living islam _ Islamic tradition

Abdal-Hakim Murad

As New York turns its gap-toothed face to the sky, wondering if the
worst is yet to come, Muslims, largely unheeded by the wider world,
are counting the cost of the suicide bombings. The backlash against
mosques and hijabs has been met by statements from Muslim communities
around the globe, some stilted, but others which have clearly found
an articulate and passionate voice for the first time. In comparison
with the pathetic near-silence that hovered around mosques and major
organisations during the Rushdie and Gulf War debacles, the
communities now seem alert to their cultural situation and its
potential precariousness. Many of the condemnations have been more
impressive than those of the American President, who seems unable to
rise above clichés.

The motives are twofold. Firstly, and most patently, Sunni Muslims
have been brought up in a universe of faith that renders the taking
of innocent lives unimaginable. By condemning the attacks, we know
that we defend the indispensable essence of Islam. Secondly, Muslims
as well as others have died in large numbers. The Friday Prayers in
the World Trade Centre always attracted more than 1,500 worshippers
from the office community, many of whom have now surely died. The
tourists, who spent their last moments choking on the observation
deck, waiting for the helicopters that never came, no doubt included
many Muslim parents and their children.

But the Western powers and their fearful Muslim minorities, both
battered so grievously by recent events, now need to think beyond
press-releases and ritual cursings. We need to recognise, firstly,
that there has been a steady 'mission-creep' in terrorist attacks
over the past twenty years. Hijackings for ransom money gave way to
parcel bombs, then to suicide bombs, and now to kiloton-range urban
mayhem. It is not at all clear that this escalation will be
terminated by further anti-terrorist legislation, further billions
for the FBI, or retina scans at Terminal Three. America's tendency to
assume that money can buy or destroy any possible obstacle to its
will now stands under a dark shadow. Far from being a climax and the
catalyst for a hi-tech military solution, the attacks may be of more
historical significance as an announcement to the militant subculture
that a Star-Wars superpower is utterly vulnerable to a handful of
lightly-armed young men. There could well be more and worse to come.

Sobered by this, the State Department is likely to come under
pressure from business interests to ask the question it never seems
to notice. Why is there so much hatred of the United States, and so
much yearning to poke it in the eye? Are the architects of policy
sane in their certainty that America can enrage large numbers of
people, but contain that rage forever through satellite technology
and intrepid double-agents? Businessmen and bankers will now start to
read carefully enough to discern that it is not US national interest,
but the power of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, that
tends to drive Washington's policy in the world's greatest
troublespot. Threatened with disaster, corporate America may just
prove powerful enough to face AIPAC down, and suggest, firmly, that
the next time Israel asks Washington to veto the UN's desire to send
observers to Hebron, it pauses to consider where its own interests
might lie.

Among Muslims, the longer-term aftershock will surely take the form
of a crisis among 'moderate Wahhabis'. Even if a Middle-Eastern
connection is somehow disproved, they cannot deny forever that
doctrinal extremism can lead to political extremism. They must
realise that it is traditional Islam, the only possible alternative
to their position, which owns rich resources for the respectful
acknowledgement of difference within itself, and with unbelievers.
The lava-stream that flows from Ibn Taymiyya, whose fierce xenophobia
mirrored his sense of the imminent Mongol threat to Islam, has a
habit of closing minds and hardening hearts. It is true that not
every committed Wahhabi is willing to kill civilians to make a
political point. However it is also true that no orthodox Sunni has
ever been willing to do so. One of the unseen, unsung triumphs of
true Islam in the modern world is its complete freedom from any
terroristic involvement. Maliki ulama do not become suicide-bombers.
No-one has ever heard of Sufi terrorism. Everyone, enemies included,
knows that the very idea is absurd.

Two years ago, Shaykh Hisham Kabbani of the Islamic Supreme Council
of America, warned of the dangers of mass terrorism to American
cities; and he was brushed aside as a dangerous alarmist. Muslim
organisations are no doubt beginning to regret their treatment of
him. The movement for traditional Islam will, we hope, become
enormously strengthened in the aftermath of the recent events,
accompanied by a mass exodus from Wahhabism, leaving behind only a
merciless hardcore of well-financed zealots. Those who have tried to
take over the controls of Islam, after reading books from we-know-
where, will have to relinquish them, because we now know their
destination.

When that happens, or perhaps even sooner, mainstream Islam will be
able to make the loud declaration in public that it already feels in
its heart: that terrorists are not Muslims. Targeting civilians is a
negation of every possible school of Sunni Islam. Suicide bombing is
so foreign to the Quranic ethos that the Prophet Samson is entirely
absent from our scriptures. Islam is a great world religion that has
produced much of the world's most sensitive art, architecture and
literature, and has a rich life of ethics, missionary work, and
spirituality. Such are the real, and historically-successful, weapons
of Islam, because they are the instruments that make friends of our
neighbours, instead of enemies fit for burning alive. Those that
refuse them, out of cultural impotence or impatience, will in the
longer term be perceived as so radical in their denial of what is
necessarily known to be part of Islam, that the authorities of the
religion are likely to declare them to be beyond its reach. If that
takes place, then future catastrophes by Wahhabi ultras will have
little impact on the image of communities, whose spokesmen can simply
say that Muslims were not implicated. This is the approach taken by
Christian churches when confronted by, say, the Reverend Jim Jones's
suicide cult, or the Branch Davidians at Waco. Only a radical
amputation of this kind will save Islam's name, and the physical
safety of Muslims, particularly women, as they live and work in
Western cities.

To conclude: there is much despair, but there are also grounds for
hope. The controls of two great vehicles, the State Department, and
Islam, need to be reclaimed in the name of sanity and humanity. It is
always hard to accept that good might come out of evil; but perhaps
only a catastrophe on this scale, so desolating, and so seemingly
hopeless, could provide the motive and the space for such a
reclamation.

from
http://ds.dial.pipex.com/masud/ISLAM/ahm/recapturing.htm