Islam 101 - Part 6

And so we reach the end. I can't be sure that anyone read any of these articles, but I hope that anyone who did so found them interesting, informative, and most of all, important. There is a problem with Islam. It may be only radical Islam which is a threat to the West, rather than Islam per se, but in order to be a threat the radical variant draws on aspects of mainstream, traditional Islamic theology and law. I have demonstrated this over the last six weeks. I hope it was worthwhile.

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THE SILENCE OF MODERATE ISLAM

Many non-Muslims find it difficult to believe that Islam is a violent religion given the fact that so many of its adherents are not violent at all, and don't appear to agree with the jihadists' supremacist designs. But are they really moderate? Does the vast majority of the Islamic world condemn jihad in all its forms?

The answer, unfortunately, is no. For starters, numerous polls and surveys have shown that a disturbingly large number of Muslims around the world support or sympathise with terrorism and jihadist sentiments. Polls in Britain have suggested that as many as 25% of British Muslims believe the London bombings in 2005 were justified. 40% would have liked to see Islamic sharia law introduced in Britain. 13% "admire" al Qaeda, because they "fight the West". Results from other countries reveal a similar story. A Pew survey in 2006 concluded that one in seven European Muslims feel that suicide bombings can sometimes be justified, although that number has since fallen slightly. In the Middle East and North Africa, polls have revealed majority answers in support of terrorism among their Muslim populations. On the fifth anniversary of 9/11, Al-Jazeera asked its viewers, "Do you support Osama bin Laden?" 49.9% answered yes. While most of these percentages show minorities, they are still significantly large minorities to cause concern.

Indeed, jihadists and their sympathisers have won elections in Palestine and elsewhere in the last few years. None of these countries harbour a democracy akin to any found in the West. Nowhere in the Islamic world today do non-Muslims enjoy full equality of rights with Muslims, and the Coalition's mission to bring democracy to Afghanistan and Iraq has resulted in the implementation of laws and constitutions which are little different to before - including sharia rulings for the oppression of non-Muslims and the death penalty for apostasy.

Some have estimated that the number of Muslims who support jihad to some degree may be roughly one in ten. This sounds comforting, for it is indeed a small percentage - until you realise that this adds up to a hundred million people worldwide. The truth is that there is no way to tell how many Muslims are truly peaceful and believe in Western notions of pluralism and tolerance. We could take each of them at their word. But it would be suicidal to assume that the number is small without asking some difficult questions, especially in light of how much terrorist violence today is committed by Muslims.

The suspicion with which many people regard Muslims today is not assuaged by the leaders of supposedly "moderate" Muslim groups, who do little to suggest that they are truly interested in stopping fellow Muslims from becoming jihadists and coexisting peacefully with non-Muslims. Some of the biggest Muslim front groups have, however, invented "Islamophobia", which is a clever term designed to silence any criticism of Islam or examination of the elements within it that give rise to jihad violence. Groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim Council of Britain, instead of unilaterally renouncing the jihad ideology and pledging their full loyalty to their respective countries, instead spend most of their time complaining that non-Muslims aren't doing enough to accomodate them, and are "bigoted" towards them.

But in reality, both these groups have questionable backgrounds. CAIR was founded by Nihad Awad and Omar Ahmad - who at that time were working for the Islamic Association for Palestine, a front group for Hamas. Awad has in the past expressed his support for Hamas (although he claims his words were misrepresented), while CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper has said, "I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the Constitution of the United States to be Islamic some time in the future". Several high-ranking CAIR officials have been arrested due to links with terrorist groups. Most recently, CAIR was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case. Their representatives have also several times refused to outright condemn Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist organisations.

The MCB, meanwhile, has affiliated itself with several highly questionable extremist and anti-Semitic groups, such as Markazi Jamiat Ahl-e-Hadith, a Muslim "charity" which spends much time in its publications blaming the Jews for all the world's ills. The MCB has also in the past called for sharia rules to be introduced in Britain and for "un-Islamic" activities such as school plays to be banned.

So what is a moderate Muslim? Is it one who has never committed any violent acts of jihad? If so, that would mean that the majority of Muslims around the world are indeed moderate. But is this because they have definitively rejected Islam's violent supremacist aspects, or because they are simply ignorant of them? To a surprising degree, the latter is most true. Many Muslims around the world are largely ignorant about many aspects of their religion. This is for a variety of historical and cultural reasons, including the fact that the Qur'an must be recited in Arabic only, which many Muslims today cannot speak. Even some of the most devout Muslims only have a passing acquaintance with what the Qur'an actually says. I remember reading about a Pakistani Muslim who was immensely proud of the fact that he had managed to memorise huge sections of the Qur'an by heart. He then said that he one day planned to buy a translation so he could find out what it was actually saying.

As in all religions, there is a large spectrum of belief in Islam, from incredible dedication to casual prayer. There are some parts of the world, such as central Asia, where violence and supremacism are simply not taught to Muslims, and so they are ignorant of these principles. This is changing, however, as jihadists make inroads into peaceful communities and present their version of Islam as "pure Islam", and use citations from the Qur'an to fuel their efforts.

What should genuine moderate Muslims be doing to stem the flow of jihadists committing violence in the name of Islam? Simply put, they should be confronting the aspects of Islam, the Qur'anic quotations and so on, that jihadists are using to justify terrorism. They should then be coming up with new, non-literalist ways to interpret this material, as Christians have done for centuries with the Bible. Then they should be setting up initiatives in schools and mosques to teach against Qur'anic literalism and jihad supremacism, so that jihadists will not have a theological leg to stand on when they come to make new recruits among peaceful Muslims. They should directly assure Western non-Muslims that they have no loyalty to the Qur'an's doctrines of jihad and subjugation, and no intention, now or in the future, to replace Western laws with sharia, even by peaceful means. As things stand, most Muslim authorities are not doing these things. They do not flat-out reject jihad; they only mouth hollow platitudes about condemning "terrorism" and attacks on "innocent civilians", which - as we have seen - does not stop the jihadists from doing what they're doing. Islamic moderation cannot be taken as given until they actually show signs of being markedly different in ideology from the jihadist element.

There are, of course, some genuine reformers in the Muslim world. There are also many apostates who have renounced the religion because they could not square its traditions with their consciences. Ex-Muslims (or ex-jihadists) such as Ibn Warraq, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Walid Shoebat and Ali Sina have written books and publically called for reform, and made many of the same arguments that I have been making during the course of these articles. It is interesting that while I will invariably be called a "bigot", "anti-Islam", "hate-monger" and a bunch of other lovely terms, when Muslims or ex-Muslims make the same arguments they largely get ignored. But in fact, they are the ones we should be listening to the hardest. At present their numbers are small, but with more awareness among Muslims and non-Muslims alike this can hopefully be changed.

And what can we as non-Muslims do to help them, and to fight the war we are in? For starters, we can recognise that this war is not against "religious fundamentalism" or "terrorism" - it is against Islamic jihad. Then we can begin to call out Islamic countries on their closeness to the jihad ideology. We should base our foreign policy on this principle, and withdraw aid from any country which supports jihad and Islamic supremacism. We should work towards finding new energy sources to replace our dependency on Middle Eastern oil. We should place tighter controls on Muslims immigrating into Western nations, by establishing (as best we can) their loyalty to the jihadist agenda. We should monitor mosques for signs of extremist activity. Overall the absolute highest priority is to recognise the threat we face from militant Islam and then to formulate positive ways to deal with it.

On this, the future of Western Judeo-Christian civilisation stands.