Prof. Dr. Ahmet Akgündüz
There is a continuing international debate around the world in general and in the Netherlands in particular. There are a lot of views and opinions about globalization of norms and values. The Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende intents to establish a commission to discuss about the norms and values. We hear the speakers of each religious, political or ideological group profess that their religion, group or ideology, which has a contribution to existing values and norms. So I can imagine that a lot of people wonder in this country about possible contribution of Islam to the existing norms and values What are the basic values of Islam that afford strength to the structure of society, its foundation, and progress? Does it have principles and aims which it specifies from the point of view of the social structure and human relations? Does it take moderation, positive action, tranquility and peace in social life as its basis, or is its aim enmity, blood, and revenge?
Let’s forget the negative publicity of the last months around Islam and everything, which has to do with Islam, because it’s temporary, in my opinion, let’s hope as it is at least. Of course only to hope is not enough, we have to take actions in order to establish or continue the harmony. The Netherlands has a long common history with the world of Islam. Islam has been a scientific study-field of the Dutch academic world for centuries. Both facts have to do with the presence of the Netherlands in the present Indonesia.
The Central Office for the Statistics has figured out that on the first of January 2002, there are around 900.000 Muslims in the Netherlands. In Amsterdam, Islam is the biggest religion with 13% in the same year. It has nothing to do with a high percentage of conversion, but with the presence of Muslim minority groups since the sixties.
The current situation and the future of this arbitrary composed Muslim-society in a secular state like the Netherlands is continuously a topic of the Dutch public, politics and media. A lot of problems around this topic are discussed daily. Unfortunately, the Muslim minority is not emancipated enough, therefore the positive contribution of Islam and Muslims to the norms and values in the Netherlands is also not clear or not in progress yet, although Islam, like other religions, can provide a certain contribution to the harmony and peace.
I will try to expound the view of Islam about norms and values, and discuss which of these values can be useful in this society. The fact that the norms and values are discussed nowadays gives me occasion to research if it has to do something with fading away of the religious factors.
First, we have to make a distinction between religions and followers. For example, while it is obligatory that all attributes of all Muslims should be Muslim, in the reality it is not always thus. We should not refer to Islam all bad or good attributes of Muslims every time.
I- ISLAMIC VALUES CAN BE DIVIDED IN THREE GROUPS
These basic values and needs which define the foundations for good individual and social life, are classified into three levels, or hierarchy, namely (1) necessities (dharuriyyat); (2) convenience (hajiat); and (3) refinements (kamaliat). In the legal theory (usul al fiqh) of Islam there is a maxim "the general aim of legislation" in Islam is to realize values through protecting and guaranteeing their necessities (al dharuriyyat) as well as fulfilling their importance (al hajiyyat) and their embellishments (tahsiniyyat). The human basic values consist of life (al nafs), reason (al 'aql), descent (nasab), property (al mal) and religion (al din). Islam protects these primary human values, and prohibits any violation of them.
1. Five Basic Values for All Mankind
According to Islam there are five basic values for humanity, which are advised to be protected every time. Depending on circumstances to build up harmony and universal peace, advises to preserve the five basic values at the lowest level or the barest minimum for an acceptable level of living. These basic values therefore includes the ability to perform moral responsibilities; protection of life, securing food, clothing and shelter, education, the right to earn a living, to set up a family, etc. It is to be understood that at this level, one has enough to live but not necessarily to be in some comfort. Islam preaches to that a human being cannot live without these basic values. Individuals and states are advised to protect or at least to respect these basic values.
A) Life (Physical Self): This includes basic items such as food, clothing, shelter, transport, health etc. In other words, physical self means all those that could provide a healthy body to lead a purposeful life. Islam, holds the human soul in high esteem, and considers the attack against innocent human beings a grave sin, this is emphasized by the following Qur'anic verse: "... whoever kills a human being for other than manslaughter or corruption and mischief in the earth, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoever saves the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind. Our messengers came unto them of old with clear proofs (of Allah's Sovereignty), but afterwards lo! Many of them became prodigals in the earth" (the Qur’an, 5: 32). In fact, Muslims serve for life, not for death. In Islam and other religions, all men are equal, regardless of color, language, race, or nationality.
Internationalized crimes are threatening life like drug trafficking and the trafficking of women and children which became much more difficult to control today because of their international character. Like crime, disease has also become globalizes and threatens the life. AIDS is one of those epidemics spreading in the world, which can only be brought under control through a global effort. The porous borders of today's world have made it all the more difficult to check all kinds of contagious disease.
B) Religion: Religion is considered as a basic value or fundamental right of every individual. One is free to practice the religion of his choice. There should not be any compulsion in choosing one's religion, nor obstruction to practice it. The religion is for providing guidance, peace, tranquility, comfort and purpose in life. The religion is for teaching man to uphold truth, justice, and all the virtues. The religion is for teaching man to avoid the vices. There is no coercion in Islam; Islam came with the just word of our creator. In Quran 2:256; God said "Let there be no compulsion in religion: Truth stands out clear from Error..."
According to many scholars, religion will be one of the prime factors of the 21st Century. Huntington, in his theory The Clash of Civilizations" analyzed the present international conflicts in terms of clash of civilizations -conflict between the two cultures two civilizations -Islamic and Western civilizations. But this is not true.
In the world of humanity, from the time of Adam up to now, two great currents, two lines of thought, have always been and will so continue. Like two mighty trees, they have spread out their branches in all directions and in every class of humanity. One of them is the line of prophet-hood and religion, the other the line of philosophy in its various forms. Whenever those two lines have been in agreement and united, that is to say, if the line of philosophy, having joined the line of religion, the world of humanity has experienced a brilliant happiness and social life. Whereas, when they have become separated, goodness and light have been drawn to the side of the line of prophet-hood and religion.
C) Intellect or Knowledge (Al Aql): The intellectual nature of man is made up of mind or intelligence or reasoning power. To this aspect Islam pays extraordinary attention and builds the intellectual structure of man on most sound foundations. Islam classifies knowledge into two, the basic or fundamental which must be secured by every individual and the specialized knowledge which should be secured by only a few in a society.
D) Family Life and Offspring (Al Nasab): In a time when values tend to be turned upside down, family life as the very heart of society was attacked just as much as many other handed-down traditions. About ten years ago, when it become fashionable for young torchbearers to live in "communities", share sex and children and earnings, many people feared that this might mean the end of family life. Fortunately, this is not so. In the end, the overwhelming majority of young women still dream of having a wedding ring on their finger, living in a comfortable flat as "Mrs. So-and-so" and bringing up their children in an orderly home, just as young men prefer to introduce "her" with the words" "This is my wife". Neither socialism nor any other "isms" were able to uproot what has been implanted into human nature from time immemorial.
E) Wealth (Al Mal): Wealth is obviously a fundamental human value. White-collar crimes such as money laundering, embezzlement and corruption "transcend frontiers and have become similar everywhere" and threatening this value. Due to the globalization process, the maximum wealth of the world is now accumulated in few hands. Less than one billion people now possess 79% of the total wealth and 11.2% people are controlling 62.5% income of the world. US (4.6% population) are getting 25.7% of the world income, which is 26% of the total wealth. Unfortunately the total income of the whole Muslim world (total population 20.5%) is only 3.5% and they control only 5.3% of the world trade.
There is erosion in this value. The immoral character of the global economy is becoming even more apparent in yet another sphere. Globalization, aided and abetted by the removal of national controls over cross-border financial flows and the computer revolution, has resulted in short-term capital entering and exiting markets at lightning speed. Because this capital is as massive as it is volatile, it is capable of wreaking havoc upon an economy, which may not have the mechanisms to deal with it. The dramatic outflow of capital from the region, triggered off to a large extent by currency speculation, has had a devastating impact upon undeveloped countries’ economies. Millions of women and men have lost their jobs; millions more are struggling to survive as hunger and poverty ravage home and hearth. It is not just the tragic consequences of capital volatility that religion would regard as a blot on the human conscience.
2. Secondary Values: Conveniences (al hajiyyat)
Conveniences comprise all activities and things that are not vital to preserve the five foundations, but rather, are needed to remove difficulties or impediments in life. Examples include the use and enjoyment of things that man can do without, but with difficulty, such as the use of some mode of transport (a car), a carpet in winter, etc.
3. Luxury Values: Refinements (al tahsiniyyat)
This category includes items that are beyond those for convenience. They do not only remove difficulty but improve the comfort. For example, if a car is considered as an item of convenience, than a chauffeur-driven car is obviously a refinement.
II- ISLAMIC NORMS
Islam has paid great attention to norms, which can protect basic values. We can’t explain all Islamic norms relating to basic values, which we have mentioned above. But we would like to mention five important norms here as examples:
1. Self Interest vs Selfsacrifice
While the present economic order, right from a small level player to Trans National Companies, is self-centered, Islam advocates the concept of selfsacrifice. It accepts that secret of progress lies in self-sacrifice, and in holding the nation's benefit above personal benefits. Every Muslim should expend all his effort and energy for the society he belongs to. Such efforts of his would be rewarded by Allah not only in this world but hereafter also. 'Should I die, let my community live, for I have an everlasting life in my community’.
2. Extravagance vs Frugality
The present economic world order generates profit as well as consumer in a cyclic manner. It has produced a society, which believes and practices a wasteful or extravagant life-style and considers it their right to "use" because they "have" it. This is in total contrast to Qur’anic model of modesty, simplicity and frugality.
