The amendment for banning sharia in Oklahoma was fueled in part by the example of this court case in New Jersey. Despite obtaining a 70 percent vote in favor of banning foreign precedents, the law never took effect. Muslim interest groups successfully challenged it for being anti-Islamic and unconstitutional. The US District court deemed that the amendment was not “narrowly tailored” and not “justified by any compelling interest.”
Sharia, Islamophobia, and Free Speech
Less pronounced among conservatives than the two concerns above, though perhaps more widespread, is the fear that Islamic culture will indirectly influence Western law. For example, sharia effectively bans any and all criticism of Muhammad and Islam. The biographic traditions of Muhammad indicate that he ordered assassinations of people who composed poems against him or his teachings, such as Abu Afak, an elderly man who took issue with sharia and its apparently arbitrary commands. After he was assassinated, a breastfeeding mother of five, Asma bint Marwan, lamented the murder, and Muhammad ordered her to be assassinated as well. These are but two examples of how the traditional foundations of Islam disavow free speech, and they shed light on why the international Muslim community is outraged by criticism of Muhammad. Such outrage is the appropriate response according to Muhammad’s example. The same reaction extends to drawings of Muhammad and criticisms of Islam as a system.
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation is an international coalition of fifty-seven member countries that works to “safeguard and protect the interests of the Muslim world.” It publishes annual reports of Islamophobia in the West. Islamophobia is a poorly circumscribed concept, ostensibly used to describe bigotry toward Muslims but many times simply an umbrella term to refer to any and all criticism of Islam or Muslims, real or imagined.
Through its annual publication, the OIC unabashedly lobbies against free speech, hoping to silence criticism of Islam. According to the OIC, free speech protects people who “have time and again aroused unwarranted tension, suspicion and unrest in societies by slandering the Islamic faith through gross distortions and misrepresentations and by encroaching on and denigrating the religious sentiments of Muslims.” In other words, people who criticize Islam are to blame for the unrest in Muslim societies. The OIC’s proclamation is directly antithetical to one of the premises of free speech, which is that people must be responsible for their own reactions in the face of ideas or beliefs that anger them. The OIC’s proclamation is entirely aligned with sharia, however.
Partially in response to the OIC’s lobbying, many Western governments are considering laws that might limit free speech. In 2008, in direct response to pressure applied by Muslim constituencies, the European Union mandated that its nations combat “xenophobia” by making it illegal to incite hatred against a person based on religion. Although the mandate seems noble in intent, it does not clearly delineate where “criticism of ideas” ends and “hatred against a person on account of religion” begins.
My own concerns about sharia in the West lie in this third area, particularly concerning possible governmental restrictions on free speech. As this book has demonstrated, I believe ideas can be dangerous, even popular ideas held by millions, and I furthermore believe we ought to be able to discuss such ideas freely. Unfortunately, there is a growing mob mentality even in the United States that allows unpopular ideas to be shouted down and the people voicing them to be accused of closed-mindedness and bigotry. I would not be surprised if, in the next generation, certain unpopular ideas were made illegal through restrictions on free speech.
The OIC is not the only influential and wealthy organization trying to limit the free speech of Westerners; there are similar efforts far closer to home. CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations, presents itself as a moderate Muslim organization aimed at protecting the liberties and interests of Muslims in the United States. However, the United Arab Emirates has labeled CAIR a terrorist organization, and the US Department of Justice has judged them to be the American arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. CAIR actively engages in restricting free speech on American soil under accusations of “Islamophobia.”
CAIR’s use of the term Islamophobia is even more concerning than the OIC’s, as they are willing to accuse Muslims who disagree with them of being Islamophobic. When Raheel Raza, president of Muslims Facing Tomorrow, attempted to speak out “against barbaric treatment of women by radical Islamists” by a screening of her film, Honor Diaries, CAIR intervened and shut down the screening. The treatment that Raza wished to criticize was, by and large, an implementation of sharia, so CAIR accused her of Islamophobia even though she is a Muslim.
Muslim Demographics and Radical Islam by the Numbers
Raza released another video at the end of 2015 in tandem with the Clarion Project. Called By the Numbers, it focused on exploring Muslim opinions and demographic trends. In the video Raza explains that the world of radical Islam can be understood through three “spheres of radicalization,” each successive circle growing larger but less overtly radical. The first and smallest circle she calls “violent jihadists.” This is the group I have been calling mujahideen, Muslims who themselves perpetrate violence and warfare. The total number of mujahideen fighting for ISIS, combined with those fighting for al-Qaida, Boko Haram, Hezbollah, and others, ranges from 160,000 to 450,000 worldwide, 0.01 to 0.03 percent of the global Muslim population.
The next sphere she calls “Islamists,” Muslims who actively impose Islamic dominance by working within Western political and cultural systems. Examples include Hamas in Palestine, CAIR in the United States, and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The brotherhood has an explicit goal of establishing an Islamic state with a global caliphate, yet it is given the freedom to pursue its aims of Islamic dominance because it employs non-violent methods.
