Muslim Heretics Conference

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A speech by HRH The Prince of Wales titled ‘Islam and the West’ at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies , The Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford

27th October 1993

Ladies and gentlemen, it was suggested to me when I first began to consider the subject of this lecture, that I should take comfort from the Arab proverb, ‘In every head there is some wisdom’. I confess that I have few qualifications as a scholar to justify my presence here, in this theatre, where so many people much more learned than I have preached and generally advanced the sum of human knowledge. I might feel more prepared if I were an offspring of your distinguished University, rather than a product of that ‘Technical College of the Fens’ - though I hope you will bear in mind that a chair of Arabic was established in 17th century Cambridge a full four years before your first chair of Arabic at Oxford.

Unlike many of you, I am not an expert on Islam - though I am delighted, for reasons which I hope will become clear, to be a Patron of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. The Centre has the potential to be an important and exciting vehicle for promoting and improving understanding of the Islamic world in Britain, and one which I hope will earn its place alongside other centres of Islamic study in Oxford, like the Oriental Institute and the Middle East Centre, as an institution of which the University, and scholars more widely, will become justly proud.

Given all the reservations I have about venturing into a complex and controversial field, you may well ask why I am here in this marvellous Wren building talking to you on the subject of Islam and the West. The reason is, ladies and gentlemen, that I believe wholeheartedly that the links between these two worlds matter more today than ever before, because the degree of misunderstanding between the Islamic and Western worlds remains dangerously high, and because the need for the two to live and work together in our increasingly interdependent world has never been greater. At the same time I am only too well aware of the minefields which lie across the path of the inexpert traveller who is bent on exploring this difficult route. Some of what I shall say will undoubtedly provoke disagreement, criticism, misunderstanding and, knowing my luck, probably worse. But perhaps, when all is said and done, it is worth recalling another Arab proverb: ‘What comes from the lips reaches the ears. What comes from the heart reaches the heart.’

The depressing fact is that, despite the advances in technology and mass communication of the second half of the 20th century, despite mass travel, the intermingling of races, the ever-growing reduction - or so we believe - of the mysteries of our world, misunderstandings between Islam and the West continue. Indeed, they may be growing. As far as the West is concerned, this cannot be because of ignorance. There are one billion Muslims worldwide. Many millions of them live in countries of the Commonwealth. Ten million or more of them live in the West, and around one million here in Britain. Our own Islamic community has been growing and flourishing for decades. There are nearly 500 mosques in Brtain. Popular interest in Islamic culture in Britain is growing fast. Many of you will recall - and I think some of you took part in - the wonderful Festival of Islam which Her Majesty The Queen opened in 1976. Islam is all around us. And yet distrust, even fear, persist.

In the post-Cold War world of the 1990s, the prospects for peace should be greater than at any time this century. In the Middle East, the remarkable and encouraging events of recent weeks have created new hope for an end to an issue which has divided the world and been so dramatic a source of violence and hatred. But the dangers have not disappeared. In the Muslim world, we are seeing the unique way of life of the Marsh Arabs of Southern Iraq, thousands of years old, being systematically devastated and destroyed. I confess that for a whole year I have wanted to find a suitable opportunity to express my despair and outrage at the unmentionable horrors being perpetrated in Southern Iraq. To me, the supreme and tragic irony of what has been happening to the Shia population of Iraq - especially in the ancient city and holy shrine of Kerbala - is that after the western allies took immense care to avoid bombing such holy places (and I remember begging General Schwarzkopf when I met him in Riyadh in December 1990, before the actual war began to liberate Kuwait, to do his best to protect such shrines during any conflict), it was Saddam Hussein himself, and his terrifying regime, who caused the destruction of some of Islam’s holiest sites.

And now we have to witness the deliberate draining of the marshes and the near total destruction of a unique habitat, together with an entire population that has depended on it since the dawn of human civilisation. The international community has been told the draining of the marshes is for agricultural purposes. How many more obscene lies do we have to be told before action is actually taken? Even at the eleventh hour it is still not too late to prevent a total cataclysm.I pray that this might at least be a cause in which Islam and the West could join forces for the sake of our common humanity.

I have highlighted this particular example because it is so avoidable. Elsewhere, the violence and hatred are more intractable and deep-seated, as we go on seeing every day to our horror in the wretched suffering of peoples across the world - in the former Yugoslavia, in Somalia, Angola, Sudan, in so many of the former Soviet Republics. In Yugoslavia the terrible sufferings of the Bosnian Muslims, alongside that of other communities in that cruel war, help keep alive many of the fears and prejudices which our two worlds retain of each other. Conflict, of course, comes about because of the misuse of power and the clash of ideals, not to mention the inflammatory activities of unscrupulous and bigoted leaders. But it also arises, tragically, from an inability to understand, and from the powerful emotioins which, out of misunderstanding, lead to distrust and fear. Ladies and gentlemen, we must not slide into a new era of danger and division because governments and peoples, communities and religions, cannot live together in peace in a shrinking world.

It is odd, in many ways, that misunderstandings between Islam and the West should persist. For that which binds our two worlds together is so much more powerful than that which divides us. Muslims, Christians - and Jews - are all ‘peoples of the Book’. Islam and Christianity share a common monotheistic vision: a belief in one divine God, in the transience of our earthly life, in our accountability for our actions, and in the assurance of life to come. We share many key values in common: respect for knowledge, for justice, compassion towards the poor and underprivileged, the importance of family life, respect for parents. ‘Honour thy father and thy mother’ is a Quranic precept too. Our history has been closely bound up together.

There, however, is one root of the problem. For much of that history has been one of conflict; 14 centuries too often marked by mutual hostility. That has given rise to an enduring tradition of fear and distrust, because our two worlds have so often seen that past in contradictory ways. To Western schoolchildren, the 200 years of the Crusades are traditionally seen as a series of heroic, chivalrous exploits in which the kings, knights, princes - and children - of Europe tried to wrest Jerusalem from the wicked Muslim infidel. To Muslims, the Crusades were an episode of great cruelty and terrible plunder, of Western infidel soldiers of fortune and horrific atrocities, perhaps exemplified best by the massacres committed by the Crusaders when, in 1099, they took back Jerusalem, the third holiest city in Islam. For us in the West, 1492 speaks of human endeavour and new horizons, of Columbus and the discovery of the Americas. To Muslims, 1492 is a year of tragedy - the year Granada fell to Ferdinand and Isabella, signifying the end of eight centureis of Muslim civilisation in Europe.

The point, I think, is not that one or other picture is more true, or has a monopoly of truth. It is that misunderstandings arise when we fail to appreciate how others look at the world, its history, and our respective roles in it.

