Bolshevism in a Headdress

Islamic fundamentalism has more to do with the hatred of the West than with faith [Originally published in The American Enterprise magazine, also available in PDF]In October of 2002 I spoke to a crowded Muslim audience in the British city of Birmingham on the topic, "The Evidence for God." My lecture focused on the modern scientific discoveries that support the idea of a designed, "fine-tuned" universe. The audience consisted mostly of Muslim students, and they were very interested in the presentation.Yet there was a small dissatisfied group in the hall. During the question-and-answer session, one who seemed to be a spokesman for the group rose and, in a passionate voice, objected to the whole idea of the conference. "Why are we wasting time with all this useless philosophical and scientific sophistry?" he demanded. "Shouldn't we concentrate on establishing the worldwide Islamic state that will save us from all evils?I explained that the Koran asks every Muslim to examine the natural world and witness God's signs in it, but there is no verse ordering an "Islamic state." The essence of Islam, I said, does not concern such political objectives, but rather faith in God and morality. If he wanted to exalt Islam he should focus on science, philosophy, or art, I suggested, because these are the underpinnings of a civilization.The young man was furious. In my speech I had mentioned the fall of Marxism as a materialistic theory that claimed to be a true explanation of human societies. He questioned me for speaking only against Marxism, not against capitalism. I responded, "Well, if we were in a communist country, we could not have a seminar titled 'The Evidence for God.' We can have it freely in this capitalist country. Isn't this a reason enough to opt for the latter?"Later, I learned that this angry young man was a member of the radical group Hizb-ut Tahrir, firmly dedicated to establishing a global Islamic state. I am sure he and his comrades saw themselves as pious Muslims. Yet there was something terribly wrong with their faith, a defect that left them much more interested in the case against "capitalism" than in the case for God.Muslim Failure Breeds Radicalism Most scholars who study radical Islam agree it is something peculiar to the twentieth century. For Muslims, the most important aspect of the last century can be captured in one word: Failure. Muslim nations became the poorest of the world, they were colonized by imperial powers, they lagged behind the West in all earthly standards, they were tyrannized by their own rulers.In the early decades of Islam, Muslims had grown accustomed to triumph. They created a vast empire and gained military and political ascendancy over other civilizations for centuries. As Daniel Pipes, a scholar of Islam, notes: "To be a Muslim meant to belong to a winning civilization." Muslim cities like Baghdad or Cordoba were "ornaments of the world" as well as centers of science and philosophy. Historian Martin Kramer opines, "Had there been Nobel prizes in the year 1000, they would have gone almost exclusively to Muslims."The might and sophistication of the Islamic world was severely shaken in the middle of the thirteenth century with the Mongol invasion. The "Mongol catastrophe," as it came to be known, resulted in the destruction of Muslim cities and the eclipse of the Arab civilization—which would never recover again. The Mongols slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Muslim inhabitants when they invaded Baghdad in 1258. Arab historian Ibn-i Kasir wrote that "such a tragedy has never been witnessed since God created the world."The Mongol catastrophe devastated the Arabs, but Islam continued to shine under the Ottomans further north. Eventually, though, the Turks declined in relation to the modernizing West, and in World War I their empire was finally destroyed. Muslim nations of North Africa and the Middle East, previously subjects of the Muslim Ottomans, were colonized by European powers. Upcoming decades ushered in worse failures: socio-cultural backwardness, military defeats at the hands of Israel, the collapse of both socialism and Arab nationalism. There was trauma in the Muslim world, which triggered Islamic radicalism.Europe has turned out to be a perfect petri dish for growing Islamic radicalism. Muslim communities there consist mostly of poor immigrants living in closed communities. Such a social situation is fertile ground for radicalism, and disenchanted European Muslims have easily been recruited by radical groups. Antoine Sfeir, a French scholar studying Islamic radicalism in Europe, characterizes it as "a kind of combat against the rich and powerful by the poor men of the planet." Oliver Roy, another French expert on Islamic movements, notes, "To convert to Islam today is a way for a European rebel to find a cause; it has little to do with theology." Not surprisingly, Lionel Dumont, an Algerian-born French national suspected of links to al-Qaeda, said that he joined Islam because "the Muslims are the only ones to fight the system."This fight against "the system" links Islamic radicalism to the Marxist-Leninist radicalism that preceded it. Marxism had a considerable influence on Islamic radicals like Sayyid Qutb, Sayyid Mawdudi, and Ali Shariati—architect of the Iranian