The All-Compassionate Creator desires Thanks in return for the bounties He bestows on mankind, while wastefulness is contrary to thanks, and slights the bounty and causes loss. Frugality, however, shows respect for the bounty and is profitable. Yes, frugality is both a sort of thanks, and shows respect towards the Divine mercy manifested in the bounties, and most definitely is the cause of plenty.
3. Greed vs Contentment:
"Excess and wastefulness lead to greed, and greed has three consequences:" The First is dissatisfaction. As for dissatisfaction, it destroys endeavor and enthusiasm for work, and causes the dissatisfied person to complain instead of giving thanks, and makes him lazy. Such a person abandons possessions which though few in number are licit and seeks possessions which are illicit and free of trouble. And he sacrifices his self-respect on that way, and even his honor. The Second Consequence of Greed is disappointment and loss. The greedy person drives away what he wishes for, is found disagreeable, and is deprived of assistance and help. He even confirms the saying: 'The greedy person is unsuccessful and suffers loss.' The Third Consequence: Greed destroys sincerity and damages actions in regard to the Hereafter. For if a God-fearing person suffers from greed, he will desire the regard of others. And someone who considers the regard of others cannot have complete sincerity. This consequence is extremely important and worth noticing.
Excess and wastefulness leads to lack of contentment. And lack of contentment destroys enthusiasm for work; it causes laziness, opens the door to complaining about life, and makes the dissatisfied person complain continuously.
4. Generalizing a Crime vs Personality in Criminal Law
The "fundamental norm" in Islam that is explained the Qur'anic verse: ‘No bearer of burdens can bear the burden of another’ which he used in its meaning of "No one is answerable for another’s faults or errors’. One of the most basic principles of "some human politics", was "Individuals may be sacrificed for the good of the nation and society. Everything may be sacrificed for the sake of the country." This "fundamental human law" had resulted in appalling crimes throughout history, including the two World Wars this century, which had "overturned a thousand years of human progress", and had given the license for the annihilation of ninety innocents on account of ten criminals. Whereas the verse taught the principle that no one was responsible for another’s crimes. And no innocent person could be sacrificed without his consent, even for the whole of humanity. It establishes true justice for mankind.
We must not forget what the Qur’an states: "Namely, that no bearer of burdens can bear the burden of another" (6: 164). There is a universal rule of law: No one can be punished without evidence. Another important rule: Freedom from guilt is principal, i.e. everybody is innocent unless the opposite is proved. The Prophet is reported to have said, "A believer remains within the scope of his religion as long as he doesn't kill another person illegally."
5. Peace and Forgiveness
In first step, Islam treats of peace in the eschatological sense, as the ultimate goal of human life, almost synonymous with salvation. A second way in which the Islam looks at peace might be called the psychological sense, as tranquility and peace of mind, an inner confidence born of faith that enables the religious believer to face adversity without anxiety or despair. Particularly when one is facing the approach of death, the believer can attain a peace of mind, which will enable the person to overcome spiritual turmoil and fear. A third aspect of peace is universal peace. It reflects the widespread conviction of the time that humankind can sink no lower in criminality towards its own kind and expresses the hope for a time of peace and prosperity for all mankind. According to Sayings for our Prophet, the virtues of civilization will prevail, the face of the earth cleaned of filth, and universal peace be secured.
Islam commands that "one believer should not be vexed with another believer for more than three days," and that so long as there is no reconciliation, both sides perpetually suffer the torments of fear and revenge." Islam advices us like that: ‘Look at the defect in your own soul that you do not see or do not wish to see. Deduct a share for that. As for the small share which then remains, if you respond with forgiveness, pardon, and magnanimity, in such a way as to conquer your enemy swiftly and safely, then you will have escaped all sin and harm.’ Thus, self-awareness should lead to repentance, repentance to forgiveness, forgiveness to reconciliation and the seeds for a lasting peace are laid.
CONCLUSION
Religion in general and Islam in particular can play positive role in reviving common values for mankind and uniting people for justice and equality, particularly the weaker sections.
Today, people should interact with each other much more than the past. There should be cultural exchanges and greater understanding of other values and norms. Within each cultural and national values and norms there should be universal attempt to address problems of social inequalities, gender inequalities and human rights. We must work for global solidarity, and struggle against injustice and for the protection of human rights. Global solidarity is necessary for the protection of the environment, to respond to natural calamities and to tackle poverty. For all these concerns, one needs an international perspective and outlook, which overcomes the narrow nationalist outlooks, which are inadequate to address global environmental concerns, concerns for common values, human rights and gender inequalities. Addressing issues of violations of human rights, gender inequalities and environment go beyond boundaries and over ride nationalist concerns.
I can declare here, on the contrary of some pretexts about Islam and Muslims, Islam attaches great importance to the health and moderation of the social structure, and works to establish general peace and well being. It does not countenance at all movements that are destructive and divisive. It sees positive action as a duty and mark, and does not permit negative action. It makes firm love and brotherhood in the structure of society, and puts forward the necessity of union and unity. It rejects decisively movements, which destroy the common values and sincerity between members of society, like tribalism, racialism, and negative nationalism.
http://www.islamicuniversity.nl/en/showarticleinfo.asp?id=359
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Saturday, January 24, 2009
The Importance of Culture, Language and Identity
(Adapted)
Culture and language:
Culture is a defining feature of a person's identity, contributing to how they see themselves and the groups with which they identify. This may be broadly defined as the sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings, which is transmitted from one generation to another.
"Understanding others makes possible a better knowledge of oneself: any form of identity is complex, for individuals are defined in relation to other people - both individually and collectively - and the various groups to which they owe allegiance, in a constantly shifting pattern." (UNESCO, Learning : The Treasure Within, 1996)
All individuals must feel free to explore the uniqueness of their culture and identity while developing understandings of the cultural diversity that exists in the world around them. Understanding and valuing cultural diversity are the keys to countering racism. Denying cultural expression means limiting the expression of unique perspectives on life and the transmission of knowledge from generation to generation.
Every community, cultural group or ethnic group has its own values, beliefs and ways of living. The observable aspects of culture such as food, clothing, celebrations, religion and language are only part of a person's cultural heritage. A shared cultural heritage bonds the members of the group together and creates a sense of belonging through community acceptance. The shared values, customs and histories characteristic of culture shape the way a person thinks, behaves and views the world.
Language is fundamental to cultural identity and is intrinsic to the expression of culture. The loss of language means the loss of culture and identity. As a means of communicating values, beliefs and customs, it has an important social function and fosters feelings of group identity and solidarity. It is the means by which culture and its traditions and shared values may be conveyed and preserved.
Cultural and linguistic diversity is a feature of most nations today as people from different groups live together as a consequence of historical events and human migrations. Within multilingual societies, the maintenance of the languages of the various ethnic and cultural groups is critical for the preservation of their cultural heritage and identity.
In many societies throughout history, the suppression of the languages of minority groups has been used as a deliberate policy in order to suppress those minority cultures. As a result a large number of the world's languages have been lost with the processes of colonisation and migration.
It has been estimated that approximately 10,000 spoken languages have existed. Today, only about 6,000 languages are still spoken and many of these are not being taught to children. More than half of these languages are unlikely to survive the next century. (W. Davis, 'Vanishing Cultures', in National Geographic, vol. 196, no. 2, pp. 62-89, 1999.)
As languages disappear, cultures die. The world becomes inherently a less interesting place, but we also sacrifice raw knowledge and the intellectual achievements of millennia. (Ken Hale, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, quoted in Davis, W. 1999.)
In an increasingly globalised world, linguistic skills strengthen international ties and foster cultural exchange. While English is the dominant language, many people speak a language other than English as their first language within their families and communities. Proficiency in English is critical for successful participation with and within a dominant English speaking society. Similarly, proficiency in first language skills is essential for self-enrichment and expression of identity.
Identity and community:
An individual's sense of identity is grounded in their cultural identity. The use of community languages is important both for individual and group identity and for communication across generations. Maintaining a community's first language, therefore, becomes a significant issue for many people who belong to diverse ethnic communities.
With migration, ethnic identity does not have to be static. A person's understanding of their own and others' cultural identity develops from birth and is shaped by the values and attitudes prevalent at home and in the surrounding community. In a culturally diverse society, individuals may have multiple identities through identification with several different sub-cultures. This identity becomes more complex and fluid over time as people develop allegiances to different groups within the broader society.
At the same time, cultures themselves are not static but develop and change as the belief systems and ways of life of different groups adapt under other cultural influences including mass media and popular culture to create new identities.
Mistrust and fear of difference which often stem from isolation from other cultures can be overcome by fostering cultural understanding. The understanding of how history has shaped our relationship with each other and respect for each other's cultures can be the key components of the Reconciliation process.
Source: RacismNoway
Culture and language:
Culture is a defining feature of a person's identity, contributing to how they see themselves and the groups with which they identify. This may be broadly defined as the sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings, which is transmitted from one generation to another.
"Understanding others makes possible a better knowledge of oneself: any form of identity is complex, for individuals are defined in relation to other people - both individually and collectively - and the various groups to which they owe allegiance, in a constantly shifting pattern." (UNESCO, Learning : The Treasure Within, 1996)
All individuals must feel free to explore the uniqueness of their culture and identity while developing understandings of the cultural diversity that exists in the world around them. Understanding and valuing cultural diversity are the keys to countering racism. Denying cultural expression means limiting the expression of unique perspectives on life and the transmission of knowledge from generation to generation.
