Islam and the West Post 9/11

Theodore Gabriel, Jane Idleman Smith, Ron Geaves, Ron Geaves

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351926089
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This book offers a chance for greater understanding of the political and religious groups in Islam that have contributed to events pre and post September 11th, and clearer insights into Muslim/Christian relations today. Many books have focused on the events of September 11th but have been primarily journalistic. This book draws together both Muslim and non-Muslim scholars who have been studying Christian/Muslim relations for many years. They assess the impact of 9/11 on Islamophobia and antipathy towards Muslims. Providing insights into various multi-cultural communities whose relations with Islam have been affected, the authors look particularly at regions where there are large minority Muslim communities (US and UK) and large minority non-Muslim communities (Indonesia and Nigeria). Assessing a number of issues impacting upon the teaching of Islam, this book allows readers to assess the consequences of the event and develop a more critical understanding of its implications.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Ron Geaves and Theodore Gabriel

In calling this collection of essays ‘Islam and the West’ we are aware that we use the term ‘West’ not so much as a geographical location, but as a symbol for a way of life which certain segments of the Muslim populations of the world find threatening or at odds with their understanding of a comprehensive way of life given to them not by human progress or action but rather by an eternal and irrevocable revelation of the divine. The label, ‘West’, then, brings to mind a set of cultures that have established over the last two hundred years a series of more or less liberal and democratic regimes based on ‘sovereignty of the people’ rather than the truths of their own religious revelations and have, to the Muslim eye, replaced God’s right to control all aspects of human individual and collective life, with the suspension of ‘sacred’ life to the private realm, preferring to trust in other agencies for the activities of public existence.

This way of life, known as ‘secular’, combined with a vigorous and aggressive free market capitalism has been extremely successful in the last decades of the twentieth century, and through a series of technological and communication breakthroughs has been able to penetrate most parts of the world, a process commonly known as globalization. However, not everyone has been happy with the results or able to participate in its benefits equally. The rich and the powerful have become more so, and the world’s poor populations have proliferated. The divide between the world’s rich nations and poor nations has increased.

One of the consequences of this process of globalization and promotion of a ‘secular’ free market – often oblivious to any moral codes or ethics arising from the world’s religious traditions – has been the resurgence of a number of religious alternatives, often involving fundamentalist or foundationalist truth-claims based on the inviolability of various revelations.

Nowhere has this been more dramatic than amongst Muslims, although it should be noted that Islamic revivalism, commonly labelled ‘fundamentalism’ by the media needs to be explained within the context of that religion, rather than by attempts to find a common cause for religious revival in the second half of the twentieth century, even though, as the Appleby Project discovered, there are a number of common features. Muslims have historically responded to political or social crisis or invasion by non-Muslim forces, through religious revival. This reaction is built into the doctrine of ‘Manifest Success’, a theological position advocated in the Qur’an which links external success with the notion of being God’s people.

Early Muslim success, linked to the dramatic expansion of the Arab tribes out of Arabia and into large swathes of territory belonging to the Byzantine Empire and all of the remainder of the Persian Empire, confirmed this special relationship with God. Later conquests and trading brought Islam to North Africa, India, South-East Asia, parts of China and into European territory in Spain and the Balkans. Muslims, like Christians in various parts of their history, could be reasonably confident that manifest success indicated that God was ‘on their side’ and the world would in due time embrace the ‘true path’.

However, major setbacks such as the Mongol invasion in 1258, but much more crucially, the expansion of Europe and encroachment onto Muslim territory in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, were to seriously challenge the Muslim religious psyche. The European expansion was particularly threatening in that it introduced not only colonial domination that demonstrated the weakness of Muslim culture in the face of new technologies, scientific discovery and new methods of secular education, but faced Muslims with the possibility of a resurgence by Christianity deemed to be the previous and superseded revelation of God. The response to political failure and cultural decline in a ‘Manifest Success’ theology can only be religious revival. To a mentality, confident throughout history, that they would inherit the earth as God’s last people, the only reason for failure had to be a lack of faith and commitment to God’s revelation. Thus, one response was to return to the ways of God as written in the Qur’an and the Sunna of the Prophet. Another response, less theological, was to learn from the successes of the Europeans and establish their education, legal and political systems; a pragmatic solution that could lead to Islam becoming a private religion but losing its prominence in public institutions, as had happened to Christianity in the West. These two responses, as will be seen, provided the possibility of a serious clash of opinion, dividing the Muslim world into those who sought solutions through seeking rapprochements with Western political and cultural institutions, creatively borrowing in order to progress their own societies and those who saw this as a continuation of the failure to live by the tenets of Islam and thus doomed to failure in regard to any renaissance of Muslim life.

