Common sense, articulated courageously. "J'accuse," by Hani Shukrallah in AhramOnline, January 1 (thanks to Rafael):
[...] I accuse a government that seems to think that by outbidding the Islamists it will also outflank them.I accuse the host of MPs and government officials who cannot help but take their own personal bigotries along to the parliament, or to the multitude of government bodies, national and local, from which they exercise unchecked, brutal yet at the same time hopelessly inept authority.
I accuse those state bodies who believe that by bolstering the Salafi trend they are undermining the Muslim Brotherhood, and who like to occasionally play to bigoted anti-Coptic sentiments, presumably as an excellent distraction from other more serious issues of government.
But most of all, I accuse the millions of supposedly moderate Muslims among us; those who've been growing more and more prejudiced, inclusive and narrow minded with every passing year.
I accuse those among us who would rise up in fury over a decision to halt construction of a Muslim Center near ground zero in New York, but applaud the Egyptian police when they halt the construction of a staircase in a Coptic church in the Omranya district of Greater Cairo.
I've been around, and I have heard you speak, in your offices, in your clubs, at your dinner parties: "The Copts must be taught a lesson," "the Copts are growing more arrogant," "the Copts are holding secret conversions of Muslims", and in the same breath, "the Copts are preventing Christian women from converting to Islam, kidnapping them, and locking them up in monasteries."
I accuse you all, because in your bigoted blindness you cannot even see the violence to logic and sheer common sense that you commit; that you dare accuse the whole world of using a double standard against us, and are, at the same time, wholly incapable of showing a minimum awareness of your own blatant double standard....
Be sure to read it all.
Check out the comments on AhramOnline. Several claim moral equivalence—that Copts are somehow "provoking" Muslims.
Here's one post:
Cops (sic) are part of Egypt
You talk about the Muslim bigotry but what about the copic (sic) bigotry against Islam and Muslims? They have tons of websites for attacking Islam in arabic. This is not to excuse the terrorist bombing, not at all but just remember that both sides have extremists who are spreading violance (sic) and bigotry. In the Muslim side, those extremists are actually the so called moderates who torture the egyptian people regardless of religion. And why isent (sic) the so called moderate regime giving the copts the right to repair their churches and fueling anger against them? Is this who the US considers moderate? I guess as long as a regime is zionist then anything is alowed (sic),it doesnt (sic) matter how much harm it causes to Muslims and Christians. Copts are part of Egypt and when Islamic empires ruled it they were protected and allowed to prosper, now when so called moderate muslims rule egypt, copts are seen as outsiders.'
.....................
Note two virtually obligatory points—the claim—utterly ludicrous—that the Egyptian regime is "Zionist", and the utterly ahistoric claim that Christians flourished as "protected" peoples under dhimmitude.
Islam is a plague on the world. It needs to be exposed for the evil that it is, and go down in flames like Fascism and Nazism. Automatically the world will be a better place.
Shukrallah can sometimes write a few consecutive rational paragraphs, but he's still got a whole lot of snakes in the brain. A good Nasserite, he mostly wants Egyptians to march together so that they can turn to the more pressing business of killing Nazis in Palestine:
"It all goes back to 1948; 'the original sin' of Israel's founding is a sin in perpetuity. It is not a question of Palestinians and Arabs recognising the Jews' right to national existence in the region, but Israeli Jews' recognition that Jewish nationhood cannot and will not be realised as a negation of the Palestinians' very existence as human beings with dignity and rights. Zionism, fully realised, is not merely racism; it's Nazism." (Shukrallah, al-Ahram, 2002)
For Shukrallah in all his silliness (and a fantastic job by former ambassador David Welch), have a look at http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/669/special.htm
These are the moderates!
JCL
Thanks for the post, John. Here's more from Hani Shukrallah praising the poor oppressed "Palestinians" and dismissing the entire concept of Islamic terrorism as absurd:
http://www.mediamonitors.net/hani4.html
Why are genuine "moderate Muslims" so damned hard to find? (This is a rhetorical question)
Wouldn't it be great if people in the Islamic world were free to directly and openly lay the blame on Islam itself? We all know that Islam is the problem, not merely someone's interpretation of it. If the Wahabi/Salafi's were so out of line theologically they wouldn't enjoy the support they do.
