Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 25, 1994 TAG: 9411050019
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: E3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MAHER HATHOUT and SALAM AL-MARAYATI
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Muslims in America enjoy their freedom, but until Muslim countries allow their citizens to think freely and write without fear of retribution, as Islamic law mandates, let us not deceive ourselves by claiming that those countries are part of our dream. They are part of our nightmare.
The problem in Muslim societies is rooted in authoritarianism. The subjugation of Muslims cannot be blamed simply on Western hegemony, though colonialism has debilitated many if not all Muslim countries. Muslims continue to suffer because of the abject failure of the religious establishment to live up to the standards of human decency set by Islam.
Nor can Muslims' poor image in the eyes of the world be blamed on the media, for it is often the flagrant contributions of Muslim leaders that foster those negative images. When the Koran, for example, stipulates that ``[t]here shall be no compulsion in religion,'' there is no excuse for religious police patrolling Muslim streets. This form of repression pushes people to the margins of civilized society, because the voice of reason, which plays a vital role in Islamic jurisprudence and in opposition politics, along with the spirit of the Koran, is silenced.
The controversies surrounding Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasrin, as another example, are symptoms of a larger problem engulfing the Muslim world - an erosion of Islamic ethics. The death threats levied against the two writers should be condemned, but the fact remains that they are by no means seeking positive change among Muslims or reconciliation between Islam and the West.
Rather, they are promoting the exclusion of Islam, which is, according to Princeton scholar Khaled Abou Fadl, a form of ``secular fundamentalism.'' Hence, Rushdie and Nasrin gain notoriety from Muslims and empathy from the Western establishment. The deeper struggle, however, involves the collapse of an Islamic structure that rests on the Koran's principle of non-compulsion.
Today, the Muslim world is held hostage by clergy and governments that promote intolerance and oppose cooperation with other religious groups. Many nations with predominant Muslim populations exploit Islam to serve their geopolitical interests.
Whether it is the inscription of the name of God in the Iraqi, Iranian or Saudi flag, or the patronizing statements by Egyptian, Libyan or Syrian dictators, virtually every country in the Muslim world violates the human rights of its Muslim and non-Muslim population and pretends to be the vanguard of Islam.
While Muslim governments deal with the West, openly or secretly, they often have their clergy instruct the people not to deal with the West. Yet the rich Muslim governments wield their financial influence to control Islamic movements worldwide, and some even have the backing of the U.S. government as representing ``moderate'' Islam.
These countries also incite extremists and then claim strategic value in defending the West against these extremists. While other citizens are defamed by clerics and oppressed by the government, religious radicals retain power as long as they do not condemn the ruler and represent a real threat. The duplicitous game of Middle Eastern leaders is withering, wherein they purport to protect the West from the fundamentalists they themselves have nurtured, while they simultaneously escalate their rhetoric to the Muslim masses about Western imperialism.
The political structures of these countries cannot last forever because they are alien to their own cultures and, most important, alien to the spirit of Islam. Many egalitarian principles within Islam have long been shackled by countries that follow the lead of a strongman.
It is time to redefine Muslim culture based on true Islam, and perhaps a new beginning is in the West. Then, the public could understand how Islam is concerned with secular affairs and balances the concerns of this world with concerns of the hereafter, the temporal with the eternal; how reason is also a cornerstone of Islamic jurisprudence; and how the will of the people is inseparable from the will of God.
One can practice Islam in America without worrying about secret police dragging people out of bed in the middle of the night. Women can pray and lecture in American mosques rather than suffer exclusion from society. In America, one can criticize the government and feel patriotic.
It is not an issue of being anti-secular or anti-religion, but of being anti-oppression and anti-exploitation. It would be beneficial for people to start thinking in those terms in order to promote justice without bias.
Maher Hathout is senior adviser to, and Salam al-Marayatl is director of, the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles.
Los Angeles Times
by CNB