Saturday, January 26, 2008

American Islam, The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion

by Paul M. Barrett

I hesitate to use the phrase, since the word bias has such nefarious connotations these days, but I suspect a sampling bias in the selection of people Barrett decided to illustrate his book with. I do not mean that he deliberately selected people who would look bad, but that he selected people who were mostly famous for one reason or another, and thus wound up with an unrepresentative sample.

I certainly hope so.

Barrett studies 7 people:

  • Osama Siblani, a publisher in Dearborn
  • Khaled El Fadl, a scholar
  • Siraj Wahhaj, an Imam
  • Asra Nomani, a feminist agitator
  • Abdul Kabir, a Sufi leader
  • Sami Omar al-Hussayen, a webmaster
  • Mustafa Saied, a radical who reformed

One theme common to almost all of them is the view of the Arab-Israeli conflict as the Ur-conflict, symbolic of all and subsuming all other conflicts into itself. Siblani's principal loyalty is not to the United States, despite his protestations. It is to his religion, and the political interests that his religion currently claims. He and several others say as much—their religious view of Israel and US interests in the Middle East is such that they would rather we suffered defeat than have the religious and political interests of their original homelands suffer. This is perhaps understandable in first generation immigrants, but it does not constitute loyalty to their new country.

I know we have a history of this kind of problem. One obvious example is immigrant Irish bringing their old feuds with them and nurturing them for generations; going so far as to raise support for terrorist organizations here to this day. They also failed in showing loyalty to their new country. The interests of Ireland are not the same as the interests of the United States.

Another common theme is the radicalization of American Islam thanks to new Arab and Pakistani immigrants. This dismays most of those Barrett talked to. It is a serious error to imagine that Islam is a simple faith with a single variety: some flavors are hideously intolerant and violent. Those varieties are on the increase in this country—and pretty much everywhere else too thanks to Saudi money and Egyptian Brotherhood organization.

Wahhaj worked to reduce crime in his neighborhood, and had quite a bit of success and fame from it, but his rhetoric pre-911 was not temperate and he celebrated terrorist supporters. Since then he has moderated his language a bit, but if his opinions have not changed he is not a friendly force.

Asra has worked for years trying to get women allowed to worship in the same place as men; to enter by the same door; to get equal treatment. She has partly succeeded, in one mosque.

Sami was accused of giving technical support to terrorist websites and promoting terrorist ideals on his own. The case was not proved and he was found innocent and made a cause celebre, and for some reason Barrett seems to think he actually was innocent. Perhaps so, but I don't find many people shipping me hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. Something smells here.

Mustafa's story is chilling. Using nothing more than standard issue religious knowledge and the Muslim Zeitgeist, he found that the way to get respect was to be “holier than thou” by being “more militantly anti-Jewish than thou.” In effect, he spontaneously radicalized. He says he turned down an invitation from some Muslim Brotherhood leaders for cadre training, and some time later began to realize what an idiot he had been in mistaking infidel-hatred for piety.

Are these people representative? Apparently Asra isn't, or she'd have not had so much trouble trying to get the mosque to do something as simple as let women walk in the same door as men. Mustafa may well be representative of many youth—the story he told is very credible. I've seen Christian youth stand up and declaim positions of piety and assurance that I know they had no training or experience to understand, to the applause of the others. Fortunately the Christian Zeitgeist is far more benign than the Muslim one, and none of the kids dallied with terrorist groups.

Islam in America is multifaceted, as Barrett describes, and the problems are also complicated. Many of the new immigrants have no interest whatever in assimilation, and little pressure to do so from either fellow Muslims or the rest of the country. (“Multiculturalism” has never been seriously analyzed or debated publicly—it has been sold as if it meant nothing more than having lots of different ethnic restaurants in town.) Many forms of Islam are incompatible with liberal democracy, many are incompatible with personal freedom, and most Muslims pay lip service at least to the doctrine that they owe allegiance to a caliphate—a foreign government (recently abolished, but there's plenty of agitation for reinstatement). This isn't the same as Catholic allegiance to the Pope—he lost all governorship years ago and his authority for secular rule was never unchallenged. The Caliph is both Pope and King.

About thirty years ago my father told me that America was going to have to face up to the problem of Islam and democracy. I didn't know what he was talking about then. I know now.

Read the book. I don't take his recommendations at the end very seriously.

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