What is of no doubt, is that cultural interchange between Muslims and the Christian world, both in Europe and in the Byzantine East, had been going on for centuries, each creatively borrowing from the other, with the directional movement of knowledge depending on who was politically dominant. Thus in the Mediaeval period, western Europe was the recipient of Arab discoveries in science and mathematics and their philosophical developments achieved through a synthesis of Muslim and neo-Platonic ideas. The colonial period saw the movement reverse, and as pointed out by Lamin Sanneh, the Muslim encounter with European colonialism was more or less amicable leading to the ‘genuine partnerships’ and remarkable syntheses of western and Islamic legal codes.

However, resistance there was, and ironically for those who maintained that a return to God’s way was necessary for Muslim renaissance, it was the estern-educated elites who led the way towards the end of colonial rule and the emergence of Muslim nation states, once again borrowing from European legal codes, political systems and either capitalist- or socialist-influenced economic systems. Yet, even in spite of the discovery of oil wealth in the Arab heartlands, there were those who saw the continuing lack of power and influence, which remained outside the Muslim world in North America, western Europe and the Soviet Union, the internal divisions between Muslim nations, the continuing poverty and lack of education and, above all, the internal corruption of Muslim regimes, as an indication that only a religious renaissance would resolve the problems. The rhetoric of an Islamic state, where Muslims governed themselves based on a full implementation of Islamic law, and removed governments that were influenced by western systems of governance and economic structures, began to find a ready audience, especially amongst those who were educated to university standard in law, engineering, accountancy and other professions, forming a new urban middle-class, increasingly disenfranchised by older elites that refused to share the rewards of wealth and status. Dissatisfied with western ideologies, both capitalism and socialism, which had to all intents and purposes failed both the common people and newly educated professionals, they turned to Islam as a political ideology as espoused by twentieth-century ideologues such as Maulana Mawdudi, Sayyid Qutb and Hasan al-Banna.

Thus, a number of movements were created throughout the Muslim world intent on creating revolutions by either militant or peaceful means that would lead to the creation of Islamic states, or even the ideal of one Muslim khalifat, arguing that even the ideal of nationalism was contrary to the Muslim concept of ummah, a transnational community of allegiance to God and His final revelation. The enemy was not so much the West, but those within the community of Muslims who were seen to have adopted western ways and departed from the comprehensive way of life revealed by God, known as Islam. However, increasingly, the struggle to determine how the Muslim nations should be governed and what part religion should take in the processes of governance has begun to implicate the western world, especially the USA.

The old colonial role of the West is not regarded as ended in many parts of the Muslim world, rather many consider that American dominance now manifests itself through forms of neo-colonialism and corporate capitalism. In addition, many of the movements founded to establish various forms of Islamic government regard the West as not only an enemy of Islam because of secular ‘godlessness’ but also for supporting the very regimes that they wish to remove. However, colonialism has brought with it other complications. Not only did the nineteenth century see the largest population movement of Europeans into other parts of the world, the collapse of the colonial enterprises has seen the corresponding movements of Muslim migrants into the homeland of the old adversaries. Thus, very few western nations do not have significant Muslim populations and very few Muslim nations are not wrestling with how to integrate western influence on lifestyles and culture into the Muslim paradigm. It is no longer a truism to state ‘East is East and West is West’. Today, more Muslims live as minorities in non-Muslim countries than in the Arab heartlands.

To further complicate the contemporary scene, the Cold War had to some extent kept the Muslim world, especially its allegiance to Islam, under the sightlines of the main protagonists. Muslim nations were essentially seen as pawns in the game of gathering allegiances and gaining influence in various spheres of the globe. In the face of US support for Israel, a number of Middle-Eastern nations wooed the Soviet Union. In South Asia, the opposite was true. In the face of India’s close relationship with the Soviet Union, the US wooed Pakistan. For a while, Afghanistan successfully played one off against the other for aid and development. However, the sudden collapse of the Soviet empire was to radically transform world politics and the perceptions of the world towards US dominance.

The invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union had provided a catalyst for thousands of Muslim volunteers to converge on the north-west frontier of Pakistan where they were mobilised into the various factions of radical Islamic organisations engaged in jihad against the Russian military. The USA saw the opportunity to exploit the situation and embarrass their main foe. Military training, weapons and money were provided to the mujahiddin. So successful were the guerrilla strategies against the Russians, involving heavy casualities, that they had to pull out, leaving Afghanistan in the hands of tribal warlords and various mujahiddin groups. Several significant consequences were to come in the aftermath of the Russian defeat that transformed international relations, and especially the dynamics of the historical heritage of Islam and the West.

The collapse of the Soviet empire was not without impact on Muslim populations. New Muslim states were carved out in central Asia, needing to determine how to govern themselves. Chechnya became a battleground between Russia, determined to retain control of its strategic geographical position, and Chechnyan nationalists, equally bent on independence. The Balkans were plunged into chaos as aggressive nationalism, especially on the part of Serbia, resurrected the practice of ethnic cleansing, particularly aimed towards Bosnian Muslims, a remnant in Europe of the old Ottoman empire. The Palestinians opened a new intifada, marked by ‘suicide bomber’ attacks on both Israeli military and citizens as the prospect of a genuinely independent state diminished under the reality of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. At the same time, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq chose to invade Kuwait, resulting in the first Gulf War and the presence of US troops stationed in Saudi Arabia. Other ongoing local Muslim issues continued to remain intractable, for example, Algeria and Kashmir.

With varying degrees of accuracy as to the religious factors in the conflicts, Muslims around the world saw the struggles as evidence of a conspiracy against Islam itself. The collapse of the Soviet Union had removed a traditional ally in a number of political issues and the US had now achieved a hegemonic dominance in world affairs. Its unreserved support of Israel, combined with its political support of a number of Muslim regimes regarded as corrupt, and its deep suspicion of the Islamic government in Iran, was all exacerbated by the presence of US troops so close to the two holy cities of Medina and Makkah. To millions of Muslims around the world it seemed as if the USA government had replaced its traditional enmity against communism with Islam. At the extreme end of this perspective, conspiracy theories abounded, resurrecting a new version of a Zionist plot to dominate world affairs. Anti-Israeli feeling amongst Muslims began to generate new versions of anti-Semitism, in which the Protocols of Zion, long condemned as forgeries after their use as anti-Jewish propaganda by the Nazi regime in Germany, again gained credibility in some Muslim circles.

However, it was developments in Afghanistan which were to prove, with hindsight, the most dangerous to western interests, and which would plunge relations between the West and Muslims into a critical stage. As mentioned, the Russian invasion had brought Muslim volunteers from all around the world to join the mujahiddin, armed by the US and battle-hardened in the vicious firefights with the Russian military, they came into contact with radical Muslim organisations in the north-west tribal areas of Pakistan, and often fought alongside jihad groups organised by various Islamic factions. Notable amongst these mujahiddin was the legendary Osama bin Laden, famous for his exploits against the Russians; a millionaire Saudi Arabian of Yemeni background, and the recipient of considerable US support. Although the story remains to be documented, Osama bin Laden was able to provide the resources, charisma and ideology for a more integrated international resistance against the perceived enemies of Islam. Linked by their experiences in Afghanistan, the mujahiddin volunteers dispersed, returning to support radical Muslim struggles in various parts of the world to overthrow corrupt regimes, or to fight in Bosnia, Chechnya, Algeria and Kashmir. Others remained in Afghanistan, intent on shaping an Islamic state in that nation. Somewhere in the midst of this activity, Osama bin Laden made the necessary contacts to found his al-Qa’eda organisation, more an umbrella movement able to link with various local jihad movements around the Muslim world than an international movement.

The power vacuum in Afghanistan was resolved by the victory of the Taliban over most other factions. They were a new radical movement created in the Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan where a passionate youth eager to reclaim their land came into contact with the teachings of revivalist Islam in the Deobandi-influenced rural madrasas of the North-West Provinces. The Taliban-dominated Afghanistan and the North-West Provinces provided the geographical space for jihad groups to live and train; al-Qa’eda gave the international dimension. However, few could have forecast the events of 9/11 even though there had been an earlier attack on the World Trade Center, or its dramatic impact on international relations.

However, the attacks on the USA were a logical continuation of the decision of Muslim revivalist movements pledged to jihad to include the West, especially the USA, in their struggle to impose their own vision of Islam on the Muslim world. The response of the US government to declare war on terrorism, although politically expedient has so far done very little to resolve the situation. The linking of the term ‘terrorist’ to jihad movements that may in some cases have justice on their side, provides the opportunity for any government, however corrupt or oppressive to brand its opponents prepared for armed insurrection as terrorists, and claim they are assisting in the US self-proclaimed war against such atrocities. On the other hand, such a policy fails to take into account the strength of popular Muslim support for such causes, particularly in Palestine, thus blurring the borders between ‘terrorist’ and ‘moderate’ Muslims, that the governments of the USA and Britain would like to keep clearly demarcated in the interests of their respective foreign policies.

