The anti-terrorism war is entering a new phase, shifting from an exclusively military and security approach to one that deals with the underlying ideology. Just as the security-oriented approach requires deep thinking and rigorous evaluations, the counter-ideology strategy requires a deep understanding of the thinking systems of the extremists and their distorted religious justification for their actions. This effort has been underway for some time in the form of detainees' rehabilitation. The focus is now shifting from rehabilitating wayward individuals toward preventing the ideas from taking root.

Addressing the general public may not require the same level of intellectual rigour when addressing other segments of the community. For example, simply brushing off the actions of extremists as un-Islamic and non-reflective of the thinking of mainstream Muslims may be an acceptable statement for the general public. However, framing an argument in a similar way to the radical extremists or their sympathisers would only portray the speaker as one who severely lacks intellectual seriousness.

The critical issue for counter-ideology actors to remember is that hardcore sympathisers, supporters of extremism and their violent offshoots such as al-Qaeda, are not stupid or uneducated fanatics.  They are people who are committed to an idea that they believe is the only true understanding of the world and their faith.

For counter-ideology actors to think otherwise would greatly undermine their effort and only serves to strengthen a wider public view that the extremists may have the right idea. This further raises the status of the leadership of extremist groups in the eyes of their own supporters, who are able to justify their support by pointing to how weak the counter-arguments are. The only way to challenge the view is to have a sound, rational counter-argument.

Take Imam Samudra for example, one of the executed Bali bombers, who wrote a book justifying his violent extremism from a religious perspective, as he understood it. His ideas can be quickly dismissed, but that in itself ignores years of study that led him to his conclusions. He tried to intellectually justify his actions; one should do the same to challenge them.

This can also be noticed in how Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the al-Qaeda No 2, who published a 200-plus page document rebutting his former mentor, Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, aka Dr Fadl, who was a key ideologue in the now-defunct Egyptian Islamic Jihad group and who has now denounced violent jihadist notions.

Although they are not within the ranks of jurists such as the Qatar-based Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, or Ali Jum'ah, the current mufti of Egypt, both Al-Zawahiri and Dr Fadl are revered in the jihadist community. Al-Qaradawi himself recently published his own book on the science of jihad, stressing that he spent seven years working on it prior to his decision to publish.

Although the extremists' arguments are narrow and faulty, they have taken time and effort to develop their arguments. Simply dismissing them by saying "this is halal and that is haram" (permissible or not permissible in Islam) is counterproductive. In this Google age, one cannot afford to be this dismissive when the available information is abundant. Contextual knowledge can only be provided with firm grounding in the past and existing scholarship in studies on Islam.

The above distinction is important, as out-of-context information can lead to misunderstanding and unnecessary reactions that could be avoided from the outset. This, in essence, is a key cause of self-radicalisation. A lay person has access to information, interprets it in a way that is not grounded on a wider scholarship, and over time reacts. The fact that the wider public is actively looking for this information means that there is a deep hunger for knowledge.

This situation needs to be addressed by scholars and community leaders who have the proper knowledge to address the wide range of subjects that the public wants covered. In this regard, it is clear the extremists are in the lead in this battle.

So how is rigour ensured and measured? The following are some pointers that may act as indicators of intellectual rigour.

To begin with, in countering the ideology of religiously-motivated extremists, it is best to avoid generalisation. To brand all who believe in the doctrine of jihad as violent extremists is in itself extreme. To erase the term from the Muslim dictionary is also problematic if not impossible, hence the need for in-depth analysis to avoid generalisations. To persuade people to believe that jihad should only be spiritually practised fundamentally betrays the tradition and the legacy of Islam itself. To merely say that jihad has many connotations is also not sufficiently rigorous.

The term "jihad" is the most misunderstood word in the world today. Acknowledging all aspects of the term - even going into details - and the context in which various understandings emerged would help challenge the extremists and offer strong arguments for the wider public. It also avoids the charge that the scholar is "taking sides" and trying to shape the understanding of jihad to fit a political agenda.

Secondly, truth matters. The scholar should never lie, shade the truth or manipulate information to gain political advantage. One should not stoop to the level of the extremists to defeat them.

Thirdly, intellectual rigour entails that there should be a strong theological foundation on which arguments stand. In the Islamic heritage of knowledge, this foundation is based on principles found in the Koran, the Prophetic Traditions and valid independent reasoning known as "ijtihad".

Fourthly, counter-ideological work should focus on arguments instead of character assassination. The rich intellectual tradition of Islam is more than capable of defeating the extremist ideas, without resorting to ad hominem personal attacks.

Without intellectual rigour, discussions will lead to the loss of credibility of the discussants. This would paradoxically strengthen the rhetoric of the extremists.

Mohamed Redzuan Salleh is a research analyst specialising in the ideological revisions of jihadists, and Muhammad Haniff Hassan is associate research fellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University.

Source

If you can get hold of it, I strongly recommend "The Image of the Other As Enemy" by Mohammed Iqbal Ahnaf.

Amongst other things he looks at the propaganda of the Indonesian franchise of HuT. Whilst it is common, post 9/11, to talk of Muslim communities as feeling 'under siege' he found that was their attitude before 9/11, as well as having a tendency to view 'the other' (Jews, Christian, Atheists, Socialists) as the enemy.

That, plus a commitment to the clash of civilisations thesis, places the likes of HuT, ironically, as having a lot more in common with the neo-Cons than they may care to admit.

From the Guardian

The communities secretary, John Denham, is to attempt a fresh start in the government's relationship with British Muslims after acknowledging that mistakes have been made in the drive against violent extremism in the UK.

Denham said he wanted to see a clear policy shift away from defining the government's relationship with Muslim communities entirely in terms of tackling extremism.

New, revised guidance on the operation of the £45m Prevent strategy, which is intended to challenge violent extremist ideology and disrupt those who promote it, is to be drawn up this summer.

The new approach is expected to ensure that funding goes to a wider range of organisations, while a more explicit strategy to resist white racist extremism is also being developed.

At least 100 council wards in England are to be identified after the British National party's strong showing in June's European elections.

Residents' meetings to discuss concerns about immigration are to be organised, and councils will be urged to be more transparent about local housing allocations.

"Although the most significant terrorist threat comes from al-Qaida groups or al-Qaida-inspired ideology, there is a perception that government is only interested in violent extremism of one kind," Denham told the Eastern Eye newspaper.

"This is simply not true – we are working to address all forms of extremism. The existence of violent far-right groups and the rise of the far right means we must adopt consistent principles and a proportionate approach to these issues."

He said it had "never been" the government's intention for the issue of terrorism to define the relationship between the government and Muslim communities.

Denham also acknowledged the title of the programme, Preventing Violent Extremism, may be alienating the groups with which the government wants to work.

The official attempt to mend fences follows a controversial phase in the history of the programme, which culminated in an acrimonious dispute between Hazel Blears, Denham's predecessor, and the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB).

That remains an issue, but Whitehall officials have contacted senior MCB members to discuss the best way forward.

The communities secretary has voiced strong concern to British Muslim journalists about the extent to which the relationship between the government and Muslim communities has been defined by the single issue of international terrorism and extremism.

He also said some of the labels used in the programme were proving a barrier to participation.

"Some local authorities have already dropped the phrase 'preventing violent extremism' because they feel it identifies them as part of the problem," he said.

"We want the Muslim community to play a positive role ... If labelling is preventing them from participating in our efforts, then it defeats the entire purpose."

The proposed changes are likely to be met with continued scepticism in parts of the Muslim community.

In recent months, there have been renewed complaints that the Prevent programme has been used to fund community groups to spy on potential extremists, and that cash has been given to organisations with little credibility among UK Muslims.

Seems like a good idea. The policies in this area have been alienating the very people whose support is vital for their success. It's only time this change happened.

Jihad is regularly misconstrued as war, with all its connotations of violence and bloodshed. However, in the Islamic context, and in literal sense, the word jihad simply means a struggle—doing one’s utmost to further a worthy cause. This is an entirely peaceful struggle, with no overtones even of aggression. The actual Arabic equivalent of war, is qital, and even this is meant in a defensive sense.

According to Islamic teachings, jihad is of two kinds. One is with the self (jihad bin nafs), that is, making the maximum effort to keep control over negative feelings in one’s self, for instance, arrogance, jealousy, greed, revenge, anger, etc. The psychological efforts to lead such a life of restraint is what jihad bin nafs is about. In social life, it happens time and again that all sorts of base, negative feelings well up within a man, causing him to lead his life succumbing to desires and temptations. The internal effort made in such a situation to overcome the temptations of the self and to continue to lead a life guided by principles is the truly Islamic jihad bin nafs

According to the hadith, a believer is one who wages jihad with himself in the path of obedience to God. That is, at moments when the self (nafs), lured by some temptation, desires to deviate from the path of God, he keeps control over it and remains unswervingly on the divine path. This is his jihad—a permanent feature of the life of a believer, continuing day and night, and ending only with death.

The other form of jihad is that which is engaged in to propagate the constructive message of Islam. All those who embark upon such a course must first of all study the Qur’an and sunnah in a dispassionate and objective manner. No kind of conditioning should be allowed to come in the way of such a study. Only after passing through this intellectual jihad will the would-be proponent of Islam be in a position to make a true representation of his religion.

Two conditions have been laid down in the Qur’an for the communication of the teachings of Islam to others—nasih, well-wishing and amin, trustworthiness. The former appertains to God and the latter to man.

What is meant by nasih (well-wishing) is an earnest desire on the part of the teacher for the well-being not just of his immediate interlocutors, but the whole of humanity. This well-wishing should be so steadfast that it remains undiluted even in the face of injustice and oppression. Overlooking people’s negative behavior towards him, the teacher should continue to remain their well-wisher.

The element of trustworthiness (amin) is important in that it ensures that the Islam God has sent to the world will be presented to the people without deletion, addition or distortion. For instance, if the Islam sent by God is akhirah (Hereafter) oriented, it should not become world oriented; if it is spirituality based, it should not become politics based; if it confines jihad to peaceful struggle, it should not become violence based.

Islam asks us to perform jihad by means of the Qur’an, calling this ‘greater’ jihad. But it never asks its believers to do the ‘greater’ jihad by means of the gun.This is a clear proof that jihad is, in actual fact, a wholly peaceful activity, carried out through peaceful methods. It has nothing to do with violent activities or violent threats.

Jihad through the Qur’an means striving to the utmost to present the teachings of the Qur’an before the people. That is, presenting the concept of One God as opposed to the concept of many gods; presenting akhirah-oriented life as superior to world-oriented life; principle-oriented life as against interest-oriented life; a humanitarian-oriented life as more elevated than a self-oriented life and a duty-oriented life as a categorical imperative taking moral precedence over a rights-oriented life.

Jihad, according to Islam, is not something about which there is any mystery. It is simply a natural requirement of daily living. It is vital both as a concept and as a practice because, while leading his life in this world, man is repeatedly confronted by such circumstances as are likely to derail him from the humanitarian path of the highest order.

These factors sometimes appear within man in the form of negative feelings. This is something to which everyone must remain intellectually alert, so that if for any reason there is some danger of a negative mindset gaining the upperhand, he may consciously and deliberately turn himself to positive thinking. Even if circumstances repeatedly place him in situations which are depressing and demoralizing, he must never on such occasions lose courage or lose sight of noble goals. The re-assertion of his ethical sense is the real jihad which he has to wage.

From the Islamic standpoint, intention is all-important. Any undertaking carried out with good intentions will win God’s approval, while anything done with bad intentions is bound to be disapproved of and rejected by God. In actual fact, intentions are the sole criteria of good or bad actions in the divine scheme of things.

This truth relates jihad to man’s entire life and to all of his activities. Whatever man does in this world, be it at home, or in his professional capacity, in family or in social life, his prime imperative must be to carry it out with good intentions and not the reverse. This, however, is no simple matter. In all one’s dealings, adhering strictly to the right path requires a continuous struggle. This is a great and unremitting lifelong struggle. And this is what is called jihad.

Even if one is engaged in good works, such as the establishment and running of institutions which cater for social welfare or academic needs, or if one is personally engaged in social work or performing some service in the political field, in all such works the element of personal glory has a way of creeping in. Therefore, in all such instances, it is essential that in the individuals concerned there should be a strong tendency to introspection, so that they may keep before them at all times the goal, not of personal glory but the greater glory of God.

It is one’s intense inner struggle to make all activities God-oriented which is truly Islamic jihad.

Source

Over the last few years, Islam has been specifically linked with terrorism. The Western media has painted a somewhat distorted picture of Islamic teachings, particularly the philosophy of Jihad, and has sought to correlate terrorism as an integral part of Islam. It is unfortunate that the leaders of Muslim nations are apologetic cowardly in their response. Muslims find themselves feeling confused with the onslaught of anti-Islamic propaganda and the lack of conviction from their own leaders.

The reality is that there is no link or correlation between Jihad and terrorism. In fact the two terms are diametrically opposed to one another. A detailed study of the principles of Jihad as expressed in the Qur’an and Sunnah, in accordance to the historical context, and in view of its prerequisites and etiquettes will clearly highlight that Jihad in Islam is only permitted to prevent terrorism. Therefore, to equate Jihad with terrorism is wholly inaccurate.

The Historical Background of Jihad

When the Beloved Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) began propagating the message of Islam to the Makkans, they left no stone unturned in attempting to cause maximum distress and anxiety upon him and his followers. Such was the extent of the physical, intellectual and spiritual harm caused by them that the Muslims were compelled to flee Makkah and migrate to Madinah. But even there, the infidels did not lessen their brutality and tyranny against the Muslims. For example, they incited ‘Abdullah ibn ‘Ubay to stir trouble with the Muslims, they united with the Jews of Madinah to make peace amongst Muslims untenable, and then intended to invade Madinah. The Muslims thus had no other viable option but to defend themselves in the form of Jihad. It was only then, Allah (swt) granted the Muslims permission to fight and combat the barbaric infidels. (Note that every war the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) participated in was wholly defensive, and were in no sense of the word offensive).

To dispel many misconceptions concerning Jihad, particularly the false claim that Jihad is offensive and aims at territorial gain, it is worth focusing on the first three wars in Islam. The infidels and their allies tried to eliminate Islam by forcing the Muslims out of their homes. The Muslims were then compelled to pick up the sword to defend themselves and their homes. For instance, the Battle of Badr took place only thirty miles away from Madinah, the Battle of Uhud was only twelve miles away and the Battle of Trench occurred just on the outskirts of Madinah. To combat the infidels’ evil, malicious and heinous intentions, Allah (swt) permitted the Muslims to fight them, but even then, in a gracious and humane manner.

The Etiquettes and Prerequisites of Jihad

Allah had permitted Muslims to counter attack violence with violence, but only under strict prerequisites. To understand the Qur’an’s position on Jihad, it is imperative to answer three questions; (i) what is the purpose of Jihad? (ii) who is Jihad waged against? (iii) what are the conditions of Jihad? The Qur’an and Sunnah explicitly answer these three questions.

(i) The purpose of Jihad is to raise the banner of truth and to save humanity from the infliction of tyranny. It is not legitimate to wage Jihad for the purpose of looting, plundering, financial gain, nationalism or simple animosity, or other futile purposes which are not befitting to the believers.

(ii) Jihad is waged against those who initiate war against Muslims or plan to do so. The Qur’an states this fact very clearly: “And fight in the path of Allah (swt) with those who fight you and do not transgress. Verily Allah (swt) does not like the transgressors” (Qur’an 2, 190) “Allah (swt) does not forbid you regarding those who did not fight you in the matter of religion, nor drove you out of your homes that you show them kindness and deal with them justly. Surely Allah (swt) loves those who do justice. Allah (swt) forbids you only about those who fought you in the matter of religion, and drove you out of your homes or helped others in driving you out, that you take them for friends. And whoever takes them for friends, it is they who are the wrong-doers.” (Qur’an 60, 8-9)

(iii) There are strict etiquettes and conditions of Jihad which are to be fulfilled at all times. This includes when the battle is in full swing; where emotions spiral out of control, when the tense atmosphere causes humans to lose any sense of humanity, and when rage spreads like wild-fire in the veins of all soldiers. Transgression is strictly prohibited in any form, for Allah does not like those who transgress. Islam forbids Muslims from harming women, children, disabled, the ill, elders, farmers, ordinary workers, clerics and leaders of any religion, as long as they do not participate in battle. History testifies that Muslims always honoured these etiquettes and numerous examples exist where the Muslims flawless behaviour in the battlefield has astonished observers.

We challenge those who are against Jihad and those who accuse Islam of terrorism to present just one nation or group who have never violated any rules in a war, and have acted fairly and justly throughout. Nowadays, cities and urban areas are carpet-bombed minutes after the announcement of war. Women, children, disabled are not spared in war and safe-havens are not longer such. Hospitals, places of worship and schools are targeted without an eyebrow being raised.

Surat at-Tawbah and Terrorism

At first, the only enemies of Islam were the infidels of Makkah, but as Islam spread to Madinah and other areas, numerous tribes and nations declared war against Muslims. Thus, the last eight or nine years of the Prophet’s (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) life was spent defending Muslims from external threats. Hence, all rulings and principles revealed concerning Jihad must be appreciated in this context. If they are not, then this a gross misinterpretation of the Qur’anic rulings. With this in mind, there are a handful of verses in Surat at-Tawbah which incite Muslims to cut all ties with infidels and to kill them, in response to which Allah promises His mercy and endless bounties.

Many non-Muslims interpret these verses as incitement to terrorism, unrest and mutual hatred. In fact, they demand that this Surah should not be taught in Muslim educational institutions. On Thursday 18th March, the Daily Jang (London) reported that according to the Minister of Education, the Pakistani Government was looking closely into perhaps omitting the translation of Surat at-Tawbah in schools and educational institutes. If the Pakistani Government had taken advice and consulted with the scholars and intellectuals then they would have been told that it is impossible to understand the verse outside its context. When the Surah is read from beginning to end then one will realise the context is the dishonoured behaviour of the infidels and the Battle of Tabuk. In the heat of battle and in the uncontrollable rage of war, each and every nation incites its subjects to act in the same way the Qur’an urged the Muslims to fight.

The objection of non-Muslims is akin to the famous question raised about verse 43 of Surat an-Nisa. The verse states, ‘O Believers! Do not approach prayer while intoxicated’. Could someone selectively quote the first part of the verse (Do not approach prayer) and then argue that the Qur’an orders Muslims not to pray? Of course not. The whole verse has to be read for it to make sense. Otherwise, one will be guilty of distorting the interpretation of the Qur’an beyond recognition.

To reinforce this point, consider the following references, the first from the Bible and the second a speech ascribed to the Wartime Prime Minister, Winston Churchill;

a. “Don’t imagine that I came to bring peace to the Earth! No, rather, a sword. I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law”. (The Living Bible, British Edition, 1975, Matthew, 10, 34-35).

b. “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory- victory at all costs, victory, however long and hard the road may be”. (Winston Churchill speaking in the House of Commons, 13 May 1940, Modern World History, p 123)

At first sight, one could easily assume that Jesus and Winston Churchill were terrorists. But naturally they weren’t. Instead, when we look at the context of the two quotes, we will find both statements made perfect sense for its time and circumstances. Jesus was warning his people that if they did not forsake their distorted beliefs, then they would have to part from their close relatives. Churchill was speaking as he declared war against Germany.

In exactly the same manner, Surat at-Tawbah was revealed in wartime and must be read and appreciated in this specific context.

Source

On 7th July 2005, four bombs exploded in the city of London and as a result fifty six lives were lost and hundreds of people were injured. According to the declaration delivered by the British government, all four were suicide bombings in which four British Muslims were involved. In view of this report, an analysis concerning the London bombings is presented here. The inference based upon the Qur’an and Prophetic Tradition expounded in this analysis is my opinion and my opinion can be differed with.

To Kill Oneself

Almighty Allah states, “And do not kill yourself. Verily, Allah is merciful towards you.” (Qur’an 4, 29)

The Messenger of Allah, Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him), stated, “The person who commits suicide by leaping from a mountain, will forever continuously fall in the fire of Hell. And the person who commits suicide by consuming poison, will have poison in his hands and will forever drink from that poison in the fire of Hell. And the person who commits suicide by means of a knife, will have that knife in his hand and will perpetually lacerate his stomach in the fire of Hell.”

To commit suicide intentionally and deliberately is unlawful (Haram) in Islam and is an enormity (Kabirah). There is even a difference of opinion concerning the offering and performance of the funeral prayer of the one who committed suicide. According to Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal, an Imam should not lead the funeral prayer (so as to discourage this unlawful act); instead, a common or layman Muslim should lead his or her funeral prayer. This is due to the fact that the noble Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) did not perform the funeral prayer of a person who committed suicide; however, he did not forbid his Companions from performing it.

To Kill Someone Else

Almighty Allah states, “If anyone killed a person, other than for murder or (a punishment) for corruption on earth, it would be as if he killed all the people. And if anyone saved a life it would be as if he saved the lives of all people.” (Qur’an 5, 32)

The killing and murder of any person (whether Muslim or non-Muslim) at the hands of any individual or any government without any reason or justification is equal to the killing and murder of all people. For the one who does not honour and respect any life is the enemy and foe of all humankind. On the other hand, the one who commits murder or causes corruption on earth can be killed, but, this is the responsibility of the government and the judicial system that they only issue the verdict of the death penalty after careful consideration of witnesses and testimonies and fulfilling the demands of justice and equity. However, no individual has the right to decide on his own accord to kill someone else.

Jihad

It would seem appropriate at this point that Jihad is elucidated as both Muslims and non-Muslims have equally and commonly misunderstood the term. Many non-Muslims have interpreted Jihad as tyranny and barbarity in order to tarnish Islam; and many Muslims have manipulated unwary and ordinary Muslims by using the name Jihad and used them for their own personal motives and objectives. In reality, Jihad in Islam refers to those individual and collective efforts, by means of which works related to the exaltation of the Truth, the stability of the nation, and the success and prosperity of the individual and society can be furthered. It is this Jihad that Almighty Allah referred to as the great Jihad (al-Jihad al-Kabir), and the noble Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) dubbed the best and greater Jihad (al-Jihad al-Akbar and al-Jihad al-Afdal). However, when peaceful endeavours become unable to bring cruelty and brutality to an end, then in order to rid malice and cruelty and to spread peace and security, there is the sanction in Islam of using force in Jihad, i.e. to fight. This is the last resort and final possible scenario of Jihad, and the noble Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) named this the lesser Jihad (al-Jihad al-Asghar). Today, the vast majority of our own and strangers ignore and neglect the peaceful struggles of the greater Jihad and by promoting the fighting of the lesser Jihad are tarnishing and distorting the reality of Jihad.

The lesser Jihad, i.e. the declaration of war is the right of only the government. No individual alone can declare and announce such a thing. Today, this is the rule that is implemented in the whole world. Only governments declare war and no single person has the right to declare war against anyone else. In this manner, when any Islamic government declares Jihad then the fighters are permitted to use force only against the army that fights them or is preparing to fight them. Just as Almighty Allah has stated, “And fight in the way of Allah with those who fight against you, and do not transgress (even against them), verily Allah does not love the transgressors.” (Qur’an 2, 190) And, “Allah does not forbid you concerning those who have not fought you over religion, or driven you out of your homes, that you show them kindness and be just to them. Surely, Allah loves those who are just. Allah only forbids you concerning those who have fought you over religion, and driven you out of your homes or assisted in driving you out, that you befriend them. And any who befriend them, then it is they who are the wrongdoers.” (Qur’an 60, 8-9)

Furthermore, in accordance with the instructions of the noble Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) the killing of women, children, disabled, unwell, injured, elderly and religious leaders is not permitted whatsoever. The corpse of anyone killed is not to be dishonoured and destroyed. Even animals, green fields and fruit bearing trees are not to be destroyed unnecessarily. In other words, whilst at the centre of the battlefield where emotions and passions become uncontrollable and the fire of revenge burns fiercely, even at that moment Islam has imposed upon the soldiers certain rules, regulations and principles of justice and equity. This is so that no one becomes a victim of transgression and injustice, for Almighty Allah does not love the transgressors. Is there present – in today’s developed and prosperous world – any such nation that has adhered to and cared for the rule of law, justice and equity during the state of war? Today, as a war commences, cities and populated locales are bombed and obliterated. Peaceful citizens, women, innocent children, elderly, unwell and the disabled, none are spared. Hospitals, places of worship and even educational establishments are all destroyed. This honour and excellence is only bestowed upon Islam that it does not sanction cruelty and transgression upon any of the innocent even during a war where emotions run wild.

Islam

The Arabic word Islam is derived from the root Salam, which means peace and security. Whenever Muslims meet and greet one another, they pray for each other’s peace and security. In addition, Muslims daily raise their hands to Almighty Allah and pray in the following words, “O Allah! You are peace, peace comes from you and to you returns peace. Keep us alive, O our Cherisher, in peace and take us into the house of peace.” Who could be more loving of peace other than those who daily offer prayers of peace for others and also pray for their own peace?

