Fundamentalist Christianity as Proxy to Fundamentalist Islamic Jihad, Part II

Because of all of these factors that I have stated in Part I Usama Bin Laden, and other like minded Jihadist leaders, have been able to create a popular following in the Middle East (and at the least, a tolerance to their actions and justifications).

Usama Bin Laden has stated:

These men [the September 11th hijackers] understood that jihad for the sake of God is the way to establish right and defeat falsehood. They understood that jihad for the sake of God is the way to deter the tyranny of the infidels...These men sought to prepare a response fo the Day of Reckoning. Faith in God and the Hereafter and emulating the traditions of Mohammed, may God’s peace be upon him, is what prompted them to leave their homes...So the case is easy, America will not be able to leave this ordeal unless it leaves the Arabian Peninsula, and stops involvement in Palestine, and all the Islamic world...[Because of] Bush’s actions the equation won’t be solved until the swords fall on their heads, with the permission of God.

Usama Bin Laden (in the eyes of the Jihadist Islamist) isn’t saying anything that is completely abhorrent to the society they are in and he isn’t saying something that couldn’t be justified by the Christian Bible if he was to use it for his spiritual and religious justifications. So coming from a Fundamentalist Christian perspective one would be able to wage a “Holy” war against a theoretical super power that was seen to commit atrocities against Christians every day and one could use the Bible to justify the means of violence (especially if one interpreted the Biblical passages above with a Fundamentalist slant). Hereupon we will now look at some quotes from Fundamentalist Christian preachers and from people who view the world in a Fundamentalist Christian slant. First we will look at the Baptist Reverend Jerry Falwell and his views of the world and of America:

The Bible is the inerrant...word of the living God. It is absolutely infallible, without error in all manners pertaining to faith and practice, as well as in areas such as geography, science history, etc...We have never been so prosperous. Yet, we have never been so secular and pagan. We are becoming both amoral and immoral. We are making secularism our national religion. The government and the courts have become, not neutral to religion as the Founders intended, but openly hostile to Christianity. And as we look with sadness at our internal demise, we cannot any longer ignore that external enemies are growing. This administration has given our military and nuclear secretes to the Chinese and they to other American foes. We have been victimized by traitorous behavior on the part of our leaders.

Falwell is essentially taking the same view as Usama Bin Laden. Numerous times Bin Laden has stated the inerrant word of God is infallible in all things and he has used Islam as a focal point in his political attacks against the Saudi government. Bin Laden has stated that the Saudi government has become hostile to Islam and that it’s internal demise is due to the fact that it’s leaders opened up it’s borders to Western (i.e. infidel) occupation by allowing Western oil companies and an American military presence within it’s borders and by lending out it’s help to the “Zionist” American enemy and that faithful Muslims must take action. Essentially, Falwell, with his views as such, he is just as justified in using violence and war for his agenda as Bin Laden is in the Fundamentalist Christian perspective (of coarse, the way American history has worked itself out and in part with the way Europe brought itself from the Dark Ages to the Renaissance to Enlightenment, Falwell doesn’t take a stance for violence, but the way his theology works, and from the Biblical examples I’ve used above, he would be justified). Now we will look at the Virginia based televangelist Pat Robertson.

In 1992 Pat Robertson was quoted in the Washington Post saying:

The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.

In many Islamic countries in the Middle East and Southeast Asia women are not treated as equals to their male counterparts, mainly because of pre-Islamic traditions and because of Islamic Sharia law. And in many of those countries when woman have tried to demand equal rights (such as in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan) they have been called heretics who are against the word of God and have been punished. Like Robertson, many fundamentalist Muslims believe that feminist are a menace to society and that they are against their value system. Robertson also uses the socialist accusation against feminists because socialists are seen as atheistic anarchists whom are against capitalism (capitalism being the perceived shining moral system of Christianity). Usama Bin Laden and many Jihadists Islamists have also spoken out against socialists and have sought their ouster from power in Egypt during the 1950s and 60s and when they fought to drive out the Soviet army from Afghanistan in the 1980s. Not incidentally, the CIA conducted operations in Egypt and Afghanistan which was meant to agitate the public and seek the overthrow of the two governments.

