Author: Michael Coren
Publication: National Post
Date: November 3, 2006
URL: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/issuesideas/story.html?id=eb74b136-3729-42a1-821b-77366f7af920
Dr. Tawfik Hamid doesn't tell people where
he lives. Not the street, not the city, not even the country. It's safer that
way. It's only the letters of testimony from some of the highest intelligence
officers in the Western world that enable him to move freely. This medical
doctor, author and activist once was a member of Egypt's Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya
(Arabic for "the Islamic Group"), a banned terrorist organization.
He was trained under Ayman al-Zawahiri, the bearded jihadi who appears in
Bin Laden's videos, telling the world that Islamic violence will stop only
once we all become Muslims.
He's a disarmingly gentle and courteous man.
But he's determined to tell a complacent North America what he knows about
fundamentalist Muslim imperialism.
"Yes, 'imperialism,' " he tells
me. "The deliberate and determined expansion of militant Islam and its
attempt to triumph not only in the Islamic world but in Europe and North America.
Pure ideology. Muslim terrorists kill and slaughter not because of what they
experience but because of what they believe."
Hamid drank in the message of Jihadism while
at medical school in Cairo, and devoted himself to the cause. His group began
meeting in a small room. Then a larger one. Then a Mosque reserved for followers
of al-Zawahiri. By the time Hamid left the movement, its members were intimidating
other students who were unsympathetic.
He is now 45 years old, and has had many years
to reflect on why he was willing to die and kill for his religion. "The
first thing you have to understand is that it has nothing, absolutely nothing,
to do with poverty or lack of education," he says. "I was from a
middle-class family and my parents were not religious. Hardly anyone in the
movement at university came from a background that was different from mine.
"I've heard this poverty nonsense time
and time again from Western apologists for Islam, most of them not Muslim
by the way. There are millions of passive supporters of terror who may be
poor and needy but most of those who do the killing are wealthy, privileged,
educated and free. If it were about poverty, ask yourself why it is middle-class
Muslims -- and never poor Christians -- who become suicide bombers in Palestine."
His analysis is fascinating. Muslim fundamentalists
believe, he insists, that Saudi Arabia's petroleum-based wealth is a divine
gift, and that Saudi influence is sanctioned by Allah. Thus the extreme brand
of Sunni Islam that spread from the Kingdom to the rest of the Islamic world
is regarded not merely as one interpretation of the religion but the only
genuine interpretation. The expansion of violent and regressive Islam, he
continues, began in the late 1970s, and can be traced precisely to the growing
financial clout of Saudi Arabia.
"We're not talking about a fringe cult
here," he tells me. "Salafist [fundamentalist] Islam is the dominant
version of the religion and is taught in almost every Islamic university in
the world. It is puritanical, extreme and does, yes, mean that women can be
beaten, apostates killed and Jews called pigs and monkeys."
He leans back, takes a deep breath and moves
to another area, one that he says is far too seldom discussed: "North
Americans are too squeamish about discussing the obvious sexual dynamic behind
suicide bombings. If they understood contemporary Islamic society, they would
understand the sheer sexual tension of Sunni Muslim men. Look at the figures
for suicide bombings and see how few are from the Shiite world. Terrorism
and violence yes, but not suicide. The overwhelming majority are from Sunnis.
Now within the Shiite world there are what is known as temporary marriages,
lasting anywhere from an hour to 95 years. It enables men to release their
sexual frustrations.
"Islam condemns extra-marital sex as
well as masturbation, which is also taught in the Christian tradition. But
Islam also tells of unlimited sexual ecstasy in paradise with beautiful virgins
for the martyr who gives his life for the faith. Don't for a moment underestimate
this blinding passion or its influence on those who accept fundamentalism."
A pause. "I know. I was one who accepted
it."
This partial explanation is shocking more
for its banality than its horror. Mass murder provoked partly by simple lust.
But it cannot be denied that letters written by suicide bombers frequently
dwell on waiting virgins and sexual gratification.
"The sexual aspect is, of course, just
one part of this. But I can tell you what it is not about. Not about Israel,
not about Iraq, not about Afghanistan. They are mere excuses. Algerian Muslim
fundamentalists murdered 150,000 other Algerian Muslims, sometimes slitting
the throats of children in front of their parents. Are you seriously telling
me that this was because of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians or American
foreign policy?"
He's exasperated now, visibly angry at what
he sees as a willful Western foolishness. "Stop asking what you have
done wrong. Stop it! They're slaughtering you like sheep and you still look
within. You criticize your history, your institutions, your churches. Why
can't you realize that it has nothing to do with what you have done but with
what they want."
Then he leaves -- for where, he cannot say.
A voice that is silenced in its homeland and too often ignored by those who
prefer convenient revision to disturbing truth. The tragedy is that Tawfik
Hamid is almost used to it.
- Michael Coren is an author and broadcaster.
www.michaelcoren.com