HVK Archives: Islam is indivisible (1995 article)
Islam is indivisible (1995 article) - The Independent, London
Connor Cruise O'Brein
()
6 January 1995.
Title : THE LESSON OF ALGERIA: ISLAM IS INDIVISIBLE
Author : Connor Cruise O'Brein
Publication : The Independent, London
Date : January 6, 1995.
"Fundamentalist Islam" is a misnomer which dulls
our
perceptions in a dangerous way. It does so by implying
that there is some other kind of Islam, which is well
disposed to those who reject the Koran. There isn't.
Islam is a universalist, triumphalist and political
religion. It claims de jure dominion over all humani-
ty; that is God's will. The actual state of affairs, with
unbelievers of various sorts dominating most of the
world, is a suspension of God's will and a scandal to the
faithful. The world is divided between the House of Islam
and the House of War, meaning the rest of us.
For more than two centuries now, the House of War
has
been in the ascendant, and the House of Islam has
been
abased. The remedy for' this unnatural and intolerable
state of i-affairs is jihad. Jilhad is defined as "the
religious duty imposed on all Muslims to wage war
upon
those who do not accept the doctrines of Islam". The
Prophet Mohammed himself not merely preached but
waged
jihad. God's word, dictated to the Prophet and preached
by him, is binding on all Muslims, and his example is
their inspiration.
In the glorious centuries of expansion, the jihad carried
Islam from Arabia, to the west as far as the Atlantic;
to the north as far as Vienna; to the south as far as the
Sahara and down the east coast of Africa to
Madagascar;
and to the east across Persia and the Indian
subcontinent
into part of China and Indonesia.
What is going on today in the Muslim world is not the
advent of some aberrant thing called Islamic
fundamental-
ism but a revival of Islam itself - the real thing -
which Western ascendancy and Westernised post-
Muslim
elites no longer have the capacity to muffle and control.
Jihad is back.
The jihad is at present raging in many parts of the world
and shaking many westernised and westernising
regimes
(and many Russified and Russifying ones as well).
The
front of the jihad that comes nearest to us in Europe,
and is of the most immediate danger to us, is that in
Algeria.
The Algerian jihad and the French-backed attempt to
repress it, cost an estimated 25,000 lives last year and
the death toll is at present estimated at about 800 a
month. Nobody really knows for sure. This is the most
unreported of the world's wars, because both sides are
in the habit of murdering journalists. The French-
backed side murders journalists who report things the
French don't want reported; the Islamic side murders
journalists for being unbelievers, or for being employed
by unbelievers. News organsations, accordingly, have
pulled out of Algeria and the place has become a kind of
black hole as far as reporting is concerned.
The general public in the West only became aware that
something peculiar was going on in Algeria when the
news
broke of the hijacking of a French airbus by the Armed
Islamic Group (GIA). This was followed by the
spectacular
news of the French rescue operation and then by the
killings of four Catholic priests in the courtyard of
their Church in Tizi-Ouzou. The GIA announced it has
killed the priests as part of a campaign of ,annihilation
and physical liquidation of Christian crusaders". The GIA
added that it would continue its jihad against all who
stood in the way of achieving the supremacy on earth of
God's Sharia (Islamic law) and the establishment of a
wise caliphate (an Islamic state, eventually ruling over
the whole world).
The GIA is reckoned to be a relatively small
organisation, but its actions and statements are
endorsed
by the much larger Islamic Salvation Front (FIS). The FIS
has so much popular support among Algerians that it
looked like winning the elections scheduled three years
ago, which was the reason why the French- backed
junta
cancelled the electoral process, thus precipitating the
outbreak of the jihad. The junta is pledged to the
eradication of Islamic fundamentalism, but it looks as if
this can hardly be done without eradicating the Muslim
population.
It is now clear that the French-prompted-decision to
cancel those elections was a terrible mistake. It is
true that an elected government in Algiers, dominated by
the Islamic Salvation Front, would have been a much
more
uncomfortable neighbor for France than that of previous
secular Algerian governments. Uncomfortable, but
hardly
as uncomfortable as the sustained jihad that followed
the
cancellation of those elections, and hardly as
uncomfortable as an Islamic government resulting from
the
victory of the jihad is likely to be.
The tragic error of the French in trying to cope with the
revival of Islam derives from a conceptual error; the
illusion that "Islamic fundamentalism" is something
distinct and separate from Islam itself. if separate,
then detachable; if detachable, then eradicable - if
necessary, by force. So reasoned those Cartesian
minds,
moving with impeccable logic to an erroneous
conclusion,
since their basic premise was false.
In denouncing the hijacking of an Air France jetliner by
four young Algerians, the US government has carefully
avoided linking the crime to the Muslim religion.
The hijacking was "a grave terrorist crime,, for which
there can be no justification whatsoever, said the State
Department spokesman, Michael McCurry, implicitly
rejecting the hijackers, claim to be acting in the name
of Islam.
That the claim of a group of Muslims to be acting in the
name of Islam, is rejected by an unbeliever. speaking for
other unbelievers, will do little to reduce the
credibility of the claim, in the eyes of other
Muslims.
President Clinton's personal approach to this matter
appears to be governed by a kind of wozzy
ecumenism,
fairly prevalent among Western liberal churchmen. As
the
president told the Jordanian Parliament in October:
"After all, the chance to live in harmony with our
neighbours and to build a better life for our children is
the hope that binds us all together. Whether we worship
in a mosque in Irbid, a baptist church like my own in
Little Rock, Arkansas, or a synagogue in Haifa, we are
bound together in that hope."
"All the great religions are the same" is the idea. only
they aren't. The Clintonian world view observes the hard
specificity of Islam. The Prophet Mohammed did not
offer his followers a chance to live in harmony with
their neighbours. He taught them to fight their
neighbours, if they were unbelievers, and kill them or
beat them into submission. And it is futile to say of
those Muslims who faithfully follow those teachings
today
that their actions are "not intrinsically related to
Islam".
We are facing an Islamic revival. The pro-Western rulers
of the Maghreb and the Middle East know this, and
know
that their own stance is increasingly unacceptable to
their peoples. Representatives of Syria and Saudi Arabia
met last week in Cairo with President Hosni Mubarak in
something resembling panic stations, over the news
from
Algeria. What these three regimes have in common is
that
all of them supported the unbelievers during Desert
Storm. (The fact that Saddam Hussein is not a model
Muslim is felt to be immaterial. Under attack by
unbelievers, he raised the flag of Islam and had
widespread support at popular level).
How the West should cope with the Islamic revival is a
complex matter. But one thing is clear: we can never get
it right if we go on trying to believe that there is
something called "Islamic fundamentalism" which is
somehow not intrinsically related to Islam itself.
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