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~ “Modernity with its language of liberty, for women as well as men, with its insistence on legitimacy in government rather than tyranny, and with its strong inclination towards secularism and away from religionis being targetedby the deformed medievalist language of fanaticism, backed up by modern weaponry.” ~ Salman Rushdie, Sept., 2014
~ “If vast numbers of Muslims across the world believe, and they do, that humans deserve to die for merely holding a different idea, or drawing a cartoon, or writing a book, or eloping with the wrong person, not only does the Muslim world have something in common with ISIS, it has too much in common with ISIS.” ~ “The Koran absolutely has on every page stuff that’s horrible about how the infidels should be treated.” Bill Maher, Sept., 2014
~ “The Muslim world is responsible for a really big part of religious extremism right now. And they are unusually violent. They’re unusually barbaric in the places where it is happening. And it’s happening there more there than it is in other places.” ~ Chris Cuomo, Oct. 2014.
~ “The believers, the Jews, the Christians,— all those who believe in God and the Last Day and do good deeds— will be rewarded by their Lord; they shall have no fear, nor shall they grieve.” ~ The Koran, 1182
~ “The easy confidence with which I know another man’s religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.”–Mark Twain, 1910
~ “All faiths insist compassion is the test of true spirituality and it brings us into relation with the transcendence we call God. Further, they all insist that you cannot confine your benevolence to your own group; you must have concern for everybody – even your enemies. But in many ways compassion is alien to our modern way of life. the capitalistic economy is intensely competitive and individualistic, and goes out of its way to encourage us to put ourselves first.” ~ Karen Armstrong, 2010.
~ “When we think of Islam we think of a faith that brings comfort to a billion people around the world. Billions of people find comfort and solace and peace. And that’s made brothers and sisters out of every race — out of every race.America counts millions of Muslims amongst our citizens, and Muslims make an incredibly valuable contribution to our country. And they need to be treated with respect. In our anger and emotion, our fellow Americans must treat each other with respect.” ~ Pres. George W. Bush, Sept 8, 2001.
In recent days, as the U.S. led crusade against ISIS has moved into high gear, like me, you have probably become increasingly troubled by the rising tide of renewed Islamophobia it has sparked off in the mass media here in America and in Europe. A range of high profile media personalities – notably Bill Maher, Chris Cuomo and Salman Rushdie (see above quotes) – have come out firing that the barbarity and aggression of ISIS are somehow a more general reflection of widespread religious extremism among Muslims in the world as a whole. In recent, widely viewed and commented news broadcasts and interviews, they have attacked what they view as fanatical religion.
In the process, they have completely ignored the complex and repressive politics of the Middle East, and its related lack of economic and social progress. And they have remained conveniently mum about the considerable role America and other Western powers in Europe have played in these in the past century. As Reza Aslan tried to point out on CNN a couple of weeks ago, and as the above quotes highlight, they also know little about the Koran, Islam or how Muslim religious and social practices vary widely across the world.
Such ignorance is the more troubling when it comes from highly educated, otherwise thoughtful, influential and privileged thought shapers in our society. It suggests such views are by now very widespread across our society as a whole. Yet, as President George W. Bush said, right after 9/11 (see above quote), Muslims are important contributors to American society and deserve our respect, even at a time of great trial and emotion. Or, perhaps as Mark Twain said (see above quote) it is folly to judge the religion of another, when we know it not? For, as Karen Armstrong points out (see above quote), all faiths – including Islam – are focused intrinsically on peace and human compassion.
Key Questions: Looking beyond the hype, what are religious, social and political attitudes and customs like among Muslims and in the Middle East today? Do they differ, if at all, from our own? Is it religion that has driven the widespread violence and disorder in Middle Easter nations? Or is it rather repressive political systems undergoing major challenges and change?
Role of Religion: What Rushdie, Maher and Cuomo seem to miss is that almost all religious people in almost all societies are not “fanatics”, but generally quite ordinary, peace-loving folks like you and me with the same set of rather mundane concerns in life : getting a good job, having a family, getting their kids a good education and good jobs, retirement security. In this, in my experience, having worked and lived with many over the years, the overwhelming majority of Muslims are just the same as the overwhelming majority of Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Bahai etc. It may be true that larger numbers of Muslims hold more traditional views on social issues than in Western societies. Though even that has been changing the past decades. And then, this is probably also true in some Christian dominated societies such as in Latin America to a significant degree.
The 2013 Pew Research survey of “Muslims in the World” paints a picture of Muslims’ social, religious and political attitudes quite different from what Rushdie, Maher and Cuomo would have us believe. Interestingly, it confirms that a majority of Muslims support freedom of religion for themselves and equally for other other faiths. Most believe in democracy as their preferred system of government. They see a significant role for Islamic parties and for religious leaders in politics. Most are concerned about extremism in politics in their societies, but from both Islamic and Christian and other groups. They see little contradiction between religion and modernity or science. They are socially conservative, generally believe sharia law should govern family and social life, accept limited women’s rights, but mostly do not believe in harsh corporal punishment as practiced in very conservative Islam dominated nations such as Saudi Arabia.
In short, while there are a few fanatical groups such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda in Muslim dominant societies in the Middle East, they are clearly a small minority and far out of the Muslim mainstream.
