From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Mon 11 Nov 2002 - 01:10:16 GMT
TRANSFORMING SOCIETIES - AND THE WORLD
It has long been obvious that the same Islamic predispositions -
an inability to come to terms with state secularism, religious
pluralism,
and universal adult suffrage, of which the mirror image is a
visceral
longing for the hermetic and exsclusive theocracy of traditional
Islam -
has been forming the attitudes of the Muslim immigrant
population of
Western Europe, especially Britain, in much the same measure as
they
have those of Muslims elsewhere, confronted with democratic
pluralism.
A general statement of the Muslim position will be found in
Sheikh
Shabbir Akhtar's Be Careful with Muhammed: the Salman
Rushdie
Affair (13). This is far more than just a defense of the Muslim
stand in
that affair. despite the author's protestations to the contrary, it is
difficult to see it as other than an implicit justification of the
Muslims'
right to set up an Islamic theocracy in Britain as being what he
considers to be the only solution to the problem of the Muslim
theocrat's
irreconcilable confrontation with secularism. He says:
"Yet one needs to rise above one's ethnocentricity to see what
cultural memories the democracy evokes in the Muslim mind. For
theocracy is as precious to Muslims as democracy is to
Westerners..."
I myself have no difficulty at all in understanding "what cultural
memories theocracy evokes in the muslim mind." But, as usual
refusing
to heed calls for political correctness, I insist on saying that I have
myself no sympathy whatsoever for the egregious arrogance of
this
demand from recent immigrants into my native land. If they truly
find
life in a secular state intolerable, why do they not now return to
the
Islamic states from which they came rather than demanding that
the
host country make radical constitutional changes to accommodate
them?
It is characteristic of a secular, pluralist democracy that all
religious beliefs are tolerated as long as they remain, within
reason,
within the limits of personal belief and do not impinge unduly
upon
those who do not share those beliefs. Or, to put it another way,
while
religious beliefs are tolerated, religious practices and institutions
may
not necessarily be accorded the same freedom if they conflict with
the
law or constitution of the wider state. But this "live and let live"
approach is apparently unacceptable to many Muslim spokesmen,
of
whose attitudes the following quotation is typical: "The
implementation
of Islam as a complete code of life cannot be limited to the home
and to
personal relationships. It is to be sought and achieved in society as
a
whole."
Those words were preached from the minbar of bradford,
England's mosque. A well-known imam in France is reported as
preaching to the effect that, "There can be no government contrary
to
what god has revealed" (in the Qu'ran). He concludes that it is the
duty
of every Muslim to overthrow every power "which governs in
contravention of that which God enjoins and (to bring about) the
erection of the Islamic state." In more moderate terms, but to the
same
effect, Sheikh Shabbir Akhtar says:
"Our inherited (Islamic) understanding of religious freedom, of
the nature and role of religion in society, is in the last analysis
being
fundamentally challenged by the new religious pluralism in
Britain."
Behind this, too, surely lies the plea articulated by Jinnah, that
Islam must be protected from the consequences of democratic
pluralism.
Perhaps the most direct expression of Muslim defiance of
western-style democracy is the following, uncompromising
statement
issued jointly by the two most representative Islamic organizations
in
Britain, the Islamic Academy of Cambridge, and the islamic
Cultural
Centre of London. This statement insists that the Muslim
community:
"cannot commit itself to follow all 'current laws' however
antireligious
these laws may become through democratic means" (emphasis
supplied).
Quotations are given to illustrate Muslim attitudes of discontent
with state neutrality towards Islam; a visceral objection to living
under
pluralist dispensation; an inability to accept the authority of
democratic
decision-making when this conflicts with revelation; and a refusal
to
contemplate the possibility of Islam existing simply as a personal
belief
system, shorn of its political and social institutions. Such
quotations
could be multiplied indefinitely. They are clearly constants of the
Muslim world outlook whether in the context of post-imperial
India,
Nigeria, the Sudan, or Muslim settlement in Western Europe.
The nature of this world outlook can be further elucidated by
expounding the views of Dr. Kalim Siddiqui, director of the
London
Muslim Institute. He became locally nototious by publicly calling
for
Muslims to murder salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses,
an
indisputably criminal offence for which, since he was an Arab
Muslim,
he was of course neither arrested nor prosecuted. Siddiqui is the
moving spirit of an international Islamic tendency inspired by
Ayatolluh
Khomeini's Iranian Revolution. The aims of this tendency are set
out as
follows:
"...to eliminate all authority other than Allah and His Prophet; to
eliminate nationalism in all its shapes and forms, in particulae the
nation-State; to unite all Islamic movements into a single global
Islamic
movement to establish the Islamic State; to re-establish a
dominant and
global Islamic civilization based on the concept of Tawheed [the
unity of
Allah]."