The corollary of how we in the West see our history has so often been to regard Islam as a threat - in medieval times as a military conqueror, and in more modern times as a source of intolerance, extremism and terrorism. One can understand how the taking of Constantinople, when it fell to Sultan Mehmet in 1453, and the close-run defeats of the Turks outside Vienna in 1529 and 1683, should have sent shivers of fear through Europe’s rulers. The history of the Balkans under Ottoman rule provided examples of cruelty which sank deep into Western feelings. But the threat has not been one way. With Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798, followed by the invasions and conquests of the 19th century, the pendulum swung, and almost all the Arab world became occupied by the Western powers. With the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Europe’s triumph over Islam seemed complete.

Those days of conquest are over. But even now our common attitude to Islam suffers because the way we understand it has been hijacked by the extreme and the superficial. To many of us in the West, Islam is seen in terms of the tragic civil war in Lebanon, the killings and bombings perpetrated by extremist groups in the Middle East, and by what is commonly referred to as ‘Islamic fundamentalism’. Our judgement of Islam has been grossly distorted by taking the extremes to be the norm. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a serious mistake. It is like judging the quality of life in Britain by the existence of murder and rape, child abuse and drug addiction. The extremes exist, and they must be dealt with. But when used as a basis to judge a society, they lead to distortion and unfairness.

For example, people in this country frequently argue that Sharia law of the Islamic world is cruel, barbaric and unjust. Our newspapers, above all, love to peddle those unthinking prejudices. The truth is, of course, different and always more complex. My own understanding is that extremes are rarely practised. The guiding principle and spirit of Islamic law, taken straight from the Qur’an, should be those of equity and compassion. We need to study its actual application before we make judgements. We must distinguish between systems of justice administered with integrity, and systems of justice as we may see them practised which have been deformed for political reasons into something no longer Islamic. We must bear in mind the sharp debate taking place in the Islamic world itself about the extent of the universality or timelessness of Sharia law, and the degree to which the application of that law is continually changing and evolving.

We should also distinguish Islam from the customs of some Islamic states. Another obvious Western prejudice is to judge the position of women in Islamic society by the extreme cases. Yet Islam is not a monolith and the picture is not simple. Remember, if you will, that Islamic countries like Turkey, Egypt and Syria gave women the vote as early as Europe did its women - and much earlier than in Switzerland! In those countries women have long enjoyed equal pay, and the opportunity to play a full working role in their societies. The rights of Muslim women to property and inheritance, to some protection if divorced, and to the conducting of business, were rights prescribed by the Qur’an 1,400 years ago, even if they were not everywhere translated into practice. In Britain at least, some of these rights were novel even to my grandmother’s generation! Benazir Bhutto and Begum Khaleda Zia became prime ministers in their own traditional societies when Britain had for the first time ever in its history elected a female prime minister. That, I think, does not necessarily smack of a mediaeval society.

Women are not automatically second-class citizens because they live in Islamic countries. We cannot judge the position of women in Islam aright if we take the most conservative Islamic states as representative of the whole. For example, the veiling of women is not at all universal across the Islamic world. Indeed, I was intrigued to learn that the custom of wearing the veil owed much to Byzantine and Sassanian traditions, nothing to the Prophet of Islam. Some Muslim women never adopted the veil, others have discarded it, others - particularly the younger generation - have more recently chosen to wear the veil or the headscarf as a personal statement of their Muslim identity. But we should not confuse the modesty of dress prescribed by the Qur’an for men as well as women with the outward forms of secular custom or social status which have their origins elsewhere.

We in the West need also to understand the Islamic world’s view of us. There is nothing to be gained, and much harm to be done, by refusing to comprehend the extent to which many people in the Islamic world genuinely fear our own Western materialism and mass culture as a deadly challenge to their Islamic culture and way of life. Some of us may think the material trappings of Western society which we have exported to the Islamic world - television, fast-food and the electronic gadgets of our everyday lives - are a modernising, self-evidently good, influence. But we fall into the trap of dreadful arrogance if we confuse ‘modernity’ in other countries with their becoming more like us. The fact is that our form of materialism can be offensive to devout Muslims - and I do not just mean the extremists among them. We must understand that reaction, just as the West’s attitude to some of the more rigorous aspects of Islamic life, needs to be understood in the Islamic world.

This, I believe, would help us understand what we have commonly come to see as the threat of Islamic fundamentalism. We need to be careful of that emotive label, ‘fundamentalism’, and distinguish, as Muslims do, between revivalists, who choose to take the practice of their religion most devoutly, and fanatics or extremists who use this devotion for their political ends. Among the many religious, social and political causes of what we might more accurately call the Islamic revival is a powerful feeling of disenchantment, of the realisation that Western technology and material things are insufficient, and that a deeper meaning to life lies elsewhere in the essence of Islamic belief.

At the same time, we must not be tempted to believe that extremism is in some way the hallmark and essence of the Muslim. Extremism is no more the monopoly of Islam than it is the monopoly of other religions, including Christianity. The vast majority of Muslims, though personally pious, are moderate in their politics. Theirs is the ‘religion of the middle way’. The Prophet himself always disliked and feared extremism. Perhaps the fear of Islamic revivalism which coloured the 1980s is now beginning to give way in the West to an understanding of the genuine spiritual forces behind this groundswell. But if we are to understand this important movement, we must learn to distinguish clearly between what the vast majority of Muslims believe and the terrible violence of a small minority among them - like the men in Cairo yesterday - which civilised people everywhere must condemn.

Chancellor, ladies and gentlemen, if there is much misunderstanding in the West about the nature of Islam, there is also much ignorance about the debt our own culture and civilisation owe to the Islamic world. It is a failure which stems, I think, from the straitjacket of history which we have inherited. The medieval Islamic world, from Central Asia to the shores of the Atlantic, was a world where scholars and men of learning flourished. But because we have tended to see Islam as the enemy of the West, as an alien culture, society and system of belief, we have tended to ignore or erase its great relevance to our own history.

For example, we have underestimated the importance of 800 years of Islamic society and culture in Spain between the 8th and 15th centuries. The contribution of Muslim Spain to the preservation of classical learning during the Dark Ages, and to the first flowerings of the Renaissance, has long been recognised. But Islamic Spain was much more than a mere larder where Hellenistic knowledge was kept for later consumption by the emerging modern Western world. Not only did Muslim Spain gather and preserve the intellectual content of ancient Greek and Roman civilisation, it also interpreted and expanded upon that civilisation, and made a vital contribution of its own in so many fields of human endeavour - in science, astronomy, mathematics, algebra (itself an Arabic word), law, history, medicine, pharmacology, optics, agriculture, architecture, theology, music. Averroes and Avenzoor, like their counterparts Avicenna and Rhazes in the East, contributed to the study and practice of medicine in ways from which Europe benefited for centuries afterwards.

