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Islam: A
Religion of Peace?
By Jack Schwartz
FrontPageMagazine.com |
December 11, 2001
IN CAIRO, Arab intellectuals met recently to address their concerns
about Islamophobia, a Western fear of Islam. The presumption, as
with any "phobia," is that this is a misplaced anxiety which, with
proper therapy and appropriate enlightenment can be alleviated. But
as an American, a Jew, a secular humanist and an unabashed
subscriber to the values of Western Civilization, I must confess to
a measure of Islamophobia, and the more I learn of Islamic words –
and the deeds they lead to – the less are my fears allayed.
Since Sept. 11,
I have been told repeatedly by the press and politicians that Islam
is a religion of peace but what I see in the news belies these
assurances. I would like to be convinced that the evidence before my
eyes is an aberration, a distortion of the faith by a few fanatics.
But sadly a candid assessment of reality leads me to an opposite
conclusion: that a significant segment of the Muslim world wishes
me, my values and my society harm and is prepared to undertake or
condone violent means to achieve this.
Perhaps I have
misperceived the good intentions of Islam, and if so, I welcome the
occasion to be reassured. We have heard a great deal recently about
why Islam hates America, but we have not heard why so many Americans
mistrust Islam – at least the face of it that we’ve seen since Sept.
11— and for many, well before. As someone brought up with the givens
of respect for all faiths, enthusiasm for pluralism and appreciation
for the diversity of all ethnic groups, I find this gnawing
Islamophobia at odds with my basic beliefs, but part of the problem
is that I do not see them reciprocated by Islam. I find myself
increasingly agreeing with the Holocaust survivor who observed: "If
someone says they’re going to kill you, believe them.’’
And I have to
wonder why the support of Muslim intellectuals, clerics and laymen
is so tepid on behalf of our war against terror in Afghanistan, so
qualified about depriving Saddam Hussein of his weapons of mass
destruction and so compromised in their splitting hairs over
wrongful terrorism at the World Trade Center and "rightful"
terrorism in Israel. I ask myself what other religion would not
outright condemn the mass murder of innocent civilians in malls,
buses, and restaurants, a slaughter aimed at inflicting the greatest
amount of pain, death and injury on its victims. Imagine if the
Pope, the Dalai Lama, the Archbishop of Canterbury or the American
Board of Rabbis were to rationalize the deliberate massacre of
innocent people. They would be decried as moral lepers. This, of
course, is unimaginable, except in Islam, where such abominable acts
are rationalized as religiously justified. What I find offensive is
the air of moral superiority from people who blow up embassies,
public buildings, shopping centers, cafes, barracks, and ships. What
I find repugnant is the air of grievance from zealots who have given
innocents so much to grieve for. So to those intellectuals in Cairo
who are concerned about Islamophobia, yes, Islam does have an image
problem, based not on the fantasies of the West but the horrendous
reality of the acts committed in Islam’s name – which no political
agenda or religious millennialism can justify. The problem, I would
suggest, is not with the West’s perception, which is all too
accurate, but with the behavior of Islamicists. And until a growing
number of, until now quite silent, Muslims address this problem, it
will continue. Here then are my own reasons for finding it difficult
to overcome a growing Islamophobia. I look forward to the day when
an enlightened Muslim majority can allay my concerns. But until they
do, my Islamic problem – I doubt I am alone – and, more importantly,
their Islamic problem won’t go away.
My greatest
concern with the militant face of Islam is the deliberate failure of
Muslim leaders to distinguish between ends and means. Whatever the
goal – a Palestinian state, a Muslim Kashmir – a test of someone’s
allegiance to the principles of tolerance, civility and decency is
where they come down on the means to achieve it. Terror – that is,
the deliberate targeting of innocent civilians to achieve political
goals, is a priori ruled out. A "yes, but,’’ is unacceptable.
Political goals must be achieved through political means,
negotiation and moral suasion, not through violence, much less
violence directed at innocents. There are no mitigating
circumstances for terrorism among civilized people. Distorting the
meaning of terrorism to turn it on its head and blame the target is
an evasion that no longer fools anyone. The dodge of equivalence is
also wearing thin. When I read about Palestinians celebrating the
deaths of Jews, most just embarking on their lives, in the latest
rash of suicide bombings in a ritual that has now become a norm for
that society – which is in keeping with Palestinians celebrating the
terrorist attack of Sept. 11 despite Arafat’s attempts to squelch
reports of them – I must ask myself what kind of culture it is that
experiences the deliberate murder of young people or the
incineration of 3,500 human beings as a cause for joy? One of the
relatives of a suicide bomber was a schoolteacher who evinced pride
in the killer’s actions. What does this man teach his students? How
poisoned by hatred can such people be that they can find pleasure in
such murderous havoc? Is any cause worth such evil and do they
really think theirs will be advanced by these tactics, or if not,
then do they console themselves with blind vengeance? What kind of
culture abets such monstrosity? Images like these fill the mind, and
not only at the World Trade Center or in Israel. I think of the
Christian survivors huddled in a Pakistani village after a gang of
Muslim murderers invaded the church during a service and slaughtered
most of the worshipers "in revenge" for the U.S. attack on the
Taliban, as if the poor victims had anything to do with the American
offensive. I think of the gruesome aftermath of a recent Muslim
terrorist bombing in Kashmir that killed 30 people. Perhaps worst of
all, I envision the anguished face of a little Filipino girl of
about five or six, roped together with a group of other hostages,
being herded to an unknown fate by Muslim terrorists during an
uprising in the Philippines. What could the young armed Islamic
terrorist, prodding his victims onward, be thinking? Is this what
Allah requires of him? Will he be rewarded in heaven for this act?
