Last Saturday, the British Prime Minister David Cameron gave a speech about how the government viewed the future of multiculturalism and Muslim community relations in the UK.
On the face of it, his argument was reasonable enough: that his government will be more careful in future only to fund Muslim groups who not only don't advocate violence in the UK, but also don't advocate violence anywhere else, either.
The risks to this strategy comes less in what he said, and more in how he said it. You can't make a speech on this without taking into account how sensitive an issue it is.
It will not have escaped Cameron's attention that the English Defence League, a group devoted to anti-Islamic prejudice, organized a 3,000-strong rally on the same day, and that papers like the Daily Express spew out anti-Muslim propaganda day after day. In this context, there is a significant minority of the population who have a deep-seated prejudice against all Muslims, and who aren't going to take the time to make the kind of distinctions on which Cameron's speech is based.
But the ability to make these distinctions is essential to understanding why certain Muslims see fit to advocate violence in the first place. Islam contains many different theological groups, branches, and strands. The vast majority are pietistic and apolitical. Historically, it is only one minority strand - Salafism - which is deeply socially conservative, and only one rogue offshoot of Salafism, Jihadism, which encourages violent terrorism. Salafism has its roots in Saudi Arabia, and entails a broad spectrum of opinions, from the non-violent to the political and violent, and Salafi Muslims tend to hold many conservative social opinions which most Muslims don't agree with. For example, mainstream Salafism is culturally isolationist and allows interaction with non-Muslims only in cases of necessity. Mainstream Salafism, however, does not advocate violence and terrorism, whereas Jihadism does.
The problem is that for a long time Salafism has been actively promoted by Saudi Arabia, and it is exactly Salafism which makes it harder to prevent jihadist radicalization. The Salafi brand of conservative and insular Islam which Saudi Arabia promotes spreads a strand of Islam which has certain doctrinal similarities to jihadism, and which can act as a gateway to ideas which encourage violence. This naturally makes it harder to educate young Muslims in traditional, mainstream, pietistic Islam, which is as compatible with David Cameron's brand of liberalism as the Church of England. In other words, Saudi Salafism impedes the efforts made by educational organizations to prevent Islamic radicalization.
I have recently written a new policy memo for the US Congress outlining the role of the Saudi government in promoting Salafism. It is estimated that somewhere between $2 and $3 billion dollars is spent yearly by the Saudi government on the effort to globalize Salafism. Books that promote Salafism at the expense of traditional Islamic teachings are published in abundance and often given free of charge, and, in many instance, non-Salafi publishing houses have been bought out. As in many countries around the world, some British Muslim institutions readily accept Saudi funding, thereby ensuring the propagation of Salafism, and more recently, a number of established western academic publishing houses have published historical accounts of Salafism presenting it as a tolerant tradition.
While the Saudi government has not explicitly promoted terrorism or violence, its practice of bankrolling the global publishing of Salafi doctrine for decades has promoted a harmful doctrine, which is the parent of one that is actively dangerous. At best, it advocates isolationism and minimal engagement with non-Salafis and non-Muslims, and at worst, it has been used as a basis to justify animosity and hatred to wider society.
My memo argues that the government would do well to counter this by engaging with the leadership of Saudi Arabia, and encourage them in private of the urgent need for further reforms, encouraging Saudi Arabia to manage and create platforms for dissent, (as history shows that when Salafism interacts with more moderate forms of Islam, it itself becomes more moderate), and encouraging more cultural exchanges between Saudi leading clerics and their European counterparts to expose them to new ideas and ways of challenging common threats.
All Muslims who see their faith twisted into unrecognizable and violent forms wish to see policymakers act against this challenge, and help us to reclaim the Islam we know - one that advocates for ethical standards of behavior, coexistence, and peace.
The Prophet Muhammad foresaw the twisting of Islam to violent un-Islamic ends. He even foresaw how this would take place: "Truly," he said, "God does not remove knowledge by extracting it from [His] servants. Rather He removes knowledge by removing the scholars, until when no scholar remains the people take ignoramuses as their leaders. Then they are consulted and give fatwas without knowledge. So they are astray and lead others astray."