Islam nurtured and preserved the quest for learning. In the words of the tradition, ‘the ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr’. Cordoba in the 10th century was by far the most civilised city of Europe. We know of lending libraries in Spain at the time King Alfred was making terrible blunders with the culinary arts in this country. It is said that the 400,000 volumes in its ruler’s library amounted to more books than all the libraries of the rest of Europe put together. That was made possible because the Muslim world acquired from China the skill of making paper more than 400 years before the rest of non-Muslim Europe. Many of the traits on which modern Europe prides itself came to it from Muslim Spain. Diplomacy, free trade, open borders, the techniques of academic research, of anthropology, etiquette, fashion, various types of medicine, hospitals, all came from this great city of cities.

Medieval Islam was a religion of remarkable tolerance for its time, allowing Jews and Christians the right to practise their inherited beliefs, and setting an example which was not, unfortunately, copied for many centuries in the West. The surprise, ladies and gentlemen, is the extent to which Islam has been a part of Europe for so long, first in Spain, then in the Balkans, and the extent to which it has contributed so much towards the civilisation which we all too often think of, wrongly, as entirely Western. Islam is part of our past and our present, in all fields of human endeavour. It has helped to create modern Europe. It is part of our own inheritance, not a thing apart.

More than this, Islam can teach us today a way of understanding and living in the world which Christianity itself is the poorer for having lost. At the heart of Islam is its preservation of an integral view of the Universe. Islam - like Buddhism and Hinduism - refuses to separate man and nature, religion and science, mind and matter, and has preserved a metaphysical and unified view of ourselves and the world aruond us. At the core of Christianity there still lies an integral view of the sanctity of the world, and a clear sense of the trusteeship and responsibility given to us for our natural surroundings. In the words of that marvellous 17th century poet and hymn writer George Herbert:

‘A man that looks on glass,

On it may stay his eye;

Or if he pleaseth, through it pass,

And then the heaven espy.’

But the West gradually lost this integrated vision of the world with Copernicus and Descartes and the coming of the scientific revolution. A comprehensive philosophy of nature is no longer part of our everyday beliefs. I cannot help feeling that, if we could now only rediscover that earlier, all-embracing approach to the world around us, to see and understand its deeper meaning, we could begin to get away from the increasing tendency in the West to live on the surface of our surroundings, where we study our world in order to manipulate and dominate it, turning harmony and beauty into disequilibrium and chaos.

It is a sad fact, I believe, that in so many ways the external world we have created in the last few hundred years has come to reflect our own divided and confused inner state. Western civilisation has become increasingly acquisitive and exploitative in defiance of our environmental responsibilities. This crucial sense of oneness and trusteeship of the vital sacramental and spiritual character of the world about us is surely something important we can re-learn from Islam. I am quite sure some will instantly accuse me, as they usually do, of living in the past, of refusing to come to terms with reality and modern life. On the contrary, ladies and gentlemen, what I am appealing for is a wider, deeper, more careful understanding of our world; for a metaphysical as well as a material dimension to our lives, in order to recover the balance we have abandoned, the absence of which, I believe, will prove disastrous in the long term. If the ways of thought found in Islam and other religions can help us in that search, then there are things for us to learn from this system of belief which I suggest we ignore at our peril.

Ladies and gentlemen, we live today in one world, forged by instant communications, by television, by the exchange of information on a scale undreamed of by our grandparents. The world economy functions as an inter-dependent entity. Problems of society, the quality of life and the environment, are global in their causes and effects, and none of us any longer has the luxury of being able to solve them on our own. The Islamic and Western worlds share problems common to us all: how we adapt to change in our societies, how we help young people who feel alienated from their parents or their society’s values, how we deal with Aids, drugs, and the disintegration of the family. Of course, these problems vary in nature and intensity between societies. The problems of our own inner cities are not identical to those of Cairo or Damascus. But the similarity of human experience is considerable. The international trade in hard drugs is one example; the damage we are collectively doing to our environment is another.

We have to solve these threats to our communities and lives together. Simply getting to know each other can achieve wonders. I remember vividly, for instance, taking a group of Muslims and non-Muslims some years ago to see the work of the Marylebone Health Centre in London, of which I am Patron. The enthusiasm and common determination that shared experience generated was immensely heart-warming. Ladies and gentlemen, somehow we have to learn to understand each other, and to educate our children - a new generation, whose attitudes and cultural outlook may be different from ours - so that they understand too. We have to show trust, mutual respect and tolerance, if we are to find the common ground between us and work together to find solutions. The community enterprise approach of my own Trust, and the very successful Volunteers Scheme it has run for some years, show how much can be achieved by a common effort which spans classes, cultures and religions.

The Islamic and Western world can no longer afford to stand apart from a common effort to solve their common problems. One excellent example of our two cultures working together in common cause is the way in which the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is working with Oxford Univeristy to set up a research centre into schizophrenia for an organisation called SANE, of which I am Patron.

Nor can we afford to revive the territorial and political confrontations of the past. We have to share experiences, to explain ourselves to each other, to understand and tolerate - and I know how difficult these things are - and to build on those positive principles which our two cultures have in common. That trade has to be two-way. Each of us needs to understand the importance of conciliation, of reflection - TADABBUR is the word, I believe - to open our minds and unlock our hearts to each other. I am utterly convinced that the Islamic and the Western worlds have much to learn from each other. Just as the oil engineer in the Gulf may be European, so the heart transplant surgeon in Britain may be Egyptian.

If this need for tolerance and exchange is true internationally, it applies with special force within Britain itself. Britain is a multi-racial and multi-cultural society. I have already mentioned the size of our own Muslim communities who live throughout Britain, both in large towns like Bradford and in tiny communities in places as remote as Stornaway in Western Scotland. These people, ladies and gentlemen, are an asset to Britain. They contribute to all parts of our economy - to industry, the public services, the professions and the private sector. We find them as teachers, as doctors, as engineers and as scientists. They contribute to our economic well-being as a country, and add to the cultural richness of our nation. Of course, tolerance and understanding must be two-way. For those who are not Muslim, that may mean respect for the daily practice of the Islamic faith and a decent care to avoid actions which are likely to cause deep offence. For the Muslims in our society, there is the need to respect the history, culture and way of life of our country, and to balance their vital liberty to be themselves with an appreciation of the importance of integration in our society. Where there are failings of understanding and tolerance, we have a need, on our own doorstep, for greater reconciliation among our own citizens. I hope we shall all learn to demonstrate this as understanding between these communities grows.

I can only admire, and applaud, those men and women of so many denominations who work so tirelessly, in London, South Wales, the Midlands and elsewhere, to promote good community relations. The Centre for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations in Birmingham is one especially notable and successful example. We should be grateful, I believe, for the dedication and example of all those who have devoted themselves to the cause of promoting understanding.

