confront the big powers have been playing in the Middle East and Arab/Muslim world for centuries, and has gone to great lengths to point out repeatedly why US and Western policies are to blame for much of the mess you see in the Muslim world today, from Palestine to Pakistan.
I have also religiously underscored the fact that groups like Al-Qaeda have been birthed and fuelled by Western double standards and unjust, callous policies in the Muslim world. And that even in the face of increasing threats from extremist groups and evidence of a clear link between cause and effect, the West has tenaciously refused to address, review and change its fundamental policies in the greater Middle East region. But that's another story altogether.
Western actions cannot be an excuse for the kind of extremist violence that is being visited on Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. Why are innocent people — almost all of them Muslims — being made to pay for Western policies and sins? And how does it help the "cause" of these so-called defenders of Islam when they target innocent Muslims, and non-Muslims for that matter? This death cult is the ultimate injustice and calumny against a faith that celebrates peace, reason, moderation and justice in all spheres. Why, Islam literally means peace!
So what kind of Islam do these lunatics think they believe in when they send young, impressionable 13-year-olds who haven't even experienced what life is to die? The Karachi attack and the terror strike on the volleyball match are only the most recent instances of crimes committed in the name of a great faith. Pakistan's recent history, and that of the Middle East, is replete with such vile and craven crimes against humanity.
Tens of thousands of innocent Muslims — and non-Muslims — have died in this mindless violence targeting bazaars, mosques, schools, hospitals... you name it. True, the self-styled "coalition of the willing" has visited a great deal of horror on Iraq and Afghanistan. But we are not any less injured by nihilists who kill and murder with impunity in our name.
Let's face it: Some of the worst crimes against Muslims have been committed in the name of Islam by people who claim to be our defenders and champions. In fact, they are worse than the West because they pretend to be our friends and allies before they hunt us from within.
If the invaders of Iraq and Afghanistan are not our friends, the folks who live in our midst to kill us from within like a cancer are not our friends either. This is the reality Muslims have to confront, and confront it now, before it's too late. And this is the message we have to send across Muslim lands and around the world.
I do not know how many people, especially Muslims, paid attention to this year's hajj sermon. Addressing the white sea of three million pilgrims from around the world in Mecca, and by extension the larger Muslim world, Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdel-Aziz Al-Sheikh used unusually strong language to draw attention to the issue that has become the bane of the Islamic world.
While Islamic scholars, including those leading prayers at the most sacred mosque on the planet, have been talking about the growing cult of the suicide bomber and warning against extremism, this is the first time anyone has condemned the menace with such force and in such unequivocal terms. Warning Muslims around the world against the extremists, the grand mufti termed the spectre of terror and suicide attacks as "the curse of Muslim lands". He singled out the extremism and the death cult of suicide attacks as the "most serious problem" facing the Muslim community today.
This is the message that has to be taken far and wide with the force and conviction with which it was delivered. This is a matter of life and death, literally. Religious scholars, politicians, intellectuals, the media and ordinary Muslims have to come together, deploying all resources and means at their disposal to free ourselves of this stigma distorting the real, pristine image of Islam before the world.
Too much innocent blood has been spilled and too many innocents have died in the name of our faith. It's time to say enough is enough! Please, not in our name! For God's sake, not in our name!
Aijaz Zaka Syed is opinion editor of Khaleej Times (Dubai, UAE).
Mark says:
The attack in Karachi, Pakistan on an ‘Ashura (Shi’ite holy day) procession was attributed to Tehreek-i-Taliban and Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, two of the most extremist Sunni Salafi (fundamentalist) groups in Pakistan. Their attack on Shi'ites was part of the civil war that is going on in the Islamic world — between extremists and those whom they regard as apostates (non-extremists) and between Sunni extremists and those they regard as infidels (Shi'ites). I'm simplifying here, but I could write an article or a book (many have already done so) on these conflicts.
In any case, members of groups like Tehreek-i-Taliban and Lashkar-i-Jhangvi consider Shi'ites to be worse than Christians and even worse than Jews. In fact, some of their ideological rants claim that Shi'ites are either crypto-Jews or allied with Jews in the "World Jewish Conspiracy" to control the world and destroy Islam. The bottom line is that, unlike Aijaz Zaka Syed (who is originally from India), they do not consider Shi’ites to be Muslims and, therefore, they are prime targets.
With all due respect to Mr. Syed, I have to take issue with his assertion that “Islam literally means peace!” It is true that the root of Islam — S-L-M — is also the same root as the word SaLāM, which means peace in Arabic. However, the word Islām — as a word — literally means “submission or resignation or surrender to the will of God” and one who does so is a muSLiM.
The implication that Islām means peace comes from classical Islamic law, which divided the world into dār al-Islām (the house or abode of Islam) and dār al-harb (the house or abode of war). Dār al-Islām was the part of the world that was under Islamic rule or control. It was assumed as a matter of course by the theologians and jurists that, by definition, anyplace that came under Islamic rule or control would be an “abode of peace,” which is how the implication that Islam “literally means peace” developed. Even a cursory survey of Islamic history demonstrates that peace was more often the exception than the rule.