Nationalism, the nation-state, and democracy for Siddiqui
represent Kufr, literally infidelity but equivalent in modern
context to
atheism. Thus the greatest political Kufr in the modern world is
nationalism, followed closely by democracy ("sovereignty of the
people"), socialism ("dictatorship of the proletariat"), capitalism,
and
free elections. and "modern Kufr has disguised itself as science,
philosophy, technology, democracy and 'progress.'" On the
contrary,
the "political party framework as found in Western 'democracies'
is
divisive of the society and therefore does not suit the Ummah"
(the
world-wide Islamic community). He concludes that "one Ummah
must
mean one Islamic movement, leading to one global Islamic State
under
one Imam/Khalifa [Caliph}."
For Siddiqui, "there is no compatibility whatsoever between
Islam and the west" and the Islamic Movement "regards the west
as
totally incompatible with Islam." The notion that a Muslim may
live
under the government a of non-Islamic nation-state and still
practice his
Islam as a personal belief system is apparently unacceptable to
Siddiqui, for "A Muslim can neither live the 'good life' on his own
nor
pursue 'personal taqwa' [faithfulness to Allah] in isolation." Dr.
Siddiqui
concluded one of his published essays with the following rallying
cry,
addressed to his fellow Muslims among whom, one must assume,
are
those in Britain:
"Just as the power and influence of kufr in the modern world is
global, so are the bonds of faith and destiny of the Muslim
Immah.
History has come full circle. The global power of kufr waits to be
challenged and defeated by the global power of Islam. This is the
unfinished business of history, so let us go ahead and finish it."
The achievement of Siddiqui's aims certainly does not exclude
armed force: "Lightly-armed muttawi [faithful to Allah] soldiers
who go
out to fight and die for islam are more powerful than the heavily-
armed
professional soldiers who fear death."
Moreover, the odds are in Islam's favor: "with a population of
almost one billion and with infinite sources of wealth, you can
defeat all
the powers." It is therefore possible for the Muslims to bring about
"the
total transformation of the world."
Dr. Siddiqui is particularly scornful of the compromisers who
have been trying to prove Islam compatible with their secular
ambitions
and Western preferences, and contemptuous of those who seek to
set
up "a liberal and democratic nation-state with a few cosmetic
'Islamic'
features."
RESISTANCE TO REFORM
The moral from all that british material is absolutely clear. If we
are to understand the nature of islam, and to meet and overcome
the
threat that it presents to the entire Western world, we have now to
abandon assumptions that were sufficiently realistic when we
were
dealing with earlier threats to that world. Before World War II, for
instance, it was common to speak of the United States as a tri-
faith
country.During that war a popular song insisted that the "Siths and
the
Jones, the kellys and Cohns" were all equally committed to the
war
effort of the U.S.A. That was their country as Americans,
regardless of
their present religious beliefs or the countries from which their
parents
or grandparents had originated. After that war, President
Eisenhower
made a remark that my theologian father thought could only have
been
made by an American president: "Everyone must have a religion,
and I
don't care what it is." Such indifference was all very well, indeed
properly presidential, at a time when the United States had no
significant number of Muslim citizens.
Certainly it is possible for people professedly committed to
aggressively incompatible religious beliefs to live together in
friendly
toleration. But this is achieved only by the more or less conscious
and
explicit abandonment of those of their pretended beliefs that
would
make such friendly and tolerant cohabitation impossible. So the
possibility of such cohabitation is irrelevant to the question of
what the
relevant teachings of the Qu'ran actually are. But because of these
possibilities of friendly cohabitation it was not preposterous for
President Bill Clinton to say in 1994, in an address to the
Jordanian
Parliament:
"After all, the chance to live in harmony with our neighbors and
to build a better life for our children is the hope that binds us all
together. Whether we worship in a mosque in Irbid, a Baptist
church
like my own in Little Rock, Arkansas, or a synagogue in Haifa, we
are
bound together by that hope."
It was not preposterous for President clinton to say this in an
address to the parliament of a country of which almost the entire
population is Muslim. For Jordan - unlike, for instance, Iraq and
saudi
Arabia - does have an effective parliament, and its king at that
time was
a man who had made peace with israel and succeeded in defeating
a
terrorist offensive against his own country (14). But for an
account of
the actual teaching sof the Qu'ran and of their great and growing
threat
to western civilization it will be instructive to attend to a warning
from an
earlier century.