Revolution. Shariati thought that Islam presented a better ideology and system than Marxism-Leninism for Muslims to topple the "imperialists."It is thus not surprising to see ex-Marxists join the ranks of Islamic radicals. A compelling example is the recent "conversion" to Islam of Carlos the Jackal, the notorious Marxist terrorist now imprisoned in France. From his prison cell he has penned a book titled Revolutionary Islam. This brand of Islam, he argues, "attacks the ruling classes in order to achieve a more equitable redistribution of wealth" and is the only "transnational force capable of standing up to the enslavement of nations."Hatred and the WestIt is imperative to note how radicals deviate from Islam proper. Radicalism uses Islam as a force to divide "us" from "them," to lead "enslaved" nations against "ruling" ones. The Koran, however, presents Islam as a way to lead all humans to the right path. From a purely Koranic point of view, Westerners are potential brothers to whom Islam should be presented "with wisdom and fair admonition...in the kindest way." From the radical point of view, Westerners are dehumanized enemies to be insulted, attacked, and murdered.The starting point of Islam is faith in God, whereas the starting point of radicalism is hatred against the West. When people begin from such markedly different premises, even if they refer to the same texts, they arrive at very different conclusions. Islam has produced a magnificent civilization, beautiful mosques, tolerant Sufis, and law-abiding citizens; Islamic radicalism produces suicide bombers and cold-blooded killers.The anti-Western hatred at the heart of Islamic radicalism is an import from alien sources. In fact, it is an ideology all of its own. Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit, professors at Bard College and Hebrew University respectively, call this ideology "Occidentalism," and argue it was born in the West itself.The first radicals to attack liberal democracies (especially the U.S.) as "rootless, cosmopolitan, superficial, trivial, materialistic, racially mixed, fashion addicted civilizations" were nineteenth-century European revolutionaries of both the left and right. Marxists and proto-fascists such as Martin Heidegger—a sworn enemy of America—constructed the basic criticisms. Others followed, like the fascist Japanese intellectuals of the early 1940s who defined the West as "a poisonous materialist civilization," or the communist Khmer Rouge in Cambodia who slaughtered the Westernized "enemies of the people"—identified as anyone with "soft hands," or who wore glasses.The creators of Islamic radicalism borrow heavily from these predecessors. They also draw extensively from fiercely anti-American intellectuals in Europe, and other 1960s radicals. And they have incorporated much of the Marxist-Leninist literature into their political discourse.The most influential Muslim Occidentalist was Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian ideologue regarded as the mastermind of Islamic radicalism and militancy. Qutb became a hater of the West after spending time in the U.S. between 1948 and 1950. Based on what he observed in New York City and Greeley, Colorado, he was persuaded that America was a soulless, decadent, corrupt civilization. He even hated the religiosity of Americans, calling it completely insincere. He regarded American Christians and Jews not as "the People of the Book"—a term of respect used in the Koran to describe Bible-believing monotheists—but as jahiliye, a society of ignorance and barbarism.Qutb misjudged the U.S. Most Americans are deeply and passionately religious. Besides all the revealing polls and statistics, I have personally observed this during many visits to churches and religious communities in the U.S. I have met American Christians who left their comfortable houses and went to the poorest areas of Africa or Indochina as missionaries, solely for the sake of God. That is sincerity indeed.Jews, Islam, and NazisAnother import of Islamic radicalism is anti-Semitism. Many Koranic verses harshly criticize Jews for not being submissive to God and His prophets, including Moses, John the Baptist, and Jesus Christ; but this is far from anti-Semitism. These verses criticize only Jews who disobey God. Other verses demand respect for the Jews as "People of the Book." In one chapter, after describing the sins committed by some Jews, the devout ones are praised:They are not all alike; of the People of the Book there is an upright party; they recite God's communications in the nighttime and they adore (Him). They believe in God and the last day, and they enjoin what is right and forbid the wrong and they strive with one another in hastening to good deeds, and those are among the good.So the Koran considers whether Jews are loyal to God in judging them. This is not much different from the view of the Old Testament, which includes some very harsh passages about Israelites gone astray.Islamic radicals, however, hate all Jews. I have personally witnessed that they even suspect Jewish converts to Islam. They demonstrate a racial hatred of Jews, which is a characteristic of modern anti-Semitism. That hatred is often nurtured by the belief in a global Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world, a belief that has its foundation not in