In classical Islamic law, dār al-harb was, by definition, in a state of ignorance and chaos that must be brought under Islamic control to bring peace. It justified the initial Arab conquests of the Byzantine and Persian empires which, in another context, were nothing more than imperial and colonialist conquests similar to those that had preceded them (see, e.g., the Greeks and Romans) and which succeeded them (see, e.g., the British and the French). It justified conquests of the Arab Muslim kingdoms in Syria, Iraq, Egypt, and North Africa by the Turks (first the Seljuks and then the Ottomans). It justified the Mughal conquest of much of India. And it justified the wars between the Sunni Ottoman Empire and the Shi’ite Safavid and Qajar Empires.
Discussions about dār al-Islām and dār al-harb are an obsession of the Salafists and those who sympathize with some or many of their aims. But, as Mr. Syed implies, it is not of great concern to the majority of Muslims, who have less esoteric concerns and more basic priorities.
It should have been obvious when suicide bombers or “martyrdom operations” started in the early 1980s against Israeli, U.S., and then other Western targets (and which started out as a Shi’ite weapon before it was later adopted by Sunni Muslim extremists) that it would eventually — and inevitably — be turned against fellow Muslims. Of course, those “fellow Muslims” would be regarded as “heretics” or “apostates” or “collaborators” — so they weren’t really “fellow Muslims.” It’s a problem when theology is turned into ideology.
Finally — just so you don’t forget — my point in posting this article was to bring to my readers’ attention an example of a Muslim naysayer — and not an obscure one — to the violence that is going on in the Muslim world, and the growing realization — as exemplified by the Grand Mufti of Mecca's hajj sermon, that the djinn (genie) must be put back in the bottle before it destroys the Muslim world. There is a great danger when we generalize — that includes what I have written here.
Showing posts with label Salafists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Salafists. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Saturday, August 29, 2009
The Islamic Republic of Gaza (and my comments)
How can the project to liberate Palestine be saved from collapse, asks Galal Nassar
Al-Ahram Weekly (Egypt)
27 August - 2 September 2009
The culture of exclusion and narrow mindedness, of the claim to a monopoly on the absolute truth, branding those who beg to differ as traitors and heretics, breeds fanatics, militias, sectarian violence and groups that clamour to proclaim entities like an "Islamic Republic of Gaza" over which they have an exclusive right to rule. Such a mode of behaviour proliferates like a particularly virulent weed in times of political decay and military defeat, especially in areas gripped by poverty, unemployment, weakness and frustration, as is the case in Gaza.
The situation in Gaza is further aggravated by an economic stranglehold as well as by an authority that fosters, protects and uses such movements to terrorise the people, intimidate opponents and purge political adversaries. Not infrequently, outside powers and forces have fostered such trends and groups, only to discover that the magic formula they used against others has turned against them. The most notorious example of this phenomenon is the Taliban, bred and fed by the US to fight the Russians in Afghanistan. Then they were termed freedom fighters, later becoming the "terrorist" scourge that provided the grounds for the US invasion. Al-Qaeda took root in a similar manner and for the same purpose. The horrors it subsequently perpetrated provided the US and other Western powers with an excuse to brand the Palestinian liberation struggle and other national resistance movements as terrorism and thus negate the universally sanctioned right to resist occupation and oppression. Yet a further example of the cynical use of terrorism unfolded in Lebanon following crimes committed by the Fatah Islam militia. The militia members took flight and hid out in the Nahr Al-Bared refugee camp, giving Lebanese authorities the excuse to invade the camp, destroy it and drive out its inhabitants. These people, whose camp has yet to be reconstructed, are yet another tragic example of how civilians pay the price for organised violence.
The militant Islamist group Jund Ansar Allah emerged in Gaza against the backdrop of both Israel's stranglehold on the Strip and under a brutish ruling authority. After having opted for military force as the means to settle Palestinian differences and seize control of Gaza, Hamas evidently succumbed to the lustre and allure of power. Its subsequent actions, from suppressing other Islamist and political forces on the pretext that their independent political activities or expressions of resistance conflict with the interests of the Palestinian people, their violations of civil rights and individual freedoms, and their oppressive laws and regulations, proclaim their determination to impose their own beliefs on others. Nothing speaks louder of this intent than their edicts compelling women lawyers to cover their heads, making the galabiya the school uniform for girls, and decreeing similar dress codes for female mannequins. More insidious are the interventions in people's private affairs by the morals police. Hamas has an endless store of excuses for its random arrests. It has rounded up and incarcerated most Fatah members in Gaza, just as the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah has rounded up Hamas members in the West Bank. Both groups seem bent on undermining the Palestinian national project, pursuing factional interests that have nothing whatsoever to do with the welfare of the Palestinian people and that only serve the American and Israeli regional projects.