London Suicide Bombings

Almighty Allah states, “Verily those who believed and emigrated, and struggled hard – with their possessions and their lives – in the way of Allah, and those who provided shelter and assisted (them), they are friends to one another. As for those who believed and did not emigrate, there is nothing for you in their association until they emigrate. And if they seek your help in religion, then you are obliged to help them, except against a nation with whom you have an agreement and treaty. And Allah sees what you do.” (Qur’an 8, 72)

This means that if some Muslims reside under any non-Muslim government and there they face difficulties in the matters of religion. If these oppressed Muslims seek the assistance of other Muslim governments against this particular non-Muslim government, then the Muslim governments should provide their assistance. However, if those Muslim governments have a treaty and an agreement of peace with this particular non-Muslim government, then they can place moral pressure upon this non-Muslim government, but using force to assist these Muslims is not permitted. For, taking regard of and adhering to the promise and treaty is an obligation. Just as Almighty Allah has stated, “And fulfil the promise, for the promise will be questioned.” (Qur’an 17, 34) It is for this reason that the noble Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) stated, “He who does not adhere to his promise, has no religion.”

Every Muslim who has acquired British nationality and citizenship has made an agreement and treaty of loyalty to Great Britain and the Queen. By virtue and reason of the Qur’an, being bound and adhering to this pledge is compulsory. Furthermore, conforming to the parents’ pledge is compulsory also upon the children and the offspring. Just as if any non-Muslim acquires the citizenship of a Muslim state under a certain pledge, then his children and offspring are bound to that pledge also. Therefore, no British Muslim has the right to use force against Great Britain whether inside Great Britain or anywhere else outside Great Britain. Even now if any foolish British Muslim wishes to use force against Great Britain, then first of all he or she will have to break the pledge of loyalty by relinquishing and surrendering his or her citizenship. Without a doubt, all Muslims resemble one body and to feel for one another’s pain and suffering is a natural instinct, however, taking care and adhering to promises and treaties is much more important. Moreover, this is the lesson we learn from the practical example and character of the noble Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him). As an example, ponder over the treaty of Hudaybiyah.

The Treaty of Hudaybiyah

- On the day of Hudaybiyah, the noble Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) agreed upon a treaty, comprising of three conditions, with the non-Muslims:

1. Any non-Muslim who would come to the Muslims (in Madinah), the Muslims would return him.

2. Any Muslim who would come to the non-Muslims (in Makkah), the non-Muslims would not return him.

3. The Muslims would come (to Makkah for the performance of the Umrah) the following year and would only remain
for three days in Makkah. They would leave their weapons, i.e. swords and arrows, etc., sheathed.

During this period, Abu Jundal (who had accepted Islam) came to the Muslims walking in shackles. As he approached the Muslims, the noble Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) returned him to the non-Muslims.

- Whilst the noble Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) and Suhayl ibn ‘Amr were writing the treaty, at that moment the son of Suhayl, Abu Jundal, came dragging himself in shackles in front of the noble Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him). When Suhayl saw his son, Abu Jundal, he went towards him, slapped him across the face, took hold of him, dragged him towards himself and said, “O Muhammad! The treaty between us and you has been completed before he came.” The noble Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) replied, “You have spoken the truth.” Then Suhayl grabbed Abu Jundal by the neck and began dragging him so that he could take him to the Quraysh. Abu Jundal began calling out aloud, “O Muslims! Would I be returned to the Muslims? They will be brutal and will torture me because of my religion!” The Muslims were ever more hurt and troubled hearing his plea. At that point, the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) stated, “O Abu Jundal! Be patient and intend for reward and blessing. Almighty Allah is soon to free you and the other weak Muslims and is soon to grant them exhilaration. And I have made a treaty with these people and I will not break this agreement and treaty.” Then Abu Jundal despondently went with his father and the treaty was completed.

Conclusion

The summarising conclusion of my submissions is that British Muslims are obliged to hold on to and take regard of their pledge and agreement. However, in order to have our demands met and needs fulfilled, great endeavours through democratic means should be maintained (just as the Jewish community) by actively participating in the political process thus electing more and more Muslim members of parliament. Matters and issues are not resolved merely by emotional and sentimental means. Only through cogent and positive initiatives based upon a proper realisation of the ground realities and modern issues can a step be taken towards a bright future.

In my opinion, Great Britain is a great country for the Muslims as it enjoys religious freedom and great opportunities for a better livelihood. It is though correct that after the 7th July 2005 bombings, the situation and state of affairs has become difficult, however, this is the reaction to those bombings. If such bombings occurred in an Islamic country by non-Muslims, then there would be a much greater reaction there. Therefore, we must show endurance, patience and tolerance.

Almighty Allah is our Helper and Protector. Amin.

Source

It is said that the 19th century French poet Mallarmé can only be fully understood by those who are not French, because they read him more slowly. Converts to Islam, the subject of this essay, can perhaps claim the same ambiguous advantage in their reading of the Islamic narrative. Several consequent questions impose themselves: can the clarity of vision brought by novelty outweigh the absence of a Muslim upbringing? Is adoption a more culturally fertile condition than simple sonship? Has the dynamism of Islamic culture after the initial Arab era owed everything to the energy of recent converts, with their own ethnic genius: the Persians, and then, pre-eminently, the Turks; and if so, might the appearance of converts in the West presage a larger revival of the fortunes of an aged and tired Islamic umma?

I hope to return to these interesting queries at a later date. Here, I shall confine myself to the issue that presents itself most sharply to those British people who, like myself, have boarded the lifeboat of Islam. The issue is the question of British Muslim identity.

Who is a British Muslim is an easy question: it is anyone who follows Islam and holds a U.K. passport. This is at once the easiest and probably the only workable definition. The more teasing question, which I wish to raise in this article is: what is a British Muslim? The query raises two problems related to belonging. What does it mean to be a British person who belongs to Islam? And, what does it mean to be a Muslim person who belongs to Britain? How do we map the overlap zone in a way that makes sense, and is legitimate, in terms of the co-ordinates of both of these terms?

Clearly, by virtue of the first definition, the British Muslim population, all 1.5 million of it, divides into three groups. Firstly, and least problematically, there are men and women whose cultural formation was not British, but who have migrated to this country. This essay will not touch centrally on their own particular struggle for self-definition, which is quite different to that addressed by converts.

Secondly, there are the children of the first group, and occasionally now their grandchildren. These people are usually seen to be torn between two worlds, but in reality, the British world has shaped their souls far more profoundly then they often recognise. Modern schooling is designed for a culture that puts an increasing share of acculturation and upbringing, as opposed to the simple inculcation of facts, on the shoulders of schoolteachers rather than of parents. Muslims who have moved to this country have done so at precisely the time when British education is also going into the business of parenting; most Muslim parents do not recognise the fact, but Muslim children in this country always have a third parent: the Education Secretary. Even those second-generation Muslims here who claim to have angrily rejected Britishness are in fact doing so in terms of types of radicalism which are deeply influenced by Western styles of dissent. Most noticeably, they locate their radicalism not primarily in a spiritual, but in social and political rejection of the oppressive order around them. Their unsettled and agitated mood is not always congenial to the recent convert, who may, despite the cultural distance, feel more comfortable with the first rather than the second generation of migrants, preferring their God-centred religion to what is often the troubled, identity-seeking Islam of the young.

Thirdly, we have the smallest group of all: the convert community. This group is highly disparate, and it is not clear that one can make any meaningful generalisations about it at all. Almost by definition, a British person who is guided to Islam is an eccentric of some kind: one of the virtues, perhaps, of the British is that eccentrics have always been nurtured or at least more or less tolerated here. But the overall pattern is confusing. One can offer certain sociological generalisations about British people who become Buddhists, or evangelical Christians, or Marxists. But the present writer’s experience with new Muslims is that no discernable patterns exist which might shed light on the routes by which people awaken to the truth of Islam. This failure to discern patterns can only be described as lamentable, for were we to discern such patterns, they could immediately be exploited for da‘wa purposes. The most we can say is that a clear majority of converts to Islam in Britain are from Catholic rather than Protestant or Jewish backgrounds. Within this group, in my experience the only clergy that convert are Jesuits; I am not aware of a single member of another religious order that has become Muslim.  Other than this very general and not terribly helpful observation, few patterns are discernable, and our missionary efforts, never very coordinated, flounder accordingly.

But whatever the processes, and we may be wise to accept traditional invocations of divine providence and guidance which transcend and make irrelevant any sociological pattern-finding, this third group among British Muslims confronts certain sharp problems of self-definition. Egyptian, or Indonesian, or Indian Muslims becoming British do so slowly, perhaps over two or three generations. The identity problems can be sharp: in particular, there can be painful challenges to the hopes and expectations of parents. But the process is gentle in comparison with the abrupt jolt, which typically welcomes the convert. The signposts of the universe are not adjusted slowly, but all at once.

The initial and quite understandable response of many newcomers is to become an absolutist. Everything going on among pious Muslims is angelic; everything outside the circle of the faith is demonic. The appeal of this outlook lies in its simplicity. The newly rearranged landscape upon which the convert looks is seen in satisfying black and white terms of Them versus Us, good against evil.

This mindset is sometimes called ‘convertitis’. It is a common illness, which can make those who have caught it rather difficult to deal with. Fortunately, it almost always wears off. The only exceptions are those weak souls who imagine that the buzz of excitement caused by their absolutist, Manichean division of the world was a necessary part of Islamic piety, or even that it has some spiritual significance. Such people are often condemned to wander from faction to faction, always joining something new, in an attempt to regain the initial excitement engendered by their conversion.  Most new Muslims, however, soon see through this. A majority of people come to Islam for real spiritual or intellectual reasons, and will continue with their quest once they are inside Islam. Becoming Muslim is, after all, only the first step to felicity. Those individuals who adopt Islam because they need an identity will be condemned to wander the sectarian and factional hall of mirrors, constantly looking for the perfect group that will give them their desperately needed sense of specialness and superiority.

But actions are by intentions. A hundred years ago the founder of the Anglo-Muslim movement, Imam Abdallah Quilliam in Liverpool, was writing that those British people who convert for Allah and His Messenger, will, by the grace of God, be rightly guided. Those who convert for any other reason are in serious spiritual trouble. Just as the namaz [salaat] prayer is invisibly invalidated if the niyya [intention] at its outset is not correct, similarly, Islam will not work for us unless we have entered it in faith, out of a sincere questing for God’s good pleasure. If things are not going right for us, if we find no delight in our prayers, if Ramadan simply makes us hungry, if we cannot seem to find the right mosque or the right company to take us forward, then we would do well to start by examining our intentions. Did we become Muslims only, and purely, to bring our souls to God? Other reasons: solidarity with the oppressed, admiration for Muslims we know, desire to join a group, the love of a woman - none of these are adequate foundations for our lives as Muslims deserving of Allah’s grace and guidance. Imam al-Qushayri says that spiritual aspirants ‘are only deprived of attainment when they neglect the foundations.’ So we need to look within, and if necessary, renew our faith, following the Prophetic sunna. ‘Renew your iman’, a celebrated hadith enjoins.  So what are we? Statistically, perhaps fifty thousand people. But once we have taken the plunge, and enjoyed the feel of Islam, and come to know through experience, rather than through reading books, that Islam is a way of sobriety, dignity, poise and rewarding spirituality, what exactly is our self-definition? When we meet family and friends who are not Muslim, how do we carry ourselves? Do we treat Islam as a great secret? A discreet eccentricity that we hope people will not be so crude as to mention? Or, on the contrary, something we wear on our sleeves, feeling that it is our duty constantly to steer the conversation back into sacred quarters, confronting people with Islam, that they might have no argument against us at the Resurrection?

More generally, what is our view of the wider world of unbelief, which, despite the breathless predictions of some of our co-religionists, continues to grow more powerful and more prosperous? How much of it can we affirm, and how much of it must we publicly or privately disown?

We can, of course, take the easy way out, and avoid engaging with these questions, by retreating from the mainstream of society, and consorting only with Muslims. But this is not so easy. We need to be employed, since this is pleasing to God; and we need to maintain good ties with our relations, since this is also enjoined in the Sunna. Wa-sahibhuma fi’l-dunya ma‘rufan - ‘Keep company with them both in the world in keeping with good custom’, says the Qur’an to converts who have unbelieving parents. And the Sunna explains that non-Muslim parents have significant rights over their Muslim children.  But more significantly even than this, to solve the problems thrown at us and at our identity by the real world outside the mosque gates, we need to engage regularly with non-Muslim society. But for this, there would be no effective da‘wa. People do not hear the word of Islam, generally, by being shouted at by some demagogue at Speakers Corner, or by reading some angry little pamphlet pushed into their hand by a wandering distributor of tracts. They convert through personal experience of Muslims. And this takes place, overwhelmingly, at the workplace. Other social contexts are closed to us: the pub, the beach, the office party. But work is a prime environment for being noticed, and judged, as Muslims.  There is nothing remotely new in this. Islam has always spread primarily through social interactions connected with work. The early Muslims who conquered half the world did not set up soapboxes in the town squares of Alexandria, Cordoba or Fez, in the hope that Christians would flock to them and hear their preaching. They did business with the Christians; and their nobility and integrity of conduct won the Christians over. That is the model followed by Muslims, particularly the Sufis, down the ages; and it is the one that we must retain today, by interacting honourably and respectfully with non-Muslims in our places of work, as much as we can.

If this is clear, then my initial question still begs a response. What is a British Muslim? What manner of creature is he, or she? The public consensus has clear ideas about other British identities: British Anglican, British Jew, British Asian Muslim or Hindu: all these are recognised categories and a certain community of expected response governs interactions between the majority and these groups. The Anglo-Muslim, however, is not a generally recognised type.

My own belief is that the future prosperity of the Anglo-Muslim movement will be determined largely by our ability to answer this question of identity. It is a question mainly for converts, but which many of whose dimensions will come to apply also to second-generation immigrant Muslims here, who have their own questions to ask themselves and this culture about what, exactly, they are.

To frame a response, I think it is useful to step back a little, and consider the larger picture of Islamic history of which we form a very small part. I mentioned earlier that Islam usually spread through the utilisation of commercial opportunities as opportunities for da‘wa. That picture is one of the most extraordinary success stories in religious history. Compare, for instance, the way in which the Muslim world was Islamised to the way in which the Americas were Christianised. Islamisation proceeded with remarkable gentleness, at the hands of Sufis and merchants. Christianisation used mass extermination of the native Americans, the baptism of uncomprehending survivors, and the baleful scrutiny by the Inquisition of any signs of backsliding. A more extreme contrast would be impossible to find.  Perhaps no less extraordinary than this contrast is its interesting concomitant: Christianisation brought Europeanisation. Islamisation did not bring Arabisation. The churches built by the Puritans or the Conquistadors in the New World were deliberate replicas of churches in Europe. The mosques constructed in the areas gradually won for Islam are endlessly diverse, and reflect and indeed celebrate local particularities. Christianity is a universal religion that has historically sought to impose a universal metropolitan culture. Islam is a universal religion that has consistently nurtured a particularist provincial culture. A church in Mexico City resembles a church in Salamanca. A mosque in Nigeria, or Istanbul, or Jakarta, resembles in key respects the patterns, now purified and uplifted by monotheism, of the indigenous regional patrimony.

No less remarkable is the ability of the Muslim liberators to accommodate those aspects of local, pre-Islamic tradition which did not clash absolutely with the truths of revelation. In entering new lands, Muslims were armed with the generous Koranic doctrine of Universal Apostleship; as the Koran says, ‘To every nation there has been sent a guide’. This conflicts sharply with the classical Christian view of salvation as hinging uniquely on one historical intervention of the divine in history: the salvific sacrifice of Christ on Calvary. Non-Christian religions were, in classical Christianity, seen as demonic and under the sign of original sin. But classical Islam has always been able and willing to see at least fragments of an authentic divine message in the faiths and cultures of non-Muslim peoples. If God has assured us that every nation has received divine guidance, then we can look with some favour on the Other. Hence, for instance, we find popular Muslim poets in India, such as Sayid Sultan, writing poems about Krishna as a Prophet. There is no final theological proof that he was one, but the assumption is nonetheless not in violation of the Koran.

Even among Muslim ulema who had not been to India, we find interestingly positive appraisals of Hinduism. For instance, the great Baghdad theologian al-Shahrastani, in his Book of Religions and Sects, had access to enough reliable information about India to develop a very sophisticated theological reaction to Indian religion. He accepts that the higher forms of Hinduism are not polytheistic. He notes that that although the Hindus have no notion of prophecy, they do have what he calls ashab al-ruhaniyat: quasi-divine beings who call mankind to love the Real and to practice the virtues. He names Vishnu and Shiva as examples, and speaks positively of them. He focuses particularly on the veneration of celestial bodies: the sun, the moon, and the planets. The reason why he fixes on these practices is that they seem to situate Hinduism within a recognisably Koranic paradigm. The Koran mentions quite favourably a group known as the Sabeans, who were by the second century identified with various star-worshipping but still vaguely monotheistic sects in Mesopotamia. The Sabeans are tolerated in Islamic law, although they are less privileged than the Jews and Christians, a position reflected in the ruling in Shari‘a that a Muslim may not marry their women or eat their meat.  Shahrastani explicitly assimilates many Hindus to this category of Sabeans. They are to be tolerated as believers in One God; and will only be punished by God if, having been properly exposed to Islam, they reject it.

Another example is supplied by the great Muslim epic in China. Those who believe that Muslim communities can only flourish if they ghettoise themselves and refuse to interact with majority communities would do well to look at Chinese history. Many of the leading mandarins of Ming China were in fact Muslims. Wang Dai-Yu, for instance, who died in 1660, was a Muslim scholar who received the title of ‘Master of the Four Religions’ because of his complete knowledge of China’s four religions: Islam, Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. Many of the leading admirals in the navy of the Ming Empire were practising Muslims.  In China, mosques look very like traditional Chinese garden-temples, except that there is a prayer hall without idols, and the calligraphy is Koranic. In some of the most beautiful, you will find, as you enter, the following words in Chinese inscribed on a tablet:

Sages have one mind and the same truth. In all parts of the world, sages arise who possess this uniformity of mind and truth. Muhammad, the Great Sage of the West, lived in Arabia long after Confucius, the Sage of China. Though separated by ages and countries, they had the same mind and Truth.

In these examples from India and China, we see a practical confirmation of Islam’s proclamation of itself as the final, and hence universal, message from God. In a hadith we learn: ‘Other prophets were sent only to their own peoples, while I am sent to all mankind.’ It is not that the Koranic world view affirms other religions as fully adequate paths to salvation. In fact, it clearly does not. But it allows the Muslim, as he encounters new worlds, to sift the wheat from the chaff in non-Muslim cultures, rejecting some things, to be sure, but maintaining others. In Islamic law, too, we find that shara‘i man qablana, the revealed laws of those who came before us, can under certain conditions be accepted as valid legal precedent, if they are not demonstrably abrogated by an Islamic revealed source. And Islamic law also recognises the authority of urf, local customary law, so that a law or custom is acceptable, and may be carried over into an Islamic culture or jurisdiction, if no Islamic revealed principle is thereby violated. Hence, we find the administration of Islamic law varying from country to country. If a wife complains of receiving insufficient dower from her husband, the qadi [judge] will make reference to what is considered normal in their culture and social group, and adjudge accordingly.

All of these historical observations have, I hope, served to make quite a simple point: Islam, as a universal religion, in fact as the only legitimately universal religion, also makes room for the particularities of the peoples who come into it. The traditional Muslim world is a rainbow, an extraordinary patchwork of different cultures, all united by a common adherence to the doctrinal and moral patterns set down in Revelation. Put differently, Revelation supplies parameters, hudud, rather than a complete blueprint for the details of cultural life. Local mindsets are Islamised, but remain distinct.

This point is obvious to anyone who has studied Islamic thought or Islamic history. I reiterate it today only because some Muslims nowadays reject it fiercely. Those who come to Islam because they wish to draw closer to God have no problem with a multiform Islam radiating from a single revealed paradigmatic core. But those who come to Islam seeking an identity will find the multiplicity of traditional Muslim cultures intolerable. People with confused identities are attracted to totalitarian solutions. And today, many young Muslims feel so threatened by the diversity of calls on their allegiance, and by the sheer complexity of modernity, that the only form of Islam they can regard as legitimate is a totalitarian, monolithic one. That there should be four schools of Islamic law is to them unbearable. That Muslim cultures should legitimately differ is a species of blasphemy.

These young people, who haunt our mosques and shout at any sign of disagreement, are either ignorant of Muslim history, or dismiss it as a gigantic mistake. For them, the grace and rahma of Allah has for some reason been withheld from all but a tiny fraction of the Umma. These people are the elect; and all disagreement with them is a blasphemy against God.

We cannot hope easily to cure such people. Simple proofs from our history or our scholarship will not suffice. What they need is a sense of security, and that, given the deteriorating conditions of both the Muslim world and of the ghettos in Western cities, may not come readily. For now, it is best to ignore their shouts and their melodramatic but always ill-fated activities. Our psychic problems are not theirs; and theirs can never be ours.

Islam is, and will continue to be, even amid the miserable globalisation of modern culture, a faith that celebrates diversity. Our thinking about our own position as British Muslims should focus on that fact, and quietly but firmly ignore the protests both of the totalitarian fringe, and of the importers of other regional cultures, such as that of Pakistan, which they regard as the only legitimate Islamic ideal.

So far, however, we have been too busy restating the initial question with which this chapter opened, and defending its legitimacy, to propose any substantive answer. It is time now to attempt a brief sketch of what I construe our cultural position and prospects to be.

As I have tried to emphasise, Islam’s presence in Britain is not an Islamic problem. Islam is universal, and can operate everywhere. It is not an Islamic problem, but it may be a British problem. Europe, alone among the continents, does not have a longstanding tradition of plurality. In medieval Asia or Africa, in China or the Songhai Empire, or Egypt, or almost everywhere, one could usually practice one’s own religion in peace, whatever it happened to be. Only in Europe was there a consistent policy of enforcing religious uniformity. The reason for this lay of course in the Church’s theology: unless you had some part in Christ’s redemptive sacrifice, you were in the grip of original sin, and hence were an instrument of the devil. Medieval Catholics were even expected to believe that unbaptised infants would be tormented in Hell forever. Given that absolute view, it was only natural that Europe constantly strove for religious uniformity.

Britain, as part of the European world, has traditionally suffered the same totalitarian entailments in its history. Hence, although it has always been possible to be a Christian in a Muslim country, it was against the law to be a Muslim in Britain until 1812, with the passage through parliament of the Trinitarian Act. Nonetheless, three centuries before that, with Henry VIII’s Act of Supremacy, England cut itself off from formal submission to Vatican doctrines; and from that time a type of religious diversity has been, within severe constraints, at least a possibility. In fact, Britain was the first major European country to break with the medieval European tradition of absolute religious conformity. Perhaps it is because of this fact that exclusivist and xenophobic political manifestations are less common in Britain today than in most Continental countries. The National Front is a lunatic fringe party in the U.K., whereas its equivalents regularly scoop twenty percent of the votes in some regions of France, Belgium, Italy, Germany and Austria.

When England threw off the Papist yoke, opportunities arose for questioning ancient errors of understanding which had been introduced into Christianity by the Church Fathers. These opportunities, however, were not properly grasped. The English Reformation was an attempt not to extirpate bid‘a in the Muslim sense, and return to the religion of Jesus of Nazareth, which had been distorted by the Church on the basis of the Hellenising agendas of the anonymous gospel authors, but to reform the doctrines and liturgy of the medieval church. Hence the reformers did not attempt to return to the simple monotheistic worship of the Apostles, but, in the Book of Common Prayer published in 1549, created a new vernacular liturgy based largely on medieval trinitarian and incarnationist precedents.

This English willingness to challenge tradition, however, was to have immense repercussions. Despite the lack of awareness of the instability of the gospel texts, as revealed by 20th century scholarship, for the first time Europeans, and notably Britons, were questioning the innovations of the Church magisterium, and attempting to grope back towards the faith revealed by God to His prophet Jesus, upon whom be peace.

One repercussion of the Reformation on our ancestors was the revival of a mystical tradition, whose most obvious manifestation was the Cambridge Platonists. English mysticism has usually been of a moderate type: one thinks of the Cloud of Unknowing, or Julian of Norwich. Extreme feats of asceticism, or extravagant and obsessive preoccupations with visions and miraculous happenings, have never been part of the English style of spirituality. The Cambridge Platonists drew on this moderate mysticism, but insisted that mystical inspiration must work hand in hand with rational judgment, and with sound doctrine derived from the Scriptures. This position, which influenced John Locke in particular, again evinces the English style of religion: profound but not verbose, rational but not rationalistic, and scriptural but not literalistic.

