By Grania Spingies
Ayaan Hirsi Ali has written an op-ed for TIME in the aftermath of the tragic and brutal siege in Australia, very worth reading for yourself. Her focus is on the Shahada, now becoming a familiar sight on television news as the white writing on a black flag waved by extremists. She points out that in and of itself, the inscription is a simple declaration not particularly different in tone from many other religions’ declarations such as the Catholic Creed.
“I bear witness that there is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is His messenger.”
This is indeed the position that many Muslims espouse, and one that had been reiterated by many Muslim groups in Australia in the wake of this tragedy. However, she goes on to point out that it can also have a political message as well, depending on whether the interpretation favors a pre or post Medina version of Islam. The pre-Medina era saw peaceful proselytizing, post-Medina the tactic changed, and proselytizing was accompanied with real and threatened violence. Ayaan argues that the more politicized version, as reviled as it is by the majority of peaceful Muslims, needs to be marginalized, both in the pulpit and on the podium.
“To the extent that sincerely peace-loving Muslims wish to combat this trend, they need to do more than utter platitudes. They need to disown the likes of Man Haron Monis before they resort to violence, when they are preaching it.”
As she points out, many countries in the “West”, for want of a better term, have fostered and protected such speech and such speakers. However, side-lining any speech whether it be racism or extremism is a tricky affair if one is not to trample on the right to free speech and avoid doing collateral damage by vilifying and marginalizing an innocent group who already are targeted by xenophobes and reactionaries. It’s a tactic that proponents of politicized Islam have certainly tried to use against Ayaan Hirsi Ali herself, as was recently seen in her invitations to speak publicly. She’s probably right though, extremist preachers need to become unwelcome in otherwise peaceful communities. Those preaching death to anyone not sharing their ideology deserve no respect.
Read her full piece here: http://time.com/3634750/shahada-in-sydney-political-islam-ayaan-hirsi-ali/
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The “tricky affair” of not trampling on the right to free speech becomes very un-tricky when said speech exhorts violence against others.
And this need not be a free speech issue, the tool kit of actions available to those who participate in the market place of ideas already includes the necessary anodyne to bad ideas such as political Islam – an open criticism of these bad ideas using ridicule, mockery, irony and satire.
And this is open to all, Muslims and non Muslims alike.
I look forward to the day when the public display of the black flag is treated exactly as the display of a KKK flag and our mainstream media lampoons Islamic inspired idiocy to the same extent that they now treat Christian lunacy.
I have to admit, I don’t understand what “politicized Islam” is supposed to mean. Is it just Muslims looking for temporal power? I don’t understand how that is seperated from regular believers since most theists look for this and their holy books advocate it in forcing others to believe or punishing/killing unbelievers.
Pan-Islamism is the far-right political ideology that all Muslims should live under a single political system with a single political agenda. Muslims in the four schools of Islam have very different opinions on politics in each Muslim-majority country.
“Islamists believe that ‘the Muslim world’ is a homogenous bloc with a shared political agenda. Uncritical use of phrases like ‘the Muslim world’ or ‘the Islamic world’, which can suggest that all Muslim-majority countries are part of a monolithic bloc, risks reinforcing a key aspect of Islamist narratives.”
http://www.quilliamfoundation.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/publications/free/islamism-and-language.pdf
thanks, that helps. It still feels like it is just the usual religious sects trying to claim that they are on the only right one. I can remember anti-Catholic nonsense here in the US, and it seems the same, that some people don’t want Christians to be known as “the same” and one group wants to control all.
You also got keys, Grania? Maybe you can write something on free will while Jerry isn’t looking 🙂
Maybe a cartoon/picture showing some dogs arguing in favour of compatibilist free will?
And then they react automatically to a squirrel and run out of the frame, leaving the debate unresolved while simultaneously demonstrating that they cannot choose otherwise.
With another d*g commenting in deepities.
Deepity Dawg?
Good ‘un
I guess that depends on what the quantum fluctuations at the Big Bang have pre-ordained. 🙂
You go, Ayaan!
