Its name implies
peace, but it preaches Holy War - so what kind of religion is it?
Ignorance of Islam may prove to be the deadliest thing we have to
fear.
World Trade Center Movie
(911 '01 WTC)
Soundtrack: famous broadcast Gordon Sinclair
"The Americans" June 5, 1973
Proudly produced on the 2nd
anniversary of this tragic event
commemorating those who died
It seems a long time now since the
American political scientist Francis Fukuyama announced the End of
History. It was not long after the Berlin Wall had fallen. The Cold
War was over. Capitalism had triumphed. There were to be no more
conflicts, just the playing out of humankind's increasing
prosperity.
Even then there were sceptics.
Another American theorist, Samuel Huntington, pronounced that the
great conflict of the 21st century would in fact be played out along
the fault line of the tectonic plates on which Islamic and Western
civilisation co-existed so uneasily. In the search for a new enemy
after the collapse of Communism, the alien dispensation of
Mohammedanism – to use a term which Muslims hate – appeared as
promising a candidate as any.
To non-Muslims, time has only
seemed to give additional credence to the notion. First there was
the Rushdie affair which raised the spectre of Islam as a threat to
hard-won post-Enlightenment Western liberal values. Then the
expressions of support by some British Muslims for Saddam Hussein
during the Gulf war went further, creating the image of the UK's two
million Muslims as potential subversives – a deadly time bomb
ticking in our midst. And now Islamic fanatics have perpetrated the
biggest terrorist atrocity of modern times.
Extremists, terrorists, fanatics –
the descriptions vary – but the constant always is the adjective
"Islamic" which precedes them. So is there – non-Muslims wonder –
something fundamental about Islam which makes it incompatible with
Western values of democracy and freedom? Are Muslims inevitably more
likely to be, in the vocabulary of cosmic good and evil so beloved
of President Bush, "the bad guys"? Certainly one might think so from
the questions which one now hears being asked about Islam by nervous
observers of current events. Many are questions born of ignorance;
but, for that very reason, they are worth answering. Here are six of
the most common.
Why does
Islam seem so confrontational, aggressive and intolerant?Top
The sword has always figured
prominently in Islamic history. Christianity may have been
inaugurated by a man who seemingly failed in his worldly agenda, but
the seventh-century Arab who founded Islam, the Prophet Muhammad,
was a man who vanquished his enemies on the battlefield. In the
centuries which followed, military conquest was the means by which
Islam spread rapidly through the Middle East to Africa, Europe, the
Indian subcontinent, the Malay Peninsula, and China.
The traditions and law of Islam
were thus formed during an era of success. Programmed for victory,
it has no theology for failure – or for being a minority. This
undoubtedly heightens the sense of humiliation Muslims feel in an
era of globalisation when Western power – cultural, economic and
military – is increasingly unchallenged. Having said that, for
almost half a millennium, under the Ottoman empire, the tone of
Islam was one of civilised consolidation.
It was also far more tolerant, of
both Jews and Christians, than Christian Europe ever was of its
minorities. In the 11th and 12th centuries, Muslim philosophy was
the most sophisticated in the world. In Moorish Spain the governing
mood was one of co-operation. In the centuries after, the attitude
of Muslim conquerors to Hindus in India – moderated by the growth of
Sufism – was far less narrow-minded than is often claimed. It is
only with the growth of fundamentalism that the tone of intolerance
has heightened, and many modern Muslims insist that the new
practices of death-sentence fatwas and book-burning are
unIslamic.
Muslims believe that the Koran is
the actual words of God, as dictated to the Prophet Muhammad by the
Angel Gabriel. As such, not only is its Arabic language thought to
be unsurpassed in purity and beauty (to imitate the style of the
Koran is a sacrilege) but it is also the infallible word of God.
That means that there is no room for the kind of interpretation
common in Christianity and Judaism which sees the Bible as the
revelation of God's purpose through the experiences, minds and pens
of men. The Koran cannot have been influenced by the circumstances
under which it was revealed. It can contain no mistake. And it
cannot be mitigated by any new discovery. What has been revealed by
God is fixed and immutable.
In the three centuries which
followed the Prophet's death, attempts were allowed to interpret the
Koran in the light of a changing world. The practice was known as
ijtihad. But by the end of the ninth century Islam had been
codified in legal manuals of The Shari'ah (The Way), a
comprehensive code of behaviour that embraces both private and
public activities. The "gates of ijtihad" were then closed.
Islam became a rigid and static system in which society could not
shape or fashion the law, but instead became controlled by it. The
word islam means submission.
Some change has taken place.
Several prominent Sunnite scholars, such as Ibn Taymiah (1236- 1328)
and Jalal ad-Din as-Suyuti (1445-1505), dared to reopen the gates.
And Shi'ite Muslims – a minority branch who split from the Sunni
majority in the seventh century and who predominate still in Iran
and parts of Iraq – believe that ijtihad is still allowed.