Is the prize of 70 virgins worth the terror on this little girl’s
face? I have yet to hear voices that represent a significant body of
Islam condemn such heinous acts perpetrated on its behalf. What I
hear instead are evasions, qualifications, rationales. When
confronted with the overwhelming documented slaughter and
enslavement of black Christians and animists by Muslim rulers in the
Sudan where more than a million people have been killed in the last
20 years, a Saudi official blandly dismissed it as untrue. End of
discussion. While Muslim apologists from their bully pulpit at Al
Jazeera flog the great Satan of the U.S. and the little Satan of
Israel as a global menace, it seems to me that wherever terror
abounds in the world, well beyond the reach of Americans and Jews,
it is Islam – or its worst adherents – that present a much realer
global menace than any of its projected enemies. The fact is that
there are currently 40 armed conflicts going on in the world and all
but two involve Islam. Who is the menace?
Islamism is the
most serious totalitarian threat to challenge the world since the
fall of Communism. Like communism, its cadres form an
internationale of dedicated adherents with a global support
group of fellow travelers supplying money, logistics, propaganda and
muscle. It is fanatic, intolerant of dissent and contemptuous of the
very societies whose principles it uses to undermine them. Unlike
Communism, it does not have a single headquarters but is a
supranational movement, taking advantage of various host entities as
the occasion warrants. Its chief venue of organization is not the
union hall but the mosque. Just as Communists infiltrated unions in
the ‘20s and ‘30s in an attempt to take over organized labor, the
Islamists, with financial and logistical help from their Saudi
backers, have taken control of mosques throughout the West and
elsewhere, as well as seized control of education from the Middle
East to Pakistan.
What people in
the West are just beginning to understand is that there is an
intimate relationship between the political, the religious and the
cultural in Islam. The mosque is not only the prayer house. It is
also a political seat. The imam preaching to the faithful can offer
a homily not only on the Koran but exhort his listeners to political
action – often violent. It is no accident that crowds stirred up by
Muslim preachers have gone on rampages, that some of the most
hate-filled anti-Western, anti-American and anti-Semitic venom has
been preached from the pulpits – including those in Europe and the
U.S.A.. Muslim "charity" may just as soon give a portion of its
funds to weapons for Al Qaeda as for a hospital. The denial of where
the money goes is disingenuous.
Americans
presume that our religion does not conflict with our obligations as
citizens but, as with Communism, this is not the presumption of
Islamism, whose adherents are obedient to a higher loyalty which is
inimical to our national interests. To the extent that Islam is a
private religion in which man struggles on a spiritual quest to
follow the ways of God, it is a great and beautiful faith. But when
it becomes political and strident, it can become dangerous,
subversive and threatening and, in this public, ideological mode, it
cannot hide behind the skirts of religious tolerance.
The critical
difference between Communism and Islam in the West – at least at
this stage, is that while the labor movement and the moderate Left
eventually united to speak out unequivocally against the Communists,
expose their lies and ultimately defeat them, we have yet to see the
Muslim Orwell emerge who will stand up to the Islamists. By way of
excuse, we are told that clerics fear assassination or losing their
power base or being seen as appeasers of the West. But principled
men of all faiths have always been willing to run risks to bear
witness against evil and we should expect no less from Muslim
spiritual leaders. A more likely explanation is that too many of
them sympathize with the methods of the terrorists. If the Muslim
clerisy lacks the moral strength to confront terror perhaps it must
come from the secular ranks. But here too, we find a void. If only a
small minority of Muslims support Al Qaeda than why doesn’t the
moral majority issue a round denunciation of terrorism – all
terrorism – in unequivocal terms.