Ladies and gentlemen, if, in the last half hour, your eyes have wandered up to the marvellous allegory of Truth descending on the arts and sciences in Sir Robert Streeter’s ceiling above you, I am sure you will have noticed Ignorance being violently banished from the arena - just there in front of the organ casing. I feel some sympathy for Ignorance, and hope I may be permitted to vacate this theatre in a somewhat better condition…

Before I go, I cannot put to you strongly enough the importance of the two issues which I have tried to touch on so imperfectly this morning. These two worlds, the Islamic and the Western, are at something of a crossroads in their relations. We must not let them stand apart. I do not accept the argument that they are on course to clash in a new era of antagonism. I am utterly convinced that our two worlds have much to offer each other. We have much to do together. I am delighted that the dialogue has begun, both in Britain and elsewhere. But we shall need to work harder to understand each other, to drain out any poison between us, and to lay the ghost of suspicion and fear. The further down that road we can travel, the better the world that we shall create for our children and for future generations.

The Prince of Wales - A speech by HRH The Prince of Wales titled ‘Islam and the West’ at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies , The Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford

Islamic Newspeak

A new version of the Prophet’s sayings is due to appear - as approved by Turkey’s Department of Religious Affairs

Brian Whitaker

February 26, 2008 5:30 PM | Printable version

A rather excited report this morning on the BBC’s Today programme hailed a development that "could signal the start of a reformation" of Islam.

The possibility of an "Islamic Reformation" of the kind that launched Protestantism in Christianity sounds attractive - at least superficially - and it has been promoted with enthusiasm by non-believers such as Salman Rushdie. But Muslims who are actually involved in trying to liberalise and reform their religion usually regard it as nonsense.

What excited the BBC this morning was the news [audio file, with a text version here] that Turkey’s department of religious affairs will shortly issue a revised version of the hadith - sayings and deeds attributed to the Prophet Muhammad. The hadith plays an important role in Islamic jurisprudence, particularly on matters where the Qur’an itself is silent, and it is on the hadith rather than the Qur’an that most of the silliest fatwas by religious scholars are based.

In the earliest days of Islam words attributed to the Prophet were passed on by word of mouth until they were eventually written down. How many of them may be genuine is a matter of opinion, but some are certainly fakes. In his book, Progressive Muslims, Scott Kugle writes:

"… It is very difficult to establish the authenticity of most reports that circulate in the name of the Prophet Muhammad. But clearly, many reports were projected retrospectively back upon the Prophet without being reliably attributed to him. Muslims are confronted with hadith in which the Prophet reportedly speaks about issues that did not exist in his lifetime: such as the Shia-Sunni schism, various theological ‘heresies’, and even the systematic collection of hadith."

The dubious material includes condemnations of homosexuality often quoted by scholars today which, according to Kugle, did not appear until long after the Prophet’s death:

"Forged hadith reports condemning same-sex sexual relations began to circulate in earnest during the Abbasid period (750-1258 AD), when it became aristocratic and courtly fashion to own young male slaves, employ handsome wine-bearers, and flaunt same-sex romances. Many hadiths were circulated in the name of the Prophet to address these practices, as part of the traditionalist cultural war on the cosmopolitan elite of Abbasid-era cities."

In the light of such examples, Kugle argues that "Reassessment of the authenticity of hadith reports is the key to legal and social reform among Muslims".

That, basically is what the Turkish Department of Religious Affairs has been doing. It has worked through the old collections of hadith, eliminating material that is "out of date, mysogynistic or anti-Christian" (to quote the BBC’s correspondent). It has also been removing "cultural baggage" which it considers to have no sound basis in religion - for example the practice of female genital mutilation and a ruling that women should not travel without a man’s permission. The latter, it says, was simply a safety measure at the time which has no relevance today.

In principle this is a valuable exercise, but it needs to be treated with a bit of caution.

In the Sunni branch of Islam (to which most Muslims belong), there are four main "schools" of law - Hanafi, Maliki, Shafii and Hanbali. Their relative influence varies from country to country but the dominant one in Turkey is Hanafi.

One of the key differences between these schools is in the reliance they place on the hadith. The Hanafi school tends to be more wary of the hadith than the other schools, with the result that its judgments are often more flexible.

It’s not terribly surprising, therefore, that a critical review of the hadith has been taking place in Hanafi-dominated Turkey. There would be more grounds for excitement if it was happening - say - in Saudi Arabia where the Hanbali school prevails and scholars produce the most conservative legal judgments, often based on literalist readings of the Qur’an and uncritical acceptance of the hadith.

One criticism of the Hanafi school is that its built-in flexibility has historically made its religious rulings susceptible to political influence. The Hanbali school, on the other hand, because it relies so heavily on the hadith, is relatively impervious to political influence; in Saudi Arabia it tends to control politics rather than the other way round.

In Turkey, the Department of Religious Affairs is not an independent body: it was established under the constitution to handle relations between the government and religious communities in accordance with the principles of secularism laid down by Ataturk. As a result of this background, no matter how academically sound the department’s editing and revision of the hadith may be, there will always be a question mark hanging over it - in the minds of Muslims living outside Turkey as well as the more traditionalist Muslims inside the country. It probably won’t cut much ice, either, with Turkey’s Alawi Muslims - from the Shia branch of Islam - who are said to number around 12 million.

It’s a pity that this very necessary process of reappraising the hadith has been tainted in Turkey by the state’s involvement. Separating the state from religion doesn’t just mean keeping the muftis out of politics; it means government keeping its hands off religion too.

Comment is free: Islamic Newspeak

Crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood

By Ibrahim El Houdaiby, Conflicts Forum, February 25, 2008

Those who believe that the ongoing crackdowns on the Muslim Brotherhood by the Egyptian regime will cause a major setback for the country’s largest and most powerful civil opposition group are definitely mistaken. Brotherhood members are an integral living part of the Egyptian society who can never be marginalized. In fact, the only possible outcome for such crackdowns is increasing the group’s popularity and radicalizing political Islam.

It has been 15 months now since security forces arrested a large number of Brotherhood members, including Deputy Chairman Khayrat El Shater, a handful of top leaders and 140 university students on the dawn of December 14th, 2006. Arrests were largely portrayed as a response to massive students’ demonstrations, but later charges on money laundry and leading and financing an outlawed organization were added. All charges were dropped three times by civilian courts, which found them to be “fabricated, groundless and politically motivated, with no substantial evidence whatsoever.” The court ordered the immediate release of the detainees; students were released a few weeks later, while senior members and leaders were rearrested from inside the court room, and were sentenced to a military tribunal, the verdict of which is expected on Tuesday.