Every community, cultural group or ethnic group has its own values, beliefs and ways of living. The observable aspects of culture such as food, clothing, celebrations, religion and language are only part of a person's cultural heritage. A shared cultural heritage bonds the members of the group together and creates a sense of belonging through community acceptance. The shared values, customs and histories characteristic of culture shape the way a person thinks, behaves and views the world.
Language is fundamental to cultural identity and is intrinsic to the expression of culture. The loss of language means the loss of culture and identity. As a means of communicating values, beliefs and customs, it has an important social function and fosters feelings of group identity and solidarity. It is the means by which culture and its traditions and shared values may be conveyed and preserved.
Cultural and linguistic diversity is a feature of most nations today as people from different groups live together as a consequence of historical events and human migrations. Within multilingual societies, the maintenance of the languages of the various ethnic and cultural groups is critical for the preservation of their cultural heritage and identity.
In many societies throughout history, the suppression of the languages of minority groups has been used as a deliberate policy in order to suppress those minority cultures. As a result a large number of the world's languages have been lost with the processes of colonisation and migration.
It has been estimated that approximately 10,000 spoken languages have existed. Today, only about 6,000 languages are still spoken and many of these are not being taught to children. More than half of these languages are unlikely to survive the next century. (W. Davis, 'Vanishing Cultures', in National Geographic, vol. 196, no. 2, pp. 62-89, 1999.)
As languages disappear, cultures die. The world becomes inherently a less interesting place, but we also sacrifice raw knowledge and the intellectual achievements of millennia. (Ken Hale, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, quoted in Davis, W. 1999.)
In an increasingly globalised world, linguistic skills strengthen international ties and foster cultural exchange. While English is the dominant language, many people speak a language other than English as their first language within their families and communities. Proficiency in English is critical for successful participation with and within a dominant English speaking society. Similarly, proficiency in first language skills is essential for self-enrichment and expression of identity.
Identity and community:
An individual's sense of identity is grounded in their cultural identity. The use of community languages is important both for individual and group identity and for communication across generations. Maintaining a community's first language, therefore, becomes a significant issue for many people who belong to diverse ethnic communities.
With migration, ethnic identity does not have to be static. A person's understanding of their own and others' cultural identity develops from birth and is shaped by the values and attitudes prevalent at home and in the surrounding community. In a culturally diverse society, individuals may have multiple identities through identification with several different sub-cultures. This identity becomes more complex and fluid over time as people develop allegiances to different groups within the broader society.
At the same time, cultures themselves are not static but develop and change as the belief systems and ways of life of different groups adapt under other cultural influences including mass media and popular culture to create new identities.
Mistrust and fear of difference which often stem from isolation from other cultures can be overcome by fostering cultural understanding. The understanding of how history has shaped our relationship with each other and respect for each other's cultures can be the key components of the Reconciliation process.
Source: RacismNoway
Monday, December 22, 2008
The Islamic Culture is not Cultural Relativism
In this essay Professor Isma'il Al Faruqi discusses "Islam as Culture and Civilization" from different aspects:
Not relativism
Islamic culture and 'Urubah (Arabness or Arab culture)
The view of ultimate reality
The view of truth
The view of man
The view of nature
The view of society and history
The view of beauty
Following is the first part of this essay:
Culture is the consciousness of values in the totality of their realm, implying at its lowest level an intuitive awareness of their respective identities and of the order of rank properly belonging to each of them, as well as a personal commitment to their pursuit and actualization. At its highest level, this consciousness of value implies, in addition to the foregoing, a discursive knowledge of values, of their mutual relations and order of rank, of the history of the growth processes by which consciousness has achieved the said level of awareness, as well as a self-conscious collective commitment to the pursuit and actualization of the totality of values. Consciousness of any one value does not constitute culture, the latter being a perspective of the realm of values impossible to obtain without their totality being in view. What is often called monistic axiology, whether it is the survival ethic of primitive man or those implicit in a number of "isms" by which human life or culture have been defined in modern times, is not awareness of a single value, but a reordering of the whole realm of values under the dominion of the one value recognized by that axiology as the prime, or first, determinant and definiens of all other values. That is why it is possible to speak of the culture of hedonism which defines and ranks all values in terms of their contributions to pleasure, or of the culture of asceticism which defines and ranks all values in terms of their contribution to the denial of the processes of life. Each is a different perspective of the total realm of values. The same is true of the culture of communism, of national socialism and democracy, as it is of group-designated cultures such as the German, Italian, French, Indian, Chinese or Japanese culture. Though unlike any one of these, Islamic culture is nonetheless a perspective on the realm of values. To analyze it as such, to lay bare the internal structure of values as Islam perceives them, is the object of this chapter.
The foregoing definition of culture does not necessarily commit us to a relativist view. In fact, the Islamic position is the very opposite of relativism. Cultural relativism holds every culture to be an autonomous whole, a hierarchical structure of values sui generis, which though subject to description, stands beyond critique, as it were, by definition. It denies the possibility of criticism on the grounds that the criteria are therefore themselves always culturally determined, and hence falling within the culture to be evaluated; that it is impossible for humans to rise above their own cultures and build any supracultural methodology, or system of criteria and norms in terms of which historical cultures may be criticized. A culture, relativism asserts, can hence be neither justified nor criticized, its very factuality constituting its own justification. The comparative study of religions, or of civilizations, is equally alleged to fall in most cases into the same predicament. Through and through it is, and should be, descriptive. It can only Eeport, analyze, compare and contrast its findings in the various cultures, religions or civilizations. But it cannot criticize, judge, or evaluate its data because the criteria by which such work is possible are themselves the data in question.
Cultures, religions and civilizations are said to enjoy that same autonomy which makes each its own judge. Surely, each has laid claim to universalism, to address itself to man as such, to speak of religion as such. Nonetheless, relativism asserts that all their claims were vain; because while purporting to be universal, they were in reality mere inflated provincialisms. In their investigations of men, anthropology, psychology, history, sociology and even philosophy - all these disciplines have in modem times toned down their ambition of describing man or reality or truth as such quite drastically. They reduced their claims to analyzing given configurations of humans, of their thought and behaviour, their given systems of ideas or life. None has nowadays the boldness or strength to speak about men, reality or truth sub specie eternitatis.
This is not the place to consider critically why the Western spirit has come to this reduction of its area of competence, or how it lost its nerve and retreated from its Christian Scholastic or rationalist Enlightenment goals. Suffice it here to emphasize two points. First, like religions and civilizations, cultures do not conceive of themselves as of one among many, not as systems whose truth and viability are only probable. "Probable truth" has no adherents committing their whole lives and energies to its pursuit, certainly no soldiers willing to lay down their lives for it. If all there is to the claims of the various cultures and religions was a mere probability, they would have never commanded the enormous energies - mental, physical, emotional - of the millions over the long centuries required for their generation, crystallization and flowering. Indeed, if their factuality indicates anything, it is that their base is firmly established on the rock of faith, on an unquestionable conviction whose object is the world in toto, humankind, reality as such. Second, culture, at least in its higher stages, must have developed its perspective of the valuational realm only after considering numerous options. By definition a perspective suggests the possibility of other methods of ordering, for no value may be assigned the order of rank proper to it without the possibility of relating it to its neighbouring values. But to assign an order of rank is to judge that a certain value has indeed priority over another which has different or contradictory content.
Co-existence of contrary claims, of contrary obligations, of opposite norms and imperatives, which is what the relativist thesis demands, is not only not productive of culture, but it appeals only to the mediocre. No worthy mind can rest when faced with contrary claims to truth or goodness or beauty. Such claims necessarily set the mind in motion to seek a higher principle in terms of which the contradiction may be solved and the differences composed. The human mind will not give up the search without satisfaction. True, such principles may not always be conscious, explicitly stated in the given literature; but their existence is absolutely indubitable. At the very least, they must be assumed; and it is the task of the analyst and comparativist to uncover and articulate them, to place them under the light of reason and understanding.
This leads us to affirm that there is no culture which does not make a meta-cultural claim to truth, to goodness and beauty. The problem is how far meta-cultural assumptions of a given culture are truly universal, how far they correspond with reality, and whether or not they are necessary; how far the culture in question is conducive to the usufruct of nature, the doing of the good works, the felicity of all humans, the cultivation of beauty. Islamic culture certainly makes this claim, namely, that it purports to speak for all humans and for all times. Its claim is that its contents are essential to humanity as such, that its values are absolutely valid for all men because they are true, and its perspective of the valuational realm the only one which fully corresponds with the order of rank inherent in each value. This absoluteness of Islamic culture did not make it intolerant of the ethnic subcultures of its adherents, of their languages and literatures, of their folk customs and styles. But it has distinguished the culture of Islam from 'adah, literally, the local custom, the provincial content, which Islam tolerated even to the point of regarding it juristically acceptable, but which it has always kept in the place proper to it. Such a position is one of subservience to the culture of Islam, which was assigned the status of determining the essence and core of Islamic civilization in tow.
Only Islam acknowledged provincial culture as content of the ethos of Islam proper, and managed to maintain a universal adherence and loyalty to it amid the widest ethnic variety of the globe. Bushmen from equatorial Africa, Europeans and Chinese, Indians and Berbers, as well as the ethnic mixtures of the Near East, the world's crossroads of civilizations, all participated in Islamic culture just as they should, building their unity and hence their definition on the culture of Islam and, under its guidance, continued to keep, develop and promote their hundred ethnic sub-cultures.
