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A blogger’s tale of Islamic prayer taking place inside a Toronto middle school ignites an online battle in Canada
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Why we feel a need to spend time spewing venom at people we often do not even know is well beyond my abilities to reason. Hate, frankly, is simply unreasonable in most every situation.
I believe the greatest danger to a global society is our lack of understanding and acceptance. Some may argue power and greed top the list, but I contend they're offshoots of the formers. The lack of understanding and acceptance lead to a desperate shortage of knowledge, kindness and positive communal experience. The resulting travesty brings us to a world of prejudice, neatly formed by heaping doses of ignorance and unnecessary distance. If you understood your fellow man and carried compassion for him in your heart, my guess is you'd be less likely to feel a need to overpower or control him or beat him out or beat him at all.
Societal rejection doesn't have to be racial or religious or gender-based or couched in sexual preference. We can decide to be against any person, persons or group simply because we consider them on some irrational level a threat. We're raised to identify heroes and villains, with the ones on the other team always playing the enemy. One needs only look at our politics to see this played out in Technicolor. Citizens rarely debate issues when talking about a candidate. Instead, they often discuss or create some disparaging thing about the person, not his or her policy. And if you are one party and you're discussing the other, you must tap into their inner villains to feel superior, which means you're really tapping into yours.
The real problem with the whole hero vs. villain mentality is that it can easily lose its place in reality. Anyone who has ever seen the Boston Red Sox play the New York Yankees have witnessed instances where average people lose their grips on reality. Anyone who has seen a brawl at a youth football game or seen a parent come out of the stands to argue a call in Little League has been exposed to the vilifying of another person or group.
Unfortunately, in our society, somewhere we're getting the message that when people don't agree with us they're not only wrong but evil. They simply don't just have another opinion, but instead are rotten to the core. Modus Vivendi is a favorite Latin phrase, if I were to pick one. Literally translated, it means "freedom of perspective." Modus Vivendi in spirit means "an agreement between those who agree to differ."
Because our society attaches an inherent shame to losing, less than ethical people have a win at all costs mentality. Whatever it takes, be first. Anyone who has ever worked in Hollywood, like I have, has seen the quintessential example of the mentality, where many would race you to hell to say they got there first.
When it's all about the end result and not how you got there, the world can become a pretty messed up place. We don't have laws for those who would never think to break them, but for those who would.
People who tell the truth do so because they prefer the truth, as it is what they know to be right. People who lie tell the truth do so when they feel they can. Greed and power and control do weird things to people who have a propensity for dishonesty, as it's been since the days of Cain and Abel.
Whereas Eastern philosophies emphasize human similarities, western culture thrives on differences. We'd be better served to find our common ground rather than mark off the parts of life for which we claim sole ownership.
Why does peace scare us? Why do we want to tear down rather than create? We need to leave poor God out of this one. It's something we need to ask ourselves.
Understanding Wahhabism
by Abdar Rahman Koya@www.malaysiakini.com
Recent news reports about the ‘Wahhabi’ terror cell in the country have brought into open some level of ignorance among the so-called Malaysian intelligentsia about Islamic movement.
On one hand such accusations reveal again the legendary close-mindedness of our government ulama; on the other hand, analysts and observers have been quick to condemn the accusations with some even coming to the defence of Wahhabism, little knowing about the historical and political issues underlying the subject.
Thankfully, as much as such a controversy somewhat reveals our intellectual isolation from any present debate in the Muslim world, it also provides an opportunity to do our homework.
Towards that end, this little book on Wahhabism, ‘Wahhabism: A Critical Essay’, written by British-American professor Hamid Algar of the University of Berkeley in California, who is one of the most well-known contemporary Muslim academics in the West, can serve as a good launchpad .
‘Wahhabism’ and ‘Wahhabis’ are names, often used derogatorily by those outside its fold, given to the doctrine and followers of Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahab, who, annoyed by practices which he claimed were bordering on kufr (disbelief of Islam), launched a campaign to ‘purify’ the Islamic faith. Many have compared the Wahhabi campaign to Islamic ‘reformation’ and ‘revivalist’ movements in various parts of the Muslim world.
