Mustafa El-Feki
writes a wonderful editorial in Al-Ahram on the rise of the
Muslim
Brotherhood. (required reading to understand the diary) It is an ill wind which blows nobody any
good: if these insane wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
produce anything good, we may learn the reality of Islamic
cultures, and they may learn from us. This diary attempts to put forward a few assertions
about what's likely to happen, beginning with some basics of
Islam, and their implications today. For those who have some working knowledge of current
Islam, skip on down to the bottom.
More below the fold.
The Shehada
لآ اِلَهَ اِلّا اللّهُ <مُحَمَّدٌ
رَسُوُل اللّه
La ilaha ill'Allah,
Muhammad rasul Allah, = there is no God but Allah, and
Muhammad
is his prophet.
He who says it becomes a Muslim.
There is nothing more: that utterance is taken as
definitive
proof of conversion by every sect of Islam. All else is the deen, the Islamic way of
life, and there are as many different ways to be a Muslim as there are
Muslims. Two Muslims who argue particulars of Islam both utter the
Shehada before and after any dispute of this sort.
I am not a Muslim. I discriminate between Church and State.
I am a pro-choice, anti-Intelligent Design, professing Christian.
Should an observant Muslim find fault in my analysis of Islam, I beg
pardon. I speak fair Arabic, I lived in Islamic countries for
many years, and have discussed Islam civilly with several scholars and
many
imams, without giving offense. Al
muslimu man salima 'l muslimina.
Anyone may utter the
shehada. When
modern Muslims talk of an Islamic society, everyone has a
different definition.
Sharia
Islam is its laws, and almost nothing more. What shall we make of
sharia
law, especially the much-hated hudud
laws, which denigrate women in the name of Islam?
In a scene from BattleGround:
21 Days on the Empire's Edge, a film I commend to you
all, Raed
Jarrar (blog in link) asks a group of Iraqi men, how many of you
want Western-style democracy? Not a hand went up. How many
want an absolute Islamic law? Every hand went up. Should
women vote and have rights too? Every hand went up. Not
exactly what comes to mind when the subject of sharia comes up.
Why is this so? Islamic society, I repeat, is its laws, and they vary directly as do
the societies. Consider, there are thousands of
discrete Islamic societies. It seems these hudud laws are a
cultural thing. Rural Pakistan and Saudi
Arabia treat their women like shit. In Iraq and Egypt, Lebanon
and
Syria, the lot of women is much better. The Koran is explicit in
its
protection of women, the more liberal
societies pick the verses they
want from the Koran, the conservative societies pick
other
verses. So, may I add, do we in the
West. The
Bible has less protections for women in it than the Koran, indeed St.
Paul
demands women be subservient to men. The Torah explicitly allows
the enslavement of women, and mishpatim
goes so far as to allow a slave to be accidentally murdered without
punishment, should the injured slave live one day.
We must remember our own Judaeo-Christian ethics have come a long way
over time, to the point where Judaism and Christianity have become
forces for good against slavery. So has Islam, in every
cosmopolitan society. Even at its worst, Islam granted slaves
rights we did not give them the USA, whilst slavery still
existed. Under Islam, the son of a slave woman by a free man was
free. A slave could earn his freedom through a meritious deed, and the
Koran urges the decent treatment of slaves.
Yet Islam does countenance slavery, in this day and age. Racism
and supremacism are endemic in Islamic societies, and always have been: Ibn Khaldun,
still a
great name in the Islamic world said, "The only people who
accept
slavery are the Blacks, owing to their low degree of humanity and
their proximity to the animal stage,"
I do not take sides, though as a Christian, I have personally been
discriminated against in Islamic societies. My goal is only to
treat sharia law as a coequal of our own brutish and primitive
religious law which gave rise to the morality of the West. Before
we get too worked up about the admittedly disgusting track
record of human rights in Islamic societies, we should consider our own
appalling history of injustices to women and slaves. The present
attempts to deny women the right to terminate a pregnancy, and the
loudmouthed ignorance of the Creationists are proof there are people in
our own country who wish to impose a sort of sharia law upon us, in the
Land of the Free.
