page 20 • variant • volume 2 number 15 • Summer 2002 Muslims and the West after September 11 Pervez Hoodbhoy

Pervez Hoodbhoy is professor of nuclear and high- The second assertion is even further off the energy physics at Quaid-e-Azam University, mark: even if Islam had in some metaphorical Islamabad. This article is based on a speech deliv- sense been hijacked, that event did not occur on ered at the Center for Inquiry International confer- September 11, 2001. It happened around the 13th ence in Atlanta, Georgia, 2001. century. Indeed, Islam has yet to recover from the America has exacted blood revenge for the trauma of those times. Twin Towers. A million Afghans have fled US bombs into the cold wastelands and face starva- tion. B-52s have blown the Taliban to bits and A dismal present changed Mullah Omar's roar of defiance into a Where do Muslims stand today? Note that I do not pitiful squeak for surrender. Usama bin Laden is ask about Islam; Islam is an abstraction. Moulana on the run (he may be dead by the time this arti- Abdus Sattar Edhi and Mullah Omar are both fol- cle reaches the reader). But even as the cham- lowers of Islam, but the former is overdue for a pagne pops in the White House, America remains Nobel Peace Prize while the other is a medieval, fearful—for good reason. Subsequent to ignorant, cruel fiend. Edward Said, among others, September 11th we have all begun to live in a dif- has insistently pointed out that Islam carries very ferent, more dangerous world. Now is the time to different meanings to different people. It is as ask why. Like clinical pathologists, we need to sci- heterogeneous as those who believe and practice entifically examine the sickness of human behav- it. There is no "true Islam." Therefore it only iour that impelled terrorists to fly airliners filled makes sense to speak of people who claim that with passengers into skyscrapers. We also need to Injured innocence faith. understand why millions celebrated as others "Why do they hate us?" asked George W. Bush. Today Muslims number one billion, spread over died. In the absence of such an understanding This rhetorical question betrays the pathetic igno- 48 Muslim countries. None of these nations has there remains only the medieval therapy of exor- rance of most Americans about the world around yet evolved a stable democratic political system. cism: for the strong to literally beat the devil out them. Moreover, its claim to injured innocence In fact, all Muslim countries are dominated by of the weak. Indeed, the Grand Exorcist, disdain- cannot withstand even the most cursory examina- self-serving corrupt elites who cynically advance ful of international law and the growing nervous- tion of US history. For almost forty years, this their personal interests and steal resources from ness of even its close allies, prepares a new hit list "naiveté and self-righteousness" has been chal- their people. No Muslim country has a viable edu- of other Muslim countries in need of therapy: lenged most determinedly by Noam Chomsky. As cational system or a university of international Iraq, Somalia, and Libya. We shall kill at will, is early as 1967, he pointed that the idea that "our" stature. the message. motives are pure and "our" actions benign is Reason too has been waylaid. To take some This will not work. Terrorism does not have a "nothing new in American intellectual history— examples from my own experience: You will sel- military solution. Soon—I fear perhaps very or, for that matter, in the general history of impe- dom encounter a Muslim name as you flip soon—there will be still stronger, more dramatic rialist apologia." through scientific journals, and if you do, chances proof. In the modern age, technological possibili- Muslim leaders have mirrored America's claim are that this person lives in the West. There are a ties to wreak enormous destruction are limitless. and have asked the same question of the West. few exceptions: Abdus Salam, together with Anger, when intense enough, makes small state- They have had little to say about September 11 Steven Weinberg and Sheldon Glashow, won the less groups and even individuals extremely dan- that makes sense to people outside their commu- Nobel Prize for Physics in 1979 for the unification gerous. nities. Although they speak endlessly on rules of of the weak and electromagnetic forces. I got to Anger is ubiquitous in the Islamic world today. personal hygiene and "halal" or "haram," they know Salam reasonably well—we even wrote a Allow me to share a small personal experience. cannot even tell us whether or not the suicide book preface together. He was a remarkable man, On September 12th, 