> Why are genuine "moderate Muslims"
> so damned hard to find?
> (This is a rhetorical question) --
There is a Christian Arabic proverb from Syria and Southern Turkey. It goes something like this:
The only Barrani (i.e., Outsiders or Muslims) who want to kill us are those that pray five times a day.
Like most proverbs, it overstates to make its point. But there is a point, and its probably sound: a person committed to the medieval Muslim legal tradition does not and cannot play well with others.
Get rid of that tradition and Islam can become anything Muslims want it to be. The sacred texts of Islam are infinitely malleable in ways that the legal tradition is not.
There are lots of real moderates, and the key differential is the role to be played by the legal tradition. Most are busy living their lives. Few are important enough to make the news. Here in the US, most avoid the mosques. Some are too frightened to speak publicly. (I see this among students at my university: intimidation, mostly from international students, mostly against women.)
The problem is something the Muslims in North America, at least, are going to have to figure out for themselves. I fear there's little non-Muslims can do to help (apart from ceasing all appeasement), and much to hurt. One sees encouraging signs: some of the Iranian exile groups, e.g., the AFID and Zuhdi Jasser (great speaker, insightful thinker, fantastic in public debate), Hasan Mahmud, and Qanta Ahmed (some of her Huff Post articles will bring tears to the eye). There's also a century-old tradition of Arab liberalism -- it's still important in the universities if not the streets. Other good stuff happening elsewhere, mostly on the peripheries of the old Muslim heartlands. (Singapore is a good case in point.)
As for failed/failing states like Egypt or Jordan or Morocco or Yemen, etc, I think there is less reason for optimism. Maybe they need first to wade through the gore of a few successful Islamic revolutions. It is somewhat encouraging, I think, that al-Qaeda's approval rating in Jordan, e.g., went from high 60% to low 20% after the sectarian blood-sport in Iraq, around 2005/6.
"I fear there's little non-Muslims can do to help (apart from ceasing all appeasement), and much to hurt".
The cessation of all appeasement is absolutely necessary, for all our sakes.
We should remember that articles like these beg more questions than they can or want to answer. We should remember that Islam and Muslims are experts in smoke and mirrors.
What few people realise is that the rot set in years ago - and has been enabled by the neo conservative push for multiculturalism, celebration of diversity etc. Because Islamists (and the so-called "moderates", by their acquiescence to the violent bullying of the rest of us bytheir brethren) - use these il(liberal) rules to groom us - we are in thrall to the threats and violence Muslims use - we have become masochists to their brand of sadism.
We are to blame, too. We elected the cynical evil people who are enabling Muslims to achieve their goal of Islamisation and world domination. We enable them to declare that nationalism and patriotism is a crime, each time we do not speak out against it and speak for pride in our cultures and our national heritages, and our countries' rights to self-determination. It's all very well for people like those who post here (I include myself)to speak out, but it's simply a repetitive loop, we are singing to the choir.
There MUST be more people like us out there - what happened to strength in numbers? The clock's ticking.....
gravenimage - why are genuine moderate Muslims so hard to find? Because there are none. I am constantly being told that I make a mistake by judging all Muslims by the actions of the few - but my answer to this is - when (not if) it all goes belly up in the US and Europe - which way would the so-called "moderates" jump? Am I wrong in believing that to leave it until then to "know our enemies" would be too late?
@JCL,
You wrote:
"The sacred texts of Islam are infinitely malleable in ways that the legal tradition is not."
If I understand you correctly, you seem to suggest that there is no fundamental doctrinal link between Islamic texts that are sacred (only within Islam), and Islamic legal tradition?
One of the "sacred" texts, is not just sacred like the Bible is to Christians, but according to Islamic tradition, it is nothing short of the Islamic moongod itself.
Another minor point that i.m.o. stands in the way of "infinite malleability" of Islam's doctrinal texts, is the example of their perfect role-model and "Prophet", laid down in these texts.