Hamas wants to turn Gaza into an Islamic emirate. Towards this end it has issued a series of laws and edicts that accomplish two general aims: they force its vision and beliefs on others, and in so doing ensure that Hamas has a monopoly on truth and on what is in the best interests of the Palestinian people. Ironically, last week Hamas turned its wrath on Jund Ansar Allah, a group with its hearts set on the same goal. Justifying its assault against the rival Islamist militia, Hamas maintained that its members once belonged to the former, Fatah-controlled security agency in Gaza. The pretext is particularly curious given that some Jund Ansar Allah members were closely connected to Hamas and, indeed, carried out many acts of murder and destruction on behalf of, or at least with the cognizance of, Hamas's security agencies.
Force is no way to handle internal relations. It breeds greater extremism and spurs fragmentation. Hamas, with its ideological absolutism and political exclusionism, with the witch hunts and repressive tactics it has used to establish its monopoly on authority, has already served as the catalyst for the proliferation of ever more virulent clones. These can serve only one purpose — to hand the Palestinians' enemies the gift of being able to brand their struggle as "terrorist" and to hand Israel an excuse for perpetuating its occupation, the blockade and other injustices.
Suppressing civil liberties and individual freedoms and disseminating a culture of suspicion, combining this with inquisitorial methods, is a recipe for disaster. The only way out of the current impasse is to guarantee civil liberties and individual rights and institutionalise political plurality. If Hamas wants to market itself abroad as a centrist movement and establish non-extremist credentials the last thing it should be doing is engage in shootouts and pitched battles, precipitating a downward slide into security breakdown. The effect of all this is to perpetuate and aggravate divisions and set people at each other's throats over control of a governing authority that exercises no real power.
It is hard to contemplate what will happen should the Palestinian situation continue in its current, repugnant direction. As if the Palestinians have not suffered enough already from political rifts and infighting, now they face a one-upmanship in fanaticism that will spawn a plethora of preachers and sermonisers, self-proclaimed caliphs and emirs, transforming Palestine into a hotbed of bigotry and religious quackery that violates the most essential tenets of Islam. Nothing could be of greater help to the agendas of forces antagonistic to Palestinian and Arab national causes, especially in this era of mounting hostility towards Islam and Muslim peoples. How could terrorism cloaked as jihad or national liberation conceivably promote a cause for which someone is willing to blow himself up at a wedding, a funeral, a house of worship, or a restaurant, taking dozens of innocent lives along with him? What possible moral points are scored by indiscriminate and senseless killing? Such mindless, gratuitous violence undermines the legitimacy of national struggle and makes a mockery of the right to resist occupation.
If Hamas is to avert the alarming prospects described above it must undertake a comprehensive revision of its practices and policies with regard to the Palestinian national cause and social affairs. The Palestinians still live under occupation. What should be foremost in everyone's mind is to do what it takes to end division, mend rifts and unify behind a common strategy in order to safeguard the project of national liberation from collapse.
Mark says:
It should have been obvious that when suicide bombings started becoming a popular form of resistance in the Arab and Muslim worlds against Western targets in the 1980s that at some point it would be turned inward against Arab and Muslim targets. The justification by those who used suicide bombers against non-Arabs and non-Muslims, and especially against Israelis and Jews, inevitably became the same justification used against fellow Arabs and Muslims: they followed or supported or imposed policies or ideologies or religious beliefs that were "heretical" or "blasphemous" and "went against God and his prophet."
Likewise, when politics is fought out in the realm of religion, your opponents become not merely opponents or people with whom you differ, but heretics and blasphemers and unbelievers and rebels against God who must be killed and destroyed lest God punish you for "allowing" them to corrupt the world. Your opponents who call themselves Muslims are even more dangerous than the United States and Israel who, by the way, use these heretics and unbelievers through unnumbered dark and tangled conspiracies to undermine the "true faith," because they might lead the unknowing and naive into similar heresies and blasphemies.
And thus it has come to pass.
And thus hundreds of thousands of Arabs and Muslims (the two are not synonymous) have been killed by fellow Arabs and Muslims over the past 25 years. The efforts of the United States and Israel to kill Arabs and Muslims seem pitiful and amateurish by comparison although, of course, the conspiracy mongers will claim that the inter-Arab and inter-Muslim violence and murder is all the result of Western and Zionist conspiracies.
So, Galal Nassar should have seen it coming long before. Instead, only now does he ask:
And wait — Galal Nassar will soon be denounced by those who are "pure of heart" for they know what is right and true. They will declaim that Galal Nassar has strayed from the true path — or they will declaim that Galal Nassar's past support of national liberation movements and resistance to Western imperialism and colonialism and Zionism was just a cover and that he was really an agent of Western imperialism and colonialism and Zionism. Or they will declaim that he was both — he strayed and he was a foreign agent.
In any case, he is clearly guilty of "thought crimes." And the penalty is...?