Let us hope that the present government gets the message and engages the Saudi government, and in the meantime, stops making noises which help people to confuse the extremists with the mainstream.
Azeem Ibrahim is a Fellow and Member of the Board of Directors at the Institute of Social Policy and Understanding and a former Research Scholar at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and World Fellow at Yale.
Follow me on Twitter (@AzeemIbrahim)
"Truly," he said, "God does not remove knowledge by extracting it from [His] servants. Rather He removes knowledge by removing the scholars, until when no scholar remains the people take ignoramuses as their leaders. Then they are consulted and give fatwas without knowledge. So they are astray and lead others astray."
"The conspiracy was uncovered by Drug Enforcement Administration sources, who posed as Taliban fighters and told the ring members that they wanted to sell drugs from the lawless Afghan regions."
"At meetings that began in Ghana in June 2010, the ring members agreed to receive and warehouse tons of Taliban-owned cocaine and heroin in West Africa, the feds said. Some drugs would be shipped by commercial jet to the United States for sale."
"When told that the proceeds would help finance the Taliban, ring member Maroun Saade, a Lebanese, "responded that it would please him to support the Taliban's cause," prosecutors wrote in the indictment."
The plot thickened in October 2010
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/taliban_drug_ring_MpBZg20O8FlefdkWANb8cI#ixzz1EDLXIyZd
"When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action. If they respond to any one of these, you also accept it and withold yourself from doing them any harm. Invite them to (accept) Islam; if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them. ... If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah's help and fight them...." (Sahih Muslim 19.4294)
'Before I was nine I had learned the basic canon of Arab life. It was me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe; and the tribe against the world and all of us against the infidel. – Leon Uris, 'The Haj'
William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) was Prime Minister of Great Britain four times: 1868–74, 1880–85, 1886 and 1892–94. He called the Qur'an an "accursed book" and once held it up during a session of Parliament, declaring: "So long as there is this book there will be no peace in the world."
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salafi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabi
Also, the Deobandi movement was founded by a Wahhabi.
http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/%5Cpapers38%5Cpaper3725.html
I don't know much about Shi'ite extremism; I presume your assertion there is correct (per Shia and Sunni views and groups hardly ever cross-pollinating).
And it seems the post author knows what he's talking about. Other than your errors that I've corrected in this comment, what else to you feel is wrong with his views?
It does appear that the Debandis were inspired by a Wahhabi.
About Shiite extremists: You don't know who Ayatollah Khomeini was? He is not the only one, of course.
As for the other details I disagree with, I could go through his article, if I get time.
Loved the article.
- What happened to political correctness I wonder :) How stuped is the west.
We need to invite a true Islamic radical to present his/her views, and then we can judge for ourselves.
We've been providing our answer since then.
While slightly problematic in execution and scope, our answer is the only one that can be given. They blow us up ... we blow them up. There really aren't any other options, because if we don't blow them up, they will not stop trying to blow us up.
By "them", I specifically mean murderous global-jihadi-extremist groups, such as al-Qaeda.
By "us" I mean everyone else.
If you really want to talk to/hear from an Islamic radical, there's always this guy (starting at 11:00 in the video).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKbzdfQeiFc
Anjem Choudry - I call him "Islam's very own Jerry Falwell" ..... every religion's got 'em.
Fortunately, this more moderate, reality-friendly Sheikh is much more popular, globally:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Gd3nKT9PTo
A quote from a warlord about twisting words to violence seems silly in its own right.
Christianity started out as a non-violent religion of poor, oppressed people. Its founder was put to death by the Romans without resisting. It was only after three hundred years of being an illegal, persecuted sect, that the Church made its faustian bargain with Constantine and was transformed into a state religion propped up by the force of arms. Christianity today is in the process of "evolving" back into what it was meant to be in the first place.
Islam, on the other hand, started with both war and politics. Muhammad was a warrior and a politician who used violence to squelch his "enemies" (meaning rival religions and rival empire-builders). There is no pre-political, pre-violent 'golden age' of Islam to get back to.
That does not mean Islam is incapable of transformation into something progressive and good. But it does mean that it will be a very difficult process involving a fundamental and radical change of vision and a leap into uncharted territory.