Muslim Heretics Conference

The Influence of a Moderate Muslim Cleric

March 13, 2008 05:00 PM ET | Jay Tolson | Permanent Link

My profile of Sheik Ali Gomaa, the grand mufti of Egypt, provides a brief look at the work of an important Muslim jurist who argues that traditionalism, particularly traditional Islamic jurisprudence, is the best antidote to Islamic extremism. Followers of the grand mufti, including many of his former students at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, believe that his approach to Islam and Islamic law has a profound influence not just on Egyptians but on Muslims throughout the Middle East and even beyond. But others are more skeptical. They say that his position as a state-appointed official makes him suspect in the eyes of most Egyptians.

While both sides are partly right, the skeptics might seem to have the stronger case, at least if recent history is any guide. While Islam has prayer and mosque leaders (imams and mullahs), the religion has never had a formal priesthood. But it has long had an elite class of scholar-jurists, or ulema, whose deep learning in sharia (religious law, as based in the Koran and the traditions of the Prophet) and the different methodologies of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) has endowed it with special clerical authority. By dint of their scholarship, the leading sheiks of the ulema were empowered to issue fatwas, religious-legal opinions on matters large or small that might arise in the everyday lives of Muslims. At least until the founding of modern Iran, the ulema never ran Muslim nations, but good Muslim rulers, whether caliphs or kings, have always been expected to respect the authority of the ulema and particularly their authority as specialists on sharia .

But during the late colonial period, the authority of the ulema began to come under question in the predominantly Muslim world. Muslim reformers and modernizers began to criticize the high-ranking sheiks as being little more than functionaries in the corrupt, authoritarian regimes that arose as the European powers departed or relinquished some of their power. The reformers argued that an Islamic state, even a new caliphate, run according to the principles of sharia was the cure to the political and social evils that plagued the modern Muslim societies. These reformers also tended toward a strict interpretation of sharia , seeing it as a set of inflexible rules and prohibitions set forth in the Koran and the hadith (the accounts of the words and deeds of the Prophet). They proposed the creation of a kind of puritanical Islamic theocracy that had never in fact existed in the history of Islam, not even in the earliest caliphates that followed the death of the Prophet. Undeterred by reality, proponents of the Islamist agenda have sought to achieve their goal through both violent and nonviolent means, drawing on popular causes (particularly hostility toward Israel or opposition to the U. S. invasion and occupation of Iraq) to build their base. Yet while most Muslims might share some of the Islamists’ outrage, few share the Islamists’ ultimate dream. Indeed, as a new Gallup Poll shows, 93 percent of Muslims polled in 35 nations see themselves as moderates.

However out of touch they have been, though, Islamists and other Islamic reformers have contributed to a general breakdown of religious authority in the Muslim world—a collapse whose effects are being felt to this day. It is precisely because of the declining authority of the ulema that almost any self-styled mullah or sheik can issue a fatwa justifying barbaric punishments or legitimizing terrorism as jihad. And this situation unquestionably contributes to ongoing instability.

So how can a sheik like Ali Gomaa help restore order within the house of Islam? The skeptics remain skeptical because they say that the ulema continue to be tainted by association with the powers that be, who in many cases have grown even more corrupt and authoritarian with the passing of years.

Talk to Alaa Al Aswany, possibly Egypt’s leading novelist today, and you hear that skepticism. For him, there is no way for even an enlightened sheik like Ali Gomaa to connect with the Egyptian masses. They see him as part of the government, Al Aswany says, “and that determines everything: whether you are part of the government or opposed to it.”

Al Aswany’s hugely successful novel The Yacoubian Building presents the sad predicament of contemporary Egypt through the microcosm of a single Cairo apartment building and the lives of its inhabitants. Home to the old elites as well as the newly rich, the building even has its own rooftop ghetto, where those who barely eke out a living occupy improvised tin shacks. From that rooftop world comes a promising young man whose frustrations in life—some resulting directly from government corruption and ineptitude—drive him into the arms of the violent jihadists. Looking at a photograph from war-torn Iraq, the young jihadist lets loose a tirade that reflects the outlook of many in his country: “The children of Muslims are slaughtered in this hideous way, while Egyptian television is crawling with scholars from Al Azhar affirming that the Egyptian government is sound in Islamic law and claiming that Islam supports the alliance with America to strike Iraq.”

It is a seemingly damning indictment from the popular Egyptian perspective. But such a broad-stroke depiction is no more accurate about the world of Al Azhar scholars (many of whom are openly critical of America’s presence in Iraq) than it is about how Egyptians feel toward the various members of the ulema .