It is clear the regime is trying to impede the Brotherhood after the group’s manifest success in the 2005 parliamentary elections, when it secured 20% of the parliament’s seats although competing on only one third of them. The crackdown was part of the regime’s attempt to silence its opposition to secure a smooth transfer of power from the 80-year-old President Mubarak to his younger son Gamal.

The regime’s objectives of impeding the Brotherhood to secure the inheritance of the presidency came in line with US foreign policy, which shifted towards a policy of pursuing “stability” rather than democracy, after the ascent of several Islamic groups in the region between 2005 and 2006.

This crackdown also included the imprisonment of the members of parliament, Ayman Nour for five years and Talaat El Sadat for one year. It also included prison sentences for four independent newspapers’ editors.

As the 69-session-tribunal in complete absence of rights, observers and activists is about to reach a verdict, it is about time to assess its impact. Today, more Egyptians are becoming aware of the unjust measures taken by the regime against the Brotherhood, and more are expressing sympathy and solidarity with the group. Hundreds of intellectuals and politicians representing all different colors of the political spectrum have signed petitions against the unjustifiable transfer of civilians to a military tribunal, more people continue to join the group, and student union and syndicate elections illustrate the vividness and strong presence of the group.

Arrests have failed to silence the Brotherhood and have only caused more friction in its relations with the regime. Fifteen months after the arrests, 25 Brotherhood students of Al Azhar University were arrested, and the same scenes of thugs entering Ain Shams University campus to prevent MB student supporters from voting in the SU elections occurred again.

This should be enough to prove that crackdowns will not cause a major setback to the Brotherhood as desired, but will only facilitate the presidency’s inheritance. With their failure to impede the Brotherhood, the regime will find no way to justify the suppressive measures it uses against the MB. Therefore, it is keen to reflect a distorted image of what’s really taking place.

It insists on convincing local and international Brotherhood adversaries that the crackdown is undermining the Brotherhood’s popularity. Several measures have been taken to confirm this assumption; security forces harshly interfered in the Parliament’s Upper House elections and manipulated the results, not allowing a single Brotherhood member to win, while independent TV channels were pressured to as not to cover the elections. State-owned newspapers spoke about how the Brotherhood’s popularity started eroding after their manifest success in the parliamentary elections in 2005, while in reality it was the reverse of a democratic process and the direct intervention of state elements that prevented Brotherhood members from securing some seats in the Upper House. Finally, Khaled Salam, IkhwanWeb co-Editor in Chief was arrested.

The regime also propagated the idea that it has drained the Brotherhood’s financial resources when it froze the assets of its leading businessmen. This was also untrue, as the frozen assets were private property of their owners and had nothing to do with the group. To stress this image, state security banned the Brotherhood’s annual Iftar (Ramadan gala dinner), which costs hundreds of thousands of pounds; and again state-owned newspapers claimed that the reason for cancellation of the event was the Brotherhood’s inability to finance it.

The Muslim Brotherhood has survived harsher crackdowns without compromising on its moderate stances and gradual, peaceful orientation. Yet these crackdowns have had a negative impact on the Islamist movement at large as more people became convinced that peaceful reform is unfruitful. Under Nasser’s regime, it was only Islamists who were harassed and persecuted, and this gave birth to some radical Islamist groups that continue to threaten global peace and stability till today, including al Jihad and al Qaeda. With the harsh surroundings facing the Brotherhood at the time, it found it impossible to convince those radicals of the correctness of its moderate orientation and gradual, peaceful approach.

Today, the Mubarak regime’s crackdowns are not limited to Islamists. In fact, his regime and security forces target every voice of opposition in all different ways. Besides putting political opponents and independent journalists behind bars, intellectuals are marginalized and their articles are banned in mainstream state-owned newspapers, and even cultural events organized by opposition activists are sometimes banned. Over the past year, Egypt has witnessed a larger number of workers’ riots and torture scandals than in has witnessed in decades.

With all that, it can only be expected that more opposition activists, whether Islamists or non-Islamists, will lose faith in peaceful democratic reform. For them, the regime has shut down all possible alternatives for such reform, leaving coups, revolution and violence as the only alternatives of bringing life to the political scene. Of course the Brotherhood disagrees with this view, which could lead to catastrophic results, but with the harsh crackdowns, it – as well as other pro-democracy groups - has a hard time convincing people of the fruitfulness of peaceful democratic reforms.

Conflicts Forum » Crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood

By HAVIV RETTIG

“Islam and the Koran have been politicized” by extremists and “there’s a lack of capacity in the Muslim community [in Britain ]” to hear liberal, tolerant Muslims, Maqsood Ahmed, senior adviser on Muslim communities at the British Department for Communities and Local Government, told the Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism on Sunday.

A photo provided by police shows the letters “SS” (standing for Schutzstaffel, the security and paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party) smeared on a gravestone at a Jewish cemetery in Czestochowa, Poland [illustrative photo].
Photo: AP [file]

The inability to hear the voices of tolerant Islam “isn’t someone else’s problem. It’s a problem of the Muslim community,” Ahmed, one of Britain ’s most senior interfaith officials, told the gathering at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem.

It is important not to let radicals use the accusation of “Islamophobia” to hide their prejudice, Ahmed continued, but it was also important “to look at how interfaith can prevent Islamophobia.”

One of the initiators of a London conference of imams and rabbis in 2006, Ahmed noted that “in Britain, there is a need for mutual partnership between the Jewish and Muslim communities, and this could be facilitated by the infrastructure established by the majority religion, the Church of England.”

The forum, which is meeting in Jerusalem on Sunday and Monday, focused on anti-Semitism worldwide, but added a specific focus on rampant anti-Semitic messages in Arab and Muslim media and religious institutions, including blood libels and references to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The forum hosted 280 participants, including ministers and parliamentarians from 45 countries.

It also saw the announcement of the launch of a new international coalition of governments and NGOs intended to combat anti-Semitism and a new scholarly organization intended to advance the study of the “oldest hatred.”

The International Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism (ICCA) was announced Sunday evening by Canadian MP Irwin Cotler and British MP John Mann. The organization will fill what many anti-racism activists see as a gap in international efforts to coordinate the many organizations and government initiatives worldwide dealing with anti-Semitism to bring “a critical mass of inquiry and advocacy” to the issue worldwide, according to Cotler.

“We’re witnessing a new, global, virulent and even lethal anti-Semitism without parallel or precedent since World War II,” said Cotler of the initiative. “It is not only essential to sound the alarm, but it’s time to act.”