The fact that an unclear but seemingly large number of Muslims are quietist to the point of insignificance, is and has always been part of the Islamization process, not a chance for a way out of this existential threat to our way of life.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
Yes, I read that comment, too. It's infuriating that Muslims insist that a website attacking Islam is virtually *begging* for a massacre. Then Lebanese uses the old 'there are extremists in every religion' chestnut. Makes my blood boil.
I think, that al-Qaeda's approval rating in Jordan, e.g., went from high 60% to low 20% after the sectarian blood-sport in Iraq, around 2005/6.
It only dropped because they were killing Muslims. Had Iraq been a Christian country, Al Qaedas approval rating would be 80%-plus, and if Al Qaeeda terrorists set off a nuke in Israel, the approval rate would be nigh on 100%.
As an Egyptian Copt, I have to say this is one of the best articles I've ever read about the issue (coming from the state-owned Ahram, no less)
Sure, Shukrallah may have some Nasserite or Communist even. But you know what ? In this country and at this point in time, I would take a socialist/nasserite any time of the day over an Islamist ! Mind you, I despise Nasser and think Arabism was a fascist movement.
Muslims are not divided into two groups, "moderate and radical." They are divided into two other groups,i.e.,
"active and inactive"
@Glenkille,
I couldn't agree more.
The only true way to really - and only gradually - differentiate between Muslims, is concerned with the level and nature of their Islamic activism.
Forget about "literalists" [nothing much allegorical about clear cut instructions to subdue infidels], "fundamentalists" [too much unnecessary association with certain Christian sects], "peaceful Muslims" [they can still be activists, or when nearly inactive they are no ally in opposing islamization, passively enabling activists to go about their business].
From a Western standpoint, it is Islamic activism in all its manifestations, that is most descriptive of our problem. I'd go so far as to say that the silent Muslim, that "friendly neighbour down the street", really is the voiceless face of today's Islamization.
It is a very slippery slope from passive Muslims, not countering Islamization, to violent Muslim activists. The slope of course, is Islamic doctrine itself.
Violent jihadis are just the high profile tip of an immense iceberg and the PC MC captains, steadfast on their collision course with that reality, ensure us that we needn't worry about the iceberg itself.
We must take over the rudder.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
Sag,
> If I understand you correctly, you seem to suggest that there is no fundamental doctrinal link between Islamic texts that are sacred (only within Islam), and Islamic legal tradition?
Good points.
First, hadith. In the States, one finds more and more Muslims turning protestant, in a sense. The Koran and the Koran alone is to determine what it means to be a Muslim. The numbers are not large, but they are increasing.
I'm thinking primarily of college-age kids who do their prayers, keep the fast, know their Koran, kind of, but write off the hadith as stories made up by later Muslims. Maybe some are authentic, but whole can tell, they say. The Muslim community here in Dallas is on the conservative side, Ikhwan-ish rather than salafi, but I'd guess that half the kids who are still religious would pull for sola scriptura.
(My impression is that things are otherwise in Europe, where a young person who gets religion more frequently gets it in the salafi form.)
But even if the hadith are kept, Muslims with moral sensibility are quite adept are sanitizing them, if they wish (most do, rather than face up to the unpleasant realities of many traditions). It's easier, by far, to sanitize hadith than to try to update the terrible and terribly explicit texts of the legal tradition.
For instance, there is a nice hadith that states one should not kill women and children. By itself, totally harmless. In the hands of the jurists, however, it becomes a foundational text to support the enslavement of women and children in those cities that do not surrender before the commencement of fighting. A reader of the hadith by itself would not, I think, naturally take it in that direction.)
Second, the Koran. I really do think that one could make the text mean just about anything. (I've seen Arab Christians argue with Muslims that the text actually support the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation.)
It also helps that the Koran is extremely obscure. I've been reading early Arabic for twenty odd years, and I'm confident that anyone who says that the text is intelligible is either lying or a fool. A sound translation would have to put question marks in a quarter of the verses. It's way worse even than the book of Job.
Modern translations rely on medieval commentaries. The thing is, those commentators had no bloody idea what the text meant either.
Lastly, the Koran really doesn't talk about much. It's got maybe 150 commandments and prohibitions. The rest is just platitudes and half-remembered stories, and a few prayers. Give me a hour and I could make a compelling case that it's about space aliens in lizard form.
