Author: Richard Gwyn
Publication: Toronto Star
Date: October 21, 2001
A Reader who is a Muslim Canadian
has sent me a deeply disturbing e-mail she received recently from a friend
who is also a Muslim Canadian.
This e-mail recounts a khutba (sermon)
preached recently by a khatib (roughly, a priest) to fellow Muslims at
York University.
According to this individual, "The
khatib said we Muslims should not be friends with Jews and Christians ...
that they'll never accept us ... that the Crusades were a terrorist action,
that only Muslims will go to heaven and Jews and Christians to hell."
After prayers were over, this person
stood up and told the others, "We should no longer stay silent on these
types of khutbas." She said she rejected the standard explanation that
the khatib spoke poor English: "The message of hate comes across loud and
clear in broken English as does the message of love and justice."
Later, this person was criticized
by Muslim student leaders for speaking out, even behind closed doors. "Muslims
cannot tolerate differences of opinion being voiced," she wrote. "This
is the old policy and practice of quietism in Muslim politics."
Partial excuses for what happened
exist. Some khatibs are new to Canada and, perhaps, haven't yet absorbed
Canadian values like pluralism. Although the sermon was in English, the
khatib's natural language would be Arabic, which lends itself to exaggeration
and rhetorical excess.
But the tone of the e-mail was so
thoughtful and concerned - the woman is a devout Muslim - that her account
of what happened is almost certainly correct.
Hatred - at best, fear - is being
preached right here and not only in madrassa (religious schools) in the
Middle East with their medieval curriculum of rote learning. The instances
may well be very few, but there ought to be none at all in a society defined
by pluralism and tolerance.
This topic is of course exceedingly
delicate. But it has to be discussed, particularly when, as will soon happen
in Ontario, private schools, religious or otherwise, will receive public
funding.
Since Sept. 11, all Western spokespeople
have gone out of their way to say this is a war not between religions (or
between civilizations), but against terrorism.
This is justified to prevent stereotyping
and a backlash. It is also correct. There is no war going on between Christianity
and Islam, not least because the majority of the West is now post-Christian.
But religion is an essential part
of the conflict. The division is not between religions. Rather, it is about
the nature of religion.
Two types of religion are in conflict.
One is liberal religion, the other is a fundamentalist religion. One accepts
pluralism and secularism and the Enlightenment, the other (including some
Christian fundamentalist sects) rejects modernity and is isolationist and
anti-intellectual.
Islam is a religion of exceptional
beauty and strength. It is wonderfully democractic because each believer
talks directly to God rather than through the intermediary of priests and
bishops and the rest. As do all religions during their best periods, Islam
today appeals, in particular, to the poor, the marginalized, the outsiders.
But there is an inherent isolationist
strain in Islam. It divides the entire world into Dar al Islam, the House
of Submission (to God) and Dar al Harb, the House of War. Osama bin Laden
repeated this concept when he declared in his highly effective video speech
that this was a war between believers and those without faith.
There is also an inherent strain
of violence in Islam. Muhammad was both spiritual leader and a military
leader. Uniquely among major religions, Islam depended initially on success
in war, spreading itself across the Middle East and North Africa and deep
into Europe. Explicit in the Qur'an is the notion of jihad, or holy war,
and of martyrdom in war.
Christianity has, of course, undergone
prolonged periods of violence, including the Crusades. But Christ's actual
teachings, from turning the other cheek to loving thy neighbour, are those
of an outright pacifist. And if only by circumstance, Christianity grew
entirely by its own merits for its first three centuries, until Emperor
Constantine converted and Christianity's appeal was expanded to - and was
corrupted by - that of possessing power and wealth.
In no way does any of this mean
that Islam is endemically violent and isolationist. Or that it is inflexibly
fundamentalist. But those tendencies and temptations exist in its sacred
texts, along with eloquent calls for tolerance and peace.
Thus, there are two wars - the war
of bombs and missiles, and the war of ideas within Islam, itself. That's
the victory that will really matter.
Richard Gwyn's column appears on
Wednesday and Sunday. He can be reached at gwynR@sympatico.ca.