Because he is an intelligent, media-savvy scholar who engages with many of the practical issues of everyday life, Ali Gomaa has found a large following among young, well-educated Egyptians. Particularly since being appointed grand mufti in 2003, in charge of an office that issues some 5,000 fatwas a week, Gomaa has distinguished himself by his flexible approach to Islamic law. His rulings on matters as diverse as female genital mutilation (which he declared unIslamic), punishment for apostasy (there should be none, he ruled), and a woman’s right to divorce her husband are of considerable consequence for Muslims—and not only those in Egypt. And because his office is one of the most respected positions in the Sunni Muslim world, the grand mufti’s rulings help shape the evolving religious-legal consensus in a way that reflects his broad-minded Sufi temperament. (His rigorous interpretation of the legitimate uses of jihad places him at odds, for example, with the influential Yusuf Qaradawi, who has said that it is permissible for Palestinian “freedom fighters” to kill Israeli civilians.) In his frequent television appearances, Gomaa has won a following among the young by insisting that traditional Islamic jurisprudence provides the kind of practical flexibility that is missing in the utopian, extremist versions of Islam. Countering the Islamists, he rejects the idea that sharia should supplant the secular legal codes that are in place in Egypt and other Middle Eastern nations—codes that, in most cases, already reconcile elements of European legal systems with the general principles of sharia . And more broadly, he rejects the idea of a caliphate or any other kind of Islamic state. “Muslims,” he has written in defense of liberal democracy, “are free to choose whichever system of government they deem most appropriate for them.”

In a Middle East increasingly saturated with satellite television, the mufti and his growing cadre of supporters are changing the terms of public debate on the place and role of religion in society. And this is no small matter in the Middle East, where religion and religious piety are on the rise. Of course, harsh critics of Islam—call them the Islamophobes—say that Islam is itself the problem. They say that there is no truly moderate Islam and that Islam is fundamentally at odds with liberal values. They are quick to point out inconsistencies in even the self-proclaimed moderates, including Gomaa. (Unless read as it was intended, Gomaa’s ruling on the sinfulness of statuary could be seen as giving encouragement to the destruction of some of Egypt’s greatest archaeological relics—something he explicitly did not mean but which was suggested in several misreadings of the fatwa that appeared in Egyptian newspapers.) But the effort to cast traditional Islam as “essentially” illiberal is no less tortured and bigoted than similar efforts to suggest the same of Roman Catholicism or, indeed, any other religion. In fact, as Gomaa himself understands, if traditional Islam does not contain within itself the moral and intellectual resources to make it compatible with liberal democracy and tolerance, Islam will condemn itself to irrelevance and become nothing more than an ideology for extremists.

The Influence of a Moderate Muslim Cleric - Faith Matters (usnews.com)

Is hating Islam the same thing as hating Muslims?

Author: Esra’a (Bahrain) - March 13, 2008

According to Iman Kurdi, it is.

An excerpt from her article:

I don’t hate Muslims. I hate Islam.” Of course, these are not my words and certainly not my sentiments. They are the words of a Dutch politician. I will not reveal his name, because I do not wish to pander to his need for media attention.

But his words exist; they are in the public sphere. In a newspaper interview this week, he calls Islam “the ideology of a retarded culture” and goes on to say that “Islam is something we can’t afford any more in the Netherlands. That means no more mosques, no more Islamic schools, no more imams…Not all Muslims are terrorists, but almost all terrorists are Muslims.”

This is the response that I sent to the author:

Dear Iman,

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your very well written article, “Hating Islam is the same thing as hating Muslims.”

Based on your article I would also like to put my finger on a few more points. Many people paint Muslims as “enemies of freedom of speech,” especially considering the ongoing fiasco with the Danish cartoons. What they don’t understand is that many Muslims actually support the free speech of others as long as it is done respectfully and without directing hate towards us or inciting violence, even if their opinions go against the very core of our beliefs. I do think that a prime example of this is the Muslim supporters behind FreeKareem.org

As you probably know, Kareem is an Egyptian blogger and former student of Al-Azhar University who not only criticized Islam, but insulted it, compared our revered Prophet (saw) with pedophiles and war criminals, and got 3 years in prison for it (and 1 year for insulting the Egyptian president, making it 4 years in total.) So it is not very common to find a Muslim in support of Kareem due to the viciousness of his posts. But I believe it’s also a part of our faith to guide and have mercy on such people, and to also support them as their views don’t change the fact that they are our brethren. Kareem is in many ways hated amongst the religious Muslim communities within Egypt and beyond, and I personally receive a lot of death threats for having associated myself with this campaign, which is rather successful in terms of publicity. But even after a full year of directing the campaign, I still think it’s imperative that more Muslims do this type of thing. Because I think I am not only serving the cause of free speech, but also Islam, by showing the world that there ARE Muslims who support you even when their religion is viciously attacked like this, that we accept criticism and defend people’s right to express it.

