Author: Amir Taheri
Publication: The Wall Street Journal
Europe
Date: October 17, 2001
"This has nothing to do with Islam,"
British Prime Minister Tony Blair recently told a delegation of Muslims
at a meeting at 10 Downing Street, referring to the September 11 attacks
against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Mr. Blair was echoing a view, popular
both in Europe and the U.S., that it is impolite, not to say impolitic,
to subject Islam to any criticism. Yet to claim that the attacks had nothing
to do with Islam amounts to a whitewash. It is not only disingenuous but
also a disservice to Muslims who need, one day, to cast a critical glance
at the way their faith is taught, lived and practiced. Even worse, the
refusal to subject Islam to rational analysis is a recipe for further fanaticism.
Unless we believe those who claim
that the September 11 was organized by Israel, we have to assume that Osama
bin Laden and al Qaeda were at least intellectually responsible. And since
there is no mechanism for excommunication in Islam, bin Laden and his gang
have every right to describe themselves as Muslims.
But that is not all. Al Qaeda did
not materialize out of thin air. Nor have they been operating in a vacuum.
Bin Laden belongs to a prominent Yemeni-Saudi family that makes much of
its Islamic credentials. He began his militant career in 1984 as a fund-raiser
for the Afghans fighting the communist regime in Kabul in the name of Islam.
He had offices in a dozen Muslim countries, none of which regarded his
activities as un-Islamic. In 1993 bin Laden was divested of his Saudi passport
but was warmly welcomed in Sudan where a fundamentalist regime was, and
still is, in power. Later, bin Laden was the star of an international conference
of Muslim fundamentalists organized in Khartoum by the then-strongman Hassan
al-Turabi. He was elected a member of the "Supreme Council," whose task
is to promote a radical brand of Islam throughout the world. That gave
him the right, not to say the pretext, to call himself a "sheik" and issue
religious "fatwas," or edicts. Again, since there is no clerical hierarchy
in Islam, there was no reason why bin Laden could not claim such authority.
Once bin Laden was forced to leave
Sudan (under U.S. pressure), he was welcomed in his ancestral homeland
of Yemen, another Muslim country. From there he went to Pakistan, the world's
second most populous Muslim nation, where he was welcomed not only by the
army but also by virtually all of Pakistan's Islamic parties, which continue
to support him. Finally, from Pakistan bin Laden shifted to Afghanistan,
where the Taliban had established what they claimed to be "the only truly
Islamic government."
In November 2000 a 10-day rally
was organized in Peshawar in support of bin Laden. More than 100,000 people
took part, including the representatives of many prominent families from
the Arab states of the Persian Gulf plus a Who's Who of Pakistani Islam.
It was a strange way of showing that Osama had nothing to with Islam. To
say that bin Laden has nothing to do with Islam and Muslims requires a
big leap of imagination.
When pressed hard, some Muslim leaders
admit that bin Laden is "part of Islam" but try to minimize his place.
Dalil Boubakeur, a French Muslim leader, says that bin Laden does not represent
more than 1% of Muslims. If that is any comfort, that 1% means almost 13
million people.
There is more: all but one of the
world's last military regimes are in Muslim countries; with the exception
of Turkey and Bangladesh there are no real elections in any Muslim country;
of the current 30 active conflicts in the world no fewer than 28 concern
Muslim governments and/or communities. Two-thirds of the world's political
prisoners are held in Muslim countries, who also carry out 80% of all executions
each year.
Anyone familiar with textbooks in
most Muslim countries would know the twisted view of the world they propagate
and the hatred they promote. Anyone who follows the media in the Muslim
world would know that the verbal version of the September 11 attacks is
an almost daily fare. Go to the Internet and check the editorials of virtually
any Muslim paper on September 10 and see what they were saying about the
West in general and the U.S. in particular. Anyone listening to a sermon
in virtually any mosque, including many in the West, would be shocked by
the vehemence of the anti-West, especially anti-American, sentiments expressed.
It is both dishonest and dangerous
for Muslims to remain in a state of denial. And yet a state of denial is
what we have. When Iran's Khomeinists burned 600 people alive in a cinema,
the whitewashers said that it had nothing to do with Islam. When the same
gang took the American diplomats hostage in Tehran again the whitewash
party insisted that that had nothing to do with Islam. And when the suicide
bombings bloodied Beirut we were told that Islam had nothing to do with
them.
The Muslim world today is full of
bigotry, fanaticism, hypocrisy and plain ignorance -- all of which serve
as breeding grounds for criminals like bin Laden. The principal victims
of these criminals are Muslims, who are prevented from developing a modern
political culture without which they cannot reform their societies and
rebuild their economies.
What I am saying is not meant as
critique of Islam as a belief system; that's an issue for theologians and
people should be free to believe whatever they like. What is needed is
a critique of Islam as an existential reality. The September 11 tragedies
should trigger a rethink of the way Muslims live Islam. We should start
with condemning those attacks without "ifs" and "buts," shunning the hypocrisy
of attempting an arbitrary explanation to impose an impossible justification.
Sadly, the way we Muslims live Islam today is a far cry from the way our
ancestors lived it in the golden age when Islam was a builder of civilization
not a force for repression, terror and destruction.
(Mr. Taheri, an Iranian author and
journalist, is editor of the Paris-based Politique Internationale.)
