{"id":48,"date":"2002-06-18T19:38:00","date_gmt":"2002-06-19T00:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=48"},"modified":"2002-06-18T19:38:00","modified_gmt":"2002-06-19T00:38:00","slug":"the-mirage-of-moderate-islam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=48","title":{"rendered":"The Mirage of Moderate Islam"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Diplomatic lies notwithstanding, Islam is anything but a `religion<br \/>\nof peace&#8217;.  Any honest scholar will tell you that Islam is a religion<br \/>\nof violence, martyrdom, and conversion by the sword.  The duty to wage<br \/>\nwar for the propagation of the faith is plainly written in the Koran;<br \/>\nOsama bin Laden&#8217;s suicide bombers are part of a tradition that springs<br \/>\nfrom Islam&#8217;s warlike origins and has been re-affirmed in every generations<br \/>\nby ghazis, hashishim, and numerous other varieties of holy warrior.<\/p>\n<p>It is the interiorization of `jihad&#8217; as a struggle for self-mastery<br \/>\nthat is revisionist and exceptional, one proposed by only a few<br \/>\nWesternized and progressive Muslims and (one senses) not wholeheartedly<br \/>\nbelieved even by them.  A truer window on the nature of Islam is the way<br \/>\nthat it divides the Earth into the Dar al-Islam (the House of Islam)<br \/>\nand the Dar al-Harb &#8212; the House of War, the theater of battle to<br \/>\nbe waged with zeal until the infidel is crushed and submits to the<br \/>\nWill of God.  The very word, islam, means `submission&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>Conspicuous by their absence are any clear denunciations of<br \/>\nbin-Ladenite terror from the members of the ulama, the loose<br \/>\ncollective of elders and theologicians that articulates the Islamic<br \/>\nfaith.  Such internal criticism as we do hear is muted, equivocal,<br \/>\noften excusing the terrorists immediately after half-heartedly<br \/>\ncondemning them.  Far more common, though seldom reported in Western<br \/>\nmedia, are pro-jihadi sermons that denounce America as a land of<br \/>\ndevils and praise Al-Qaeda&#8217;s mass murderers in one breath with<br \/>\nPalestinian suicide bombers as martyrs assured of a place in<br \/>\nheaven.<\/p>\n<p>There has been some play given in the media lately to the notion<br \/>\nthat the ideological force behind Islamic terrorism is not Islam per<br \/>\nse but specifically the puritanical <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/hi\/english\/world\/middle_east\/newsid_1571000\/1571144.stm\"><br \/>\nWahhabi<\/a> sect associated with the House of Saud.  Some accounts<br \/>\ntrace the rise in terrorism to Wahhabi prosyletization in Afghanistan,<br \/>\nPakistan, and elsewhere.  Most versions of this theory have it that<br \/>\nWahhabism is an unattractive doctrine (by contrast with, say, the Sufi<br \/>\ntradition of the Caucasus or the relaxed syncretic Buddhist-influenced<br \/>\nIslam of Indonesia) but that it wins converts because, with billions<br \/>\nin Saudi oil money behind it, the Wahhabites can afford to field<br \/>\nmissionaries and build schools that promulgate the puritan party<br \/>\nline.<\/p>\n<p>The trouble with this theory is that it ignores the history of<br \/>\nIslam and the internal logic of Islamic doctrine.  The history of<br \/>\nIslam is a collection of cycles of doctrinal decay followed by<br \/>\nfundamentalist renewal.  Believers tend to drift away from strict<br \/>\nIslam, but ever century or two some mad-eyed wanderer will come<br \/>\nscreaming out of the desert and haul the faithful back on to the<br \/>\nNarrow Way with a blend of personal charisma, argument and force (the<br \/>\nlatter generally administered by some allied warlord who sees political<br \/>\ngain in it).<\/p>\n<p>This drama keeps getting re-enacted because, in general, these<br \/>\ncharismatic fundamentalist looney-toons are <em>correct<\/em> in their<br \/>\ncriticism of `soft&#8217; Islam.  The Koran, the actions and statements of<br \/>\nthe prophet Mohammed, and the witness of the lives of his immediate<br \/>\nfollowers are pretty clear on what the religious duties of a Muslim<br \/>\nare.  Long before the 9\/11 attacks, I read large portions of the Koran<br \/>\n(in translation) and more than one history of Islam, because I collect<br \/>\nreligions.  I learned about the Five Pillars and the hadith (the<br \/>\ntraditional sayings of Mohammed) and the ulama.<\/p>\n<p>Moderate Muslims trying to argue against the latest version of<br \/>\nIslamic fundamentalism are in a difficult situation.  All the<br \/>\nfundamentalists have to do to support their position is to point at<br \/>\nthe Koran, which is much more authoritative in an Islamic context than<br \/>\nthe Bible is in most Christian ones.  Moderates are reduced to arguing<br \/>\nthat the Koran doesn&#8217;t really mean what it says, or arguing from<br \/>\nhadith that qualify or contradict the Koranic text. Since the Koran<br \/>\ntrumps the hadith, this is generally a losing position.<\/p>\n<p>The grim truth is that Osama bin Laden&#8217;s fanatic interpretation<br \/>\nof Islam is Koranically correct.  The God of the Koran and Mohammed<br \/>\ntruly does demand that idolatry be purged with fire and sword, and<br \/>\nthat infidels must be forced either to convert to Islam or (as a<br \/>\nlimited exception for Christians and Jews, the &#8220;Peoples of the Book&#8221;)<br \/>\nlive as second-class citizens subject to special taxes and legal<br \/>\nrestrictions.  The Koran really does endorse suicidal martyrdom and<br \/>\nthe indiscriminate killing of infidels for the faith.<\/p>\n<p>(The Koran does not, however, require purdah and the veil; these<br \/>\nare practices the Arab world picked up from Persia after the tenth<br \/>\ncentury CE. Nor does it require female genital mutilation, which<br \/>\nseems to have been acquired from sub-Saharan Africa.)<\/p>\n<p>For both shallow diplomatic\/political reasons and deeper<br \/>\npsychological ones, Westerners have trouble grasping just how<br \/>\nbloody-minded, intolerant, and prone to periodic murderous outbreaks<br \/>\nof fundamentalist zeal Islam actually is.  But we <em>must<\/em> come<br \/>\nto grips with this.  If we treat the terror war as a merely<br \/>\ngeopolitical conflict, we will be fighting the wrong battle with the<br \/>\nwrong weapons.<\/p>\n<p>It is not merely Al-Qaeda or the Taliban or even Wahhabism we are<br \/>\nfighting, it is a fanatic tendency wired deep into the origins and<br \/>\ndoctrine of Islam itself, a tendency of which these movements are<br \/>\njust surface signs.  That tendency must be cured or cauterized out.<br \/>\nNo lesser victory will do for a world in which means and weapons of mass<br \/>\ndestruction grow ever easier for terrorists to acquire.<\/p>\n<p><em>(To be continued&#8230;)<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/enetation.co.uk\/comments.php?user=esr&amp;commentid=77964879\">Blogspt comments<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Diplomatic lies notwithstanding, Islam is anything but a `religion of peace&#8217;. Any honest scholar will tell you that Islam is a religion of violence, martyrdom, and conversion by the sword. The duty to wage war for the propagation of the faith is plainly written in the Koran; Osama bin Laden&#8217;s suicide bombers are part of&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=48\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Mirage of Moderate Islam<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-terror","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}