I do not think Kareem was hateful in any way towards Muslims and never incited violence against them, even if he despised the religion itself and referred to us as being “misguided.” Here, I challenge your view that hating Islam and Muslims is the same thing. I am a Muslim, and consider myself to be a close friend of Kareem’s, who has become like a brother to me. I have many other ex-Muslim friends who loathe the religion, but treat me as their friend.

So here we get into another topic; perhaps it only seems as if hating Islam and Muslims is the same way if an inexperienced, ignorant foreigner would associate radical Muslims with the entire religion and its followers and thus resort to hate speech against us. But technically in our region, where many ex-Muslim atheists or converts or harsh critics of Islam reside, we cannot use this same argument because these people come from Muslim families or are close to their Muslim friends and for the most part have first-hand experience (many of which are unfortunately traumatic, due to ill-practiced “versions” of what people like to call “Islam,” but by definition is not.)

I know I lost a lot of respect from my family, friends, and Muslim societies in general for supporting Kareem and his ilk. It is worth paying that price. I think more Muslims should defend criticism, as well as the rights of other minorities (BahaiRights.org is a very important initiative based on the same premises) who are abused in our societies in the name of Islam. It’s our job to. For example before loudly denouncing Islamaphobic cartoons, we should take a look at our own series of anti-Semitic, xenophobic, racist cartoons that are flooding our newspapers on a daily basis across the Arab and Muslim world. If we don’t treat others with respect, and if we don’t pick at our own flaws before blaming others for all our faults, then why should we expect respect and acceptance from others? I believe we spend too much time defending ourselves against all foreign critics, and not focusing on what we do to our ethnic and religious minorities as well as to each other, which, frankly, is far worse by comparison.

Essentially I am not disagreeing with your article at all, but I am just offering a different perspective, one that I think is not really explored in the more “mainstream” Muslim media.

Is hating Islam the same thing as hating Muslims? - Mideast Youth - Thinking Ahead

Alliance looks to bridge the gap between Islam and the West

The Alliance of Civilizations aims to heal the wounds of conflict through education, viable integration policies and better-informed dialogue with the media

By Shlomo Ben-Ami
COPYRIGHT: PROJECT SYNDICATE
Sunday, Feb 17, 2008, Page 9

The first International Forum of the Alliance of Civilizations, conceived as an antidote to the idea that the world is doomed to a “clash of civilizations,” recently met in Madrid and revealed that there is more than a grain of truth in Robert Kagan’s idea that Americans are from Mars and Europeans from Venus. Ever since Sept., 11, 2001, the US has been engaged in a crusade against the forces of evil in the Muslim world. By contrast, the March 11, 2004, terrorist attack on Spain, which left 200 dead, triggered an “anti-crusade” that seeks to disarm extremism by building bridges of understanding and reconciliation with Islam.

Co-sponsored by Spain and Turkey, the Alliance of Civilizations initiative is not devoid of political calculation. To the Spaniards, it helps to justify their abrupt withdrawal from Iraq in 2004; for the Turks, it is yet another vehicle in their struggle, as the vital bridge between Islam and the West, for admission into the EU.

A loose and somewhat confused project, the Alliance of Civilizations aims to heal the wounds of conflict between Islam and the West through education, viable integration policies and a better-informed dialogue with the media. But it suffers from the major global players’ profound skepticism, with the US, Russia and, for that matter, the EU showing no real enthusiasm for it.

However vague, the alliance of civilizations idea certainly cannot do more harm than war against Islamic extremism. After all, none of the Muslim world’s problems and conflicts with the West are susceptible to a military solution. Moreover, the alliance is not an entirely incoherent proposal if the objective is that the West disengage from the politics of hubris and establish a genuine sphere of cooperation with the Muslim world in economics, culture and science.

Of course, the idea is held back by the inner workings of both parts of the proposed alliance. Many in the West question whether Islam is compatible with human rights and Western concepts of liberty. Many Muslims who have been fighting for years for ?their countries’ modernization have so far failed to find a lucid response to the progressive wave of radical Islam.

To claim that Islam is incompatible with human rights is to consider it a civilization too hidebound to change. This is a historic fallacy. Nor is the claim that Islam is intrinsically inimical to innovation viable, because Muslim civilization has contributed mightily to science and art throughout history.

Today, Western universities are replete with distinguished Arab scholars in almost every field — the result of a brain drain that itself reflects the Islamic world’s centuries of decline. In 2005, the 17 countries of the Arab world produced 13,444 scientific publications, fewer than the 15,455 achieved by Harvard University alone.

Enemies of reason, however, are also to be found in the West. We live in an age in which many people are disillusioned with secular politics and are turning to religion instead, not only throughout the Muslim world, but in the core of Western civilization, Christian Europe and Evangelist US. Nor is the Jewish state of Israel, where Messianic fanatics and religious nationalists have embraced a political theology that questions the very legitimacy of the democratic institutions, immune from this phenomenon.

The current crisis of Islam might not be congenital, but Islam’s predicament is acute. The question is this: Are Muslims ready to accept Khomeini’s dictum that “Islam is politics or it is nothing” is wrong, that Islam is a religion and not a form of government and that, as in the Christian world, there is a sphere for Caesar and a sphere for God? Those in the Muslim world who want to embrace reform must be driven by the conviction that theocracy has never served as a vehicle for human progress.

Of course, the Alliance of Civilizations should not attempt to bridge differences by defending moral relativism. If it is driven by a Western guilt complex that assumes that the solution simply lies in greater empathy for the Muslim predicament, then the skeptics are bound to be vindicated.

For the alliance to have any chance of success, the emphasis must be on reciprocity. Tolerance and religious freedom must be mutual. Islam’s part in the deal must include a guarantee of human rights and civil liberties, improvement in women’s status and realistic policies to stem the Islamic world’s demographic explosion.

Some, as usual, will claim that the Arab-Israeli conflict lies at the root of the problems that exist between Islam and the West and that resolving the Palestinians’ plight will contribute immensely to smoother relations. But Arabs and Muslims must stop deluding themselves that the Israel-Palestine dispute is what is holding them back. Ending the US occupation in Iraq and imposing an Arab-Israeli peace would help, but they are no panacea. The fight to eradicate misery, illiteracy and corruption, and Islam’s embrace of science, do not depend on the results of the Middle East peace process.

Shlomo Ben-Ami, a former Israeli foreign minister, now serves as the vice president of the Toledo International Center for Peace in Spain.

Taipei Times - archives

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 09:26:56

John McCain (L) and Rod Parsley

Televangelist Rod Parsley, a key McCain ally in Ohio and his spiritual adviser, has called for eradicating Islam as a ‘false religion’.
Senator John McCain hailed Parsley, as the Ohio megachurch pastor called upon Christians to wage a “war” against the Islam to destroy it.
On February 26, McCain appeared at a campaign rally in Cincinnati with the Reverend Rod Parsley of the World Harvest Church of Columbus. During the rally McCain called the evangelical minister a “spiritual guide.”
The leader of a 12,000-member congregation, Parsley has written several books outlining his fundamentalist religious outlook.
Parsley in his book “The 2005 Silent No More” in a chapter titled “Islam: The Deception of Allah,” warns there is a “war between Islam and Christian civilization.”
He also calls Islam as an “anti-Christ religion”, urging the US to launch a new crusade to eradicate Islam.
In the past Parsley’s church has been accused of engaging in pro-Republican partisan activities in violation of its tax-exempt status.
McCain’s relationship with Parsley is politically significant. In 2004, Parsley’s church was credited with driving Christian fundamentalist voters to the polls for George W. Bush.
JM/PA

McCain’s advisor: Destroy Islam (Press TV)

Challenges, opportunities: Islam in the West

By Tariq Ramadan

He has been banned from entering the United States, he’s advised Scotland Yard, the British Government and the previous Australian Government. He is accused of doublespeak and terrorist links. What did Oxford-based Muslim scholar, Tariq Ramadan, have to say to an international audience in Brisbane?

I’m used to saying when I begin a lecture: look, first remember I’m not representing all the Muslims, because there are trends.

I’m from the reformist trend, which is saying something which is simple. I want to be faithful to the Islamic principles but to take into account the context and the situation, the environment within which I live.

I would say that if you look at the Muslims throughout the world, even in this country, it is the mainstream. The mainstream are reformists. Now it’s true that the six categories are not closed categories. The mystics can be also reformists or they can be literalists or traditionalists, it depends.

So the “Islamic” universal reference is as complex as the Christian one, and you show respect to the people when you accept from the beginning that they are as complex as you are.

So I think that yes, you have literalists, you have people in this country saying, ‘We don’t have to mix. This is not our country.’ You have literalists and you have also traditionalists. That’s fine.

