by Ed Husain
The West keeps on fanning the flames with sensational headlines, penalises the innocent majority with sanctions, and uses drone warfare to deal with symptoms, while ignoring the causes of the conflicts against and within the Muslim world. Our political leaders cannot think beyond five-year election cycles. They strategise for the short term while our extremist enemies think far longer-term.
The West cannot reverse the anti-Americanism that is widespread among the world’s Muslims without acknowledging the deep emotions of betrayal, hurt, injustice and humiliation harboured by many – not just radicals. Like the American billionaire, our response is delineated through materialist lenses. We miss what is not in sight, but is all-powerful: feelings, narratives, and perceptions. In this, a chasm has opened up between the modern West and Islam.
Just over a century ago, writers and politicians referred to a global entity, Christendom. Today, that reference is limited to a handful of faith leaders. The deep influences of a strident secularism have chased religion out from the public domain in most parts of the West. What was Christendom has now become ‘the West’. Modern, secular philosophers have taken the place of prophets. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), godfather of the French Revolution, argued that man is a self-sufficient individual with absolute freedom. Defying tradition and religion, he had five children with his laundrymaid and abandoned every child to a hospice. Family meant nothing to Rousseau. Just as children had no right to a family, there was no divine right of kings or queens. Royalty was overthrown and modern liberty was born.
Modernity’s unquestioning adherents regard the Enlightenment project with awe – a blind faith of sorts. We forget that these men were as flawed as their contemporaries and were not always the contrarian liberators we have come to believe. The British philosopher John Gray exposes their regressive thinking. Voltaire, Gray reminds us, believed in a secular version of the anti-Semitic creed of pre-Adamite theory. This was the idea, advocated by some Christian theologians, that Jews were pre-Adamites, leftovers of an older species that existed before Adam.2 Immanuel Kant, the ultimate Enlightenment guru, asserted that there are innate, inherent differences between the races. He judged white people to ‘have all the attributes required for progress towards perfection’, Gray writes. Africans were ‘predisposed to slavery’. Gray quotes Kant as writing: ‘The Negroes of Africa have by nature no feeling that rises above the trifling.’ Asians fared little better. John Stuart Mill in his On Liberty referred to China as a stagnant civilisation: ‘They have become stationary – have remained so for thousands of years; and if they are ever to be farther improved it must be by foreigners.’ His father, James Mill, argued in his History of British India that the natives could only achieve progress by abandoning their languages and religions. Marx defended colonial rule as a way of overcoming the apathy of village life. ‘Progress’ was the Enlightenment’s salvation. Gray reminds us that: ‘All had to be turned into Europeans, if necessary by force.’
Voltaire mocked Catholicism and Islam. Nietzsche declared God dead. Rousseau, Bentham, Voltaire, Mill, Nietzsche, Marx, Lenin and their worldviews are preponderant in the West today. Just as Jews and Muslims venerate prophets and cherish their tombs, so too does the modern, liberal West its philosophers. Rousseau was dug up by the French revolutionaries and reinterred in the Pantheon in 1794, a mark of highest honour in secular France. Bentham was embalmed and remains on display in Bloomsbury at University College London. Lenin, too, was mummified in Moscow.
There is, however, another, lesser-known West: that of Edmund Burke (1730–97). Not widely known beyond the Anglosphere, Burke was a British Member of Parliament and an Irishman. A devout believer in God, he took principled stances against the French Revolution and foresaw the troubles and terror unleashed by it. He viewed the radical attacks on the French monarchy and seizure of Church property as godless. To Burke, Rousseau and Voltaire offered destruction and darkness. Burke’s conservatism was based on religion; he hedged his support for the British monarchy with the need for greater parliamentary power. His political philosophy instituted the oldest political party in the world, the British Conservative Party.
Burke wrote in his seminal Reflections on the Revolution in France that: ‘Society is a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are yet to be born.’3 He stated that this social partnership connected ‘the visible and invisible world’.4 He considered our time spent on earth as stewardship of the planet’s resources for the next generation, and our inheritance from the last generation. As such, he opposed tyranny and injustice against the creation of God. He therefore supported emancipation for the peoples of America, Ireland and India. In France, however, he swiftly concluded that it was the revolutionaries who were the tyrants, for they sought to remove all residue of tradition and impose on society new and abstract ideas.
If the modern West has greater alignment with Rousseau and Bentham, the Muslim world is with the conservative Burke. By conservatism I mean that Muslims strive to preserve the collectively inherited wisdom and goodness of the past. Burke echoed this sentiment in his Reflections: ‘When ancient opinions and rules of life are taken away, the loss cannot possibly be estimated. From that moment we have no compass to govern us; nor can we know distinctly to what port we steer.’5 But we have not made the connection between Burke, conservatism and the Muslim world – instead, we have tried to impose Rousseau, Voltaire and Marx through wars, propaganda, education and occupation since Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798. We are yet to understand the power of conservatism for building lasting alliances with the Muslim world.