the Koran but in modern anti-Semitic literature such as the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion.Some Islamic radicals even feel sympathy for the Nazis, contending that they gave the Jews "what they deserved." Ex-friends of Mohammed Atta, the 9/11 mastermind, inform us that he had a kind of "Nazi weltanschauung." Such pro-Nazi Islamists are so far removed from a religious perspective they fail to remember that Muslims are also Semites ("children of Abraham"), and that the neo-pagan Nazi ideology was inherently hostile to all Semitic monotheisms.An Islam Without AnimosityIslamic radicals do use many religious arguments, and those arguments are cited by some Western analysts as evidence that Islam itself is the real source of their militancy. But while there truly are some militant teachings within the Islamic tradition that radicals use to justify their positions, the pathological hatred of the West, the obsession with politics, and the indiscriminate murderousness of these radicals is something without precedent in mainstream Islam. It is a worldview much closer to Bolshevism than to any kind of theism.As for the militant teachings within the Islamic tradition, they can be ameliorated by a critical evaluation of traditional Islamic sources and a modern exegesis of the Koran. This takes us to the greatest doctrinal problem within the contemporary Islamic world: The majority of Muslims rely uncritically on religious schools that date back to the Middle Ages. The founders of those schools were pious Muslims, but they lived in a medieval world and interpreted the Koran within that milieu. There was no modernity or democracy at that time, and their political doctrine assumed a perpetual conflict between "us" and "them"—"house of Islam" and "house of war."Yet times have changed. We Muslims don't ride camels anymore; we drive cars. Similarly, we can't apply a medieval political doctrine to the twenty-first century. There is a modern phenomenon called the open society, in which all Muslims are free to practice and evangelize their faith. We should embrace it and question those traditional teachings that would forbid our doing so. We should build a "Muslim conservatism" through which we will stand for our values in a modern democratic society. This will not be a departure from our faith—it will be a great service to it.Islam needs a doctrinal renewal. As a first step, we should rid ourselves of animosity toward the West, because it perverts the very essence of Islam. We Muslims must understand that Islam is not about avenging our failures, justifying our hatreds, and establishing repressive political systems. Yes, Islam has principles that will guide the political sphere, but our religion does not start there. It starts with faith in God and the moral values He has decreed.I wish that the young militant in Birmingham, along with the radical group he represented, could realize this.Writer : Mustafa Akyol

European Muslims and the Quest for the Soul of Islam

There are about thirteen million Muslims living in Europe, nearly all of them law-abiding citizens. Since September 11, 2001, however, European Muslims have been seen as a potential base for a radical, anti-Western ideology founded on a crude misinterpretation of Islam that has nothing to do with true Islamic faith and is rejected by the majority of Muslims worldwide. The contest between these two views of Islam may define the course of the 21st century.Unlike Muslims in the United States, who belong largely to the middle class, most European Muslims are economically disadvantaged, poorly integrated and tend to cluster in closed communities. They are predominantly post-World War II immigrants who arrived as manual workers. They migrated from poor countries and were among the poorest even in their native societies. Turkish workers in Germany, for example, came from the least-developed areas of Turkey, and they experienced an enormous cultural shock when faced with a highly modernized, secular German society. (They would have experienced a similar shock had they migrated to Istanbul instead of Berlin, Cologne or Hamburg.) When I was in Germany several years ago, I was surprised to learn that some of the immigrants that came there during the late '50s or early '60s are still unable to speak German. This underscores their deep cultural isolation, which is even stronger among many Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in the United Kingdom, North Africans in France and Spain, and Muslims from the Middle East throughout Europe. This cultural and linguistic isolation is further deepened by racial differences. Many immigrants tend to accept this separation. Older people try to maintain their traditional lifestyles in a foreign land. Many of their children adopt Western ways, but even they live with a peculiar sense of double alienation: neither the lands of their fathers nor the new countries of residence seem a true home to them. They are, as the French political scientist Oliver Roy says, "culturally uprooted". Another reason for this sense of homelessness is that these young European Muslims lack an interpretation of Islam that would be compatible with modern life. Many of them find a middle ground between Islamic traditions and Western lifestyles, but since those attempts do not have a