This very English approach to religion in due course led to serious questions being asked about the centrepiece of medieval Christian dogma: the Trinity. Milton, and later John Locke himself, are known to have held discreetly Unitarian beliefs, having been unable to find convincing justification for trinitarian and incarnationist views in the Scriptures. Locke’s close friend Newton was even more frank, writing of the vehement universal and lasting controversy about the Trinity.

Let them make good sense of it who are able. For my part, I can make none.

The period around the Civil War threw up many Englishmen who were likewise concerned about the distortion of the teachings of Jesus by the Church; and the term Unitarian comes into being sometime during this period. But side by side with this tradition of dissent, and in often obscure ways interacting with it, went an even more revolutionary change: improved information about the Blessed Prophet of Islam.

The medievals chose to remain in ignorance about Islam. For them, Muslims were summa culpabilis: the sum of everything blameworthy. Knights from Britain had been at the forefront of the Crusades. The sack of the Muslim city of Lisbon in 1147 during which perhaps 150,000 Muslims were massacred, was largely the work of soldiers from Norfolk and Suffolk. But the same quest for simplicity and honesty which made the Reformation possible, also made of England the first country in Europe where medieval images of Islam could be challenged.

To an extent which we cannot now determine, largely because an excess of sympathy with either Islam or Unitarianism could result in the dissenter being hung, drawn and quartered, new perspectives on Islam informed and reinforced the discreet Unitarian movement. This is implied by the title of Humphrey Prideaux’s hate-filled book of 1697, which he called, The true nature of Imposture, fully displayed in the life of Mahomet ... offered to the consideration of the Deists of the present age.  Prideaux is clearly implying that some radical Dissenters were being drawn towards Islam, and he is writing his polemic to hold back that tide. But a far clearer insight into this process is supplied by another author, a certain Henry Stubbe.

Stubbe is the first European Christian to write favourably of Islam. In fact, he writes so favourably that we can only conclude that he had thrown off the heritage of Christianity, and privately adopted it. He was educated at Westminster and Oxford, and worked as a physician in Warwick, and as personal physician to King James. His biographer Anthony Wood described him as ‘the most noted person of his age that these late times have produced.’ He died in 1676, after being accused of heresy, and spending some time in prison.

Stubbe was a child of the Civil War, and the spiritual chaos of the Interregnum prompted him to question the official tenets of his inherited Anglicanism. He was also a scholar, who had mastered Latin, Greek and Hebrew, and was fully conversant with the new critical scholarship on the Bible. Putting all these gifts together, and thanks to his friendship with Pococke, the Laudian Professor of Arabic in Oxford, he wrote a book, which for the nineteenth century would have been advanced, but which for the seventeenth is positively astounding. Just the title alone gives some hint of this: ‘An Account of the Rise and Progress of Mahometanism, and a Vindication of him and his Religion from the Calumnies of the Christians.’

The book begins with a chapter demonstrating how the message of Jesus Christ has been perverted by the Church. He stresses the fact that Jesus, upon him be peace, had remained faithful to the Mosaic Law, and would have been horrified by the idea that later generations might use his name to justify the eating of pork, for instance. He says, of the Disciples:

They did never believe Christ to be the natural Son of God, by eternal Generation, or any tenet depending thereon, or prayed unto him, or believed the Holy Ghost, or the Trinity of persons in one Deity ... The whole constitution of the primitive Church Government relates to the Jewish Synagogue, not to the Hierarchy. The presbyters were not Priests, but Laymen set apart to their office by imposition of hands . . . Nor was the name of Priest then ever heard of.

He concludes that the sacraments of the Church, particularly baptism and the Eucharist, are pagan rituals introduced into Christianity several decades after Christ’s death.  Stubbe then provides a chapter on ‘a brief History of Arabia and the Saracens’, followed by four on the Prophet. Chapter Eight is a vindication of the Prophet; chapter 9 is a vindication of Islam, and chapter 10 explains the moral necessity of the doctrine of Jihad.

His polemical intentions throughout are clear: he constantly shows Islam to be a purer and more rational form of religion than Christianity. Here is Stubbe, for instance, summarising the Prophet’s teaching:

This is the sum of Mahometan Religion, on the one hand not clogging Men’s Faith with the necessity of believing a number of abstruse notions which they cannot comprehend, and which are often contrary to the dictates of Reason and common Sense; nor on the other hand loading them with the performance of many troublesome, expensive and superstitious Ceremonies, yet enjoining a due observance of Religious Worship, as the surest Method to keep Men in the bounds of their Duty both to God and Man.

And a little further on he adds:

Let us now lay aside our prejudices ... Their Articles of Faith are few and plain, whereby they are preserved from Schisms and Heresies, for altho’ they have great diversity of opinions in the explication of their Law, yet, agreeing in the fundamentals, their differences in opinion do not reach to that breach of Charity so common among the Christians, who thereby become a scandal to all other Religions in the world. Their Notions of God are great and noble, their opinions of the Future State are consonant to those of the Jews and Christians. As to the moral part of their Religion . . . we shall see that it is not inferior to that of the Christians. And lastly, their religious Duties are plainly laid down, which is the cause that they are duly observed, and are in themselves very rational.

He allocates an entire chapter to show the moral significance of the Jihad. This chapter is perhaps the most remarkable in the entire book, since it had long been a Christian idée fixe that Islam could only spread by the sword. He goes to some length, quoting travellers to the Ottoman Empire, to show that Christian minorities are usually protected better under Muslim rule than under the rule of their fellow Christians. He observes, for instance:

It is manifest that the Mahometans did propagate their Empire, but not their Religion, by force of arms . . . Christians and other Religions might peaceably subsist under their Protection . . . it is an assured truth, that the vulgar Greeks live in a better Condition under the Turk at present then they did under their own Emperors, when there were perpetual murders practised on their Princes, and tyranny over the People; but they are now secure from Injury if they pay their Taxes. And it is indeed more the Interest of the Princes & Nobles, than of the People, which at present keeps all Europe from submitting to the Turks.

Having sung Islam’s praises in these terms, Stubbe could hardly expect to publish his book. He published several others, but this one languished discreetly in manuscript form until 1911, when a group of Ottoman Muslims in London rescued it from obscurity and published it.  At least six manuscripts did, however, circulate in a more or less clandestine fashion. No fewer than three of them were preserved in the private library of the Revd John Disney, who at the beginning of the 19th century shocked the established church by publicly converting to Unitarianism. Some historians have suggested also that Gibbon was familiar with the work. For instance, Stubbe observes:

When Christianity became generally received, it introduced with it a general inundation of Barbarism and Ignorance, which over-run all places where it prevailed.

And Gibbon, several decades later, closes his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire with the words: ‘I have described the triumph of barbarism and religion.’ Gibbon himself was known for his private scepticism about Trinitarian dogma.  Stubbe’s book, as I have said, is the work of a brave pioneer. But it is also a considered reflection upon the religious instabilities of the interregnum period which generated it. It shows a sensitive and immensely cultivated English mind shaking off the complications of old dogma, using modern scholarship to reconstruct the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, and of the Prophet Muhammad. Instead of something exotic, we see here a very English kind of religion expressing itself.

Stubbe is spiritual, but not superstitious. He likes simplicity: the blank, Puritan wall of the mosque rather than the elaborate stone metaphors of Catholicism or of the dizzyingly high Anglicanism of Charles. He values wholesome morality that is pragmatic rather than irresponsibly idealistic: so he commends polygamy, and shows the moral dangers of legally imposed monogamy. He regards with distaste traditional Christian strictures on ‘the flesh’ - a century beforehand, Englishmen had rejected the arguments for a celibate clergy and had firmly quashed monasticism as both unnatural and parasitic. For Stubbe, the Prophet’s approach was in accord with nature: the love of woman is as natural as the love of God. The Prophet, like the great Hebrew patriarchs, showed that sacred and profane love can and indeed must go together.

A generation earlier, John Donne had suffered passions for both woman and for God; and found his religion finally unable to reconcile the two. His early poems are among some of the most touching, and also sensual, love poems in the English language. Later, as Dean of St Paul’s, he realised that he must renounce the flesh as the instrument of the Fall and the perpetrator of original sin. Hence his agonising, tragic spiritual career, renouncing the flesh to serve God, composing poems wrapped in his winding sheet: Donne’s great Muslim soul caught in the flawed dialectic of a theology that regarded spirit and body as eternally at war.

Stubbe is also drawing on a particularly English pragmatism in his treatment of the Jihad. Far from regarding the Islamic institution of the just war as a reproach, he extols it, contrasting it with what he regarded as the insipid and irresponsible pacifism of the unknown New Testament authors. Stubbe is an English gentleman of a generation that had known war, and knew that there are some injustices in the world that cannot be dissolved through passive suffering, through turning the other cheek. He had sided with Parliament during the civil war, holding, with Cromwell, that the righteous man may sometimes justly bear the burden of the sword. An admirer of Cromwell, he became an admirer of the Prophet. For him, the Prophet was not a foreign, exotic figure: his genial vision of human life under God exactly conformed to what a civilised Englishman of the seventeenth century thought necessary and proper. In Stubbe’s work, in other words, we find a vindication of Muhammad as an English prophet.

There is more that can be said about the convergence of Islamic moderation and good sense with the English temper. Tragically, the rise of Dissent in England coincided also with the rise of nationalism and xenophobia, which reached its intoxicating heights with the empire of Queen Victoria and the Edwardians. Under such Anglocentric and frankly racist banners, sympathy with Islam became once more a receding possibility. But there were exceptions. Perhaps the most celebrated was that most English of intellectuals, Carlyle. Carlyle, like Stubbe two centuries before, was a free spirit, unhampered either by obsessions with Trinity, or modern delusions about the ability of material progress to secure human happiness.

On May the 8th 1840, in a stuffy lecture room in Portman Square, London’s intellectual elite were hearing Carlyle speak about the Prophet. They had anticipated the usual invective; and they were astonished to watch him holding up the Prophet as a heroic, adventurous figure, whose sacrifices had brought a natural theism to his people, and had much to teach a materialistic Victorian England. The climax came when the lecturer cried:

Benthamee Utility, virtue by Profit and Loss; reducing this God’s world to a dead brute Steam-engine . . . if you ask me which gives, Mahomet or they, the beggarlier and falser view of Man and his Destinies in this Universe, I will answer, it is not Mahomet.

Stung to the quick, John Stuart Mill leaped to his feet, and cried out: ‘No!’Carlyle was lecturing on ‘The Hero as Prophet’; and again we see the English realism towards the use of force, which had made possible the creation of the British Empire, inspiring a more positive appreciation of the Prophet of Islam. The great Christian blindness towards Islam has always been the belief that there can be only one type of perfection, namely the pacifist Jesus, who taught men to turn the other cheek, and who said, ‘Resist not him that is evil.’ For minds nurtured on such an image, the hero-Prophet is a difficult figure to comprehend.

In the Far East, of course, there is no such mental block. Spirituality and the cultivation of the martial arts there went hand in hand. The love of women was also seen as a necessary part of this ethos. The samurai tradition in particular, of the righteous swordsman, a meditator who was also a great lover of women, ensures that a Japanese, for instance, will have few difficulties with the specific genius and greatness of the Prophet of Islam. But for Christians, there is no such model, although knightly ethics in the early Middle Ages, learned from Muslims in Spain and Palestine, dimly suggested it. But even for the Crusader knights, the ideal of celibacy was often accepted: the Knights Templar, for instance, a monastic warrior order, who were influenced enough by Islam to comprehend the importance of a sacred warriorhood, but who never quite got the point about celibacy.

With Carlyle, the Hero as Prophet, or the Prophet as Hero, reveals itself as a credible type for the English mind. And Carlyle’s insistence on the moral exaltation of the Prophet who transcended pacifism to take up arms to fight for his people was understood by at least one later British writer, George Bernard Shaw. For Shaw, as for Carlyle, there was no doubt about the correct answer to Hamlet’s question.

Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them.

Edmund Burke had already pointed out that ‘for evil to triumph, it is enough that good men do nothing.’ Shaw, like Carlyle, recognised that this principle calls into question the Gospel ethic of passivity in the face of suffering and injustice. Let me read to you a few words from Hesketh Pearson’s biography of the generally post-Christian Shaw:

For many years (this was 1927), Shaw had been meditating a play on a prophet. The militant saint was a type more congenial to his nature than any other, a type he thoroughly sympathised with and could therefore portray with unfailing insight. In all history the one person who exactly answered his requirements, who would have made the perfect Shavian hero, was Mahomet.

In his diary for 1913, Shaw himself wrote: ‘I had long desired to dramatise the life of Mahomet. But the possibility of a protest from the Turkish Ambassador - or the fear of it - causing the Lord Chamberlain to refuse to license such a play, deterred me.’ And so, as Pearson records, he wrote Saint Joan instead.  Perhaps we can close this brief parenthetic summary of the convergence between British martial theory and traditions and Islam, with a final insight; this time offered by Colin Morris, former head of the BBC in Northern Ireland:

The false prophet is a moralist, he tells the world how things ought to be; the real prophet is a realist, he tells the world how things really are.

Let us try to sum up the above arguments. Firstly, Islam is a universal religion. Despite its origins in 7th century Arabia, it works everywhere, and this is itself a sign of its miraculous and divine origin. Secondly, the British Isles have for several hundred years been the home of individuals whose religious and moral temper is very close to that of Islam. To move from Christianity to Islam is hence, for an English man or woman, not the giant leap that outsiders might assume. It is, rather, simply the logical next step in the epic story of our people. Christianity, formerly a Greek mystery religion advocating a moral code against the natural law, is in fact foreign to our national temperament. It is an exotic creed, and it is now fatally compromised by its positive view of secular modernity. Islam, once we have become familiar with it, and settled into it comfortably, is the most suitable faith for the British. Its values are our values. Its moderate, undemonstrative style of piety, still waters running deep; its insistence on modesty and a certain reserve, and its insistence on common sense and on pragmatism, combine to furnish the most natural and easy religious option for our people.

I should close by saying that nothing in what I have said is intended in a jingoistic sense. That the British have a convergence with Islam is to the credit of our people, certainly. But I am not commending any smug ethnocentrism; precisely because Islam itself came to abolish a tribal mentality. Islam is the true consanguinity of believers in the One True God, the common bond of those who seek to remain focused on the divine Source of our being in this diffuse, ignorant and tragic age. But it is generous and inclusive. It allows us to celebrate our particularity, the genius of our heritage; within, rather than in tension with, the greater and more lasting fellowship of faith.

Based on a lecture given to a conference of British converts on September 17 1997.

British convert to Islam, Abdal-Hakim Murad, was born in 1960 in London. He was educated Cambridge University (MA Arabic), and at al-Azhar University, the highest seat of learning in Sunni Islam.  He has studied under traditional Islamic scholars in Cairo and Jeddah, including Shaykh Ahmad Mashhur al-Haddad, and Shaykh Ismail al-Adawi.  Abdal-Hakim Murad has translated several classical Arabic works, including Imam al-Bayhaqi's 'Seventy-Seven Branches of Faith', and 'Selections from the Fath al-Bari'. He is also the Trustee and Secretary of The Muslim Academic Trust and Director of The Anglo-Muslim Fellowship for Eastern Europe.

Source

'Blood is no argument', as Shakespeare observed. Sadly, Muslim ranks are today swollen with those who disagree. The World Trade Centre, yesterday's symbol of global finance, has today become a monument to the failure of global Islam to control those who believe that the West can be bullied into changing its wayward ways towards the East. There is no real excuse to hand. It is simply not enough to clamour, as many have done, about 'chickens coming home to roost', and to protest that Washington's acquiescence in Israeli policies of ethnic cleansing is the inevitable generator of such hate. It is of course true - as Shabbir Akhtar has noted - that powerlessness can corrupt as insistently as does power. But to comprehend is not to sanction or even to empathize. To take innocent life to achieve a goal is the hallmark of the most extreme secular utilitarian ethic, and stands at the opposite pole of the absolute moral constraints required by religion.

There was a time, not long ago, when the 'ultras' were few, forming only a tiny wart on the face of the worldwide attempt to revivify Islam. Sadly, we can no longer enjoy the luxury of ignoring them. The extreme has broadened, and the middle ground, giving way, is everywhere dislocated and confused. And this enfeeblement of the middle ground, was what was enjoined by the Prophetic example, is in turn accelerated by the opprobrium which the extremists bring not simply upon themselves, but upon committed Muslims everywhere. For here, as elsewhere, the preferences of the media work firmly against us. David Koresh could broadcast his fringe Biblical message from Ranch Apocalypse without the image of Christianity, or even its Adventist wing, being in any way besmirched. But when a fringe Islamic group bombs Swedish tourists in Cairo, the muck is instantly spread over 'militant Muslims' everywhere.

If these things go on, the Islamic movement will cease to form an authentic summons to cultural and spiritual renewal, and will exist as little more than a splintered array of maniacal factions. The prospect of such an appalling and humiliating end to the story of a religion which once surpassed all others in its capacity for tolerating debate and dissent is now a real possibility. The entire experience of Islamic work over the past fifteen years has been one of increasing radicalization, driven by the perceived failure of the traditional Islamic institutions and the older Muslim movements to lead the Muslim peoples into the worthy but so far chimerical promised land of the 'Islamic State.'

If this final catastrophe is to be averted, the mainstream will have to regain the initiative. But for this to happen, it must begin by confessing that the radical critique of moderation has its force. The Islamic movement has so far been remarkably unsuccessful. We must ask ourselves how it is that a man like Nasser, a butcher, a failed soldier and a cynical demagogue, could have taken over a country as pivotal as Egypt, despite the vacuity of his beliefs, while the Muslim Brotherhood, with its pullulating millions of members, should have failed, and failed continuously, for six decades. The radical accusation of a failure in methodology cannot fail to strike home in such a context of dismal and prolonged inadequacy.

It is in this context - startlingly, perhaps, but inescapably - that we must present our case for the revival of the spiritual life within Islam. If it is ever to prosper, the 'Islamic revival' must be made to see that it is in crisis, and that its mental resources are proving insufficient to meet contemporary needs. The response to this must be grounded in an act of collective muhasaba, of self-examination, in terms that transcend the ideologised neo-Islam of the revivalists, and return to a more classical and indigenously Muslim dialectic.

Symptomatic of the disease is the fact that among all the explanations offered for the crisis of the Islamic movement, the only authentically Muslim interpretation, namely, that God should not be lending it His support, is conspicuously absent. It is true that we frequently hear the Quranic verse which states that "God does not change the condition of a people until they change the condition of their own selves." [1] But never, it seems, is this principle intelligently grasped. It is assumed that the sacred text is here doing no more than to enjoin individual moral reform as a precondition for collective societal success. Nothing could be more hazardous, however, than to measure such moral reform against the yardstick of the fiqh without giving concern to whether the virtues gained have been acquired through conformity (a relatively simple task), or proceed spontaneously from a genuine realignment of the soul. The verse is speaking of a spiritual change, specifically, a transformation of the nafs of the believers - not a moral one. And as the Blessed Prophet never tired of reminding us, there is little value in outward conformity to the rules unless this conformity is mirrored and engendered by an authentically righteous disposition of the heart. 'No-one shall enter the Garden by his works,' as he expressed it. Meanwhile, the profoundly judgmental and works - oriented tenor of modern revivalist Islam (we must shun the problematic buzz-word 'fundamentalism'), fixated on visible manifestations of morality, has failed to address the underlying question of what revelation is for. For it is theological nonsense to suggest that God's final concern is with our ability to conform to a complex set of rules. His concern is rather that we should be restored, through our labours and His grace, to that state of purity and equilibrium with which we were born. The rules are a vital means to that end, and are facilitated by it. But they do not take its place.

To make this point, the Holy Quran deploys a striking metaphor. In Sura Ibrahim, verses 24 to 26, we read:

Have you not seen how God coineth a likeness: a goodly word like a goodly tree, the root whereof is set firm, its branch in the heaven? It bringeth forth its fruit at every time, by the leave of its Lord. Thus doth God coin likenesses for men, that perhaps they may reflect. And the likeness of an evil word is that of an evil tree that hath been torn up by the root from upon the earth, possessed of no stability.

According to the scholars of tafsir (exegesis), the reference here is to the 'words' (kalima) of faith and unfaith. The former is illustrated as a natural growth, whose florescence of moral and intellectual achievement is nourished by firm roots, which in turn denote the basis of faith: the quality of the proofs one has received, and the certainty and sound awareness of God which alone signify that one is firmly grounded in the reality of existence. The fruits thus yielded - the palpable benefits of the religious life - are permanent ('at every time'), and are not man's own accomplishment, for they only come 'by the leave of its Lord'. Thus is the sound life of faith. The contrast is then drawn with the only alternative: kufr, which is not grounded in reality but in illusion, and is hence 'possessed of no stability'.[2]

This passage, reminiscent of some of the binary categorisations of human types presented early on in Surat al-Baqara, precisely encapsulates the relationship between faith and works, the hierarchy which exists between them, and the sustainable balance between nourishment and fructition, between taking and giving, which true faith must maintain.

It is against this criterion that we must judge the quality of contemporary 'activist' styles of faith. Is the young 'ultra', with his intense rage which can sometimes render him liable to nervous disorders, and his fixation on a relatively narrow range of issues and concerns, really firmly rooted, and fruitful, in the sense described by this Quranic image?

Let me point to the answer with an example drawn from my own experience.

I used to know, quite well, a leader of the radical 'Islamic' group, the Jama'at Islamiya, at the Egyptian university of Assiut. His name was Hamdi. He grew a luxuriant beard, was constantly scrubbing his teeth with his miswak, and spent his time preaching hatred of the Coptic Christians, a number of whom were actually attacked and beaten up as a result of his khutbas. He had hundreds of followers; in fact, Assiut today remains a citadel of hardline, Wahhabi-style activism.

The moral of the story is that some five years after this acquaintance, providence again brought me face to face with Shaikh Hamdi. This time, chancing to see him on a Cairo street, I almost failed to recognise him. The beard was gone. He was in trousers and a sweater. More astonishing still was that he was walking with a young Western girl who turned out to be an Australian, whom, as he sheepishly explained to me, he was intending to marry. I talked to him, and it became clear that he was no longer even a minimally observant Muslim, no longer prayed, and that his ambition in life was to leave Egypt, live in Australia, and make money. What was extraordinary was that his experiences in Islamic activism had made no impression on him - he was once again the same distracted, ordinary Egyptian youth he had been before his conversion to 'radical Islam'.

This phenomenon, which we might label 'salafi burnout', is a recognised feature of many modern Muslim cultures. An initial enthusiasm, gained usually in one's early twenties, loses steam some seven to ten years later. Prison and torture - the frequent lot of the Islamic radical - may serve to prolong commitment, but ultimately, a majority of these neo-Muslims relapse, seemingly no better or worse for their experience in the cult-like universe of the salafi mindset.

This ephemerality of extremist activism should be as suspicious as its content. Authentic Muslim faith is simply not supposed to be this fragile; as the Qur'an says, its root is meant to be 'set firm'. One has to conclude that of the two trees depicted in the Quranic image, salafi extremism resembles the second rather than the first. After all, the Sahaba were not known for a transient commitment: their devotion and piety remained incomparably pure until they died.

What attracts young Muslims to this type of ephemeral but ferocious activism? 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.

One easily visualises how this works. A young Arab, part of an oversized family, competing for scarce jobs, unable to marry because he is poor, perhaps a migrant to a rapidly expanding city, feels like a man lost in a desert without signposts. One morning he picks up a copy of Sayyid Qutb from a newsstand, and is 'born-again' on the spot. This is what he needed: instant certainty, a framework in which to interpret the landscape before him, to resolve the problems and tensions of his life, and, even more deliciously, a way of feeling superior and in control. He joins a group, and, anxious to retain his newfound certainty, accepts the usual proposition that all the other groups are mistaken.

This, of course, is not how Muslim religious conversion is supposed to work. It is meant to be a process of intellectual maturation, triggered by the presence of a very holy person or place. Tawba, in its traditional form, yields an outlook of joy, contentment, and a deep affection for others. The modern type of tawba, however, born of insecurity, often makes Muslims narrow, intolerant, and exclusivist. Even more noticeably, it produces people whose faith is, despite its apparent intensity, liable to vanish as suddenly as it came. Deprived of real nourishment, the activist's soul can only grow hungry and emaciated, until at last it dies.

THE ACTIVISM WITHIN

How should we respond to this disorder? We must begin by remembering what Islam is for. As we noted earlier, our din is not, ultimately, a manual of rules which, when meticulously followed, becomes a passport to paradise. Instead, it is a package of social, intellectual and spiritual technology whose purpose is to cleanse the human heart. In the Qur'an, the Lord says that on the Day of Judgement, nothing will be of any use to us, except a sound heart (qalbun salim). [3] And in a famous hadith, the Prophet, upon whom be blessings and peace, says that

"Verily in the body there is a piece of flesh. If it is sound, the body is all sound. If it is corrupt, the body is all corrupt. Verily, it is the heart.