Al-Ahram Weekly (Egypt)
27 August - 2 September 2009
The culture of exclusion and narrow mindedness, of the claim to a monopoly on the absolute truth, branding those who beg to differ as traitors and heretics, breeds fanatics, militias, sectarian violence and groups that clamour to proclaim entities like an "Islamic Republic of Gaza" over which they have an exclusive right to rule. Such a mode of behaviour proliferates like a particularly virulent weed in times of political decay and military defeat, especially in areas gripped by poverty, unemployment, weakness and frustration, as is the case in Gaza.
The situation in Gaza is further aggravated by an economic stranglehold as well as by an authority that fosters, protects and uses such movements to terrorise the people, intimidate opponents and purge political adversaries. Not infrequently, outside powers and forces have fostered such trends and groups, only to discover that the magic formula they used against others has turned against them. The most notorious example of this phenomenon is the Taliban, bred and fed by the US to fight the Russians in Afghanistan. Then they were termed freedom fighters, later becoming the "terrorist" scourge that provided the grounds for the US invasion. Al-Qaeda took root in a similar manner and for the same purpose. The horrors it subsequently perpetrated provided the US and other Western powers with an excuse to brand the Palestinian liberation struggle and other national resistance movements as terrorism and thus negate the universally sanctioned right to resist occupation and oppression. Yet a further example of the cynical use of terrorism unfolded in Lebanon following crimes committed by the Fatah Islam militia. The militia members took flight and hid out in the Nahr Al-Bared refugee camp, giving Lebanese authorities the excuse to invade the camp, destroy it and drive out its inhabitants. These people, whose camp has yet to be reconstructed, are yet another tragic example of how civilians pay the price for organised violence.
The militant Islamist group Jund Ansar Allah emerged in Gaza against the backdrop of both Israel's stranglehold on the Strip and under a brutish ruling authority. After having opted for military force as the means to settle Palestinian differences and seize control of Gaza, Hamas evidently succumbed to the lustre and allure of power. Its subsequent actions, from suppressing other Islamist and political forces on the pretext that their independent political activities or expressions of resistance conflict with the interests of the Palestinian people, their violations of civil rights and individual freedoms, and their oppressive laws and regulations, proclaim their determination to impose their own beliefs on others. Nothing speaks louder of this intent than their edicts compelling women lawyers to cover their heads, making the galabiya the school uniform for girls, and decreeing similar dress codes for female mannequins. More insidious are the interventions in people's private affairs by the morals police. Hamas has an endless store of excuses for its random arrests. It has rounded up and incarcerated most Fatah members in Gaza, just as the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah has rounded up Hamas members in the West Bank. Both groups seem bent on undermining the Palestinian national project, pursuing factional interests that have nothing whatsoever to do with the welfare of the Palestinian people and that only serve the American and Israeli regional projects.
Hamas wants to turn Gaza into an Islamic emirate. Towards this end it has issued a series of laws and edicts that accomplish two general aims: they force its vision and beliefs on others, and in so doing ensure that Hamas has a monopoly on truth and on what is in the best interests of the Palestinian people. Ironically, last week Hamas turned its wrath on Jund Ansar Allah, a group with its hearts set on the same goal. Justifying its assault against the rival Islamist militia, Hamas maintained that its members once belonged to the former, Fatah-controlled security agency in Gaza. The pretext is particularly curious given that some Jund Ansar Allah members were closely connected to Hamas and, indeed, carried out many acts of murder and destruction on behalf of, or at least with the cognizance of, Hamas's security agencies.
Force is no way to handle internal relations. It breeds greater extremism and spurs fragmentation. Hamas, with its ideological absolutism and political exclusionism, with the witch hunts and repressive tactics it has used to establish its monopoly on authority, has already served as the catalyst for the proliferation of ever more virulent clones. These can serve only one purpose — to hand the Palestinians' enemies the gift of being able to brand their struggle as "terrorist" and to hand Israel an excuse for perpetuating its occupation, the blockade and other injustices.
Suppressing civil liberties and individual freedoms and disseminating a culture of suspicion, combining this with inquisitorial methods, is a recipe for disaster. The only way out of the current impasse is to guarantee civil liberties and individual rights and institutionalise political plurality. If Hamas wants to market itself abroad as a centrist movement and establish non-extremist credentials the last thing it should be doing is engage in shootouts and pitched battles, precipitating a downward slide into security breakdown. The effect of all this is to perpetuate and aggravate divisions and set people at each other's throats over control of a governing authority that exercises no real power.
It is hard to contemplate what will happen should the Palestinian situation continue in its current, repugnant direction. As if the Palestinians have not suffered enough already from political rifts and infighting, now they face a one-upmanship in fanaticism that will spawn a plethora of preachers and sermonisers, self-proclaimed caliphs and emirs, transforming Palestine into a hotbed of bigotry and religious quackery that violates the most essential tenets of Islam. Nothing could be of greater help to the agendas of forces antagonistic to Palestinian and Arab national causes, especially in this era of mounting hostility towards Islam and Muslim peoples. How could terrorism cloaked as jihad or national liberation conceivably promote a cause for which someone is willing to blow himself up at a wedding, a funeral, a house of worship, or a restaurant, taking dozens of innocent lives along with him? What possible moral points are scored by indiscriminate and senseless killing? Such mindless, gratuitous violence undermines the legitimacy of national struggle and makes a mockery of the right to resist occupation.
