Progressing Islam

My father is reading an interesting book by a progressive Muslim author on Islam in the modern world. While the book has a tendency to glorify Islam and, from the excerpts I've read, seems incredibly dismissive of some of the inherent issues within the Muslim world and a little to ready to blame the problems that Islam has on the media, which does not create problems (though it does often make them worse, or appear worse).

Religions are often hijacked by political movements looking for a way to get unquestioning masses which are already engaged in a church to accept their political ideology and develop a certain degree of xenophobia to demonize their opposition. We've seen this with the Christian Right in America, which has used the fear of an ever more secular world to demonize a "Secular Left."

This backfired, of course, but it hasn't backfired in the Muslim world. In point of fact, it seems that Muslim leaders have had an easier time hijacking political movements than political leaders have hijacking Islam. The example of the Taliban is perpetual.

The Taliban is a movement unmistakably political in nature, and its use of strict interpretations of fundamentalist Islam, to the point where no freedom to dissent is possible (one of the most powerful and dangerous statements which can be made by a political movement) seems to indicate that it is a political movement which has used Islam as a means of developing a certain degree of popular support and creating dissent for the "Secularized" or "Judeo-Christian" West (sometimes it's the Jews and Christians attempting to oppress the Muslim world, sometimes it's the secularists, it waffles). It is hard, when looking at their roots as the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan, to dispute this point.

Of course, there are other examples of fundamentalism in the Muslim world where it has been the religious clerics, not the political activists, who have brought Islam into the political arena, and into the world at large, as a means of enforcing strict interpretations of the law. We saw this with the Ayatollah, who went from being a powerful religious figure to enforcing his will over the political arena internationally, and we've seen similar acts of enforcement by religious clerics choosing to force European legislators to engage not simply in Muslim apologetics, but in the oppression of free speech.

What is interesting about the book that my father is reading is that it points out a few very interesting things the western world has come to accept about Islam that are certainly, objectively untrue.

The author makes valid points about women in education and leadership roles (and it is worth noting that women have taken leadership roles throughout the Muslim world, while it has been far more difficult for them to establish power in the US). Those, though, I think are worth overlooking for a moment.

The American media is under the impression that Muslim fundamentalism is somehow radically different from Christian fundamentalism (and Jewish fundamentalism, though the Jewish political position stays out of the spotlight, because they are more of a lobby than a voting block). This is disputable. While it's true that Muslim fundamentalists engage in acts that we find terrible, that we term terrorism, so do many Christian fundamentalists.

The KKK is an explicitly Christian organization, which engages in acts of terrorism and is seen by the United States as a terrorist organization engaged in the same form of hate speech that Muslim fundamentalists engage in. While they don't kill the same number of people (though they did about forty or fifty years ago), they still engage in the same acts of intimidation, high levels of illegality and political activism (i.e. David Duke).

That analogy from the opening, post-9/11 episode of the West Wing still rings true today:

[Muslim] Extremest is to [Islam] as the Klu Klux Klan is to Christianity.

Of course, the Klan is only a singular example of Christian fundamentalism. It is important that we recognize that Christian fundamentalism extends far further. If the Phelps family had political power and social relevance, they would be in a similar position to the Saudi Arabian Royal Family, without a doubt. The different, of course, is that in the west, these groups are not empowered. Those who are transparently and unashamedly racist have been pushed to the fringes of western society.

Muslim countries are working to push these political movements to the fringe of their world, but it is not easy. It was not easy for us, in the west, and anyone who thinks that the Muslim world is having a harder time than we did is lying to themselves. Let us not forget that we had openly racist leadership in this country for generations, that even a man considered one of the most progressive and praiseworthy leaders in this nations history, Abraham Lincoln, was not without staunch political opposition, and that his successor was a man who allowed for the moral failure of this country to lead to hundreds more years of racial inequity.

Of course, the Muslim world is not about racial oppression, it is about religious and social oppression, which is a far more dangerous dynamic. In the United States, we had a first amendment which ensured the freedom to politically dissent from opposition. The fact that America was a nation that came into being out of political dissent and discourse allowed it to ensure that the minority opinion, however conservative or progressive, would be heard.

There is no first amendment right assuring free speech in the Muslim world. It is not a right supported by Islam, and those who claim the right of Islam claim to right to protection from any sort of dissent, because dissenting from them is dissenting from Islam, and to dissent from Islam is death.

The west is under the impression that our right to dissent offers us some degree of moral superiority and, perhaps, there is a cultural superiority when political opposition can be open and stand in the street with signs and shout at the top of their lungs without fear. However, that feeling is not productive, that statement that "we are living right and you need to shape up and be like us" gets us nowhere in conversations with the Muslim world.

Understanding Islam is difficult, and America doesn't have a grasp on the religion that acts as a language for political discourse in the Middle East, just as it doesn't understand the history of tribal warfare that defines the African continent. It would be unfair to advocate that we should remain silent in issues which deeply affect our country, but it is not so outlandish to suggest that in a time of political strife within these nations we should ensure that we, at the very least, attempt to understand that these countries are moving forward in a way that we did, and that while America did not get to where it is without the help of powerful leaders, that vast majority of that leadership came from within a nation that wanted to change.

It seems that countries in the Muslim world want to change. They see the way that we live, and the way that the world is changing around them and understand this much, and often their governments ask for our help, as Pakistan has asked for help in their ongoing war with the Taliban. However, it is not our place to believe that we are capable of mediating conflict in the Muslim world, or that we are capable of enforcing peace, or that we even have a duty to.

In listening to President Obama speak to the Muslim world, one thing has become clear, there is a single gift that the western world can offer the Muslim world, a gift which, unlike the AK-47, unlike the anti-tank weapons, cannot be turned on other governments by the rogue leadership of political movements (like the Mujahadeen) which we once supported. That is the gem of free political discourse.

The Muslim world has voices of moderation and progression, though, like the voices in the early years of the United States, those voices are silenced by gunfire, it seems the Muslim world is progressing towards a more fulfilled understanding of the value of dissent from a political position, and hopefully this will allow for a dissent from religious values, and lead to the progression of a society which understands the virtue of personal freedom.

Freedom, though, cannot be enforced by military might. There cannot be a free people when they need a tank and a dozen American military personal to police their streets. A free society must stand on its own. These are lessons from our own history that we have forgotten to apply to the Muslim world, because we think it is radically different from our own.

Make no mistake: The Muslim world is radically different from the one that we live in, but it is not different from the world that, not so long ago, our great-grandparents tried to change, and then our grandparents, and then our parents, and now us. Theirs is a world moving forward, just as ours is, and to refer to them as a backwards civilization run by religious fanaticism is dismissive and overlooks that, not so long ago, we, too, were just the same.

NOTE: I have been told before that I am anti-Islam. This is true. I believe that there are primitive aspects to Islam, and to Christianity and Judaism (and Buddhism, and Hinduism, and so on), that are not conducive to life in modern, civilized society. That aside, the answer is not to enforce secularism in the Muslim world, or anywhere, the answer is to allow for political dissent, and to let debate over the merits and beneficial nature of religion ensue, so that the people, on an individual basis, can decide whether it is something that their society wants to embrace. This is a principle of Freedom, and expressed clearly in the first amendment.