Without the massive subsructure of later tradition the text melts right away.
My two dirhems...
Cheers,
JCL
"space aliens in lizard form." Well, it would explain the lack of compassion (in the Qur'an) for human life.
TheDudeAbides,
I actually agree. I'd take a Nasser or the elder Asad, any day. I'd much prefer a military dictator to a capricious bunch of jihadi nut-jobs who believe they know Allah better than he knows himself.
Keep one's nose clean, one's mouth shut, and stay out of politics, and life is not at all bad in Syria. And certainly far better for the health of religious minorities.
Still, I don't trust Shukrallah. He's violently anti-semitic and anti-American. And he's also got a head full of conspiracy theories. Worse yet, he has almost no knowledge of even the most basic facts about twentieth-century history.
And then there's his incessant beating of the chest: Egypt is humiliated; Islam is impotent; the Arabs are living in shame. Rather than turn his gaze inward and trying to fix something, he attributes all problems to the malicious influence of outsiders. And he's really good at it!
This is just the sort of thing to keep the good people of Egypt ready for sacrifice in yet another horrible and pointless war.
I sometimes wonder if the Egyptian government lets the press blow up this storm, day after day, for no other reason than that they really do want another war with Israel. I can see no other reason fully to account for it. And I'm certain of two things: (i) the government of Egypt does not care one bit about the Palestinians, and (ii) that nothing appears in al-Ahram that does not serve the government's purpose.
Aripameui qen pek`slyl,
JCL
With regard to supposedly moderate Muslims : From a larger essay, "The Myth of the Moderate Muslim".
I
“Slaughter and the Danger from Within”
Much of the discussion regarding Islam these days centers around whether or not all Muslims are bad, are terrorists, or moderates, (or sympathizers with such, etc.) and usually lacks what should be the opening qualifier for every debate with a Muslim:
“The United States was attacked in an overt act of war on 9-11. This must never be forgotten or allowed to be diminished in its importance, lest we also forget 1993 and Madrid and Glasgow and Bali and Mumbai and Fort Hood, etc., etc., to our detriment. We remember lest we forget the innocent victims. Moslems committed these acts. They committed all of them; not Christians, not Jews, not Hindus and not Buddhists. For this reason, all Muslims are considered suspect”.
We are a culture of forgetters and easy forgivers. This must not be the case with regard to Islam, its insidious reaching fascism and the very real threat the “religion” and its adherents pose to modern civilization. Witness the most recent firing of a very prominent NPR/FOX contributor, Juan Williams, or the farce that is the “trial of Geert Wilders. The Muslims have the liberals by their existential balls, because the Liberals cannot bear to consider that there may be other cultures that do not believe in religious or social pluralism.
Herein lay the great danger.
II
“Denial and Projection”
Of course, the Muslims like to ascribe 9-11 to the Jews, or to some plot by Bush the Younger to justify invading Iraq. One doesn’t need to address these “theories” again.
They are, and have been proven to be, patently absurd.
And indeed, we have lately seen in America and its mainstream media a truly bizarre form of denial, as well, Muslim or not – too many “progressives” or “liberals” or self-avowed Marxists gleefully repeat the mantra - “Islam is a religion of Peace, and clearly we are not at war with Islam; we are at war with those extremists who have hijacked the religion”, or so the argument goes.
As an aside, I have always thought that to be a particularly curious choice of words – “hijacked” - being that that is exactly what those supposed “misunderstanders” of Islam did to those planes! “Confusingly” of course, when a car or other vehicle is hijacked, the vehicle itself does not change its appearance or basic function. Similarly, the “hijacked” Islam walks, talks, looks and functions exactly as does the “unhijacked” Islam. Let me explain.
Apologists dissemble because Islam is a supremacist, fascist and ultimately (as is the case in Saudi Arabia, where the worst possible socio/religious phenomena manifests itself; where one finds oneself living under a corrupt monarchy slathered atop a fabricated pseudo-religion) non-forgiving ideology. In this sense, then, one is tempted to conclude that either all of Islam are extremists and none of its adherents are “moderates”, or all of those “billion or so, peaceful, moderate Muslims” that the ignorant scream about again and again, are not Muslims at all, extreme or moderate.
