With the recent growth in terrorism and the terrorists claiming to be the flag bearers of the Islamic faith, a lot of questions are being raised about Islam as a religion. Vikas questions whether Islam is a peaceful religion. Confused asserts that Islam is not the real problem. And Nitin maintains that it is the state and not Islam per se and concludes that it is more of political issue than religious. There have been interesting comments on each of these posts. Though they all differ on what the problem is, they all acknowledge that there is a problem. Judging from the disagreements on issues it can be concluded that it is a fairly complex problem. But what is the problem?
In most simplistic terms the manifestation of the underlying problem is that, a bunch of madmen are blowing people and themselves up and while doing so claim that they have the religious authority to do so, and claim that the word of God is with them.
But why are they blowing people up? The answer to that is the real issue.
Is the issue religious? Do they want to convert the entire world to Islam? Or is it political? And religion is just a tool to achieve these political goals?
Let us take some places where terrorism is rampant.
- Kashmir -Territorial Dispute (political)
- Israel/Palestine - Territorial Dispute (political)
- Chechnya - Struggle for Independence (Again Territorial Dispute)
In all the above examples one can observe that all these disputes are political but there is one thing common…The tool used to fight is religion.
But where do the likes of Osama Bin Laden (OBL) fit in? What about Afghanistan and Iraq? To understand OBL’s position one needs to understand his goals.
So what is it that bin Laden wants today? His basic argument is that Muslims in the Middle East are currently suffering from political, social and economic deprivation for the simple reason that their governments have not fully implemented shari’a, or Islamic law. Because their rulers have failed to do this, bin Laden no longer considers them to be truly Muslim.
This is an interesting observation. There is a fact that the Muslims in the Middle East are currently suffering from political, social and economic deprivation. If this the problem then what is the reason? The reason according to him is that their governments have not fully implemented shari’a, or Islamic law. Note here that the end goal is to end goal is to end political, social and economic deprivation and the means to achieve that is extablishment of a governments based on shari’a or the Islamic law.
What is OBL’s gripe against America? In his article What does Osama bin laden want, David plotz notes the following…
What is his particular grievance against the United States? According to CNN’s Peter Bergen, author of a forthcoming book on Bin Laden, Holy War, Inc., Bin Laden is most enraged by the American military presence in Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden was incensed when the Saudis invited U.S. troops to their defense after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Bin Laden—like many Muslims—considers the continued presence of these armed infidels in Saudi Arabia the greatest possible desecration of the holy land.
So why does OBL rely on terrorism as a means to achieve his goals? The author further notes that
Bin Laden has strategic reasons to believe in terrorism, too. The Muslim victory over the Soviet Union in Afghanistan showed him that superpowers are not so superpowerful. And the ignominious American withdrawal from Somalia—following a Bin Laden connected attack—convinced him that the United States is morally weak. The U.S. soldier is “a paper tiger” who crumples after “a few blows.”
Now with his goal to cleanse the middle east he declared America as the enemy and declared a war. Now once the war is declared he is using Quranic verses written in times of war to justify all his acts.
The point of going through all this was to acknowledge Nitin’s point that it is more of a political issue that uses religion as a tool to achieve its objectives. I also agree with Confused that Islam is not the real problem.
Having identified the problem, how do you solve it? Obviously not an easy answer otherwise we would have done it by now. What makes it more difficult is the intertwining of religion with this issue. The first step in my view is to isolate the two (easier said than done. Right?).
At this point I would like to note that there is a vast majority of muslims that do not approve of OBL’s methodolgy of terrorism. These people fall into two categories. Moderates and Reformists. Moderates in my view are those who do not follow the extremist form of Islam. They go on living their lives having nothing to do with the likes of OBL. The reformists on the other hand are those who would come out in the open and oppose anything and everything that OBL does. They denounce terrorism. They acknowledge the problems in the Muslim society and are working towards changing it.
