The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam From the Extremists (21 page)

an affirmative will as to most matters in life, puritans have rules that regulate how one eats, drinks, dresses, sits, walks, goes to the bathroom, makes love, and undertakes practically every other aspect of life. For every human activity, there are rules that must be observed. Below are examples of common puritan laws as practiced in parts of the Muslim world today:

• Music, singing, and dancing in all forms are forbidden.
  

• All television programs, unless religious, are forbidden.
  

• The giving of flowers is forbidden.
  

• Clapping the hands in applause is forbidden.
  

• Drawing human or animal figures is forbidden.
  

• Acting in a play is forbidden, because acting is a form of lying.
  

• Writing novels is forbidden, because it is a form of lying.
  

• Wearing shirts with animal or human images is forbidden.
  

• Shaving one’s beard is forbidden.
  

• Eating or writing with the left hand is forbidden.
  

• Standing up in honor of someone is forbidden.
  

• Celebrating anyone’s birthday, including the Prophet’s, is forbidden.
  

• Keeping or petting dogs is forbidden.
  

• Dissecting cadavers even in criminal investigations and for the purposes of medical research is forbidden.
  

  Anyone who has visited Muslim countries, with the excep- tion of Saudi Arabia, would know that these rulings are not followed, much less accepted. Puritans consider this lack of acceptance as a testament to the fact that modern-day Mus- lims have gone awry and that they must be led to reembrace Islam. In truth, puritans believe that people should be forced to fulfill the strict legal vision which they embrace. Most Mus- lim societies, however, reject the puritanical social vision and gravitate toward moderation.
  

  Moderates believe that the law should be flexible and dy- namic enough to fit the highly complex and ever-changing so- cial conditions of human beings. In essence, then, the moderate view recognizes the temporal and sociocultural changes that have taken place since the time of the Prophet. Indeed, the discussion on law and morality demonstrates the fundamental distinction between what was done in the past, and what must be done now, to conform to the Islamic faith. In short, it is the distinction between history and modernity that further widens the gap between the puritan and moderate viewpoints. We turn to that distinction in the next chapter.
  

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  APPROACHES TO HISTO RY AND MODERNITY
  

  A
  

  t the very root of the debates about the nature of God’s law and what demands this law places upon believers is
  

  the issue of how to think about and deal with history. The problem that confronts all religious legal systems is no less complex than whether history is redundant and static, or pro- gressive and ever-changing. Assuming that history is not static and that as time changes so do people, then the difficult ques- tion becomes: How does it make sense that God would inter- vene at one point in time in history and decree His immutable Will to a people who are constantly evolving and changing? Does it make sense to say that God is ever-present in a histor- ical process that is necessarily fluid and constantly changing? Before long, we are forced to confront the issue of whether God’s will is itself constantly evolving and changing; but if so, how can the Divine remain eternal and immutable? Does it make sense to say that the Creator of all things creates history and, in the same breath, claim that the Divine Will changes with history?
  

  These questions and many more have forced moderates and puritans to ask whether there is a specific point in time or a particular historical moment, when the Divine Will was fully and completely expressed. As importantly, both groups had to
  

  contend with the extent to which Islamic law ought to change in order to accommodate the changing natures and customs of people in different places of the world. As one struggles with giving effect to the Divine Will and Command, the problem of how to understand and react to history raises one of the most fundamental disputes between puritans and moderates. This issue is far-reaching and pivotal to how one understands Islam’s universal and eternal message.
  

  For puritans, it is considered a fundamental premise of the faith that Islam fulfilled its full potential during a particular his- torical period, which they consider to be “the golden age of Islam.” According to puritans, the golden age of Islam con- sisted of the time that the Prophet ruled Medina and the ages of the four Rightly Guided Caliphs, close Companions and sup- porters of the Prophet during his lifetime—Abu Bakr (d. 13/634), ‘Umar (d. 23/644), ‘Uthman (d. 35/656), and ‘Ali (d. 40/661). In addition, many Muslims consider the Umayyad Caliph ‘Umar bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz (d. 101/720) to be the fifth Rightly Guided Caliph, although he was not a Companion of the Prophet. The expression “Rightly Guided Caliphs” (
  al- Khulafa’ al-Rashidun
  ) literally means “the wise or sagacious caliphs,” and in general reflects the belief of Sunni Muslims that the caliphs who earned this honorific title enjoyed a high degree of piety and religious knowledge and that they were just and fair rulers.
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  While Sunni Muslims in general respect the first four caliphs and admire their achievements, puritans go much further—Puritans highly idealize this time period, which lasted roughly for the first fifty years of Islam, and believe that in the golden age, perfect justice and fairness were fully real- ized. For puritans it is simply not possible for any polity any- where, at any time, to accomplish a greater degree of justice and fairness. After the first fifty years, they believe, the balance of Islamic history was one of unmitigated deterioration.
  