This is because there are certain inescapable and potentially very inconvenient “requirements” of all believers in the Mohammedan Death Cult. Apostacy is clearly punishable by death. Jihad is another. If one rejects Jihad, one is dispensing with one of the 5 “precepts” of Islam. It would be akin to removing Holy Communion or Baptism from the Catholic faith. One who deviates from the established norm by renouncing even a small part of Islam or the life of Mustafa literally is no longer a Muslim and is subject to severe punishment, at very least. Finally, and to add to the argument:
Those who push against the howling hordes of Islam are not a type of extremist themselves, no matter how often the brain-dead, mainstream media insist that they are. Is there any such thing as a moderately held belief? Is it possible to take God’s words out of context? No, and no. But beliefs do not need to be acted upon to convince others of their validity.
One simply cannot disagree with, or attempt to escape the clutches of Islam. Too many are the tales of those who have been slaughtered for their intellectual insolence toward Islam and loathing of Mohammed Mustafa Al-Qasim:
Descansa en paz, Theo Van Gogh…cuidate, Geert Wilders…blood in, blood out.
DMD
john: you are so wrong it is not even fumny.
besides Islam feeding the Jihadists it is also those dictators who by their actions are creating more jihadists.
look at paksitan, Egypt, yemen, look ..i.
look at teir leaders. bunch of douches
@JCL,
First off, let me say that I really appreciate the info you provided about the dubious nature of Mr. Shukrallah.
I also value your comments as an interesting perspective from the standpoint of heterodox or apostate Muslims. Some things you say about the Koran are mirrored by my own experience wading through the boring, obscure and highly repetitive tropes of its so-called revelations. But that's where it pretty much ends for me as a Westerner.
Some of your comments almost seem influenced by a Mid-Eastern dhimmi perspective, waiting for "moderates" (apostates really) in the Muslim world to change the Koran and Hadith beyond recognition, hoping that will somehow nullify the hold of the caste of professional Islamic scholars (i.e. religious leaders) on Islamic doctrine.
You leave out the example given by the "Prophet" of Islam. That is a huge obstacle for any belief in a "reformation" of Islam. Actually that reformation, in the sense of "going back to the original sources" is what we are witnessing today, with the spectacular rise of global Salafism and the Muslim Brotherhood expanding on an unhealthy diet of petrodollars.
You also seem to narrow the whole problem with Islam down to "medieval legal tradition". Get rid of that, you say to Muslims with "moral sensibility", and Islam is like clay in your hands.
Large part of today's legal Muslim tradition, at least the part dealing with "infidels" is on par with its medieval foundations.
Two of your more problematic statements stay in my mind, and I'll quote them:
"The problem is something the Muslims in North America, at least, are going to have to figure out for themselves. I fear there's little non-Muslims can do to help"
"Keep one's nose clean, one's mouth shut, and stay out of politics, and life is not at all bad in Syria. And certainly far better for the health of religious minorities."
Can you imagine why a Westerner like me would detect an undercurrent of genuine dhimmitude here?
I'll try to explain my problem with that, by taking you on a little detour which involves a documentary about poverty in Africa, so bear with me ;-)
I want to tell you about the brilliantly and seriously ironical, if not downright cynical documentary film from a Dutch artist by the name of Renzo Martens.
He has filmed himself, travelling Africa with a prophetic message for its poorest people. He's basically saying: "You better face up to the fact that the foreign aid workers are not here to really help you. Their main clients are the caring people of the West, not you, and the progressives running the pity industry won't help you. You help people far away to feel better about themselves." "Poverty," he asserts, "is a commodity, but even that is taken away from you." So he goes there and says: "Own it, take back your poverty and please enjoy, because you will keep depending on foreign aid and therefore you will remain poor for the rest of your lives."
Here is a telling scene from the film: "Enjoy Poverty"
Now my point is: replace "poverty" with "dhimmitude", and it could serve as the basis for another documentary, "Enjoy Dhimmitude".
As I understand some of your comments, you could feature in that documentary, not as someone in need of convincing to accept the harsh reality of passively hoping for a benign reformist Islam or to live the quiet dhimmi life under Islamic hegemony, but as one who is already enjoying it in fair measure.