Mindful of this commandment, under which all the other commandments of Islam are subsumed, and which alone gives them meaning, the Islamic scholars have worked out a science, an ilm (science), of analysing the 'states' of the heart, and the methods of bringing it into this condition of soundness. In the fullness of time, this science acquired the name tasawwuf, in English 'Sufism' - a traditional label for what we might nowadays more intelligibly call 'Islamic psychology.'

At this point, many hackles are raised and well-rehearsed objections voiced. It is vital to understand that mainstream Sufism is not, and never has been, a doctrinal system, or a school of thought - a madhhab. It is, instead, a set of insights and practices which operate within the various Islamic madhhabs; in other words, it is not a madhhab, it is an ilm. And like most of the other Islamic ulum, it was not known by name, or in its later developed form, in the age of the Prophet (upon him be blessings and peace) or his Companions. This does not make it less legitimate. There are many Islamic sciences which only took shape many years after the Prophetic age: usul al-fiqh, for instance, or the innumerable technical disciplines of hadith.

Now this, of course, leads us into the often misunderstood area of sunna and bid'a, two notions which are wielded as blunt instruments by many contemporary activists, but which are often grossly misunderstood. The classic Orientalist thesis is of course that Islam, as an 'arid Semitic religion', failed to incorporate mechanisms for its own development, and that it petrified upon the death of its founder. This, however, is a nonsense rooted in the ethnic determinism of the nineteenth century historians who had shaped the views of the early Orientalist synthesizers (Muir, Le Bon, Renan, Caetani). Islam, as the religion designed for the end of time, has in fact proved itself eminently adaptable to the rapidly changing conditions which characterise this final and most 'entropic' stage of history.

What is a bid'a, according to the classical definitions of Islamic law? We all know the famous hadith:

Beware of matters newly begun, for every matter newly begun is innovation, every innovation is misguidance, and every misguidance is in Hell. [4]

Does this mean that everything introduced into Islam that was not known to the first generation of Muslims is to be rejected? The classical ulema do not accept such a literalistic interpretation.

Let us take a definition from Imam al-Shafi'i, an authority universally accepted in Sunni Islam. Imam al-Shafi'i writes:

There are two kinds of introduced matters (muhdathat). One is that which contradicts a text of the Qur'an, or the Sunna, or a report from the early Muslims (athar), or the consensus (ijma') of the Muslims: this is an 'innovation of misguidance' (bid'at dalala). The second kind is that which is in itself good and entails no contradiction of any of these authorities: this is a 'non-reprehensible innovation' (bid'a ghayr madhmuma). [5]

This basic distinction between acceptable and unacceptable forms of bid'a is recognised by the overwhelming majority of classical ulema. Among some, for instance al-Izz ibn Abd al-Salam (one of the half-dozen or so great mujtahids of Islamic history), innovations fall under the five axiological headings of the Shari'a: the obligatory (wajib), the recommended (mandub), the permissible (mubah), the offensive (makruh), and the forbidden (haram).[6]

Under the category of 'obligatory innovation', Ibn Abd al-Salam gives the following examples: recording the Qur'an and the laws of Islam in writing at a time when it was feared that they would be lost, studying Arabic grammar in order to resolve controversies over the Qur'an, and developing philosophical theology (kalam) to refute the claims of the Mu'tazilites.

Category two is 'recommended innovation'. Under this heading the ulema list such activities as building madrasas, writing books on beneficial Islamic subjects, and in-depth studies of Arabic linguistics.

Category three is 'permissible', or 'neutral innovation', including worldly activities such as sifting flour, and constructing houses in various styles not known in Medina.

Category four is the 'reprehensible innovation'. This includes such misdemeanours as overdecorating mosques or the Qur'an.

Category five is the 'forbidden innovation'. This includes unlawful taxes, giving judgeships to those unqualified to hold them, and sectarian beliefs and practices that explicitly contravene the known principles of the Qur'an and the Sunna.

The above classification of bid'a types is normal in classical Shari'a literature, being accepted by the four schools of orthodox fiqh. There have been only two significant exceptions to this understanding in the history of Islamic thought: the Zahiri school as articulated by Ibn Hazm, and one wing of the Hanbali madhhab, represented by Ibn Taymiya, who goes against the classical ijma' on this issue, and claims that all forms of innovation, good or bad, are un-Islamic.

Why is it, then, that so many Muslims now believe that innovation in any form is unacceptable in Islam? One factor has already been touched on: the mental complexes thrown up by insecurity, which incline people to find comfort in absolutist and literalist interpretations. Another lies in the influence of the well-financed neo-Hanbali madhhab called Wahhabism, whose leaders are famous for their rejection of all possibility of development.

In any case, armed with this more sophisticated and classical awareness of Islam's ability to acknowledge and assimilate novelty, we can understand how Muslim civilisation was able so quickly to produce novel academic disciplines to deal with new problems as these arose.

Islamic psychology is characteristic of the new ulum which, although present in latent and implicit form in the Quran, were first systematized in Islamic culture during the early Abbasid period. Given the importance that the Quran attaches to obtaining a 'sound heart', we are not surprised to find that the influence of Islamic psychology has been massive and all-pervasive. In the formative first four centuries of Islam, the time when the great works of tafsir, hadith, grammar, and so forth were laid down, the ulema also applied their minds to this problem of al-qalb al-salim. This was first visible when, following the example of the Tabi'in, many of the early ascetics, such as Sufyan ibn Uyayna, Sufyan al-Thawri, and Abdallah ibn al-Mubarak, had focussed their concerns explicitly on the art of purifying the heart. The methods they recommended were frequent fasting and night prayer, periodic retreats, and a preoccupation with murabata: service as volunteer fighters in the border castles of Asia Minor.

This type of pietist orientation was not in the least systematic during this period. It was a loose category embracing all Muslims who sought salvation through the Prophetic virtues of renunciation, sincerity, and deep devotion to the revelation. These men and women were variously referred to as al-bakka'un: 'the weepers', because of their fear of the Day of Judgement, or as zuhhad, ascetics, or ubbad, 'unceasing worshippers'.

By the third century, however, we start to find writings which can be understood as belonging to a distinct devotional school. The increasing luxury and materialism of Abbasid urban society spurred many Muslims to campaign for a restoration of the simplicity of the Prophetic age. Purity of heart, compassion for others, and a constant recollection of God were the defining features of this trend. We find references to the method of muhasaba: self-examination to detect impurities of intention. Also stressed was riyada: self-discipline.

By this time, too, the main outlines of Quranic psychology had been worked out. The human creature, it was realised, was made up of four constituent parts: the body (jism), the mind (aql), the spirit (ruh), and the self (nafs). The first two need little comment. Less familiar (at least to people of a modern education) are the third and fourth categories.

The spirit is the ruh, that underlying essence of the human individual which survives death. It is hard to comprehend rationally, being in part of Divine inspiration, as the Quran says:

"And they ask you about the spirit; say, the spirit is of the command of my Lord. And you have been given of knowledge only a little."[7]

According to the early Islamic psychologists, the ruh is a non-material reality which pervades the entire human body, but is centred on the heart, the qalb. It represents that part of man which is not of this world, and which connects him with his Creator, and which, if he is fortunate, enables him to see God in the next world. When we are born, this ruh is intact and pure. As we are initiated into the distractions of the world, however, it is covered over with the 'rust' (ran) of which the Quran speaks. This rust is made up of two things: sin and distraction. When, through the process of self-discipline, these are banished, so that the worshipper is preserved from sin and is focussing entirely on the immediate presence and reality of God, the rust is dissolved, and the ruh once again is free. The heart is sound; and salvation, and closeness to God, are achieved.

This sounds simple enough. However, the early Muslims taught that such precious things come only at an appropriate price. Cleaning up the Augean stables of the heart is a most excruciating challenge. Outward conformity to the rules of religion is simple enough; but it is only the first step. Much more demanding is the policy known as mujahada: the daily combat against the lower self, the nafs. As the Quran says:

'As for him that fears the standing before his Lord, and forbids his nafs its desires, for him, Heaven shall be his place of resort.'[8]

Hence the Sufi commandment:

'Slaughter your ego with the knives of mujahada.' [9]

Once the nafs is controlled, then the heart is clear, and the virtues proceed from it easily and naturally.

Because its objective is nothing less than salvation, this vital Islamic science has been consistently expounded by the great scholars of classical Islam. While today there are many Muslims, influenced by either Wahhabi or Orientalist agendas, who believe that Sufism has always led a somewhat marginal existence in Islam, the reality is that the overwhelming majority of the classical scholars were actively involved in Sufism.

The early Shafi'i scholars of Khurasan: al-Hakim al-Nisaburi, Ibn Furak, al-Qushayri and al-Bayhaqi, were all Sufis who formed links in the richest academic tradition of Abbasid Islam, which culminated in the achievement of Imam Hujjat al-Islam al-Ghazali. Ghazali himself, author of some three hundred books, including the definitive rebuttals of Arab philosophy and the Ismailis, three large textbooks of Shafi'i fiqh, the best-known tract of usul al-fiqh, two works on logic, and several theological treatises, also left us with the classic statement of orthodox Sufism: the Ihya Ulum al-Din, a book of which Imam Nawawi remarked:

"Were the books of Islam all to be lost, excepting only the Ihya', it would suffice to replace them all." [10]

Imam Nawawi himself wrote two books which record his debt to Sufism, one called the Bustan al-Arifin ('Garden of the Gnostics', and another called the al-Maqasid (recently published in English translation, Sunna Books, Evanston Il. trans. Nuh Ha Mim Keller).

Among the Malikis, too, Sufism was popular. Al-Sawi, al-Dardir, al-Laqqani and Abd al-Wahhab al-Baghdadi were all exponents of Sufism. The Maliki jurist of Cairo, Abd al-Wahhab al-Sha'rani defines Sufism as follows:

'The path of the Sufis is built on the Quran and the Sunna, and is based on living according to the morals of the prophets and the purified ones. It may not be blamed, unless it violates an explicit statement from the Quran, sunna, or ijma. If it does not contravene any of these sources, then no pretext remains for condemning it, except one's own low opinion of others, or interpreting what they do as ostentation, which is unlawful. No-one denies the states of the Sufis except someone ignorant of the way they are.'[11]

For Hanbali Sufism one has to look no further than the revered figures of Abdallah Ansari, Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani, Ibn al-Jawzi, and Ibn Rajab.

In fact, virtually all the great luminaries of medieval Islam: al-Suyuti, Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, al-Ayni, Ibn Khaldun, al-Subki, Ibn Hajar al-Haytami; tafsir writers like Baydawi, al-Sawi, Abu'l-Su'ud, al-Baghawi, and Ibn Kathir[12] ; aqida writers such as Taftazani, al-Nasafi, al-Razi: all wrote in support of Sufism. Many, indeed, composed independent works of Sufi inspiration. The ulema of the great dynasties of Islamic history, including the Ottomans and the Moghuls, were deeply infused with the Sufi outlook, regarding it as one of the most central and indispensable of Islamic sciences.

Further confirmation of the Islamic legitimacy of Sufism is supplied by the enthusiasm of its exponents for carrying Islam beyond the boundaries of the Islamic world. The Islamization process in India, Black Africa, and South-East Asia was carried out largely at the hands of wandering Sufi teachers. Likewise, the Islamic obligation of jihad has been borne with especial zeal by the Sufi orders. All the great nineteenth century jihadists: Uthman dan Fodio (Hausaland), al-Sanousi (Libya), Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza'iri (Algeria), Imam Shamil (Daghestan) and the leaders of the Padre Rebellion (Sumatra) were active practitioners of Sufism, writing extensively on it while on their campaigns. Nothing is further from reality, in fact, than the claim that Sufism represents a quietist and non-militant form of Islam.

With all this, we confront a paradox. Why is it, if Sufism has been so respected a part of Muslim intellectual and political life throughout our history, that there are, nowadays, angry voices raised against it? There are two fundamental reasons here.

Firstly, there is again the pervasive influence of Orientalist scholarship, which, at least before 1922 when Massignon wrote his Essai sur les origines de la lexique technique, was of the opinion that something so fertile and profound as Sufism could never have grown from the essentially 'barren and legalistic' soil of Islam. Orientalist works translated into Muslim languages were influential upon key Muslim modernists - such as Muhammad Abduh in his later writings - who began to question the centrality, or even the legitimacy, of Sufi discourse in Islam.

Secondly, there is the emergence of the Wahhabi da'wa. When Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, some two hundred years ago, teamed up with the Saudi tribe and attacked the neighbouring clans, he was doing so under the sign of an essentially neo-Kharijite version of Islam. Although he invoked Ibn Taymiya, he had reservations even about him. For Ibn Taymiya himself, although critical of the excesses of certain Sufi groups, had been committed to a branch of mainstream Sufism. This is clear, for instance, in Ibn Taymiya's work Sharh Futuh al-Ghayb, a commentary on some technical points in the Revelations of the Unseen, a key work by the sixth-century saint of Baghdad, Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani. Throughout the work Ibn Taymiya shows himself to be a loyal disciple of al-Jilani, whom he always refers to as shaykhuna ('our teacher'). This Qadiri affiliation is confirmed in the later literature of the Qadiri tariqa, which records Ibn Taymiya as a key link in the silsila, the chain of transmission of Qadiri teachings.[13]

Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, however, went far beyond this. Raised in the wastelands of Najd in Central Arabia, he had little access to mainstream Muslim scholarship. In fact, when his da'wa appeared and became notorious, the scholars and muftis of the day applied to it the famous Hadith of Najd:

Ibn Umar reported the Prophet (upon whom be blessings and peace) as saying: "Oh God, bless us in our Syria; O God, bless us in our Yemen." Those present said: "And in our Najd, O Messenger of God!" but he said, "O God, bless us in our Syria; O God, bless us in our Yemen." Those present said, "And in our Najd, O Messenger of God!". Ibn Umar said that he thought that he said on the third occasion: "Earthquakes and dissensions (fitna) are there, and there shall arise the horn of the devil."[14]

And it is significant that almost uniquely among the lands of Islam, Najd has never produced scholars of any repute.

The Najd-based da'wa of the Wahhabis, however, began to be heard more loudly following the explosion of Saudi oil wealth. Many, even most, Islamic publishing houses in Cairo and Beirut are now subsidised by Wahhabi organisations, which prevent them from publishing traditional works on Sufism, and remove passages in other works considered unacceptable to Wahhabist doctrine.

The neo-Kharijite nature of Wahhabism makes it intolerant of all other forms of Islamic expression. However, because it has no coherent fiqh of its own - it rejects the orthodox madhhabs - and has only the most basic and primitively anthropomorphic aqida, it has a fluid, amoebalike tendency to produce divisions and subdivisions among those who profess it. No longer are the Islamic groups essentially united by a consistent madhhab and the Ash'ari [or Maturidi] aqida. Instead, they are all trying to derive the shari'a and the aqida from the Quran and the Sunna by themselves. The result is the appalling state of division and conflict which disfigures the modern salafi condition.

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.

British convert to Islam, Abdal-Hakim Murad, was born in 1960 in London. He was educated Cambridge University (MA Arabic), and at al-Azhar University, the highest seat of learning in Sunni Islam.  He has studied under traditional Islamic scholars in Cairo and Jeddah, including Shaykh Ahmad Mashhur al-Haddad, and Shaykh Ismail al-Adawi.  Abdal-Hakim Murad has translated several classical Arabic works, including Imam al-Bayhaqi's 'Seventy-Seven Branches of Faith', and 'Selections from the Fath al-Bari'. He is also the Trustee and Secretary of The Muslim Academic Trust and Director of The Anglo-Muslim Fellowship for Eastern Europe.

Read other articles by Abdal-Hakim Murad on this site here.

NOTES

1. Sura 13:11.

2. For a further analysis of this passage, see Habib Ahmad Mashhur al-Haddad, Key to the Garden (Quilliam Press, London 1990 CE), 78-81.

3. Sura 26:89. The archetype is Abrahamic: see Sura 37:84.

4. This hadith is in fact an instance of takhsis al-amm: a frequent procedure of usul al-fiqh by which an apparently unqualified statement is qualified to avoid the contradiction of another necessary principle. See Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri, Reliance of the Traveller, tr. Nuh Ha Mim Keller (Abu Dhabi, 1991 CE), 907-8 for some further examples.

5. Ibn Asakir, Tabyin Kadhib al-Muftari (Damascus, 1347), 97.

6. Cited in Muhammad al-Jurdani, al-Jawahir al-lu'lu'iyya fi sharh al-Arba'in al-Nawawiya (Damascus, 1328), 220-1.

7. 17:85.

8. 79:40.

9. al-Qushayri, al-Risala (Cairo, n.d.), I, 393.

10. al-Zabidi, Ithaf al-sada al-muttaqin (Cairo, 1311), I, 27.

11. Sha'rani, al-Tabaqat al-Kubra (Cairo, 1374), I, 4.

13. See G. Makdisi's article 'Ibn Taymiyya: A Sufi of the Qadiriya Order' in the American Journal of Arabic Studies, 1973.

14. Narrated by Bukhari. The translation is from J. Robson, Mishkat al-Masabih (Lahore, 1970), II, 1380.

Source

In what sense were the World Trade Centre bombers members of Islam? This question has been sidelined by many Western analysts impatient with the niceties of theology; but it may be the key to understanding the recent attacks, and assessing the long-term prospects for peace in the Muslim world.

Certainly, neither bin Laden nor his principal associate, Ayman al-Zawahiri, are graduates of Islamic universities or seminaries. And so their proclamations ignore 14 centuries of Muslim scholarship, and instead take the form of lists of anti-American grievances and of Koranic quotations referring to early Muslim wars against Arab idolators. These are followed by the conclusion that all Americans, civilian and military, are to be wiped off the face of the Earth.

All this amounts to an odd and extreme violation of the normal methods of Islamic scholarship. Had the authors of such fatwas [non-binding legal opinions] followed the norms of their religion, they would have had to acknowledge that no school of traditional Islam allows the targeting of civilians. An insurrectionist who kills non-combatants is guilty of baghy, "armed transgression", a capital offence in Islamic law. A jihad can be proclaimed only by a properly constituted state; anything else is pure vigilantism.

Defining orthodoxy in the mainstream Sunni version of Islam is difficult because the tradition has an egalitarian streak which makes it reluctant to produce hierarchies. Theologians and muftis emerge through the careful approval of their teachers, not because a formal teaching licence has been given them by a church-like institution.

Despite this apparent informality, there is such a thing as normal Sunni Muslim doctrine. It has been expressed fairly consistently down the centuries as a belief system derived from the Muslim scriptures by generations of learned comment. Until a few decades ago, a Koranic commentary containing the author's personal views would have been dismissed as outrageous. In the 19th century, the Iranian reformer known as "the Bab" was declared to be outside the pale of Islam because he ignored the accumulated discussions of centuries, and wrote a Koranic commentary based on his own direct understanding of scripture.

The strangeness as well as the extremity of the New York attacks has been reflected in the strenuous denunciations we have heard from Muslim leaders around the world. For them, this has been a rare moment of unity. Mohammed Tantawi, rector of Cairo's Al-Azhar University, the highest institution of learning in the Sunni world, has bitterly condemned the outrages. In Shi'ite Iran, Ayatollah Kashani called the attacks "catastrophic", and demanded a global mobilisation against the culprits. The Organisation of the Islamic Conference, normally well known for its indecision, unanimously condemned "these savage and criminal acts".

Why should apparently devout Muslims have defied the unanimous verdict of Islamic law? The reasons - and the blame - are to be found on both sides of the divide which, according to bin Laden, utterly separates the West from Islam. On the Western side, a reluctance to challenge the Israeli occupation of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem has unquestionably contributed to the sidelining of mainstream Muslim voices in the Middle East. Those voices, speaking cautiously from ancient religious universities and venerable mosques, have been reluctant to exploit, rather than calm, the hatred of the masses for Israeli policy, and thus for the United States. This perceived failure to make a difference has allowed wilder, more intransigent voices to gain credibility in a way that would have been unimaginable before the capture of Arab Jerusalem in 1967.

It is unfair and simplistic, however, to claim that it is Western policy that lit the fuse for last month's events. Without a theological position justifying the rejection of the mainstream position, the frustration with orthodoxy would have led to a frustration with religion - and then to a search for secular responses.

That alternative theology does, however, exist. While Saudi Arabia itself has been consistent in its opposition to terrorism, it has also on occasion unwittingly nurtured revolutionary religious views. Before the explosion of oil wealth in the 1960s, its Wahhabi creed was largely unnoticed by the wider Islamic world. Those erudite Muslims who did know about Wahhabism typically dismissed it as simple-minded Bedouin puritanism with nothing to add to their central activity - exploring Muslim strategies of accommodation with the modern world.

When I myself studied theology at Al-Azhar, we were told that Wahhabism was heretical - not only because of issues such as its insistence that the Koranic talk of God's likeness to humanity was to be taken literally, but also because it implied a radical rejection of all Muslim

scholarship. Grey-bearded sheikhs departed from their usual imperturbability to denounce the tragic consequences for Islam of the claim that every believer should interpret the scriptures according to his own lights.

This sort of radical move leads to liberal re-readings of the Koran, as in the case of the South African theologian Farid Esack, who has horrified traditionalists by advocating homosexual rights among Muslims.

Much more commonly, however, it allows young men whose anger has been aroused by American policy in the Middle East to ignore the scholarly consensus about the meaning of the Koran, and read their own frustrations into the text.  Another result of this rejection of traditional Islam has been the notion that political power should be in the hands of men of religion.

When he came to power in 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini remarked that he had achieved something utterly without precedent in Islamic history. The Taliban, by ruling directly rather than advising hereditary rulers, have similarly combined the "sword" and the "pen". Far from being a traditionalist move, this is a new departure for Islam, and mainstream scholarship regards it with deep suspicion.

Islamic civilisation has in the past proved capable of, for the times, extraordinary feats of toleration. Under the Muslims, medieval Spain became a haven for diverse religions and sects. Following the Christian reconquest, the Inquisition eliminated all dissent. The notion that Islamic civilisation is inherently less capable of tolerance and compassion than any other is hard to square with the facts.

Muslims none the less have to face the challenge posed by the new heresies. The Muslim world can ill afford to lapse into bigotry at a point in history when dialogue and conviviality have never been more important.

It is a relief that the mainstream theologians have come out so unanimously against the terrorists. What we must now ask them is to campaign more strongly against the aberrant doctrines that underpin them.

Both "sides", therefore, have a responsibility to act. The West must drain the swamp of rage by securing a fair resolution of the Palestinian tragedy. But it is the responsibility of the Islamic world to defeat the terrorist aberration theologically.

British convert to Islam, Abdal-Hakim Murad, was born in 1960 in London. He was educated Cambridge University (MA Arabic), and at al-Azhar University, the highest seat of learning in Sunni Islam.  He has studied under traditional Islamic scholars in Cairo and Jeddah, including Shaykh Ahmad Mashhur al-Haddad, and Shaykh Ismail al-Adawi.  Abdal-Hakim Murad has translated several classical Arabic works, including Imam al-Bayhaqi's 'Seventy-Seven Branches of Faith', and 'Selections from the Fath al-Bari'. He is also the Trustee and Secretary of The Muslim Academic Trust and Director of The Anglo-Muslim Fellowship for Eastern Europe.

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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 Center 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, 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 reclamation.

Addendum

Although the response from Muslims in the UK seems to have been very favourable to my essay, with one or two requests that it be sent to national newspapers for reprinting on their pages, it is inevitable that under pressure from real or potential rioters and cross-burners, some Muslims consider premature any attempt to begin a debate among ourselves about the cultural and doctrinal foundations of extremism.

It is true that no convictions have been secured, and that in the Shari'a suspects are innocent until proven guilty. However it is also regrettably the case that these suspects will not be tried under Shari'a law, and that we need, in the absence of a traditional framework of accusation and assessment, to hold our own discussions. This is particularly urgent in this case, since the damage to the honour of Islam, and the physical safety of innocent Muslims, in the West and in Central Asia and elsewhere, is very considerable. We Muslims are now at 'ground zero'. As such, we cannot simply ignore the duty to ask each other what has caused the attitudes that probably, but not indisputably, lie at the root of these events.

My essay, which endeavoured to kick-start this debate, takes its cue primarily from the UK situation, which is no doubt less intense than in the US, but is nonetheless serious. In particular I am concerned to insist that Muslims distance themselves from, for instance, the janaza prayer for the hijackers that was held two days ago at a London Wahhabi mosque (the term Wahhabi is more useful, since 'Salafi' can also refer to the Abduh-Rida reformism and is hence confusing). Having spoken to the editor of one of this country's major Muslim magazines, it is clear that the small minority of voices which have been raised in support of the terrorist act were in every case of the Wahhabi persuasion. Clearly, we cannot simply ignore this on grounds of 'Muslim unity', since those people appear so determined to destroy Muslim unity, and endanger the security of our community.