  Consequently, puritans believe that Muslims should reclaim the golden age by closely imitating and replicating the institutions and codes of conduct they believe existed at that time. It is as if history had peaked and fulfilled its complete potential during the golden age of Islam. As to what remains of history, puritans imagine that Muslims, and indeed the rest of humanity, must strive to replicate that earlier time when history reached its zenith.
  

  Earlier I explained the profound sense of alienation felt by the puritans in the modern age. It is likely that by clinging to an idealized notion of the past, the puritans only reinforce their own sense of alienation in the modern age. But there are several factors that augment this sense of alienation, which also induce puritans to cling to an idealized past with uncom- promising fervor. Prominent among these factors is the suffo- cating despotism that exists in several Muslim countries.
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  This despotism results in a feeling of powerlessness and even desperation. People living in these despotic countries are made to feel that their views and opinions are entirely incon- sequential and of no relevance vis-à-vis the government. Not only is there an extremely high cost for speaking out, but even thought and creativity are activities full of risk. Generally, the government communicates to its citizenry that to be on the safe side of things, the citizenry ought to occupy itself with personal and private concerns such as earning a living and raising a family. In despotic societies, those who have a sense of social conscience or a desire to be politically involved in their nation’s interests are presented with very limited choices: either carefully walk within the strict boundaries set by the government, or risk suffering the considerable punitive powers of the state. The pervasive effect of despotism is that it robs much of the citizenry its sense of dignity and self-worth.
  

  Not surprisingly, the people most affected by this despotism
  

  are classes within society that are educated but that also suffer limited economic means and few opportunities for social mo- bility. Typically, the educated classes develop a higher level of sociopolitical consciousness, and are more aware of their rights as well as their social obligations. Furthermore, edu- cated classes are usually not as complacent about accepting whatever social status they may enjoy and they believe that further education and hard work entitles them to elevate and improve their economic, social, and political status. This is why, for instance, feminist and human rights movements thrive in direct proportion to a rising level of literacy in soci- ety. In addition, societies with the highest levels of literacy and education are the most successful in establishing stable demo- cratic states.
  

  In addressing the factors that contribute to this sense of alienation, it is important to take particular note of the conse- quences of torture, which is a regular staple of despotic gov- ernments. State prisons where torture is regularly practiced have given birth to some of the most puritanical and extremist orientations in the Islamic world. Importantly, the very prac- tice of torture generates narratives of torture, tales of horror that are transmitted through society and that become part of the cultural fabric, and that play a significant role in deepen- ing the sense of stress, fear, and lack of self-worth. These nar- ratives help in creating a polarized atmosphere between puritans and the state, empowering the puritans to view the state as part of the hostile environment that is working against them. Furthermore, such narratives bolster and strengthen the puritans’ sense of victimhood and their alienation from the so- cieties in which they live. Puritans become convinced that their own societies remained complacently apathetic and noncaring as they were forced to endure savage mistreatment. This, of course, contributes to the process through which puritans end
  

  up excommunicating the societies they live in. Most important of all, the practice of torture further radicalizes puritans by de- sensitizing them toward cruelty and humane values in general. For instance, Salih Saraya (executed 1975), and Shukri Mustafa (executed 1978), leaders of very extreme puritan or- ganizations, were at one time members of the more moderate Muslim Brotherhood organization, but became radicalized after they were severely tortured in Egypt. The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood became radicalized and resorted to violence in 1982 after enduring years of barbaric treatment by the Syrian government. In addition, it is not coincidental that the Saudi government, one of the worse human rights abusers in the Middle East, is also one of the prime exporters of highly fa- natic and violent extremists.
  