I mean no disrespect and I do feel you add an illuminating viewpoint, but as a Westerner, I want my society to get rid of Islam, not invest in reforming it, for that is the bread and butter of our progressive and fatally "hubrisctic" overlords.
Thank you for the exchange.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
Sag,
Nicely argued. And thank you for the reference to Martens, which I'm downloading now.
My Texas-sized gun collection and my membership in the secret neo-con cabal will, I trust, go part of the way toward redeeming me of the charge of dhimmitude. I did once lose a fist fight with a Saudi, though. I can only plead that it was a close run thing and I was slightly less than sober at the time.
Lots of items here. Let me touch just three points:
1. Syria sucks in a whole lot of ways. But it suck way less than (say) Sudan or Yemen. For religious minorities in the Middle East, it has been one of the saftest countries to live in during the last fifty years. The security enjoyed has been in part a result of Asad's ruthless suppression of political Islam domestically. Remember Hama 1982. We still don't know how many died. Could have been 10,000 or 40,000. That's one way to win an insurgency.
If one's goal is to stay alive and maybe raise a family, I think one's chances would be way better in Syria than in those countries where rule is less effective or less authoritative.
I've spent a lot of time with the Christian communities in Damascus, Aleppo, and further east in Syria. While it may be surprising to us in the US or Europe, most felt very fortunate to have a strong, secular government. The same holds for other religious minorities, from Yazadis to Alawis to the Druze. I've little doubt that lots of Copts would like that strong government at the moment. Don't get me wrong. Most will jump at a change to get to Europe or North America, and for good reason. But until papers can come through, safety is way better than a bit of extra freedom.
2. I really do think that the central problem (in Sunni Islam, at least) is precisely the legal tradition. And one can see again and again that when Muslims either are not exposed to that tradition or explicitly reject it, they are free to make Islam into whatever they want it to be. The legal tradition is the framework that holds the whole system together. Its also what impels Islam to its unholy alliance with the state.
Imagine Christianity with scriptural status given to both the New Testament and the Roman Civil Code of Law.
Really, have a look at Zuhdi Jasser's work or Qanta Ahmed. (Her "Invitation to a beheading" is outstanding and online.) These are two very articulate representatives of a whole lot of Muslims in the US. (Not all, by any means.) They are moral human beings and good citizens who also happen to be Muslim.
I would most certainly not place in the same category someone like Said Ramadan or Yusuf Qaradawi or the co-called moderates of CAIR. Frank Gaffney is should be in charge on that front.
(Arab secular liberalism is a different sort of thing entirely. Perhaps in the long run, of greater importance.)
At any rate, can't such a non-political Islam find a place in Sweden? I'm having a difficult time seeing how it could be a threat to the kindgom, its electoral process, or legislative integrity? It's Five pillars, one god, a bit of family law (not the nasty bits), and that's it. Really, not much different from (say) Buddhism or Judaism?
3. Reformation, Salafism, etc. I agree. This has been an utter and total disaster for Islam and its neighbors. The death rattle of an imperial and colonial tradition that just won't accept the fact that it's been killed.
The type of change that's been taking place out of the spotlight is something quite different. Its not about recovering some true meaning of some ancient authority. That's all nonsense anyway. The Salafis discover only what they want to find.
Religions undergo dramatic change all the time. There's usually no program, no thinker, no founder of a new sect. Society changes, people change, and their religions change. There are types of Christianity today that would not even have been imaginable 100 years ago. Same too, Judaism. The same is happening in Islam: though on a much smaller and slower scale, and accompanied by the current insanity convulsing noose of failed states stretching from the High Atlas to the Hindu Kush.
Tho zealous in those states go from potential ideological savior to potential ideological savior, each one failing worse than the other. Now the candidate for savior is a return to a mythological pristine and pure Islam that NEVER actually existed. This too will surely fail. But probably only after a dozen states fall to ruin.
Let's just hope that the process does not take out too many normal folk, whether Muslim or non-Muslim. And may the Lord have mercy on us and them if real weapons are ever brought to bear. Pop a nuke over NYC, London, Paris or Tel Aviv and the rules change.
Cheers,
JCL
I guess the author's life expectancy has dropped.