November 2, 2001
Yes, This Is About Islam
By SALMAN RUSHDIE
LONDON -- "This isn't about Islam." The world's leaders have been repeating this
mantra for weeks, partly in the virtuous hope of deterring reprisal attacks on
innocent Muslims living in the West, partly because if the United States is to
maintain its coalition against terror it can't afford to suggest that Islam and
terrorism are in any way related.
The trouble with this necessary disclaimer is that it isn't true. If this isn't
about Islam, why the worldwide Muslim demonstrations in support of Osama bin
Laden and Al Qaeda? Why did those 10,000 men armed with swords and axes mass on
the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier, answering some mullah's call to jihad? Why
are the war's first British casualties three Muslim men who died fighting on the
Taliban side?
Why the routine anti-Semitism of the much-repeated Islamic slander that "the
Jews" arranged the hits on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, with the
oddly self-deprecating explanation offered by the Taliban leadership, among
others, that Muslims could not have the technological know-how or organizational
sophistication to pull off such a feat? Why does Imran Khan, the Pakistani
ex-sports star turned politician, demand to be shown the evidence of Al Qaeda's
guilt while apparently turning a deaf ear to the self-incriminating statements
of Al Qaeda's own spokesmen (there will be a rain of aircraft from the skies,
Muslims in the West are warned not to live or work in tall buildings)? Why all
the talk about American military infidels desecrating the sacred soil of Saudi
Arabia if some sort of definition of what is sacred is not at the heart of the
present discontents?
Of course this is "about Islam." The question is, what exactly does that mean?
After all, most religious belief isn't very theological. Most Muslims are not
profound Koranic analysts. For a vast number of "believing" Muslim men, "Islam"
stands, in a jumbled, half-examined way, not only for the fear of God — the fear
more than the love, one suspects — but also for a cluster of customs, opinions
and prejudices that include their dietary practices; the sequestration or
near-sequestration of "their" women; the sermons delivered by their mullahs of
choice; a loathing of modern society in general, riddled as it is with music,
godlessness and sex; and a more particularized loathing (and fear) of the
prospect that their own immediate surroundings could be taken over — "Westoxicated"
— by the liberal Western-style way of life.
Highly motivated organizations of Muslim men (oh, for the voices of Muslim women
to be heard!) have been engaged over the last 30 years or so in growing radical
political movements out of this mulch of "belief." These Islamists — we must get
used to this word, "Islamists," meaning those who are engaged upon such
political projects, and learn to distinguish it from the more general and
politically neutral "Muslim" — include the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the
blood-soaked combatants of the Islamic Salvation Front and Armed Islamic Group
in Algeria, the Shiite revolutionaries of Iran, and the Taliban. Poverty is
their great helper, and the fruit of their efforts is paranoia. This paranoid
Islam, which blames outsiders, "infidels," for all the ills of Muslim societies,
and whose proposed remedy is the closing of those societies to the rival project
of modernity, is presently the fastest growing version of Islam in the world.
This is not wholly to go along with Samuel Huntington's thesis about the clash
of civilizations, for the simple reason that the Islamists' project is turned
not only against the West and "the Jews," but also against their fellow
Islamists. Whatever the public rhetoric, there's little love lost between the
Taliban and Iranian regimes. Dissensions between Muslim nations run at least as
deep, if not deeper, than those nations' resentment of the West. Nevertheless,
it would be absurd to deny that this self-exculpatory, paranoiac Islam is an
ideology with widespread appeal.
Twenty years ago, when I was writing a novel about power struggles in a
fictionalized Pakistan, it was already de rigueur in the Muslim world to blame
all its troubles on the West and, in particular, the United States. Then as now,
some of these criticisms were well-founded; no room here to rehearse the
geopolitics of the cold war and America's frequently damaging foreign policy
"tilts," to use the Kissinger term, toward (or away from) this or that
temporarily useful (or disapproved-of) nation-state, or America's role in the
installation and deposition of sundry unsavory leaders and regimes. But I wanted
then to ask a question that is no less important now: Suppose we say that the
ills of our societies are not primarily America's fault, that we are to blame
for our own failings? How would we understand them then? Might we not, by
accepting our own responsibility for our problems, begin to learn to solve them
for ourselves?
Many Muslims, as well as secularist analysts with roots in the Muslim world, are
beginning to ask such questions now. In recent weeks Muslim voices have
everywhere been raised against the obscurantist hijacking of their religion.
Yesterday's hotheads (among them Yusuf Islam, a k a Cat Stevens) are improbably
repackaging themselves as today's pussycats.
An Iraqi writer quotes an earlier Iraqi satirist: "The disease that is in us, is
from us." A British Muslim writes, "Islam has become its own enemy." A Lebanese
friend, returning from Beirut, tells me that in the aftermath of the attacks on
Sept. 11, public criticism of Islamism has become much more outspoken. Many
commentators have spoken of the need for a Reformation in the Muslim world.
I'm reminded of the way noncommunist socialists used to distance themselves from
the tyrannical socialism of the Soviets; nevertheless, the first stirrings of
this counterproject are of great significance. If Islam is to be reconciled with
modernity, these voices must be encouraged until they swell into a roar. Many of
them speak of another Islam, their personal, private faith.
The restoration of religion to the sphere of the personal, its depoliticization,
is the nettle that all Muslim societies must grasp in order to become modern.
The only aspect of modernity interesting to the terrorists is technology, which
they see as a weapon that can be turned on its makers. If terrorism is to be
defeated, the world of Islam must take on board the secularist-humanist
principles on which the modern is based, and without which Muslim countries'
freedom will remain a distant dream.
Salman Rushdie is the author, most recently, of "Fury: A Novel."
This op-ed piece is the property of The New York Times and can be seen at their site: http://www.nytimes.com/
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