During a taping of his show the 700 Club on CBN (Christian Broadcasting Network) Pat Robertson called for the assassination of a head of state and a constant critic of America:

He has destroyed the Venezuelan economy, and he’s going to make that a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism all over the continent. You know, I don’t know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think we really ought to go ahead and do it. It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war...this man is a terrific danger...

Here, instead of a quote that can lead to an abstract argument that states it’s on par with Jihadist Islam, we have a quote from a mainstream evangelical (who ran for president in 1988) who is openly calling for the killing of an enemy of America (which in turn means an enemy of Christianity and God). Since Chavez is a critic of American foreign policy (and since America, in the eyes of the Fundamentalist Christian, is the sovereign nation of God, Chavez has attacked God) and has set up socialist programs in the government (since socialism is considered a Godless ideology which God finds an affront to him)he needs to be taken care of by any means necessary, in this case, assassination.

What we have seen is that a Fundamentalist Christian perspective supplanted into Jihadist Islamic doctrine can yield the same results, with the same justifications, as the actions of an Jihadist Islamist. So what does this mean for the Fundamentalist Christian American who subscribes to the unequivocal view that the Bible, the Holy Bible, is the word of God which supersedes all other wisdom and law? It means: [1] that the Fundamentalist Christian must look within his or herself to see if there indeed is a difference between any form of fundamentalism, [2] look at the Bible with a critical eye to see its contradictions to find out what it means to be a “true” Christian, and [3] it means that in order to live in a rational modern world(1) one must accept certain truths about the Bible, about religion and fundamentalism, and modernity.

For the Fundamentalist Christian to look within one’s self to see that all forms of fundamentalism are the same he or she must acknowledge the paradox of being a Fundamentalist Christian.(2) Even though the Fundamentalist Christian claims that the Bible is the word of God and that God never changes over time the Fundamentalist Christian essentially chooses and discards certain Biblical precepts based on how he or she wants to see the world. For one, this explains why there are numerous Fundamentalist Christian sects (i.e. United Pentecostal, Southern Baptist, Jehova’s Witness, and numerous non-denominational churches) because not everyone agrees which precepts to follow and which to discard. Yet this also highlights the paradox, because, essentially, almost all churches with certain rules and regulations are Biblically correct (if one takes a fundamentalist look at the Bible) in having those rules and regulations; the dividing line between certain Fundamentalist Christian churches is what those churches leave out instead of keep in.

Some churches, especially older Baptist and pre-Vatican II Catholic churches, don’t or didn’t allow women into the church unless they had something covering their head, adhering to what is said in 1st Corinthians 11:6-10:

For if a woman will not veil herself, then she should cut off her hair...she should wear a veil...For this reason a woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels.

Over the years though many fundamentalist churches have become laxed with this rule, yet they still adhere to a fundamentalist tilt. Many of these churches are on the forefront of the “culture war,” that the mainstream media loves to talk about, speaking out against “attacks” on Biblical principles. Yet many of these churches allow women to go into church unveiled and to even have women preachers, contrary to Biblical precepts. 1st Corinthians 14:34-35 states:

Women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

Yet these same Fundamentalist Christians will speak out against homosexuality, abortion, secularism, and other religious faiths because of certain precepts in the Bible. When the Fundamentalist Christian truly acknowledges this paradox (hypothetically) of Fundamentalist Christianity he or she can see that deep down they don’t hold an all encompassing fundamentalist view of the Bible because of the certain absurdity that some of these precepts seem to the modern mind. So if certain Biblical precepts are indeed absurd in a modern day context, and in a Fundamentalist Christian view the Bible is the word of God, then there is something wrong with fundamentalism.

Many Fundamentalist Christians speak out against Islam(3) stating that it is based on a violent book and is based on violent, terrorist like, principles. Yet in this essay it is shown that the Bible is just as violent (if not more) then the Qu’ran, and that if a Jihadist Islamist wanted to use the Bible instead of the Qu’ran and other Muslim literature, to justify attacks against civilians, he or she could. Yet the Fundamentalist Christian speaks out against this Fundamentalist form of Islam. Since, essentially, all forms of fundamentalism are the same and fall apart after critical study, when the Fundamentalist Christian is attacking Fundamentalist Jihadist Islam he or she is, in actuality, attacking his or her own faith, the faith of fundamentalism with a Christian tilt.