The ICCA will deal with two forms of anti-Semitism, Cotler told The Jerusalem Post. The “most benign form” is the escalation of anti-Semitic hate crimes in Europe and elsewhere, Holocaust denial, the singling out of Israel and boycotts of Jews and Israeli nationals. Anti-Semitism’s “lethal form,” he continued, “is state-sanctioned incitement to genocide, with its epicenter in Ahmadinejad’s Iran and including terrorist movements which have genocide as their objective, anti-Semitism as their ideology and terrorism as their instrument.”

“We must now concern ourselves specifically with anti-Semitic terrorism, in which Jews are targeted as Jews,” Cotler added.

In announcing the new initiative with Cotler, Mann called for the Global Forum to be held in London next year.

Of combating anti-Semitism, Mann said: “The question for everyone here and for elected politicians is this: ‘If not me, then who? If not now, then when?’ The question is not ‘what would I have done?’ The question is ‘what will I do?’”

The first step for the new group will be to set up a “steering committee” composed of parliamentarians, scholars and NGO heads who will establish task forces on a host of anti-Semitism-related issues. These include anti-Semitism in the Muslim and Arab worlds, the parallels between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, boycotts that single out Israel, anti-Semitism at the UN, and best practices - such as legislation or activism initiatives - that can be copied from one country to others.

Also Sunday, Dr. Charles Small, director of the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism, announced the formation of a scholarly association meant to unite and help scholars and institutions that study anti-Semitism.

No such organization currently existed for the study of anti-Semitism, said Small, while just four academic institutes worldwide focused on the phenomenon.

The new International Association for the Study of Anti-Semitism will represent scholars “regardless of their school of thought, scientific approaches, academic discipline, or ideological opinion,” according to a Yale University press release. As with other scholarly organizations, it will organize conferences and oversee publication of research in the field.

According to Small, it is “imperative to engage in education during these times when some national leaders and social movements call openly for the destruction of Israel and its people in the most heinous manner, while other leaders and scholars in other parts of the world do not want to fathom this rapidly changing reality. It is the responsibility of scholars to understand and assess the current state of anti-Semitism” and “the destructive forces it unleashes, which affect [not only Jews, but] many [others as well]. This we know from history.”

The organization’s Interim Executive Committee will initially be composed of directors of the four anti-Semitism study institutes operating today: Wolfgang Benz of the Technical University of Berlin, Robert Wistrich of Hebrew University , Dina Porat of Tel Aviv University and Small at Yale.

UK official: Koran has been politicized (The Jerusalem Post)

Stephen Fitzpatrick in Denpasar, Bali | February 26, 2008

THE 2002 Bali bombings were not terrorist acts but “ordinary crimes” and the three men awaiting execution for the atrocity should have their convictions quashed “and their good names rehabilitated”, lawyers argued yesterday.

However, Fahmi Bachmid, from the Muslim Defenders’ Team, conceded that his clients could still then be convicted under an amended brief and, presumably, executed.

Appearing in Denpasar District Court for Amrozi bin Nurhasyim, Ali Ghufron (alias Mukhlas) and Imam Samudra, Mr Bachmid presented an extraordinary second appeal against the men’s death sentences.

A previous appeal, in December 2006, was thrown out by Indonesia’s Supreme Court.

The chief judge in one of three panels sitting yesterday, Ida Bagus Putu Madeg, allowed the matter to proceed and conceded afterwards there was technically no limit to the number of appeals that could be lodged.

The defence will rely on a 2004 decision in Indonesia’s Constitutional Court that only “extraordinary crimes” — which include terrorism — can be tried under retrospectively enacted legislation.

The anti-terrorism law under which the men were convicted was passed after the October 2002 attacks that left 202 people, including 88 Australians, dead.

Prosecutors want the trio to be tried under the crimes act, with any conviction still carrying the death sentence. Judges baulked yesterday at a request to send the matter to Java, where the three men are being held, saying they would hand down a decision on that matter on Thursday.

Prosecutors in the stifling courtroom were outraged at proceedings, describing terrorismas “something that is extremely cruel”.

Analysts including terrorism commentator Sidney Jones say the men’s death sentences will almost certainly be carried out, even though the Government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono fears a Muslim backlash once the fatal shots are fired.

Bali bombings ‘not acts of terrorism’ (The Australian)

Graham Stewart

Was England ever on the verge of becoming an Islamic state? In 1215 King John was forced to accept the Magna Carta, that touchstone of English liberties. But according to one medieval chronicler, only two years previously he was toying with passing the country over to Sharia.

The claims appear in the Chronica Majora written some years after the event by a Benedictine monk by the name of Matthew Paris.

In 1207 Pope Innocent III placed England under an interdict that effectively closed down the country’s churches. He excommunicated John two years later. Facing war with France and rebellion at home, the monarch was in a tight spot.

If Matthew Paris is to be believed, this was the background to perhaps the most bizarre diplomatic initiative in English history. John dispatched Thomas of Erdington, Radulus, son of Nicholas Esquire, and a cleric, Robert of London, on a top secret mission to Morocco.

On arrival, they approached the powerful Almohad caliph, Muhammad an-Nâsir. Their task was to win his military assistance to help to see off John’s converging enemies. Paris claimed that they brought a letter from the King offering to place England at the caliph’s disposal and promising that John “would not merely relinquish the Christian faith, which he considered vain, but would adhere faithfully to the law of Muhammad”. Far from being impressed, the caliph sent John’s emissaries away, curtly assuring them that he had no intention of allying with someone so lacking in faith that he was intent on becoming an apostate for the sake of political expediency. Thus rebuffed, John ended up having to appease the Pope and the barons instead.

Can this bizarre Moroccan adventure possibly be true? Although John was certainly exploring various extreme diplomatic options at the time, many leading medieval historians believe that the story of his offer to convert to Islam must be largely or wholly a work of fiction.

After all, while Paris may have been an early historian, he was also a propagandist, intent on misrepresenting the King’s position. On the other hand, he claimed an impeccably placed source for the story. Paris was a monk at St Albans Abbey where the guardian was Robert of London, supposedly one of King John’s Moroccan posse.

At any rate, if the whole story was a concoction, then it ended up missing its target. While subsequent generations of British historians have tended to pass over it as a red herring, it has gained wide currency across the Maghreb.

Only the discovery of John’s letter of self-abasement lying undisturbed in some Moroccan archive could prove the story true. And if we could read it now, would apologists for his late Majesty be able to assert that his words had, in fact, been taken terribly out of context?

The king who wanted Sharia England Past Notes: The Times unveils an amazing plot to turn this nation into a Muslim state (The Times On-Line)

Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent of The Times

Muslim leaders from around the world will tomorrow issue a statement to the world’s Jewish Community in “a call for positive and constructive action that aims to improve Muslim - Jewish relations.”