doctrinal basis, they create a sense of guilt in people living at cultural crossroads. This guilt leads some of them to embrace the most radical interpretations — or rather misinterpretations — of Islam peddled by itinerant imams from Saudi-funded madrassas. Most of the 9/11 conspirators in Europe were just such born-again "neo-fundamentalists," to use the term introduced by Oliver Roy. Roy emphasizes the difference between neo-fundamentalism and what is usually called "traditional" Islam. He points out that neo-fundamentalism (or Jihadism) is based on political slogans, not theological arguments, and defies many established Islamic laws. Traditional Islam, for example, is very outspoken on the need to assure the safety of non-combatants in warfare. Acts of terror against civilians are a clear violation of this principle. Bernard Lewis, one of the most prominent Western experts on Islam, says that the attacks of September 11 have "no justification in Islamic doctrine or law and no precedent in Islamic history." Other scholars have also noted the discrepancy between Jihadism and traditional Islam. Daniel Pipes, one of the foremost experts on the issue, says: "Traditional Islam seeks to teach human beings how to live in accord with God's will; militant Islam aspires to create a new order." Why the sudden appeal of Islamic neo-fundamentalism to some young Muslims? Three general answers are usually provided. The first one points to the widespread poverty and desolation of the Muslims living in Europe and the Islamic world in general. That claim, however, requires some explanation, because it has also been noted that most radicals and terrorists do not come from among the ignorant poor but from educated and prosperous classes. Daniel Pipes concludes, correctly, "poverty doesn't create terrorists." But he further notes that the plight of the Islamic masses is an important factor in the ideological make-up of militant Islamism. Just as leftist intellectuals, who often came from bourgeois families, fought capitalism in the name of "the proletariat," so well-off and -educated Islamist militants believe they sacrifice themselves for the sake of the impoverished, oppressed umma, the worldwide Muslim community. It should be noted that the creators of modern Jihadism — people like Sayyid Qutb, Ali Shariati or Mawdudi — were very much influenced by Marxism-Leninism. Like the communists, who believe in a global conspiracy of capitalist imperialists aided by native compradors, Jihadists think that the Islamic world's poverty and weakness are the result of a great conspiracy of the West and their local agents. According to this line of reasoning, to redeem the Islamic world one needs to strike at "the oppressors" rather than work to raise education levels, productivity or health standards in Muslim societies. A second source for Islamic radicalism are old and recent political mistakes made by the West. Bernard Lewis acknowledges that, "[t]here is some justice" to the charge that the United States and the West in general "apply different and lower standards" to Middle Easterners. The most obvious root causes of anti-Western feelings are the English and French colonial past and the American backing of Middle Eastern dictatorships during the Cold War. Perceived American support for the Israeli occupation is another major issue, which will not be resolved unless there is a workable two-state solution. The third explanation of the origins of Islamic militancy has to do with the cultural gap between traditionalist Islam and the modern world. The pre-modern lifestyle practiced by many Islamist traditionalists — and often seen by them as the essence of their faith — creates a perception of an inherent clash between Islam and modernity. The traditionalists themselves may be free of pro-terrorist sentiments, but Jihadists use this alleged incompatibility to fashion themselves as the vanguard in the Islamic struggle. The above suggests three important tasks for Muslim leaders and intellectuals in the immediate future: First, de-legitimize the political ideology of militant Islamism by exposing its departures from true teachings of Islam; refute its underlying conspiracy theories, its quasi-Marxist blueprint, and its misuse of traditional Islamic sources. Second, help the Western powers formulate better policies to overcome centuries of distrust and misunderstanding. Third, construct a new interpretation of Islam that will help Muslims break free from medieval traditions and develop modern attitudes compatible with the Islamic faith and morality. Luckily, there exist several Muslim voices trying to accomplish these tasks, especially the third and most important one. Since the 19th century enlightened Muslims have argued that a new reading of Islam is urgently needed. It was often noted, for example, that most tenets of traditionalist Islam do not have a Qur'anic basis. The Qur'an gives very few detailed rules and teaches mostly general ethical principles. The question of how those principles should be applied in daily life was answered by Muslim jurists in the early centuries of Islam, and their rulings were gradually transformed into unquestioned, sacrosanct laws. The legal code known as the shariah is mostly the product of this process. A great many of shariah laws — like those which refer to