Islam Beyond the Violent Jihadis E-Book

Ziauddin Sardar

• Herausgeber: Biteback Publishing
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: Provocations
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 171

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Islam has been corrupted. A virulent strain of the religion manifests itself in bloodthirsty mutations such as Boko Haram in Nigeria and the terrifying spectre of ISIS. But behind the atrocities and turmoil lie many different versions and visions of Islam, each struggling to survive in a rapidly changing world. Ziauddin Sardar, with inimitable wit and intelligence, chronicles the diversity and richness of Islam and, in doing so, answers a host of frequently asked questions: Is Islam inherently violent and misogynistic? Why do young men and women choose to join the jihadi caliphate? What part should Muhammad's teachings play in our own times? Islam Beyond the Violent Jihadis argues for a pluralistic and reflective religion with a distinguished past - but one that appears to have been wrenched from its noble origins by rigid fundamentalism. In examining how we have nourished the rise of Islamic jihadi groups, Sardar urges us all to work together to preserve the sanity of our world.

Leseprobe

PROVOCATIONS

ISLAM BEYOND THE VIOLENT JIHADIS

ZIAUDDIN SARDAR

SERIES EDITOR:

YASMIN ALIBHAI-BROWN

Contents

Title PageGlossaryFirst wordsPart I:What I am askedPart II:What I knowPart III:The wound is the place where light entersLast wordsCopyright

Glossary

ADAB: literally, etiquette; more specifically the etiquette of being human. The literary and philosophical movement of classical Islam that established liberal humanism between the eighth and the thirteenth centuries.

DEOBANDI: an adherent of the revivalist movement that emerged from the Deoband seminary in India during the eighteenth century. The Deobandis are Sunni Muslims, puritan and close cousins of the Wahhabis.

HADITH: sayings or traditions of the Prophet Muhammad.

IJMA: literally, agreeing upon, consensus of the community in general, and (in recent history) the religious scholars in particular.

IJTIHAD: systematic original thinking; exerting oneself to the utmost degree to reach comprehension and form a rational opinion based on evidence.

ILM: knowledge in all forms, and distributive knowledge in particular, incorporating the notions of wisdom and justice. In contemporary times, it has been reduced to obscurantist religious knowledge.

ISLAMIC ORTHODOXY: an amalgam of Sunni and Shia Muslims who follow the strict theological and legal interpretations of classical theologians of eighth and ninth centuries and believe that these interpretations cannot be changed and that the Shariah is divine.

JIHAD: literally, striving. Any earnest striving in the way of God, involving personal, financial, intellectual or physical effort, for righteousness and against oppression or wrongdoing.

KHARJITES: a seventh-century fanatical and murderous sect.

MUTAZILA: the school of Islamic theology based on reason and rational thought that flourished from the eighth to the thirteenth centuries. The Mutazila laid the foundations of Islamic philosophy, established the movement of liberal humanism (adab) in Islam, and produced some of the greatest thinkers of civilisation (as we and others know it).

SAHIH AL-BUKHARI: the foremost authentic collection of hadith in Sunni Islam, compiled by the Persian scholar Muhammad al-Bukhari (810–870), during the ninth century.

SAHIH MUSLIM: the second most important collection of hadith in Sunni Islam, compiled by the Persian scholar Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj (815–875), during the ninth century.

SALAFI: member of an ultra-conservative, fanatical movement in Sunni Islam based on the doctrine that the example of Prophet Muhammad and his earliest followers – the salafs, or ‘pious forefathers’ – should be followed and imitated totally and without question. Those who do not are heretic at best and infidels to boot at worse.

SHARIAH: literally the path to a watering hole; it is the ethical, moral and legal code of Islam. Conventionally translated as ‘Islamic Law’, the Shariah is considered divine by the orthodox and has remained unchanged since the ninth century.

SHIAISM: the second most important sect of Islam, which believes that the legitimate successor to the Prophet Muhammad was his cousin and son-in-law, Ali, and that all other successors must come from the Prophet’s family.

SUFISM: the great mystical tradition of Islam that has produced boundless literature and spiritual insights. Sufi orders trace their chain of teachers right back to the Prophet Muhammad.

SUNNAH: literally, path or example, it applies particularly to the example of the Prophet Muhammad and includes what he said, actually did and agreed to.

SUNNISM: the dominant, majority sect of Islam, which believes that the legitimate successor to the Prophet Muhammad was his closest companion and father-in-law, Abu Bakr.

TABLIGHIS: followers of the Tablighi Jammat, an evangelical movement that emerged in India in 1927. The Tablighis reduce Sunni Islam to six principles: faith, prayer, remembrance of God, treating Muslims with honour (as long as they are men), sincerity of intention, and going out to preach their creed. They shun politics and can be recognised by their chaotic facial furniture.

TAKFIRIS: Sunni Muslims who denounce other Muslims as apostates or unbelievers (kafirs). They don’t like anybody except themselves. Takfiri jihadis are happy to kill all others, starting with other Muslims, and believe that suicide bombers are martyrs who receive a one-way ticket to paradise. Basically, they are psychotic. The so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is a takfiri jihadi enclave.

ULAMA: religious scholars (for what they are worth, which is little).

UMMAH: the ensemble of Muslim individuals and communities forming an entity of common culture with common goals and aspirations, as well as certain self-consciousness, but not necessarily a coincident common polity.

WAHHABISM: a puritan, ultra-conservative sect in Sunni Islam, named after its founder Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703–92). It is now the state ideology of Saudi Arabia. The ideologies of violent extremists such as al-Qaida, the Taliban of Pakistan and Afghanistan, Boko Haram of Nigeria and al-Shabab of Somalia can all be traced back to Wahhabism and Saudi Arabia.

First words

TAKE TWO RECENT incidents. On 22 May 2013, Fusilier Lee Rigby was run down by a car and then brutally hacked to death by two recent converts to Islam, Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale. Brandishing their knives, the murderers told the world that they had killed a British soldier as revenge for the killing of Muslims by the British Army. On 10 August 2011, Haroon Jahan, twenty-one, was killed along with two of his friends when they were deliberately run down by a car driven by Afro-Caribbean youths. Haroon died protecting his community during the month of Ramadan. In an atmosphere of rising tensions, with the police fearing revenge attacks and killings, Haroon’s father, Tariq Jahan, diffused the situation with a few unscripted words of immense dignity: ‘Why do we have to kill one another? Why are we doing this? I have lost my son. Step forward if you want to lose your sons. Otherwise, calm down and go home – please.’1 As a Muslim, Jahan said, revenge was not part of his faith. But his faith gave him the strength and composure, as Bryan Appleyard noted in the Sunday Times, ‘to make one of the great speeches of the twenty-first century’.2

We have two entirely different versions of Islam. One based on an old tradition of love and tolerance, perhaps drawing some inspiration from Sufism; the other on a more recent sectarian version that has no notion of humanity or ethics. The vast majority of Muslims are not all that different from Tariq Jahan. But there is little doubt that the jihadis are gaining ground, enticing young British Muslims to join the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and spreading murder and mayhem from Nigeria and Somalia to the Middle East, Pakistan and Indonesia, and across the West.

The reasons for the rise and rapid spread of jihadi Islam, as any academic will tell you, are varied and complex. But that does mean that we can’t pin down a couple of key culprits. I am going to suggest that the root cause of fanaticism, violent extremism and paranoid jihadism is a single sect that has, like the killer gangs in Mad Max movies, gone berserk: Wahhabism. And we – the Muslims in general, and the British governments of past and present in particular – have nursed and nourished, supported and propped up the official site of this totalitarian creed for several decades: the police state and theocracy of Saudi Arabia.

Wahhabi dogma now occupies the central position in Islamic orthodoxy for a fundamental historical reason: the outright suppression of the great tradition of critical thinking and free thought in Islam. From the eighth to the fourteenth centuries, philosophers, writers, satirists and other freethinkers stood up to orthodoxy and curbed its authoritarian tendencies. But that tradition has now all but disappeared. And in its absence, Islamic orthodoxy has become more and more dogmatic, narrow, authoritarian and inhuman – reaching its logical culmination with the rise of Wahhabism. The guardians of Islamic orthodoxy, the ulama, the religious scholars and clerics, have banned criticism and question, stolen free will, and turned ordinary Muslim believers into empty vessels who have nothing more to do than gratefully receive and follow their hateful ideology.

Much of what I have to say about Islamic orthodoxy, traditionalism and Wahhabism will upset the bearded mullahs and legions of their pious and conservative followers. But as the eleventh-century Muslim thinker Al-Ghazali, perhaps the most reactionary theologian of the classical period and a key player in the decline of rational and free thought in Islam, once said, ‘I am no longer obliged to remain silent.’ Some may even accuse me of heresy. Which will put me in the good company of countless Muslim freethinkers, classical and contemporary, who had to endure such accusations. But in my case the accusation has more meaning – what I am actually suggesting is that it is time for heresy to take centre stage and to dethrone orthodoxy.

Those who follow my arguments would realise, I hope, that independent critical thinking and free thought is the only way to promote more rational and humane interpretations of Islam. It was the case when Muslim civilisation was at its zenith and individuals like Tariq Jahan were the dominant majority in every Muslim community. And it is the case even now, when orthodox dogma has created radical evil like ISIS and spouts characters like Michael Adebolajo, who threaten to end Muslim civilisation as we know it. Make no mistake: these dogmatic thugs hate rational and freethinking Muslims more than they hate non-Muslims or the West.

1 Michael Seamark, ‘Grieving father’s voice of sanity’, Mail Online, 11 August 2011.

2 ‘Death of Haroon Jahan’, Sunday Times, 14 August 2011.

Part I

What I am asked

BELLE VUE GIRLS’ School in Bradford describes itself as ‘a specialist academy for languages and science with maths’, devoted to ‘educating the women of tomorrow’. It is one of the highest-performing schools in the city, and, by Ofsted’s ranking, always in the top 20 per cent of schools in the country when measured by the progress its pupils make from year seven to year eleven. Most of its 1,200 or so pupils are from Muslim backgrounds. I visited the school to have a ‘candid conversation’ with sixth formers pursuing religious studies. I had been roped into the schools programme of the Bradford Literature Festival, which ran for ten days in May 2015.

I arrived early on Friday morning expecting a relatively comfortable question-and-answer session. After a casual walk through the long school corridors I was ushered into a classroom. Over two dozen excited girls, some wearing hijabs, stood up to greet me. The teacher, Aqeela Jahan, a gracious, sublime English woman who had converted to Islam, asked them to sit down. I stood in front of the class as she uttered a few words of introduction. Today’s topic, she said, was ‘everything you wanted to ask about Islam but never dared’. Several hands shot up before she finished her sentence. I pointed towards a girl in hijab. ‘How do we determine the will of God?’ she asked in a matter-of-fact way. The question knocked me out of my comfort zone. I sat down on the small chair in front of the class to think of a viable answer.

The questions I am usually asked on such occasions tend to be straightforward. What are the five pillars of Islam? (Faith in a merciful and beneficent God; daily prayers; fasting during the month of Ramadan; zakat, or almsgiving; and hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca if one has the means for the journey.) Does Islamic theology portray women as inferior to men? (No. Islam views men and women as equal before God ‘created from a single soul’ (The Qur’an 4:1, 39:6). But misogynist interpretations throughout history have relegated women to the kitchen.) Are Muslim men allowed to have four wives? (Only if they can be perfectly just to all of them, which is impossible. Most Muslim men have problems treating one fairly and ethically, so more than one is simply out of the question.) This sort of thing. But these pupils had already sorted most of these questions in their religious studies class.

When I had recovered my composure, I said: ‘This is a difficult question. Perhaps we can start with a simple question.’ Several girls raised their hands immediately, and I randomly pointed towards a pupil who oozed confidence. ‘Would you say that Islam is incompatible with postmodernism?’ she asked. There was no way I could duck the second question. ‘Yes, it is,’ I replied. ‘Postmodernism suggests that almost everything that provides meaning and a sense of direction in our lives is meaningless – such as religion, history, tradition, reason and science. It also argues that all truth is relative. As a faith, Islam seeks to provide meaning and direction in the lives of believers. It places strong emphasis on tradition, history, reason and science. And it sees only some truths as relative. Ironically, postmodernism itself functions as a religion for some people.’ A lively discussion followed, with some girls expressing slight disagreement with my explanation. ‘It wasn’t nuanced enough,’ said one.

Then we moved on to the difference between Sunni and Shia Islam. The real difference between them, I said, lies in political theology. After the death of the Prophet Muhammad a dispute emerged amongst his followers regarding the issue of succession. The Prophet himself did not designate his successor. So who had the legitimate claim to succeed him? One group argued that the successor should be chosen by election or selection from amongst his closest companions; this group called itself Ahl as-Sunnah wa l-Jammah, or the People of the Tradition of the Prophet and the Consensus of the Community (ummah), or Sunnis for short. But another group argued that only members of the family of the Prophet had the right to succeed him, and Ali, his cousin and son-in-law, was the only legitimate person to lead the Muslim community. This group was known as Shiatu Ali, the Party of Ali, and came to be known as Shia. Those who supported the Sunni view were in the majority and won the day.

The dispute was solidified in the political theology of each group. The Sunnis created a mythology around the companions, designating the first four caliphs as ‘Rightly Guided’, and insisting that the examples of all the companions had to be followed; and, after the companions, the companions of the companions. In contrast, the Shia created an edifice around the members of the Prophet’s family, who were seen as immaculate and pure, unique and predetermined for each age, true believers who have to be recognised and followed if one is to be saved. These legitimate hirers to the Prophet’s mantle were known as imams. Ali was the first imam, and his descendants, through the Prophet’s youngest daughter Fatima, became subsequent imams. In total, there are twelve imams; and this is why the largest Shia community describes itself as ‘Twelvers’. The last imam, Imam Mahdi, is said to have gone into occultation and will reappear towards the end of days to rid the world of evil. The Ismailis, a minority Shia sect, believe that there are only seven imams – hence, they are known as ‘Seveners’.

Despite this contrived dogma, Shia and Sunnis are just different kinds of Muslim. All Shia are largely Sunnis, as they embrace all the basic tenets of Sunnism. All Sunnis are actually partly Shia, as demonstrating love for the Prophet and his family is as important in Sunni theology as it is in Shia. The only difference is that Sunnis demonstrate unconditional love for all the companions of the Prophet while the Shia limit their devotion to the circumference of the Prophet’s family.

As one question followed another, it became evident that the sixth formers at Belle Vue Girls’ School were into asking critical, complex questions. And they were not going to be satisfied with simple answers. Not the sort of women who will go and join the ‘Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’ (ISIL) to become ‘jihadi brides’. Not, then, like the three sisters who left for the so-called ‘Islamic State’ during half-term holiday on 28 May 2015. Khadija Dawood, Sugra Dawood and Zohra Dawood, who lived only a few miles from the school, took their nine children aged between three and fifteen with them. They told their husbands that they were going for the lesser pilgrimage, Umrah, to Mecca. But they headed straight for Syria instead.

What, I asked, did the Belle Vue sixth formers think of those who leave Britain to fight for the Islamic State? ‘Misguided.’ ‘Brainwashed.’ ‘Not very educated, are they?’ The answers came quick and fast. Another girl in hijab said: ‘They know very little about Islam. What they know they have acquired from the social media or websites run by ultra-conservative imams. They think they are learning about Islam but they are being fed propaganda and a literalist, extremist version of Islam.’ Another lively discussion followed, and we ended up exploring the reasons why some young Muslims are happy to give up their lives in Britain and head for ‘the Caliphate’ in Syria.

The session with the sixth formers lasted four hours. I was exhausted; I had never been questioned, cross-examined and politely put down so thoroughly before. I felt like I had been forensically interrogated in a court of law. After the event, the teacher, Mrs Jahan, offered me a much needed cup of tea. What inspires these students, I wondered, to ask such searching questions? Clearly the school and the teacher had something to do with it. I learned from Mrs Jahan that there is considerable emphasis in her Islamic studies class on what is called ‘philosophy for children’. It is not that she teaches Aristotle and Plato, or Hegel and Wittgenstein; rather, she teaches philosophical modes of learning and inquiry, of asking questions through discussion and debate. She encourages her pupils to read widely, to reflect on what they read, and to realise that they don’t always have to be right. The girls who were firing questions at me from all directions obviously read widely. Indeed, they had even read a few of my books; one, a rather scholarly tome on postmodernism, was a set text and had been devoured thoroughly. And they knew how to ask questions – not just questions for the sake of questions, but questions that were based on thought and reflection. They were into critical engagement. That was the key difference between the sixth formers at Belle Vue Girls’ School and those young men and women who trudged off to Syria in search of ‘jihad’.

Over the past few years, I have gone out of my way to engage with young Muslims – from Bradford and Birmingham to Lahore and Istanbul. Everywhere, the young are restless and rebellious, eager to break out of convention, longing to be free from their parents and from tradition that crushes individual and social creativity and spirit. They are grappling with the challenges of modernity against tremendous odds, trying to discover what it means to be Muslim in the twenty-first century. They are angry at the plight of Muslims, at the wars in Iraq and Syria, at the invasion of Afghanistan, at the drone attacks in Pakistan, at the dehumanisation of the Palestinians by the Israelis, at the demonisation of Islam and Muslims. Frankly, I too would be angry at what has been done to Muslim societies in the name of ‘modernity’, ‘democracy’, ‘our security’ (as though the security and lives of others do not matter), ‘war on terror’, et cetera; and I do not count myself amongst the young.

Indeed, I am angry.

But just because they are angry and rebellious does not mean that they are about to take a nihilistic jump and join a death cult. Or support the aims and objectives of the ‘Islamic State’. The majority of Muslims around the world, I believe, think, like the Belle Vue sixth formers, that the jihadis are deluded, misguided, brainwashed and just plain ignorant about Islam. Indeed, Muslims are as bewildered about the ‘sudden’ emergence of ISIS as everyone else. Just as they were at the atrocity that was 9/11. I remember my neighbour, the wonderful, straight-talking Bill, asking a few days after the aircraft attack on the Twin Towers: ‘Zia, are these chaps from your lot?’ ‘Nothing to do with me, Bill,’ I replied. ‘But they are Muslims?’ ‘I suppose they are, since they describe themselves as Muslims. Just as the National Front types describe themselves as British.’