  Despotic governments in the Muslim world, which are sys- tematic human rights abusers, tend to fall into one of two cat- egories: either they target and persecute all dissenters, regardless of their ideological orientation, whether puritan or not, or they target Islamic, particularly puritanical, move- ments. In the first category are countries such as Saudi Arabia, Saddam’s Iraq, Syria, Libya, Indonesia, or Sudan, to name just a few. These countries arrest and torture any real or imagined opponents of the government, including people who are criti- cal of the state’s human rights record or the rampant corrup- tion and nepotism that plagues the institutions of governance in these nations. They persecute puritan movements to the ex- tent that the policies of these movements are inconsistent with the policies of the state. In effect, whether puritan movements end up being persecuted entirely depends on the extent to which their ideology conflicts with the state. As a result, in countries such as Saddam’s Iraq, Libya, and Syria the vast ma- jority of Islamic movements end up being savagely repressed because their ideology conflicts with the secular nationalist
  

  ideology of the state. In Saudi Arabia, however, most puritan movements enjoy a high degree of safety, but liberal, Sufi, and secular groups as well as the majority of Shi’i movements are severely repressed. In the second category are countries like Egypt, Pakistan, Kuwait, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and Uzbekistan again, to name just a few. These countries adopted policies of systematically repressing either all Salafi/puritan groups or militant puritanical organizations. In these coun- tries, individuals or groups that fall victim to state repression are given no quarter and are mercilessly obliterated. Whether one deals with the first or second category of states, I think that the net effect is the same. First, the use of severe violence and repression by the state against any particular group has the collateral effect of spreading anxiety and fear in Muslim societies. Second, with some notable exceptions, such as Saudi Arabia, the overall impact of the policies of most Muslim gov- ernments, whether they fall in the first or second category, is the repression of puritan movements. This only contributes to the sense of alienation and also to the sense of victimhood felt by puritan movements, and fuels many of the conspiracy theo- ries that have become an essential component of their world- view. Finally, there is no doubt that the fact that puritan movements end up clashing with most of the despotic and un- popular regimes of the Muslim world earns them a certain level of popular sympathy, even from people who would oth- erwise find their thought most troubling or offensive.
  

  The puritan sense of alienation, however, is more complex than hostility toward the dictatorial governments that control their countries. Puritans believe that the colonial experience of Western governments dominating Muslim nations has not come to an end. Puritans believe that the West continues to dominate and completely control the Muslim world, particularly the Arab heartland in the Middle East. In their understanding, Israel was
  

  created as a satellite state to ensure that Arabs remain disunited and weak. Furthermore, they also believe that the rulers of the various Muslim countries are nothing more than subservient peons that serve the interests of colonial powers, and that are kept in power by the West as long as they suppress Islamic insti- tutions and movements. In other words, they believe that the contemporary form of colonialism has figured out that it is less costly to fight Islam by putting in power secularized and West- ernized rulers who will do the job for them. This accusation has been made by puritans at one time or another against the gov- ernments of most Muslim countries, including Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Morocco, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Sudan, Uganda, Pakistan, and Indonesia.
  

  Saudi Arabia presented a very special case for puritan movements. Although the Al Sa‘ud family came to power through the help of Britain, as a colonial power, and despite the close relationship between the Saudi and American gov- ernments, Saudi Arabia was virtually immune from criticism by puritans throughout the 1970s and 1980s. The situation changed somewhat in the early 1990s, with the first Gulf War. A few puritan movements became critical of the Saudi govern- ment because it welcomed and cooperated with American troops in Arabia. Nevertheless, the vast majority of puritan movements remained ideologically aligned with the Saudi gov- ernment—and also financially dependent on Saudi largesse. Only after the recent American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, a sizable number of puritan movements, sympathetic to Bin Laden and the Taliban, started accusing the Saudi govern- ment of betraying the Salafi/Wahhabi cause and declared it to be an infidel government. Very recently, this even led to vio- lent clashes between the government and puritan movements in Saudi Arabia. Nevertheless, in my view, even if post-9/11 events force the Saudi government to distance itself from mili-