The largest and broadest sphere of radicalization Raza calls “fundamentalists.” These are Muslims who neither pick up arms nor attempt to overthrow governments, but simply “hold beliefs and practices that no doubt seem radical.” Citing a 2013 Pew Forum survey of thousands of Muslims in thirty-nine countries, Raza reported that 237 million Muslims are in favor of capital punishment for apostasy, 345 million are in favor of honor killings as a punishment for illicit sexual relations, and 469 million want to be governed by sharia law, approximately half of whom explicitly support whippings and stoning. These numbers reflect only Muslims in the countries surveyed. Adding the opinions of Muslims in other countries such as India, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and China would increase these numbers.
Laws regarding stoning, whippings, amputations, and the like are found in the traditional texts of Islam, many in the Quran. These are the punishments associated with hudud laws, those crimes committed against God himself. Raza implies that support for these laws constitutes radical Islam.
Thus, according to Raza’s categories, radicalism is prevalent in the Muslim world, depending on how it is understood. If we consider only mujahideen to be radical Muslims, then the number of radical Muslims might be as low as .01 percent. But if we consider those who desire sharia governance to be radical, then at least 29.3 percent of the Muslim world is radical. Raza seems to suggest we should consider the latter number as more reflective of Muslim radicalism in the world today.
It may go without saying, but I think the situation is slightly more complicated than that. In my experience, many who say they support sharia only do so because it is the “right answer” for a Muslim to give. They have romantic notions of what sharia is, and they do not realize exactly what they are supporting. This is reflected in the survey itself, as 469 million expressed a desire for sharia law, only half supported the specific laws that would come with sharia.
The same may have been the case when the Muslim Brotherhood rose to power in the Arab Spring. It was the summer of 2012, and I was enrolled in an immersion Arabic program. My professor was a young, politically oriented Egyptian Muslim. I asked her what she thought of the brotherhood, and she said, “We will see. They seem like goo
d people who want to do the right thing, but we will find out.” Egypt did find out. When the nation realized the reality of the brotherhood’s Islamist aims, including its dictatorial means, the nation turned on them. The crackdown on the brotherhood was brutal. Voters in Egypt didn’t know what they had asked for.
Conclusion
So are Muslims seeking to take over the West with sharia? I would be quick to answer, “No, but …”
“No,” because the question implies a conspiracy among the average Muslim immigrant, as if all Muslims are part of a ploy to take over the West. That is untrue and ludicrous. In my experience, Muslim immigrants are simply trying to live life as best as they know how, as are all of us. For the vast majority, imposing sharia does not even enter their minds.
“But …” because many Muslims do entertain romantic notions of sharia and Islamic dominance. The Golden Age of Islam appeals to many hearts, and in the minds of most Muslims it is nebulously connected to sharia. Yet as Muslims in Egypt loudly declared through the swift ousting of their elected Muslim Brotherhood president, the average Muslim might not know what sharia really looks like.
Overarching all of this is the undeniable demographic shift: Muslims are coming to the West, and they are bringing their culture and values with them. My encouragement to those who fear Muslim immigration is that we should engage immigrants with love and friendship, sharing our views and our lives with one another. Part of the reason why Muslim immigrants in the West can become radicalized, as with Sayyid Qutb, is that Westerners do not help them to understand our culture and do not provide them with appealing ways of navigating it. Segregating ourselves from those immigrants with whom we disagree only encourages further disagreements and misunderstandings.
Instead of fearing Muslim immigrants, we should embrace them and be the element of change we wish to see. Had someone done that with Sayyid Qutb, the world might be a different place today. I suggest friendship rather than fear as a better way forward.
Part 3
Part 3, Jihad in Judeo-Christian Context
Question 13
Question 12, Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God?
IN MY FIRST YEAR of medical school, a male physician from India approached me, offered the Muslim greeting of peace, and told me that he knew my mother. I returned his greeting, but I had a hunch he was mistaken. My mother maintains purdah, the Islamic practice of wearing a burqa and socializing outside the family only with other women. I found it unlikely a strange man would know her or talk about her in this casual manner.
On the other hand, he was a physician, he was from India, and he appeared to be part of the Muslim community. Perhaps he did know her? Upon asking further, he assured me that he did. I recall him saying, “She lives here in Norfolk, and she is from Pakistan, is she not? I see her every now and again in the hospital. She is a smart, very kind woman.” That certainly did sound like her. My mother is very kind and smart, and she is from Pakistan. Every now and again she came to Norfolk for treatment, too, though she primarily went to the naval hospital in Portsmouth. He was wrong about where she lived, though. We lived in Virginia Beach, not Norfolk, but the two cities are right next to each other. Though he was wrong about a detail or two, I concluded he knew my mother after all.
