Challenging Ignorance on Islam:
a Ten-Point Primer for Americans
[Gary Leupp is an an associate
professor, Department of History,
Tufts
University
and coordinator, Asian Studies Program – He is not a Muslim. He can be
reached at:
gleupp@tufts.edu]
"We should invade [Muslim]
countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."
Columnist Ann Coulter, National Review Online,
Sept. 1, 2001
"Just turn [the sheriff] loose
and have him arrest every Muslim that crosses the state line."
Rep. C. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), chairman of
the House Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland security and Senate
candidate, to
Georgia
law officers, November 2001
"Islam is a religion in which God
requires you to send your son to die for him. Christianity is a faith where
God sent his Son to die for you."
Attorney General John Ashcroft, interview on Cal Thomas radio, November 2001
"(Islam) is a very evil and
wicked religion wicked, violent and not of the same god (as Christianity)."
Rev. Franklin Graham, head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association,
November 2001.
"Islam is Evil, Christ is King."
Allegedly written in marker by law
enforcement agents on a Muslim prayer calendar in the home of a Muslim being
investigated by police in
Dearborn ,
Michigan ,
July 2002.
People
with power and influence in the
U.S.
have been saying some very stupid things about Islam and about Muslims since
September 11. Some of it is rooted in conscious malice, and ethnic prejudice
that spills over into religious bigotry. But some is rooted in sheer
historical and geographical ignorance. This is a country, after all, in
which only a small minority of high school students can readily locate
Afghanistan
on the map, or are aware that Iranians and Pakistanis are not Arabs. As an
educator, in Asian Studies, at a fairly elite university, I am painfully
aware of this ignorance. But I realize it serves a purpose. It is highly
useful to a power structure that banks on knee-jerk popular support whenever
it embarks on a new military venture, at some far-off venue, on false
pretexts immediately discernable to the better educated, but lost on the
general public. The generally malleable mainstream press takes care of the
rest.
I don't mean to suggest that the
academic cognosenti, as a "class," habitually counter this
ignorance and protest the imperialist interventions that
Washington
routinely undertakes. Some of them may indeed support the venture, cynically
asserting that the advertised pretext fulfills some sort of valid function,
regardless of the lies and distortions that surround it. (I think of the
depiction in the media of the "Rambouillet Accords" concerning Yugoslavia in
1999 as "the will of the international community," when one Contact Group
member, Russia, rejected the U.S.-dictated plan for Kosovo outright, and
several European states only signed on after their arms were twisted nearly
out of their sockets. I think of the calculated, extreme exaggeration of the
number of Kosovar victims of Serbian forces as the bombing of
Yugoslavia
began. The lies surrounding that bombing were obvious to anyone studying the
situation, but even some rather progressive academics were all for
"Operation Allied Force.") American academe is---unfortunately--- whatever
its right-wing critics may contend, not particularly left or
anti-imperialist. In any case, such ignorance is not just a national
embarrassment; it's really dangerous. Raw material for a made-in-USA version
of fascism.
To understand the contemporary
world, we all need to know something about Islam-beyond the inane
contribution of the Attorney General cited above. So I have prepared this
little primer on Islam for Americans (suitable for ages 13 and above, so
appropriate for high school use), dealing not with its theology so much as
its general character as an important force in the world, presently
encountering unprecedented, unprincipled attack from various quarters. (Oh,
and by the way, I'm not a Muslim, but what those on the Christian right
revile as a "secular humanist.")
1. Islam has been around for
approximately 1400 years. Established on the west coast of
Arabia
900 years before European settlement in
America ,
and spreading rapidly throughout
Southwest Asia
and
North Africa
soon thereafter, it was not designed as an anti-U.S. movement!
The basic
teachings or requirements of Islam are not difficult to grasp. They
constitute the "Five Pillars of Islam": (1) profession that there is no God
but God ("Allah," in Arabic), and his Prophet (the last of the prophets, the
"seal of the prophets") is Muhammad; (2) daily prayer; (3) fasting during
the month of Ramadan; (4) charity; and (5) the pilgrimage to Mecca. Whatever
you may think of this package, it's not terribly threatening to the
non-Muslim.
2. Islam's teachings are
contained in a fairly compact book, the Qur'an, which Muslims believe was
dictated to the Prophet Muhammad by the archangel Gabriel. They believe of
it precisely what Jews and Christians believe of their scriptures: that is,
it's the Word of God. This book, like the Bible, demands belief in
monotheism; refers to Adam, Noah, Abraham, Jesus, etc. (far more space is
given to Mary, mother of Jesus, in the Qur'an than in the New Testament);
has a substantial legalistic component reminiscent of the Old Testament
Book of Leviticus, and poetic content as beautifully uplifting as the
Book of Psalms. For religious and secular scholars alike, it is
absolutely clear that Islam stems from the Judeo-Christian tradition.
Indeed, we should think in terms of the "Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition."
(Some fundamentalist Christians,
of course, see Islam as the work of Satan, and medieval Christians in
Europe
saw it as a heresy rather than as "paganism. The point is---for
better or worse---Muslims have a whole lot more in common with the dominant
religious trends in the U.S. than do, say, Buddhists or Hindus.)