If Hamas is to avert the alarming prospects described above it must undertake a comprehensive revision of its practices and policies with regard to the Palestinian national cause and social affairs. The Palestinians still live under occupation. What should be foremost in everyone's mind is to do what it takes to end division, mend rifts and unify behind a common strategy in order to safeguard the project of national liberation from collapse.
Mark says:
It should have been obvious that when suicide bombings started becoming a popular form of resistance in the Arab and Muslim worlds against Western targets in the 1980s that at some point it would be turned inward against Arab and Muslim targets. The justification by those who used suicide bombers against non-Arabs and non-Muslims, and especially against Israelis and Jews, inevitably became the same justification used against fellow Arabs and Muslims: they followed or supported or imposed policies or ideologies or religious beliefs that were "heretical" or "blasphemous" and "went against God and his prophet."
Likewise, when politics is fought out in the realm of religion, your opponents become not merely opponents or people with whom you differ, but heretics and blasphemers and unbelievers and rebels against God who must be killed and destroyed lest God punish you for "allowing" them to corrupt the world. Your opponents who call themselves Muslims are even more dangerous than the United States and Israel who, by the way, use these heretics and unbelievers through unnumbered dark and tangled conspiracies to undermine the "true faith," because they might lead the unknowing and naive into similar heresies and blasphemies.
And thus it has come to pass.
And thus hundreds of thousands of Arabs and Muslims (the two are not synonymous) have been killed by fellow Arabs and Muslims over the past 25 years. The efforts of the United States and Israel to kill Arabs and Muslims seem pitiful and amateurish by comparison although, of course, the conspiracy mongers will claim that the inter-Arab and inter-Muslim violence and murder is all the result of Western and Zionist conspiracies.
So, Galal Nassar should have seen it coming long before. Instead, only now does he ask:
How could terrorism cloaked as jihad or national
liberation conceivably promote a cause for which someone is willing to blow
himself up at a wedding, a funeral, a house of worship, or a restaurant, taking
dozens of innocent lives along with him? What possible moral points are scored
by indiscriminate and senseless killing? Such mindless, gratuitous violence
undermines the legitimacy of national struggle and makes a mockery of the right
to resist occupation.
And wait — Galal Nassar will soon be denounced by those who are "pure of heart" for they know what is right and true. They will declaim that Galal Nassar has strayed from the true path — or they will declaim that Galal Nassar's past support of national liberation movements and resistance to Western imperialism and colonialism and Zionism was just a cover and that he was really an agent of Western imperialism and colonialism and Zionism. Or they will declaim that he was both — he strayed and he was a foreign agent.
In any case, he is clearly guilty of "thought crimes." And the penalty is...?
Saturday, August 22, 2009
The Trouble With Islam
Sadly, mainstream Muslim teaching accepts and promotes violence.
By Tawfik Hamid
The Wall Street Journal
April 3, 2007
Not many years ago the brilliant Orientalist, Bernard Lewis, published a short history of the Islamic world's decline, entitled "What Went Wrong?" Astonishingly, there was, among many Western "progressives," a vocal dislike for the title. It is a false premise, these critics protested. They ignored Mr. Lewis's implicit statement that things have been, or could be, right.
But indeed, there is much that is clearly wrong with the Islamic world. Women are stoned to death and undergo clitorectomies. Gays hang from the gallows under the approving eyes of the proponents of Shariah, the legal code of Islam. Sunni and Shia massacre each other daily in Iraq. Palestinian mothers teach 3-year-old boys and girls the ideal of martyrdom. One would expect the orthodox Islamic establishment to evade or dismiss these complaints, but less happily, the non-Muslim priests of enlightenment in the West have come, actively and passively, to the Islamists' defense.
These "progressives" frequently cite the need to examine "root causes." In this they are correct: Terrorism is only the manifestation of a disease and not the disease itself. But the root-causes are quite different from what they think. As a former member of Jemaah Islamiya, a group led by al Qaeda's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, I know firsthand that the inhumane teaching in Islamist ideology can transform a young, benevolent mind into that of a terrorist. Without confronting the ideological roots of radical Islam it will be impossible to combat it. While there are many ideological "rootlets" of Islamism, the main tap root has a name — Salafism, or Salafi Islam, a violent, ultra-conservative version of the religion.
It is vital to grasp that traditional and even mainstream Islamic teaching accepts and promotes violence. Shariah, for example, allows apostates to be killed, permits beating women to discipline them, seeks to subjugate non-Muslims to Islam as dhimmis and justifies declaring war to do so. It exhorts good Muslims to exterminate the Jews before the "end of days." The near deafening silence of the Muslim majority against these barbaric practices is evidence enough that there is something fundamentally wrong.