In the letter, which has emerged from the Muslim-Jewish study centre at the Woolf Institute of Abrahamic Faiths in Cambridge, Muslim scholars admit: “Many Jews and Muslims today stand apart from each other due to feelings of anger, which in some parts of the world, translate into violence.

“It is our contention that we are faced today not with ‘a clash of civilizations’ but with ‘a clash of ill-informed misunderstandings’.”

Signatories include Professor Akbar Ahmed, chair of Islamic Studies at the American University in Washington DC and former High Commissioner of Pakistan to Great Britain. Professor Ahmed also signed the recent letter from Muslim scholars to Christian leaders around the world, which has led to plans for Muslim leaders to visit the Vatican in an attempt to continue to improve relations between the faiths.

The latest letter states: “Deep-seated stereotypes and prejudices have resulted in a distancing of the communities and even a dehumanizing of the ‘Other’. We urgently need to address this situation. We must strive towards turning ignorance into knowledge, intolerance into understanding, and pain into courage and sensitivity for the ‘Other’.”

The Muslims note that Judaism and Islam share core doctrinal beliefs, the most important of which is strict monotheism.

“We both share a common patriarch, Ibrahim/Abraham, other Biblical prophets, laws and jurisprudence, many significant values and even dietary restrictions. There is more in common between our religions and peoples than is known to each of us,” they state. “It is precisely due to the urgent need to address such political problems as well as acknowledge our shared values that the establishment of an inter-religious dialogue between Jews and Muslims in our time is extremely important.

“Failure to do so will be a missed opportunity. Memories of positive historical encounters will dim and the current problems will lead to an increasing rift and more common misunderstandings between us.”

The Chief Rabbi, Dr Jonathan Sacks, is understood to have seen a copy of the letter. Responses from him and other Jewish leaders are expected this week.

The aim is to show that Muslims are willing to engage in dialogue with the Jewish community about issues other than the conflict in Israel-Palestine.

Sheikh Michael Mumisa, lecturer at the Woolf Institute, described the letter as the first in modern times sent to the Jewish community with the backing of scholars and Muslim leaders. “The message in this letter conveys to the Jewish community a genuine desire for mutual respect, for dialogue and deeper understanding,” he said.

Muslim leaders issue letter to improve relations with Jewish community (The Times On-Line)

By Aysha Chowdhry and Andrew Masloski
Commentary by
Monday, February 25, 2008

Notably absent from the presidential primary campaign in the United States is serious discussion on how to implement an effective long-term strategy for protecting the US from future terrorist acts. Many political leaders in the past have embraced winning “the battle of ideas” against Muslim extremists as the most important component of any strategy, yet this ubiquitous catchphrase stems from an erroneous, counterproductive framework for understanding extremists like Osama bin Laden.

The framework assumes that groups like Al-Qaeda possess a coherent and compelling interpretation of Islam that the US must counter to prevent Muslims from adopting it. This flawed understanding should be replaced by a more nuanced approach based on the true nature of the terrorist threat.

The “battle of ideas” approach is counterproductive for two important reasons: first, it encourages the concept of a Manichean struggle raging between two equally powerful and opposing world views, in effect legitimizing the extremists’ understanding of the struggle; and second, it overstates the extent to which Bin Laden’s worldview constitutes a viable theological alternative for the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims. His zealous religious views are not only alien to most Muslims living today, but have also earned a place on the fringes of Islamic intellectual thought.

For an effective strategy, the United States needs to take three important steps. The first is de-coupling Islam and terrorism. The 9/11 Commission report states that “the enemy is not just ‘terrorism’ … it is the threat posed by Islamist terrorism.” While it is true that America faces a significant threat from people who identify themselves as Muslims and dress their grievances in religious terms, this does not mean that such people are perpetrators of “Islamist terrorism.” The phrase implies that Islam sanctions terrorism and that Muslims are more likely to commit terrorist acts. “Terrorism in the name of Islam” is more accurate.

The second step requires recognition that most grievances expressed by extremists like Bin Laden are secular and political in nature. They are angry about what they perceive as the exploitation of Muslims at the hands of the US. They enjoy sympathy from Muslims who perceive the US - and the West in general - as perpetuators of an unjust global political-economic system. As many have already noted, the attacks of 9/11 targeted American financial and military complexes and not Western religious symbols. Though Washington should not accept at face value the legitimacy of Al-Qaeda grievances, we cannot effectively prevent terrorist acts from taking place without a better understanding of their ultimately profane roots.

The third step involves ensuring the US actively works for the promotion of human dignity. American policy makers should make a concerted effort to understand the circumstances of the countries of the Muslim world that cause a sense of deprivation and humiliation among their populations, as these factors contribute to sympathy for Al-Qaeda’s political aims. US conventional wisdom states that Muslims need to believe in an alternative vision for their economic and political future, though the vast majority of Muslims need no convincing that economic prosperity and political freedom are good things.

Muslims share the same vision held by humanity everywhere - a secure future for their children and a life defined by dignity and liberty. Thus, policymakers should approach Muslims as partners on the path toward bettering livelihoods in Muslim societies. If the US continues to be implicated in the social, political and economic underdevelopment of much of the Muslim world, Al-Qaeda will continue to gain followers who are blind to everything but the perceived destructive effects of American hegemony.

In the end, focusing on winning the “battle of ideas” obscures our view of what must be done to prevent future terrorist attacks. The US should recognize the true nature of the terrorist threat, identify its root causes, and partner with Muslims to eliminate them.

Aysha Chowdhry and Andrew Masloski work for the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. Chowdhry is a research assistant with the Project on US Relations with the Islamic World, and Masloski is a senior research assistant with the Middle East Democracy and Development Project. THE DAILY STAR publishes this commentary in collaboration with Common Ground News Service.

Don’t credit Al-Qaeda by assuming it offers Muslims hope (The Daily Star)

Catholic intellectual and writer, George Weigel

Boulder, CO, Feb 24, 2008 / 03:18 pm (CNA).- George Weigel, Catholic thinker and biographer of Pope John Paul II, delivered a lecture on Thursday on religion and world politics in which he argued that Pope Benedict XVI has provided a unique model for global understanding between Christianity, Western secularism and Islam. 

In the lecture, Weigel also called on Muslim leaders engaged in inter-religious dialogue to acknowledge and vigorously condemn the specific abuses of human rights and religious freedom found among some Muslim nations. 

During the lecture at the University of Colorado at Boulder, sponsored by the Aquinas Institute for Catholic Thought, Weigel said that Pope Benedict XVI was uniquely suited to addressing world conflicts grounded in religious differences.  Weigel believes that the Pope, especially in his 2006 Regensberg lecture, provides a “grammar” to world leaders that could help them understand and reform both the relativism of the secular West and the violence of Islamic extremism.

