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Recapturing
Islam From the Terrorists © by Abdal-Hakim Murad
As New York turns its gap-toothed face
to the sky, wondering if the worst is yet to come, Muslims, largely
unheeded by the wider world, are counting the cost of the suicide
bombings. The backlash against mosques and hijabs has been met by
statements from Muslim communities around the globe, some stilted, but
others which have clearly found an articulate and passionate voice for the
first time. In comparison with the pathetic near-silence that hovered
around mosques and major organisations during the Rushdie and Gulf War
debacles, the communities now seem alert to their cultural situation and
its potential precariousness. Many of the condemnations have been more
impressive than those of the American President, who seems unable to rise
above clichés.
The motives are twofold. Firstly, and
most patently, Sunni Muslims have been brought up in a universe of faith
that renders the taking of innocent lives unimaginable. By condemning the
attacks, we know that we defend the indispensable essence of Islam.
Secondly, Muslims as well as others have died in large numbers. The Friday
Prayers in the World Trade Centre always attracted more than 1,500
worshippers from the office community, many of whom have now surely died.
The tourists, who spent their last moments choking on the observation
deck, waiting for the helicopters that never came, no doubt included many
Muslim parents and their children.
But the Western powers and their fearful
Muslim minorities, both battered so grievously by recent events, now need
to think beyond press-releases and ritual cursings. We need to recognise,
firstly, that there has been a steady 'mission-creep' in terrorist attacks
over the past twenty years. Hijackings for ransom money gave way to parcel
bombs, then to suicide bombs, and now to kiloton-range urban mayhem. It is
not at all clear that this escalation will be terminated by further
anti-terrorist legislation, further billions for the FBI, or retina scans
at Terminal Three. America’s tendency to assume that money can buy or
destroy any possible obstacle to its will now stands under a dark shadow.
Far from being a climax and the catalyst for a hi-tech military solution,
the attacks may be of more historical significance as an announcement to
the militant subculture that a Star-Wars superpower is utterly vulnerable
to a handful of lightly-armed young men. There could well be more and
worse to come.
Sobered by this, the State Department is
likely to come under pressure from business interests to ask the question
it never seems to notice. Why is there so much hatred of the United
States, and so much yearning to poke it in the eye? Are the architects of
policy sane in their certainty that America can enrage large numbers of
people, but contain that rage forever through satellite technology and
intrepid double-agents? Businessmen and bankers will now start to read
carefully enough to discern that it is not US national interest, but the
power of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, that tends to drive
Washington’s policy in the world’s greatest troublespot. Threatened
with disaster, corporate America may just prove powerful enough to face
AIPAC down, and suggest, firmly, that the next time Israel asks Washington
to veto the UN’s desire to send observers to Hebron, it pauses to
consider where its own interests might lie.
Among Muslims, the longer-term aftershock
will surely take the form of a crisis among ‘moderate Wahhabis’. Even
if a Middle-Eastern connection is somehow disproved, they cannot deny
forever that doctrinal extremism can lead to political extremism. They
must realise that it is traditional Islam, the only possible alternative
to their position, which owns rich resources for the respectful
acknowledgement of difference within itself, and with unbelievers. The
lava-stream that flows from Ibn Taymiyya, whose fierce xenophobia mirrored
his sense of the imminent Mongol threat to Islam, has a habit of closing
minds and hardening hearts. It is true that not every committed Wahhabi is
willing to kill civilians to make a political point. However it is also
true that no orthodox Sunni has ever been willing to do so. One of the
unseen, unsung triumphs of true Islam in the modern world is its complete
freedom from any terroristic involvement. Maliki ulama do not become
suicide-bombers. No-one has ever heard of Sufi terrorism. Everyone,
enemies included, knows that the very idea is absurd.
Two years ago, Shaykh Hisham Kabbani of
the Islamic Supreme Council of America, warned of the dangers of mass
terrorism to American cities; and he was brushed aside as a dangerous
alarmist. Muslim organisations are no doubt beginning to regret their
treatment of him. The movement for traditional Islam will, we hope, become
enormously strengthened in the aftermath of the recent events, accompanied
by a mass exodus from Wahhabism, leaving behind only a merciless hardcore
of well-financed zealots. Those who have tried to take over the controls
of Islam, after reading books from we-know-where, will have to relinquish
them, because we now know their destination.