The standpoint of Islamic culture, therefore, is not that of cultural relativism.
Agree:10 Disagree:4 Neutral:4
Not relativism
Islamic culture and 'Urubah (Arabness or Arab culture)
The view of ultimate reality
The view of truth
The view of man
The view of nature
The view of society and history
The view of beauty
Following is the first part of this essay:
Culture is the consciousness of values in the totality of their realm, implying at its lowest level an intuitive awareness of their respective identities and of the order of rank properly belonging to each of them, as well as a personal commitment to their pursuit and actualization. At its highest level, this consciousness of value implies, in addition to the foregoing, a discursive knowledge of values, of their mutual relations and order of rank, of the history of the growth processes by which consciousness has achieved the said level of awareness, as well as a self-conscious collective commitment to the pursuit and actualization of the totality of values. Consciousness of any one value does not constitute culture, the latter being a perspective of the realm of values impossible to obtain without their totality being in view. What is often called monistic axiology, whether it is the survival ethic of primitive man or those implicit in a number of "isms" by which human life or culture have been defined in modern times, is not awareness of a single value, but a reordering of the whole realm of values under the dominion of the one value recognized by that axiology as the prime, or first, determinant and definiens of all other values. That is why it is possible to speak of the culture of hedonism which defines and ranks all values in terms of their contributions to pleasure, or of the culture of asceticism which defines and ranks all values in terms of their contribution to the denial of the processes of life. Each is a different perspective of the total realm of values. The same is true of the culture of communism, of national socialism and democracy, as it is of group-designated cultures such as the German, Italian, French, Indian, Chinese or Japanese culture. Though unlike any one of these, Islamic culture is nonetheless a perspective on the realm of values. To analyze it as such, to lay bare the internal structure of values as Islam perceives them, is the object of this chapter.
The foregoing definition of culture does not necessarily commit us to a relativist view. In fact, the Islamic position is the very opposite of relativism. Cultural relativism holds every culture to be an autonomous whole, a hierarchical structure of values sui generis, which though subject to description, stands beyond critique, as it were, by definition. It denies the possibility of criticism on the grounds that the criteria are therefore themselves always culturally determined, and hence falling within the culture to be evaluated; that it is impossible for humans to rise above their own cultures and build any supracultural methodology, or system of criteria and norms in terms of which historical cultures may be criticized. A culture, relativism asserts, can hence be neither justified nor criticized, its very factuality constituting its own justification. The comparative study of religions, or of civilizations, is equally alleged to fall in most cases into the same predicament. Through and through it is, and should be, descriptive. It can only Eeport, analyze, compare and contrast its findings in the various cultures, religions or civilizations. But it cannot criticize, judge, or evaluate its data because the criteria by which such work is possible are themselves the data in question.
Cultures, religions and civilizations are said to enjoy that same autonomy which makes each its own judge. Surely, each has laid claim to universalism, to address itself to man as such, to speak of religion as such. Nonetheless, relativism asserts that all their claims were vain; because while purporting to be universal, they were in reality mere inflated provincialisms. In their investigations of men, anthropology, psychology, history, sociology and even philosophy - all these disciplines have in modem times toned down their ambition of describing man or reality or truth as such quite drastically. They reduced their claims to analyzing given configurations of humans, of their thought and behaviour, their given systems of ideas or life. None has nowadays the boldness or strength to speak about men, reality or truth sub specie eternitatis.
This is not the place to consider critically why the Western spirit has come to this reduction of its area of competence, or how it lost its nerve and retreated from its Christian Scholastic or rationalist Enlightenment goals. Suffice it here to emphasize two points. First, like religions and civilizations, cultures do not conceive of themselves as of one among many, not as systems whose truth and viability are only probable. "Probable truth" has no adherents committing their whole lives and energies to its pursuit, certainly no soldiers willing to lay down their lives for it. If all there is to the claims of the various cultures and religions was a mere probability, they would have never commanded the enormous energies - mental, physical, emotional - of the millions over the long centuries required for their generation, crystallization and flowering. Indeed, if their factuality indicates anything, it is that their base is firmly established on the rock of faith, on an unquestionable conviction whose object is the world in toto, humankind, reality as such. Second, culture, at least in its higher stages, must have developed its perspective of the valuational realm only after considering numerous options. By definition a perspective suggests the possibility of other methods of ordering, for no value may be assigned the order of rank proper to it without the possibility of relating it to its neighbouring values. But to assign an order of rank is to judge that a certain value has indeed priority over another which has different or contradictory content.
Co-existence of contrary claims, of contrary obligations, of opposite norms and imperatives, which is what the relativist thesis demands, is not only not productive of culture, but it appeals only to the mediocre. No worthy mind can rest when faced with contrary claims to truth or goodness or beauty. Such claims necessarily set the mind in motion to seek a higher principle in terms of which the contradiction may be solved and the differences composed. The human mind will not give up the search without satisfaction. True, such principles may not always be conscious, explicitly stated in the given literature; but their existence is absolutely indubitable. At the very least, they must be assumed; and it is the task of the analyst and comparativist to uncover and articulate them, to place them under the light of reason and understanding.
This leads us to affirm that there is no culture which does not make a meta-cultural claim to truth, to goodness and beauty. The problem is how far meta-cultural assumptions of a given culture are truly universal, how far they correspond with reality, and whether or not they are necessary; how far the culture in question is conducive to the usufruct of nature, the doing of the good works, the felicity of all humans, the cultivation of beauty. Islamic culture certainly makes this claim, namely, that it purports to speak for all humans and for all times. Its claim is that its contents are essential to humanity as such, that its values are absolutely valid for all men because they are true, and its perspective of the valuational realm the only one which fully corresponds with the order of rank inherent in each value. This absoluteness of Islamic culture did not make it intolerant of the ethnic subcultures of its adherents, of their languages and literatures, of their folk customs and styles. But it has distinguished the culture of Islam from 'adah, literally, the local custom, the provincial content, which Islam tolerated even to the point of regarding it juristically acceptable, but which it has always kept in the place proper to it. Such a position is one of subservience to the culture of Islam, which was assigned the status of determining the essence and core of Islamic civilization in tow.
Only Islam acknowledged provincial culture as content of the ethos of Islam proper, and managed to maintain a universal adherence and loyalty to it amid the widest ethnic variety of the globe. Bushmen from equatorial Africa, Europeans and Chinese, Indians and Berbers, as well as the ethnic mixtures of the Near East, the world's crossroads of civilizations, all participated in Islamic culture just as they should, building their unity and hence their definition on the culture of Islam and, under its guidance, continued to keep, develop and promote their hundred ethnic sub-cultures.
The standpoint of Islamic culture, therefore, is not that of cultural relativism.
Agree:10 Disagree:4 Neutral:4
Thursday, November 6, 2008
The Role of Colonization on the Political System of the Muslim World
by IslamReligion.com
The Quran and the Sunnah have been the guide of Muslim political and moral activism throughout the centuries. The example of how the Prophet Muhammad and his companions led their lives and developed the first Muslim community serves as a blueprint for an Islamically guided and socially just state and society.
More than a prophet, the Prophet Muhammad, may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him, was the founder of a state. In the era of the Prophet Muhammad and his successors, all Muslims belonged to a single community whose unity was based upon the interconnection of religion and the state, where faith and politics were inseparable. Islam expanded from what is now Saudi Arabia across North Africa, through the Middle East and into Asia and Europe. Historically, Islam has been the religious ideology for the foundation of a variety of Muslim states, including the great Islamic empires: Umayyad (661–750), Abbasid (750–1258), Ottoman (1281– 1924), Safavid (1501–1722), and Mughal (1526–1857). In each of these empires and other sultanate states, Islam was the basis of the state’s legal, political, educational, economic, and social institutions.
By the 11th century the Islamic world was under attack by the Turks and the Mongols. They were not conquered by Islam; rather, they entered the Islamic world as conquerors and converted to Islam over the following centuries.
Over the last two centuries the Islamic world has been under another transformation from the West. The Europeans who came in the 19th and 20th centuries to militarily colonize the Muslim world did not convert like the Turks and Mongols. For the first time, Muslims were politically subjugated by the European empires of Russia, Holland, Britain, and France.
The 20th century was marked by two dominant themes: European colonialism and the Muslim struggle for independence. The legacy of colonialism remains alive today. Colonialism altered the geographical map of the Muslim world. It drew the boundaries and appointed leaders over the Muslim countries. After WWII, the French were in West and North Africa, Lebanon, and Syria; the British in Palestine, Iraq, Arabian Gulf, the Indian Subcontinent, Malaya, and Brunei; and the Dutch in Indonesia. It replaced the educational, legal, and economic institutions and challenged the Muslim faith. Colonial officers and Christian missionaries became the soldiers of European expansion and imperialism. Christianity was seen by the colonialists as inherently superior to Islam and its culture. This attitude can be seen in the statement of Lord Cromer, the British counsel in Cairo from 1883-1907, “…as a social system, Islam has been a complete failure. Islam keeps women in a position of inferiority…it permits slavery…its general tendency is intolerance towards other faiths…”
European colonialism replaced Muslim self rule under Islamic Law, which had been in existence from the time of the Prophet Muhammad, by their European lords. The colonialists were modern Crusaders – Christian warriors going out of their way to uproot Islam. The French spoke of their battle of the cross against the crescent. The only difference was that the Europeans came, this time, not with cavalry and swords, but with an army of Christian missionaries and missionary institutions like schools, hospitals, and churches, many of which remain in Muslim countries to this day. The French seized the Jami’ Masjid of Algiers and turned it into the cathedral of Saint-Philippe with the French flag and cross on the minaret, symbolizing Christian domination.[1]
The Muslim world’s centuries of long struggle with Western colonial rule was followed by authoritarian regimes installed by European powers. The absence of stable states has led many to ask whether there is something about Islam that is antithetical to civil society and rule of law. The answer to this question lies more in history and politics than in religion. Modern Muslim states are only several decades old and they were carved out by European powers to serve Western interests.