I hope that the recent events will spur Muslims to consider the implications for the wider ethos in which we understand our religion of the shift which we have witnessed over the past twenty years or so away from accommodationist and tolerant forms of Islam, and towards narrowmindedness. Al-Ghazali recommends a tolerant view of non-Muslims, and is prepared to grant that many of them may be saved in the next world; Ibn Taymiya, as Muhammad Memon has shown in his book on him, is vehement and adversarial. In our communities in the West, and indeed worldwide, we surely need the Ghazalian approach, not the rigorism of Ibn Taymiya. Not just because we need to reassure our neighbours, but also because we need to reassure those very many born Muslims who are made unsure about their attachment to Islam by events such as this that they can belong to the religion without being harsh and narrow-minded. Extremism can drive people right out of Islam. In 1999 the Conference of French Catholic bishops announced that 300
Algerians were among the year's Easter baptisms. Noting that ten years earlier Muslims never converted at all, they reported that the change was the result of the spread of extreme forms of Islam in Algeria.

In Afghanistan, too, there are now Christians for the first time ever, and I have heard from one ex-Taliban member that this is because of the extremism with which Islam is imposed on the people. The shift away from traditional Islam, and towards Ibn Taymiya's position, has been widely documented, for instance by Ahmad Rashid, in his chapter 'Challenging Islam', in his book on the Taliban. The Saudi-Wahhabi connection has been very conspicuous.

We must ask Allah to open the hearts of the Muslims everywhere to recognise that narrow-mindedness and mutual anathema will lead us nowhere, and that only through spirituality, toleration and wisdom will we be granted success.

The most appropriate du'a' for our situation would seem to be: 'Ya Hayyu Ya Qayyum, bi-rahmatika astaghiith', which is recommended in a hadith in cases of fear and misfortune. It means: 'O Living, O Self-Subsistent; by Your mercy I seek help.'

British convert to Islam, Abdal-Hakim Murad, was born in 1960 in London. He was educated Cambridge University (MA Arabic), and at al-Azhar University, the highest seat of learning in Sunni Islam.  He has studied under traditional Islamic scholars in Cairo and Jeddah, including Shaykh Ahmad Mashhur al-Haddad, and Shaykh Ismail al-Adawi.  Abdal-Hakim Murad has translated several classical Arabic works, including Imam al-Bayhaqi's 'Seventy-Seven Branches of Faith', and 'Selections from the Fath al-Bari'.  He is also the Trustee and Secretary of The Muslim Academic Trust and Director of The Anglo-Muslim Fellowship for Eastern Europe.

Source

The late Sayyed Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi (or Ali Miyan as he was also known) was one of the leading Indian ulema of modern times. A noted writer, he headed the famous Nadwat ul-Ulema madrasa in Lucknow from 1961 till his death in 1999. He was associated with several other Indian as well as international Islamic organisations, a mark of the high respect that he was accorded among Muslims all over the world.

Maulana Nadwi's wrote extensively on a vast range of subjects, including on Islam and politics. On this issue, his views underwent a gradual process of change and maturation, beginning with his early association with a leading Indian Islamist formation and later making a forceful critique of some crucial aspects of its understanding of Islam. His views in this regard point to the little-known yet rich internal debate among Indian Muslim scholars about the relationship between Islam and politics, particularly on the question of what Islamists describe as an 'Islamic state'.

In 1940, Maulana Nadwi came under the influence of Sayyid Maududi, the founder of the principal Indian Islamist outfit, the Jamaat-i Islami. Maududi, along with the Egyptian Syed Qutb, may be said to be among the pioneers of contemporary Islamism. Soon after joining the Jamaat, Maulana Nadwi was put in-charge of its activities in Lucknow. This relationship proved short-lived, however, and he left the Jamaat in 1943. He later wrote that he was disillusioned by the perception that many members of the Jamaat were going to what he called 'extremes' in adoring and glorifying Maududi as almost infallible, this bordering on personality worship'. At the same time, he felt that many Jamaat activists believed that they had nothing at all to learn from any other scholars of Islam. He was also concerned with what he saw as a lack of personal piety in Maududi and some leading Jamaat activists and with their criticism of other Muslim groups.

Maulana Nadwi's opposition to the Jamaat's understanding about Islam and politics, which it shared with most other Islamist formations, comes out clearly in his Urdu book Asr-i Hazir Mai Din Ki Tahfim-o-Tashrih ('Understanding and Explaining Religion in the Contemporary Age') which he penned in 1978, and which won him, so he says in his introduction to its second edition published in 1980, fierce condemnation from leading members of the Jamaat. Here, Maulana Nadwi takes Maududi to task for having allegedly misinterpreted central Islamic beliefs in order to suit his own
political agenda, presenting Islam, he says, as little more than a political programme. Thus, he accuses Maududi of wrongly equating the Islamic duty of 'establishing religion' with the setting up of an Islamic state with God as Sovereign and Law Maker. At Maududi's hands, he says, 'God', 'The Sustainer', 'Religion' and 'Worship' have all been reduced to political concepts. In this way, Maududi, Maulana Nadwi says, sought to incorrectly suggest that Islam is simply about
political power and that the relationship between God and human beings is only that between an All-Powerful King and His subjects. However, Maulana Nadwi says, this relationship is also one of 'love' and 'realisation of the Truth', which is far more comprehensive than what Maududi envisages.

Linked to Maulana Nadwi's critique of Maududi for having allegedly reduced Islam to a mere political project was his concern that not only was such an approach a distortion of the actual import of the Quran but also that it was impractical, if not dangerous, in the Indian context. Thus, he argued, Maududi's insistence that to accept the commands of anyone other than God, including of an elected government, was tantamount to shirk, the crime of associating others with God, as this was allegedly akin to 'worship', was not in keeping with the teachings of Islam. God, Maulana Nadwi wrote, had, in His
wisdom, left several areas of life free for people to decide how they could govern them, within the broad limits set by the
Islamic law or shariah, and guided by a concern for social welfare.

Further, Maulana Nadwi asserted that Maududi's argument that God had sent prophets to the world charged with the mission of establishing an 'Islamic state' was a misreading of the Islamic concept of prophethood. The principal work of the prophets, Maulana Nadwi argued, was to preach the worship of the one God and to exhort others to do good deeds. Not all prophets were rulers. In fact, only a few of them were granted that status. Maulana Nadwi faulted

Maududi for what he said was 'debasing' the 'lofty' Islamic understanding of worship to mean simply 'training' people as willing subjects of the Islamic state. In Maududi's understanding of Islam, he wrote, prayer and remembrance of God are seen as simply the means to an end, the establishment of an Islamic state, whereas, Maulana Nadwi argued, the converse is true. The goal of the Islamic state is to ensure worship of God, and not the other way round. If at all worship
can be said to be a means, he added, it is a means for securing the 'will of God' and 'closeness to Him'.

If the 'Islamic state' should then simply a means for the 'establishment of religion' and not the 'total religion' or the 'primary objective' of Islam, it opens up the possibility of pursuing the same goals through other means. Maulana Nadwi
refers to this when he says that the objective of the 'establishment of the faith' needs to be pursued along with 'wisdom of the faith', using constructive, as opposed to destructive, means. Eschewing 'total opposition', Muslims striving for the 'establishment of the faith' should, he wrote, unhesitatingly adopt peaceful means such as 'understanding and reform', 'consultation' and 'wisdom'. Critiquing the use of uncalled for violence by some groups calling themselves 'Islamic', Maulana Nadwi stressed the need for 'obedience', 'love' and 'faith' and struggle against the 'base self' (nafs). Muslims
should, he wrote, make use of all available legitimate spaces to pursue the cause of the 'establishment of religion', such as propagating their message through literature, public discussions, training volunteers, winning others over with the force of one's own personality and establishing contacts with governments.

Maulana Nadwi's critique of radical Islamism points to the rich theological resources contained within traditional Islamic thought that can be used to fashion alternate understandings of the relationship between Islam and politics in a far more sensible way than most Islamists have articulated hitherto and which have caused untold havoc in the name of Islam.

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The terrorist attacks on New York City and the Pentagon have focus public attention on the site of Muslim theology. For most Americans the utter indifference to the value of human life and the unmitigated hostility to the United States shown by some Muslims came as a great shock. Others were confirmed in their belief that we face great struggle between civilizations Islamic values, they say, are fundamentally at odds with western libral values. The terrorist attacks are symptomatic of a clash between Judeo – Christian civilization with its values of individual freedom pluralism and secularism and
An amoral unWesternized so call authentIc Islam. Indeed, Islamic civilization is associated with the ideas of collective rights, individual duties legalism, despotism and intolerance that we associated with our former civilizational rival the Soviet bloc. We seem to project onto the other everything we like to think that we are not.

This intellectual trap is easy to fall into when we deal with the theology of Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban, the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia and the Jihad organizations. The theologically-based attitudes of these Muslim puritans are fundamentally at odds not only with a Western way of life, but also with the very idea of an international society or the notion of universal human values. They display an intolerant exclusiveness and a belligent sense of supremacy vis-avis the other. According to their theologies, Islam is the only way of life, and must be pursued regardless of its impact on the rights and well being of other. The straight path (al-sirat al mustaqim) is fixed, they say by a system of Divine laws (shariah) that trump any moral considerations or ethical values that are not fully codified in the law. God is manifested through a set of determinate legal commands that specify the right way to act in virtually all circumstances. The sole purpose of human life on earth is to realize the Divine manifestation by dutifully and faithfully implementing God’s law. Morality itself begins and ends in the mechanics and technicalities of Islamic law. (though different schools of Islamic law understand the content of those laws differently.) A life devoted to compliance with this legal code is considered inherently superior to all others and the followers of any other way are considered either infidels (kuffar) hypocrites (munafiqun) or iniquitous (fasiqun). Anchored in the security and assuredness of a differentiate between the rightly-guided and the misguided. The rightly – guided obey the law the misguided either deny attempt to dilute or argue about the law. Naturally the rightly – guided are superior because they have God on their side. The Muslim puritans Imagine that God's perfection and immutability are fully attainable on earth-as if God's perfection had been deposited In the Divine Jaw, and, by giving effect to this law, we could create a social order that mirrors Divine Truth. By attaching themselves to the Supreme Being, Puritan groups are able to claim a self-righteous perfectionism that easily slips into a pretense of supremacy.

Extremism in Islamic History
Perhaps all firmly held systems of belief, especially those founded on religious conviction, are in some way supremacist believers are understood to have some special virtue that distinguishes them from adherents of other faiths. But the supremacist creed of the puritan groups is distinctive and uniquely dangerous. The supremacist thinking of Muslim puritan has a powerful nationalist component which is strongly oriented towards cultural and political dominance. These groups are not satisfied with living ac- cording to their own dictates, but are actively dissatisfied with all alternative ways of life. They do not merely seek self-empowerment but aggressively seek to disempower, dominate, or destroy others, The aux of the matter is that all lives lived outside the Jaw are considered an offense against God that must be actively resisted and fought.

The existence of Muslim Puritanism is hardly surprising. Most religious systems have suffered at one time or another from absolutist extremism, and Islam is no exception Within the first century of Islam. Religious extremists known as the Khawarij (Iiterally, the secessionists) slaughtered a large number of Muslims and non-Muslims, and were even responsible for the assassination of the Prophet's cousin and companion, the Caliph All b, Abi Talib. The descendantss of the Khawarij exist today In Oman and Algeria but after centuries of bloodshed, they became moderates If not pacifists. Similarly, the Qaramites and Assassins for whom error became a raison d’tre earned unmitigated Infamy in the writings of Muslim historians, theologians, and jurists. Again, after centuries of bloodshed, these two groups learned moderation, and they continue to exist in small numbers In North Africa and Iraq. The essential lesson taught by Islamic history is that extremist groups are ejected from the mainstream of IsIam they are marginalized, and eventually treated as heretical aberrations to the Islamic message.
But Islam is now living through major shift, unlike any it has experienced in the past. The Islamic civilization has crumbled, and the traditional institutions that once sustained and propagated Islamic orthodoxy-and marginalized Islamic extremism have been dismantled Traditionally, Islamic epistemology tolerated and even celebrated divergent opinions and schools of thought. The guardians or the Islamic tradition were the jurists (fuqaha) , whose legitimacy rested largely on their semi-indepen dence from a decentralized political system, and their dual function of representing the interests or the state to the laity and the Interests or the laity to the state.

But In Muslim countries today, the state has grown extremely powerful and meddlesome and is centralized in ways that were inconceivable two centuries ago. In the vast majority or Muslim countries the state now controls the private religious endowments (awqal) that once sustained the juristic class. Moreover, the state has co-opted the clergy, and transformed them into its salaried employees. This transformation has reduced the clergy’s legitimacy, and produced a profound vacuum in religious authority. Hence there is a state of virtual anarchy in modem Islam: It Is not clear who speaks with authority on religious issues. Such a state of virtual religious anarchy Is perhaps not problematic In secular societies where religion is essentially reduced to a private matter. But where religion remains central to the dynamics or public legitimacy and cultural meaning, the question or who represents the voice of God is of central significance.

Puritanism and Modem Islam
It would be wrong to say that fanatic supremacist groups such as the al-Qa’ida or al-Jihad organizations now fill the vacuum of authority in contemporary Islam. Though they are obviously able to commit highly visible acts of violence that command the public stage, fanatic groups remain sociologically and intellectually marginal in Islam. Still they are extreme manifestations of more prevalent intellectual and theologicaJ currents in modem Islam.

Fanatic groups derive their theological premises from the intolerant puritanism of the Wahhabi and Salafi creeds. Wahhabism was founded by the eighteenth-century evangelist Muhammad Ibn 'Abd al- Wahhab In the Arabian Peninsula. 'Abd al-Wahhab sought to rid Islam of the corruptions that he believed had crept into the religion. He advocated a strict literalism in which the text became the sole source of legitimate authority, and displayed an extreme hostility to intellectualism, mysticism, and any sectarian divisions within Islam. According to the Wahhabi creed, it was imperative to return to a presumed pristine, simple, straight forward Islam, which could be entirely reclaimed by literal implementation or the commands of the Prophet and by strict adherence to correct rituaI practice. Importantly, Wahhabism rejected any attempt to interpret the divine law historically or contextually, with attendant possibilities of reinterpretation under changed circumstances. It treated the vast majority of Islamic history as a corruption of the true and authentic Islam. Furthermore Wahhabism narrowly de- fined orthodoxy, and was extremely intolerant of any creed that contradicted its own.

In the late eighteenth century, the AI Sa'ud family united with the Wahhabi movement and rebelled against Ottoman rule in Arabia. The rebellions were very bloody because the Wahhabis indiscrim- inately slaughtered and terrorized Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Interestingly mainstream jurists writing at the time such as the Hanafi Ibn Abidin and the MaIiki aI-Sawi, branded the Wahhabis the modern day KhawariJ of Islam, and condemned their fanaticism and Intolerance. In 1818, Egyptian forces under the leadership of Muhammad Ali defeated this rebellion, and Wahhabism seerned destined to become another fringe historical experience with no lasting impact on Islamic theology. But the Wahhabi creed was resuscitated in the early twentieth century under the leadership of Abd aI-Aziz Ibn Sa'ud, who allied himseIf with Wahhabi militant rebels known as the Ikhwan, in the beginnings of what would become Saudi Arabia. Even with the formation of the Saudi state, Wahhabism remained a creed of limited Influence until the mid-1970 when the sharp rise in on prices, together with aggressive Saudi proselytizing, dramatically contributed to its wide dissemination In the Muslim world.

Wahhabism did not propagate itself as one schooI of thought or a particuIar orientation within Islam. Rather, it asserted itseIf as the orthodox “Straight path” of Islam. By claiming literal fidelity to th Islamic text, it was able to make a credible claim to authenticity at a time when Islamic identity was contested. Moreover, the proponents of Wahhabism refused to be labeled or categorized as the followers of any particuIar figure including Abd al-Wahhab himself. Its proponents insisted that they were simply abiding by the dictates of al-salaf al-salih (the rightly-guided predecessors namely the Prophet and his companions and in going so Wahhabis were able to appropriate the symbolisms and categories of Salafism.

Ironnically Salafism was founded in the early twentieth century by Al Afghani Muhammad Abduh, and Rashid Rida as a liberal theological orientation. To respond to the demands of modernity, they argued Muslims needed to return to the original sources of the Quran and Sunnah (tradition of the Prophet) and engage in de novo interpretations of the text. By the 1970s however Wahhabism had succeeded in transforming Salafism from liberal modernist orientation to a literalist puritan and conservative theology. The sharp rise in oil prices in 1975 enabled Saudi Arabia the main proponent of Wahhabism to disseminate the Wahhabi creed under a Salafi guise, which purported to revert back to the authentic fundamentals of religion uncorrupted by the accretions of historical practice. In reality however Saudi Arabia projected its own fairly conservative cultural practices onto the textual sources of Islam and went on to proselytize these projections as the embodiment of Islamic orthodoxy.

Despite its tolerance and rigidity however, Wahhabism itself does not bear primary responsibility for the existence of terrorist groups in Islam today. To be sure Wahhabism and its militant offshoots share both attitudinal and ideological orientations. Bith insist on a normative particularism that is fundamentally text-centered both reject the notion of universal human values and both deal with the other however defined in a functionalist and even opportunistic fashion. But Wahhabism is distinctively inward – looking although focused on power it primary asserts power over other Muslims. This is consistent with its obsession with orthodoxy and correct ritualistic practice. Militant puritant groups however are both introverted and extroverted – they attempt to asset power against both Muslims  and Non – Muslims. As populist movements, they are a reaction to the disempowerment most Muslims have suffered in the modem age at the hands of harsly despotic governments, and at the hands of interventionist foreign power. These groups compensate for extreme feelings of disempowerment by extreme and vulgar claims to power. Fueled by supremacist and puritan theological creeds their symbolic acts of power become uncompromisingIy fanatic and violent.

The Theology of Intolerance
Islamic puritans whether of the Wahhabi or more militant varieties, offer a set of textual references in support of their exclusionary and intolerant theological orientation. For instance, they frequently cite the Quranic verse that states: ‘0’ you who believe, do not take the Jews and Christians as allies. They are allies of each other, and he amongst you who becomes their ally is one of them. Verily, God does not guide the unjust Wahhabi and militant puritanism read this and similar Quranic verses literally and ahistorically, and therefore reach highly exclusionary conclusions. For example, while Muslims may elicit the support or aid of non- Muslims over particular issues when the self-interests of Muslims so require, they may not befriend or share the nonnative values of non-Muslims. This orientation often demands the perfomance of symbolic acts, which aim to distinguish Muslims from non-Muslims for instance, dressing in a particular Way or marking non-Muslims with distinctive symbols.

Islamic puritanism also often invokes the Qur'anic verse asserting that, "whomsoever follows a religion other than Islam this will not be accepted from him and in the Hereafter he will be among the losers. This verse is invoked in arguing that the theology and rituals of Islam are the exclusive path to salvation. Moreover, a mere testament of faith or a general act of submission to God is insufficient to attain salvation in the Hereafter; rather, a person must comply with the particulars of the Divine law in order to qualify as a "true" believer. The puritan trend is thus uncompromising in its rejection of all forms of belief and ritual that do not qualify as the "true" religion of God.

As to the principles that should guide the interaction between Muslims and non-Muslims, the puritan trend cites the Qur' anic verse commanding Muslims to fight the unbelievers until there is no more tumult or oppression, and until faith and all judgment belongs to God. Moreover justifying an essentially supremacist view towards non-Muslims, proponents of puritanism often quote the following Qur'anic injunction: "Fight those among the People of the Book Dews and Christians) who do not believe in God or the Hereafter, who do not forbid what God and His Prophet have forbidden and who do not acknowledge the religion of truth-fight them until they pay the poll tax (jizyah) with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.

Relying on such textual evidence, Muslim puritans assert that Muslims are the inheritors of an objectively ascertain- able and realizable Divine Truth; while Jews and Christians may be tolerated they cannot be befriended. Ultimately, however, they must be subdued and forced to acknowledge Muslim supremacy by paying a poll tax. The puritan doctrine is not necessarily or entirely dismissive of the rights of non-Muslims, and it does not necessarily lead to the persecution of Jews and Christians. But it does assert a hierarchy of importance, and the commitment to toleration is correspondingly fragile and contingent. So it is conducive to an arrogance that can easily descend into a Jack of respect or concern for the well-being or dignity of non-Muslims. When this arrogant orientation is coupled with textual sources that exhort Muslims to fight against un- believers (kuffar) it can produce a radical belligerency.

The Case for Tolerance in Islam
The puritans construct their exclusionary and intolerant theology by reading Qur'anic verses in isolation, as if the meaning of the verses were transparent as if moral ideas and historical context were irrelevant to their interpretation. In fact, however, it is impossible to analyze these and other verses except in light of the overall moral thrust of the Qur'anic message.

The Qur'an itself refers to general moral imperatives such as mercy, justice, kindness, or goodness. The Qur'an does not clearly define any of these categories, but presumes a certain amount of moral probity on part of the reader. For instance, the Quran persistently commands Muslims to enjoin the good. The word used for "the good" is ma’ruf which means that which is commonly known to be good. Goodness, in the Quranic discourse, is part of what one may call a lived reality-it is the prodoct of human experience and constructed normative understandings. Similarly, the Qur'anic term for kindness is ihsan, which literally means to beautify and improve upon. But beautification or irnproving upon can have meaning only in the context of a certain sociological understanding and practice.

In a further example, as to justice, the Quran states : "0 you who believe, Stand firmly for justice, as witnesses for God, even If it means testifying against yourselves, or your parents, or you kin, and whether it Is against the rich or poor, for God prevails upon all. Follow not the lusts of your hearts, lest you swerve, and If you distort Justice or decline to do justice, verily God knows what you do. The idea that Muslims must stand up for justice even against their own self-interests is predicated on the notion that human beings are capable of achieving a high level of moral agency. As agents Muslims are expected to achieve a level of moral conscientiousness, which they will bring to their relationship with God. In regards to every ethical obligation, the Qur'anic text assumes that readers will bring a pre -existing, innate moral sense to the text. Hence, the text will morally enrich the reader, but only if the reader will morally enrich the text. The meaning of the religious text is not fixed simply by the literal meaning of Its words, but depends, too, on the moral construction given to it by the reader. So if the reader approaches the text without moral commitments, it will almost inevitably yield nothing but discreate, legalistic, technical insights

Similarly, it is imperative to analyze the historical circumstances in which specific Qur'anic ethical norms were negotiated. Many of the lnstitutions referenced In the Qur'an-such as the poll tax or the formation of alliances with non- MusIims-can be understood only if the reader is aware of the historical practices surrounding the revelation of the text. By emptying the Qur'an both of its historical and moral context, the puritan trend ends up transforming the text into a long list of morally non-committal legal com mands.

The Qur'anic discourse, for instance, can readiIy support an ethic of diversity and tolerance. The Qur'an not only expects but even accepts the reality of difference and diversity within human society. “0 humankind, God has created you from male and female and made you into diverse nations and tribes so that u may come to know each other. Verily, the most honoured of u in the sight of God Is he the most righteous! Elsewhere, the Qur'an asserts that diversity Is part of the Divine Intent and purpose in creation: "If thy Lord had willed, He would have made humankind into a single nation but they will not cease to be diverse And for this God created them (humankind). The classical commentators on the Qur 'an did not fully explore the implications of this sanctioning of diversity or the role of peaceful conflict resolution in prepetuating  the type of social interaction that would result in people ‘knowing each other’ nor does the Quran provide specific rules or instruction about how diverse nations  and tribes are to acquire such knowledge. In fact the existence of diversity as a primary purpose of creation as suggested by the verse above, remained underdeveloped in Islamic theology. Pre-modem Muslim scholars did not have a strong incentive to explore the meaning and implications of the Quranic endorsement of diversity and cross-cultural intercourse. This is partly because of the political dominance and superiorty of Islamic Civilization which left Muslim scholars with a sense of self-sufficient confidence. Nevertheless it is fair to say that the Islamic civilizations was pluralistic and unusually tolerant of various social and religious denominations. Working out the implications of a commitment to human diversity and mutual knowledge under contemporary conditions requires moral reflection and attention to historical circumstance precisely what is missing from puritan theology and doctrine.

Other than a general endorsement of human diversity the Quran also accepted the more specific notion of a plurality of religious beliefs and laws. Although the Quran clearly claims that Islam is the Divine Truth and demands belief in Muhammad as the final messenger in a long line of Abrahamic prophets it does not completely exclude the possibility that there might be other paths to salvation.The Quran insists on God’s unfettered discretion to accept in His mercy whomever His wishes. In a rather remarkable set of passages that again have not been adequately theorized by Muslim theologians the Quran recognizes the legitimate multiplicity of religious convictions and laws. In one such passage for example the Quran asserts “To each of you God has prescribed a Law and a way. If God would have willed He would have made you a single people. But God’s purpose is ti test you in what he has given each of you so strive in the pursuit of virtueand know that you will all returan to God(in the Hereafter) and He will resolve all the matters in which you disagree. On this and other occasions the Quran on to state that is possible for Non-Muslims to attain the blessing of salvation. “Those who believe those who follow Jewish scriptures, the Christians, the Sabians and any who believe in God and the Final Day, and do good and all shall have their reward with their Lord and they will not come to fear or grief. Significantly this passage occurs in the same chapter that instructs Muslims not to take the Jews and Christians as allies. How can these different verses be reconciled?

