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Islam and Islamism Faith and Ideology

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Islam and Islamism Faith and Ideology feature article Islam and Islamism Faith and Ideology Daniel Pipes Traditional Islam seeks to teach humans how to live in accord with GodÊs will, whereas Islamism aspires to create a new order·faith-based totalitarianism. ne cannot emphasise too much the distinction their faith and their worldly success, to assume that between Islam—plain Islam—and its they were the favoured of God in both spiritual and O fundamentalist version. Islam is the religion mundane matters. of about one billion people and is a rapidly growing And yet, in modern times, battlefield victories and faith, particularly in Africa but also elsewhere in the prosperity have been notably lacking. Indeed, as early world. The United States, for example, boasts almost a as the 13th century, Islam’s atrophy and Christendom’s million converts to Islam (plus an even larger number advances were already becoming discernible. But, for of Muslim immigrants). some 500 years longer, Muslims remained largely Islam’s adherents find their faith immensely oblivious to the extraordinary developments taking place appealing, for the religion possesses an inner strength to their north. Ibn Khaldun, the famous Muslim that is quite extraordinary. As a leading figure in the intellectual, wrote around the year 1400 about Europe, Islamic Republic of Iran maintains, ‘Any Westerner who ‘I hear that many developments are taking place in the really understands Islam will envy the lives of Muslims.’ land of the Rum, but God only knows what happens Although Islam is temporally the last of the three major there!’ Middle Eastern monotheisms, Muslims believe that Such wilful ignorance rendered Muslims vulnerable their faith improves on the earlier ones. In their telling, when they could no longer ignore what was happening Judaism and Christianity are but defective variants of around them. Perhaps the most dramatic alert came in Islam, which is God’s final, perfect religion. July 1798, when Napoleon Bonaparte landed in Contributing to this internal confidence is the Egypt—the centre of the Muslim world—and memory of outstanding achievements during Islam’s first conquered it with stunning ease. Other assaults six or so centuries. Its culture was the most advanced, followed over the next century and more, and before and Muslims enjoyed the best health, lived the longest, long most Muslims were living under European rule. had the highest rates of literacy, sponsored the most As their power and influence waned, a sense of advanced scientific and technical research, and deployed incomprehension spread among Muslims. What had usually victorious armies. This pattern of success was gone wrong? Why had God seemingly abandoned them? evident from the beginning: in A.D. 622 the Prophet Muhammad fled Mecca as a refugee, only to return eight Daniel Pipes is Director of the Philadelphia-based Middle years later as its ruler. As early as the year 715, Muslim East Forum, and author of three books on Islam. Dr Pipes will conquerors had assembled an empire that extended from be a keynote speaker at The Centre for Independent StudiesÊ Spain in the west to India in the east. To be a Muslim annual public policy conference, Consilium, to be held this meant to belong to a winning civilisation. Muslims, August at Coolum, Queensland. Reprinted with permission. not surprisingly, came to assume a correlation between (c) The National Interest, No.59, Spring 2000,Washington, DC. 22 Policy vol. 18, no. 1 ISLAM AND ISLAMISM The trauma of modern Islam results from this sharp own ways by adopting those of the West.’ To reach this and unmistakable contrast between medieval successes conclusion, reformers reread the Islamic scriptures in a and more recent tribulations. Put simply, Muslims have Western light. For example, the Koran permits a man had an exceedingly hard time explaining what went to take up to four wives—on the condition that he treat wrong. Nor has the passage of time made this task any them equitably. Traditionally, and quite logically, easier, for the same unhappy circumstances basically Muslims understood this verse as permission for a man still exist. Whatever index one employs, Muslims can to take four wives. But because a man is allowed only be found clustering toward the bottom—whether one in the West, the reformists performed a sleight of measured in terms of their military prowess, political hand and interpreted the verse in a new way: the Koran, stability, economic development, corruption, human they claim, requires that a man must treat his wives rights, health, longevity or literacy. Anwar Ibrahim, the equitably, which is clearly something no man can do if former deputy prime minister of Malaysia who now there is more than one of them. So, they conclude, Islam languishes in jail, estimates in The Asian Renaissance prohibits more than a single wife. (1997) that whereas Muslims make up just one-fifth of Reformists have applied this sort of reasoning across the world’s total population, they constitute more than the board. To science, for example, they contend half of the 1.2 billion people living in Muslims should have no objections, for abject poverty. There is thus a pervasive science is in fact Muslim. They recall sense of debilitation and encroachment that the word algebra comes from the in the Islamic world today. As the The trauma Arabic, al-jabr. Algebra being the imam of a mosque in Jerusalem put it of modern Islam essence of mathematics and not long ago, ‘Before, we were masters mathematics being the essence of of the world and now we’re not even results from science, all of modern science and masters of our own mosques.’ the sharp and technology thereby stems from work Searching for explanations for their unmistakable done by Muslims. So there is no reason predicament, Muslims have devised to resist Western science; it is rather a three political responses to contrast between matter of reclaiming what the West modernity—secularism, reformism medieval success took (or stole) in the first place. In case and Islamism. The first of these holds and more recent after case, and with varying degrees of that Muslims can only advance by credibility, reformists appropriate emulating the West. Yes, the secularists tribulations. Western ways under the guise of concede, Islam is a valuable and drawing on their own heritage. The esteemed legacy, but its public aim of the reformists, then, is to imitate dimensions must be put aside. In particular, the sacred the West without acknowledging as much. Though law of Islam (called the Shari’a)—which governs such intellectually bankrupt, reformism functions well as a matters as the judicial system, the manner in which political strategy. Muslim states go to war, and the nature of social interactions between men and women—should be The ideological response discarded in its entirety. The leading secular country is The third response to the modern trauma is Islamism. Turkey, where Kemal Ataturk in the period 1923-38 Islamism has three main features: a devotion to the sacred reshaped and modernised an overwhelmingly Muslim law, a rejection of Western influences, and the society. Overall, though, secularism is a minority transformation of faith into ideology. position among Muslims, and even in Turkey it is under Islamism holds that Muslims lag behind the West siege. because they’re not good Muslims. To regain lost glory Reformism, occupying a murky middle ground, requires a return to old ways, and that is achieved by offers a more popular response to modernity. Whereas living fully in accordance with the Shari’a. Were secularism forthrightly calls for learning from the West, Muslims to do so, they would once again reside on top reformism selectively appropriates from it. The reformist of the world, as they did a millennium ago. This, says, ‘Look, Islam is basically compatible with Western however, is no easy task, for the sacred law contains a ways. It’s just that we lost track of our own achievements, vast body of regulations touching every aspect of life, which the West exploited. We must now go back to our many of them contrary to modern practices. (The Autumn 2002 23 ISLAM AND ISLAMISM Shari’a somewhat resembles Jewish law, but nothing ideologies of the twentieth century. In fact, Islamism comparable exists in Christianity.) Thus, it forbids usury represents an Islamic-flavoured version of the radical or any taking of interest, which has deep and obvious utopian ideas of our time, following Marxism-Leninism implications for economic life. It calls for cutting off and fascism. It infuses a vast array of Western political the hands of thieves, which runs contrary to all modern and economic ideas within the religion of Islam. As an sensibilities, as do its mandatory covering of women Islamist, a Muslim Brother from Egypt, puts it, ‘We and the separation of the sexes. Islamism not only calls are neither socialist nor capitalist, but Muslims’; a for the application of these laws, but for a more rigorous Muslim of old would have said, ‘We are neither Jews application than ever before was the case. Before 1800, nor Christians, but Muslims.’ the interpreters of the Shari’a softened it somewhat. Islamists see their adherence to Islam primarily as a For instance, they devised a method by which to avoid form of political allegiance; hence, though usually pious the ban on interest. The fundamentalists reject such Muslims, they need not be. Plenty of Islamists seem in modifications, demanding instead that Muslims apply fact to be rather impious. For instance, the mastermind the Shari’a strictly and in its totality. of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York, In their effort to build a way of life based purely Ramzi Yousef, had a girlfriend while living in the on the Shari’a laws, Islamists strain to reject all aspects Philippines and was ‘gallivanting around Manila’s bars, of Western influence—customs, strip joints and karaoke clubs, flirting philosophy, political institutions and with women’.
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