In South Asia, the British divided the Indian subcontinent into India and Pakistan, giving portions of the Muslim-majority state of Kashmir to each of them. The conflicts that resulted from these actions have led to the deaths of millions in the communal warfare between Hindus and Muslims, the civil war between East and West Pakistan that led to the creation of Bangladesh, and conflicts in Kashmir over Indian rule that persist to the present day. In the Middle East, the French created modern Lebanon from portions of Syria, and the British set the borders for Iraq and Kuwait and created a new entity called Jordan. They also created a new country called Israel, ousting non-Jewish locals and taking land once belonging to Christians and Muslims and surrendering it to a foreign Jewish authority. Such arbitrary borders fed ethnic, regional, and religious conflicts including the Lebanese Civil War between Christians and Muslims, the occupation of Lebanon by Syria, the Gulf War, which resulted from Saddam Hussein’s claim to Kuwaiti territory, and the Israel-Palestinian conflict which need no further explanation.
Political and economic models were borrowed from the West to replace the Islamic political and economic systems after independence from colonial rulers in the mid-twentieth century, creating overcrowded cities lacking social support systems, high unemployment, government corruption, and a growing gap between rich and poor. Rather than leading to a better quality of life, Westernization led to the breakdown of traditional family, religious, and social values. Many Muslims blame Western models of political and economic development as the sources of moral decline and spiritual malaise.
Unelected governments, whose leaders are kings, military or ex-military officers, rule the majority of countries in the Muslim world. State power is heavily reliant on security forces, police, and military, and where freedoms of assembly, speech, and press are severely limited. Many Muslim states operate within a culture of authoritarianism that is opposed to civil society and a free press.
In addition to influencing those who came to power in emerging modern Muslim nation-states, Europe, and later America, forged close alliances with authoritarian regimes, tolerating or supporting their non democratic ways in exchange for, or to ensure, Western access to oil and other resources.
When people ask themselves why the Muslim world is distraught with violence and unrest, the answer can surely be found in the colonial interference, both past and present, in the region. Therefore, any future success depends upon returning to a society which is governed by the principles of the people who live in it, one in which all its affairs are governed by Islam.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Footnotes:
[1] Some of the early imperialist policies of the colonial powers carried not only economic, but religious and cultural agendas. The French, for example, sought to replace Islamic culture with their own by, among other measures, imposing controls on Islamic courts and suppressing many Muslim institutions. After transforming the Grand Mosque of Algiers into the Cathedral of Saint-Philippe, for example, the archbishop of Algiers announced a missionary plan to “save” Muslims from “the vices of their original religion generative of sloth, divorce, polygamy, theft, agrarian communism, fanaticism and even cannibalism.” Azim A. Nanji, ed., The Muslim Almanac (Detroit: Gale Research, Inc., 1996), p. 123; Arthur Goldschmidt Jr., A Concise History of the Middle East, 3rd ed. (Boulder, Colo.:Westview Press, 1988), p. 231; John L. Esposito, The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality?, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 50; Fawaz A. Gerges, America and Political Islam: Clash of Cultures or Clash of Interests? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
The Quran and the Sunnah have been the guide of Muslim political and moral activism throughout the centuries. The example of how the Prophet Muhammad and his companions led their lives and developed the first Muslim community serves as a blueprint for an Islamically guided and socially just state and society.
More than a prophet, the Prophet Muhammad, may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him, was the founder of a state. In the era of the Prophet Muhammad and his successors, all Muslims belonged to a single community whose unity was based upon the interconnection of religion and the state, where faith and politics were inseparable. Islam expanded from what is now Saudi Arabia across North Africa, through the Middle East and into Asia and Europe. Historically, Islam has been the religious ideology for the foundation of a variety of Muslim states, including the great Islamic empires: Umayyad (661–750), Abbasid (750–1258), Ottoman (1281– 1924), Safavid (1501–1722), and Mughal (1526–1857). In each of these empires and other sultanate states, Islam was the basis of the state’s legal, political, educational, economic, and social institutions.
By the 11th century the Islamic world was under attack by the Turks and the Mongols. They were not conquered by Islam; rather, they entered the Islamic world as conquerors and converted to Islam over the following centuries.
Over the last two centuries the Islamic world has been under another transformation from the West. The Europeans who came in the 19th and 20th centuries to militarily colonize the Muslim world did not convert like the Turks and Mongols. For the first time, Muslims were politically subjugated by the European empires of Russia, Holland, Britain, and France.
The 20th century was marked by two dominant themes: European colonialism and the Muslim struggle for independence. The legacy of colonialism remains alive today. Colonialism altered the geographical map of the Muslim world. It drew the boundaries and appointed leaders over the Muslim countries. After WWII, the French were in West and North Africa, Lebanon, and Syria; the British in Palestine, Iraq, Arabian Gulf, the Indian Subcontinent, Malaya, and Brunei; and the Dutch in Indonesia. It replaced the educational, legal, and economic institutions and challenged the Muslim faith. Colonial officers and Christian missionaries became the soldiers of European expansion and imperialism. Christianity was seen by the colonialists as inherently superior to Islam and its culture. This attitude can be seen in the statement of Lord Cromer, the British counsel in Cairo from 1883-1907, “…as a social system, Islam has been a complete failure. Islam keeps women in a position of inferiority…it permits slavery…its general tendency is intolerance towards other faiths…”
European colonialism replaced Muslim self rule under Islamic Law, which had been in existence from the time of the Prophet Muhammad, by their European lords. The colonialists were modern Crusaders – Christian warriors going out of their way to uproot Islam. The French spoke of their battle of the cross against the crescent. The only difference was that the Europeans came, this time, not with cavalry and swords, but with an army of Christian missionaries and missionary institutions like schools, hospitals, and churches, many of which remain in Muslim countries to this day. The French seized the Jami’ Masjid of Algiers and turned it into the cathedral of Saint-Philippe with the French flag and cross on the minaret, symbolizing Christian domination.[1]
The Muslim world’s centuries of long struggle with Western colonial rule was followed by authoritarian regimes installed by European powers. The absence of stable states has led many to ask whether there is something about Islam that is antithetical to civil society and rule of law. The answer to this question lies more in history and politics than in religion. Modern Muslim states are only several decades old and they were carved out by European powers to serve Western interests.
In South Asia, the British divided the Indian subcontinent into India and Pakistan, giving portions of the Muslim-majority state of Kashmir to each of them. The conflicts that resulted from these actions have led to the deaths of millions in the communal warfare between Hindus and Muslims, the civil war between East and West Pakistan that led to the creation of Bangladesh, and conflicts in Kashmir over Indian rule that persist to the present day. In the Middle East, the French created modern Lebanon from portions of Syria, and the British set the borders for Iraq and Kuwait and created a new entity called Jordan. They also created a new country called Israel, ousting non-Jewish locals and taking land once belonging to Christians and Muslims and surrendering it to a foreign Jewish authority. Such arbitrary borders fed ethnic, regional, and religious conflicts including the Lebanese Civil War between Christians and Muslims, the occupation of Lebanon by Syria, the Gulf War, which resulted from Saddam Hussein’s claim to Kuwaiti territory, and the Israel-Palestinian conflict which need no further explanation.
Political and economic models were borrowed from the West to replace the Islamic political and economic systems after independence from colonial rulers in the mid-twentieth century, creating overcrowded cities lacking social support systems, high unemployment, government corruption, and a growing gap between rich and poor. Rather than leading to a better quality of life, Westernization led to the breakdown of traditional family, religious, and social values. Many Muslims blame Western models of political and economic development as the sources of moral decline and spiritual malaise.
Unelected governments, whose leaders are kings, military or ex-military officers, rule the majority of countries in the Muslim world. State power is heavily reliant on security forces, police, and military, and where freedoms of assembly, speech, and press are severely limited. Many Muslim states operate within a culture of authoritarianism that is opposed to civil society and a free press.
In addition to influencing those who came to power in emerging modern Muslim nation-states, Europe, and later America, forged close alliances with authoritarian regimes, tolerating or supporting their non democratic ways in exchange for, or to ensure, Western access to oil and other resources.