But I was wrong. As the conversation progressed, he told me that he had admitted some of my mother’s patients from the emergency room. Apparently he thought my mother was a colleague of his, but my mother is not a doctor. Although we were both talking about the same role, that of my mother, we were not talking about the same woman. I later discovered there was a Dr. Qureshi in the emergency room at the children’s hospital, and from then on I was able to inform dozens of people that, no, she was not my mother.
I see intriguing similarities between that conversation and the one our nation is having as I write this chapter about whether Muslims and Christians worship the same God. The question is pressing because the national conversation has grown controversial in light of the refugee crisis and concerns about jihad.
The Wheaton Controversy
Wheaton College, a flagship of evangelical educational institutions, placed one of its professors on administrative leave on December 15, 2015, for “theological statements that seemed inconsistent with [their] doctrinal convictions.” Five days prior, while donning a hijab and staking her position on a variety of controversial matters, Larycia Hawkins had written on Facebook, “I stand in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian, are people of the book. And as Pope Francis stated last week, we worship the same God.”
Wheaton’s decision to give Hawkins “more time to explore theological implications of her recent public statements” ignited a firestorm of controversy. One strong voice in the fray was Yale Professor Miroslav Volf, a theologian greatly respected for his contributions to Christian-Muslim dialogue, who wrote in the Washington Post, “There isn’t any theological justification for Hawkins’s forced administrative leave. Her suspension is not about theology and orthodoxy. It is about enmity toward Muslims. More precisely, her suspension reflects enmity toward Muslims, taking on a theological guise of concern for Christian orthodoxy.”
Such a dialogue-stifling judgment from a highly acclaimed Ivy League scholar was surprising, but it served to illustrate the enormous tensions in Christian-Muslim relations. As a former Muslim, I have many Muslim family members and friends I spend time with regularly, and I often encourage Christians to consider gestures of solidarity with the hope that, somehow, this affection will trickle down to the Muslims I know and love. I have even recommended that Christian women consider wearing the hijab in certain circumstances, as well as counseled Christian men to consider fasting with their Muslim neighbors during the month of Ramadan, as long as it is clear these gestures are out of Christian love and not submission to Islam.
So without a shred of “enmity toward Muslims,” I must say that I disagree with Hawkins and Volf. My position is that Muslims and Christians do not worship the same God, but given the complexity of the matter we ought to stop demonizing those who disagree with us.
Why Many Conclude That Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God
For years after leaving Islam and becoming a Christian, I believed that Muslims worshiped the same God as Christians but were simply wrong about what he is like and what he has done. After all, I had been taught as a young Muslim to worship the God who created Adam and Eve, who rescued Noah from the flood, who promised Abraham a vast progeny, who helped Moses escape Egypt, who made the Virgin Mary great with child, who sent Jesus into the world, who helped the disciples overcome, and who is still sovereign today. Is that not the God of the Bible?
For that matter, the Quran asserts that the Torah and the Gospels are inspired scripture and that Jews and Christians are people of the book. The Quran tells Muslims to say to Jews and Christians, “our God and your God is One, and unto Him we surrender” (29:46). If the Quran asserts that Muslims worship the same God as Jews and Christians, does that not settle the matter?
For years I thought it did, and the great overlap between Islam and Christianity meant we were talking about the same God. Just as when the Indian physician was right about many details and wrong about only a few, leading me initially to conclude we were both talking about my mother, so I used to think that Muslims disagreed with Christians on a few details but we were talking about the same God.
I no longer believe that. At a certain point the differences go beyond details to essential matters of identity, and it turns out we are talking about different people. When the Indian physician said my mother lived in Norfolk, he was wrong about a minor detail, and we could still have been talking about the same woman. But when he said she was a doctor, it was not just a detail: he was wrong about an essential characteristic. It became clear that he was envisioning someone else. In the same way, the Muslim God is different in essential characteristics from the Christian God, which is why I now conclude they are not the same
God.
This matter is further complicated by the distinction between role and person. In my conversation with the Indian doctor, we were talking about one role, the one filled by my mother, but was it the same person? Clearly not. In the same way, Muslims and Christians envision the same role when they speak of God, the unique Creator of the universe of whom there can only be one. But is it the same person? In my view, clearly not.
I do not condemn those who think Muslims and Christians worship the same God, because it is a complex issue. But the identity of the Muslim God is different from that of the Christian God in essential characteristics. The Quran seems to agree with this assessment. Though Muslims and Christians worship a God who fulfills the role of Creator, the persons they see occupying that role are quite different.
How the Christian God and Muslim God Differ in Essential Characteristics
Let’s start with the obvious. Christians believe Jesus is God, but the Quran is so opposed to this belief that it condemns Jesus worshipers to hell (5:72). For Christians Jesus is certainly God, and for Muslims Jesus is certainly not. For this reason alone, no one should argue as Volf has done that “there isn’t any theological justification” for believing Christians and Muslims worship different Gods. There is, and it is obvious when we consider the person of Jesus.
Answering Jihad Page 9