The Mirage of Moderate Islam
<p>Diplomatic lies notwithstanding, Islam is anything but a `religion<br />
of peace&#8217;.  Any honest scholar will tell you that Islam is a religion<br />
of violence, martyrdom, and conversion by the sword.  The duty to wage<br />
war for the propagation of the faith is plainly written in the Koran;<br />
Osama bin Laden&#8217;s suicide bombers are part of a tradition that springs<br />
from Islam&#8217;s warlike origins and has been re-affirmed in every generations<br />
by ghazis, hashishim, and numerous other varieties of holy warrior.</p>
<p>It is the interiorization of `jihad&#8217; as a struggle for self-mastery<br />
that is revisionist and exceptional, one proposed by only a few<br />
Westernized and progressive Muslims and (one senses) not wholeheartedly<br />
believed even by them.  A truer window on the nature of Islam is the way<br />
that it divides the Earth into the Dar al-Islam (the House of Islam)<br />
and the Dar al-Harb &#8212; the House of War, the theater of battle to<br />
be waged with zeal until the infidel is crushed and submits to the<br />
Will of God.  The very word, islam, means `submission&#8217;.</p>
<p>Conspicuous by their absence are any clear denunciations of<br />
bin-Ladenite terror from the members of the ulama, the loose<br />
collective of elders and theologicians that articulates the Islamic<br />
faith.  Such internal criticism as we do hear is muted, equivocal,<br />
often excusing the terrorists immediately after half-heartedly<br />
condemning them.  Far more common, though seldom reported in Western<br />
media, are pro-jihadi sermons that denounce America as a land of<br />
devils and praise Al-Qaeda&#8217;s mass murderers in one breath with<br />
Palestinian suicide bombers as martyrs assured of a place in<br />
heaven.</p>
<p>There has been some play given in the media lately to the notion<br />
that the ideological force behind Islamic terrorism is not Islam per<br />
se but specifically the puritanical <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1571000/1571144.stm"><br />
Wahhabi</a> sect associated with the House of Saud.  Some accounts<br />
trace the rise in terrorism to Wahhabi prosyletization in Afghanistan,<br />
Pakistan, and elsewhere.  Most versions of this theory have it that<br />
Wahhabism is an unattractive doctrine (by contrast with, say, the Sufi<br />
tradition of the Caucasus or the relaxed syncretic Buddhist-influenced<br />
Islam of Indonesia) but that it wins converts because, with billions<br />
in Saudi oil money behind it, the Wahhabites can afford to field<br />
missionaries and build schools that promulgate the puritan party<br />
line.</p>
<p>The trouble with this theory is that it ignores the history of<br />
Islam and the internal logic of Islamic doctrine.  The history of<br />
Islam is a collection of cycles of doctrinal decay followed by<br />
fundamentalist renewal.  Believers tend to drift away from strict<br />
Islam, but ever century or two some mad-eyed wanderer will come<br />
screaming out of the desert and haul the faithful back on to the<br />
Narrow Way with a blend of personal charisma, argument and force (the<br />
latter generally administered by some allied warlord who sees political<br />
gain in it).</p>
<p>This drama keeps getting re-enacted because, in general, these<br />
charismatic fundamentalist looney-toons are <em>correct</em> in their<br />
criticism of `soft&#8217; Islam.  The Koran, the actions and statements of<br />
the prophet Mohammed, and the witness of the lives of his immediate<br />
followers are pretty clear on what the religious duties of a Muslim<br />
are.  Long before the 9/11 attacks, I read large portions of the Koran<br />
(in translation) and more than one history of Islam, because I collect<br />
religions.  I learned about the Five Pillars and the hadith (the<br />
traditional sayings of Mohammed) and the ulama.</p>
<p>Moderate Muslims trying to argue against the latest version of<br />
Islamic fundamentalism are in a difficult situation.  All the<br />
fundamentalists have to do to support their position is to point at<br />
the Koran, which is much more authoritative in an Islamic context than<br />
the Bible is in most Christian ones.  Moderates are reduced to arguing<br />
that the Koran doesn&#8217;t really mean what it says, or arguing from<br />
hadith that qualify or contradict the Koranic text. Since the Koran<br />
trumps the hadith, this is generally a losing position.</p>
<p>The grim truth is that Osama bin Laden&#8217;s fanatic interpretation<br />
of Islam is Koranically correct.  The God of the Koran and Mohammed<br />
truly does demand that idolatry be purged with fire and sword, and<br />
that infidels must be forced either to convert to Islam or (as a<br />
limited exception for Christians and Jews, the &#8220;Peoples of the Book&#8221;)<br />
live as second-class citizens subject to special taxes and legal<br />
restrictions.  The Koran really does endorse suicidal martyrdom and<br />
the indiscriminate killing of infidels for the faith.</p>
<p>(The Koran does not, however, require purdah and the veil; these<br />
are practices the Arab world picked up from Persia after the tenth<br />
century CE. Nor does it require female genital mutilation, which<br />
seems to have been acquired from sub-Saharan Africa.)</p>
<p>For both shallow diplomatic/political reasons and deeper<br />
psychological ones, Westerners have trouble grasping just how<br />
bloody-minded, intolerant, and prone to periodic murderous outbreaks<br />
of fundamentalist zeal Islam actually is.  But we <em>must</em> come<br />
to grips with this.  If we treat the terror war as a merely<br />
geopolitical conflict, we will be fighting the wrong battle with the<br />
wrong weapons.</p>
<p>It is not merely Al-Qaeda or the Taliban or even Wahhabism we are<br />
fighting, it is a fanatic tendency wired deep into the origins and<br />
doctrine of Islam itself, a tendency of which these movements are<br />
just surface signs.  That tendency must be cured or cauterized out.<br />
No lesser victory will do for a world in which means and weapons of mass<br />
destruction grow ever easier for terrorists to acquire.</p>
<p><em>(To be continued&#8230;)</em></p>
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