The Muslim
community has been quite vocal in asserting its civil rights but
strangely quiet in supporting the U.S. war effort against a regime
that we now see suppressed fellow Muslims. Why? When it comes to
standing up for America against a remorseless foe, the Muslim
leadership – so vociferous in asserting Palestinian rights – seems
to have lost its voice. It may be that in recent years the Islamists
have seized the reins of Muslim organizations in this country,
achieving what the Communists never succeeded in doing. Currently it
appears that they have taken over a good chunk of the mosques, they
have commandeered too many of the Muslim student organizations and
they have virtually silenced any serious opposition from within the
Muslim community. Muslims must ask themselves why is it that they
complain (validly) about American support of non-democratic states
in Egypt and Saudi Arabia but are silent about non-democratic states
in Iraq, Syria and Libya or Syrian occupation of Lebanon. Why do we
hear nothing from the American Muslim community about support for
the democratic movement in Iran which, despite the oppression of the
mullahs, has the support of three-quarters of the nation’s
voters?
In Europe,
there is a virtual hatred of the West preached in mosques from
London to Cologne. Why, as an American, a Jew, a Westerner, should I
find this reassuring? And why should I be welcoming to the people
who preach it, who clearly seek my own physical destruction as well
as that of everything I stand for? Must I convert to Islam and have
my wife and daughter don chadors in order to appease them? Until I
see a widespread movement among American (and hopefully other)
Muslims to unequivocally reject the tenets of Islamism – which means
ALL forms of violence, no excuse, no justification, no extenuating
circumstances, I will mistrust their motives and their disclaimers.
At this point, one must choose sides, and qualifications for terror
and rationales for murder is choosing the wrong one.
When Imam Abdul
Omar Rahman issues a fatwa saying that it is the duty of
every Muslim to re-conquer every meter of Islamic land lost to the
infidel, he is unfortunately well within the tradition of Islam
where Muhammad’s last words on jihad were that struggle against the
infidel was permanent and truce was temporary for tactical reasons.
That a "truce’’ can last for a long time does not reassure me. What
does it say about negotiations for a Palestinian state? If all of
the Holy Land is an Arab trust for Islam then Muslims are, sooner or
later, obligated to destroy the Jewish state and, if so, why should
Israel make any concessions? We are not talking about rearranging
the borders of Hungary and Romania, or carving a new state out of a
neighboring one with appropriate political arrangements; we are
talking about a religious obligation to annihilate another nation
with the probability that most of its five million inhabitants would
be butchered in a new Holocaust – which also has a precedent in the
expulsion and despoliation of the Jewish tribes from the Hijaz in
Muhammed’s time. Are American Muslims ready to sign aboard for this?
What are the implications of their exhortations for "fairness’’ in
the Middle East. What is "even-handed’’ about vitiating Israel’s
strength until it is vulnerable to overwhelming Arab numbers? And
why in the world should Israel – after Yasser Arafat at Camp David
rejected its offer of 95 percent of the West Bank and Gaza and
control of Arab Jerusalem as well as Muslim holy sites – now permit
in Jerusalem a regime in thrall to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, pledged
to Israel’s destruction?
Muslims in the
West – and, for that matter, everywhere – will have to decide
whether the holy obligation to reclaim Islamic land applies to
Andalusia (al-Andaluz) and much else of Spain, France up to Tours,
large chunks of Sicily and the Balkans to the gates of Vienna. And
they must ask themselves, is the decision not to do so (if they so
decide) arrived at because it is impracticable or immoral? The
difference is critical. Such revanchist schemes may seem like
madness but no less so than flying two airplanes into the World
Trade Center. Chillingly Muslim extremists have already openly
discussed a takeover of America. The fact that they are living a
fantasy does not gainsay that some of them, with a net of
supporters, are prepared to use violent means to advance their
millennial aims.
There is
certainly enough intolerance to go around in many religions. Judaism
has its zealots, but they are marginalized in the West and are not
the driving force in Israel, much less running the country which is
still overwhelmingly secular and democratic. When Baruch Goldstein
kills 29 Arabs in a mosque he is reviled by most of the Jewish
community, not cheered as are the suicide bombers by the Arab
street. At a West Bank university, Palestinian students set up an
exhibition devoted to the grisly fruits of terror bombings,
presenting "displays" of severed limbs and spattered Jewish blood.
This could not have been done without the collusion of the
Palestinian Authority. It is in keeping with its fostering
suicide-bomber summer camps for children and using terror as a
political tool. What kind of government can allow such things, and
how can it possibly be considered a serious partner for peace? How
can it be trusted to keep any peace?
Christianity
fought almost two centuries of religious wars before an exhausted
Europe was finally ready for tolerance. Islam has experienced
schism, faction and sects but not a true Reformation. Worse still,
it missed out on a Radical Enlightenment, withdrawing to tradition,
piety and obscurantism at the very moment that the West was
flowering with the political, commercial, social and technological
benefits of both the Reformation and the Enlightenment. Little
wonder then that Islam lost the ensuing footrace for supremacy.