When that happens, or perhaps even
sooner, mainstream Islam will be able to make the loud declaration in
public that it already feels in its heart: that terrorists are not
Muslims. Targeting civilians is a negation of every possible school of
Sunni Islam. Suicide bombing is so foreign to the Quranic ethos that the
Prophet Samson is entirely absent from our scriptures. Islam is a great
world religion that has produced much of the world’s most sensitive art,
architecture and literature, and has a rich life of ethics, missionary
work, and spirituality. Such are the real, and historically-successful,
weapons of Islam, because they are the instruments that make friends of
our neighbours, instead of enemies fit for burning alive. Those that
refuse them, out of cultural impotence or impatience, will in the longer
term be perceived as so radical in their denial of what is necessarily
known to be part of Islam, that the authorities of the religion are likely
to declare them to be beyond its reach. If that takes place, then future
catastrophes by Wahhabi ultras will have little impact on the image of
communities, whose spokesmen can simply say that Muslims were not
implicated. This is the approach taken by Christian churches when
confronted by, say, the Reverend Jim Jones’s suicide cult, or the Branch
Davidians at Waco. Only a radical amputation of this kind will save
Islam’s name, and the physical safety of Muslims, particularly women, as
they live and work in Western cities.
To conclude: there is much despair, but
there are also grounds for hope. The controls of two great vehicles, the
State Department, and Islam, need to be reclaimed in the name of sanity
and humanity. It is always hard to accept that good might come out of
evil; but perhaps only a catastrophe on this scale, so desolating, and so
seemingly hopeless, could provide the motive and the space for such a
reclamation.
Addendum
Although the response from Muslims in the
UK seems to have been very favourable to my essay, with one or two
requests that it be sent to national newspapers for reprinting on their
pages, it is inevitable that under pressure from real or potential rioters
and cross-burners, some Muslims consider premature any attempt to begin a
debate among ourselves about the cultural and doctrinal foundations of
extremism.
It is true that no convictions have been
secured, and that in the Shari'a suspects are innocent until proven
guilty. However it is also regrettably the case that these suspects will
not be tried under Shari'a law, and that we need, in the absence of a
traditional framework of accusation and assessment, to hold our own
discussions. This is particularly urgent in this case, since the damage to
the honour of Islam, and the physical safety of innocent Muslims, in the
West and in Central Asia and elsewhere, is very considerable. We Muslims
are now at 'ground zero'. As such, we cannot simply ignore the duty to ask
each other what has caused the attitudes that probably, but not
indisputably, lie at the root of these events.
My essay, which endeavoured to kick-start
this debate, takes its cue primarily from the UK situation, which is no
doubt less intense than in the US, but is nonetheless serious. In
particular I am concerned to insist that Muslims distance themselves from,
for instance, the janaza prayer for the hijackers that was held two days
ago at a London Wahhabi mosque (the term Wahhabi is more useful, since 'Salafi'
can also refer to the Abduh-Rida reformism and is hence confusing). Having
spoken to the editor of one of this country's major Muslim magazines, it
is clear that the small minority of voices which have been raised in
support of the terrorist act were in every case of the Wahhabi persuasion.
Clearly, we cannot simply ignore this on grounds of 'Muslim unity', since
those people appear so determined to destroy Muslim unity, and endanger
the security of our community.
I hope that the recent events will spur
Muslims to consider the implications for the wider ethos in which we
understand our religion of the shift which we have witnessed over the past
twenty years or so away from accommodationist and tolerant forms of Islam,
and towards narrowmindedness. Al-Ghazali recommends a tolerant view of
non-Muslims, and is prepared to grant that many of them may be saved in
the next world; Ibn Taymiya, as Muhammad Memon has shown in his book on
him, is vehement and adversarial. In our communities in the West, and
indeed worldwide, we surely need the Ghazalian approach, not the rigorism
of Ibn Taymiya. Not just because we need to reassure our neighbours, but
also because we need to reassure those very many born Muslims who are made
unsure about their attachment to Islam by events such as this that they
can belong to the religion without being harsh and narrow-minded.
Extremism can drive people right out of Islam. In 1999 the Conference of
French Catholic bishops announced that 300
Algerians were among the year's Easter baptisms. Noting that ten years
earlier Muslims never converted at all, they reported that the change was
the result of the spread of extreme forms of Islam in Algeria.
In Afghanistan, too, there are now
Christians for the first time ever, and I have heard from one ex-Taliban
member that this is because of the extremism with which Islam is imposed
on the people. The shift away from traditional Islam, and towards Ibn
Taymiya's
position, has been widely documented, for instance by Ahmad Rashid, in his
chapter 'Challenging Islam', in his book on the Taliban. The Saudi-Wahhabi
connection has been very conspicuous.
We must ask Allah to open the hearts of
the Muslims everywhere to recognise that narrowmindedness and mutual
anathema will lead us nowhere, and that only through spirituality,
toleration and wisdom will we be granted success.
The
most appropriate du'a' for our situation would seem to be: 'Ya Hayyu Ya
Qayyum, bi-rahmatika astaghiith', which is recommended in a hadith in
cases of fear and misfortune. It means: 'O Living, O Self-Subsistent; by
Your mercy I seek help.'Article
courtesy of www.masud.co.uk
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