But in general, attempts by Sunni modernists toward the end of the
19th century to reopen ijtihad to reconcile Islam with what
they found valuable in Western scientific traditions have not been
widely pursued.
How does
Islam justify the notion of Holy War?
Top
There are five "Pillars of Islam" –
practices which anchor the Muslim community. They are: the
profession of faith ("There is no god but God, and Muhammad is his
prophet"); five daily congregational prayers, with bowing and
prostration, preceded by ritual ablutions; zakat, an
obligatory charitable tax to provide for the needy; fasting during
the month of Ramadan; and to travel, at least once in their life, on
the hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. But to these some
Muslims add a sixth pillar: the jihad.
There is much debate in Islam as to
what this Holy War means. All agree it means "active struggle".
Muhammad's followers in the early years took it to mean military
advance, not to enforce the conversion of individuals – the Koran
forbids compulsion in religion – but to control the collective
affairs of societies to run them in accordance with the principles
of Islam. After the Muslim empire was established, however, the
doctrine of the jihad was modified. More spiritual
interpretations took over. The struggle became an internal one of
moral struggle against temptation.
So where
does the notion come from that suicide bombers go straight to
heaven?Top
There is nothing about this in the
Koran. But Islam also has many books of hadith – sayings
which were attributed by others to the Prophet. It is here that it
is stated that martyrs, among the host of heaven, stand nearest the
throne of God. Tradition also provides other details about a
paradise of milk and honey with 72 beautiful virgins to every
martyr. Yet many modern Muslims dismiss these notions as Arab
hyperbole. Taken in context, they say, the practice is unIslamic.
The Koran clearly states that "If anyone murders an [innocent]
person... it will be as if he had murdered the whole of humanity."
And Muhammad is recorded as saying that Muslim rules of engagement
forbid attacks on non-combatants, women, children and men of
religion; they outlaw attacks on the "means of subsistence" of those
who "offer no resistance". No miscreant should be given succour or
refuge by Muslims. Moreover there is a Koranic insistence that only
God at Judgement Day should punish. And there are many fatwas
(the word merely means Islamic legal judgment) which pronounce
suicide to be illegitimate.
How can a
British Muslim say, as one did this week, that his religion is more
important than his nationality?
Top
Muslims believe they are bound by
their common faith into a single community – the umma – all
of whom are "brothers unto each other". This explains the particular
solidarity Islam creates, regardless of national boundaries.
Nevertheless, most British Muslims insist that they can hold their
religious and national loyalties together without any sense of
conflict, though many feel that they get a rough deal as far as
education, housing and job opportunities are concerned. Which
creates additional tensions.
How can
Islam, with its Barbaric code of criminal punishment and its
treatment of women, be reconciled to modern Western notions about
human rights?Top
The veil, the Taliban's refusal to
allow women education or hospital treatment, the widespread practice
of female circumcision – all mean that Islam is frequently accused
of treating women as second-class citizens. Muslim apologists
suggest that these are cultural practices not religious ones. But
the Koran and hadith contain provisions which make a prima
facie case for misogyny – ruling that a woman's testimony is
worth only half that of a man, that her inheritance rights must be
lesser, and that woman is to be seen as Satan when a man is sexually
tempted. And the Koran lays down punishments regarded in the West as
barbaric – cutting off the hands of thieves and stoning adulterers
to death. Yet many British Muslims, including white women converts,
insist that they have found embracing Islam to be a liberating
experience which has brought them inner peace. It is a
reconciliation which continues to mystify most non-Muslims.
Even so it is difficult to spend
any time looking into Islam, and meeting modern British Muslims,
without concluding that often it is our questions which tell us more
about the problems we face than do their answers, even where they
fail entirely to convince. It is clear that much of our contemporary
secular mindset about Islam is about as accurate as an assessment of
Christianity were to be if we made it on the basis of the rhetoric
of the Rev Ian Paisley or the actions of the IRA in its terrible
heyday. The 1,000 Muslims who were reported to be among those who
died in last week's attacks on New York would doubtless tell us so,
if only they now could.
The issue, of course, is not Islam
but fundamentalism – a tendency which is as evident among
Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and even Confucians. Academics
argue that it makes no sense to talk of Muslim fundamentalism – for
if you don't believe that the Koran is literally the inspired word
of God, you're not a Muslim. But fundamentalists in all religions
share common characteristics beyond the fact that they interpret
symbols literally. All are highly selective in "the fundamentals"
they chose to return to, and in what part of modernity they accept.
All take traditional texts and use them out of context. All embrace
some form of Manicheanism – seeing themselves as part of a cosmic
struggle between good and evil in which they have to find an
opponent and demonise them. The danger in the days in which we
non-Muslims now find ourselves is that we too will succumb to some
of the same temptations.
If so, it may be that there is
indeed a time-bomb ticking away at the heart of our society. But it
is ignorance of Islam that may prove to be the deadliest thing we
have to fear.
