Author: Irshad Manji
Publication: New York Post
Date: July 8, 2007
URL: http://www.nypost.com/seven/07082007/postopinion/opedcolumnists//islams_problem_opedcolumnists_irshad_manji.htm?page=0
We Must Stop Denying Our Religion's Role In
Violence
Last week, two very different Brits had their
say about the latest terrorist plots in their country. Prime Minister Gordon
Brown told the nation that "we have got to separate those great moderate
members of our community from a few extremists who wish to practice violence
and inflict maximum loss of life in the interests of a perversion of their
religion." By contrast, a former jihadist from Manchester wrote that
the "real engine of our violence" is "Islamic theology."
Months ago, this young man informed me that
as a militant he raised most of his war chest not from obscenely rich Saudis,
but from middle-class Muslim dentists living in the United Kingdom. There's
sobering lesson here for the new prime minister.
So far, those arrested in connection to the
car bombs are, by and large, medical professionals. The seeming paradox of
the privileged seeking to avenge grievance has many champions of compassion
scratching their heads. Aren't Muslim martyrs supposed to be poor, disenfranchised,
and resentful about both?
WE should have been stripped of that breezy
simplification by now. The 9/11 hijackers came from means. Mohamed Atta, their
ringleader, earned an engineering degree. He then moved to the West, pursuing
his post-graduate studies in Germany. No servile goat-herder, that one.
In 2003, I interviewed Mohammad Al Hindi,
the political leader of Islamic Jihad in Gaza. A physician himself, Dr. Al
Hindi explained the difference between suicide and martyrdom. "Suicide
is done out of despair," the good doctor diagnosed. "But most of
our martyrs today were very successful in their earthly lives."
In short, it's not what the material world
fails to deliver that drives suicide bombers. It's something else. And, time
and again, the very people committing these acts have articulated what that
something else is: their religion.
CONSIDER Mohammad Sidique Khan, the teaching
assistant who master minded the July 7, 2005 transit bombings in London.
In a taped testimony, Khan railed against
British foreign policy. But before bringing up Western imperialism, he emphasized
that "Islam is our religion" and "the Prophet is our role model."
Khan gave priority to God, not to Iraq.
Now take Mohammed Bouyeri, the Dutch-born
Moroccan Muslim who murdered Amsterdam film director Theo van Gogh. Bouyeri
pumped several bullets into van Gogh's body. Knowing that multiple shots would
finish off his victim, why didn't Bouyeri stop there? Why did he pull out
a blade to decapitate van Gogh?
Again, we must confront religious symbolism.
The blade is an implement associated with 7th-century tribal conflict. Wielding
it as a sword becomes a tribute to the founding moment of Islam. Even the
note stabbed into van Gogh's corpse, although written in Dutch, had the unmistakable
rhythms of Arabic poetry.
Let's credit Bouyeri with honesty: At his
trial he proudly acknowledged acting from "religious conviction."
DESPITE integrating Muslims far more adroitly
than most of Europe, North America isn't immune. Last year in Toronto, police
nabbed 17 young Muslim men allegedly plotting to blow up Canada's parliament
buildings and behead the prime minister. They called their campaign "Operation
Badr," a reference to the Battle of Badr, the first decisive military
triumph achieved by the Prophet Mohammed. Clearly, the Toronto 17 drew inspiration
from religious history.
For people with big hearts and good will,
this has to be uncomfortable to hear. But they can take solace that the law-and-order
types have a hard time with it, too. After rounding up the Toronto suspects,
police held a press conference and didn't once mention Islam or Muslims. At
their second press conference, police boasted about avoiding those words.
If the guardians of public safety intended
their silence to be a form of sensitivity, they instead accomplished a form
of artistry, airbrushing the role that religion plays in the violence carried
out under its banner.
THEY'RE in fine company: Moderate Muslims
do the same.
While the vast majority of Muslims aren't
extremists, a more important distinction must start being made - the distinction
between moderate Muslims and reform-minded ones. Moderate Muslims denounce
violence in the name of Islam - but deny that Islam has anything to do with
it.
By their denial, moderates abandon the ground
of theological interpretation to those with malignant intentions - effectively
telling would-be terrorists that they can get away with abuses of power because
mainstream Muslims won't challenge the fanatics with bold, competing interpretations.
To do so would be admit that religion is a
factor. Moderate Muslims can't go there.
Reform-minded Muslims say it's time to admit
that Islam's scripture and history are being exploited. They argue for re-interpretation
precisely to put the would-be terrorists on notice that their monopoly is
over. Re-interpreting doesn't mean re-writing. It means re-thinking words
and practices that already exist - removing them from a seventh-century tribal
time warp and introducing them to a twenty first-century pluralistic context.
Un-Islamic? God no. The Koran contains three
times as many verses calling on Muslims to think, analyze, and reflect than
passages that dictate what's absolutely right or wrong. In that sense, reform-minded
Muslims are as authentic as moderates, and quite possibly more constructive.
Irshad Manji is a senior fellow with the European
Foundation for Democracy, the creator of the PBS documentary "Faith Without
Fear" and author of "The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim's Call
for Reform in Her Faith." From TNR.com, the Web site of The New Republic.