2001, I had a seminar sched- bombers violated Islamic laws. According to Dr. terribly in love with his country and his religion. uled at the department of physics in my universi- Taha Jabir Alalwani, chair of the Virginia-based And yet he died deeply unhappy, scorned by his ty in Islamabad, part of a weekly seminar for (and largely Saudi-funded) Fiqh Council, "this country and excommunicated from Islam by an physics students on topics outside of physics. kind of question needs a lot of research and we act of the Pakistani parliament in 1974. Today the Though traumatized by events, I could not cancel don't have that in our budget." Ahmadi sect, to which Salam belonged, is consid- the seminar because sixty people had already Fearful of backlash, most leaders of Muslim ered heretical and harshly persecuted. (My next- arrived, so I said, "We will have our seminar today communities in the US, Canada, and Europe have door neighbour, also an Ahmadi, was shot in the on a new subject: on yesterday's terrorist responded in predictable ways to the Twin Towers neck and heart and died in my car as I drove him attacks." The response was negative. Some stu- atrocity. They have proclaimed first, that Islam is a to the hospital. His only fault was to have been dents mindlessly rejoiced in the attacks. One said, religion of peace; and second, that Islam was born in the wrong sect.) "You can't call this terrorism." Another said, "Are hijacked by fanatics on the September 11. They Though genuine scientific achievement is rare you only worried because it is Americans who are wrong on both counts. in the contemporary Muslim world, pseudo-sci- have died?" It took two hours of sustained, First, Islam—like Christianity, Judaism, ence is in generous supply. A former chairman of impassioned, argumentation for me to convince Hinduism, or any other religion—is not about my department has calculated the speed of my students that the brutal killing of ordinary peace. Nor is it about war. Every religion is about Heaven: it is receding from the earth at one centi- people who had nothing to do with the policies of absolute belief in its own superiority and its metre per second less than the speed of light. His the United States was an atrocity. I suppose that divine right to impose itself upon others. In medi- ingenious method relies upon a verse in the millions of Muslim students the world over felt as eval times, both the Crusades and the Jihads were Qur'an which says that worship on the night on mine did, but heard no counter-arguments. soaked in blood. Today, Christian fundamentalists which the Qur'an was revealed is worth a thou- If the world is to be spared what future histori- attack abortion clinics in the US and kill doctors; sand nights of ordinary worship. He states that ans may call the "Century of Terror," we must Muslim fundamentalists wage their sectarian wars this amounts to a time-dilation factor of one thou- chart a perilous course between the Scylla of against each other; Jewish settlers holding the sand, which he plugs into a formula belonging to American imperial arrogance and the Charybdis Old Testament in one hand and Uzis in the other Einstein's theory of special relativity. of Islamic religious fanaticism. Through these burn olive orchards and drive Palestinians off A more public example: one of two Pakistani waters we must steer by a distant star towards a their ancestral land; Hindus in India demolish nuclear engineers recently arrested on suspicion careful, reasoned, democratic, humanistic, and ancient mosques and burn down churches; Sri of passing nuclear secrets to the Taliban had earli- secular future. Else, shipwreck is certain. Lankan Buddhists slaughter Tamil separatists. er proposed to solve Pakistan's energy problems by harnessing the power of genies. The Qur'an variant • volume 2 number 15 • Summer 2002 • page 21

says that God created man from clay, and angels But Brzezinski's "stirred up Moslems" wanted and genies from fire; so this highly placed engi- to change the world; and in this they were des- neer proposed to capture the genies and extract tined to succeed. With this we conclude our histo- their energy. (The reader may wish to read the ry primer for the 700 years until September 11, rather acrimonious public correspondence 2001. between Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood and myself in 1988 on this subject, reproduced in my book Islam and Science—Religious Orthodoxy Facing the future And The Battle For Rationality, published in What should thoughtful people infer from this 1991). whole narrative? I think the inferences are sever- Prophet) in favour of the Qur'an. Others seized on