If we read the text with moral and historical guidance, we can see the different passages as part of a complex and layered discourse about reciprocity and its implications in the historical situation in Mohammed’s Medina. In part the chapter exhorts Muslims to support the newly established Muslim community in Medina. But its point is not to issue a blanket condemnation against Jews and Christians (who 'shall have their reward with their Lord"). lnstead, it accepts the distinctiveness of the Jewish and Christian communities and their laws, while "also insisting that Muslims are entitled to the same treatment as those other communities. Thus it sets out an expectation of reciprocity for Muslims while calling  upon Muslims to support the Prophet of  Islam against his Jewish and Christian I detractors, it also recognizes the moral worth and rights of the non-Muslim “other”

The challenge most often invoked against an argument for tolerance in Islam is the issue of jihad. Jihad, especially as portrayed in the Western media, is often associated with the idea of a holy war that is propagated in the name of God against the unbelievers. Therefore, jihad is often equated with the most vulgar image of religious intolerance.

At the most rudimentary level the Quran itself is explicit in prohibiting any form of coerced coversations to Islam. It contends that truth and falsity are clear and distinct, and so whomever wishes to believe  may do so, but no duress permitted in religion. There is no compulsion in matter of faith. Of course this response is incomplete- even if forced conversions to Islam are prohibited, aggressive warfare to spread Islamic power over non-believers might still be allowed. Does the Quran condone such expansionist war?

Interestingly, Islamic tradition does not have a notion of holy war. "Jihad" simply means to strive hard or struggle in pursuit of a just cause and according to the Prophet of Islam, the highest form of Jihad is the struggle waged to cleanse oneself from the vices of the heart. Holy war (In Arabic a/-harb a/-muqaddasah) an expression used by the Qur'anic text or Muslim theologians. In Islamic theology, war Is never holy it is either justified or not and if it is justified those killed in battle are considered martyrs. The Qur'anic text does not recognize the idea of unlimited warfare, and does consider the simple fact of the belligerent’s Mulsims identity to be sufficient to establish the justness of his cause. In other words, the Qur'an entertains the possibility  that the Muslim combatant might be the unjust party in a conflict.

Moreover, while the Qur'an emphasizes that Muslims  may fight  those who fight them, it also insists that Muslims may fight those who fight them it is also insists that Muslims may not transgress. Transgression is an ambiguous term, but on several occasions the Qur'an intimates that in order not to , transgress. Muslims must be constrained by a requirement of proportionality, even when the cause is just. For Instance, it states  "Mandated is the law of equality, so that who transgresses against you, respond in kind, and fear God, and know that God is with those who exercise restraint.

Despite the prohibition against transgression and condemnation of unlimited warfare many classical jurists adopted an imperialist orientation, which divided the world  into the abode of Islam and the abode of war supported expansionist wars against unbelievers. But this view was not unanimous. Classical Muslim jurists debated whether unbelief is a sufficient justification for warfare, with a sizeable number of classical jurists arguing  that non-MusIims may not be fought unless they pose a physical threat to Muslims. If non-Muslims seek peace Muslims should make an effort  to achieve such a peace. This discourse was partly inspired by the Quranic injunctions concerning peace.  The Quran asserts that  God does not prohibit  Muslims from making peace with those who do not fight Muslims, but God does prohibit Muslims from making peace with those who have expelled Muslims from their homes and  continue to persecute them elsewhere, the Qur'an pronounces a stronger mandate in favor of peace in stating : “If your enemy inclines towards peace, then you should seek peace and trust in God.  Moreover, the Qur'an instructs Muslims not to haughtily turn away unbelievers who seek to make peace with Muslims, and reminds Muslims that, if God would have willed, He would have given the unbelievers power over you (Muslims) and they would have fought you (Muslims) Therefore if they (the unbelievers) withdraw from you and refuse to fight you and instead send you guarantees of peace know that God has not given you a license [to fight them]. These discussions of peace would not make sense if Muslims were in a permanent state of war with non-believers were a permanent enemy and always a legitimate target. 

The other major issue on the point of tolerance In Islam Is that of the poll tax (jizyah) imposed on the People  of Book (Christians and Jews) who Iive  in Muslim territory. When the Qur'an was revealed it was common inside and outside of Arabia to levy poll taxes against alien groups. Building  upon the historical practice , classical Muslim jurists argued that the poll tax Is money collected by the Islamic polity from non-MusIims in return for the protection of the Muslim state. If the Muslim state was incapable of extending such protection to non-Muslims. It was not supposed to levy a poll tax. In fact, 'Umar the second Rightly Guided Caliph and close companion of the Prophet. returned the poll tax to an Arab Christian tribe that he was  incapable of protecting from Byzantine aggression.

Aside from the juristic  theory justifying the poll tax, the Qur'an does not, however, pronounce an absolute and unwavering rule in favor of such an institution. Once more, attention to historical circumstance is essential. The Qur' an endorsed a poll tax as a response to particular groups in Arabia who were persistently hostile, to the early Muslims. Importantly, the Prophet did not collect a poll tax from every non-Muslim tribe that submitted to Muslim sovereignty, and In fact. In the case  of a large number of non- Muslim but non-hostile tribes, he paid them a periodic  sum of money or goods. These tribes were known as "those whose hearts  have been reconciled. Furthermore Umar entered into a peace settlement with Arab Christian tribes pursuant to which these tribes were obligated to pay the Islamic annual tax known as the zakah and not the poll tax. Reportedly, although they refused to convert to Islam the Christian tribes contended that paying the jizyah (poll tax) was degrading and instead instead, asked to pay the zakah, and 'Umar accommodated their request.

In short, there are various Indicators that the poll tax is not a theologically mandated practice but functional soIution that  was adopted In response to a specific set of historical circumstances. Only an entirely ahistorical reading of the text could conclude that It is an essential element in a Divinely-sanctioned program of subordinating the non-believer.

Final Thoughts
Ultimately the  Qur'an, or any text speaks through its reader. This ability of human beings to interpret texts is both a blessing and a burden. It is a blessing because it provides us with the flexibility to adapt texts to changing circumstances. It is a burden because the reader must take responsibility for the normative values he or she brings to the text. ANY TEXT INCLUDING THOSE THAT ARE Islamic Provides possibilities for meaning not inevitabilities. And those possibilities are exploited developed and unlimately determined by the readers effort  - good faith efforts we hope – at making sense of the text complexities. Consequently the meaning of the text is often only as moral as its reader. If the reader is intolerant, hateful or oppressive, so will be the interpretation of the text.  It would be disingenuous to deny that the Quran and other IsIamic sources offer possibilities of intolerant interpretation. Clearly these possibilities are exploited by the contemporary putitians and supremacists. But the text does not command such tolerant readings. Historically, IsIamic civilization has displayed a remarkable ability to recognize possibilities of tolerance and to act upon these possibilities. Islamic civilization produced a moral and humanistic tradition that preserved Greek philosophy, and generated much science art, and socially benevolent thought. Unfortunatelly, however. the modern puritans are dissipating and wasting this inspiring moral tradition. They ate Increasingly shutting off the possibilities for  a tolerant interpretation of the Islamic tradition.

If we assess the moral trajectory of a civilization in light of its past record then we have ample reason to be optimistic about the future. But the burden and blessing of sustaining that moral trajectory – of accentuating the Quranic message of tolerance and openness to the other – falls squarely on the shoulder of contemporary Muslim interpreters of the tradition.

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Countering Islamic radicalism has been the main focus of global counter-terrorism efforts in recent years.These largely operational strategies have yielded some success. But terrorists have displayed a high level of resilience and adjusted their strategies accordingly. Though operational capabilities have been weakened, groups like Al-Qaeda have shifted to “franchising” their violent ideologies to like-minded groups and individuals, with the Internet increasingly becoming their main media. The outcome of this strategy can be seen in that five years after 9-11, the 2006 US National Intelligence Estimate reports that "activists identifying themselves as jihadists, although a small percentage of Muslims, are increasing in number and geographic dispersion".

The recent arrest of former lawyer Abdul Basheer shows that Singapore is not immune to the threat of radicalisation via the Internet. This incident marks an important shift in the struggle against terrorism and radicalism here. This is because from an intelligence perspective, self-radicalised individuals are harder to monitor and detect compared to those who belong to a group. Furthermore, it is equally challenging, if not impossible, to control the activities on the Internet effectively. More importantly, it illustrates that now, more than ever, we need to target the extremist ideology at its innermost core. The battle is in the realm of the hearts and minds, not merely in the use of guns and through legislation.

Globalisation and Islamic Resurgence
The first question we need to ask is: What drives the heart of Islamic radicalism?
Radicalism is the internalisation of a set of beliefs, including a militant mindset that embraces violent jihad, as the paramount test of one’s conviction. In the case of Abdul Basheer, we realise that his radicalisation was sparked by a desire to become a better, practicing Muslim. This, incidentally, was also the case with many Jemaah Islamiah members who, when interviewed, considered religion as their top-most priority - more crucial than developing themselves socially or economically. What they were saying was that in an increasingly secularised world, their search for excellence went beyond material concerns. It was, in fact, equated to a search for spiritual meaning. And it was to fill this spiritual void that they sought to deepen their knowledge and practice of Islam.

Abdul Basheer is not alone in this. In fact, he is a part of a global phenomenon of Islamic resurgence today. One of the main effects of globalisation is that some individuals increasingly find it difficult to cope with rapid changes without losing their inner sense of security and identity.This happens across many societies, not just among Muslims. Yet, one of the options that many Muslims take to preserve their identity and values is to uphold the values and identity offered by Islamic teachings.

Unfortunately, many Muslims today, including Abdul Basheer and the JI members, are not equipped with the proper knowledge to adapt true Islamic teachings to the demands of a rapidly changing world. This is the result of a deepening intellectual and moral crisis in the Muslim leadership across many Muslim societies.

The origins of the crisis can be traced back to the 19th century when the Muslim world, along with other non-western parts of the world was challenged by the economic, political and cultural hegemony of Europe. As a result of adopting foreign concepts without first evaluating these concepts and incorporating only what is of value through the guidelines of their own intellectual heritage, Muslim scholars from both dogmatic literalists(what is commonly known as fundamentalists) and modern liberal secularists(or modernists) were born.

For instance, Western thought had the effect of intruding upon the integrity of the Islamic intellectual tradition by mutating and marginalizing several of its disciplines. For example, Sufism came to be viewed as a mystical, personal experience of the religion and thus sidelined from mainstream Islamic practices. This, Omid Safi asserts can only be argued if one looked at Sufism through the lens of post-enlightenment theories of religion. The rejection of this core Islamic teaching which emphasizes morality and spiritual cleansing signifies the onset of an intellectual imbalance and subsequent moral decay within the Muslim ummah. This can be seen manifest in the many problems that beset many Muslim nations and leaders who struggle with issues of corruption, authoritarian regimes and immorality-all of which have directly or indirectly responsible for the insurgencies and terrorism-related activities in the Muslim world.

The crisis is deepening with a current trend towards anti-intellectual minimalism spearheaded by the dogmatic literalists. This group of people strongly rejects the diversity of views, broad range of thinking and varying levels of rational discourse found in the intellectual Islamic disciplines in the past. Instead, they insist on a worldview based on a narrowly defined traditionalist past which forces doctrinal conformity and uniformity of thought across the whole spectrum of Muslim communities worldwide.

The crisis has led to a serious depletion of scholars who are able to provide intelligent guidance to lead the Muslims through the challenges arising from the forces of globalisation. The incapacitation or marginalization of creative Muslim thinkers from both the professional and educational fields further add to the general failure to respond effectively to the challenges of globalisation and to increasing secularism. One of the consequences of this are Muslims who are unable to embrace these changes and at the same time still hold fast to the obligations of their religion. This has resulted in many problems in the Muslim world, one of which is the emergence of a group of people who have adopted rigid, radical views with violent tendencies in a bid to withstand the pressures of secularisation and globalisation.

Return to The True Teachings of Islam

There must also be a parallel effort to revive the Islamic intellectual traditions in which knowledge is pursued in accordance with the correct code of conduct or adab prescribed by Islam. One of the more important criteria is that it must be sought from a credible teacher, who is chosen not only because of his knowledge, but also for his good moral conduct, which his students should aim to emulate. For this, the students must be in direct physical contact with their teacher. This concept of pursuing knowledge face-to-face with a teacher is exemplified by the  Prophet Muhammad, who did not receive the Quranic revelations directly from God but through the Archangel Jibrail as his teacher and guide.One of the main arguments today against learning religion face-to-face with a teacher is that people are constrained by work and time. So the Internet becomes the most attractive option due to its convenience and accessibility.

Religious organisations and mosques need set aside time and find opportunities to cater to the different needs of the community.It is important to catch young Muslims while they are still in school so they will have a good foundation in the religion. What is clear is that a large number of radicals have shallow knowledge of the religion. This is probably the norm here and elsewhere in the Muslim world. Such individuals fail to pursue religious knowledge in a proper and consistent manner. This could be due to a combination of their work and lifestyle demands.

The Muslim public must also be encouraged to attend intellectual discourses and debates and be weaned off from a diet of talks and activities that have high entertainment value but low knowledge content. In this regard, mosques and other Muslim organisations have to ensure their programmes are of high educational value, rather than just a means to entertain or raise funds. In addition to upgrading knowledge, efforts must be made to equip Muslims with creative and critical thinking skills. This is important in the face of religious impostors operating in the real and virtual world. Muslims must have the means to be able to contribute to resolving important issues inherited from the past as well as the future challenges that the modern world brings to bear on them.

The crisis of governance and of intellectual and moral leadership in the Muslim world has been aggravated by a failure to resolve long-standing conflicts that involve the large scale the victimisation of Muslims. In the short term, we must provide a platform for Muslims to air their grievances or channel their energies and other forms of help to their Muslim brethen who are in difficulties abroad, in a legitimate and peaceful manner. For example, just as we have performed mass-prayers for those who died in the Sept 11, 2001 atrocities, perhaps the same can be done for the victims of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.At the same time, dialogues should not be confined to those among different faiths. There must also be dialogues that provide a ear to the voices of dissent within Islam.

Self-radicalisation is just one of the many routes that terrorists have adopted to achieve their aims. And as long as technology progresses, the terrorists will become more advanced and sophisticated too.Given their resilience, we have no choice but to strike at the root of the problem if we are to achieve success in both the short and long term.

The root of the problem, as I see it, lies in the lack of intellectual and moral leadership in the Muslim world. In particular, there is great concern with regards to what can be termed as the anti-intellectual movement within certain Islamic circles, which rejects critical methods of analysis and contextual thinking thus undermining the legitimate authority of Islam’s intellectual and moral-spiritual heritage and the required flexibility and space to providing guidance to Muslims through the challenges in a dynamic and ever-changing world. It thereby impoverishes current Muslims by stripping them of a powerful weapon for combating the values of secular materialism and worldview of globalizing culture. In addition, a more dangerous effect of this trend is the legitimization and ideological empowerment that the group provides to the most radically inclined minority in their midst, namely the militant jihadists. This is best reflected in the myopic jihadist goal of a political Islam system which is devoid of its intellectual-rational-spiritual dimension. As this trend involves a subtle internal challenge to the legitimacy and relevance of the Islamic legacy, efforts to recast the direction of Muslim thought and action can only arise from within Islam itself.

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Southeast Asia, more than any other region in the Muslim world, is known for an extraordinarily moderate and tolerant approach to the practice of religion. This is a region where several of the world’s major civilizations and religious have converged, and where Muslims and others have co-existed with other religious and cultural traditions in a way that makes Southeast Asia stands as an example to other regions of the world. Nevertheless, it is also true that over the past decades, and accelerating in recent years, there has been a process of radicalization of the Muslim communities of Southeast Asia, which, if left unchecked, could lead to the loss, or at least the attenuation of this valuable tradition of moderation and tolerance in religion.

Conceptual Framework for the Analysis of Radicalization

Before proceeding with the analysis of the trends in the religio-political landscape of Southeast Asia and what they mean for the future of the region and of the Muslim world we need to define our terms, what we mean by radicalization, so that we can have a common language in addressing this issue. I was asked to address the subject of radical and moderate Islam at a hearing of a committee of the U.S.; House of Representatives last month, and I said at the time that one of the problems that we have found in the discourse about Islam is that the terms "radical"; or "moderate" are often used in a subjective and imprecise way, without going through a process of critically examining what these terms mean. In particular, it is important to examine the relationship between radicalization and violence.

I note that the paper that outlines the design of this conference names violent extremism and radicalization of Muslim communities as the subject or problems that this conference is examining. This suggests that violent extremism and radicalization are separate, but related phenomena, that there may be stages of radicalization that do not incorporate violence but that nevertheless have the potential to lead individuals to violence or that have other detrimental effects.

This is the view that we have taken in our analyses of radicalization in the Muslim world, that the propensity for violence is certainly a defining characteristic of the most extreme segment of the radical spectrum—for instance, in terms of the definition of jihad as armed struggle and as an individual obligation of the same standing as the five pillars of the religion (the profession of faith, prayer five times daily, zakat or almsgiving, fasting during Ramadan, and the hajj). However, outside of the violent there is a much larger universe of radical fundamentalist or Salafi groups who may not themselves practice violence, but that propagate an ideology that creates the conditions for violence and that is subversive of the values of democratic societies.

Therefore, the willingness to use or justify violence to attain religious or political objectives is one element of what separates radical from moderate Muslims—a very important element, but only one element nonetheless. This is why in our analysis of politico-religious tendencies in the Muslim world we have taken a broader view of what constitutes radical Islam. The analytical framework that we have developed differentiates religious and political currents according to their overarching ideologies; their preferred forms of government (do they seek to establish an Islamic state or are they willing to accept non-sectarian forms of government?); their political and legal orientation (do they insist on the application of Islamic law, or do they accept other sources of law?); their attitudes toward the rights of women and religious minorities (do they deny women equal rights, including the right to political participation? Do they support the education and advancement of women? Would they allow freedom of worship?).

The radical groups may not advocate violence, but they would register significantly lower levels of tolerance. As Donald Emmerson has noted,1 their lower tolerance may then lower these Muslims’ reluctance to acquiesce—or even take part—in the use violence for Islamist ends. In this way, organizations such as the Hizb ut-Tahrir have been identified as a gateway to terrorism. In our own studies of radical recruitment in the Middle East, we found that individuals recruited into Salafi or Muslim Brotherhood groups decide at some point that their mentors are not Islamic enough and move on to even more extreme and violent groups. This progression from religious radicalism to violent extremism is made possible by the absence of firewalls between mainstream Islam and radicals and violent extremists. Violent extremists can derive scriptural justifications for their actions. This is because the elements of the Islamic tradition that could be used to lend support to radical interpretations have not yet been anachronized.  Therefore, if the goal is to turn the ideological tide, modernizing Islamic teachings on jihad is an area where progressive theological work is needed.

1 Donald K. Emmerson, “Islam, Muslims, and Violence: The Useful Diversity of ‘Islamism,’” Paper prepared for Special Session on “Islam and Political  Violence,” Annual Convention of the Middle East Studies Association, November 20-23, 2004 (draft).

2 International Crisis Group (ICG), “Jemaah Islamiyah in Southeast Asia: Damaged but Still Dangerous,” ICG Asia Report No. 63, Jakarta/Brussels: August 26, 2003, p. 6.

3 “Saudis Quietly Promote Strict Islam in Indonesia,” New York Times, July 5, 2003.

4 Zachary Abuza, “Muslims, Politics, and Violence in Indonesia: An Emerging Jihadist-Islamist Nexus?” NBR Analysis, Vol. 15, No. 3, September 2004, p. 31.
Sources of the Radicalization of Muslim Communities in Southeast Asia

Having defined radicalization and the issues associated with this process in general terms, we can turn to the Southeast Asian experience. One of the assumptions stated in the concept paper for this conference is that violent extremism and the radicalization of the Muslim communities are recent phenomena.  This is true, for the reasons that I suggested at the beginning of this presentation, but there have been some historical deviations from the norm. As the Indonesian participants here know, the Padri movement in Sumatra in the 1820s and 1830s involved an effort to introduce Wahhabism, sometimes using forceful methods, by preachers who had returned from Mecca and had been influenced by Wahhabi teachings during the al-Sauds’ first occupation of the city at the beginning of the nineteenth century.  

With this exception, and of the uprisings against the colonial powers that combined ethnic and religious factors, the only major Islamist revolt in the modern history of Southeast Asia was the Darul Islam rebellion from 1949 to 1962. The Darul Islam experience is important because it is one of the fountainheads of the regional terrorist movement that goes by the name of Jemaah Islamiyah, which seems to me a misappropriation of a perfectly respectable name, but this precisely one of the tactics of the extremists, which is to cloak themselves in the language of religion.  

As Sidney Jones has pointed out in her analyses of the origins of Islamist terrorist in Indonesia, Abdullah Sungkar, the co-founder of Jemaah Islamiyah, served as an officer in Darul Islam leader Kartosuwirjo’s Islamic Army of Indonesia and Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, although he did not participate in the rebellion, accepted the Darul Islam’s ideological agenda.2 Individuals from families with a Darul Islam backgrounds continue to play an important role in terrorism in Indonesia. The point here is that while external factors provided the catalyst for radicalization and violent extremism in Southeast Asia, these phenomena have internal sources as well.

Nevertheless, while the seeds of radicalization in Southeast Asia were already there, this process was catalyzed by the worldwide Islamic revival in its Salafi and Wahhabi manifestations—there is nothing wrong with religious piety per se—and by the influx of money and ideologies from the Middle East, which has allowed extremist groups to expand their activities and to make inroads Southeast Asian educational and social welfare networks.

First, the effects of the worldwide Islamic resurgence. This is a complex phenomenon that reflects the stresses of traditional societies and of individuals within these societies as they seek to adjust to or cope with rapid societal change. In its Salafi manifestations, this process involves a rejection of modernity and an effort to return to an imagined past. Chandra Muzaffar describes the manifestations of this phenomenon in his important study, Islamic Resurgence in Malaysia. These include, among other things, greater insistence on the outward manifestations of piety such as the wearing of Islamic garb, greater social distance between the sexes, intolerance of un-Islamic public behavior such as consumption of alcohol at public accommodations, and exclusive, identity-driven politics. 
In non-Arab countries, this process has involved the displacement of indigenous culture by religious and social practices from the Middle East—what the distinguished Indonesian scholar Azyumardi Azra, whom we are fortunate to have in this conference, has referred to as Arabization. This importation of social, political and cultural patterns from the Middle East has had a polarizing impact on Islam in Southeast Asia, where the cultural context is quite different and not always consistent with that in the Arab world.

Second, the export of Saudi money and ideology.  Radicalization throughout the Muslim world has been driven by an aggressive proselytizing campaign, directed and funded by the Saudis, in countries from Bosnia to the Philippines. The Saudis funded mosques, schools, and Islamic social welfare organizations that, in countries such as Pakistan, filled the void left by ineffectual or non-existent state institutions. As in the rest of the Muslim world, the influx of Saudi money and ideology has been an important engine of radicalization in Southeast Asia. In the early 1990s Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, Osama bin Laden’s brother–in-law and agent in the Philippines, became the regional director of the Saudi-based charity International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), which he used as a cover for al-Qaeda operations there. The Indonesian extremist Agus Dwikarna, who is in prison in the Philippines on terrorism charges, was the regional head of the al-Haramain Foundation, which was listed by the United Nations in 2004 as an organization with links to al-Qaeda.

The mechanics of Saudi funding of activities in Southeast Asia was through institutional or personal links that Saudi donors established with ideologically compatible organizations or individuals in Southeast Asia to whom they channeled funds and scholarships for study at Saudi universities. For instance, beginning in the 1970s the Rabithat al-Alam al-Islami (World Muslim League) funded programs run by the Dewan Dakwah Islam Indonesias  (DDII). The Religious Affairs Officer in Saudi embassies abroad is a channel for direct Saudi propagation of Wahhabi ideology.  For instance, the Saudi office in Jakarta finances the translation of about one million books a year from Arabic to Bahasa Indonesia and offers scholarships to Indonesian students for study in Saudi universities.3  

Third, the consequences of the Afghan war. The war against the Soviets in Afghanistan attracted militants from all over the Muslim world. The war not only served as the training ground for many of today's terrorists and radicals, but it provided the context for the creation of the transnational networks that served as the foundation for al-Qaeda and its associated groups.  About a thousand Southeast Asians are estimated to have participated in training or combat in Afghanistan.  Of greater consequence, many of the leaders of extremist organizations had experience in Afghanistan, for instance: former Jemaah Islamiyah leaders Hambali and Abu Jibril, the late Fathur Rahman al-Ghozi and Zulkarnaen; former Laskar Jihad leader Ja'afar Umar Thalib; and Abu Sayyaf Group founder Abdurajak Janjalani, among others.