Since the tragic events of 9/11, the situation in the world has done little to appease Muslim fears that they are the new enemy of the West. Afghanistan has been invaded and a new government installed in Kabul with little control over the rest of the country. The Taliban, under their leader Mullah Omar, are resurgent and able to flourish in the North-West Provinces of Pakistan, now under the control of an elected revivalist Muslim government. Osama bin Laden has attained a legendary status in the Muslim world, especially amongst disaffected youth. Conspiracy theories of denial of his involvement in 9/11 abound in the Muslim world, preferring to believe in Jewish/Christian conspiracies against Islam than admit that a pious man of the desert could have performed the atrocity. The Palestinian problem is at its most intractable as the hardline government of Ariel Sharon prepares to isolate the Arab population by building a wall between Israel and Palestinian territory. Iraq has been invaded by the military forces of the USA and Britain, Saddam Hussein removed from power, but Muslim opinion inflamed against what is perceived as renewed colonisation. Clumsy attempts to justify the war with overblown claims of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and dubious links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qa’eda have only helped confirm Muslim suspicions. In addition, many regard the excursion into Iraq, the military presence in Afghanistan, the US build-up of military bases and commercial presence in Muslim Central Asia, and the Russian insistence on maintaining Chechnya as having more to do with petroleum geopolitics than efforts to support democracy.

Although al-Qa’eda and its allies in the Muslim world have failed to repeat the atrocity of 9/11 on either US or European soil, several bombs have exploded in Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and other parts of the Muslim world, demonstrating how difficult it is to prevent such acts. The choice of locations for attacks since 9/11 would suggest that the targets have been chosen in places where the West and Islam most interact with each other, either in multi-cultural Muslim societies striving to maintain a delicate balance between Islamic values, democracy and pluralism or where western influence is strong, for example Saudi Arabia, which also follows tightrope diplomacy between its strong relations with the West and the Saudi regime’s traditional links with Wahhabi strands of Islam.

Thus it would seem that it is either Muslim minorities in the West or Muslims living in societies which are trying to balance the demands of multi-faith or multi-cultural societies that have borne the brunt of the post 9/11 world. Muslim minorities in western democracies and larger and older minorities such as those in India have found themselves under suspicion and easily made the targets of either racism or the resurgence of ancient hostilities that brand them as ‘other’. Muslim societies such as those in South-East Asia or Turkey, considered moderate by the West have become the target of the jihad movements, who regard them as almost apostate or at least, as hypocrites, failing to live by the tenets of Islam in public as well as private lives.

The contributors to this book have long experience of the relations between Islam and the West either as Muslim/Christian relation scholars, or as Muslims living in the West. It is on the areas mentioned above that we have chosen to focus rather than the Arab heartlands, with the exception of Palestine, so crucial to the resolution of the atmosphere of suspicion towards the West. It is in these places where the relations with the West have been most affected and where they are at their most creative. The collection is divided into parts: the first dealing with theoretical issues and the second containing a number of case studies specific to various regions around the world.

The traumatic events of 9/11 shocked the world and especially the United States, which had rarely suffered aggression from external enemies within its frontiers since its inception in 1776, in spite of its participation in two world wars and numerous other undeclared wars. The notable exception is the attack on Pearl Harbour which in itself becomes a mythic memory of heinous crimes against the nation. The leaders and people of the United States had never expected the homeland of the nation to be so vulnerable as to suffer acts of violence on some of its most prestigious sites. The destruction of two institutions symbolic of its economic and military might, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, was so significant. The USA had long been the target of Muslim mujahiddin of various kinds, vexed by, to them, unwarranted interference in Muslim affairs, in Iran, in Lebanon, in Iraq, in Saudi Arabia and most culpably in Palestine. But these were acts of desperation, ill-organised and not of long-term consequence – the hijacking of a plane or a ship or the bombing of an embassy. But the present attack was symptomatic of a more clever, well-organised well-planned and more ruthless effort. Al-Qa’eda, masterminded by Osama bin Laden seemed quite different from earlier militant organisations. Indications of its potency had been forthcoming in ...