Role of Politics : Religion mainly gets badly distorted and veers off course when it gets mixed up with politics and struggles for power. In many countries in the Middle East, Western colonialism tried to impose a Christian view of the world upon peoples many of whom were of different faiths including Islam. In those countries, to fight colonialism and to reject both capitalism and communism – seen as Western colonial ideologies – groups like the Muslim Brotherhood – founded by Hasan al-Banna in the 1930s – sought to find a third way to modernize based upon a mix of Islamic principles andWestern self-help concepts. They often borrowed from the English mid-19th century social reformer, Samuel Smiles, whose original book “Self-Help”published in 1850s London was translated into Arabic in the 1870s and widely distributed and read.
This amalgam led to the guiding philosophy of many in the Muslim Brotherhood today. All this explains why the Muslim Brotherhood – mainly led by professional people – men and women – has avoided violence and adhered to peaceful opposition and an active role in politics as part of service to the community. Against this, the more extreme socialist and Stalinist Nasserites and Baathists (in Egypt, Syria and Iraq) employed systematic violence to impose their rule by cracking down upon all moderate opposition. In other cases, such as the Shah in Iran, the state cracked down to maintain autocratic modernizing rule. In the process, societies became highly unequal, many remained very poor and uneducated and highly devout.
In yet other cases (Saudi Arabia, Morocco, the Gulf States) – old style monarchies and principalities (run by emirs) imposed traditional rule – as monarchs have done in the past in Christian countries (recall the “divine right of kings”).They took religion and distorted it to support their unique claims to power.
Modernizing and traditional autocracies have had, and still have, one thing in common : they both have cracked down most viciously on the moderate political opposition – because of its broader appeal. This left the much narrowed field of political opposition open mainly to violent extremist groups. These latter groups fell into two very different categories : ~ the Salafists, who borrowed from the Muslim Brotherhood’s philosophy but scoffed at staying non-violent in face of oppression; and ~ the pan-Arab jihadists, that were far more conservative and followers of Wahhabi Islam practiced in, and actively promoted abroad by, Saudi Arabia. A third group, like the second , was the Iranian clerical movement against the Shah. It preached traditional religious values as a populist rallying call for the poor, rural folks excluded by the Shah’s modernizers.
I point all this out to show that, in each case, religion has been manipulated by politics and deformed into something far from peaceful and compassionate. But also in each case, aside from a handful of fanatics and “true believers”, the vast majority of people were never so extreme. In fact, greater freedom and democracy almost inevitably leads to the rise of the moderates and greater tolerance over time.
In this context, ISIS is merely a brutal side show – dangerous only in a short-term sense. By manipulating religion for criminal purposes and with such savagery, ISIS’ chances of surviving long-term are poor. But again, the vacuum created by the tragic and awful civil war unleashed by Assad in Syria starting three years ago, only leads to the total instability and rising sectarian tensions between Sunni and Shia in which extremism will thrive. Thus helping resolve, once and for all, the repression of the Assad regime will also hasten the demise of ISIS and groups like it.
Israel is a Middle East State Too : An irony here is that Israel today seems to be moving backwards culturally, socially and politically. The rise of its religious right is imposing increasingly stringent restrictions on women, and on freedom of expression. Meanwhile, a Zionist state is finding true democracy difficult if not impossible to maintain. The Israeli government – through control by its national internal security services, the Shin Bet – vets the curriculum of all Israeli schools – including those for Arab Israelis as well as Jewish Israelis that are segregated – to make sure that the correct Zionist version of history is the only one taught. That version suppresses all references to the forced mass exodus of one million Palestinian Arabs in 1947-48 that enabled the very creation of the state of Israel!
Clearly, in this we can see the hand of Israel’s Zionist fundamentalists at work. Old and new “fundamentalisms” are alive and well in Israel too. In good part this is because of the repression of Israel’s non-Jewish population as well as of the Arab populations of the West Bank and Gaza. Once again, religion – in this case Judaism – is being manipulated for purposes of maintaining political power. In this Israel is little different from any other Middle Eastern government.
Conclusions : In sum, I would say to Salman Rushdie. Bill Maher and Chris Cuomo : Things are not anywhere near as simple as you portray them. The issues of Middle Eastern politics should not be oversimplified in purely religious terms. This is because religion is being manipulated by a few people whose goal is to gain or stay in power. Instead of distracting attention away from this by blaming religion, any religion, we must put the main focus where it should be : on politics and political repression of all kinds. Blaming religion will only give rise to new breeds of religious bigots amongst us, when we urgently need fewer of them!
If we want to help assist the Middle East in its modernization and development, we should do all we can to help the middle way, the moderate way. Not the autocracies of either modernizing or traditional varieties. This means supporting constitutional processes – such as the one the Egyptians were establishing up until the tragic coup in 2013, and the one the Tunisians have been trying to establish. Given strong grassroots support for Islamic parties and a role for religious leaders in politics, it is clear moderate Islamists willing to work within constitutional systems will have a major role to play. On the other hand, building coalitions with regimes that are autocratic and repressive – such as Saudi Arabia, today’s Egypt, Jordan – can only be counter-productive.
I, for one, hope Western political leaders, and media personalities, will have the good judgment and statesmanship to change course, before it is too late.