Secondly, to look at the Bible with a critical eye in order to find out what it means to be a “true” Christian a Fundamentalist Christian must fully study what the Bible actually says in context to how it was created and in context to the history behind it. Modern day exegesis(4) has shown how the Bible was essentially created and edited over the centuries and has borrowed concepts and stories from many other religions in the area surrounding the land of the Israelites, such as the religion of the Canaanites, Egyptians, Assyrians, Mesopotamians, etc. Assuming that the Fundamentalist Christian accepted the fact of the Fundamentalist Christian paradox, and that all fundamentalism is essentially the same, he or she can now see how there are certain precepts to the Bible that do not make sense to the modern day mind. The Fundamentalist Christian, through modern day exegesis, can see and understand why certain Biblical precepts came about, such as woman not being allowed to be preachers or homosexuals being considered sinners. They came about because of the cultural beliefs at the time, and naturally, those cultural beliefs were written down into the religious texts. What the Fundamentalist Christian can do is look at the certain Biblical precepts as the products of past thought and culture, such as not allowing the consumption of pork and blood vengeance, and then try to find the precepts that transcend culture and time, such as a universal love for mankind and a compassion for the downtrodden, and use those as his or her corner stone for their own Christian thought.

Thirdly, and in conclusion to this long-winded seven paragraph wrap-up, the Fundamentalist Christian with the above stated truths of the Bible, can then accept certain facts about religion and fundamentalism in the modern day world. When a Fundamentalist Christian can see (after accepting the previous two steps) that a Jihadist Islamist can use precepts from the Christian Bible for purposes of terrorism and can justify those violent attacks Biblically (as the previous Christian Crusaders did during the Middle Ages) it should essentially give the Fundamentalist Christian pause to his or her fundamentalist religious beliefs in this modern day world and should give him or her pause to criticism of Islam and any other religion. Firstly, about religion and fundamentalism, the Fundamentalist Christian should see that all structured religions that purport to give the answers to all of life’s questions are always prone to fundamentalist perversions, whether the religion is Christian, Islamic, Hindu, etc. With structured religion there is always a hierarchy that naturally appears(5) and will try to mold the religion into a certain viewpoint, people such as a Pat Robertson or a James Dobson can affect many people with their religious rigidity and in turn they can mold their “flock” into their likening because structured religion forces the removal of critical thought from the Fundamentalist Christian who is apart of the “flock.” This is the essence of what fundamentalism is. With this newly attained view on fundamentalism the Fundamentalist Christian can then see the modern world with a clear view instead of through the prism of fundamentalist religiosity and can accept a more encompassing and critical view of his or her religion, the Bible, fundamentalism, and the world.

Now the Fundamentalist Christian who has (hypothetically) realized all three of these steps can get to the true essence of Christianity which had been kept out of his or her view because of the Fundamentalist Christian box they entrapped themselves in.(6) Realizing the context of the Bible and putting into perspective the teachings and miracles of Jesus and having them stand alone by themselves, the now ex-fundamentalist can realize the kernel of truth that is Christianity which was previously surrounded by a fundamentalist world view. He or she can now have a more compassionate Christianity that can allow for critical thought, self expression, true compassion for mankind, a genuine empathy for the oppressed, and a non-religious spiritual connect with God which couldn’t be previously realized before.

Notes

1. To not be divorced from the reality that is the world that surrounds him or her. To realize that turning into one’s self and using the Bible as a shield to “protect” one’s fundamentalist values is by no means healthy or the “answer” to the world.
2. Which is, being a Fundamentalist Christian (therefore adhering to all laws in the Bible) one must realize that he or she doesn’t actually live according to all of the Biblical principles. The Fundamentalist Christian lives by some principles that he or she (or his or her respective church) chooses and ignores others that he or she doesn’t deem important enough. This is the classic term for a paradox.
3. Not the Jihadist concept of Islam but of all of Islam. The whole religion of Islam.
4. Which I will not get into detail about because the subject of modern exegesis and critical study of the Bible would span a whole term paper, in fact, it could be a dissertation in itself.
5. One example of that is that the original ministry of Jesus turned, after Jesus’ death, from 12 apostles into a Catholic Church with a hierarchical system with a Pope, Cardinals, Bishops, and priests in charge of over 1 billion people (with similar systems in the Eastern Orthodox Church).
6. Similar to Plato’s Cave.

