Author: Daniel Pipes
Publication: The New York Post
Date: November 26, 2001
The U.S. government wants you to
know that the Taliban, who yet rule part of Afghanistan, are bad Muslims.
Instead, it should be showing that they are totalitarian thugs. There's
a big difference.
When the Taliban destroyed the ancient
Buddhist statues in their country early this year, Washington repeatedly
decried this demolition as un-Islamic. It contradicts "one of Islam's basic
tenets - tolerance for other religions," intoned the State Department spokesman.
It is "an act of intolerance, which . . . has, in our view, nothing to
do with Islam," declared one of his colleagues.
The Sept. 11 atrocities prompted
Imam George W. Bush to declare that these "violate the fundamental tenets
of the Islamic faith." His wife issued a fatwa deeming the repression of
women in Afghanistan "not a matter of legitimate religious practice."
More broadly, a State Department
Fact Sheet asserts that the Taliban "misuse Islam" to justify their "illegal
and dishonorable" policies. American officials even have the nerve to instruct
Muslims on how to live their faith.
"We accept that Islam is the religion
of most Afghans. They can practice it in the way they want," the acting
assistant secretary for South Asian Affairs conceded. But, he added, their
Islam "should be in a spirit of toleration, in a spirit of acceptance of
other faiths and creeds."
Not surprisingly, the Taliban hotly
reject these admonishments. Two days after Bill Clinton in 1999 had called
their treatment of women "a terrible perversion" of Islam, they replied:
"Any criticism regarding Afghanistan's Muslims and women's rights should
come from a Muslim. This Clinton is not a Muslim and does not know anything
about Islam and Muslims."
Likewise, President Bush's peculiar
statements about true Islam being "nonviolent" spurred a Taliban representative
to reply: "I am astonished by President Bush when he claims there is nothing
in the Koran that justifies jihad or violence in the name of Islam. Is
he some kind of Islamic scholar? Has he ever actually read the Koran?"
The Taliban have a point, for it
is very strange for U.S. government officials to proclaim what is or is
not true Islam. Who are they - neither Muslims nor scholars of Islam but
representatives of a secular government - to instruct Muslims about their
religion? And, realistically, which Muslims accept spiritual guidance from
the White House?
Interestingly, U.S. policy in principle
agrees that this hectoring is unacceptable. "Don't presume to lecture Muslims
on Islam," reads an internal State Department memo that bore the secretary
of state's personal endorsement. The former top State Department official
in charge of Afghanistan, Karl Inderfurth, agrees that it is not "appropriate
for non-Muslims to presume to give instruction" about Islamic faith and
the Koran.
Bernard Lewis, the leading American
scholar of Islam, puts it less diplomatically: "it is surely presumptuous
for those who are not Muslims to say what is orthodox and what is heretical
in Islam."
This is good and sensible advice.
Rather than initiate a quixotic and unconvincing campaign to delegitimize
the Taliban (or any other instances of militant Islam) on religious grounds,
Washington should stick to its knitting - politics. The oppression, poverty,
violence, and injustice of Taliban rule offer plenty of evidence to indict
it, without having also to contest the regime's Islamic credentials.
Life in Afghanistan has been a living
hell. Beatings and arbitrary executions are commonplace; for example, eight
boys who dared to laugh at Taliban soldiers were shot dead. In 1998, the
Taliban massacred 600 Uzbek villagers in the west; in early 2001, they
followed with a massacre of 200 civilians in the center. To prevent defections
to the Northern Alliance, the Taliban have taken thousands of families
of their own soldiers as hostages and some 400 of those soldiers were just
massacred to prevent their changing sides.
The United States government has
a powerful message for the world, a message of individualism, freedom,
secularism, the rule of law, democracy and private property. But it should
have nothing to say about the proper practice of Islam (or any religion).
It's right for President Bush to
condemn Taliban rule for the fact that women are "beaten for wearing socks
that are too thin. Men are jailed for missing prayer meetings." He just
shouldn't give his opinion on whether or not these punishments constitute
genuine Islam.
(Daniel Pipes, director of the Philadelphia-based
Middle East Forum, can be reached via www.DanielPipes.org.)