Since then, Islam has coveted the wealth and power of the West
without being willing to accept the pluralism, tolerance, critical
mindset and democracy that has made it possible. Arab states
complain of being exploited by the West but refuse to accept their
own cultural responsibility in falling behind. Asian states also
endured colonial rule. But in Asia, nations from India to South
Korea to Taiwan have all managed to achieve democracy and a degree
of prosperity while Arab states still wallow in corruption, poverty
and tyranny. Blaming their failures on the West, or on the existence
of Israel, is a lame excuse that has gotten ever-fewer buyers and,
in any case, won’t solve the problems of the people who live in
these countries.
All
monotheistic religions to some degree believe in the uniqueness of
their own revelation, without which the foundation of faith that
supports their belief would crumble. But in the modern world, most
of the great religions have preached tolerance and the possibility
that God may manifest His design to different faiths in different
ways. The exception is Islam. Listen to the exhortations of Muslim
preachers and their lay followers – who are forthright in asserting
their beliefs – and we hear repeatedly the mantra that Islam is
God’s final revelation, His last word to mankind. We are all
inherently Muslims even if we don’t know it and it is for our own
salvation that this discovery of our innate Muslimhood should be
brought out. Infidels must be humbled. Friendship with them is
forbidden. Like Communism, Islam offers its adherents an entire
social fabric, a complete meaning for the world, man’s place in it
and human destiny. It is comforting and inclusive to its adherents.
But to those outside its circle, it appears unforgiving,
contemptuous at best, intolerant at worst. For a Westerner to
convert to Islam is a matter of private choice. For a Muslim to
convert to another faith is a capital crime in nations ruled by
strict Sharia. Think only of the aid workers in Afghanistan who were
imprisoned and faced death before being rescued from the Taliban.
And the local Afghans who may have been receptive to Christian
teaching would have also faced a grim fate. No one would think twice
about establishing a mosque in Rome, but imagine what would happen
if someone attempted to build a church in Saudi Arabia. The idea of
land being holy, starting with the Hijaz, moving to Jerusalem and
then extending out to any territory that was once Muslim land,
explains the impetus driving the attempts to re-conquer places like
Kashmir and Chechnya, not as national quests but as sacred duties.
What is hard
for us in the West to grasp is that after three centuries of
imperial, national colonial, class, ethnic and cold wars – all
fought for material goals after the worldwide triumph of secularism
– we are now in a religious war, a throwback that the world has not
seen on a global basis since the 17th century. It is a
religious war that is intertwined with politics and masked by the
appurtenances of modernity but at its heart, it is driven by an
atavistic belief in a struggle to conquer an infidel culture that
has humiliated Islam – the one true faith – for too long. And if you
are armed with the only truth, then it is indeed your obligation to
bring it to everyone else, by words if possible, by the sword if
necessary. Anyone who opposes you, must be doing the devil’s work
and is therefore fair game for destruction. It is no accident that
America is called "The Great Satan," because that is exactly the way
the mullahs perceive us. We are not an imperial overlord, or an
economic oppressor; we are a demonic force for evil, that must be
opposed with any means at hand. This sense of America as the wicked
"other" is driven by religious conviction, which is what inspires
the dedication of the Islamists and doubtless flutters the hearts of
other Muslims who may be too timid to take up arms but feel a glow
in contributing to their purchase. I find it hard to believe the
disclaimers of many of the imams that President Bush trotted up to
the national dais, who represented groups that themselves were
supporting and apologizing for terrorist groups until Sept. 11.
Because America
separates church and state, we assume conversely that all faiths do
the same. But in Islam, the political and the religious are one,
tied together in a single smooth tapestry. One explains the other,
one justifies the other. Muhammed was not only a religious leader
but a political one. He sought and held power. In America, people
are free to believe, or not, as they choose. We encourage religious
diversity and respect political dissent. To the extent that a
religious institution exists as a place for an individual to make a
private profession of faith, it is protected by the Bill of Rights.
But when a mosque through its imam becomes an adjunct to a terror
plot, as was the case with the first bombing of the World Trade
Center, it is no longer a sanctuary. When it is the source of
exhortations to commit mayhem, it forfeits the rights to be treated
like one. Not that clerics of all faith don’t discuss public issues
from the pulpit, but in Islam it is intrinsic and, given the rise of
Islamicist proselytizing, an ideology that is inimical not only to
the security of the West, but to its very idea. I am not sure that
it is possible for Islam to extract the political from the
spiritual, but until there is some separation of church and state,
public and private, zealotry and tolerance, I fear that the mosque
will be seen by most Americans like myself as a source of subversion
and separation, a barrier that prevents the full integration of
Muslims into Western society. It will be up to them to find a way to
embrace both the duties of the heart and that of the citizen. Until
they do, my Islamic problem and, more importantly, their Islamic
problem, won't go away.
Jack
Schwartz is a longtime New York newspaper editor.
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