When people ask themselves why the Muslim world is distraught with violence and unrest, the answer can surely be found in the colonial interference, both past and present, in the region. Therefore, any future success depends upon returning to a society which is governed by the principles of the people who live in it, one in which all its affairs are governed by Islam.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Footnotes:
[1] Some of the early imperialist policies of the colonial powers carried not only economic, but religious and cultural agendas. The French, for example, sought to replace Islamic culture with their own by, among other measures, imposing controls on Islamic courts and suppressing many Muslim institutions. After transforming the Grand Mosque of Algiers into the Cathedral of Saint-Philippe, for example, the archbishop of Algiers announced a missionary plan to “save” Muslims from “the vices of their original religion generative of sloth, divorce, polygamy, theft, agrarian communism, fanaticism and even cannibalism.” Azim A. Nanji, ed., The Muslim Almanac (Detroit: Gale Research, Inc., 1996), p. 123; Arthur Goldschmidt Jr., A Concise History of the Middle East, 3rd ed. (Boulder, Colo.:Westview Press, 1988), p. 231; John L. Esposito, The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality?, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 50; Fawaz A. Gerges, America and Political Islam: Clash of Cultures or Clash of Interests? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
Monday, October 6, 2008
Britain: Muslim Youths
By Iftikhar Ahmad
(Adapted)
Muslim children face lots of problems of growing up in two distinctive cultural traditions and value systems, which may come into conflict over issues such as the adherence to religious and cultural traditions and the role of women in the society. They are confused because they are being educated in a wrong place at a wrong time in state schools by monolingual teachers. Muslim youths become angry, frustrated and extremist because they could be mis-educated and de-educated by the British schooling. The conflicting demands made by home and schools on behaviour, loyalties and obligations can be a source of psychological conflict and tension in Muslim youngsters.
There are also the issues of racial prejudice and discrimination to deal with, in education and employment. They have been victim of racism and bullying in all walks of life. According to DCSF, 56% of Pakistanis and 54% of Bangladeshi children has been victims of bullies. The first wave of Muslim migrants were happy to send their children to state schools, thinking their children would get a much better education. Then little by little, the overt and covert discrimination in the system turned them off. There are fifteen areas where Muslim parents find themselves offended by state schools.
The right to education in one’s own comfort zone is a fundamental and inalienable human right that should be available to all people irrespective of their ethnicity or religious background. Schools do not only belong to state, but also belong to parents. It is the parents’ choice to have faith schools for their children. Bilingual Muslim children would need state funded Muslim schools with bilingual Muslim teachers as role models during their developmental periods. There would be no signifant benefit of having a non-Muslim teacher or child in such a Muslim school. There are hundreds of state schools where Muslim children are in majority. In my opinion, all such schools could be designated as Muslim community schools. An ICM Poll of British Muslims showed that nearly half wanted their children to attend Muslim schools. There are only 143 Muslim schools. A state funded Muslim school in Birmingham has 220 pupils and more than 1000 applicants chasing just 60.
The majority of anti-Muslim stories are not about terrorism but about Muslim culture - the hijab, Muslim schools, family life and religiosity. Muslims in the west ought to be recognised as part of the western community - not as an alien culture.
(Adapted)
Muslim children face lots of problems of growing up in two distinctive cultural traditions and value systems, which may come into conflict over issues such as the adherence to religious and cultural traditions and the role of women in the society. They are confused because they are being educated in a wrong place at a wrong time in state schools by monolingual teachers. Muslim youths become angry, frustrated and extremist because they could be mis-educated and de-educated by the British schooling. The conflicting demands made by home and schools on behaviour, loyalties and obligations can be a source of psychological conflict and tension in Muslim youngsters.
There are also the issues of racial prejudice and discrimination to deal with, in education and employment. They have been victim of racism and bullying in all walks of life. According to DCSF, 56% of Pakistanis and 54% of Bangladeshi children has been victims of bullies. The first wave of Muslim migrants were happy to send their children to state schools, thinking their children would get a much better education. Then little by little, the overt and covert discrimination in the system turned them off. There are fifteen areas where Muslim parents find themselves offended by state schools.
The right to education in one’s own comfort zone is a fundamental and inalienable human right that should be available to all people irrespective of their ethnicity or religious background. Schools do not only belong to state, but also belong to parents. It is the parents’ choice to have faith schools for their children. Bilingual Muslim children would need state funded Muslim schools with bilingual Muslim teachers as role models during their developmental periods. There would be no signifant benefit of having a non-Muslim teacher or child in such a Muslim school. There are hundreds of state schools where Muslim children are in majority. In my opinion, all such schools could be designated as Muslim community schools. An ICM Poll of British Muslims showed that nearly half wanted their children to attend Muslim schools. There are only 143 Muslim schools. A state funded Muslim school in Birmingham has 220 pupils and more than 1000 applicants chasing just 60.
The majority of anti-Muslim stories are not about terrorism but about Muslim culture - the hijab, Muslim schools, family life and religiosity. Muslims in the west ought to be recognised as part of the western community - not as an alien culture.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Struggling with Semantics
The war against terror is also a war of words.
Diaa Rashwan skips through the synonyms
Al-Ahram Weekly Online
6 - 12 December 2001
Issue No.563
The international crisis triggered by the 11 September attacks on Washington and New York has spawned an interesting breed of synonyms. In a game of political semantics, words have been forced to mate, binary oppositions resuscitated, and conclusions twisted to serve various vested interests.
The most obvious example is that of jihad and terror. Many Western politicians, academics and media professionals now use the two words interchangeably. The word game, however, knows no limits. We have terror/ national resistance, Arab and Muslims/fanatical terrorists, Islam and Arabs/barbarism, enduring freedom and infinite justice/war, the West/human civilisation, the international anti-terror coalition/the United States and its allies, and cluster bombs/food packages.
All these pairs suggest that the two sides of the dichotomy are in fact similar. A word is chosen, turned around, coupled with a target word, and then used interchangeably with it. With persistent repetition, the two parts become one in an act of linguistic wizardry that can cause serious damage.
The need for synonyms is as old as language, but as the media gain an ever greater grip on modern life, the creation of synonyms is becoming a veritable cottage industry. The media-led invention of a special new language is due either to sheer ignorance or to malicious intent. The combination of jihad and terror, which gained relevance in the aftermath of 11 September, is no benign coincidence. It is part of an ongoing war.
In this war, the United States and its closest allies have the advantage of an awesome media machine, capable of rearranging concepts and restructuring language, which has assumed a key role in managing the crisis and manipulating world opinion. Since the Gulf War -- even since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Romanian "revolution" against Ceaucescu -- the Western media have been powerful tools for the United States and its allies in the campaign to reshape the world, in reality and ideology.
In the ongoing war against "international terror," Muslims and Arabs are the villains du jour; so jihad, a perfectly legitimate concept, is being equated with the horrifying goals of terrorists. The trick is standard fare for spin doctors: choose a word with sinister connotations and associate it with a concept you wish to discredit. Then use the two interchangeably, until the difference between them is forgotten.
Jihad and terror were good candidates. The two concepts share one trait. Jihad, under certain conditions, may involve the use of violence. The two concepts are different in almost every other sense. But once the differences are swept under the rug, through the constant abuse of language, jihad and its proponents evoke only images of violence and suffering. The same game can be played with national resistance, to impugn legitimate struggle against occupation and discredit opponents of global capitalism.
The war of words aims to obscure the meaning of jihad, reduce and twist the term, banish it to the territory of terror. Jihad al-nafs, a struggle for self-improvement and purification, is excised from the concept. All that remains is the image of terror, loathsome, menacing, and ugly.
The only way we can deal with this is to refuse to play. The word games are a crime against language. They should be deconstructed and shown to be empty of meaning. The two words must be dissociated, then returned to their true meanings.
Theoretically, the "terror" side of the equation should be easy to deal with. Most people would agree that terrorism is the use of force to frighten or kill civilians in order to attain illegitimate ends. The practical implications, however, are more difficult. The West sees the 11 September attacks as "terror." But the actions of US forces against civilians in Afghanistan are seen as a legitimate "war" on terror. Likewise, the West refrains from labelling Israel's occupation, massacres and mass detentions as anything more than the "excessive use of force." Acts of resistance by the Palestinians, meanwhile, are invariably described as "terror."
What we need, then, is a practical definition of terror. Since it is almost impossible to formulate a definition that satisfies everyone, perhaps it would be a good idea to formulate an Arab and Islamic definition of terror, in line with international law. At the same time, it would be appropriate to emphasise that Islam explicitly prohibits terror. This effort could take place through one of the two key international organisations of the Arab and Islamic world: the Arab League and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference. Public figures, religious scholars, and intellectuals from Arab and Muslim countries should participate in that effort.
As for jihad, historical and religious information abounds. Jihad, most Muslim scholars would agree, is of two types. Jihad al-nafs, as mentioned above, refers to the individual's striving to attain a higher moral ground. The other form of jihad is directed against those who live outside the umma (the Muslim community); that is, against non-Muslim countries and peoples. In both types of jihad, a Muslim may choose among four weapons: the heart, speech, the hand, and the sword.
Jihad against those outside the umma is of two types: defensive and offensive. The first is the duty of all Muslims: to defend their faith, life, land, and honour against attacks by non-Muslims. Offensive jihad is the duty of the "Muslim state": to try and integrate non-Muslim peoples and zones into the land of Islam -- that is, to convert people to the monotheistic faith of Islam and bring them into the umma. In both cases, jihad is conducted under rigorous restrictions. First, it must involve no threat to the lives, security, honour, and property of civilians and non- combatants.
Since there is no central Islamic state that encompasses all Muslim societies, it can be argued that the concept of offensive jihad, in the sense of conquest, is no longer valid. The essence of the term, however, remains applicable. It is still possible to enlarge the umma -- the community of Muslims -- through persuasion and dissemination of the faith, peaceful activities in which the media and various Muslim communities can take part.
