Reason and Faith

Jill, I include below a reply I sent to some acquaintances who took your Personal Day of Rage post as further reason that Muslims in the whole are to be feared and thought poorly of. Much of my reply is taken from a post by Juan Cole on his site Informed Comment, regarding the large number of Muslim clerics who spoke out against Osama Bin Laden and the 9/11 attacks. I believe that the vast majority of the Islamic world condemned those attacks, and reasoned very clearly on moral and religious grounds that such actions are not advocated, or condoned by Islam. But as the recently leaked NIE and British intelligence reports make clear, the manner of execution of the so-called "war on terror," particularily the war on Iraq, has radicalized a whole generation of Muslims. In my opinion, the Pope quoting from a period of turmoil in Christian Muslim relations was ill-advised in our currrent period of turmoil. I wrote my acquaintances: Some declarations against Bin Laden, and terrorism by Muslim leaders. These examples are about a year old but are valid. Sorry about the unembedded links. The Pope's words were ill-advised, and ill-timed. I appreciate the fact he has reached out to Muslim leaders and is meeting with them. He should have known, given the leading military power of the world attacking Iraq, threatening Iran with nuclear weapons, conducting an indiscriminate "war on terror" that has killed more people, mostly Muslims, than the terrorist attack that started it, or combined over the last 25 years, might not appreciate a comment calling their religion violent. First off, there are some Muslims who are violent, just as there are some Christians, Jews, Hindus that are violent. Second, the ignorance the West seems to repeatedly show to the Muslim world, especially the war in Iraq, has radicalized a whole generation of Muslims. There was a great article in a recent issue of The New Yorker, I think by George Packer, that talked about a Muslim philosopher, now dead, but whose teachings lead a way out of Muslim radicalism. His years of study of the Koran brought him to the conclusion that Mohammed's life consisted of two distinct periods, the Mecca period, and the Medina period. In Mecca, Mohammed's religious views were forming, and being in the midst of a troubled city and period, his calls for jihad in the Koran reflect on those circumstances, on that context. The Medina period came later, and was written to all people and was centered around tolerance, peace, becoming personally involved with God. This philosopher saw this difference in texts as the answer to get away from violent jihad. He was killed for his preaching this message of tolerance. The following is from Juan Cole's site Informed Comment: "Tom Friedman is a Middle East expert who knows a lot about Islam. Why, then, does he keep saying misleading things? He wrote in his latest column, "To this day - to this day - no major Muslim cleric or religious body has ever issued a fatwa condemning Osama bin Laden." A "fatwa" is simply a considered opinion of a Muslim jurisconsult. Such opinions are numerous. First of all, almost all the major Shiite Grand Ayatollahs have condemned Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. You could say that is easy, since Shiites don't generally like Wahhabis. But they are the leaders of 120 million Muslims (some ten percent of the 1.2 billion). So that is one. Tracking these things down is time-consuming, but this should do: Ayatollah Muhammad Husain Fadlallah of Lebanon condemns Osama Bin Laden. http://www.sullivan-county.com/identity/bin_laden.html So then what about the Sunni world? The leading moral authority for Sunnis is the rector or Grand Imam of the al-Azhar Seminary/ University in Cairo, Egypt. Al-Azhar is perhaps the world's oldest continuous university and has been since the time of Saladin a major center of Sunni religious authority. The current incumbent is Shaikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi. So what about Tantawi and Bin Laden? Grand Imam of Al-Azhar seminary, Shaikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, condemns Osamah Bin Laden. http://www.usembassyjakarta.org/lawmaker.html And: The Grand Imam of al-Azhar Seminary, Shaikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, condemns Osamah Bin Laden. http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:NFEcFTKSzcUJ:www.chaplain.navy.mil/Attachme\ nts/SeekingMeaning_Grand_Imam.pdf+Tantawi++Bin+Laden+James+Reston&hl=en What about Pakistan? Admittedly, it has some clerics who are fans of Bin Laden, or at least who would avoid condemning him. But the allegation Friedman is making is that no major cleric has condemned him. Try this: Prominent Pakistani Cleric Tahir ul Qadri condemns Bin Laden. http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/10/17/195606.shtml I don't personally care for Yusuf al-Qaradawi. He is an old-time Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood preacher who fled to Qatar and now has a perch at al-Jazeera. But he does have some virtues. He is enormously popular among Muslim fundamentalists. And, he absolutely despises Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Al-Qaradawi has repeatedly condemned the latter. He even gave a fatwa that it was a duty of Muslims to fight alongside the US in Afghanistan against al-Qaeda! See also: Yusuf al-Qaradawi condemns al-Qaeda. http://www.islamfortoday.com/qaradawi02.htm There are also substantial Muslim communities in Europe with leaderships that have explicitly condemned Bin Laden. E.g.: Spanish Muslim Clerical authorities Issue Fatwa against Osamah Bin Laden. There are on the order of 250,000 Muslims in Spain. http://www.int-review.org/terr42a.html High Mufti of Russian Muslims calls for Extradition of Bin Laden. The Russian Muslim community is about 20 million strong, or 15 percent of Russia's 143 million population, and is growing rapidly, so that in a century Russia may be 50 percent Muslim. So this is not a pro forma thing here. A good round-up on this sort of issue has been put up by al-Muhajabah: http://www.muhajabah.com/otherscondemn.php See also Charles Kurzman's page: http://www.unc.edu/~kurzman/terror.htm Friedman also does refer to a major conference of Muslim clerics, http://www.albawaba.com/en/countries/Jordan/185952 thinkers and notables wound up just Wednesday that made a powerful statement about religious tolerance and condemned everything Osama Bin Laden stands for. But he seems oddly unaware of the significance of having Grand Ayatollah Sistani, Grand Imam of al-Azhar Seminary Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, and many other great Muslim authorities sign off on this epochal statement of Muslim ecumenism. The statement forbids one Muslim to declare another "not a Muslim" if the believer adheres to any of the mainstream legal rites of Sunnism and Shiism. The whole basis of al-Qaeda is to call the Muslim leaders of countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as well as Shiites, "not Muslims." The statement also demands that engineers should please stop pretending to issue fatwas, which should be left to trained clerical jurisconsults. This para. is also a slam at Bin Laden. PS As for Friedman's main point, that Muslims haven't done a good job of fighting jihadi ideology and terrorism, it is bizarre. The Algerian government fought a virtual civil war to put down political Islam, in which over 100,000 persons died. The Egyptians jailed 20,000 or 30,000 radicals for thought crimes and killed 1500 in running street battles in the 1990s and early zeroes. Al-Qaeda can't easily strike in the Middle East precisely because Syria, Egypt, Algeria, etc. have their number and have undertaken massive actions against them. What does Friedman want? And, besides, he is wrong that this is only a Muslim problem. In the global age all problems are everybody's. That's part of flat world, too, Tom."