Fourth, there is an organizational basis for the spread of radical ideologies. Radicals by and large are a minority, but in many areas they hold the advantage because they have developed extensive networks spanning the Muslim world and sometimes reaching beyond it. Hizb ut-Tahrir, for instance, is an international organization, and many of the Southeast Asian Salafi groups have intimate ties to their mentors, funders and counterparts in the Middle East. Liberal and moderate Muslims, although a majority in almost all countries, have not created similar networks, although efforts are now beginning to be made, by some of the people present in this room, to network together moderate Muslim organizations in Southeast Asian—an effort that perhaps could be expanded on a global scale.

Fifth, another reason for the spread of radical Islamist groups is their aggressive and sophisticated recruitment techniques. The targets are separate potential pools of recruits, each requiring different methods and venues for recruitment. The key recruitment nodes are mosques and Islamic study circles; schools, universities, and youth organizations; health and welfare organizations, including charities; and other social clusters. Recruitment methodologies vary: in universities, for instance, the process involves Quranic study groups or circles where members gradually internalize the ideology of the group. This has been the specialty of the PKS in Indonesia. In economically and socially marginalized districts, recruits might be willing to join the extremist group as an avenue of escape from boredom or unemployment. Laskar Jihad recruited among the poorest and less educated segments of the population, especially the young rootless urban poor.

Sixth, I should mention that violence itself plays a central role in recruitment. International jihadists have become involved in conflicts from Chechnya and Kashmir to Maluku and Poso, ostensibly to help beleaguered Muslims in these regions, but also to gain credibility among some sectors of the broader Muslim communities and especially among the young people that they hope to entice into joining. We see, for instance, that the playing of sometimes very graphic tapes of the armed jihad has a central role in recruitment events. But these local jihads also provide new members with a “rite of passage” which is the functional equivalent of the previous generation’s experience in Afghanistan Beyond that, it could be that from the jihadist standpoint, violence is its own justification.  According to Zachary Abuza, the concept of purifying violence is central to the JI ideology.  Religious violence is seen as an act of cleansing of sins, particularly important in the case of JI members who were formerly criminals and are seeking redemption.

Factors Specific to Southeast Asia

I have outlined above some of the general conditions and processes that have contributed to the radicalization of Muslim communities in Southeast Asia. There are, of course, factors that are specific to Southeast Asia.  These domestic factors interacted with broader external trends to produce greater militancy in the region. In Indonesia, the principal dynamic was the weakening of state authority after the downfall of President Suharto. The political disorder also produced tactical alliances between some elite factions and extremists, which gave the extremists greater scope to expand their political influence. The result was the appearance of radical militias and vigilante groups, communal conflict in eastern Indonesia, and even today, outburst of intolerance such as the violence or threats of violence against the Ahmadiyah sect, Christian churches and Ulil Abshar-Abdallah’s Liberal Muslim Network.

In the southern Philippines and southern Thailand, the potential for radicalization lies in a strong sense of grievance on the part of the Muslim populations of these countries toward the central government that has manifested itself in a longstanding insurgency in Mindanao—that has entered, however, a stage of what appears to be serious negotiations toward an equitable settlement—and a situation of escalating violence in southern Thailand. 

What is to be done?

I believe that it is widely understood now that only Muslims themselves can effectively challenge the message of radicals, and that the role of those of us who stand outside is to do what we can to empower Muslim moderates in this ideological struggle. I noted in my presentation that one of the advantages of radicals is that they have extensive networks, while by and large moderates do not. Therefore, central to this task is to create a strong international network to unite the fractured voices of moderate Muslims. 

The creation of this network can provide moderates with a platform for their message and amplify their voices. Southeast Asia is unique in the Muslim world in that there is already in place a dense structure of moderate Muslim institutions. There are mass organizations in Indonesia such as Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah that by and large subscribe to moderate conceptions of Islam. The Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University system comprises, if my information is correct, 47 colleges and universities with over 100,000 students.  Muhammadiyah also has an extensive university system. In Malaysia and the Philippines there has been a significant growth of Muslim civil society. There are already efforts to under way to network moderate Muslim organizations in the region; I want to mention in this regard the work of the International Center for Islam and Pluralism in Jakarta, and the Philippine Council for Islam and Democracy, among others. These institutions can be instrumental in developing and disseminating a moderate narrative that contradicts the radical narrative. So perhaps the turning of the tide can begin not in the alleged center of the Muslim world, the Middle East, but here, in Southeast Asia.

Source

BRITISH Muslim Abu Izzadeen (Trevor Brooks) said in 2005 that it was imperative for Muslims to “instill terror into the hearts of the kuffar”. He added: “I am a terrorist. As a Muslim of course I am a terrorist.”

In fact a treatise was written under the name of Abd Al-Qader Abd Al-Aziz, a leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad organization, in 2001 titled “Al-Irhab min Al-Islam, wa man ankara zalika faqad kafara” (Terrorism is Islamic. Whoever rejects it, he has become infidel). Fortunately, however, Abd Aziz recanted his previous jihadist ideology and today became the forefront critique of it.

Such statement was made through their own cognizance that they took of the verse: “Muster against them whatever you are able of force and tethers (ropes) of horses, so that you strike terror into the enemies of Allah and your enemy, and others besides them whom you do not know but Allah does. All that you spend in the Way of Allah shall be repaid to you. You shall not be wronged.” (The Quran, 8:60)

The extremists argued that whoever rejects terrorism as part of Islam is considered an apostate because the verse, according to them, has clearly indicated an ‘order’ to ‘strike terror’ into God’s enemies. Another implication of the verse, they claimed, was a ‘command’ to agglomerate military prowess as the superior means to confront and subdue the enemies i.e. all non-Muslims and their false teachings.

Such avowal is a huge slander towards the Qur’an and an implication of distorted thinking because firstly, the connotation of “terror” in the word “Turhibun” was used in a context that was entirely dissimilar to terrorism as it is understood today. It is important to note however that the contemporary Arabic word “Irhab” which refers to “terrorism” was derived from the word “Turhibun” as used in the verse. Secondly, the verse itself does not signify any reference to attacking civilians or pronouncing them as God’s enemies. The word “Turhibun” (‘so that you strike terror’) is not equivalent to “Irhab” (terrorism). Rather, it means to strike fear into the attacking rivals which is adjacent to the concept of “deterrence” in strategic terms. Thirdly, it contradicts the Prophetic tradition that forbids killing non-combatants in military conflicts such as women, children, the elderly, as well as priests.

The idea that “tethers of horses” symbolizes the use of hard power to realize the mission of Islam is another warped understanding. Reality reveals that where a mission of inviting people to values and goodness is concerned, military power is not the ultimate determinant. American culture penetrates into the lives of people from different corners of the world without any use of hard power. Even India, without having to be the World Power, has had ‘Bollywood’ and ‘Kollywood’ influences reached beyond her borders.

In spite of the fact that the Qur’an and Prophetic tradition used physical strength (tethers of horses and archery) to denote the concept of quwwah (strength), modern Quranic exegetes have broadened it to include intellectual and economical strength or any kind of strength that would effectuate the message of Islam. 

Japan is one such example. Though the post-World War II saw the country demilitarised by US occupation and backed up by the Japanese Constitution, Japan was able to make an impact on modern lifestyle and secure her interests through a rapid growth and expansion of economic, industrial and technological forces – again, without the use of hard power.

Muhammad Asad (Leopold Weiss) had attempted a more elaborative way of translating the above mentioned verse – which he did by understanding it in the light of other verses following it (The Quran, 8:60-62):

“Hence, make ready against them whatever force and war mounts" you are able to muster, so that you might deter thereby the enemies of God, who are your enemies as well, and others besides them of whom you may be unaware, [but] of whom God is aware…But if they incline to peace, incline thou to it as well, and place thy trust in God. …the Muslims may resort to war only if and when the other party is openly hostile to them…The "reason to fear treachery" must not, of course, be based on mere surmise but on clear, objective evidence (Tabari, Baghawi, Razi; also Mandr X, 58).”

Both kinds of interpretation attempted by the extremists resembled their war-obsessed ideology. The war is only a tool for politics and ideology, but to them, it has become the ultimate goal – a vision that hinders them from rationally perceiving other tools that are more effective for the promotion of values, ideologies or faith.

In reality, the extremists are preachers of war, not at all preachers of Islam.

Source

Religion, particularly Islam, has become one of the most difficult subject areas to tackle in recent years.

Contemporary culture, whether approached from the perspective of anthropology or theology, psychology or psychoanalysis, evaluates religion with empirical methods. On the one hand, religion is an inwardly experienced and felt phenomenon, one mostly related to life's permanent aspects. On the other believers can see their religion as a philosophy, a set of rational principles, or mere mysticism. The difficulty increases in the case of Islam, for some Muslims and policy-makers consider and present it as a purely political, sociological, and economic ideology, rather than as a religion.

If we want to analyze religion, democracy, or any other system or philosophy accurately, we should focus on humanity and human life. From this perspective, religion in general and Islam in particular cannot be compared on the same basis with democracy or any other political, social, or economic system. Religion focuses primarily on the immutable aspects of life and existence, whereas political, social, and economic systems or ideologies concern only certain variable, social aspects of our worldly life.

The aspects of life with which religion is primarily concerned are as valid today as they were at the dawn of humanity and will continue to be so in the future. Worldly systems change according to circumstances and so can be evaluated only according to their times. Belief in God, the hereafter, the prophets, the holy books, angels, and divine destiny have nothing to do with changing times. Likewise, worship and morality's universal and unchanging standards have little to do with time and worldly life.

Therefore, when comparing religion or Islam with democracy, we must remember that democracy is a system that is being continually developed and revised. It also varies according to the places and circumstances where it is practiced. On the other hand, religion has established immutable principles related to faith, worship and morality. Thus, only Islam's worldly aspects should be compared with democracy.

The main aim of Islam and its unchangeable dimensions affect its rules governing the changeable aspects of our lives. Islam does not propose a certain unchangeable form of government or attempt to shape it. Instead, Islam establishes fundamental principles that orient a government's general character, leaving it to the people to choose the type and form of government according to time and circumstances. If we approach the matter in this light and compare Islam with today's modern liberal democracy, we will better understand the position of Islam and democracy with respect to each other.

Democratic ideas stem from ancient times. Modern liberal democracy was born in the American (1776) and French Revolutions (1789-99). In democratic societies, people govern themselves as opposed to being ruled by someone above. The individual has priority over the community in this type of political system, being free to determine how to live his or her own life. Individualism is not absolute, though. People achieve a better existence by living within a society and this requires that they adjust and limit their freedom according to the criteria of social life.

The Prophet says that all people are as equal as the teeth of a comb. Islam does not discriminate based on race, color, age, nationality, or physical traits. The Prophet declared: "You are all from Adam, and Adam is from earth. O servants of God, be brothers [and sisters]." Those who are born earlier, have more wealth and power than others, or belong to certain families or ethnic groups have no inherent right to rule others.

Islam also upholds the following fundamental principles:

1. Power lies in truth, a repudiation of the common idea that truth relies upon power.
2. Justice and the rule of law are essential.
3. Freedom of belief and rights to life, personal property, reproduction, and health (both mental and physical) cannot be violated.
4. The privacy and immunity of individual life must be maintained.
5. No one can be convicted of a crime without evidence, or accused and punished for someone else's crime.
6. An advisory system of administration is essential.

All rights are equally important, and an individual's right cannot be sacrificed for society's sake. Islam considers a society to be composed of conscious individuals equipped with free will and having responsibility toward both themselves and others. Islam goes a step further by adding a cosmic dimension. It sees humanity as the "motor" of history, contrary to fatalistic approaches of some of the nineteenth century Western philosophies of history such as dialectical materialism and historicism. Just as every individual's will and behavior determine the outcome of his or her life in this world and in the hereafter, a society's progress or decline is determined by the will, world-view, and lifestyle of its inhabitants. The Qur'an (13:11) says: "God will not change the state of a people unless they change themselves [with respect to their beliefs, world-view, and lifestyle]." In other words, each society holds the reins of its fate in its own hands. The prophetic tradition emphasizes this idea: "You will be ruled according to how you are." This is the basic character and spirit of democracy, which does not conflict with any Islamic principle.

As Islam holds individuals and societies responsible for their own fate, people must be responsible for governing themselves. The Qur'an addresses society with such phrases as: "O people!" and "O believers!" The duties entrusted to modern democratic systems are those that Islam refers to society and classifies, in order of importance, as "absolutely necessary, relatively necessary, and commendable to carry out." The sacred text includes the following passages: "Establish, all of you, peace" (2:208); "spend in the way of God and to the needy of the pure and good of what you have earned and of what We bring forth for you from earth" (2:267); "if some among your women are accused of indecency, you must have four witnesses [to prove it]" (4:15); "God commands you to give over the public trusts to the charge of those having the required qualities and to judge with justice when you judge between people" (4:58); "observe justice as witnesses respectful for God even if it is against yourselves, your parents and relatives" (4:135); "if they [your enemies] incline to peace [when you are at war], you also incline to it" (8:61); "if a corrupt, sinful one brings you news [about others], investigate it so that you should not strike a people without knowing" (49:6); "if two parties among the believers fight between themselves, reconcile them" (49:9). To sum up, the Qur'an addresses the whole community and assigns it almost all the duties entrusted to modern democratic systems.

People cooperate with one another by sharing these duties and establishing the essential foundations necessary to perform them. The government is composed of all of these foundations. Thus, Islam recommends a government based on a social contract. People elect the administrators and establish a council to debate common issues. Also, the society as a whole participates in auditing the administration. Especially during the rule of the first four caliphs (632-661), the fundamental principles of government mentioned above-including free election-were fully observed. The political system was transformed into a sultanate after the death of 'Ali, the fourth caliph, due to internal conflicts and to the global conditions at that time. Unlike under the caliphate, power in the sultanate was passed on through the sultan's family. However, even though free elections were no longer held, societies maintained other principles that are at the core of today's liberal democracy.

Islam is an inclusive religion. It is based on the belief in one God as the Creator, Lord, Sustainer, and Administrator of the universe. Islam is the religion of the whole universe. That is, the entire universe obeys the laws laid down by God, so everything in the universe is "Muslim" and obeys God by submitting to his laws. Even a person who refuses to believe in God or follows another religion has perforce to be a Muslim as far as his or her bodily existence is concerned. His or her entire life, from the embryonic stage to the body's dissolution into dust after death, every tissue of his or her muscles, and every limb of his or her body follows the course prescribed for each by God's law. Thus, in Islam, God, nature, and humanity are neither remote from each other nor are they alien to each other. It is God Who makes himself known to humanity through nature and humanity itself, and nature and humanity are two books (of creation) through each word of which God is known. This leads humankind to look upon everything as belonging to the same Lord, to whom it itself belongs, so that it regards nothing in the universe as alien. His sympathy, love, and service do not remain confined to the people of any particular race, color, or ethnicity. The Prophet summed this up with the command, "O servants of God, be brothers [and sisters]!"

A separate but equally important point is that Islam recognizes all religions previous to it. It accepts all the prophets and books sent to different peoples in different epochs of history. Not only does it accept them, but also regards belief in them as an essential principle of being Muslim. By doing so, it acknowledges the basic unity of all religions. A Muslim is at the same time a true follower of Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus, and of all other Hebrew prophets. This belief explains why both Christians and Jews enjoyed their religious rights under the rule of Islamic governments throughout history.

The Islamic social system seeks to form a virtuous society and thereby gain God's approval. It recognizes right, not force, as the foundation of social life. Hostility is unacceptable. Relationships must be based on belief, love, mutual respect, assistance, and understanding instead of conflict and realization of personal interest. Social education encourages people to pursue lofty ideals and to strive for perfection, not just to run after their own desires. Right calls for unity, virtues bring mutual support and solidarity, and belief secures brotherhood and sisterhood. Encouraging the soul to attain perfection brings happiness in both worlds.

Democracy has developed over time. Just as it has gone through many different stages in the past, it will continue to evolve and to improve in the future. Along the way, it will be shaped into a more humane and just system, one based on righteousness and reality. If human beings are considered as a whole, without disregarding the spiritual dimension of their existence and their spiritual needs, and without forgetting that human life is not limited to this mortal life and that all people have a great craving for eternity, democracy could reach its peak of perfection and bring even more happiness to humanity. Islamic principles of equality, tolerance, and justice can help it do just that.

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The word Islam is derived from silm and selamet, which mean submission, salvation, providing trustworthiness, and peace. Innumerable arguments in Qur'an and the Hadith literature, the essential sources of Islam, support these meanings. Besides, all actions leading to or ending in violence and terror are forbidden in the strongest possible terms. Among the central tenets of Islam, which depicts true reality, is that peace and trustworthiness are to be adhered to in all aspects of one's daily life.

Judaism and Christianity also emphasize peace and trustworthiness. No revealed religion can clash with another. Furthermore, all of them-but especially Islam-thoroughly reject corruption, oppression, and conflict.

Historically, Muslim governments did participate in battles and wars, just like any other government. No government or religion can claim not to have participated in such events. But I would like to remind the readers of the words of the man who was tortured on the cross: "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone" (John 8:7).

All claims of innocence in this matter are no more than distortions of history. Islam allows military action only in the cases of self-defense or to repel those who interfere in its affairs. Over the centuries, a vast body of literature on the proper conduct of war was developed. Today, such guidelines are known as "laws of war."

Many Qur'anic verses deal with the concepts of justice and peace, both of which are the current essence of the modern legal system developed to protect life, capital, and reproduction. For example: Deal fairly, and do not let the hatred of others for you make you swerve to wrong and depart from justice. Be just, for that is next to piety; and fear Allah (5:8); If someone kills another person, unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land, it would be as if he had killed all people (5:32); If the enemy inclines toward peace, you (also) incline toward peace and trust in Al1ah, for He is the Al1-Hearing, Al1-Knowing (8:61); and O believers, enter into peace (Islam) wholeheartedly, and do not follow Satan's footsteps, for he is your avowed enemy (2:208).

In the Hadith literature, Prophet Muhammad describes Muslims as those people from whom others are secure from their tongues and hands. [1] In other words, those Muslims who are not known for their provision of security and trustworthiness to others must reexamine their claim to be Muslim.

In another hadith, the Prophet was asked: ''Which action is more virtuous In Islam?'' He replied, and I hope his response brings us to sharp vision in this theme: ''Muslims who Invite others to their meals and who give greetings to everyone, even If they have never met before.'' [2]

I would like to give some more hadiths to clarify even further the Prophet's view on this subject:

The Prophet spent first 13 years of his mission in Makkah, where they endured severe persecution and an embargo by the pagans. Abu Jahl, the Prophet's leading enemy, was responsible for causing great pain and suffering to the Prophet, who never answered back with hatred. Instead, he and his followers followed a policy of patience. One day Ikrimah, the son of Abu Jahl, converted to Islam. Some Muslims who had not yet fully accepted the values of Islam in their hearts and minds, started to blame Ikrimah for what his father had done. But the Prophet rebuked them by saying that ''cursing your own mothers and fathers is one of the big sins.'' [3] When they asked how people can curse their own parents, he replied: ''If you curse someone else's parents, they curse your parents. Thus it is like cursing your own parents.''

As the following examples indicate, annoying others is equal to annoying your own parents.

Those who research such issues in Islamic history will find that Muslims have been representatives of peace and trustworthiness throughout history. Thus trying to associate Islam with terror is both a distraction and an injustice, an enormous example of ignorance that history cannot forget.

Thus we can say with full confidence that there is no terror in Islam. Terrorists are not Muslims, and Muslims cannot be terrorists. Islam and terror are like black and white or spring and winter. They are sharply different from each other, and terror cannot approach Islam. In connection with the above logic, Muslims must be legitimate in their intentions when it comes to their goals, thoughts, and actions, for only a straight and allowed way can lead them to their exalted objective.

Islam equates killing one innocent person to killing humanity, and prescribes eternal hell for such an action. The Prophet stood up for the funeral procession of a Jew out of respect for the fact that the deceased was a fellow human being. Certainly such religion never allows terror for any purpose.

September 11th will remain a blemish on the pages of human history. Although no Muslim approves of such terrorist acts, the print and visual media continue to do their best to link Islam with terror so that we will see them as related to one another. I am very sorry to say that some media outlets are doing this intentionally in order to make all Muslims appear guilty.

Another part of this is the circumstances in Muslim countries. We must realize that no Muslim country, when considered from the viewpoint of administrative, legal, and economic matters, exists. What we mean by that phrase is countries with majority Muslim populations. Many of them have movements for independence and also have to cope with the pressures of artificial and oligarchic governments, poverty, ignorance, lack of accurate religious knowledge, geographical difficulties, and unjust distribution of wealth; continued intervention from outside forces who want to block democracy from taking root; easy imports and the consequent non-improvement in domestic production, export, and economics; and, more than anything else, the role of the media in undermining moral values. All of these problems are confronting the Muslims and make them appear in an unfavorable light.

If any Muslims are joined to or associated with terrorism and anarchy, it is because they do not understand Islam correctly and because the existing realities in their countries to do not allow them to acquire a correct understanding. But the roots of these causes can be traced only to cultural, economic, and other related reasons-not to Islam.

In our increasingly smaller and global world, developed countries and international associations are more often than not only spectators that make no contribution to other nations' growth and do not take seriously their responsibility to make this world a better place for everyone.

In conclusion, when we look at terror from the Islamic prospect, we see that it causes only disaster and tragedy in this world and leads to Hell in the Hereafter.

[1] Bukhari: Iman 4,5 / Muslim: Iman 64, 65
[2] Bukhari: Iman 6,20 / Mus1im: Iman 63
[3] Muslim: lman 145 July-September 2002, Issue 39

Source

Compulsion is contrary to the meaning and purpose of religion, which essentially is an appeal to beings endowed with free will to affirm and worship their Creator. Intention and volition are necessary bases of all actions (including formal worship), attitudes, and thoughts for which the individual is religiously accountable. Without that basis, accountability has no meaning. According to Islam, actions are not considered religiously acceptable or valid unless they are done with the appropriate intention. Compulsion also contradicts the religious–legal principle that actions are to be judged only by intentions. [1]

Islam does not allow Muslims to be coerced into fulfilling its rites and obligations, or non-Muslims to be forced into accepting Islam. Under Islamic rule, non-Muslims always are allowed full freedom of religion and worship if they agree to accept Islamic rule. This is indicated by their payment of jizya (capitation tax) and kharaj (land tax). In return, the state protects their lives, property, and religious rights. [2]

The Islamic way of life cannot be imposed or sustained by force, for faith (iman) is essential to it. And as we know, faith is a matter of the heart and conscience, both of which are beyond force. In the absolute sense, therefore, compulsion is impossible, for one can believe only with and from the heart.

From the time of Adam, religion has not coerced anyone into unbelief or forced anyone to stray from righteousness. However, the powers of unbelief always seek to coerce believers away from their religion and their faith. No believer has tried to coerce an unbeliever to become a Muslim, whereas unbelievers continually try to lead believers back to unbelief.

Some ask why some Qur'anic verses describe fighting and jihad as obligatory, on the grounds that this appears to sanction compulsion.

Fighting and physical jihad were commanded because, at that time, the unbelievers fought the believers in order to eradicate their religion. The command to fight enabled and established an ethos that recognizes the right of religious freedom and extends it to all. In other words, Islam understands and practices the principle of "there is no compulsion in religion." Muslims had the confidence and self-assurance to understand that once that principle becomes part of the collective ethos, people will recognize Islam's truth and enter it of their own will. Historically, that is what happened throughout the territories under Islamic rule and, of course, far beyond.

We can look at this matter from another perspective. The command to wage war against unbelief pertains to certain circumstances. As civilizations rise, mature, decay, and fall, similar or the same circumstances will occur and recur. Tolerance and letting-be will be replaced by persecution, which calls for force to re-establish religious freedom. At other times, the attitude expressed in: To you your religion, and to me my religion (109:6) will be more appropriate.

The present is a period of the latter sort, one in which jihad is seen in our resolution, perseverance, forbearance, and devoted, patient preaching. And so we teach and explain. We do not engage in coercion, for there would be no benefit in our doing so. The misguidance and corruption of others is niether the target nor the focus of our efforts. We provoke, target, or offend no one. But, we try to preserve our own guidance in the face of misguidance. And in our own lives, we strive to establish the religion.

