 #87 (permalink) Sat Aug 01, 2009 13:07 pm Is every Muslim a terrorist? |
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WHERE DO HOSTILE FEELINGS TOWRDS ISLAM AND MUSLIMS STEM FROM?
The west’s attack on Islam is unfair,for the the simple reason that they judge it by the behaviours and practices of some mercenaries who justify their actions in the name of this noble religion that would have spread peace all over the globe if only it had faithfully been given the chance to take roots and grow its own way.
By Mohamed Elmoussaoui,middle school English Teacher,Marrakesh,Morocco.
Answering the question formulated in the title prerequires answering another question; namely, why is there so much ignorance about Islam anyway? In fact,because Islam and other religions, especiallyChristianity and Judaism, have been in contact many times and for very long periods of time throughout history since the seventh century, through the medieval ages, the colonial period and the contemporary times, the current ignorance of Islam has to be explained in terms other than chance. It cannot be a historical accident. Churches, Popes, Monarchs, rabies, Imams, theologians, scholars, intellectuals and politicians have convened many councils and inter-religion conferences and set up many institutions to maintain dialogue and communication going on among Christians, Jews and Muslims, since the dawn of Islam, yet each seems to know so little about each other.
In many cases, therefore, it would seem to be more judicious to talk of purposive misrecognition rather than of popular ignorance which is but a natural consequence of the calculations of the former. In fact, the tendency of associating Islam to the concept of nation, expressed by the word “world”, for instance, underscores a reductionist attitude towards a complex phenomenon. While Islam is spread over the five continents and has been anchored over as diverse cultures as the Chinese, the Eastern European, the Amazigh, the American, the Indian, the Zulu, etc. analysts still insist on reducing Islam and Muslims to one and unique identity1. Likewise, talking of the Koran while one is referring to faulty translations which are more often interpretations or re-writings of the original by individuals whose command of the Arabic language is as doubtful as their intentions reveals attitudes of hidden agendas. In fact, taking something for what it is not from the start informs not only of the flaws and of the unsoundness of the analytical instruments, of the poor quality of the analysis, of the unreliability of the results but also of interested bias and of uncertain intentions.
That Islam, or Christianity for that matter, has developed through the centuries and in different places in diverse ways is knowledge which is occulted in leading strategic political analysis. This occultation simplifies the job of creating stereotypes and therefore of validating strategies to make consensus and later on to justify taking political action, which can be violence. Such occultation also serves the purpose of shaping the thinking aptitudes and the abilities to negotiate, to solve problems and to set up meeting grounds. An individual commits an isolated crime somewhere and it is explained in terms of the religion of the perpetrator. A social practice is observed in a country that happens to host Muslims, and the behaviour is said to be Islamic. Describing the dance of a group of Catholic Peruvian Indians as a Christian tradition would be repulsive to any Westerner, but may not inspire any incredulity to a Chinese who has no knowledge of Catholicism. In fact, stereotypes are like viruses or chips through which minds are manipulated. Because they are created and cultivated, they can also be made to change, to say things, to communicate feelings and to trigger behaviour.
In the stereotype of the Muslim, all shared historical affinities and features with Christianity or Judaism are wiped away. Muslims are made not only to stand as separate from the Judaeo-Christian tradition, but opposed to it. The potential of conflict is created and increased by the mere presentation of Islam as an entity that seeks self realisation outside the hegemony of the Judaeo-Christian tradition which is expressed for ideological purposes in terms of democracy, liberalism, Human Rights, etc. Being separate is equated to denying the other’s right to existence. While Islam stipulates that it is first and foremost a confirmation of Christianity and Judaism, this truth is concealed and erased from the traits of the stereotype. It took European theology and Churches centuries, for example, before some recognised the affiliation of Islam to their religions.
Going back to the questions stated at the beginning of this report, one has to make a methodological reservation on the many comments and observations opposed to Islam and to Islamic traditions. These observations can be summed up in the single principle that one cannot analyse either the Koran or the Hadith with conceptual instruments of the twentieth or twenty first centuries. In other words, Islam, like any other system or set of ideals, ideas, laws, precepts, commandments and taboos can be understood only in reference to the cognitive, conceptual, ideological,sociological, historical, emotional, psychological and attitudinal realities of the people it was addressed to. The universal aspect of religion should not refer to interpretations which freeze the understanding of founding precepts and convictions to particular events or states of knowledge, but to the conviction that any social, economic, cultural or political condition as well as any knowledge are subject to evolution, to change and to transformation under the influence of each other and of the natural environment. The constant precepts remain values relating to justice, equal rights, right, human solidarity and respect of others as well as of the environment. Islam has therefore to be analysed and understood as would a system of ideals and ideas whose constants are the pursuit of social justice, equity, human solidarity irrespective of race, gender, creed or religion and respect of others and of the environment. It has to be understood as a comprehensive alternative way of life that superseded to a social order that had become
anachronous.
Islam came to Mecca - a small animistic village with a strong Judeo-Christian tradition. In addition to the Jewish and Christian communities that coexisted in this village, an important community of excommunicated Christians, namely some Nestorians and other religions fared along rather well with each other. Mecca was a village in which the rule of strong tribes over others was total. Slavery was an establishment. One of the worst curses a man could have was to have a daughter whereby the loathsome tradition of burying newly born female babies. Women were the property of men. Virtuous social values included strength and the ability to capture and enslave enemies. Islam came to Mecca as a liberating ideology for all the oppressed of the time. It made it possible for slaves to be freed through a number of
procedures, it limited the number of wives a man could take to one, although many men prefer to think the limitation was to four, it affranchised women who became owners of themselves and gave them the right to choose their husbands, to seek the rule of law for protection from abuse, to seek knowledge and education despite the will of their husbands, to run their businesses, to own property, etc. Islam also installed a legal system by which minorities were protected by law and ensured the right to practice their own religions, to have their own worship shrines and to be judged according to the laws of their own religions in private matters. Islam also protected the poor by abolishing a financial system that often resulted in individuals and whole families losing their freedom and becoming the property of money lenders. Islam instituted many laws that meant to protect the poor, the marginal and the vulnerable. Because of this, the first followers of Islam were women, slaves, poor men and women and some oppressed minority groups. Historically, Islam was what we could call in modern language a revolutionary and progressive ideology. It was far ahead of its time. Like all other ideals, it came under the attack of political usurpers who saw in it an easy way of satisfying their own aspirations at the expense of those of others. Humanity has known such usurpations when, for instance, the communistic ideal was turned against the freedom and the happiness of those it was supposed to affranchise and to make happy. Many analysts say the same thing about how the concepts of democracy and liberalism have been –are being – usurped and turned against the populations of many a country. Likewise, there have been recent cases of religious extremist sects which brought doomsday on their followers by ordering collective suicide.
Islam has, therefore, to be approached in a historical perspective and not to be judged or assessed by standards that are fifteen centuries younger nor according to what has been done with it or through it. This does not mean that Islamic principles will not stand the test of modernity, but that the analysis of Islam has to take place within the rational framework of scientific rigour and ethical probity.
Furthermore, as I have already mentioned, Islam did not pretend or seek to create a chasm between itself and other monolithic religions. On the contrary, it confirmed them and made being a true Muslim dependent on believing in their prophets and scriptures .Mohammed knew the other religions rather well. In fact, he belonged to a noble family that was in charge of the Kaaba, the Holy House of Mecca’s religious establishment at the time, and a cousin of his first wife, Khadija, Ouaraqa Ibn Naoufal was a respected Christian priest. This knowledge of the religious affairs of his society in addition to his direct social relations with leaders of various religions in Mecca heightened his understanding and tolerance of diversity. One famous Islamic precept which many modern self proclaimed clerics do not evoke as often as they should stipulates that no one can join a religion forcefully .
This precept implies that religion is an individual issue and no one should be made to declare or do something related to religion forcefully. This tolerance does not seem to be related to the frequent and too easily declared apostasy of intellectuals,, thinkers and writers of recent years. Many intellectuals such as Nasr Hamed Abou Zeid, Nawal Assaadaoui, Nobel Prize winner Najib Mahfoudh, and others have been declared apostates by some Mullahs which means that killing them has been authorized. In worst cases, intellectuals were assassinated, Faraj Fouda for example in 1992 and the failed attempt against Najib Mahfoudh.
There is knowledge of Islam in the West. There are even positive attitudes among Western scholars. Bernard Lewis, an authority on Islam, for example once wrote "Islam is one of the world's great religions. Let me be explicit about what I, as a historian of Islam who is not a Muslim, mean by that. Islam has brought comfort and peace of mind to countless millions of men and women. It has given dignity and meaning to drab and impoverished lives. It has taught people of different races to live in brotherhood and people of different creeds to live side by side in reasonable tolerance. It inspired a great civilization in which others besides Muslims lived creative and useful lives and which, by its achievement, enriched the whole world." Access to sources with positive attitudes towards Islam has often been possible. The question is therefore why a dialogue that would have a lasting and effective impact on Western populations has never been possible.
Dialogue is possible only in the framework of respect of the other, humility, recognition of his rights to his own religion and respect of Human Rights. Dialogue is not possible when a party does not think it has to negotiate because it is all too powerful, which seems to be the case in the current situation bringing Islam and the West face to face.
No discourse, no language, no symbolic which conveys hatred, the seeds of violence, and of anachronistic attitudes, should be ignored, let alone tolerated. One such discourse and symbolic is the one that identifies people, groups and individuals by a conviction they have, an intellectual choice or a religion. In fact, referring to a person as a “communist” in some countries would mean an invitation to exclude them altogether from mainstream political, social and cultural life. Convictions should not be allowed to mark identities.
Not all violence carried out in the name of religion is to be understood as motivated by religious feelings or convictions. In fact, religion which has, in the past, been used to justify the implementation of political models and to give reason for hatred and violence, is once more being called upon to conceal the real motives of new ideologies. The populations of the world enter in contact more often and in more diverse ways nowadays than they have in the past. More religions, more races, more cultural sensitivities are called upon to coexist peacefully than ever in the past. This peaceful coexistence, however, can disturb some political visions and the economic interests of some groups. An easy emotion to play on to set people against each other is still religion. This is why any introduction of religion in the proposition of political models and/or in economic alternatives – nationally or internationally – is to be considered with a lot of caution. Quite often, Muslims are asked why they have difficulties separating religion from politics like it is now the case in Europe.
In the West, the separation of religious organisations as well as religious belief from state related affairs and from determining social relations within the community was a result not only of political conflicts with the Church but also of the kind of developments which Europe and later on the USA were undergoing whereby populations had to enter into complex human relations for the success of which neither nationality, nor language, nor race, nor religious conviction was decisive.
When Thomas Jefferson decreed that "Divided we stand, united, we fall.", he was highlighting the political concept that was deeply rooted in Western philosophy and political thinking especially in the writings of Spinoza, Locke, and the philosophers of the European Enlightenment. The philosophical concept found an expression in political reality after many cultural, political and ideological revolutions that involved not only intellectual elites but the masses at various levels of their everyday lives. This being said, the separation which took place in the West was actually between the Church and the State, a situation which should be irrelevant under Islam as there can be no Church or clergy in Islam. In fact, what needs to be done is a definition of which spheres of human life and human activity will fall under religious rule, which is an individual issue, and which will fall under the rule of politics – of the state, which is the rule of public life. In other words, Muslims need to design a political model which will satisfy their aspirations for a rich and independent private life and a public life that guarantees equity, justice, respect and self government.
To conclude this report, I reiterate the caution that no religion, no text, be it religious or not and no social model should be approached with concepts alien to its own culture, to its own time and to its own conceptual references. This does not mean, however, to deny the universal dimension of religion, but to insist on the fact that universality lies in the principles, the values and the ideals which any human community should aspire to.
( I would be most appreciative of any of your contributions whatsoever.) |
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 MohamedMoussaoui
New Member
Joined: 27 Jul 2009
Posts: 1
Location: France
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Even about europenans we said that their families consist of male, female and their dog 
I can list lots of things on this.