Maajid Nawaz, the founder of the counter-radicalisation group Quilliam, has a post discussing the history of the black banner of jihad
“On the ISIS flag that has caused controversy being raised in certain Western capitals during Gaza rallies: 1) just because this flag contains the Muslim testimony of faith (shahadah), this does not make it “the Islamic flag”. Such a defence deliberately uses Freedom of a Religion as a deflective tool. Do not be fooled. Saddam’s flags also used an Islamic slogan, was that too an “Islamic flag”? 2) the ISIS flag is inspired originally by the Abbasid dynasty’s flag, used as war propaganda against their rivals, the Umayyad dynasty – both early Muslim dynasties 3) the Abbasids made up & popularised some prophetic traditions (hadith) to support their claim for this flag. These hadiths are widely recognised as inauthentic (da’eef) 4) the flag was then ditched by all Muslims globally for hundreds of years 5) My former extreme Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir revived the black flag as their symbol from the 1950s onwards, using the very same inauthentic traditions. Since then, only *Islamist* & *jihadist* groups have raised this black flag 6) Hizb ut-Tahrir took the view that their “caliphate” would raise a white flag with black writing during peace time (dar al-salam), and a black flag with white writing during war time (dar al-harb). Absent their “caliphate”, the whole world was held to be in a state of war 7) Inspired by Hizb ut-Tahrir, al-Qaida liked this black ‘flag of jihad’ and adopted it 8) ISIS took al-Qaida’s black flag, liked the image of what is reputed to be the Prophet’s seal at the bottom of the writing, and popularised the flag below, which is an ISIS flag. 9) Before ISIS, and perhaps al-Qaida, no historical precedent exists for the combination of the writing & the seal underneath it. 10) So, anyone raising this particular flag should be told in clear terms that this is an ISIS flag. Raising this ISIS flag symbolises nothing but genocidal maniacs who are killing Sufis, Shia, Christians, Yazidis & anyone who disagrees with them in mass executions. They enslave women, and they chop children in half. Like the Nazis appropriated the swastika symbol from Hindus, ISIS have appropriated the Muslim testimony of faith and the Prophet’s seal. Do not fly this flag.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=719004368166831&substory_index=0&id=135775283156412
The business of things being “inauthentic” lacks force, unless there is both widespread agreement and widespread vocal support.
I give Muslims a temporary pass, because Christians have a history of perpetrating every foul deed we see militant Muslims committing. And a few that are unique to Christianity.
In fact, Many Christians continue to speak as if their mission is to convert the world. I have to imagine that this is just as threatening to non-Christians as is the rhetoric of ISIS is to non-Muslims. Particularly since nations like the US have guns and bombs and drones, and use them.
Religious wars have permeated history. Much of European history is the history of religious warfare. We still have a cold war in Ireland that could heat up any moment.
That’s a false equivalency in most cases. ISIS’ rhetoric is scary because they follow it up by beheading people who don’t agree with them. When and where christian sects do that, then yeah, a person could legitimately find their rhetoric to be equally scary. The LRA in Uganda would be an equivalent christian example: non-christians in Uganda should find their rhetoric very scary, indeed. However, they do not represent “many Christians.” Western televangelists and religious pundits are nothing like that, and nobody should find their bluster to be any more scary than any other bluster.
“Western televangelists and religious pundits are nothing like that, and nobody should find their bluster to be any more scary than any other bluster.”
IMO, that is only because we have a strong law system to prevent it. Considering the foul threats that folks in the MRFF and FFRF get *constantly*, I have no doubt that western Christians would be just as horrible as any ISIL or the murderers in Pakistan if given the chance.
Maybe some would, maybe some wouldn’t. But the fact is that they aren’t. So it’s a bad and false comparison to equate what ‘many Christians say about wanting to spread Christianity througout the world’ (Petrushka’s contention) with ISIS’ religious pronouncements. I find the local door to door JW or mormon annoying, but I don’t fear he’s going to behead me. The two messages are not equivalent in scariness, because the people who send those messages are not equivalent in their willingness to commit violent bloodbaths.
Again, you don’t fear because you have a law system that is strong and secular.
If we did not have this law system, do you think that these people would not act on their claims that anyone who disagrees with them deserves death? We have evidence that they will. As has been said, we have plenty of instances where these Christians *have* committed violence again and again, now and in the past. We have the violent messages that the MRFF and FFRF get constantly. The average Christian wouldn’t do these things, just like the average Muslim wouldn’t but there are more than plenty of them that would. To think that Christians are “safe” because of what they are is a misapprehension.
And we’ve certainly seen cases of Christian extremists who have become quite violent, like the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas and the numerous people who’ve attack abortion clinics and doctors over the past few decades.
