http://www.masud.co.uk/
The hijackers were
not
Muslims after all
©
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.'
Abdal-Hakim Murad, born 1960, London. Educated
Cambridge University (MA Arabic), and al-Azhar. Translator of al-Bayhaqi's
77 Branches of Faith. Editor
of M. Z. Siddiqi's Hadith Literature (Islamic
Texts Society, 1993). Trustee and Secretary of The
Muslim Academic Trust. Director, The Anglo-Muslim Fellowship for
Eastern Europe.