Islam is adapting, as quickly as the societies adapt. Brutish
society, brutish Islam. Cosmopolitan society, Secular Islam.
We believe that Islamic society has been held back by an unwillingness to subject its beliefs, laws and practices to critical examination, by a lack of respect for the rights of the individual, and by an unwillingness to tolerate alternative viewpoints or to engage in constructive dialogue. The Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society (ISIS) has been formed to promote the ideas of rationalism, secularism, democracy and human rights within Islamic society.
ISIS promotes freedom of expression, freedom of thought and belief, freedom of intellectual and scientific inquiry, freedom of conscience and religion - including the freedom to change one's religion or belief - and freedom from religion: the freedom not to believe in any deity.
Fiqh
To get beyond the simple shibboleths about sharia law, we must consider
fiqh, and the long history
of Islamic jurisprudence. Dr. William S Peachy, a longtime friend
of mine, a master of Arabic, Turkish and Farsi, a convert to Muslim now living and teaching in Saudi Arabia,
has written extensively on the need and capability of sharia law to
evolve.
In fairness to those who don't buy this line of argument, fiqh has
quiesced and become dormant. This fossilization has produced a class of
specialized scholars, who strive to outdo each other in fanatical
devotion to detail, as do the scholars of Talmudic Aggadah and Christians
arguing infant
baptism. Fiqh can be brought into modern times, and is as
valid a social construct as our own flawed historical legal
precedents.
Democracy cannot be imported, for all democracy must reflect the
Consent of the Governed. Nor can Islam be imported: the Zarqawi mujahidin are learning that bitter lesson. They have failed in provoking a civil war. They lack the Consent of the Faithful.
The Muslim Brotherhood and Marja
Ali Sistani
Have you made it this far? Bless you. Here is the meat of
the matter: Islam is evolving, almost faster than an outsider can
keep up with the process. How you view this evolution depends on
how far back you want to look. I start with the downfall of the
Ottoman Empire: but even before that point, Islam had become a
dissolute thing, subservient to the will of various despots.
Around 1920, the remains of the Ottoman Empire were either occupied by
the Allied winners of WW1, or in Turkey, controlled by a secular
revolutionary, Kemal Ataturk. In colonial Egypt, the Muslim
Brotherhood , Hizb Al-Ikhwan,
arose with an alternate vision. The Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas
are essentially synonymous, and the Muslim Brotherhood has metastized
into dozens of organizations. Want to know who's funding and
planning most of the terror in the world? It's the Muslim
Brotherhood, in one form or another.
Mustafa El-Feki
writes
The rise of "political Islam" is intrinsically associated with the birth of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is why it is so crucial to study the history of this organisation. Founded in 1928 by Hassan El-Banna, its first supreme guide, the Muslim Brotherhood's calling spread so rapidly that within a matter of years it evolved from a locally based group of proselytisers to a tightly structured socio-political movement whose influence in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East would grow exponentially over the next 75 years. However, if, as some have put it, the "brain" of political Islam is Egyptian, its "muscle" is Asian, in view of the profound impact Wahabi thought and practice had upon its development.
It is of no small significance that political Islam, as first embodied in the Muslim Brotherhood, was born in Ismailia, on the banks of the Suez Canal, which was then still under direct British military control. In this city, where a populous "Arab quarter" rubbed against a wealthy and exclusive foreign one, the friction between the local populace and the occupation forces was at its most immediate and intense. The effect of this face-to-face confrontation imparted the first charge of radicalism to the nascent movement's rejection of Westernisation. It was also in these early years of action that the movement's religious mission, and specifically its call to return to fundamental values and principles, became intrinsically bound to the drive for independence.
At the other end of the political spectrum,
Marja
Ali Sistani believes Islam must neither be master nor tool of the
politicians.
Sistani's
website dispenses advice on any number of subjects, it's
fascinating to see what people ask him. Here's a statement of his
about religious tolerance:
As part of the cycle of criminal acts witnessed in beloved Iraq, targeting its unity, stability and independence, a number of Christian churches in Baghdad and Mosul were viciously attacked - leading to tens of innocent victims falling dead and wounded as well as the destruction of many public and private properties.