Sir William Muir's Life of Mahomet, based on original Muslim
sources, appeared in Edinburgh in four volumes between 1856
and
1861. muir's judgment on the life, which was to be repeated over
and
over again by subsequent scholars, was based upon a distinction
between its earlier Meccan and later medinan period. In Mecca,
Muhammed was a sincere, religiously motivated seeker after
truth. In
Medina, Muhammed the man showed his feet of clay, and was
corrupted by power and by worldly ambitions.
Muir went on th say that so long as the Qu'ran remained the
standard of Islamic belief certain evils would continue to flourish:
"Polygamy, divorce and slavery strike at the root of public morals,
poison domestic life, and disorganize society; while the Veil
removes
the female sex from its just position and influence in the
world...Freedom of thought and private judgment are crushed and
ahhihilated. Toleration is unknown, and the possibility of free and
liberal institutions is foreclosed (15)." Muir's final judgment was:
"The
sword of mahomet and the Coran [the Qu'ran] are the most
stubborn
enemies of Civilization, Liberty and Truth which the world has
yet
known (16)."
Anthony Flew is professor emeritus of philosophy, Reading
University
(UK)
NOTES
1) They can be found in Paul Kurtz, ed., Skeptical Odysseys
(Amherst, NY; Prometheus, 2001), p. 377. My earlier paper on
"The
Terrors of Islam" is included in Paul Kurtz, ed. Challenges to the
Enlightenment (Buffalo, Prometheus 1994).
2) See, for instance, his 1998 interview with al-Jazeera Arab
TV Channel, published in the UK, in The Sunday Telegraph on
October
7, 2001.
3) See Ibn Warraq, Why I Am Not a Muslim (Amherst, NY;
Prometheus, 1995), p. 115, pp. 122-123, and pp. 163-164.
4) The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (London: Allen and
Unwin, 2nd ed., 1962) p. 7
5) Ibid., p. 27
6) Ibid., p. 74
7) In doing this I am exploiting a comparative advantage. For I
am not only british myself, but my also-British wife was born in
Burma,
the daughter of a father serving in the Indian Civil Service, an
institution
of which several of my own father's Oxford friends served. My
father-in-
law was the first of the senior British officials to say that britain
must, as
it soon did, do a deal with the burmese Nationalist leader U Aung
San,
despite his period of collaboration with the Japanese, because he
was
so clearly an honorable man. The entire surviving family were
both
proud and delighted that the memorial celebratum for my father-
in-law's
life was attended by the husband of U Aung San's daughter, Daw
Aung
San Soo Kyi. She might well have attended herself had she not
then
been, as she still is of this writing, under house arrest for the
offence of
winning an election.
Muhammed Ali Jinnah (1876-1948), founder of the state of
Pakistan.
9) See Mervyn Hiskett, Some to Mecca Turn to Pray (London:
Claridge, 1993). Hiskett was a lecturer in Islamic studies in the
London
School of Oriental and African Studies.
10) There was slaughter of members of the Muslim community
by members of the Hindu "community" and vice-versa.
11) It is a matter of fact, and I believe significant, that the only
provinces of the former british Empire where the population was
and is
not White that have matched this achievement are those of the
Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent, which had both been
under
British rule for over a hundred years and had become enthusiasts
for
the game of cricket. As a former prime minister of Barbados said,
after
his party had been defeated in a general election: "The religion of
my
people is cricket and in cricket the umpire's decision is final."
12) Reliable evidence about this extremely remote and
inaccessible area is hard to come by. But there can be no
reasonable
doubt about the fact of the enslaving of several Christian Blacks
in that
region. For my friend the Baroness Cox has undertaken several
missions to purchase and thus to free such slaves, and has been
reproached for so doing on the grounds that such emancipatings,
in
that nightmare region, actually encourage further enslavings.
13) London: Belew, 1989.
14) His successor shosw every sigh of following in his father's
admirable footsteps. On his visit to london in November 2001 he
was
reported as saying: "The events of September 11 were plainly and
simply an affront to all humanity. That is the view of the too
rarely
heard Arab majority."
15) I should very much like to know how many of those
Departments of Women's Studies, which it seems are now to be
found
on almost if not quite all the university campuses in the USA.,
students
are required to study the impact upon the lives of women of the
imposition of the Sharia. If, as I suspect, the answer is very few,
then
the publication of the findings of research showing this to be the
case
would surely have a salutatory effect.
16)Vol. I, pp. 503-06.
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