The grave predicament we face in the Islamic world is the virtual lack of approved, theologically rigorous interpretations of Islam that clearly challenge the abusive aspects of Shariah. Unlike Salafism, more liberal branches of Islam, such as Sufism, typically do not provide the essential theological base to nullify the cruel proclamations of their Salafist counterparts. And so, for more than 20 years I have been developing and working to establish a theologically-rigorous Islam that teaches peace.
Yet it is ironic and discouraging that many non-Muslim, Western intellectuals — who unceasingly claim to support human rights — have become obstacles to reforming Islam. Political correctness among Westerners obstructs unambiguous criticism of Shariah's inhumanity. They find socioeconomic or political excuses for Islamist terrorism such as poverty, colonialism, discrimination or the existence of Israel. What incentive is there for Muslims to demand reform when Western "progressives" pave the way for Islamist barbarity? Indeed, if the problem is not one of religious beliefs, it leaves one to wonder why Christians who live among Muslims under identical circumstances refrain from contributing to wide-scale, systematic campaigns of terror.
Politicians and scholars in the West have taken up the chant that Islamic extremism is caused by the Arab-Israeli conflict. This analysis cannot convince any rational person that the Islamist murder of over 150,000 innocent people in Algeria — which happened in the last few decades — or their slaying of hundreds of Buddhists in Thailand, or the brutal violence between Sunni and Shia in Iraq could have anything to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Western feminists duly fight in their home countries for equal pay and opportunity, but seemingly ignore, under a façade of cultural relativism, that large numbers of women in the Islamic world live under threat of beating, execution and genital mutilation, or cannot vote, drive cars and dress as they please.
The tendency of many Westerners to restrict themselves to self-criticism further obstructs reformation in Islam. Americans demonstrate against the war in Iraq, yet decline to demonstrate against the terrorists who kidnap innocent people and behead them. Similarly, after the Madrid train bombings, millions of Spanish citizens demonstrated against their separatist organization, ETA. But once the demonstrators realized that Muslims were behind the terror attacks they suspended the demonstrations. This example sent a message to radical Islamists to continue their violent methods.
Western appeasement of their Muslim communities has exacerbated the problem. During the four-month period after the publication of the Muhammad cartoons in a Danish magazine, there were comparatively few violent demonstrations by Muslims. Within a few days of the Danish magazine's formal apology, riots erupted throughout the world. The apology had been perceived by Islamists as weakness and concession.
Worst of all, perhaps, is the anti-Americanism among many Westerners. It is a resentment so strong, so deep-seated, so rooted in personal identity, that it has led many, consciously or unconsciously, to morally support America's enemies.
Progressives need to realize that radical Islam is based on an antiliberal system. They need to awaken to the inhumane policies and practices of Islamists around the world. They need to realize that Islamism spells the death of liberal values. And they must not take for granted the respect for human rights and dignity that we experience in America, and indeed, the West, today.
Well-meaning interfaith dialogues with Muslims have largely been fruitless. Participants must demand — but so far haven't — that Muslim organizations and scholars specifically and unambiguously denounce violent Salafi components in their mosques and in the media. Muslims who do not vocally oppose brutal Shariah decrees should not be considered "moderates."
All of this makes the efforts of Muslim reformers more difficult. When Westerners make politically-correct excuses for Islamism, it actually endangers the lives of reformers and in many cases has the effect of suppressing their voices.
Tolerance does not mean toleration of atrocities under the umbrella of relativism. It is time for all of us in the free world to face the reality of Salafi Islam or the reality of radical Islam will continue to face us.
Dr. Hamid, a onetime member of Jemaah Islamiya, an Islamist terrorist group, is a medical doctor and Muslim reformer living in the West.
By Tawfik Hamid
The Wall Street Journal
April 3, 2007
Not many years ago the brilliant Orientalist, Bernard Lewis, published a short history of the Islamic world's decline, entitled "What Went Wrong?" Astonishingly, there was, among many Western "progressives," a vocal dislike for the title. It is a false premise, these critics protested. They ignored Mr. Lewis's implicit statement that things have been, or could be, right.
But indeed, there is much that is clearly wrong with the Islamic world. Women are stoned to death and undergo clitorectomies. Gays hang from the gallows under the approving eyes of the proponents of Shariah, the legal code of Islam. Sunni and Shia massacre each other daily in Iraq. Palestinian mothers teach 3-year-old boys and girls the ideal of martyrdom. One would expect the orthodox Islamic establishment to evade or dismiss these complaints, but less happily, the non-Muslim priests of enlightenment in the West have come, actively and passively, to the Islamists' defense.