For example, when asked: ‘Are there traditions and customs that are important to you, or not?’, majorities in Muslim countries say: ‘Yes’ – Jordan 96%, Saudi Arabia 95%, Turkey 90%, Egypt 87%. Compare these figures with postmodern societies in the United States of America (54%), the United Kingdom (36%), France (20%) and Belgium (23%).6 These figures indicate that tradition, religion and custom are important in Muslim countries as diverse as Egypt and Turkey. If so, what are these traditions, what is this faith that unites more than a billion people around the world?
In contrast to a vanished Christendom, ‘the Muslim world’ still exists and is vibrant in its faith-based identity. A 2007 Gallup poll of more than thirty-five Muslim nations found that for 90 per cent of Muslims, Islam is an important part of daily life. From spirituality to food, dress code to bathroom etiquette, daily prayers to conduct with elders, a common civilisation and collective history bind Muslims together. From Morocco to Indonesia, Bosnia to Yemen, there is a presence of Islam in language, behaviour, prayers, architecture, food and habits that unite a people. There are, of course, linguistic, cultural, ethnic and political differences, but there is an underlying unity amid the diversity.
‘You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing,’ said Winston Churchill, ‘after they have tried everything else.’ Churchill’s instincts about America were right then, and they are even more correct today. How many more wars, drone attacks and counter-terror operations will the West undertake? And how many more terrorist organisations will germinate in Muslim countries? The cycle of terrorism and counter-terrorism since 9/11 has not made our world safer. The West forgets that political violence is only a symptom of a much deeper malaise in the Muslim world that we have not fully grasped yet.
There are three dominant currents vibrating across the Muslim world. Every Muslim community feels these today, and has done so in various ways for several decades. Firstly, Arabisation, though the vast majority of the world’s Muslims are not Arabs. Only 20 per cent of the Islamic world’s population is Arab, but the conflicts and ideologies shaping global Muslim communities stem from Arab countries of the Middle East. Understanding the beating heart of Islam, the Middle East, is therefore vital to understanding the Muslim world. I will define Islam, Muslims, the Quran, and Sunni and Shi‘a Muslims in the first chapters.
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p; This disproportionate Arab influence on the Muslim world is driven by several factors: Islam was born in Arabia, the Quran is written in Arabic, the Prophet Mohamed was an Arab, Islam’s primary history and personalities were in Mecca and Medina in Arabia, and Muslims around the world turn to pray toward Mecca five times a day. This piety, history, culture and geography matters. Wearing the Arab cultural dress of hijab for women; the centrality of the Palestinian conflict; the popularity of Arab Islamist authors among all Muslims – these, and many more, point to the Arab superiority pulsating through contemporary Islam.
A hundred years ago, Muslims in Turkey or India or Africa were culturally distinct, but now Gulf Arab culture is being adopted as a marker of Muslim authenticity and religious identity in dress, using Arabic religious terms in conversations, names of children, television-watching habits, popularity of Gulf Arab clerics, Muslim reading habits, and even styles of facial hair and female attire. This is not accidental: Saudi Arabia has spent an estimated $200 billion in the last seven decades building mosques, training and exporting clerics, and using its embassies to evangelise its own form of Arabised Islam.
Chapters 7 to 11 deal with the ideas, identities and consequences of this Arabisation that has been accompanied with a rise in levels of anger. Muslim discussions on the meaning and relevance of sharia, Sufism, Islamism, Salafism, Wahhabism, jihadism, and the reappearance of Kharijism are addressed in these chapters.
The second current is Westernisation and the loss of Muslim confidence: the entire Muslim world is being called to embrace secular, liberal, democratic forms of Western government. No other form of consensual government is allowed. If a state is not a democracy, the West will consider it to be an autocracy. Just as in the ancient world, if not a Greek then a barbarian. The West has not allowed for any global grey zones, no other forms of consensual or tribal government that allows for recognition of other civilisations. The North African scholar Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) wrote about a social contract 200 years before Hobbes. Just as Arabisation has disoriented traditional Muslim equilibrium, so has Westernisation. Those that are not Arabised are often Westernised in name, musical tastes, dress, preference for Hollywood, corporate lifestyle, and use of the English language. Chapters 12 to 16 address the control, positive and negative, of this enduring Westernisation and its discontents in the Muslim world.
The third current is confusion between Westernisation and Arabisation, with efforts to straddle the two, as well as the emergence of hybrids of people who speak fluent English, drive American cars, dine at McDonald’s, wear jeans and baseball caps, but want to establish a caliphate or support the destruction of Israel.
Despite the perplexity, as chapters 17 to 20 illustrate, Islam retains an extraordinary hold over its adherents. Muslims value much that has been lost in the modern West. But that does not entail inherent conflict – global openness and coexistence is possible.
What is to be done about the multifaceted malaise in the Muslim world? The conclusion of this book provides ideas for finding new ways forward for a better world.
Through the centuries, Muslims have been taught their sacred tradition of faith via oral transmission of storytelling. The Quran has chapters named after prophets and their stories. The great Sufis passed on their sagacity through tales. Muslims look to the past for validation and vision. Burke took a similar attitude: ‘People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.’7
The modern West closes off the past, and imagines a future of ‘creative destruction’ as Joseph Schumpeter put it. This is rooted in an assumed belief in incessant progress. To Muslims, history and historic individuals are important: we look behind to look forward; we step back before jumping ahead.