Professor Algar’s study of the Wahhabi phenomenon was published in 2002. It was considered timely then, coming after the rise and fall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, whose ‘Islamic’ rule few would deny was a carbon copy of the Wahhabi-Saudi rule in the Arabian peninsula.
The difference between them is mainly that the former was destroyed because of its resistance to Western bullying, and the latter survives because of America’s interest in the region’s petroleum resources.
The western media have labelled as ‘Wahhabis’ any jihad groups in Central Asia, and conveniently used phrases such as “strict Sunni Islam” or “puritan Islam” to describe the Saudi and the Taliban governments.
But Wahhabism is not Sunni Islam; in fact many Sunni traditions have been attacked by the Wahhabis as shirk (polytheism) and bid’ah (un-Islamic innovations), the most common example of which is the celebration of the Prophet’s birthday.
Delight in polemics
Most non-Wahhabis already have a general idea of Wahhabism even if they have not experienced it personally. Generally speaking, Wahhabis delight in polemics, have no patience with a second opinion, are often chauvinist in their interpretations, and usually peripheral in their approach.
Anyone with a Wahhabi tendency is generally liberal in the use of strong terms such as bid’ah, kufr, aqidah, shirk and khurafat.
Yet a tendency to label and condemn is not exclusive to Wahhabis. Numerous other pseudo-intellectual movements to “purify” Islam have emerged later, often claiming that Muslims have deviated for “hundreds of years”, only to be offered salvation by these ‘purified’ understandings of theirs, as if Islam’s built-in system of deviation and correction is inadequate.
One can safely name in this category the ‘gold dinar’ advocates and the anti-Hadith followers, both from opposite extremes but identical in their approach and thinking method: one obsessed with monetary issues, the other with weak hadiths (traditions of Prophet Muhammad).
Any movement that does not have an intellectual foundation may be doomed to fail, especially when it seeks to interpret and offer guidelines for a revealed paradigm. One may be forgiven for thinking that the movement of Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab emerged out of a scholastic tradition, from the fact that Wahhabism has grown from its small localised beginnings to encroach into the minds of many Muslim individuals and groups from Indonesia to Europe.
Historical honesty demands that we admit that this in itself is some success. True, Wahhabism may not be pursued with the same vigour today as it was during its early days, yet its influence on the Muslim world is undeniable.
Idealistic youngsters
In the West Muslims may have encountered Wahhabi tendencies among the more idealistic youngsters, who are influenced through Saudi-sponsored Muslim fraternities such as the Muslim Student Associations, the Muslim World League, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), and an array of academic institutes and publication houses. In the East the Wahhabi success story is much shorter, although the Saudis have funded Muslim youth organisations in the Indian subcontinent and south-east Asia.
The Jamaat Muslimin group in India and the Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia (ABIM) are examples.However, it would be grossly unfair to dismiss these organisations as Wahhabi set-ups. Social, cultural and financial circumstances have made these unsuspecting groups embrace Saudi-Wahhabi assistance.
In much of India and the Malay world it is admitted even by the most anti-Wahhabi that many unIslamic beliefs and practices have penetrated local Muslim traditions; various forms of Wahhabism have offered that radical ‘cleaning up’ drive that local ulama have not been able to provide.
Some even try to justify the Wahhabis’ ‘historical terrorism’ in the Arabian peninsula, destroying places of historical importance, such as libraries and graves of the Companions of the Prophet.
Whether all this is done with sincere Wahhabi sentiment is highly doubtful, as Algar notes: the palaces of the Saudi monarchs have somehow escaped the Wahhabis’ ‘purification’.
The Saudis’ Islamic programmes are conducted in the hope of acquiring political legitimacy within the Ummah by propagation of Islamic tenets, albeit with questionable interpretations. The end-products of such programmes are at best an intellectual exercise for Islamic studies graduates.
One example is the so-called revised version of Abdullah Yusuf Ali’s famous translation of the Quran. Years of effort by Wahhabi-minded scholars have resulted in a distorted version of the original work , with all commentaries or terms bordering on tasawwuf (Islamic mysticism)- which is ‘innovation’ according to the Wahhabis – omitted.