I don’t know….
When the guy in charge of the most powerful nation in the world starts saying that God talks to him I’d be pretty cautious if I was an outsider/potential target.
Problem being in many cases, when looking across cultural borders, it’s really hard to tell what’s rhetoric and what isn’t.
This is no reason to give anyone a pass. It is a reason not to.
I can certainly understand why a reasonable person of faith would want to distract himself from Jihadists and terrorists. And it’s interesting to hear the history of the ISIS flag. The only flaw in Mr. Nawaz’s reasoning is the use of terms like “inauthentic” and “made up” to describe the theology ISIS promotes and relies upon. One person’s “inauthentic” tenet is another person’s holy word. All religious tenets, strictly speaking, are “made up”: there is no evidence for a God governing the universe; if there were such a being, there is no proof that one prophet has any more direct and authentic line to that being than does any other.
It is good and reasonable for people to eschew violent means and to fight against evil people of necessary and of they are able. An argument that relies on those principles has meaning to those outside of the advocate’s sect. Relying on religious arguments however is a fool’s errand: once a person wants to assert that s/he stands without evidence for the one universal truth, s/he creates the opening that it is possible to have a one universal truth without evidence and, from the outside, no one can judge which either baseless claim as more legitimate.
I don’t know what the point is or who the audience is for Mr. Nawaz. Those who believe as he does are not getting new information, and those who disagree will not be moved. I don’t see how his argument offers anything to someone who is attracted to ISIS or a similar cause, since they are already likely alienated from the “mainstream”‘ view. The one value I can see for Mr. Nawaz is that he can demonstrate to non-Muslims that “good Muslims” reject ISIS and Jihadism – and I guess his argument is appealing to some I that way.
Without in any way wishing to detract from what happened in Sydney (on a personal level my son just finished working in that area and knew the cafe involved) – I find the reaction to this event, compared to that towards domestic violence to be somewhat sickening. At the same time the story was evolving in Sydney we had six people killed in Montgomery county, PA and it’s just considered a normal “run of the mill” killing. These sorts of killings involving more than four deaths occur on average every couple of weeks in the US – per FBI stats – and nobody seems to care too much.
The Australian media has mostly willingly adopted the nothing-to-do-with-religion narrative, but here’s an exception.
Interesting article. Thanks for linking.
There is at least one mosque congregation that has split in NZ because an imam was teaching in support of DAESH. The non-peaceful group was sidelined and began gathering in a home garage. This also, of course, made them obvious to security services.
It’s time governments and the Muslim community started being honest about what the problem is. While they pussyfoot around the semantics, damage is done. Most people don’t go around attacking all Muslims because of the actions of a few. Those who do are looking for an excuse anyway.
If more Muslim leaders stood up and condemned the extremists, they’d be far less likely to face xenophobic attacks. It’s appearing to support the extremists by not criticizing them that’s the problem imo. Of course, there is the genuine fear some have of the extremists in their own community which can make it difficult for them. This is a problem with Islam – that killing and dying for Allah are seen as praiseworthy actions by too many.
Shahada is not a bargaining point. Some Muslims, justifiably are terrified of, what must seem to them, the corrosive nature of reform. Reform has no return. When an organized religion adopts even an iota of scientific understanding of our world it creeps into an inescapable direction towards secularism. This is not endurable by some fundamentalists of many religions, not just Islam.
All politicians should read al-Ma’arri
a Blind philosopher who died in 1058CE
He didn’t like religion either. And he lived amongst it:
1) You said, “A wise one created us “;
That may be true, we would agree.
“Outside of time and space,” you postulated.
Then why not say at once that you
Propound a mystery immense
Which tells us of our lack of sense?
Al-Ma’arri
2) They all err—Moslems, Jews,
Christians, and Zoroastrians:
Humanity follows two world-wide sects:
One, man intelligent without religion,
The second, religious without intellect.
Al-Ma’arri
3) A Spoken Lie Enforced by Blood
Had they been left alone with reason,
they would not have accepted a spoken lie;
but the whips were raised to strike them.
Traditions were brought to them,
and they were ordered to say,
“We have been told the truth”;
If they refused, the sword was drenched with their blood.
They were terrified by scabbards of calamities,
and tempted by great bowls of food,
Offered in a lofty and condescending manner.
Al-Ma’arri
http://www.jesusandmo.net/2014/12/17/duty/