When it comes to individuals and incidents that are household names for Muslims – the events in Karbala, historic personalities such as Rumi, Khayyam, Hafez, Ibn Arabi, Jahanara, Hasan al-Banna, to name a few – I have included details that give the reader a full grasp of the subject.
Most modern Western minds, for instance, find it difficult to believe in miracles, angels, the divine, or an afterlife. But for the fastest-growing group of human beings on the planet, these are vital beliefs. To better understand, let us suspend our prejudices.
PART ONE
A Millennium of Power
What beliefs and rituals have defined Muslims for the past fourteen centuries?
Why does the Sunni–Shi‘a historical divergence matter so much and continue to play out in today’s world?
Can historical sharia law become reconciled with the modern world?
Why is Sufism so attractive and popular among Muslims?
1
What is Islam?
‘Islam began as a stranger,’ said the Prophet Mohamed, who founded the faith in seventh-century Arabia. ‘One day,’ he predicted, ‘it will again return to being a stranger.’ Indeed, Islam today is a familiar outsider in our midst in the West.
We use the English word ‘religion’ to describe Islam, but Islam is not a religion in the Western sense. The Oxford English Dictionary definition of religion is cold and alien to a believer in Islam: ‘A state of life bound by religious vows; the condition of belonging to a religious order.’ There is no mention of the afterlife, the most important and abiding aspect of faith that has a daily impact on the behaviour of a believer, nor is there reference to a divine text, or prophecies. The OED’s other explanations include belief in a ‘superhuman’ – such notions may resonate in the West, but make little sense to the believer in Islam. For an adherent of Islam, a Muslim, God is not a ‘superhuman’, but an infinite being, a force, an entity, that the finite human mind can never fully comprehend. But the rational Western mind refuses to accept the possibility that it is limited and cannot comprehend. From definitions onwards, we seem to be in constant friction with Islam because we seek to impose on it our history, definitions, expectations and concepts.
‘The idea of religion as a personal and systematic pursuit was entirely absent from classical Greece, Japan, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran, China and India,’ writes the historian Karen Armstrong.
Nor does the Hebrew Bible have any abstract concept of religion; and the Talmudic rabbis would have found it impossible to express what they mean by faith in a single word or even in a formula. The only faith tradition that does fit the modern notion of religion as something codified and private is Protestant Christianity, which, like ‘religion’ in this sense of the word is also a product of the early modern period.1
So what is Islam?
Islam is a way of life based on three facets: it is a feeling and a conviction in the existence of one God; it is a belief in the message of the Prophet Mohamed; and it is a path to salvation in the coming life. The Muslim refers to these tenets as tawhid, oneness of God; risalah, prophethood and the message of Mohamed; and Akhirah, the next life or eternity.
For the devout Muslim, Islam’s divine touches leave an imprint on daily life. Love for God leads Muslims to imitate the Prophet Mohamed, who was the most beloved of God. Ritual duties that may seem burdensome for some feel light for those in love with the Divine. When a sincere believer awakes, she thanks God for bringing her a new day after a night’s sleep. Throughout the day, in her standing, bowing, reciting, prostrating, and praising of God, she emulates the Prophet Mohamed. She puts on her slippers with her right foot first, as he did. In the bathroom, she enters first with her left foot and brushes her teeth from right to left. She leads with her right foot after her ritual ablution and stands facing Mecca to pray.
Everything from her Halal breakfast to her choice of modest clothes is influenced by Islam, as explained in the Quran and lived by the Prophet. Through each act, she experiences and tastes the joy of faith and feels her soul growing ever nearer to a state of peace. A materialist, sceptical mind cannot easily surrender or submit to such divine ways. The word Islam shares the same root as the Arabic istislam, or surrender, which also leads to another derivative, salam,
or peace. Through surrender to God, therefore, the soul finds peace.
Islam and its adherents are still loyal to Arabic, the abiding language of the Quran and the Prophet Mohamed. Hardly any Christians today speak or pray in Aramaic, the language of Jesus, but every single one of the world’s 1.7 billion Muslims prays in Arabic.2 Calls to prayer in Arabic sound from the minarets of mosques in the world’s Muslim communities, where the faithful even meet and greet each other with salamu alaykum, meaning ‘peace be upon you’ in Arabic. From Indonesia to Bosnia, Muslims’ liturgical language is undiluted by the passing of time. That freshness and connection of Muslim roots to seventh-century Arabia is a blessing, and also a curse, as we shall see in later chapters.
When I lived in Damascus in Syria during 2003–5, I was intrigued to hear Syrian Christians use words such as inshaAllah meaning ‘God willing’, or Alhamdulillah meaning ‘Praise be to God’. Having been born and raised a Muslim, I always assumed those popular Arabic words somehow belonged to us, but this was the city in which St Paul preached, the walls of the city marked his escape from persecution, and the biblical ‘street called straight’ in Damascus was full of Christian artisans and craftsmen. There, Allah was God. And God was Allah.