One interesting comment by Algar is his rejection of the theory that Wahhabism had a scholarly origin. He points out that Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab had no foundation, intellectually or spiritually. A cursory glance at some of the Wahhabi writings and reference materials does show a lack of research and intellectual honesty.
Collections of hadiths
Many of these books, as he observes, are merely collections of hadiths on different subjects. Perhaps in jest, Algar argues that the birthplace of Wahhabism is enough for us to view its doctrines with suspicion, mentioning an “apocalyptic hadith” about Najd in central Arab peninsula being unfavourable compared with other regions in terms of divine blessings.
He adds: “Correlating apocalyptic hadith with observable historical phenomena is a hazardous task, best left unattempted, and this particular hadith, if indeed authentic, may ultimately be seen to have a sense entirely unconnected with Wahhabism” (pp. 5-6).
Using the works of Orientalists and Arab Muslims, Wahhabis as well as non-Wahhabis, he argues that the final feather in Wahhabism’s cap was the founding of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Algar’s explanation of the early rise of Wahhabism is also useful to understand the rise of the Saudi dynasty in the Arabian peninsula and how the colonial powers, namely the British in this case, used such groups in order to remain effectively entrenched in territories long after they ‘leave’.
These are historical facts, but what the writer seems to have missed is the fact that the Wahhabis even in their early days were not very different from their modern counterparts, such as the Taliban.
Followers of Wahhabism may have been unprepared for, and ill-equipped to deal with, the intricate and devious manoeuvres of the British. Could it not be that these unsuspecting followers were used by Britain because of this lack of sophistication on their part?
Having given an overview of Wahhabism, Algar explains the various activities of the Saudis, using their oil wealth, to propagate the Wahhabi creed to the rest of the Muslim world, through the organisations mentioned above.
While not much success can be conceded to Wahhabis in Muslim countries, the fact is that the Wahhabi ‘ideology’ has been spread vigorously among Muslims in the West. In the meantime, he also dismisses the Western propaganda of the Wahhabis’ so-called influence in the Caucasus and Central Asia.
Shi’ah response
The last part of the book deals with the Shi’ah response to Wahhabism. Were it not for the fact that the Shi’ite Muslims have been at the receiving end of the Wahhabi onslaught, the subject would have been better ignored.
One of the Wahhabis’ primary targets were the Shi’ahs in the Holy Lands, and fatwas were issued by Wahhabi scholars condemning them and saying that their blood may be shed.
Algar then fast-forwards to the contemporary Wahhabi position on Shi’ism, and how those opposed to the Saudi dynasty continue to echo Wahhabi sentiments despite their criticism of Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab because of his alliance with the Saudis.
Other Wahhabi-minded dissidents have been more accommodating, and prefer to be among the more ‘diplomatic’ (by Wahhabi standards) cousins of Wahhabis, called Salafis, so called after the generation of ‘Salafs’: the generation of the Prophet and the four Caliphs after his death.
Algar, however, warns us of the tendency of the people whom he calls “professional anti-Wahhabis” to accuse of Wahhabism any who do not subscribe to their own political and religious views.
The Salafis, and those for whom the cause of Palestine is a high priority, for example, are some of their victims in America. He writes: “No doubt the Salafi mode of thought has many adherents, and no doubt it has many points in common with Wahhabism… however, it is inaccurate, irresponsible, and dangerous-particularly in the climate of the post-September 11 America-to conflate ‘Salafi’ with ‘Wahhabi’ and paint a picture of American Muslims as being in their majority Wahhabi” (pp 67-68).
The book ends with some selected writings by Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab and his followers, and a Shi’ah response to Wahhabism in the form of a letter by Shaykh Ja’far Kashif al-Ghita to Abdul Aziz bin Muhammad bin Saud, refuting the Wahhabis’ many accusations of shirk and kufr against Shi’ism.
Algar’s essay on Wahhabism is perhaps the strongest indictment of the divisive sect by a contemporary Muslim academic in the West, one who is highly respected for his depth of scholarship.