3. Muslims are about 20% of the
world's population; Christians, about 30%. (The U.S. Muslim population is
estimated between 5 and 8 million; U.S. Jews between 5 and 6 million). The
global Jewish population is statistically quite small, so one can say the
Judeo-Christian-Islamic population is roughly half the world's total.
The consequences of a protracted religious war, pitting Christians and Jews
against Muslims, are highly unpleasant to consider.
4. The Qur'an
depicts Jews and Christians as "People of the Book," meaning that they have
their own scriptures bestowed upon them by God (Allah is simply the
Arabic world for God, related to the Hebrew Elohim; we should see it
as analogous to the German word Gott, the French Dieu, or the
Spanish Dios. It's not the personal name of a deity within a
pantheon, like Thor, Aphrodite or Siva.)
Muslim scripture counsels
respect for these communities, and indeed, in the history of Islam, within
Islamic societies Jews and Christians have fared FAR better than
non-Christians in Christendom. Muslims ruled all or part of Spain from
around 800 to the late 15th century, when Columbus' great patrons,
King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella "drove
the Moors (Muslims) out of Spain," forced everybody to embrace Catholic
Christianity (or be killed), and promoted the exquisite Christian tortures
of the Inquisition. Under Muslim rule,
Christian and Jewish communities generally flourished from
Spain
to
Iraq .
On the other hand, until recent times, Christian intolerance
prevailed throughout
Europe .
5. The Qu'ran does NOT call upon
Muslims to KILL all non-Muslims. It calls for the destruction of
"infidels," meaning principally Arabs who, during the time of Muhammad,
practiced idolatry and polytheism. Again: this is a seventh-century book,
produced in a specific historical context! It, and the Muslim religion,
should be studied and understood objectively, dispassionately. Islam emerged
very quickly, and within decades united under its banner-the banner of
monotheism---the various tribes of
Arabia .
Its violent rejection of idolatry, however offensive to the modern, secular,
humanist mind, is hardly unique. It can be compared to the ferocious
suppression in Christian Europe of paganism (often associated with
witchcraft).
And for perspective,
while the Qu'ran does call for the
extermination of "infidels," the Old Testament is replete with its own
exhortations to genocide.
According to the Biblical narrative (of dubious
historicity, but believed by hundreds of millions), the Hebrews under
Joshua's leadership, invading
Canaan
from
Egypt ,
killed twelve thousand "men and women together" in the town of
Ai -because
God wanted them to (Joshua
8:25 ).
The Hebrews put all the people of Hazor to the sword (they "wiped them all
out; they did not leave one living soul." Judges
11:14 ).
The poetics of hatred are as conspicuous in the Bible as in the Qu'ran. A
personal favorite of mine, from Psalm 137, refers to the Babylonians: "A
blessing on him who takes and dashes your babies against the rock!"
Such references are characteristic of Judeo-Christian-Islamic literature,
and are best examined in historical perspective.
6. Islamic "fundamentalism" is
not a species apart from other fundamentalisms, including the Christian,
Jewish, and Hindu varieties. They are all anti-modern, anti-science,
anti-intellectual, rarely harmless and potentially (if not necessarily)
fascistic. They demand belief in received dogma, inscribed in texts, rather
than open-ended scientific inquiry. They either legitimate the existing
order, or call for a return to a past social order in which class and gender
relations were properly sorted out in line with the Divine Will.
Some (including non-religious
people in or from Muslim countries) criticize Islam (appropriately, in my
view) for what they consider backward and reactionary features. This is not
the place to deal with such criticisms, nor am I the right person to do it.
I will merely observe what many others have observed: Christendom underwent
the Enlightenment-an evolution towards secularism, rationalism, and
scientific thought in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries-which the
Islamic world, in general, has not yet experienced. To become "modern" (more
specifically, to become capitalist), the West had to become more
ideologically tolerant (i.e., less religious), and allow a freer market in
ideas than had been possible when the Church monopolized learning. If
mullahs monopolize education in much of the Muslim world, they serve a
function identical with that of
Europe 's
medieval Catholic clergy.
But our own Enlightenment is not
irreversible. Top
U.S.
officials reject the theory of evolution in favor of the ludicrous "theory"
of "creationism," and seek to criminalize abortion on the grounds that a
fetus is a human being created by God. Recent changes in U.S. law (allowing
the use of vouchers to support religious schools at taxpayer's expense), and
the failure of the courts to prosecute behavior which plainly violates the
constitutional separation of church and state, demonstrate that medieval
thinking and fundamentalism retain a strong hold in sections of U.S.
society, and are well represented in the Bush administration.
The American people are, I submit, far more
threatened by Christian fundamentalism than its Islamic counterpart.
And for a Pentecostalist Christian like John Ashcroft, who believes every
word of the Bible literally, to inveigh against Islam (as he has) is (to use
the English proverb) the "pot calling the kettle black."
7. Islamic fundamentalism (or
what some, including CNN Moneyline's Lou Dobbs calls "Islamism," meaning a
specifically political Islam) has NOT, historically, posed a great threat to
Western interests (by which I mean corporate, oil, and geopolitical
interests) but rather been exploited to SERVE those interests.