As for defensive jihad, it is essentially a form of "national resistance" that is legitimate, under international law, as a means of confronting foreign occupation and aggression. Defensive jihad, in the sense of national resistance, does not need to emanate from a central authority. From the Islamic point of view, it is the duty of all capable Muslims to defend their land against foreign assault and occupation.
* The writer is an expert on Islamist movements at the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
Diaa Rashwan skips through the synonyms
Al-Ahram Weekly Online
6 - 12 December 2001
Issue No.563
The international crisis triggered by the 11 September attacks on Washington and New York has spawned an interesting breed of synonyms. In a game of political semantics, words have been forced to mate, binary oppositions resuscitated, and conclusions twisted to serve various vested interests.
The most obvious example is that of jihad and terror. Many Western politicians, academics and media professionals now use the two words interchangeably. The word game, however, knows no limits. We have terror/ national resistance, Arab and Muslims/fanatical terrorists, Islam and Arabs/barbarism, enduring freedom and infinite justice/war, the West/human civilisation, the international anti-terror coalition/the United States and its allies, and cluster bombs/food packages.
All these pairs suggest that the two sides of the dichotomy are in fact similar. A word is chosen, turned around, coupled with a target word, and then used interchangeably with it. With persistent repetition, the two parts become one in an act of linguistic wizardry that can cause serious damage.
The need for synonyms is as old as language, but as the media gain an ever greater grip on modern life, the creation of synonyms is becoming a veritable cottage industry. The media-led invention of a special new language is due either to sheer ignorance or to malicious intent. The combination of jihad and terror, which gained relevance in the aftermath of 11 September, is no benign coincidence. It is part of an ongoing war.
In this war, the United States and its closest allies have the advantage of an awesome media machine, capable of rearranging concepts and restructuring language, which has assumed a key role in managing the crisis and manipulating world opinion. Since the Gulf War -- even since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Romanian "revolution" against Ceaucescu -- the Western media have been powerful tools for the United States and its allies in the campaign to reshape the world, in reality and ideology.
In the ongoing war against "international terror," Muslims and Arabs are the villains du jour; so jihad, a perfectly legitimate concept, is being equated with the horrifying goals of terrorists. The trick is standard fare for spin doctors: choose a word with sinister connotations and associate it with a concept you wish to discredit. Then use the two interchangeably, until the difference between them is forgotten.
Jihad and terror were good candidates. The two concepts share one trait. Jihad, under certain conditions, may involve the use of violence. The two concepts are different in almost every other sense. But once the differences are swept under the rug, through the constant abuse of language, jihad and its proponents evoke only images of violence and suffering. The same game can be played with national resistance, to impugn legitimate struggle against occupation and discredit opponents of global capitalism.
The war of words aims to obscure the meaning of jihad, reduce and twist the term, banish it to the territory of terror. Jihad al-nafs, a struggle for self-improvement and purification, is excised from the concept. All that remains is the image of terror, loathsome, menacing, and ugly.
The only way we can deal with this is to refuse to play. The word games are a crime against language. They should be deconstructed and shown to be empty of meaning. The two words must be dissociated, then returned to their true meanings.
Theoretically, the "terror" side of the equation should be easy to deal with. Most people would agree that terrorism is the use of force to frighten or kill civilians in order to attain illegitimate ends. The practical implications, however, are more difficult. The West sees the 11 September attacks as "terror." But the actions of US forces against civilians in Afghanistan are seen as a legitimate "war" on terror. Likewise, the West refrains from labelling Israel's occupation, massacres and mass detentions as anything more than the "excessive use of force." Acts of resistance by the Palestinians, meanwhile, are invariably described as "terror."
What we need, then, is a practical definition of terror. Since it is almost impossible to formulate a definition that satisfies everyone, perhaps it would be a good idea to formulate an Arab and Islamic definition of terror, in line with international law. At the same time, it would be appropriate to emphasise that Islam explicitly prohibits terror. This effort could take place through one of the two key international organisations of the Arab and Islamic world: the Arab League and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference. Public figures, religious scholars, and intellectuals from Arab and Muslim countries should participate in that effort.
As for jihad, historical and religious information abounds. Jihad, most Muslim scholars would agree, is of two types. Jihad al-nafs, as mentioned above, refers to the individual's striving to attain a higher moral ground. The other form of jihad is directed against those who live outside the umma (the Muslim community); that is, against non-Muslim countries and peoples. In both types of jihad, a Muslim may choose among four weapons: the heart, speech, the hand, and the sword.
Jihad against those outside the umma is of two types: defensive and offensive. The first is the duty of all Muslims: to defend their faith, life, land, and honour against attacks by non-Muslims. Offensive jihad is the duty of the "Muslim state": to try and integrate non-Muslim peoples and zones into the land of Islam -- that is, to convert people to the monotheistic faith of Islam and bring them into the umma. In both cases, jihad is conducted under rigorous restrictions. First, it must involve no threat to the lives, security, honour, and property of civilians and non- combatants.
Since there is no central Islamic state that encompasses all Muslim societies, it can be argued that the concept of offensive jihad, in the sense of conquest, is no longer valid. The essence of the term, however, remains applicable. It is still possible to enlarge the umma -- the community of Muslims -- through persuasion and dissemination of the faith, peaceful activities in which the media and various Muslim communities can take part.
As for defensive jihad, it is essentially a form of "national resistance" that is legitimate, under international law, as a means of confronting foreign occupation and aggression. Defensive jihad, in the sense of national resistance, does not need to emanate from a central authority. From the Islamic point of view, it is the duty of all capable Muslims to defend their land against foreign assault and occupation.
* The writer is an expert on Islamist movements at the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
Thursday, August 7, 2008
The Origins of Extremism: Theology or Reality
Written by Ms.Soumaya Ghanoushi Sep 04, 2007
Language is not a transparent medium or a neutral instrument, but is overwhelmed with power strategies. Language not only reflects worldviews and modes of life, it articulates and dictates them such as to preclude any possibility of separating terminologies from their contexts. This is most evident in the bulk of Western intellectual and political discourse on Islam. Indeed much can be read into the deceivingly simple words President Bush or Prime Minister Blair use to characterize the blood chilling catastrophic events of September 11th; "the attacks" we are told "are an assault on the free civilized world". Before such a world stands its anti-thesis an enslaved barbaric world, one that encapsulates all that "we" are not. The far stretching lands of Islam loom largely in this bleak uncivilized sphere. If the modern West is dynamic the world of Islam is stagnant, if it is governed democratically and honors self-ownership, Islam is plagued by a despotism that crushes the individual altogether out of existence. If it is rigorously rational, the world of Islam is the embodiment of raving instincts and wild emotionalism.
The practice is also popular amongst a great many Western intellectuals, journalists and academics who, reminiscent of 18th Century Christian missionaries, urge us to promote 'our' Western "values everywhere from Burma to Saudi Arabia, Iraq to Chechnya" as a leading columnist in the Guardian daily newspapervehemently proclaims. Islam is thus transformed into a silent passive object laid bare before their gaze, stigmatized categorized and tried, a "world- picture" to use the words of the well known German philosopher Martin Heidegger. In this vortex of comments and analyses, Islam's voice remains unheard.
The 19th century European traveler's distant detached observations of the strange ways of the Muslim other, the Christian missionary, colonial administrator and military general's representations of the remote world of Islam are now replaced by ones by journalists, Islamologues and so- called experts. And while medieval christians dissociated the historical success of Islam from its doctrinal and philological sources - which were deemed false and indeed fraudulent -, modern and present day Western intellectuals almost unanimously attribute the decadent historical condition of Islam to its beliefs and value system. While Medieval theologians insisted that Islam's historical accomplishments did not validate its claim as a true revelation - Christianity being the one and only right path to God -, their modern secularist heirs fervently insist that the roots of the backwardness of the Muslim world are to be traced back to its religious texts. Intensely intricate labyrinthine social and political phenomena are thus uprooted from their historical contexts in a bid to consolidate a portrayal of Islam as a "deficient", "stagnant" religion, a warrior blood thirsty religion that glorifies slaughter and aggression against its enemies on the outside, while oppressing minorities and subordinating women internally.
Even those of little if any knowledge of Islam and its intensely complex historical condition, movements and traditions have now entered this unrestricted open market. Thus on the basis of translated scattered fragments pulled out of their interpretive contexts, with no knowledge of any of the great languages of Islam, and no awareness of the complexities of Muslim society, many do not hesitate to declare that Islam is an "intolerant" barbaric religion.
With no concern for the most elementary requirements of responsible objective scientific research parts of verses are extricated from their contexts and combined with other fragments to distort the general meaning, Quranic verses are confused with sayings of the prophet, talk of otherworldly punishment and reward is represented as rules determining treatment of non-believers in this world. And daily we witness the hideous spectacle of ignorance, arrogance and prejudice parading freely across the larger part of the countless analyses, columns and articles on Islam and its world that stretch across pages and pages of newspapers, glossy magazines and academic reviews.
Verses are quoted selectively with no mention of exhortations to peace, which almost in every case follow teachings on conduct in armed struggle. "Thus, if they let you be, and do not make war on you, and offer you peace, God does not allow you to harm them" (4:90)". Nor indeed is there any mention of the verses that form the bulk of the Quran that enjoin Muslims to treat with respect those of other faiths. "Let there be no coercion in religion" is the rule it lays down for the treatment of those of other convictions. A special status is reserved for Jews and Christians, whom it refers to as "the people of the book". Judaism and Christianity are not regarded as other religions but as intrinsic to Islam itself. Their God is its God, their prophets its prophets.