Fundamentalist Christianity as Proxy to Fundamentalist Islamic Jihad, Part I

“So the people flouted, when they had blowen trompets: for whé the people had heard the founde of the trompet, they flouted with a great fhoute: and the wall fel down flat: fo the people went vp into the citìe, euerie man fteight before him: and they toke the citie.

And they vtteily deftroyed all that was in the citie, bothe man and woman, yong, and olde, and oxe, and fhepe, and affe, with the edge of the fworde.”
-Iofúa 6:20-21 (Geneva Bible version 1560 AD)

America is a very unique country. It was founded by people who were fleeing religious persecution from Europe and, who in turn, founded colonies based on Fundamentalist Christian(1) religious precepts. Over the centuries America has created a unique Christian religious tradition that isn’t seen anywhere else in the Western world. Out of this religious tradition has come a Fundamentalist Christian tradition which holds the Bible as the inherent word of God and has morphed into a politically conservative social and world view. While America and the rest of the modern world has progressed this Fundamentalist Christian tradition has not(2) and has lead to a rigid religious system with a Christian tilt that is essentially harmful to the human mind and body, within this modern day world. At the same time, since the 1950s, there has been a rise in a fundamentalist form of Islam which uses Jihad as a political tool in reaction to the political realities surrounding the ones who hold a Jihadist Islamist(3) world view. Contrary to what many Fundamentalist Christians think and preach these two very distinct forms of religion are essentially very similar in their world, social, and religious views, and in order to understand Fundamentalist Christianity one has to also understand and juxtapose it with Jihadist Islam, and when one looks at Jihadist Islamic reasoning compared to the book of the Qu’ran and Muslim society one can see why Jihadist Islamists reason as they do, and if one contrasts Jihadist Islamic reasoning with Fundamentalist Christianity and it’s reasoning, the concept of Jihadist Islam isn’t as foreign as one might think. And by looking at Fundamentalist Christianity in this light it begs the question of whether such a brand of reasoning should even exist in an American form of Christianity in this day and age and how to answer the Fundamentalist Christian view.

First, on Jihadist Islam. To understand the reasoning of Jihadist Islamists and their hero like status to some in the Middle East one has to juxtapose that onto Fundamentalist Christianity and their reasoning for past actions, especially in the Old Testament, and in turn, this will make one understand Fundamentalist Christianity. What Jihadists Islamists sees in the Middle East is an American presence that has set itself up there since the 1950s when the American government overthrew President Mosaddeq of Iran and installed the American (and secular) friendly Shah in 1953, it also sees American support for what they consider an illegal Middle Eastern (non-Islamic) state that set itself up in 1948, Israel, un-Islamic presence of American troops in the Holy Land (Saudi Arabia, the site of Muhammad’s preaching of Islam and of the number one holy city in Islam, Mecca), and the twice invasion and now occupation of a Middle Eastern country that was the heart of civilization (Iraq). Of course, using violence as one’s driving force for change isn’t agreeable to the temporary Christian mind, but Fundamentalists Christians (if they dare so choose) could justify violence on their religious behalf. Fundamentalist Christians in the United States see the rise of a one world government in an ever secular Europe (the United Nations, the European Union, and the International Criminal Court), they see the destruction of God in public life,(4) they see a Middle East that is controlled by the Devil (Islam), etc. The Old Testament gives Fundamentalist Christians just as much right to attack as the Qu’ran gives Jihadists Islamists. And one step further, the Old Testament also gives Islamic Jihadists an excuse to attack as well. Both the Jihadists Islamists and the Fundamentalist Christians profess that their book is the true infallible word of God, and since it is, it must be acted upon with full fervor. And, hypothetically, if the only text the Jihadist Islamic had (instead of the Qu’ran) was the Christian Holy Bible, he or she too could justify attacks in the name of God, Islam, and Jihad.

Usama Bin Laden has argued that on their attacks of the United States mass civilian casualties are acceptable (despite the Qu’ran’s explanation that no innocent human life shall be killed [yet the Qu’ran isn’t without it’s loopholes]) and with an understanding of the Old Testament this argument can be justified. Looking at Joshua 6:20-21 Yehoshua (a servant and warrior of God) and his troops have surrounded the heathen (or by looking at it through the light of Islam or Fundamentalist Christianity, un-Islamic/un-Christian) city of Yericho and they shouted and their shouts caused the walls of the city to crumble and they then “devoted to destruction by the edge of the sword all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys” They ended up killing everyone in the city whether they were children or old women (save the prostitute who had helped Yehoshua’s spies and her family) and they then burned the city down. Another story about genocide and the justification for the killing of mass innocence is from Numbers 31:7-11 and verses 14-18 when God told Moshe to make war with Midyan and when Moshe amassed an army of 12,000 the Old Testament said:

They did battle against Midyan, as YHWH had commanded Moshe, and killed every male. They killed the kings of Midyan: Evi, Rekem, Tzur, Hur, and Reva, the five kings of Midyan, in addition to others who were slain by them; and they also killed Bil’am son of Be’or with the sword. The children of Yisra’el took the women of Midyan and their little ones captive; and they took their cattle, their flakcs, and all their goods and booty. All their towns where they had settled, and all their encampments, they burned, but they took all the spoil and all the booty, both people and animal...Moshe became angry with the officers of the army, the commanders of thousands and the commanders of hundreds, who had come with service in the war. Moshe said to them, “Have you allowed all the women to live? These women here on Bil’am’s advice, made the children of Yisra’el act treacherously against YHWH in the affair of Pe’or, so that the plague came among the congregation of YHWH. Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every women who has known a man by sleeping with him. But all the young girls who have not known a man by sleeping with him, keep alive for yourselves.”

With this understanding at hand one can see that the Jihadists Islamist perspective on the killing of innocent Americans isn’t out of line when it can be compared to a Fundamentalists Christian’s evangelical-infallible-word-of-God interpretation of the Holy Bible. Whether they are women or children, non-combatants or combatants, if they are in the nation that is sinning against God or hurting a nation of God they are the root causes of the problem. The Jihadist Islamist sees America as one of the root causes of the problems in the Middle East, he or she sees that America is propping up dictatorial despots or elected officials whom are viewed as harming Islam(5) so the appropriate action of Jihad almost requires one (or gives cover of innocence for) to kill the innocents of a nation that is your enemy and the enemy of your religion. So mass killing and genocide through the use of unconventional weapons (hijacked airplanes and suicide bombers) and possibly conventional (a nuclear devise) by Jihadists Islamists has a precedent and a justification within Fundamentalist Christianity.

Of coarse, this isn’t the only account in the Bible on the killing of mass innocents, nor is it the only account of the killing of innocents to advance the cause of a people in which the death of innocent people is used as a massive cultural shock to the system they are trying to fight against. The attacks of September 11th against American innocents were supposed to be a huge cultural, and economic, shock to the American system that the Jihadists Islamists were trying to fight against. And it worked almost perfectly; Americans were appalled by the amount of innocent life that was lost and many lashed out not only against the attackers but also against the administration for not preventing the attacks from happening due to a lack of solid intelligence and the stock market took more than a year to fully recover. A perfect example of this in the Bible is in Exodus 12:29-32 during the killing of every innocent firstborn child in Egypt in order to shock the Egyptians and outrage them in order to move the Pharaoh to release the Jews from Egypt:

In the middle of the night YHWH struck down all the first-born in the land of Egypt, from the first-born of the Pharaoh who sat on the throne to the first-born of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the first-born of the cattle. And Pharaoh arose in the night, with all his courtiers and all the Egyptians-because there was a loud cry in Egypt; for there was no house where there was not someone dead. He summoned Moshe and Aharon in the night and said, “Up, depart from among my people, you and the children of Yisrael with you! Go, worship YHWH as you said! Take also your flocks and your herds, as you said, and begone! And may you bring a blessing upon me also!”

Looking at this passage with a Fundamentalist Christian perspective (which is that the Torah was written by Moshe and was dictated to by God and therefore it is the infallible word of God and that everything in the Bible is truth and should be heeded by all God fearing Christians) this can easily be interpreted by a Fundamentalist Christian that even though all life is precious, the killing of mass innocents in a country that oppresses you and affronts your Christian values and God can be justified in order to shock the whole cultural and political system to cave into your demands. So supplanting this Fundamentalist Christian perspective on this passage from the Torah onto the Jihadist Islamic who planned the September 11th attacks that killed over 3,000 innocent Americans you can see how the Jihadist Islamic could justify himself in the killing of innocent people. While Usama Bin Laden most definitely didn’t think that this would cause America to cave in to his demands just as the Pharaoh had to Moshe and Aharon he could have used that example in order to justify this political and cultural shock to America in order to catapult his Islamic ideals and demands onto the rest of the world, and most importantly, to the Muslim community.

The Jihadist Islamist perceives that his own fellow Muslims are being hurt by the United States through the actions of the United States in the region of the Middle East and of Muslim Africa. Because the Jihadist Islamist perceives the world as this way, with his people being oppressed and wronged, the Jihadist Islamist justifies that the only way to get results is to strike back, and this too, whether the Jihadist Islamist kills innocents or not can be justified with a Fundamentalist Christian’s perspective of the Bible, an example of this would be in Psalms 137: 6-9:

Remember, O YHWH, against the Edomites, the day of Jerusalem’s fall; how they cried, “Strip her, strip her to her very foundations!” Fair Babylon, you predator, blessing on him who repays you in kind, what you have inflicted on us; blessing on him who seizes your babies and dashes them against the rocks!

As with all of the other scriptures of the Bible, in the hands of a Jihadist Islamist whom looks at the Bible with a Fundamentalist Christian perspective (and even a Fundamentalist Christian whom would want to justify such acts Biblically) the Jihadist would and could justify revenge against America for it’s actions in the United States and he could also justify the destroying of innocent children in the process as it inflicts pain upon the enemy and is payback for the death of his own Muslim children.

Notes:

1. I use the term “Fundamentalist Christian/Christianity” to denote a certain type of form of Christianity. I put the moniker “Fundamentalist” before the term “Christian/Christianity” in order to state that for someone who holds a Fundamentalist Christian view they actually practice Fundamentalism with a capital F before they practice Christianity. By Fundamentalist Christian I actually mean a much broader term of people then one might think: This is anyone who holds the view that the Bible is the inherent word of God written down verbatim and that all of its precepts must be followed and one who holds a conservative political outlook.
2. By that I mean it hasn’t progressed in a “progressive” fashion. It has progressed, but only internally, within the Fundamentalist Christian community in order to answer to the questions of the outside world.
3. I too use the term “Jihadist Islamist/Islam” to denote a certain type of form of Islam. I put the moniker “Jihadist” in front of “Islamist/Islam” in order to state that for someone who holds a Jihadist Islamist view they put the practice and thought of Jihad before the practice of Islam. As supposed to Fundamentalist Christian, Jihadist Islamist is a much narrower term: This is anyone who ascribes to the view that they must wage a “Holy War” or Jihad against an enemy in the view that God wants them to take innocent life in His name.
4. The ACLU suing city governments on the removal of nativity scenes near public buildings, no more prayer in public school, Roe v. Wade, an increase in religious tolerance in America with the rise of immigrants and therefore causing the worship of God to “backslide”, etc.
5. The House of al Saud which rules Saudi Arabia, President Mubarak of Egypt, President Karzai of Afghanistan, etc.

Muslims and Sharia: The Real Sharia, Democracy, and Patriarchy

By Mona Eltahawy

This essay first appeared on Saudi Debate and then on Muslim WakeUp!, a Muslim blog which “seeks to bring together Muslims and non-Muslims in American and around the globe in efforts that celebrate cultural and spiritual diversity, tolerance, and understanding." On Muslim WakeUp! it was titled “Copenhagen Sharia Conference Celebrates ‘Heresy.’” Mona Eltahawy has worked for Reuters and is a commentator and an internaitonl lecturer on Arab and Muslim issues who is based in New York.

The views and opinions expressed in this essay do not necessarily reflect those of the creator of this blog and are the sole responsibility of the author. Essays expressing opinions similar to and counter to those of the creator of this blog are strictly for diversity and to start thoughtful and meaningful discussion.

This summer at the end of a day-long conference in Copenhagen on freedom of expression in the Arab world a young man with slightly faltering Arabic asked to speak to me.