al—and different for different protagonists. the modern idea of the nation-state. It is crucial to For Muslims, it is time to stop wallowing in A brilliant past that vanished note that not a single 20th century Muslim nation- self-pity: Muslims are not helpless victims of con- Today's sorry situation contrasts starkly with the alist leader was a fundamentalist. Turkey's Kemal spiracies hatched by an all-powerful, malicious Islam of yesteryear. Between the 9th and the 13th Ataturk, Algeria's Ahmed Ben Bella, Indonesia's West. The fact is that the decline of Islamic great- centuries - the Golden Age of Islam - the only peo- Sukarno, Pakistan's Muhammad Ali Jinnah, ness took place long before the age of mercantile ple doing decent science, philosophy, or medicine Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, and Iran's imperialism. The causes were essentially internal. were Muslims. For five straight centuries they Mohammed Mosaddeq all sought to organise their Therefore Muslims must introspect, and ask what alone kept the light of learning ablaze. Muslims societies on the basis of secular values. went wrong. not only preserved ancient learning, they also However, like other anti-colonial nationalist Muslims must recognise that their societies are made substantial innovations and extensions. The currents across the Third World, Muslim and Arab far larger, more diverse and complex than the loss of this tradition has proved tragic for Muslim nationalism included the desire to control and use small homogenous tribal culture that existed in peoples. national resources for domestic benefit. Conflict Arabia 1400 years ago. It is therefore time to Science flourished in the Golden Age of Islam with Western greed was inevitable. Imperial inter- renounce the idea that Islam can survive and because there was within Islam a strong rational- ests in Britain and later the United States feared prosper only in an Islamic state run according to ist tradition, carried on by a group of Muslim independent nationalism. Anyone willing to col- Islamic sharia law. Muslims need a secular and thinkers known as the Mutazilites. This tradition laborate was preferred, even ultraconservative democratic state that respects religious freedom stressed human free will, strongly opposing the Islamic regimes like that of Saudi Arabia. In time, and human dignity, founded on the principle that predestinarians who taught that everything was as Cold War pressures rose, nationalism became power belongs to the people. This means confront- foreordained and that humans have no option but intolerable. In 1953, Mosaddeq of Iran was over- ing and rejecting the claim by orthodox Islamic to surrender everything to Allah. While the thrown in a CIA coup and replaced by Reza Shah scholars that in an Islamic state sovereignty does Mutazilites held political power, Pahlavi. Britain targeted Nasser. Indonesia's not belong to the people but, instead, to the vice- knowledge grew. Sukarno was replaced by Suharto after a bloody regents of Allah (Khilafat-al-Arz) or Islamic jurists But in the twelfth century coup that left a million dead. (Vilayat-e-Faqih). Muslim orthodoxy reawakened, Pressed from without, corrupt and incompetent Muslims must not look towards the likes of bin spearheaded by the cleric Imam from within, secular governments proved unable Laden; such people have no real answer and can Al-Ghazali. Al-Ghazali champi- to defend national interests or to deliver social offer no real positive alternative. To glorify their oned revelation over reason, justice. As they failed they left a vacuum which terrorism is a hideous mistake—the unremitting predestination over free will. He Islamic religious movements grew to fill. After the slaughter of Shias, Christians, and Ahmadis in refuted the possibility of relat- fall of the Shah, Iran underwent a bloody revolu- their places of worship in Pakistan, and of other ing cause to effect, teaching tion under Ayatollah Khomeini. General minorities in other Muslim countries, is proof that that man cannot know or pre- Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq ruled Pakistan for eleven all terrorism is not about the revolt of the dispos- dict what will happen; God hideous years and strove to Islamize both state sessed. alone can. He damned mathe- and society. In Sudan, an Islamic state arose The United States too must confront bitter matics as against Islam, an under Jaafar al-Nimeiry; amputation of hands and truths. It is a fact that the messages of George W. intoxicant of the mind that limbs became common. Decades ago the Bush and his ally Tony Blair fall flat while those of weakened faith. Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was Usama bin Laden, whether he lives or dies, reso- Islam choked in the vicelike the most powerful Palestinian organization, and nate strongly across the Muslim world. Bin grip of orthodoxy. No longer, as largely secular; after its defeat in 1982 in Beirut, Laden's religious extremism turns off many during the reign of the dynamic it was largely eclipsed by Hamas, a fundamental- Muslims, but they find his political message easy caliph Al-Mamum and the great ist Muslim movement. to relate to—stop the dispossession of the Haroon Al- Rashid, would Muslim, Christian, and The lack of scruple and the pursuit of power by Palestinians, stop propping up corrupt and des- Jewish scholars gather and work together in the the United States combined fatally with this tide potic regimes across the world just because they royal courts. It was the end of tolerance, intellect, in the Muslim world in 1979 when the Soviet serve US interests. and science in the Muslim world. The last great Union invaded Afghanistan. With Pakistan's Zia- Americans will also have to accept that the Muslim thinker, Abd- al Rahman ibn Khaldun, ul-Haq as America's foremost ally, the CIA openly United States is past the peak of its imperial belonged to the 14th century. recruited Islamic holy warriors from Egypt, Saudi power; the 1950's and 60's are gone for good. U.S. Arabia, Sudan, and Algeria. Radical Islam went triumphalism and disdain for international law is into overdrive as its superpower ally and mentor creating enemies everywhere, not just among Islam under Imperialism funnelled support to the mujahideen, whom Muslims. Therefore they must become less arro- Meanwhile, the rest of the world moved on. The Ronald Reagan feted on the lawn of White House, gant and more like other peoples of this world. Renaissance brought an explosion of scientific lavishly praising them as "brave freedom fighters While the U.S. will remain a superpower for some inquiry in the West. This owed much to Arab trans- challenging the Evil Empire." time to come, inevitably it will become less and lations and other Muslim contributions, but that After the Soviet Union collapsed, the United less "super." There are compelling economic and fact would matter little. Mercantile capitalism States walked away from an Afghanistan in sham- military reasons for this. For example, China's and technological progress drove Western coun- bles, its own mission accomplished. The Taliban economy is growing at seven percent per year tries rapidly to colonize the Muslim world from emerged; Usama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda while the U.S. economy is in recession. India, too, Indonesia to Morocco. Always brutal, at times gen- made Afghanistan their base. Other groups of is coming up very rapidly. In military terms, supe- ocidal, it made clear, at least to a part of the holy warriors learned from the Afghan example riority in the air or in space is no longer enough Muslim elites, that they were paying a heavy price and took up arms in their own countries. to ensure security; in how many countries can for not possessing the analytical tools of modern At least until September 11th, US policy-mak- U.S. citizens safely walk the streets today? science and the social and political values of mod- ers were unrepentant. A few years ago Zbigniew Our collective survival lies in recognising that ern culture - their colonizers' real source of power. Brzezinski, Carter's U.S. national security adviser, religion is not the solution; neither is nationalism. Despite widespread resistance from the ortho- was asked by the Paris weekly Nouvel Both are divisive, embedding within us false dox, the logic of modernity found 19th century Observateur whether in retrospect, given that notions of superiority and arrogant pride that are Muslim adherents. Modernizers such as "Islamic fundamentalism represents a world men- difficult to erase. We have but one choice: the Mohammed Abduh and Rashid Rida of Egypt, ace today," US policy might have been mistaken. path of secular humanism, based upon the princi- Sayyed Ahmad Khan of India, and Jamaluddin Brzezinski retorted: "What is most important to ples of logic and reason. This alone offers the Afghani (who belonged everywhere) wished to the history of the world? The Taliban or the col- hope of providing everybody on this globe with adapt Islam to the times, to interpret the Qur'an lapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happi- in ways consistent with modern science, and to Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and ness. discard the Hadith (the traditions, or ways of the the end of the cold war?"