92 lines
6.3 KiB
Plaintext
92 lines
6.3 KiB
Plaintext
The Mirage of Moderate Islam
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<p>Diplomatic lies notwithstanding, Islam is anything but a `religion<br />
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of peace’. Any honest scholar will tell you that Islam is a religion<br />
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of violence, martyrdom, and conversion by the sword. The duty to wage<br />
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war for the propagation of the faith is plainly written in the Koran;<br />
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Osama bin Laden’s suicide bombers are part of a tradition that springs<br />
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from Islam’s warlike origins and has been re-affirmed in every generations<br />
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by ghazis, hashishim, and numerous other varieties of holy warrior.</p>
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<p>It is the interiorization of `jihad’ as a struggle for self-mastery<br />
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that is revisionist and exceptional, one proposed by only a few<br />
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Westernized and progressive Muslims and (one senses) not wholeheartedly<br />
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believed even by them. A truer window on the nature of Islam is the way<br />
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that it divides the Earth into the Dar al-Islam (the House of Islam)<br />
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and the Dar al-Harb — the House of War, the theater of battle to<br />
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be waged with zeal until the infidel is crushed and submits to the<br />
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Will of God. The very word, islam, means `submission’.</p>
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<p>Conspicuous by their absence are any clear denunciations of<br />
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bin-Ladenite terror from the members of the ulama, the loose<br />
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collective of elders and theologicians that articulates the Islamic<br />
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faith. Such internal criticism as we do hear is muted, equivocal,<br />
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often excusing the terrorists immediately after half-heartedly<br />
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condemning them. Far more common, though seldom reported in Western<br />
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media, are pro-jihadi sermons that denounce America as a land of<br />
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devils and praise Al-Qaeda’s mass murderers in one breath with<br />
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Palestinian suicide bombers as martyrs assured of a place in<br />
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heaven.</p>
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<p>There has been some play given in the media lately to the notion<br />
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that the ideological force behind Islamic terrorism is not Islam per<br />
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se but specifically the puritanical <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1571000/1571144.stm"><br />
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Wahhabi</a> sect associated with the House of Saud. Some accounts<br />
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trace the rise in terrorism to Wahhabi prosyletization in Afghanistan,<br />
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Pakistan, and elsewhere. Most versions of this theory have it that<br />
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Wahhabism is an unattractive doctrine (by contrast with, say, the Sufi<br />
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tradition of the Caucasus or the relaxed syncretic Buddhist-influenced<br />
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Islam of Indonesia) but that it wins converts because, with billions<br />
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in Saudi oil money behind it, the Wahhabites can afford to field<br />
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missionaries and build schools that promulgate the puritan party<br />
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line.</p>
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<p>The trouble with this theory is that it ignores the history of<br />
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Islam and the internal logic of Islamic doctrine. The history of<br />
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Islam is a collection of cycles of doctrinal decay followed by<br />
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fundamentalist renewal. Believers tend to drift away from strict<br />
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Islam, but ever century or two some mad-eyed wanderer will come<br />
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screaming out of the desert and haul the faithful back on to the<br />
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Narrow Way with a blend of personal charisma, argument and force (the<br />
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latter generally administered by some allied warlord who sees political<br />
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gain in it).</p>
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<p>This drama keeps getting re-enacted because, in general, these<br />
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charismatic fundamentalist looney-toons are <em>correct</em> in their<br />
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criticism of `soft’ Islam. The Koran, the actions and statements of<br />
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the prophet Mohammed, and the witness of the lives of his immediate<br />
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followers are pretty clear on what the religious duties of a Muslim<br />
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are. Long before the 9/11 attacks, I read large portions of the Koran<br />
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(in translation) and more than one history of Islam, because I collect<br />
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religions. I learned about the Five Pillars and the hadith (the<br />
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traditional sayings of Mohammed) and the ulama.</p>
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<p>Moderate Muslims trying to argue against the latest version of<br />
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Islamic fundamentalism are in a difficult situation. All the<br />
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fundamentalists have to do to support their position is to point at<br />
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the Koran, which is much more authoritative in an Islamic context than<br />
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the Bible is in most Christian ones. Moderates are reduced to arguing<br />
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that the Koran doesn’t really mean what it says, or arguing from<br />
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hadith that qualify or contradict the Koranic text. Since the Koran<br />
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trumps the hadith, this is generally a losing position.</p>
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<p>The grim truth is that Osama bin Laden’s fanatic interpretation<br />
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of Islam is Koranically correct. The God of the Koran and Mohammed<br />
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truly does demand that idolatry be purged with fire and sword, and<br />
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that infidels must be forced either to convert to Islam or (as a<br />
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limited exception for Christians and Jews, the “Peoples of the Book”)<br />
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live as second-class citizens subject to special taxes and legal<br />
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restrictions. The Koran really does endorse suicidal martyrdom and<br />
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the indiscriminate killing of infidels for the faith.</p>
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<p>(The Koran does not, however, require purdah and the veil; these<br />
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are practices the Arab world picked up from Persia after the tenth<br />
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century CE. Nor does it require female genital mutilation, which<br />
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seems to have been acquired from sub-Saharan Africa.)</p>
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<p>For both shallow diplomatic/political reasons and deeper<br />
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psychological ones, Westerners have trouble grasping just how<br />
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bloody-minded, intolerant, and prone to periodic murderous outbreaks<br />
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of fundamentalist zeal Islam actually is. But we <em>must</em> come<br />
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to grips with this. If we treat the terror war as a merely<br />
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geopolitical conflict, we will be fighting the wrong battle with the<br />
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wrong weapons.</p>
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<p>It is not merely Al-Qaeda or the Taliban or even Wahhabism we are<br />
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fighting, it is a fanatic tendency wired deep into the origins and<br />
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doctrine of Islam itself, a tendency of which these movements are<br />
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just surface signs. That tendency must be cured or cauterized out.<br />
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No lesser victory will do for a world in which means and weapons of mass<br />
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destruction grow ever easier for terrorists to acquire.</p>
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<p><em>(To be continued…)</em></p>
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<p><a href="http://enetation.co.uk/comments.php?user=esr&commentid=77964879">Blogspt comments</a></p>
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