Why am I talking about these muslims? For everyone to acknowledge their existence and their importance! If we ignore such people and equate all muslilms to OBL, we end up attacking Islam. Once Islam is attacked these moderates and reformists, being believers, will take sides with other believers even if they are like OBL. So it is important not to attack Islam in this problem or we will end up losing muslim allies. The more Islam is attacked, the more it will turn into clash of the civilizations.
So now someone asked me, what do we do? We cannot attack Islam. We cannot say things against OBL that even have slightest religious undertones so what do we do? Sit like a duck and let them kill us? Hell no! Acknowledge that you are in a different kind of war with OBL and his gang. I repeat here , Isolate them within their religion. Of course being a non muslim, no one would believe what I say then what? I say, support the reformists. Do not isolate the moderates.
Acknowledge and respect their faith and believe them when they say Islam does not support violence against innocents. The usage of the slayer verse from quran that OBL used while asking muslims to attack American’s everywhere has been questioned and criticised by muslims. Take that explanation and run with it. Spread the word.
People ask why can’t muslilm cleric issue fatwas against terrorism. Beleive me they have! For every fatwa that OBL has issued there have been dozen other fatwas issued against him and terrorism. Aisha Eteraz has post explaining why fatwas don’t work against mad men. That post has a link to most of the fatwas issued against terrorism.
How come fatwas issued by OBL is known to everyone and these fatwas do not even get a mention? We need to fight this by media power. Unfortunately the media is only interested in ratings and would not take up this cause. But we have to keep pushing. We need to fight the propoganda war.
People also say why can’t muslims protest like civilised people if they don’t like something. Akram’s Razor tries to come with an explanation here. The important thing to note is how someone acts has something to do with his socio-economic and political condition.
We all must understand that finger pointing and name calling will not bring about any reform in any community, if that is the intention . It has to come from within the community. We can do our part by supporting them. If you have questions and doubts then talk to someone who knows about it. Here is an example.
Once the terrorists are stripped of their religious authority, it will be very difficult for them to recruit in the name of religion. Once their ranks start thinning down, it will be very easy to defeat them.
Islam and Muslims are going through a turbulent phase that every religion has gone through at some point in time. It is their turn now to reform. I would like to quote from this article by Abdul Hakim Murad.
One does not have to subscribe to determinist social theories to realise the importance of the almost universal condition of insecurity which Muslim societies are now experiencing. The Islamic world is passing through a most devastating period of transition. A history of economic and scientific change which in Europe took five hundred years, is, in the Muslim world, being squeezed into a couple of generations. For instance, only thirty-five years ago the capital of Saudi Arabia was a cluster of mud huts, as it had been for thousands of years. Today’s Riyadh is a hi-tech megacity of glass towers, Coke machines, and gliding Cadillacs. This is an extreme case, but to some extent the dislocations of modernity are common to every Muslim society, excepting, perhaps, a handful of the most remote tribal peoples.
Such a transition period, with its centrifugal forces which allow nothing to remain constant, makes human beings very insecure. They look around for something to hold onto, that will give them an identity. In our case, that something is usually Islam. And because they are being propelled into it by this psychic sense of insecurity, rather than by the more normal processes of conversion and faith, they lack some of the natural religious virtues, which are acquired by contact with a continuous tradition, and can never be learnt from a book.
The author goes on to conclude
At this critical moment in our history, the umma has only one realistic hope for survival, and that is to restore the ‘middle way’, defined by that sophisticated classical consensus which was worked out over painful centuries of debate and scholarship. That consensus alone has the demonstrable ability to provide a basis for unity. But it can only be retrieved when we improve the state of our hearts, and fill them with the Islamic virtues of affection, respect, tolerance and reconciliation. This inner reform, which is the traditional competence of Sufism, is a precondition for the restoration of unity in the Islamic movement. The alternative is likely to be continued, and agonising, failure.
What we (Non Muslims) should do is help/support the moderates and reformists and not attack them (by attacking Islam) and corner them. As somone rightly noted once, “As long as they are on the defensive, they cannot be on the offensive (against terrorism)”
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Is Islam violient?