These "progressives" frequently cite the need to examine "root causes." In this they are correct: Terrorism is only the manifestation of a disease and not the disease itself. But the root-causes are quite different from what they think. As a former member of Jemaah Islamiya, a group led by al Qaeda's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, I know firsthand that the inhumane teaching in Islamist ideology can transform a young, benevolent mind into that of a terrorist. Without confronting the ideological roots of radical Islam it will be impossible to combat it. While there are many ideological "rootlets" of Islamism, the main tap root has a name — Salafism, or Salafi Islam, a violent, ultra-conservative version of the religion.
It is vital to grasp that traditional and even mainstream Islamic teaching accepts and promotes violence. Shariah, for example, allows apostates to be killed, permits beating women to discipline them, seeks to subjugate non-Muslims to Islam as dhimmis and justifies declaring war to do so. It exhorts good Muslims to exterminate the Jews before the "end of days." The near deafening silence of the Muslim majority against these barbaric practices is evidence enough that there is something fundamentally wrong.
The grave predicament we face in the Islamic world is the virtual lack of approved, theologically rigorous interpretations of Islam that clearly challenge the abusive aspects of Shariah. Unlike Salafism, more liberal branches of Islam, such as Sufism, typically do not provide the essential theological base to nullify the cruel proclamations of their Salafist counterparts. And so, for more than 20 years I have been developing and working to establish a theologically-rigorous Islam that teaches peace.
Yet it is ironic and discouraging that many non-Muslim, Western intellectuals — who unceasingly claim to support human rights — have become obstacles to reforming Islam. Political correctness among Westerners obstructs unambiguous criticism of Shariah's inhumanity. They find socioeconomic or political excuses for Islamist terrorism such as poverty, colonialism, discrimination or the existence of Israel. What incentive is there for Muslims to demand reform when Western "progressives" pave the way for Islamist barbarity? Indeed, if the problem is not one of religious beliefs, it leaves one to wonder why Christians who live among Muslims under identical circumstances refrain from contributing to wide-scale, systematic campaigns of terror.
Politicians and scholars in the West have taken up the chant that Islamic extremism is caused by the Arab-Israeli conflict. This analysis cannot convince any rational person that the Islamist murder of over 150,000 innocent people in Algeria — which happened in the last few decades — or their slaying of hundreds of Buddhists in Thailand, or the brutal violence between Sunni and Shia in Iraq could have anything to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Western feminists duly fight in their home countries for equal pay and opportunity, but seemingly ignore, under a façade of cultural relativism, that large numbers of women in the Islamic world live under threat of beating, execution and genital mutilation, or cannot vote, drive cars and dress as they please.
The tendency of many Westerners to restrict themselves to self-criticism further obstructs reformation in Islam. Americans demonstrate against the war in Iraq, yet decline to demonstrate against the terrorists who kidnap innocent people and behead them. Similarly, after the Madrid train bombings, millions of Spanish citizens demonstrated against their separatist organization, ETA. But once the demonstrators realized that Muslims were behind the terror attacks they suspended the demonstrations. This example sent a message to radical Islamists to continue their violent methods.
Western appeasement of their Muslim communities has exacerbated the problem. During the four-month period after the publication of the Muhammad cartoons in a Danish magazine, there were comparatively few violent demonstrations by Muslims. Within a few days of the Danish magazine's formal apology, riots erupted throughout the world. The apology had been perceived by Islamists as weakness and concession.
Worst of all, perhaps, is the anti-Americanism among many Westerners. It is a resentment so strong, so deep-seated, so rooted in personal identity, that it has led many, consciously or unconsciously, to morally support America's enemies.
Progressives need to realize that radical Islam is based on an antiliberal system. They need to awaken to the inhumane policies and practices of Islamists around the world. They need to realize that Islamism spells the death of liberal values. And they must not take for granted the respect for human rights and dignity that we experience in America, and indeed, the West, today.
Well-meaning interfaith dialogues with Muslims have largely been fruitless. Participants must demand — but so far haven't — that Muslim organizations and scholars specifically and unambiguously denounce violent Salafi components in their mosques and in the media. Muslims who do not vocally oppose brutal Shariah decrees should not be considered "moderates."
All of this makes the efforts of Muslim reformers more difficult. When Westerners make politically-correct excuses for Islamism, it actually endangers the lives of reformers and in many cases has the effect of suppressing their voices.
Tolerance does not mean toleration of atrocities under the umbrella of relativism. It is time for all of us in the free world to face the reality of Salafi Islam or the reality of radical Islam will continue to face us.
Dr. Hamid, a onetime member of Jemaah Islamiya, an Islamist terrorist group, is a medical doctor and Muslim reformer living in the West.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Into the Abyss
By Hussein Shobokshi
Arab News (Saudi Arabia)
August 20, 2009
As if the Palestinians needed a new chapter to be added to their sad story! It seems, however, that the road is still full of sadness, shocks, and unpleasant surprises. How else can one explain the harsh bloody clashes between the "government" of the Hamas organization in the Gaza Strip and the new "alien" faction called Jund Ansar Allah? These clashes led to the killing of scores of people, including Dr. Abdul Latif Al Mousa, the obscure and controversial leader of this faction who is also known by his code name of Abu Noor al-Maqdisi.