In fact not only is Islam tolerant to these religions, since tolerance implies dualism and a fundamental difference between the subject and object of tolerance, it identifies itself with Judaism and Christianity and enjoins upon its adherents religious respect and devotion to the Prophets and revelations of these two great religions. It is indeed striking that while no religion preserved the shrines of another in its own base and enabled them to flourish in its midst except Islam, none has been so deeply misrepresented and cruelly disfigured as Islam has been.
Difference according to the Quran is not only to be tolerated and accepted. It is to be celebrated as the object of creation itself. The Q'uran emphatically notes " "And had your Lord so willed, He could surely have made the whole mankind one single community, but He willed it otherwise, and so they continue to differ save among those on whom God has bestowed his grace and for this He has created them.".
The principle governing relations between humans is, the Quran tells us, atta'aruf or acquaintance. Addressing humankind it insists: "O people! We have formed you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another" (49: 13)--not to conquer, convert or subjugate but to reach out toward others.
If such is Islam's conception of relations between human beings why we must ask do many extremist tendencies manifest themselves on its surface?
If we are to gain insight into the grave phenomena emerging in the Islamic world, we must free ourselves of the blind naïve essentialism characteristic of a great many analyses of the problem, which seek theological explanations for highly complex historical phenomena. The intensely intricate nature of the Islamic socio-political situation marked by striking contradictions and strong tensions is better understood when viewed within the context of the waves of Western imperialist expansion, of the crises of the post-colonial state and the reality of social deprivation, economic dependence and decadent educational systems unable to fill the vacuum generated by the erosion of traditional learning centers, along with the marginalisation of the Muslim masses from the political system.
The situation has been further complicated by American foreign policies in the Middle East, its backing of Israel's 34 year illegal military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and insistence on an increasingly pa inful embargo on Iraq which according to Columbia University researcher Richard Garfield led to the death of 06,000 to 220,000 children between 1991 and 1998. The West's support of despotic totalitarian regimes that annihilate all margins of freedom and stifle all voices of dissent proves to be another principal source of frustration.
The US is widely regarded by many in the Middle East as a crucial obstacle in their struggle for freedom from oppression. It is indeed interesting that the most despotic states in the Middle East region are those who have the closest ties with the USA and its Western allies. One indeed may legitimately ask if such totalitarianism is the product of Islam or whether it is the creation of Western policies themselves.
It is to West's hegemonic self-engrossed policies in the region that we should turn if we are to understand the causes of the great turmoil shaking Muslim societies to their very depths. Much to the horror of the journalists and intellectuals acting as the "enlightened missionaries" of new colonialism, it is America's statesmen, generals and moneymen that hold the key to our search for the origins of so- called Islamic fanaticism and extremism, not the texts of the Qu'ran or the tradition of Islam's Prophet as they never tire of repeating.
Language is not a transparent medium or a neutral instrument, but is overwhelmed with power strategies. Language not only reflects worldviews and modes of life, it articulates and dictates them such as to preclude any possibility of separating terminologies from their contexts. This is most evident in the bulk of Western intellectual and political discourse on Islam. Indeed much can be read into the deceivingly simple words President Bush or Prime Minister Blair use to characterize the blood chilling catastrophic events of September 11th; "the attacks" we are told "are an assault on the free civilized world". Before such a world stands its anti-thesis an enslaved barbaric world, one that encapsulates all that "we" are not. The far stretching lands of Islam loom largely in this bleak uncivilized sphere. If the modern West is dynamic the world of Islam is stagnant, if it is governed democratically and honors self-ownership, Islam is plagued by a despotism that crushes the individual altogether out of existence. If it is rigorously rational, the world of Islam is the embodiment of raving instincts and wild emotionalism.
The practice is also popular amongst a great many Western intellectuals, journalists and academics who, reminiscent of 18th Century Christian missionaries, urge us to promote 'our' Western "values everywhere from Burma to Saudi Arabia, Iraq to Chechnya" as a leading columnist in the Guardian daily newspapervehemently proclaims. Islam is thus transformed into a silent passive object laid bare before their gaze, stigmatized categorized and tried, a "world- picture" to use the words of the well known German philosopher Martin Heidegger. In this vortex of comments and analyses, Islam's voice remains unheard.
The 19th century European traveler's distant detached observations of the strange ways of the Muslim other, the Christian missionary, colonial administrator and military general's representations of the remote world of Islam are now replaced by ones by journalists, Islamologues and so- called experts. And while medieval christians dissociated the historical success of Islam from its doctrinal and philological sources - which were deemed false and indeed fraudulent -, modern and present day Western intellectuals almost unanimously attribute the decadent historical condition of Islam to its beliefs and value system. While Medieval theologians insisted that Islam's historical accomplishments did not validate its claim as a true revelation - Christianity being the one and only right path to God -, their modern secularist heirs fervently insist that the roots of the backwardness of the Muslim world are to be traced back to its religious texts. Intensely intricate labyrinthine social and political phenomena are thus uprooted from their historical contexts in a bid to consolidate a portrayal of Islam as a "deficient", "stagnant" religion, a warrior blood thirsty religion that glorifies slaughter and aggression against its enemies on the outside, while oppressing minorities and subordinating women internally.
Even those of little if any knowledge of Islam and its intensely complex historical condition, movements and traditions have now entered this unrestricted open market. Thus on the basis of translated scattered fragments pulled out of their interpretive contexts, with no knowledge of any of the great languages of Islam, and no awareness of the complexities of Muslim society, many do not hesitate to declare that Islam is an "intolerant" barbaric religion.
With no concern for the most elementary requirements of responsible objective scientific research parts of verses are extricated from their contexts and combined with other fragments to distort the general meaning, Quranic verses are confused with sayings of the prophet, talk of otherworldly punishment and reward is represented as rules determining treatment of non-believers in this world. And daily we witness the hideous spectacle of ignorance, arrogance and prejudice parading freely across the larger part of the countless analyses, columns and articles on Islam and its world that stretch across pages and pages of newspapers, glossy magazines and academic reviews.
Verses are quoted selectively with no mention of exhortations to peace, which almost in every case follow teachings on conduct in armed struggle. "Thus, if they let you be, and do not make war on you, and offer you peace, God does not allow you to harm them" (4:90)". Nor indeed is there any mention of the verses that form the bulk of the Quran that enjoin Muslims to treat with respect those of other faiths. "Let there be no coercion in religion" is the rule it lays down for the treatment of those of other convictions. A special status is reserved for Jews and Christians, whom it refers to as "the people of the book". Judaism and Christianity are not regarded as other religions but as intrinsic to Islam itself. Their God is its God, their prophets its prophets.
In fact not only is Islam tolerant to these religions, since tolerance implies dualism and a fundamental difference between the subject and object of tolerance, it identifies itself with Judaism and Christianity and enjoins upon its adherents religious respect and devotion to the Prophets and revelations of these two great religions. It is indeed striking that while no religion preserved the shrines of another in its own base and enabled them to flourish in its midst except Islam, none has been so deeply misrepresented and cruelly disfigured as Islam has been.
Difference according to the Quran is not only to be tolerated and accepted. It is to be celebrated as the object of creation itself. The Q'uran emphatically notes " "And had your Lord so willed, He could surely have made the whole mankind one single community, but He willed it otherwise, and so they continue to differ save among those on whom God has bestowed his grace and for this He has created them.".
The principle governing relations between humans is, the Quran tells us, atta'aruf or acquaintance. Addressing humankind it insists: "O people! We have formed you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another" (49: 13)--not to conquer, convert or subjugate but to reach out toward others.
If such is Islam's conception of relations between human beings why we must ask do many extremist tendencies manifest themselves on its surface?
If we are to gain insight into the grave phenomena emerging in the Islamic world, we must free ourselves of the blind naïve essentialism characteristic of a great many analyses of the problem, which seek theological explanations for highly complex historical phenomena. The intensely intricate nature of the Islamic socio-political situation marked by striking contradictions and strong tensions is better understood when viewed within the context of the waves of Western imperialist expansion, of the crises of the post-colonial state and the reality of social deprivation, economic dependence and decadent educational systems unable to fill the vacuum generated by the erosion of traditional learning centers, along with the marginalisation of the Muslim masses from the political system.
The situation has been further complicated by American foreign policies in the Middle East, its backing of Israel's 34 year illegal military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and insistence on an increasingly pa inful embargo on Iraq which according to Columbia University researcher Richard Garfield led to the death of 06,000 to 220,000 children between 1991 and 1998. The West's support of despotic totalitarian regimes that annihilate all margins of freedom and stifle all voices of dissent proves to be another principal source of frustration.
The US is widely regarded by many in the Middle East as a crucial obstacle in their struggle for freedom from oppression. It is indeed interesting that the most despotic states in the Middle East region are those who have the closest ties with the USA and its Western allies. One indeed may legitimately ask if such totalitarianism is the product of Islam or whether it is the creation of Western policies themselves.
It is to West's hegemonic self-engrossed policies in the region that we should turn if we are to understand the causes of the great turmoil shaking Muslim societies to their very depths. Much to the horror of the journalists and intellectuals acting as the "enlightened missionaries" of new colonialism, it is America's statesmen, generals and moneymen that hold the key to our search for the origins of so- called Islamic fanaticism and extremism, not the texts of the Qu'ran or the tradition of Islam's Prophet as they never tire of repeating.
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