The Enemy At Home (27 page)

Admittedly Islamic tolerance was always qualified. As historian Albert Hourani points out, no Muslim regime permitted equal rights to other religions. Judaism and Christianity, although regarded as genuine precursors to Islam, suffered moderate forms of discrimination. Jews and Christians were required to pay a special tax, although they were exempt from paying the religious tax levied on Muslims. No synagogue or church could be more prominent than the local mosque. No Christian or Jewish man could marry a Muslim woman. Other groups such as the Zoroastrians received less protection, and beliefs regarded as pagan or polytheistic received no protection at all.
²¹
Many Americans may regard this as a crude, bogus form of toleration, although as we shall see, it is precisely the form of toleration that today’s brand of liberalism employs toward orthodox believers of all faiths.

Islam is notorious for the harshness of some of its punishments, such as cutting off the arms and legs of thieves, flogging adulterers, and executing drug dealers. In this respect one may say, with only a hint of irony, that Muslims are in the Old Testament tradition. Muslim courts require demanding standards of proof: when there is a charge of fornication or adultery, no circumstantial evidence is permitted and conviction can occur only on the basis of a confession or multiple witnesses. Even Muslim countries with a reputation for moderation, such as Malaysia and Indonesia, deal harshly with burglars and drug offenders. While admitting the severity of Islamic remedies, traditional Muslims point to their effectiveness as a deterrent. There are very few one-armed and one-legged people walking around the streets of Muslim countries, yet crime rates are very low by Western standards. Recently Maulvi Qalamuddin, former head of the Taliban’s Department for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue, defended the 1996 stoning of two adulterers in Kandahar. “Just two people, that’s all, and we ended adultery in Kandahar.”
²²

The regulations in Islamic countries covering sex and personal behavior are so detailed that they sometimes reach the level of the absurd. Even Orthodox Jews, with their elaborate codes of diet, dress, and conduct, cannot compete with Muslims in this matter. The Taliban—always out in front in these areas—declared that playing with birds such as pigeons was impious behavior, and ordered that all Afghans with non-Islamic names change them to Islamic ones. Even today, it is not uncommon to have clergymen on Iranian, Egyptian, or Saudi television solemnly discussing whether it is appropriate for a husband and wife to have anal sex, whether food may be consumed during intercourse, under what circumstances it is acceptable to laugh in public, or what the permissible ways are for a man to play with his beard. Muhammad Majlesi, an influential cleric of the Safavid dynasty, wrote on such matters as appropriate techniques for “plucking nasal hairs” and “proper ways of sneezing, belching and spitting.”
²³
I am not suggesting that most Muslims follow all, or any, of these procedures. They seem, however, to be the natural consequence of a worldview that places the entire orbit of life under religious scrutiny and possible state regulation.

The Islamic system of enforcing piety and virtue through the heavy hand of the law seems to me both unreasonable and imprudent. It does not concede the legitimacy of the secular life. It ignores the dangers of giving the state so much power over the lives of the citizens. It is open to grotesque abuses, which are apparently routine in countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran. In private conversation, many traditional Muslims agree with all of this. But Muslims like Tariq Ramadan point to a strange parallel. If it is wrong for fundamentalist Muslims to occupy the public square all by themselves, using law as their instrument, and pushing everyone else into the background, why isn’t it equally wrong for devout secularists to occupy the public square all by themselves, using law as their instrument, and pushing everyone else into the background? If it is unfair to discriminate against the secular life, isn’t it equally wrong to discriminate against the religious life? If Muslim regimes are too rigid about enforcing a fixed conception of morality, Ramadan argues, the Western system of separation of church and state enforces “a militant ideology opposed to any form of religious expression…in the public arena.”
²⁴
For many Muslims, whatever the flaws of the Islamic system, the American system is much worse.

American-style secularism, many Muslims believe, is being forced on the Muslim world. This belief is the basis for the allegation that Islam itself is under attack. In a survey of Muslim opinion, the Pew Research Center concluded, “The perception that Islam faces serious threats is widespread and growing among Muslims in many parts of the world. More than 9 in 10 Jordanian and Palestinian Muslims say their religion is threatened, and three quarters in Lebanon agree. While this view is somewhat less universal in Pakistan, Indonesia, Turkey and Nigeria, the proportion concerned about threats to their religion has risen significantly in all these nations.”
²⁵

Many Muslims believe that America is imposing its atheism and paganism on the Muslim world. This missionary paganism works, they say, by proclaiming “rights” that are inconsistent with Islamic teaching, and then using those “rights” to attack and discredit the principles of Islam. Moreover, they charge that America and the West use the United Nations and other international agencies to pressure Muslim countries to get rid of Islamic laws and replace them with secular laws. Bin Laden alleges that “America’s intention…is to change the beliefs, and morals of Muslims,” which amounts to nothing less than “changing our religion.”
²⁶
Finally, Islamic radicals accuse America of propping up secular dictators who are undermining Islam within the Middle East. These dictators—from Atatürk and the shah of Iran to, now, Musharraf and Abdullah—open up their society to Western influences that are imported in the name of “freedom of speech” and “civil liberties.” These same despots also regulate the mosques, appointing religious authorities who receive government salaries and, in exchange, provide religious blessing for the despot’s anti-Islamic policies. In addition, the Islamic radicals say, the tyrants seek to suppress religious education in the madrassas, fearing those schools may teach young Muslims to rise up against their rulers and against America. The dictators are accused of seeking, with American blessing, nothing less than a systematic secularization of Muslim society.