“Would you give me one example of why freedom of expression and democracy are good things?” he asked after introducing himself as Abdel-Hamid. He apologized for what he described as his basic Arabic, explaining that he was born and raised in Denmark to Arab parents.

At first I thought his question was a joke. The other conference speakers and I had spent hours explaining how the sorry lack of freedom of expression had harmed Arab civil society. And surely as a Dane he appreciated the democracy and freedoms he enjoyed?

“No, really, tell me,” he persisted. “Democracy is the rule of the people. Islam is the rule of the Sharia. So what’s good about democracy and freedom of expression?”

When I realized he was serious – and when I began to see the direction his argument was heading – I dragged out my usual defense to his line of thinking: whose version of Sharia, I asked him? Iran? Turkey? Saudi Arabia? Egypt, my country of birth?

“The Sharia of God,” he adamantly replied.

“There is no such thing,” I told Abdel-Hamid.

That was essentially the message at another conference that took me back to Copenhagen in November at which speaker after speaker bemoaned the Muslim fundamentalist reduction of Sharia to a set of laws.

It has become fashionable among radical Muslims in the West to long for the application of Sharia. Abdel-Hamid, my summer Copenhagen interlocutor and adherent to the idea that there was only one kind of Sharia – that of God -, identified himself as a member of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, the radical Islamist group that wants to reestablish the Caliphate and does not believe Islam is compatible with democracy.

In many parts of the Muslim world, what the State has deemed Islamic is slapped with the label “Sharia”. So when a murderer or a drug dealer is beheaded in Saudi Arabia, it is ostensibly out of adherence to Sharia.

When a dictator or a regime feels the need to burnish their Islamic credentials – often at a time of growing radical Muslim opposition – they make their country’s legislation “more Islamic”. Take Pakistan’s late President General. Zia ul-Haq who in 1979 introduced the Hudood Ordinances, notorious not so much for making Pakistan “more Islamic” but for punishing rather than protecting women who have been raped.

Under the Hudood Ordinances, a rape victim had to produce four male witnesses to prove the crime or face the possibility of prosecution for adultery. President Gen. Pervez Musharraf on Dec. 1 signed into law an amendment to the controversial rape statute to make it easier to prosecute sexual assault cases. Thousands of Islamists gathered at separate events throughout Pakistan to protest the changes.

One has to wonder what kind of Islam those protestors follow and how it came to be so shamefully reduced to an obsession over sex and women.

As the Associated Press reported, under the new law, called the Protection of Women Bill, judges can choose whether a rape case should be tried in a criminal court - where the four-witness rule would not apply - or under the old Islamic law, i.e. the Hudood Ordinance.

And that is exactly the lie at the heart of the calls for Sharia. Why are there criminal courts in which the old Islamic law does not apply? In many Muslim countries, the justice system has been modernized and has adopted either Roman or Napoleonic law, with the exception of one area which stubbornly remains caught in the cobweb of edicts issued by Muslim scholars who lived centuries ago – family law. In other words, in many Muslim countries Sharia is used only to govern the lives of women and children with regards to marriage, divorce and custody of children.

How refreshing therefore it was to hear Emory University law professor Abdullahi An-Nai’m point out that lie at the heart of the calls for Sharia by saying it was essentially an attempt to “protect a patriarchal system by calling it Sharia”.

“I need a secular state to be the kind of Muslim I need to be,” he told the conference.

As Egyptian liberal Muslim scholar Nasr Hamed Abu Zeid noted, “Sharia” these days means nothing more than the “haram” (forbidden) and the “halal” (permissible).

The definition of Sharia as law is based on 500 verses of the Quran, Abu Zeid reminded us – that is just 16 percent of the Quran.

It was a relief to hear Abdel-Hamid’s adamant theory debunked in his own city – and how I wish he was there to hear. But more importantly, Abu Zeid, An-Nai’m and their fellow speakers were crafting the instruments by which all of the Muslims who were present could take the Sharia argument apart.

In a climate of growing right-wing anti-Muslim rhetoric, particularly in Europe, some in the Muslim community find it difficult to stand up to radical Islamist posturing on Sharia. Such hesitation is often based on a mix of reluctance to openly criticize fellow Muslims – so as to not contribute to a further demonization of Muslims – and ignorance as to exactly what the word Sharia means and what the concept entails.

The conference, called “Sharia in a modern context”, was organized by Democratic Muslims, a liberal Muslim group that was launched as an alternative to the voices of radical imams in Denmark during the controversy that surrounded publication of cartoons featuring Prophet Mohammed in Jyllands-Posten.

If the talks given by each speaker represented the tools which we could use to dismantle the Sharia argument, then the lives of the speakers themselves were the starkest examples of the danger of Islamist ideology run amok.

None of the speakers lives in his country of birth. That is a sad testament to the dangerously conservative environment in many Muslim countries today. But the speakers’ presence at the conference and at the various western universities where they teach were testaments to their courage and determination to continue their fearless work.

Abu Zeid, Ibn Rushd Chair of Humanism and Islam at the University of Leiden in The Netherlands, is former Professor of Arabic literature at Cairo University. In 1995 a Cairo appeals court sided with Muslim fundamentalists who raised a case to demand Abu Zeid divorce his wife on the ground of his alleged apostasy. The fundamentalists accused Abu Zeid of apostasy because of his liberal theories on Islam.
The day the appeals court issued its verdict, I was a correspondent with Reuters News Agency in Cairo. I clearly remember typing an urgent bulletin announcing the verdict while thinking it was time to buy a one-way ticket out of my country.

After the court’s verdict against Abu Zeid, Ayman al-Zawahri – who is today al-Qaeda’s number two but in 1995 was head of the Egyptian terrorist group Islamic Jihad – called for the scholar’s murder. Abu Zeid and his wife, fellow academic Ibtihal Younes, left for The Netherlands where they have lived and taught since.
An-Nai’m, an internationally recognized scholar of Islam and human rights, and Mohamed Mahmoud, who teaches comparative religion at Tufts University in Boston, were both students of Sudanese Muslim reformer Mahmoud Taha who was publicly executed for his liberal views by then President Jaafar Nimeri whose introduction of Sharia was opposed by Taha.

Bassam Tibi, a Syrian-born German political scientist who is Professor of International Relations in Goettingen, received a death threat in Karachi when he told a conference that Sharia was not divine.

His points were particularly pertinent to a Europe increasingly struggling with ways to react to radical Islamists. While lamenting European governments’ habit of turning to the most conservative in the Muslim community to speak on its behalf he vowed “In the name of multiculturalism I will not accept cultural rights as a cover for Sharia”.

“I believe in Sharia as morality not as state law,” he said. “I am not willing to shut up about human rights abuses by Islamists just because of the right wing. They are my enemy too.”

“Islamophobia is the weapon of Islamists to silence critics. I do not believe Europe will become Islamist – that is the fantasy of both Islamists and the right wing,” Tibi said. “Are European Muslims committed to democracy or political Islam and Sharia? The debate should take place in Europe.”

One of the best ways to stimulate such a debate is to highlight the views of the scholars who spoke at the conference both within the Muslim community and outside it.

It is imperative that non-Muslims hear the vigorous debates that are taking place between Muslims over controversial issues such as Sharia. The argument between Abdel-Hamid and me is the best proof that Muslim thought is not monolithic.

How representative are we? That is the question most often asked of those of us who call ourselves liberal Muslims. I will let An-Nai’m and Abu Zeid reply:

“Is my voice the minority or the majority? That is a value judgment,”An-Nai’m said. “The question instead should be is my voice loud enough? Islamists blow themselves up and they make the news. My lecture on human rights doesn’t make the news.”

“Islamic transformation is underway,” he added. “My view is demographically representative of the majority of Muslims but it is not very loud……Who defines what Islam is? Islam is what Muslims make of it. Heresy? I celebrate heresy.”

Abu Zeid simply asked “Who said reformation comes out of the majority?”

“We shouldn’t be ashamed of being the minority,” he added. “Mohammed and his people were a minority at first.”

And if you’re wondering what example I gave to prove to Abdel-Hamid that democracy and freedom of expression were good things, all I had to do was point to him and say “you are my proof”.

Hizb-ut-Tahrir is banned in most Muslims countries whereas in Denmark the organization is legal and operates openly.

Image From:
Middle East Institute