The clashes erupted after the man [Abdul Latif Al Mousa] proclaimed the establishment of an "Islamic Emirate" in the Gaza Strip in an extremely radical style reminiscent of the same violent tone of the factions fighting the government in Algeria, the same tone used by the Taliban, and the same tone used by the Al-Qaeda organization. They use the same words, the same tone, and the same style and are all photocopies of the same harsh pseudo-ideologies that refuse to co-exist with anyone. The truth is that the chaotic style and odd narcissism adopted by these groups is no longer bizarre. One wakes up from his sleep, loudly proclaims himself the leader of the Ummah [Community of Islam], and asks for allegiance and blind obedience as did Abu Noor al-Maqdisi. The destruction, devastation, discord, and division that follow are not important! It is an ignorant and selfish style always paid for by the innocents. Nevertheless, it is a scene that is repeated in different forms and shapes in various parts of the world. The only losers are the Muslims that continue to constitute a silent majority. This silent majority needs to take firmer and stronger stands in confronting the "ideas" of these groups and in banning the publication and circulation of "heritage" books that are loaded with these ideas and that continue to be glorified as the mothers of all sources and the springs of thought.
Hamas created an extremist environment in the Gaza Strip and nurtured it with dictatorial management. It was natural for such an experiment to produce one that is even more radical and excessive in its practices. The result was this "provisional" Jund Ansar Allah that seems not to have been crushed completely. Fresh statements by "new" leaders were issued promising revenge and more "jihad". Only a few hours after the news that al-Maqdisi had been liquidated, a fresh group of the same "type" emerged also in Gaza calling itself "Suyuf al-Haq" [Swords of Justice] threatening Hamas to target its leaders and security centers. The Palestinians are presenting Israel with the biggest service in history. They are liquidating one another systematically and consistently without mercy. All the shame and criticism leveled against Israel about its ability to produce fundamentalist extremism can now also be leveled at the Palestinians themselves. The code names of armed organizations that hide behind religious epithets such as "Swords of Justice", "Jund Ansar Allah", and others are all plans for political destruction. A firm stand should be taken against such groups because their ideologies can only lead to plunging into one abyss after another.
Arab News (Saudi Arabia)
August 20, 2009
As if the Palestinians needed a new chapter to be added to their sad story! It seems, however, that the road is still full of sadness, shocks, and unpleasant surprises. How else can one explain the harsh bloody clashes between the "government" of the Hamas organization in the Gaza Strip and the new "alien" faction called Jund Ansar Allah? These clashes led to the killing of scores of people, including Dr. Abdul Latif Al Mousa, the obscure and controversial leader of this faction who is also known by his code name of Abu Noor al-Maqdisi.
The clashes erupted after the man [Abdul Latif Al Mousa] proclaimed the establishment of an "Islamic Emirate" in the Gaza Strip in an extremely radical style reminiscent of the same violent tone of the factions fighting the government in Algeria, the same tone used by the Taliban, and the same tone used by the Al-Qaeda organization. They use the same words, the same tone, and the same style and are all photocopies of the same harsh pseudo-ideologies that refuse to co-exist with anyone. The truth is that the chaotic style and odd narcissism adopted by these groups is no longer bizarre. One wakes up from his sleep, loudly proclaims himself the leader of the Ummah [Community of Islam], and asks for allegiance and blind obedience as did Abu Noor al-Maqdisi. The destruction, devastation, discord, and division that follow are not important! It is an ignorant and selfish style always paid for by the innocents. Nevertheless, it is a scene that is repeated in different forms and shapes in various parts of the world. The only losers are the Muslims that continue to constitute a silent majority. This silent majority needs to take firmer and stronger stands in confronting the "ideas" of these groups and in banning the publication and circulation of "heritage" books that are loaded with these ideas and that continue to be glorified as the mothers of all sources and the springs of thought.
Hamas created an extremist environment in the Gaza Strip and nurtured it with dictatorial management. It was natural for such an experiment to produce one that is even more radical and excessive in its practices. The result was this "provisional" Jund Ansar Allah that seems not to have been crushed completely. Fresh statements by "new" leaders were issued promising revenge and more "jihad". Only a few hours after the news that al-Maqdisi had been liquidated, a fresh group of the same "type" emerged also in Gaza calling itself "Suyuf al-Haq" [Swords of Justice] threatening Hamas to target its leaders and security centers. The Palestinians are presenting Israel with the biggest service in history. They are liquidating one another systematically and consistently without mercy. All the shame and criticism leveled against Israel about its ability to produce fundamentalist extremism can now also be leveled at the Palestinians themselves. The code names of armed organizations that hide behind religious epithets such as "Swords of Justice", "Jund Ansar Allah", and others are all plans for political destruction. A firm stand should be taken against such groups because their ideologies can only lead to plunging into one abyss after another.
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