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The Source of ALL Evil?
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By
Taqiyuddin Malik**
Freelance Journalist
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July
20, 2005
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The
media make these pseudo-intellectuals into torch-bearers of
freedom.
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To
readers in the West: You are being manipulated.
Your
own media are being used to drag you into a battle that has raged
within Islam for many years. Your lack of familiarity with Islam has
made you susceptible to this scheming and conniving, forcing you to
unwittingly take sides in a battle you have nothing to do with.
This
is not a part of your war on terror.
After
September 11, countless insta-pundits spoke and wrote prolifically
on Islamic terrorism. But equally popular on the talk show circuits
and in the left wing press were countless "Islamic
scholars," many with questionable credentials, who in most
cases were revered more for their moral relativism or their ability
to draw large crowds of well-intentioned youth by twisting Islamic
discourse to sound more like a flower-power inspired hippy rant
about love and compassion, than for any actual academic
qualification.
Ethnocentrism
aside, many of those people acknowledged by the West as experts and
scholars of Islam would not stand up to academic scrutiny by their
peers in many other parts of the world. Some of these
pseudo-scholars authored works during their time studying in the Middle East
that reflected a completely flawed understanding of Islam, and were
roundly and deservedly criticized. But once those scholars leave
their academic institutions and head West, they style themselves as
repressed intellectuals, ostracized for not toeing the party line,
so to speak.
Naturally,
these individuals know how to present themselves to a Western
audience; their discourse, even their appearance, seem calculated to
sooth Western prejudices about what Muslims and terrorists look
like. More power to them, then.
But
so what if their stances on various issues are completely at odds
with the consensus and traditions of Islam through the ages? As long
as they espouse "freedom," "human rights," and
make all the correct sympathetic noises about terrorism, they're
guaranteed respect and good standing in Western academic, media, and
even political circles. In other cases, they're made out to be
torch-bearers of freedom, locked in an epic struggle to free the
Muslim world from the strangle-hold of the bearded Mullahs.
Take
for example, the inordinate amounts of media coverage granted fringe
groups like Al-Fatiha, who espouse homosexual rights in Islam, or
Irshad Manji, the "lesbian Muslim intellectual," or the
unwholesome fascination and carnival-like atmosphere ("an event
of historic proportions!") that surrounded a woman's insistence
on leading prayers, making her out to be a sort of Muslim Rosa
Parks.
Some
maintain that it is intellectual terrorism, fascistic apparently, to
claim that these people are incorrect in their beliefs, that they do
not represent Islam. But it is no more unfair or fascistic than it
would be to describe the Flat Earth Society as being
unrepresentative of mainstream geology.
We
can blame Western journalists and editors. Or can we?
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So,
to return to our earlier point: These Muslim Flat Earth-ers are
using your media as a platform to vent their spleens at their
supposed oppressors, and to recruit you into supporting them as the
underdog.
Distressingly,
these pseudo-intellectuals have hijacked discourse on Islam. Wahhabism,
in purely academic terms, is historically "a faith-based,
political and reformist movement attributed to its founder, Imam
Muhammad ibn `Abdul-Wahhab," (The Wahhabi Movement: History and
Beliefs). But, thanks to the successful demonization campaign being
waged in the Western press by Muslim "intellectuals" with
an axe to grind, coupled with the limitless opportunity provided by
the misguided excesses of many Wahhabis, Wahhabism to the average
Western reader is now synonymous with all that is evil and
repressive about the Muslim world. Someone blows up a bus full of
children? Wahhabi bomber, obviously. Woman beaten and raped? Wahhabi
misogynist, probably. And so on and so forth, ad nauseum. It is as
though the entire Muslim world is devoid of criminals, save for
those inspired by the teachings of ibn `Abdul-Wahhab.
You
would be hard pressed to find an erudite Westerner who has not been
brainwashed, through persistent media exposure, into believing this
propagandistic load of hogwash.
Simultaneously,
many of these same Muslim spin doctors have also pushed hard to
promote their own understanding of an esoteric "New Age"
Islam, with allegedly ancient roots, in the West. This has, of
course, done wonders for intra-Islamic relations, and suspicion and
hostility now abound.
Guess
we can lay the blame squarely on Western journalists' and editors'
shoulders. Or can we? On the one hand, maybe if they actually did
the research to figure out who they're talking to, rather than speak
to those most conveniently located, we'd have less of this mess. On
the other hand, we can't expect them to know any better, given the
sad state of affairs in the Muslim world, with even Muslim
media taking the easy way out and referring to government
appointees like Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi as the Grand Sheikh of
"the highest seat of learning in the Sunni world."
A
recent article by Ziauddin Sardar in the New
Statesman is a good example of cheap opportunism
masquerading as intellectual profundity. He cites the London
bombings, a fatwa in India ordering a raped woman to divorce her husband, and the demolition of
Islamic historic sites in Makkah. What is the common source of Evil
with a capital E that binds these seemingly disparate events in
Sardar's mind? You guessed it: Wahhabism.
For
someone who rants bitterly about Wahhabism's ostensible penchant for
decontextualizing events, Sardar is very apt at doing exactly the
same thing.
He
dedicates a good chunk of his article to providing his curiously
warped perspective on Wahhabism, placing the ills of the world
firmly at its door step; a trend that has become disturbingly
prevalent as of late. According to Sardar, Wahhabism apparently
"abhors history and drains it of all humanity," and
"does not recognize, understand or appreciate a contrary view.