The problem is for us to have this intra-community dialogue, to accept the different trends. But you should know that the mainstream is for the Muslims to be faithful to the principles and at the same time facing the challenges of our world.

US ban

I am obliged, being here and having been invited in this country, to say two words about some of the articles that were published during the last two days, repeating things that are simply unacceptable, asking the [Australian] Government to follow in the footsteps of the American policy when the American government is really doing wrong.

Two things that I wanted to say. The first is - yes, so far I am banned from the States. I got the visa in 2004 and this was banned nine days before I was to go for a double tenure position at Notre Dame University. I was asking for two years with ACLU, American Association of University Professors, and the American Academy of Religions, plus 18 universities, we want to know why.

And we got no answer until last September. Last September we got an answer, and this answer is as follows, because I was asked when I went for the interview, and the interview was…80 per cent of the questions were about my position on Iraq and Palestine. It has nothing to do with terrorism. By the way, afterward they withdrew everything which has to do with terrorists and they just were saying ‘we will come with an answer’, and they came.

I was asked if I gave money for some organisations and I said yes, 12 organisations, among them there is one organisation…and they said afterward, two years, you should have known that this organisation was connected to Hamas. The point is that this organisation is today officially recognised in Europe, it’s not blacklisted.

But the most important point is that I gave this money between ‘98 and 2002, one year before this organisation was blacklisted in the States. I should then reasonably have known one year before the homeland security that this organisation was to be blacklisted one year later. You laugh? And this is why I cannot go.

But in fact it is not for that, it’s because, as I was told clearly, that my stance on Iraq, saying what you are doing there is illegal, and I will never support what you are doing in Iraq, and I am critical towards your unilateral support of Israel against the rights of the Palestinians. I said that, I repeat it. And it’s your honour today to welcome me here when you don’t accept to be banned from a country in the name of freedom of speech.

The point for me, and I said it, I will never confuse between the Americans and their current government because I really admire all these people, all these American professors, teachers, organisations, people supporting and saying no to this government.

To be banned from the current Bush administration is much more an honour than a dishonour for me. Criticising governments when they are doing wrong is the dignity of the human beings, it’s the dignity.

Views on education:

I’m not promoting something which is a parallel system. I think that the future is to be together. I am coming from this system which is common … following the state school system to be together. I learned a lot by being with non-Muslims. I think that I can understand that some are not happy with the state’s official system and they want something which is to protect their kids.

I can understand this but I think that this is and could just lead us towards self-segregation. We need to be together. But it means that we have a very strong supplementary system which is what we are providing after school, on Sunday, on Saturday and after school. Here we need people to be a bit specialised, we need to be creative here.

Some of our kids, they don’t want to go and every year they are repeating the same thing. We are destroying ourselves, the teaching of Arabic, in the way we are dealing with it in the supplementary schooling, in many, many organisations, because we are asking people, ‘You know Arabic…you are going to be the teacher in Arabic.’ But I can know Arabic but I cannot be a good teacher. It’s not because I know the language that I know how to teach it.

So the point here … some of our kids are going to schools during the week and in the schools they know how to ask questions, to be critical. They go to the mosque during the weekend; ‘keep quiet, not a word, you have to listen’. No critical mind within the religious community. This is completely wrong.

So we have to reform our way of teaching according to the environment. And by the way, what we want is to do this in an Islamic majority country. We need more critical minds, asking questions, which was exactly what the companions were doing with the Prophet, peace be upon him, asking questions.

So we have to work on different fields; primary, secondary, what you are doing here, once again, university. We need spaces where we can teach, and the Muslims should be involved. There is suspicion, we all know that. There is suspicion around the West that we think that a committed Muslim cannot be objective with his or her own religion.

It’s as if to teach Islam you should be a non-Muslim to be objective, while when it comes to Christianity, to Judaism, to Buddhism, to feminism, to atheism, to Marxism, you can be from within and we think that you can be objective.

I’m sorry, you can be a completely fully convinced Muslim and be objective with it and this what we want for the future. We want Muslims to be at the highest level of scholarship to be able to be objective with the matter they are teaching, the discipline they are teaching and at the same time to be respected within academia. This is the future, so education is essential.

This is an edited transcript of an address given by Professor Tariq Ramadan to a conference in Brisbane on March 3 2008: “The Challenges and Opportunities of Islam in the West: The Case of Australia”. He is senior research fellow at St Antony’s College Oxford and the Lokahi Foundation London, and also president of the European Muslim Network in Brussels. For more on Tariq Ramadan’s address, go to ABC Radio National’s Encounter website.

Challenges, opportunities: Islam and the West (ABC.net)