Yet it would be unwise to brand such groups as being outside the fold of Islam, and Professor Algar is careful not to do so. It is imperative that Muslims be warned of such a dangerous creed within Islam.
Yet it is more productive to seek common ground with such groups and engage them within the Islamic movement, instead of wasting energy on countering their claims.
The truth is that supporters and opponents of Algar’s views on Wahhabism may be surprised to find their differences made irrelevant by the common enemies of Islam.
The horrific events in Norway this past weekend provide yet another powerful teachable moment in the ongoing and increasingly dangerous saga of religion becoming lethal. The murderous rampage by Anders Behring Breivik brings several important lessons more clearly into view. First, religion is an extraordinarily powerful and pervasive force in human society. Throughout history, people within various religions have been motivated to their highest and noblest best actions. At the same time, some of the worst things human beings have done to one another have been done in the name of or justified by religion. Religion is a powerful force inspiring constructive and destructive behavior among believers. Second, we live in a world with many weapons of mass destruction. Quite apart from the horrors associated with chemical, nuclear or biological weapons, we now know that a devious plan can utilize automatic weapons, fertilizer, box knives and commercial airplanes as weapons of mass destruction. Attacking a summer camp for youth vividly reminds us that there are many ways people bent on doing great harm can accomplish their goal. Third, we now know with certainty that it doesn't take many people to wreak havoc on a wide scale. Breivik may have acted alone or within a small circle of cohorts, as did Timothy McVeigh. Nineteen men carried out the attacks of Sept. 11. Small numbers of zealots who are convinced they know what God wants for them and for everyone else are capable of almost anything. Not surprisingly, many preachers and pundits who have spewed hateful rhetoric and fanned the flames of Islamophobia are now scrambling to disassociate themselves, their published statements about Islam and Muslims, and what some call "true" Christianity from the actions of Breivik. But words matter. Examine the path taken by violent extremists claiming inspiration from Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism or Buddhism and you can trace connections with the fiery rhetoric of influential, sometimes self-appointed leaders in madrasas, in books, at religious rallies, on websites and the like. There are consequences when cocksure Christians or Muslim militants proclaim God's truth while stoking fear of the "other" in the minds of their would-be followers. While there are no easy answers or simple solutions, there are constructive ways to move forward in our increasingly interconnected and interdependent world community. It begins with education.
Study programs in schools and colleges, churches, mosques and synagogues are essential. Interfaith dialogue and engagement with people of different religious and cultural backgrounds are invaluable ways to dispel generic fears and help humanize the "other." All across the U.S., Christians, Muslims and Jews are working together to build Habitat for Humanity houses and work on common problems such as crime and drug abuse within their communities. These kinds of intentional efforts at education and cooperation are vital at the local, national and international level. We need more and more such endeavors in the U.S., not only for the well-being of our communities, but also as a way to model the kind of healthy religious pluralism our future requires.
The path to a more hopeful and healthy future also requires people of faith and goodwill to speak out clearly and directly against extremists of all stripes. Although most of us were taught by our parents not to talk about religion or politics in public, the stakes today are far too high for deferential silence or casual indifference. Ignorance is not bliss; silence is proving deadly. Just as many people continue to call on Muslims to speak out forcefully and unambiguously against violence and extremism, so too must Christians and Jews openly challenge those who advocate extremism and foster hatred in the name of religion. This means, for example, naming names and identifying the theological and political positions of Jewish fundamentalists and Muslim extremists who block potential paths to peace in Israel/Palestine.
For me, as a follower of Jesus and a Christian minister, it means strongly disagreeing with TV preachers with political clout such as John Hagee and Rod Parsley. They have every right to espouse their religious and political worldviews. But their ill-informed and hateful rhetoric about Islam and Muslims, as well as their certainty that Jesus will be arriving in the next couple of weeks, has very real consequences. The mind-boggling terrorism manifest in Norway will continue to provide hard but important lessons about the dangers all around us and the need to find more constructive ways to move forward in the 21st century. It is a stark reminder that we share a fragile planet where ignorance, hate and fear can link easily with religious worldviews and produce horrific consequences.
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