Those who express an alternative opinion are seen as apostates,
collaborators or worse." Ironically, many who subscribe to such
farcically simplistic notions are quick to accuse their detractors
of being reductionist and simplistic.
As
though the Muslim world is devoid of criminals, save those
inspired by Wahhabism.
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Sardar
uses his over-dramatic prose to full effect, drawing on a vocabulary
that makes him sound profound, while also playing on the readers'
emotions by conjuring up images of Wahhabis as criminally obtuse,
malevolent atavisms of medieval barbarism, intent on stifling all
dissent and brutally enforcing a faceless conformity on all.
"No complaint or opposition is allowed… it does not recognize
the diversity of Islam… the humanist or rationalist tradition of
Islam, or the great mystical tradition…" Of course, anything
that opposes diversity or humanism must be foul, mustn't it?
Furthermore,
Wahhabism, he asserts, is "aggressively self-righteous; and
insists on imposing its notion of righteousness on others," a
statement that immediately evokes images of Arthur Miller's The
Crucible, prompting a near-Pavlovian reaction of moral outrage.
As though Wahhabism has a monopoly on self-righteousness among all
of Islam's schools of thought.
Actually,
unlike many of the new wave of Islamic "traditionalists,"
as they like to style themselves, Wahhabism utterly rejects the
notion of compelling an individual to obey the precepts of a single
madhhab, or school of jurisprudence, demonstrating a flexibility
that many of those same "liberal" Muslim intellectuals and
self-styled traditionalists, so popular with many young Western
educated Muslims, would probably deride as a "heretical
innovation."
In
fact, as far as abhorring history goes, did everyone lose sight of
the fact that before Wahhabism, much of the Arabian peninsula's population had degenerated back into pagan, fetishistic adoration
of graves, shrines, trees, and relics? That crime and vice was
rampant? Or did that particular context for the rise of Wahhabism as
a counter-weight to that new jahiliyyah [pre-Islamic
ignorance] escape Sardar?
Why
does Sardar feel obliged to fabricate new reasons?
Mass-murder isn't enough for him?
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Sardar
also makes the completely reprehensible and irresponsible suggestion
that Wahhabism holds that "those who commit sin—that is,
disagree or deviate—cannot be Muslims," linking Wahhabism to
the Kharijites, the early Muslim sect who held that sin was a
"contradiction for a true Muslim—it nullified the believer
and demonstrated that inwardly he was an apostate who had turned
against Islam," and that hence, "he could be put to
death."
With
that blatant and libelous falsity, Sardar deftly deals a killing
blow to his already mortally-wounded credibility. Had he made a
statement like that in front of a gathering of actual Islamic
scholars, he'd have been jeered down from the podium, scorned for
the Islamic Flat Earth-er he is. As it is, Sardar can publish
falsehoods freely and with no fear of opprobrium or being exposed
as, at best, a failed academic, or at worst, a cynical propagandist.
Wahhabis
have nothing to do with Kharijites. Even a cursory reading of their
sources demonstrates that Wahhabis have nothing but contempt for the
deviated creeds of the Kharijites. The allegation is little more
than a thinly-veiled slur to vilify Wahhabism by linking it to a
notoriously deviated sect.
He
then cranks up the slander a notch, asserting that Ibn Taymiyah, one
of Islam's foremost scholars, and Muhammad Ibn Ab al-Wahhab, the
founder of Wahhabism, are influenced by Kharijite thought. This is a
curious (perhaps deliberate) oversight, given that Ibn Taymiyah made
repeated references to hadiths describing the Kharijites as being
renegades from Islam.
Sardar
also detects this alleged Kharijite influence in Sayid Qutb, whom he
helpfully describes as the "chief ideologue of the Muslim
Brotherhood." These spurious allegations are, again, devoid of
factual basis. Qutb was, if anything, very much a rogue element for
the Brotherhood, a self-evident fact, given that the Brotherhood
have sought peaceful, democratic change in Egypt for almost a half a century. Not very loyal to their "chief
ideologue," apparently. And if Qutb advocated violence, it was
certainly not, as Sardar suggests, because each and every citizen of
society is an apostate worthy of death. The same applies to many of
those groups inspired by Bin Laden. Perhaps Sardar thinks it is
beneath him to read the writings that provide the intellectual
foundations for these groups, but if so, perhaps he should be a
little more cautious when making wild assertions about something he
is unfamiliar with.
The
point is, Muslim militants give Islamic scholars enough
jurisprudential reason to condemn them. Why does Sardar feel obliged
to fabricate new reasons? Mass-murder isn't enough for him? If he's
out to undermine them intellectually, Islamic scholars have done so
much more effectively, and apparently without feeling obliged to
make things up to bolster their case as they go along.
A
struggle for the soul of Islam, is the cliché he uses to describe
it. "In that struggle, all Muslims have to examine their words,
deeds, motivations and interpretations of Islam."
No,
Sardar, Muslims should not engage in the knee-jerk, self-loathing,
finger-pointing exercises that you and your disciples advocate under
the euphemistic title of "self-criticism." We must not
allow the actions of a few to force us to exist in a perpetual state
of collective guilt, or to be consumed by mutual suspicion. We must
not become another
Germany, obliged to perpetually and publicly atone for and disavow crimes
carried out in our names.
Works
Cited:
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Taqiyuddin
Malik is an Egyptian freelance writer based in Cairo. You can email him at
taqiyuddin_malik@hotmail.com.
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