Remember
Lawrence
of
Arabia ?
What was his objective other than to forge a British alliance with the
Hashemites, who would certainly qualify as "Islamists" by Lou Dobb's
standards, during World War I? Later, the British boosted the Saudi royal
family (patrons of the Wahhabi
school
of
Islam ,
usually described as among the most conservative, embraced by Osama bin
Laden as well as the Saudis in general) into power. The U.S. inherited Saudi
Arabia as a client state after World War II, and we all know how well U.S.
oil companies have done there ever since. (Aramco alone, prior to its
nationalization in the mid-1980s, yielded some $ 3 trillion from the Arabian
reserves.)
The
U.S.
helped create, recruit, and finance the fundamentalist Mujahadeen, including
some 30,000 young volunteers who came from throughout the Muslim world to
fight "godless Communism" in
Afghanistan
in the 1980s. The
U.S.
encouraged them to view their war as a jihad (in the sense of
a "Holy War," a meaning the term usually does NOT carry), and put many in
contact with young Osama bin Laden, then an ally. The Reagan administration
was in love with fundamentalist Islam, so long as it served its
purposes.
The
California-based company Unocal was cordially negotiating right up to Sept.
11 with Afghanistan's Taliban for an oil pipeline through Afghan territory,
State Department official and oilman Zalmay Khalilzad was arguing up through
1998 that the Taliban were friendly, potential business partners who did
"not practice the anti-U.S. style of fundamentalism practiced in Iran."
8. Muslims of the world have
many thoroughly LEGITIMATE reasons to resent
U.S.
policy. Nearly absolute support for the
settler state of
Israel
in its relationship with the indigenous Palestinian people. Imposition of
brutal sanctions on
Iraq ,
contrary to logic and morality. Maintenance of bases throughout the
Persian Gulf ,
in defiance of local sensibilities and interests. Support for brutal
regimes, including that of the Shah of Iran and that of
Indonesia 's
Suharto (who unquestionably has more blood on his hands than even that
arch-villain and former
U.S.
buddy Saddam
Hussein).
9. Muslims typically DO NOT hate
the
U.S.
as an abstract concept, reject
U.S.
culture in toto, or seek the destruction of American civilization. Many are,
indeed, uncomfortable with some aspects of American behavior, as are most
people in the world, from
Central America
to
Japan .
But a Zogby International poll, released June 11 of this year, shows that in
nine Muslim countries, including
Bangladesh
and
Malaysia ,
the most admired foreign country is the
U.S.
10. Muslims and Jews in
Palestine/Israel have NOT always hated one another, and the current
Middle East
conflict does NOT go back many centuries. Rather, it began with the influx
of foreign Jews into the region after World War I, which became a flood as a
result of the Holocaust, and with international support resulted in the
formation of
Israel
as a specifically Jewish state in 1948.
Jewish settlement and terrorism (well-documented by the Jewish Israeli
historian Ilan Pappe) resulted in the displacement of 750,000 Palestinian
Arabs (including both Christians and
Muslims).
The Arab-Israeli conflict is not, fundamentally,
about Islam, or a clash between Islam and other faiths, but about
this-worldly land grabbing, settlement, dispossession and oppression that
has enraged the Muslim world, as it should enrage any thinking, moral human
being. Unfortunately,
fundamentalist Christians in this country tend to depict this history of
injustice as the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy, and they will brook no
dissent when it comes to the Zionist cause that they have embraced as their
own. ("God gave them the land, so don't bother me with historical details.
End of discussion.") Hard to imagine a delusion more injurious to world
peace and to the cause of justice.
Finally: In understanding Islam,
Americans should give some thought to one of the pivotal episodes in world
history, the Crusades, or Wars of the Cross, that ripped up the
Holy Land
between 1096 and 1291. During these two centuries, European Christians
seeking to "win back for Christendom" territory that had fallen to the
Muslim Turks-territory that had been ruled by Muslims since the early
seventh century anyway, on terms generally agreeable to Jews and Christians
as well as Muslims-committed unspeakable atrocities.
In July 1099
Jerusalem
was conquered, the Roman Catholic soldiers massacring all the Muslim and
Jewish inhabitants, including women and children. Nor was the Crusaders'
zeal exhausted upon non-Christians; frustrated at lack of success in
Palestine
in 1204, they instead sacked
Constantinople
(modern
Istanbul ),
then the center of Eastern Orthodoxy. In comparison, the behavior of the
Muslim armies was chivalrous, the twelfth-century Kurdish leader Saladin in
particular winning high praise from Christians and Muslims alike for his
humanity.
The Islamic world remembers the
Crusades; George Bush, like many Americans, is clueless about them. Hence
his amazingly dim-witted reference to the "War on Terrorism" as a "Crusade"
last September 16-a statement that produced immediate, widespread outrage in
the Muslim world. No offense intended, no doubt. But such ignorance, in
action, in a world where religious prejudice generates idiotic action from
Belfast ,
to the Balkans, to
Gujarat ,
to the
Moluccas ,
is perilous ignorance indeed.