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| Recapturing Islam from the
Terrorists Abdal-Hakim Murad 14 September 2001 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 (AIPAC),
that tends to drive Washington’s policy in the world’s greatest
trouble spot. 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 reclaimation. 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. Source:
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