Muslim fears of coerced secularization are based on concrete experience. In the past half century, there has been a thoroughgoing push to dilute or abolish Islamic law and replace it with secular law. Rulers such as Atatürk in Turkey and the shah of Iran tried to detach Muslim societies from their Muslim identity, and to give them new, secular, and Western-oriented identity. So determined was the shah of Iran to do this that he even changed the name of his country. For centuries, the country we now call “Iran” was known as “Persia.” During the 1930s, a newly ascendant group in Germany, led by Adolf Hitler, sought to strengthen Germany’s ties with Persia. The Germans informed the shah that “Iran,” the ancient name for Persia, was derived from the same root as “Aryan.” So by descent the Persians were actually European, and they even had a claim to be part of the master race! Delighted with this “discovery,” and eager to affirm his country’s identification with Germany, the shah got rid of his country’s name, Persia, and gave it a new name, Iran.
²⁷
One can hardly blame traditional Muslims for chafing under such extreme measures to transform their national and religious identity.

With the acquiescence if not support of ruling dictators, Western culture and Western liberal ideals have made deep inroads into contemporary Islamic society, weakening the influence of traditional Islamic mores. Some Americans blame “globalization” for all this, but that is an inadequate explanation. Globalization in this case has been driven by a powerful Hollywood effort to push American culture throughout the world. International agencies like the U.N. and its various spin-off groups have been active in asserting rights for women, children, homosexuals and others that directly contravene Islamic teaching. At U.N. conferences, liberal activists stress that religious objections cannot serve as legitimate grounds to restrict homosexual rights and reproductive rights. No doubt the most active agents of secularization are the dictators who are responsible for suppressing Islamic institutions and Islamic law. But even here the despots are routinely encouraged to liberalize by powerful forces inside and outside the American government.

It is important to realize that secular despots in the Middle East enjoy bipartisan support in America. On the right, the despots are supported largely for strategic reasons. Conservatives like the fact that they are pro-American, and don’t ask many other questions about how they are ruling their countries. Liberals, on the other hand, tend to support the rulers’ secular agenda. Indeed liberalism is behind the international campaign to introduce a secular way of life to Muslim societies around the world. Liberals tend to believe, as two leading scholars assert, that “an Islamic religious heritage is one of the most powerful barriers to the rising tide of gender equality.”
²⁸

Many liberals agree with Rushdie’s contention that “if terrorism is to be defeated, the world of Islam must take on board the secular humanist principles on which the modern is based.” The influential philosopher Richard Rorty condemns Islam as a backward way of life and says that “the idea of a dialog with Islam is pointless” until there is an “Islamic Enlightenment” that produces a largely secular society in the Middle East. These attitudes even extend to democratically approved religious laws. Even though both men and women voted for Iraq’s democratic government, the
New York Times
finds it “glaringly deficient in women’s rights and minority rights” simply because it seeks to implement some forms of Islamic law. The
Times
demands that Iraq’s constitution be rewritten so that women don’t have to resolve family disputes in religious courts but can do so in secular courts.
²⁹
In other words, even if Muslims want to live in an Islamic society under Islamic laws, the
Times
believes they should be denied that right. This is liberal cultural imperialism in its most naked form. What many liberals apparently seek is an Islamic world bereft of public expressions of Islam. Here, as many Muslims see it, is America’s secular crusade against the Muslim religion.

HOW CAN PROMINENT
liberals be so arrogant as to treat an entire civilization and one of the world’s great religions in this contemptuous way? In general, they derive their confidence from the American idea of separation of church and state, which is regarded, by many liberals and even some conservatives, as a model for the rest of the world. America’s contemporary church-state doctrine has been in effect for several decades now, and most Americans are so familiar with it that they do not see how weird it really is. A visitor from another place would be struck by the fact that a nation with a strong Christian heritage, where most of the population is at least nominally Christian, has expelled virtually all displays of Christianity from its public institutions.

Consider this: we live in a society where it is considered legitimate for homosexuals to press for state endorsement of their sexual orientation and beliefs, but not for Christians to seek the same for their religious orientation and beliefs. The government can fund any kind of project it wants, with the single exception of religious expression and activity. The public schools can teach and promote any ideas they choose; they can extol the blessings of masturbation and safe sex and even hand out the contraceptives. At the same time the public schools are absolutely forbidden to promote any ideas that are deemed religious. If a public-school teacher handed out copies of the Bible to each student, the practice would promptly be halted as a violation of the U.S. Constitution and a threat to the basic liberty of citizens.

Such policies would strike an outside observer as deeply strange, and it is hard to fault religious people for seeing in them an antireligious prejudice. Even so, there is a powerful movement in America to secure and defend them. This is the secular movement, led by activist groups like the ACLU, People for the American Way, and Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Unknown to many Americans, there is a “secular left” in this country today that is the political counterpart to the “Christian right.” Who are these people? Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg points out that more than 25 percent of voters go to church once a year or not at all. He notes that these secular voters constitute a bloc that is just as large as the voters who do attend church regularly. Greenberg calls this group the Secular Warriors. They are, he says, “the true loyalists” in the Democratic party.
³⁰

The distinguishing characteristic of the secularists is that they define their faith through the liberal code of personal autonomy. Years ago the sociologist Robert Bellah interviewed a woman named Sheila Larson, who described her faith as “Sheilaism.” No church, no sacraments, no creed. “It’s Sheilaism. Just my own little voice.” This is not to say that there are no Christians in this group. But they tend to be tactical Christians who employ religious language in a secular way. As Hillary Clinton puts it, “The Good Samaritan parable is an example of compassion toward people who are of different backgrounds.” In the same vein, Al Gore explained the significance of Christmas: “Two thousand years ago, a homeless woman gave birth to a homeless child.” What unites the secular left is a denial of an external or transcendent moral order. This group affirms, with the Supreme Court in its
Casey
decision, an individual “right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”
³¹
This doctrine may be termed “political atheism.” Working through the courts, the secular left seeks to implement this political atheism in the public square.