the killing of apostates, the stoning of adulterers, the seclusion of women, compulsory prayer, required dress code, punishments for drinking or even possessing alcohol — have simply no basis in the Qur'an. The shariah, according to Bassam Tibi, a Syrian-born scholar at the University of Göttingen, is "a post-Qur'anic construction". As soon as we start questioning it, we will see that many requirements of traditionalist Islam that put Muslims in conflict with the modern world can simply be abandoned. Take, for example, the much-disputed concept of the division of the world into the "House of Islam" and the "House of War". It was formulated by Muslim jurists in the early centuries of Islam. At that time the world was ruled by empires that imposed their own faith on all subjects. A Muslim could not safely practice and proselytise Islam in foreign lands. Thus, military conquest was seen as a pre-condition to "opening" a country, i.e. giving its inhabitants a chance to know Islam. After the "opening" there would be no forced conversions and non-Muslims would be allowed practice their faith, but the land would be made "safe" for Islam. Similarly, Ottomans justified their conquests on the principle of ila-yi kelimetullah, spreading the word of God, though they allowed free practice of Christianity and Judaism in conquered territories. But times have changed. Today we already live in an "open" world, and Muslims are free to practice and proselytise their faith throughout the world — especially in Western liberal democracies. Because of that, Tariq Ramadan, one of the most prominent voices on behalf an Islamic reformation, argues that Europe is no longer the "House of War" but the "House of Witness" where Muslims have the duty to propagate their creed by their own good example — by living Islam in the modern world and in peace with other creeds. Apart from the complex task of reforming our understanding of Islam, there are also other, more practical things that Muslims and Westerners can do together to prevent a "clash of civilizations." First of all, we should destroy the myth of a monolithic "materialist West". The radical Islamist discourse tends to picture the whole Western civilization as a licentious, selfish, hedonistic world — a new Pompeii waiting to be buried under the ashes. This is a great distortion of the truth. Let us remember that the Judeo-Christian values of the Western civilization and the values of Islam share the same Abrahamic sources. Let us present to Muslim societies "the West of faith and morality," which they would find more appealing than the alleged "aggressive market materialism and intolerant secularism" of the "MacWorld" discussed by Benjamin Barber. Further, we must help Muslim communities in Europe to better interact with and integrate into the societies among which they live. Help them see Europe as a true house of liberty. The French decision to ban Muslim girls' headscarves in public schools certainly does not help. It forces the veiled ones back into their cultural ghetto and instills in them aversion towards the French system. As Zaki Badawi, the dean of the Muslim College in London suggests, we also need to help moderate Muslim institutions educate moderate imams. Extremism, which is being imported to Europe from the Middle East, can only be defeated by a legitimate Islamic model of tolerance. For such a tolerant view we need keep in mind the Turkish example. Turkey has an Islamic heritage free of anti-Westernism and anti-Semitism and quite favorable to open society. Said Nursi, probably the most influential 20th century Turkish Muslim thinker, is known for his appeals for an alliance between Islam and Christianity against communism. Nursi's most prominent follower, Turkish Muslim scholar Fethullah Gulen, leads today a moderate Islamic movement known for its global advocacy of modern education and inter-faith dialogue. The West should certainly support Turkey's entry into the European Union. This would blur the "civilizational" boundaries and create a model for other Muslim nations. Note that Turkey's efforts to join the EU — and to implement the required democratic reforms — are supported by most Islamic circles in the country and are being spearheaded by the ruling conservative Justice and Development Party, whose members are mostly devout Muslims. Help them succeed so that they could be a positive example to other Muslim countries. Let us support inter-faith dialogue that will help both Muslims and Westerners see their common qualities. Joint charity programs and religious studies can be organized. A British Anglican priest, Rev. Donald Reeves, is working to re-build the Bosnian mosque of Farhadija destroyed by Serbian militias in 1993. Symbolic gestures like that can be most effective as a refutation of the "Islam vs. the West" scenario. We need also to overcome Islamophobia in the West by explaining that the contemporary problems of the Islamic world stem not from the faith but from social and historical conditions. Let us present the splendor of the medieval Islamic civilization, help moderate Muslim voices reach Western audiences and let the Westerners see Muslims other than those burning American flags after their Friday prayers. Most of these goals will require a great deal of effort, but we simply can't afford to fail.