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The hijackers were not Muslims after all
© Abdal-Hakim Murad
As New York turns its gap-toothed face to the sky,
wondering if the worst is yet to come, Muslims, largely unheeded by the wider
world, are counting the cost of the suicide bombings. The backlash against
mosques and hijabs has been met by statements from Muslim communities around the
globe, some stilted, but others which have clearly found an articulate and
passionate voice for the first time. In comparison with the pathetic
near-silence that hovered around mosques and major organisations during the
Rushdie and Gulf War debacles, the communities now seem alert to their cultural
situation and its potential precariousness. Many of the condemnations have been
more impressive than those of the American President, who seems unable to rise
above clichés.
The motives are twofold. Firstly, and most patently, Sunni
Muslims have been brought up in a universe of faith that renders the taking of
innocent lives unimaginable. By condemning the attacks, we know that we defend
the indispensable essence of Islam. Secondly, Muslims as well as others have
died in large numbers. The Friday Prayers in the World Trade Centre always
attracted more than 1,500 worshippers from the office community, many of whom
have now surely died. The tourists, who spent their last moments choking on the
observation deck, waiting for the helicopters that never came, no doubt included
many Muslim parents and their children.
But the Western powers and their fearful Muslim minorities,
both battered so grievously by recent events, now need to think beyond
press-releases and ritual cursings. We need to recognise, firstly, that there
has been a steady 'mission-creep' in terrorist attacks over the past twenty
years. Hijackings for ransom money gave way to parcel bombs, then to suicide
bombs, and now to kiloton-range urban mayhem. It is not at all clear that this
escalation will be terminated by further anti-terrorist legislation, further
billions for the FBI, or retina scans at Terminal Three. America’s tendency to
assume that money can buy or destroy any possible obstacle to its will now
stands under a dark shadow. Far from being a climax and the catalyst for a
hi-tech military solution, the attacks may be of more historical significance as
an announcement to the militant subculture that a Star-Wars superpower is
utterly vulnerable to a handful of lightly-armed young men. There could well be
more and worse to come.
Sobered by this, the State Department is likely to come under
pressure from business interests to ask the question it never seems to notice.
Why is there so much hatred of the United States, and so much yearning to poke
it in the eye? Are the architects of policy sane in their certainty that America
can enrage large numbers of people, but contain that rage forever through
satellite technology and intrepid double-agents? Businessmen and bankers will
now start to read carefully enough to discern that it is not US national
interest, but the power of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, that
tends to drive Washington’s policy in the world’s greatest troublespot.
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 Suufi 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
Qur'aan
ic 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 narrowmindedness 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 Hadiith
in cases of fear and misfortune. It means: 'O Living, O Self-Subsistent; by Your
mercy I seek help.'
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