Just because a particular Qur'anic command is not applicable in present circumstances does mean that it is no longer applicable or relevant. Rather, it means that the command can be applied correctly or properly only in certain circumstances. We do not know when such circumstances will recur, only that they will. Meanwhile, the principle underlying the command remains relevant and applicable: religious persecution is abhorrent at all times and in all places. In the law and history of Islam, this principle has meant that under an Islamic polity, no non-Muslim can be coerced to enter the faith, and that all persons are free, both individually and communally, to live their faith.

Even non-Muslim, Western scholars, who often are hostile to Islam, acknowledge that Jews, Christians, and other non-Muslims ruled by Muslims generally enjoyed much greater economic prosperity, dignity, and prestige, and had far more freedoms than under non-Islamic rule—even that of their own co-religionists. Nor did this situation change significantly in the Western world until a through-going secularization diminished the importance of religious beliefs, rites, and solidarity. Intolerant states did not become legally tolerant so much as legally indifferent.

Religious tolerance is, in some sense, a sociopolitical characteristic special to Islam, one derived directly from the Muslims' understanding of and commitment to the Qur'anic principle of "there is no compulsion in religion."

Even in modern times, Western political constitutions typically make space for individual religious freedom, as opposed to collective and communal religious freedom. The Islamic polity recognizes the relevance and importance of community to the practice and continuance of religious beliefs and traditions. That is why, in lieu of jizya, Muslims protected the lives and property as well as the rites and places of worship of their non-Muslim subjects. Also, non-Muslims were recognized as distinct communities with their own schools and institutions. The conditions for such a display of successful religious pluralism were a just, impartial central authority and the discipline of non-provocation. A collective ethos of tolerance cannot be sustained without that discipline. For example, neither Muslims nor non-Muslims were allowed to blaspheme or otherwise mock and undermine each other's beliefs and rites.

Such disciplines and the related deterrent sanctions do not amount to coercion and compulsion. Islam also applies Muslim-specific deterrent sanctions to maintain the Islamic social order and ethos. An analogy may clarify this point. Most states have armed forces. These forces are composed either of volunteers or conscripts. Both types of soldiers are governed by the same disciplines (and sanctions). There is no "conscription" into Islam, for you can enter only by repeating the shahada. [3] To be valid and acceptable, this declaration must be voluntary and sincere. After that, the duties and obligations of Islam apply equally to all Muslims.

Of course, the system and its discipline is not external and as rigid as an army discipline is and has to be. Nevertheless it is a discipline, and breaches entail sanctions based on the seriousness of the matter. Typically, the disciplines of Islam are acquired gradually. Due to their inherent naturalness and ease and, most especially, because they are based on Divine and not human commands, they are readily internalized and welcomed in the heart.

When a sergeant shouts "Attention!" at his soldiers, they jump to a command that is always and only external—one obeys only because one must. By contrast, when the leader of a Muslim congregational prayer calls Allahu akbar, everyone present gives himself or herself the same command—it is internal as well as external. One obeys because one wants and consents to do so, and one is glad that one must. The solidarity and cohesion of a Muslim congregation (as the variety and rhythm of its members' movements demonstrates) is the solidarity of individuals gathered by consent to share in the same noble endeavor. Each fulfils his or her duty a little behind or a little ahead of another, but still together with all. It does not look like, nor is it, the mechanical solidarity of uniformed soldiers on parade.

Unsurprisingly, most breaches of discipline are slight, informal, and informally put right—usually by one Muslim advising a fellow Muslim to do the right thing and stop doing the wrong thing. Elaborating, exaggerating, or even reporting on someone's shortcomings or sins of others is considered a grave fault in Islam. Forbearance, forgiveness, patience for others, strictness for oneself—this is the more commended and generally practiced stance of the overwhelming majority of Muslims.

However, certain kinds of breaches threaten the social ethos as a whole. If such threats are not countered, the social ethos becomes eroded and society's general order and stability is undermined. Where informal private efforts to correct matters right have failed or are of no use, formal public measures, including force, must be applied. For example, Islam forbids the consumption of intoxicants, gambling, adultery, fornication, fraud, theft, and other harmful practices. It considers them both sins and crimes subject to punishment. If these vices are allowed to take root and spread, society has failed to fulfill its duty to the law and moral ethos of Islam. Collective action must be taken to prevent or undo widespread corruption within the social body. While such action includes positive efforts to educate the community in the corresponding virtues, it also must accept the negative action of imposing appropriate penalties on those who wilfully and systematically introduce vices into society that will destroy its discipline and Islamic character.

Consider the issue of apostasy. Under Islamic law, apostasy is regarded with the same gravity as treason is regarded by most states and all armed forces. The hope must be to prevent, by pleading, prayers, persuasion, and all other legitimate means, such a crime from becoming public and offensive to society. Those who insist on pursuing this path must be asked to reconsider and repent. If they reject this opportunity, the penalty is death. No lesser penalty could express society's abhorrence of breaking one's covenant with God. The shahada, by which the individual enters Islam, is a most weighty affair. To overturn it is to insult the whole balance of creation and its relationship with the Creator. If apostasy were regarded as an individual affair only, personal conscience would be tantamount to degrading religion to a plaything, a literary toy—now a pleasure or convenience, now a displeasure or nuisance, according to the whim or caprice of the moment.

"There is no compulsion in religion" because we have free will and because "Truth stands clear of falsehood." Truth has an absolute authority within the human conscience, which calls it urgently to affirm its Creator and Sustainer. In both individual and collective life, the Truth's absolute authority demands a flexible but strong and steady discipline. Discipline and forbearance, as well as compassionate understanding and patience, are the proper responses to all breaches—but only up to and until the discipline itself is threatened with destruction. Like every discipline, the discipline of Islam imposes its burdens. But unlike any other, the rewards for carrying those burdens with sincere devotion are sanity, serenity, and ease in this life and in the life to come.

The word "Islam" literally stems from the root "s-l-m" and the words "silm" and "salamah" which mean peace, and which indicate the "submission" or 'surrender" of oneself to God Almighty, being obedient to His commands, embarking on a safe and secure path that leads to salvation, promising a sense of trust to everyone and everything, while also denoting the fact that the person surrendering will not inflict any harm on others, be it physical or verbal.

The basis of Islam is "iman" and "iz'an", that is, faith, and conscious obedience. The fruits of Islam are "ihsan" (blessings) and "ihklas" (sincerity), that is acting or living as if seeing God, and doing everything only for the sake of God Almighty. The concept of Islam can be briefly summarized as the unconditional and doubtless belief of the "Tawhid", the Unity of God, and His divine Existence, and the submission of the self to Him. Also included in this, are the performance of every act and the responsibility of acting as if one sees Him, and is observed by Him, and doing everything only for His sake. A person who acts according to these or to similar descriptions is called a "Muslim" (not an Islamist). Such a person is accepted as a candidate to eternal prosperity.

Based on the messages of God Almighty, and the teachings and practices of His prophet Muhammad, upon him be peace and blessings, Islam is a Divine religion. A person who believes and practices Islam is called a "Mu'min" and a "Muslim" (one who has faith, and who has submitted). Scholars have described Islam as "the sum of all divine laws that urge people to do good deeds with their freewill and consciousness." Hence, if such a dynamic system can be practiced in life, then its fruits will become obvious in this world and in the hereafter. On the contrary, when this system is expelled from life, then it is not easy to find anything positive to say about religion.

From the perspective of language, there is a fine distinction between "iman" and "Islam", that is, faith and submission. However, it is a strongly believed that Islam without faith (iman), and faith (iman) without Islam (submission and/or actions) are incomprehensible. Faith is the interior, and Islam is the physical expression of this faith that constitutes the exterior. Their union makes the Divine Religion, which establishes all aspects of faith and practice in this life (iman and Islam). A person who practices and who accordingly represents this religion can only be called a Muslim. From this perspective, those who consider religion to be no more than a system of beliefs, and those who only practice it culturally without understanding the deeper meanings, are mistaken. It is obvious that both groups have been and will be left bereft of the fruits of this religion, fruits promised by the Lord, in this and in the next world.

Surprisingly, however, to consider the practice of Islam as being part of the faith would be another mistake. Although those who believe that the practice of the faith is compulsory, but still fail to fulfill their duties are sinners, they are still Mu'min (one who has faith). Such thought does not conflict with the Sunni understanding of Islam, because not worrying about committing sins is very different from saying "To punish or not to punish is God's decision". According to the Qur'an, faith is an essential part of the religion, lying in its very core, while Islam is the only way to make faith a part of human nature. Practice without faith is hypocrisy, faith without practice is sin (transgression). As hypocrisy is no more than hidden blasphemy, it will not be forgiven, but it is possible for sins to be forgiven through repentance. In this respect, even if someone does not practice Islam, we should have a good opinion of them and not see those people as non-believers, unless they undermine or express that they do not care about Islam. Yet, it is not possible to think in the same way for those who are faithless, and oppress and despise other believers for being Muslims. An additional point that needs to be addressed here is the importance of being steadfast in one's religion, carrying out all the aspects of faith and its practice, this is what God seeks in believers.

To be a truthful Muslim, one should avoid all kinds of hypocrisy and acts of blasphemy; one should surrender to God with utmost sincerity, and practice Islam with a consciousness of being in His presence and being watched by Him. It is disrespectful to think of religion only as a matter of conscience and mysticism. Those who seemingly accept Islam - God is always aware of the truth of the situation - yet proclaim that the practice of religion is a form of extremism, are deceiving themselves with empty illusions and they are posing as devout Muslims. Subjective and immoral interpretations of Islam turn it into a man-made religion, not a divine religion. In fact, Islam was sent down to save people from their own selves, the self that follows only human desires, and to enlighten people with the knowledge of God. In other words, Islam is collection of divine rules and revelations that raises human beings above the level of the animals, and which prepares them for the journey to the comforting climate of the heart and the spirit. The spirit of this system is Iman (faith), its body is Islam (submission), its perception Ihsan (consciousness of His presence), and the name of this unique order is Din, Islam (submission).

Islam addresses those who are intellectually capable, urging them to do what is good for both this and the next life through their own freewill, promising eternal contentment to those who heed this call. The position of believers is not one of being oppressed by responsibilities and obligations. All blessings, prosperity and enduring joy are bound together with the free will of humanity by God's Knowledge, Will and Choce. In the same way religion and the responsibilities entailed are a favor and a tribute given to human will by the Divine Will. From this aspect, Islam is totally different than other religious systems; the manners of Islam are divine, and the expression of this is servitude. Those to whom Islam is being addressed are intellectually capable, and they possess freewill, as already stated; they try to practice the religion of God, and also try to be representatives of it. It is also possible to think of religion as a gift from God to those who are capable; those who are mentally incapable and who are not free in their actions cannot be held responsible for religious obligations, and they are not privileged as others are as they cannot be encouraged to do good.

As this religion has been sent by the All-Knowing God, He Who best knows His creation, it always shows the way to the truth, to good deeds, and it encourages hearts with promises of paradise. On the other hand, it also urges people to be cautious and warns them of terrible consequences if they go astray. In this context, the commandments of the religion are everlasting, constant, and relevant to the date, because these edicts are eternal. Despite the fact that all systems are subject to becoming irrelevant and out-of-time, the commandments of Islam are always new, and attractive. Yet, there are some biased people who do not perceive this truth. This is not surprising, as all man-made decrees are subjective, and they all differ from country to country, and fall out of step with time, due to continuous amendment that is made on an ad hoc basis; such systems provide only a temporary relief to the problems of humanity, due to the limited perception of humanity of itself.

On the contrary, Islam has been revealed with messages that deal with all kinds of matters and that provide satisfaction for the eternal and never-ending needs of humanity. It has never asked or suggested anything that goes against human nature, and has never neglected any of our needs or desires. For those who are mindful and righteous, there are no issues that have been neglected, no doubts or desires that go unanswered, and there are no conflicts between the commandments of the religion and their practical meaning, nor are there any gaps or issues that have not been taken in hand. On the whole, Islam, with its eternal messages and glad tidings about how to please and see the Lord in the hereafter, has been uniquely and divinely planned to suit human nature, its capabilities, goals, and tendencies.

Living an Islamic life, one benefits from the lawful bounties of this world, spending all one's years full of the joy of walking the corridors that lead to paradise and the eternal blessings of He Who Bestows. In addition to all of this, if a person can live his/her life totally concentrating on pleasing God, which is the essence of religion, then this person can be considered as being of the rank of the angels. The decrees made by humanity are limited, and are usually race and ethnicity oriented; these can never be an answer to the limitless and never-ending needs and desires of humanity. God is the Creator and the All-Knowing, and this religion is His decree given to mankind for this world. All other man-made systems are of limited vision and are short-sighted in their awareness, and their spirituality is always hazy.

Islam, the true religion, is a unique order that never misleads and a divine source that opens new earthly and heavenly prospects for human beings. This divine system is called "religion" from the perspective of belief, "shariah" from the perspective of actions, and "community" from the perspective of social functions. Primarily, all actions and activities occur according to the belief system, and social life is shaped according to this behavior, these actions and activities. For this reason, believers, who have solid faith and who make their faith a part of their character, continuously practicing it, are sources of truth, justice and fairness; such a person is trustworthy, a representative of high morality, a seeker of knowledge and wisdom, and is loyal to the sacred call of religion. Such a faithful believer would also actively participate in working toward the perfection of human society.

Faithful Muslims, who are conscious of their religion, whose practices are in line with the divine commandments, whose hearts are always connected to their Lord, and whose actions reflect this relation with the Divine, will never be deceived, nor will such people be in a position of servitude to any other human being. Such Muslims are always aware of their relationship with this exalted community, and thus are self-confident; they reflect this assurance, and are distinctive in their behavior. They love, show sympathy, and deep respect for all the created things because of the Creator. They prevent themselves from performing base and simplistic actions that are not compatible with the honor of being human; they are above the others in their faith, wisdom, and actions. While doing all of the above, believers are never proud or arrogant, they never push or force others to accept their philosophy or way of life. Aware of the fact that Islam never causes repugnance, they accept everyone as they are, and instead of trying to push their ideas on others, they are adorned with true faith, trying to represent their religion flawlessly, and being one of those who are admired by those around. Yet, they are not seeking the admiration of others; they do everything for the sake of their Exalted God, thinking only of His approval in their everyday speech, behavior, and thought; such people are never "ostentatious", considering this as little better than a virus infecting and killing the heart and spirituality.

As a matter of fact, Islam did not come to oppress the minds or the will of humanity, but rather it was sent to prevent such oppression and tyranny on the part of human beings, hence urging people to use their minds and their intellects alongside their freewill to make new choices. This was exactly how things were at the time when Islam was being fully practiced; its majestic spiritual charm never needed any mind games or tricks, nor was hidden or explicit cruelty accepted. Deeds were the language that Islam used to reach the heart, words were used to explain the details. Words were used as a tool to address the conscience, words that encourage good and prohibit evil were the means; physical enforcement was not used. Islam does not approve of enforced faith (this is against the nature of the religion), nor does it accept any practice or deed which is not oriented around the pleasing of God. According to Islam, enforced faith is hypocrisy, and such deeds are no more than showing off. The Qur'an strictly forbids oppression in faith, as can clearly be seen in this verse "There is no compulsion in religion. True guidance is distinct from error (Al-Bakara 256)." Islam exists to prevent all kinds of hypocrisy and disbelief, and to hinder those who want to show-off. All of these facts in no way contradict the persistent behavior of a believer in the expression and establishment of the Truth.

As long as there is an opportunity, Islam will address the minds and souls of humanity, saving them from hypocrisy and leading them to the truth by the perfect example of the prophet Muhammad (pbuh), lighting the true faith and belief in their hearts, and equipping them with an awareness of God's presence everywhere and eternally. This kind of behavior is nothing more than the result of the acceptance of the message of Muhammad (pbuh).

The message proclaimed by the last prophet (the Messenger) Muhammad (pbuh) is the final and complete divine message, and it is the most reliable, trustworthy path leading to God Almighty. If this religion cannot express itself very clearly nowadays, the fault lies in that it is not only being perceived incorrectly, but it is also not being depicted in the best possible manner by those who follow Islam. Nevertheless, we do not think that this situation will stay forever as it is. When the time is right, Islam will re-express itself in every stage of life and it will entrance mankind with its joyful colors and patterns once again.

When this community of Islam notices that once again they are renowned and their name has been given to them by God (according to a verse in the Qur'an, "God is the one who gave the name Muslim to you and to those before you") they will be impressed, saying "How Exalted, how Beneficial our Lord is" and turn their faces towards Him; they will submit to His wisdom.

Islam is an invitation that expresses the religions that came before it. As materialist and naturalist philosophies have became too energetic, the containment of this divine message has also meant that all other religions are defeated by those dangerous and terrifying ideologies. Islam is the protector of the true faith. Since every other prophet in the past proclaimed the same messages, Islam is a point of support, and acts as evidence for the other heavenly religions. Thus, to revive Islam means revitalizing the other heavenly religions, correcting those points that are erroneous, maybe even partially revising some points that are in need of repair and providing new ideas for the believers of other religions. I personally believe that all of the above are possible and the fact that all heavenly religions come from the same source is a great advantage in this direction.

Source

In one of your previous articles, you describe those who are hostile to dialogue activities as "assaulting everything in a Karmati frenzy, slaughtering whatever comes in their path in a Kharijite frame of mind, in the way anarchists act." What exactly do you mean when you say "a Karmati frenzy, a Kharijite frame of mind, the way of the anarchists"?

Karmatism is a heretical esoteric sect founded by Hamdan ibn Karmat in the ninth century AD. Hamdan took advantage of the poverty of people and was influential, especially in Iraq and its periphery, voicing "collective property" and claiming shares from the rich. These people may have appeared religious on the outside, however, they had an economic theory, political zeal and objectives. They attempted to rebel against the Abbasid caliphate, gathering forces around them, and they tortured Muslims of the Sunni path for years, martyring many. They ambushed pilgrims on their way to the hajj, attacked the sacred city of Makka, and they even stole the Hajar al-Aswad from the Ka'ba and took it to Basra.

Not accepting marriage as an institution, Karmatis named forbidden acts as being "fine arts." They treated women as collective property and led the youth astray through prostitution, the legitimization of drinking wine and alcoholic drinks, and made every kind of indulgence lawful. In short, enslaved by their carnal desires and aspirations the Karmatis designed a religion of their own; they labeled anyone who did not follow their way as being "hell-bound," and thus managed to fabricate disunity for a long time. In one sense, they can be seen to be the anarchists or nihilists of their time.

Modern Kharijites

The Kharijites were another heterodox faction which blamed Caliph Ali, first for conceding to arbitration and accepting the treaty at the Battle of Siffin and second for not handing over the caliphate to Muawiya and thus being guilty of a "grievous sin." They declared all others who did not think likewise—including the Companions of the Prophet—infidels. Although they apparently believed in Islam, their vision was narrow and deprived of sound thinking. Action always took precedence over knowledge and learning for them; they were subsequently dragged into bigotry, hostility, and intolerance, getting mired in harshness, violence, and crudity. They were distracted by their slogans and action, which they had turned into a religion shaped by their rioting and restless character. They were motivated, not by knowledge, but by slogans, enthusiasm, and reactionary mood. Perhaps they read the Qur'an time after time, but it was a literal reading and they always opposed any interpretation other than theirs. They regarded those who thought otherwise as infidels whom were to be obliterated; they were cruel and tyrannical without a single drop of mercy.

Today, we have seen some people who behave like modern Karmatis and Kharijites, obstructing endeavors for dialogue and understanding, disrupting the dreams of peace and friendship. They too call themselves Muslims; yet, they have attacked the religion from some esoteric approach, replacing it instead with their own passions and thrills. Some others, entrapped in bigotry, have construed the literal meaning of the Qur'an and the hadith as the only primary essentials, sharpening their blades of hatred and hostility against other Muslims. A subgroup within them has adopted a deep esoteric understanding, considering themselves as having attained a transcendental existence, and look down on other Muslims. Still others, however, have blindly adhered to overt divine commandments (nass) with no effort whatsoever to use their mind to interpret them. They have been deprived of any proper techniques of teaching faith or of understanding others; they have no code of conduct, good morals, or respect. What all of these people have done was to start the fire of disunity and to fan the movement of tolerance.

These two groups were later joined by a third: anarchist souls. The Karmati zeal and the Kharijite restlessness pushed some Muslims into the web of terrorists, causing them to be involved with chaos, threatening and even murdering people. Whatever the motive was, be it national or religious, some imprudent individuals were manipulated by some dark power sources. They were denied the slightest share of religion by their actions; yet they committed murders on behalf of it, and handed over their trump card to those who were already standing opposed to religion.

Anarchists, Murderers of Innocents!

Anarchists legitimized the actions of some tyrants against Muslims. They came into being as rebels against the state, and they refused to recognize democracy or the secular system. The natural outcome of such a situation was that the state used it as an excuse to suppress such insurgences. In the meantime, obscure suspicions were construed as actual incidents and many innocent people were hurt on the false grounds that "there is a possibility that they may be dangerous." In Islam there are no suicide bombers. All throughout history Islam has never issued permission to murder innocent people; this is out of the question. However, as a consequence of the actions of some people, people similar to the Karmati and Kharijite's, who have been deceived or manipulated by drugs or in some other way, many other innocents have been defamed, and pristine Islam has been tarnished. Muslims, the representatives of submission to God and security, have been depicted as potential terrorists.

Two factors can be listed which aggravate the issue: the first is the fury, coercion, and determination of the tyrants; the second is the actions and conduct of some imprudent people which substantiate the cause of the tyrants.

Throughout the process, the greatest harmed have been those in the middle, those in doubt and hesitation. They have observed what has been going on, and seeing in the front those anarchist souls, nihilists, and a few Karmatis and Kharijites, they thought "they have done far too much, they deserve punishment." In this way, they have endorsed the coercive operations of the tyrants, perceiving them as being carried out in defense of the system. Moreover, those in the administration either then deliberately overlooked all that was happening, or were incapable of comprehending the true extent of things. Those people who hesitated in the middle were overwhelmed by their doubts and consented to the deterioration of the atmosphere of tolerance and to the hands that had been extended for peace being pulled back.

It is also important to note that it is always easier to inflict damage; damage can be influential, even if it is apparently small in size or carried out by only a few. Destruction is easy. Libeling, lying, slandering can always be done very easily by a few hired writers. Many people, as well as many institutions, have been defamed in this way. They have even organized slander campaigns concealed by the so-called "freedom of press." These campaigns were always brought to a court of law to be refuted and compensated; however, these trials lasted months and a verdict was reached at a much later date. The evil intentions had already been fulfilled, leaving behind tainted images in some minds.

A small marginal minority which was unsatisfied with everything was behind all this wickedness. They believed in a kind of caste system in which they formed the eyes, ears, nose, and mouth of Divine Existence, whereas the rest of the people were made the fingernails, or in the words of Necip Fazil, they were simply pariahs. If something good were to take place, it was surely accomplished only by them; if any achievement were made, it was certainly them who were to be associated with it. How is it possible that religious people are first to be remembered when dialogue and tolerance are mentioned? How can it be that Muslims are in the forefront of education? This is not possible, it should be these others who are being appreciated for these activities, as they form the eyes and ears, not those whose essence is fingernail. You may call them a marginal group or an oligarchic minority, these arrogant people damaged extensively the peaceful aura that could have surrounded us; what they did was destructive.

Attacking Dialogue

Karmati zeal, Kharijite thought, and the anarchist mood have been seen in the past, and they can reappear at any time. As long as people of faith can recover and have an opportunity to express themselves, take a stand in favor of dialogue and understanding, voice peace everywhere and to everyone, surely there will be some others who will be disturbed by them. Perhaps we should ask them this question: "People of faith act upon certain principles and their numbers constantly grow as they are welcomed by everyone; why don't you use your own arguments of unbelief so that you may grow in number too? You are not appreciated by the society. You have to reach such a level that you are countable, inspire confidence, and become beloved so that you may be welcomed."

I would prefer not to have mentioned these three groups of evil people, especially as we are experiencing the blissful month of Ramadan. The mention of evil blockades mercy; thus, talking about these people breathing evil may prevent the divine mercy pouring down upon us these days. To ensure that these blessings are continued perhaps we should always speak about the good-doers and take action for the good. I was inspired by the recent fast-breaking dinners of representatives of many different thoughts dedicated to tolerance, each holding each other's hand, exchanging glances; no more are their looks of "the other." I wish some people had not sabotaged such activities in the past, that they did not take on hostility and could embrace these gatherings with good intentions; I wish they could at least respond to those hands extended for peace, by holding out an olive branch.

Everyone shows their true character. We are also supposed to continue showing our true character. Our path is that on which we are inspired with faith in God and on which we take positive action. Our duty is to invite others for "conversations about the Beloved for another hour," as the Companions would do, and in that way to reinforce our faith and to enthusiastically walk, making the truths of belief accessible to others…it does not matter what some other people say or do.

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