Author: Tawfik Hamid
Publication: The Wall Street Journal
Date: April 3, 2007
URL: http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009890
Sadly, mainstream Muslim teaching accepts
and promotes violence.
Not many years ago the brilliant Orientalist,
Bernard Lewis, published a short history of the Islamic world's decline, entitled
"What Went Wrong?" Astonishingly, there was, among many Western
"progressives," a vocal dislike for the title. It is a false premise,
these critics protested. They ignored Mr. Lewis's implicit statement that
things have been, or could be, right.
But indeed, there is much that is clearly
wrong with the Islamic world. Women are stoned to death and undergo clitorectomies.
Gays hang from the gallows under the approving eyes of the proponents of Shariah,
the legal code of Islam. Sunni and Shia massacre each other daily in Iraq.
Palestinian mothers teach 3-year-old boys and girls the ideal of martyrdom.
One would expect the orthodox Islamic establishment to evade or dismiss these
complaints, but less happily, the non-Muslim priests of enlightenment in the
West have come, actively and passively, to the Islamists' defense.
These "progressives" frequently
cite the need to examine "root causes." In this they are correct:
Terrorism is only the manifestation of a disease and not the disease itself.
But the root-causes are quite different from what they think. As a former
member of Jemaah Islamiya, a group led by al Qaeda's second in command, Ayman
al-Zawahiri, I know firsthand that the inhumane teaching in Islamist ideology
can transform a young, benevolent mind into that of a terrorist. Without confronting
the ideological roots of radical Islam it will be impossible to combat it.
While there are many ideological "rootlets" of Islamism, the main
tap root has a name--Salafism, or Salafi Islam, a violent, ultra-conservative
version of the religion.
It is vital to grasp that traditional and
even mainstream Islamic teaching accepts and promotes violence. Shariah, for
example, allows apostates to be killed, permits beating women to discipline
them, seeks to subjugate non-Muslims to Islam as dhimmis and justifies declaring
war to do so. It exhorts good Muslims to exterminate the Jews before the "end
of days." The near deafening silence of the Muslim majority against these
barbaric practices is evidence enough that there is something fundamentally
wrong.
The grave predicament we face in the Islamic world is the virtual lack of
approved, theologically rigorous interpretations of Islam that clearly challenge
the abusive aspects of Shariah. Unlike Salafism, more liberal branches of
Islam, such as Sufism, typically do not provide the essential theological
base to nullify the cruel proclamations of their Salafist counterparts. And
so, for more than 20 years I have been developing and working to establish
a theologically-rigorous Islam that teaches peace.
Yet it is ironic and discouraging that many
non-Muslim, Western intellectuals--who unceasingly claim to support human
rights--have become obstacles to reforming Islam. Political correctness among
Westerners obstructs unambiguous criticism of Shariah's inhumanity. They find
socioeconomic or political excuses for Islamist terrorism such as poverty,
colonialism, discrimination or the existence of Israel. What incentive is
there for Muslims to demand reform when Western "progressives" pave
the way for Islamist barbarity? Indeed, if the problem is not one of religious
beliefs, it leaves one to wonder why Christians who live among Muslims under
identical circumstances refrain from contributing to wide-scale, systematic
campaigns of terror.
Politicians and scholars in the West have
taken up the chant that Islamic extremism is caused by the Arab-Israeli conflict.
This analysis cannot convince any rational person that the Islamist murder
of over 150,000 innocent people in Algeria--which happened in the last few
decades--or their slaying of hundreds of Buddhists in Thailand, or the brutal
violence between Sunni and Shia in Iraq could have anything to do with the
Arab-Israeli conflict.
Western feminists duly fight in their home
countries for equal pay and opportunity, but seemingly ignore, under a façade
of cultural relativism, that large numbers of women in the Islamic world live
under threat of beating, execution and genital mutilation, or cannot vote,
drive cars and dress as they please.
The tendency of many Westerners to restrict
themselves to self-criticism further obstructs reformation in Islam. Americans
demonstrate against the war in Iraq, yet decline to demonstrate against the
terrorists who kidnap innocent people and behead them. Similarly, after the
Madrid train bombings, millions of Spanish citizens demonstrated against their
separatist organization, ETA. But once the demonstrators realized that Muslims
were behind the terror attacks they suspended the demonstrations. This example
sent a message to radical Islamists to continue their violent methods.
Western appeasement of their Muslim communities
has exacerbated the problem. During the four-month period after the publication
of the Muhammad cartoons in a Danish magazine, there were comparatively few
violent demonstrations by Muslims. Within a few days of the Danish magazine's
formal apology, riots erupted throughout the world. The apology had been perceived
by Islamists as weakness and concession.
Worst of all, perhaps, is the anti-Americanism
among many Westerners. It is a resentment so strong, so deep-seated, so rooted
in personal identity, that it has led many, consciously or unconsciously,
to morally support America's enemies.
Progressives need to realize that radical
Islam is based on an antiliberal system. They need to awaken to the inhumane
policies and practices of Islamists around the world. They need to realize
that Islamism spells the death of liberal values. And they must not take for
granted the respect for human rights and dignity that we experience in America,
and indeed, the West, today.
Well-meaning interfaith dialogues with Muslims
have largely been fruitless. Participants must demand--but so far haven't--that
Muslim organizations and scholars specifically and unambiguously denounce
violent Salafi components in their mosques and in the media. Muslims who do
not vocally oppose brutal Shariah decrees should not be considered "moderates."
All of this makes the efforts of Muslim reformers
more difficult. When Westerners make politically-correct excuses for Islamism,
it actually endangers the lives of reformers and in many cases has the effect
of suppressing their voices.
Tolerance does not mean toleration of atrocities
under the umbrella of relativism. It is time for all of us in the free world
to face the reality of Salafi Islam or the reality of radical Islam will continue
to face us.
Dr. Hamid, a onetime member of Jemaah Islamiya,
an Islamist terrorist group, is a medical doctor and Muslim reformer living
in the West.