While we disapprove and condemn such abhorrent crimes and see the necessity to consolidate efforts and cooperation by everyone - government and people - in order to stop attacks against Iraqis and root out the attackers; we stress the need to respect the rights of Christians and other religious minorities. Among these rights are their right to live in their country, Iraq, in peace and security.
We ask Allah The Almighty, The Omnipotent, to protect all Iraqis from harm and misfortune and to bless this beloved country with security and stability, He is All Hearing and [He] Answers Prayers.
Polar opposites, the Muslim Brotherhood and Marja Sistani.
Sistani tries to stay out of politics, and keeps getting dragged in,
because he's got much cred. The Muslim Brotherhood yearns for
political validity, but has a history of violence, and therefore has
problems in the credibility department.
Future Trends
In a previous
diary, titled The Three Insurgencies, pursewarden questioned my use
of the word
insurgency in the context of Iraq. We decided struggle
was a better
word. Unfortunately, struggle in Arabic is jihad.
Whatever the correct word, the Zarqawi mujahidin do not
constitute an insurgency, in the classic Maoist sense of the word, for
the mujahidin lack the support of the common people. This is
becoming increasingly clear over time: the domestic Sunni
factions have sworn death to Zarqawi after his fighters murdered a
prominent Sunni sheikh. The Americans, to their credit, are
exploiting this wedge, forging alliances with the Sunnis: the
Americans are tired of getting killed by the mostly foreign mujahidin,
and the Sunnis are tired of American retribution against them for the
doings of the foreign mujahidin. One mujahid sniper in a date grove
fires on an American patrol, and the
bulldozers knock down an ancient grove of productive date palms.
That's a real incident. Zarqawi
has worn out his welcome in the Islamic world, with his dreadful
beheadings and war against the Shii. The ordinary
Iraqi Sunni will not carry water for the
Wahhabi mujahidin and their brand of extremism. Jordan blames Zarqawi for
an
attempt to release poison gas in Amman. If anything, Zarqawi's
mujahidin are viewed with as much contempt as the Americans. The
Americans may be big, stupid, and pagan, but Zarqawi's thugs have
murdered thousands of Iraqis, and brought about the deaths of many more
by drawing down American fire on their villages.
See, it's not just the Americans making stupid blunders in Iraq.
The Sunni sheikhs welcomed the foreign mujahidin at first, thinking
they were come to help them in some patriotic struggle. Dumb
move. Zarqawi doesn't give a damn about the Iraqis, he just wants
to fight the ameriki to
enhance his own perverse glory. His goal
is to stop Iraq's electoral process. There was a day in Iraq, and
not long ago, when Sunni and Shii got along just fine. The 1991
Shiite uprising changed everything for a while, Saddam's horrible
retribution against the Shii still resound in the minds of ordinary
Iraqis, but now the Sunnis desperately want to rejoin the
Iraq-that-was, the Iraq of the future. That means cooperating with the
Kurds and Shii, a price the Sunnis will gladly pay.
The lessons of Afghanistan, Egypt, Palestine and Saudi Arabia
were not lost on the rest of the Middle East. Iraq is the newest
parable describing the failure of Islamic mujahidin in their attempt to
establish a Caliphate. Osama bin Ladin has been driven away into
the remotest place in the world, and his Taliban hosts are now reduced
to living in caves. The ameriki
may take casualties, and they
may be inept conquerors, but the mujahidin's only hope for victory in
the long haul would require Islamic societies to adopt the Wahhabi
mindset. That change of mindset is not forthcoming, the Wahhabi /
Salafi vision is no more applicable than Bush's grandiose visions of
corporate tyranny for Iraq. Against the Shii and Kurdi militias,
the Zarqawi mujahidin don't stand a chance of survival. In a
strange twist of fate, when the Americans leave, Zarqawi's fate is
sealed.
Ambrose Bierce said War is God's way of teaching Americans
geography
and he was right. If we emerge from this war with a better
understanding of Islamic society, the price will have been too high,
but we will both have considerably more respect for each other, as two
bruised boxers stagger toward each other and hug at the end of the match. No
love lost, to be sure, but we'll both be glad the war is over. Let us pray both the Americans and the Mujahidin learn there is no military victory in a war of ideology, and remember it forever.