At his 2006 lecture at the University of Regensberg, the Pope said that religious violence and compulsion are rooted in the idea that God is pure will instead of a rational, loving being.  He said that Christianity’s belief in a loving, reasonable God has helped Christians reconcile themselves to Enlightenment values of religious freedom and human rights, while aspects of Islamic theology have hindered such reform among Muslims.

Weigel countered the media portrayal of the speech as a “gaffe” for its perceived insult of Mohammed.  Far from being a gaffe, he argued, the Regensberg address was an important reflection that considered questions important to world policy today.  These questions included:

“Can Islam be self-critical?  Can its leaders condemn and marginalize its extremists, or are Muslims condemned to be held hostage to the passions of those who consider the murder of innocents to be pleasing to God?  Can the West recover its commitment to reason, and thus help support Islamic reform?”

Weigel argued that no one other than Pope Benedict could have framed the discussion in such a way.  “No president, prime minister, king, queen, or secretary general could put these questions in play at this level of sophistication before a world audience,” Weigel said.

Pope Benedict’s lecture has given the world political community “a grammar for addressing these questions, a genuinely transcultural grammar of rationality and irrationality.”

“Far from being an exercise in theological abstraction, the Regensberg lecture was a courageous attempt to create a new public grammar capable of disciplining and directing the world discussion of what is arguably the world’s greatest problem,” Weigel continued.

Weigel also criticized some of the reactions to the Regensberg lecture.  Though acknowledging that Muslim critiques of the West are often “not without merit,” Weigel argued that the October 2007 letter from the 138 Muslim leaders “sidestepped” the questions raised by the Pope’s lecture.

Muslim scholars addressed the letter, titled “A Common Word Between Us and You,” to global Christian leaders in pursuit of inter-religious dialogue.  Many observers considered the letter an important breakthrough.

Weigel said the letter had spoken at length about the “Two Great Commandments” to love God and to love one’s neighbor as oneself.  However, Weigel claimed, the letter said nothing applicable to relevant issues of “faith, freedom, and the governance of society,” such as death threats against Muslims who convert to Christianity or the prohibition of Christian worship in Saudi Arabia.

He challenged the Muslim leaders to be more specific in future dialogue:

“Do these 138 Muslim leaders agree or disagree that religious freedom and the distinction between spiritual and political authority are the issues at the heart of the tension between Islam and the West, indeed between Islam and ‘the rest,’ and even more within Islam itself.  Would it not be more useful to concentrate on these urgent issues of classical reason, which bear on the organization of 21st century society, than to frame the dialogue in terms of a generic exploration of the Two Great Commandments, which risk leading to an exchange of banalities?

“Why not get down to cases?” Weigel asked.  He further asserted that authentic dialogue requires a “precise focus” and a commitment to “condemn by name the members of their communities who murder in the Name of God.”

Weigel also criticized the “secularization thesis,” which claims that countries become less religious as time advances.  He argued that in fact the secularization of the West was the exception, rather than the rule.  The secularization thesis, he said, has clouded the analysis of Western thinkers and politicians who cannot understand the religious basis of many world movements, including Islamic extremism.

The centuries-long Catholic encounter with the positive Enlightenment values of religious freedom and human rights, Weigel thought, could be a model for Christian-Muslim dialogue.  While not compromising with what Weigel called the “chaff” of Enlightenment scientific atheism, past Catholic mistakes and successes could help Muslims navigate reforms of their own religion.

Weigel cited Pope Benedict’s 2006 Christmas address as evidence the Pope approved of a similar strategy.  In that speech the Pope said:

“In a dialogue to be intensified with Islam, we must bear in mind the fact that the Muslim world today is finding itself faced with an urgent task. This task is very similar to the one that has been imposed upon Christians since the Enlightenment, and through which the Second Vatican Council, as the fruit of long and difficult research, found real solutions for the Catholic Church.”

Weigel’s lecture drew its content from his recent book, “Faith, Reason, and the War Against Jihadism: A Call to Action.” The lecture was co-sponsored by the St. Thomas More Society of Colorado.

Pope Benedict provides “new public grammar” for reform of Islam, says George Weigel (Catholic News Agency)

The first-ever, nationwide, random sample survey of Muslim Americans finds them to be largely assimilated, happy with their lives, and moderate with respect to many of the issues that have divided Muslims and Westerners around the world.

The Pew Research Center conducted more than 55,000 interviews to obtain a national sample of 1,050 Muslims living in the United States. Interviews were conducted in English, Arabic, Farsi and Urdu. The resulting study, which draws on Pew’s survey research among Muslims around the world, finds that Muslim Americans are a highly diverse population, one largely composed of immigrants. Nonetheless, they are decidedly American in their outlook, values and attitudes. This belief is reflected in Muslim American income and education levels, which generally mirror those of the public.

Key findings include:

• Overall, Muslim Americans have a generally positive view of the larger society. Most say their communities are excellent or good places to live.
• A large majority of Muslim Americans believe that hard work pays off in this society. Fully 71% agree that most people who want to get ahead in the United States can make it if they are willing to work hard.
• The survey shows that although many Muslims are relative newcomers to the U.S., they are highly assimilated into American society. On balance, they believe that Muslims coming to the U.S. should try and adopt American customs, rather than trying to remain distinct from the larger society. And by nearly two-to-one (63%-32%) Muslim Americans do not see a conflict between being a devout Muslim and living in a modern society.
• Roughly two-thirds (65%) of adult Muslims in the U.S. were born elsewhere. A relatively large proportion of Muslim immigrants are from Arab countries, but many also come from Pakistan and other South Asian countries. Among native-born Muslims, roughly half are African American (20% of U.S. Muslims overall), many of whom are converts to Islam.

 

• Based on data from this survey, along with available Census Bureau data on immigrants’ nativity and nationality, the Pew Research Center estimates the total population of Muslims in the United States at 2.35 million.
• Muslim Americans reject Islamic extremism by larger margins than do Muslim minorities in Western European countries. However, there is somewhat more acceptance of Islamic extremism in some segments of the U.S. Muslim public than others. Fewer native-born African American Muslims than others completely condemn al Qaeda. In addition, younger Muslims in the U.S. are much more likely than older Muslim Americans to say that suicide bombing in the defense of Islam can be at least sometimes justified. Nonetheless, absolute levels of support for Islamic extremism among Muslim Americans are quite low, especially when compared with Muslims around the world.
• A majority of Muslim Americans (53%) say it has become more difficult to be a Muslim in the United States since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Most also believe that the government "singles out" Muslims for increased surveillance and monitoring.
• Relatively few Muslim Americans believe the U.S.-led war on terror is a sincere effort to reduce terrorism, and many doubt that Arabs were responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Just 40% of Muslim Americans say groups of Arabs carried out those attacks.

Pew Research Center: Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream