Fuad Shaban. Arab Studies Quarterly. Volume 31, Issue 1-2, Winter-Spring 2009.
From a purely personal viewpoint, based on religious and logical principles, I did not subscribe to the view that a ‘war of cultures’ between Islam and the West is inevitable. I had been steadfast in this belief until I began researching world events and trends of thought that have risen during the last two centuries. This has given me some insight into the growth in power and popular appeal of certain extreme ideologies—religious, political and social—throughout the world. And this has caused me to pause and question somewhat my optimism regarding the possibility of a war of cultures.
I still think (or would like to think) that a cultural war based on purely religious beliefs is not inevitable, especially if the all-but-silent majority throughout the Muslim and Western worlds becomes active on the religious and political fronts.
Religions differ on some basic beliefs, and on many details of faith and practice. However, followers of many religions have actually lived in peace and harmony in the same communities or in contiguity for ages and have had amicable, indeed very close, relations.
Coexistence and peaceful relations among different faiths do not result only from pragmatic reasons and those of self preservation. A more compelling reason is the layers of common values and principles that are basic to all religious beliefs. The Ten Commandments have equivalents in Christianity, Islam and other systems of belief. Tolerance towards other faiths and the principles of human rights are also common to all religions, if to varying degrees as a result of the cultural and immediate social environments.
So what happened to change the friendly peaceful relations among religious communities to attitudes of belligerence and suspicion?
Let us consider the following scenes and events that have become rather familiar in recent years.
Scene I:
On a clear serene September morning and just before nine o’clock, an American commercial airplane flew into one of the twin towers of the Trade Center in the heart of New York city, and a few minutes later, before people were able to figure out what was happening, a second commercial passenger airplane hit the second tower. Scenes of devastation and mayhem followed; the towers and another building eventually collapsed with indescribable speed. Three thousand innocent civilians, including policemen and firefighters, were killed. Another plane went down in Pennsylvania and another flew into the Pentagon.
The devastation caused by this willful act of terror can only be matched in its enormity by the gleeful boast of the Bin Laden camp over this ‘act of martyrdom’ carried out by its recruits ‘in the cause of Islam’.
America was shocked and everyone grieved for the victims and their families and expressed anger and rejection of acts of terrorism. This willful act of mass murder was condemned by all peoples of the world. Yet, on television and on the internet, self-styled Islamic jihadists, described in Western circles as ‘Islamic extremists’ and ‘Islamic terrorists’, aired videos of turbaned and masked men chanting slogans in broken English and in Arabic:
Kill the agents of Satan!
Drive the infidels out of our land!
Declare jihad against the enemies of Allah!
Death to America!
And in some mosques in the Arab-Muslim World a few imams call for jihad against the infidels and excite young and old by trumpeting their distorted call for jihad.
Scene II:
On a beautiful breezy summer day and in an outdoor interview open to the public hosted by Chris Matthews, an attractive young blond lady sat across from the host (Mathews 2007). The lady had on a casual-looking, rather revealing pink dress, her hair fluttering over her face and shoulders in the light wind. One could not in any way mistake Ann Coulter for a violent radical activist. Yet the words she uttered to the applause of some young men and women in the background are frightening:
Bomb their societies! Bomb their societies!
Collateral damage happens in a war.
Civilians get killed!
Why are we afraid of killing civilians?
Why are we afraid of collateral damage?
We killed more people in the battle for Hamburg than
we have killed in the whole Iraq War!
I confess that I had some difficulty keeping tab of the number of times the attractive lady used the words ‘kill’ and ‘bomb’; not only because of the speed with which she spurted them out, but because of the chill they sent through my being! I experienced the same horror which I had gone through years ago when I read over and over again Kurtz’ dying words in The Heart of Darkness: “exterminate the brutes”.
Scene III:
On 25 February 1994, Baruch Goldstein, a retired Israeli army doctor, entered a mosque in Hebron, Palestine, and shot Muslim worshippers in the back during prayer killing 29 and injuring scores more. In the event, Goldstein himself was shot dead (Shahak and Mezvinsky 2004).
Two days later there were posters in the streets of religious quarters of Jerusalem and other Israeli cities and settlements praising Goldstein and ‘his heroic act’, expressing regrets that he did not kill more Arabs. His name became synonymous with martyrdom, and he was praised for “curing Israel of its ills”. There were lengthy negotiations between the extreme religious community in Israel and the authorities over the official procession route of the cortege of this ‘martyr’. The religious parties wanted to parade Goldstein’s body in Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem and Hebron. President Weizman advised that these wishes be respected. The Mayor of Kiryat Arbaa threatened that if these demands were not met the settlers “would make a pogrom of Arabs.” Chief of Staff Barak’s reasons for not accepting these demands were simple: “The army was afraid that Arabs would desecrate Goldstein’s tomb and carry away his corpse.” Kiryat Arbaa rabbi, Dor Lior, declared that “since Goldstein did what he did in God’s own name, he is to be regarded as a righteous man”. The army provided a guard of honor for Goldstein’s mausoleum. At the funeral a number of rabbis eulogized Goldstein, and Rabbi Israel Ariel declared that “the holy martyr, Baruch Goldstein, is from now on our intercessor in heaven…. the Jews inherit the land not by any peace agreement but only by shedding blood.”
Scene IV:
On 16 July 2007, Christians United for Israel held their annual summit in Washington, D. C. (Blumenthal 2007). The thousands of right-wing Christians in attendance believed in the end-time scenario of the Battle of Armageddon where all non-believers—Jews (except for the 144,000 saved), Muslims, Hindus and many Christians—will suffer torture, burning in the Lake of Fire, and eternal damnation.
Max Blumenthal, reporting the event—before he was ‘escorted’ out-interviewed a number of enthusiastic conferees who could not wait to witness that day. In fact, Tom DeLay, who was among the prominent attendants, told Blumenthal that he “wished it would come tomorrow.” Tom Delay (for former Republican Majority leader, the Hammer) was only one of the American legislators present. They included also senators Joe Lieberman and Rick Santoro. In his address at the convention, Lieberman (who must have believed that he would be one of the 144,000) told the cheering crowd that Pastor John Hagee was “a man of God”—a modern-day Moses, only with a much larger following. Blumenthal ends his introduction to the video recording of this event with these words: “I have covered the Christian right intensely for over four years. During this time, I attended dozens of Christian right conferences, regularly monitored movement publications and radio shows, and interviewed scores of its key leaders. I have never witnessed any spectacle as politically extreme, outrageous, or bizarre as the one Christians United for Israel produced last week in Washington. See for yourself.”
Extremists on both sides—the Islamic World and the West—have gained more visibility and power and have succeeded in igniting a war of ideas, sometimes accompanied by violent terrorist activities which threaten to pit cultures against each other and plunge the world in an actual violent ‘war of cultures’.
These trends of thought and ideologies pose also the danger of an all-out war not based simply on cultural grounds; this is because, although they base their appeal on religious ideologies and beliefs, their tentacles extend to the social and political arenas in both the Muslim as well as the Western Worlds. This appeal to the masses has been enhanced by the tremendous advances made by media and communications technology.
Furthermore, the extremists on both sides of the divide have fairly similar ideologies and world views, but from different perspectives and from interpretations of their respective sacred texts. Of course, the means each side uses to express and translate these views are vastly different. While some of these expressions are very violent acts of terror, others are seemingly peaceful, but still very dogmatic and have the potential of causing violence.
Briefly, these religious factors can be summed up as follows:
- Each side claims that it owns the only truth and that others present only falsehoods and errors. This claim of a monopoly on religious truth often results from the concept (or misconception) that it occupies a special place in a divine plan and is called upon to play a crucial role in this plan.
- Each side claims that this special place has been assigned to it by God, Allah or Jehovah and that consequently it knows what goes on in God’s mind.
- Again, consequently, each side claims that it has a mandate from God in the execution of its duties, and in the pursuit of these duties there are no human or humane boundaries to its actions.
- Extremists on both sides have two curious (to put it mildly) end-time eschatological dramas whose actors are in alliance with the dramatic hero, i.e., God.
- Finally, extremists on both sides have varying degrees of connections with and/or influence on other major social and political forces in their communities. Therein lies the danger which is, in my view, that some secularist politicians, political scientists and influential public figures have either bought into these ideologies or have decided to promote them to serve their agendas.
(Regrettably, I have simplified these factors by placing them in separate compartments. I hasten to note emphatically, however, that they are all interconnected and overlapping in many instances.)
I will begin with a brief description of Extremism in the Arab-Muslim World and try to demonstrate how these factors play themselves out in their ideologies and actions. Bin Laden and others of his school of thought have actually existed throughout the history of Islam. In many cases they operated within the confines of the Muslim nation, in peaceful exchanges of ideas, controversies, and struggle for power, or violent conflicts which caused bloodshed and rifts in the ranks of Islamic communities and have had a lasting affect on the Muslim World until today.
In other, and more recent, situations, Islamic extremist groups have turned to their swords and guns, and more recently suicide bombers, car bombs and airplanes, against an external enemy.
In the Arab/Muslim World, extremism has grown especially in religious circles, but the call for ‘jihad’ against the West has been based not only on religious but also on socio-political grounds.
Extremists in religious circles have used grievances—real and conceived—caused by Western past and present injuries and have often translated these grievances to violent, sometimes terrorist, acts against Western targets. Sometimes these acts of violence and terrorism have also been directed against Arab/Muslim targets, resulting in heavy casualties among the civilian population.
Among the religious factors that inspire Islamic extremists is their interpretation of the concept of ‘Jihad’—which they have decided to be a ‘holy war’ against infidels and those who do not subscribe to their ideology. This includes especially Christians and Jews and heathens, but also secular and nonreligious elements within Muslim communities. In fact, many of the conflicts—violent and otherwise—within Islam have historically been among Muslim sects and factions, each claiming that theirs is the true faith.
These social and political grievances against the West include, among others, the corruption of Islamic societies by Western domination, imperial and military, a Western cultural invasion of Muslim societies and adoption by Muslims of Western patterns of thought and ideologies whether in politics or in daily life, such as clothes, goods, social behavior and mores—educational methods and materials—which are imitated especially by the young generation in Muslim societies.
But the most violent acts by Muslim extremists have been prompted by political motives and grievances:
- Colonization of Muslim countries and regions;
- Military invasions and occupation of Muslim lands;
- Carving out the Muslim/Arab region into political entities and states with artificial borders that tend to suit the interests of Western colonial powers;
- Occupation of Palestine—the Holy Land—and establishing the State of Israel in the middle of the Arab World based on religious beliefs derived from Western interpretation of sacred texts;
- Setting up and supporting what is conceived by extremists as secular, but undemocratic, regimes and administrations in the Arab/Muslim World;
- Draining the natural resources of Arab/Muslim regions, particularly oil from the Arab Gulf countries and recently from the newly-independent regions of the former Soviet Union.
The most recent phenomena of Muslim extremist acts of violence and terror, as seen daily in news media, have been perpetrated by Al-Qaida and Jihadist movements throughout the Arab/Muslim World and those of copy-cats among Western home-bred terrorists inspired by the Al-Qaida agenda.
In almost every statement, declaration, videotape or other means, Al-Qaida and other Islamic extremists site some or all of the factors that I have already detailed. Mainly, when they perpetrate, cause or execute an act of violence, they are actually on a jihad course against the enemies of Islam and, naturally, of God. They bomb Western targets and interests, assassinate or capture and kill Westerners (especially Americans) in the name of Allah, in obedience to a clear mandate and command from Him. They believe they have, as I explained earlier, a direct communication line with God, a special place in His universal scheme, and a special mandate to carry out His will. There is no logic in this kind of ideology—except in their minds. And there is virtually no logical argument or dialogue that can be initiated or conducted with them to bring about some sort of concession or agreement.
Having said all of this about Islamic extremists, I must emphasize two important points: First, I personally do not think any of these principles and beliefs represent Islam or Islamic teachings. Secondly, there are many Islamic movements and parties in the Arab/Muslim World which operate within the social and political contexts of their respective communities and which do not advocate violence and terror; indeed most of them criticize or condemn acts of terrorism. I say this because, more often than not, Western ‘experts’ intentionally or otherwise make general statements contrary to these two provisos.
Almost the same operative factors play out in the ideologies and behavior of Western religious extremists. And Western religious extremists also have existed throughout the history of Christianity and have also historically fought internal battles within the confines of the Christian community. They have also operated against other religions and cultures, such as Jews and Muslims.
I will treat here (briefly again) American and Israeli religious extremists together because they have had a greater influence on Western relations vis-a-vis Islam and the Arab/Muslim World, and because they work towards the same goals in the context of these relations.
However, saying that these extremist religious groups are governed by the same factors as Muslim groups, is not to be understood in any way that they resort to similar violent actions, although in some cases they do, and although in many cases they inspire or lead to such violence. However, the depth of dogmatic certainty and ideological zeal is even more obvious in the history of American and Jewish extremism and in their persistence in going after their goals.
With special emphasis on moral absolutism, the American political and religious Right have always presented a bipolar view of the world in which they work for the good of America and the rest of mankind against the evil enemy.
American religious extremists believe, like their Muslim counterparts, that they are in direct contact with God, have a covenantal relation with Him, act to carry out His commands, and are commissioned by Him to execute His plan for the universe, in the words of Stephen Sizer in his review of a ‘scary’ book, Captain America and the Crusade Against Evil: “The apocalyptic religious zeal, now dominant in America, is also ironically a mirror image of both Islamic jihad as well as Israeli militancy witnessed in the settler movement. The parallels are both striking and worrying. [The book notes] the inherent contradiction of America progressively distancing itself from any accountability to the United Nations or international law, in order to fulfill its unilateral crusade to impose Pax Americana and, to use the words of George W. Bush, ‘rid the world of evil'” (Sizer 2005).
Generally speaking, eschatological ideology has been more pronounced and persistent in American religious history, and so have the concepts of a ‘chosen people’, and the ‘promised land’, described often as ‘the city on a hill’, the ‘new Jerusalem’, or ‘this little American Israel’. Based upon this self-image, Americans have assigned to themselves—actually taken on by divine dispensation—a special role in the plan for all of humankind. The concept of Manifest Destiny—a term coined by John O’Sullivan in mid-nineteenth century in connection with the annexation of Texas—had actually been at work from the beginning and is still at work today. John Winthrop’s statement that God sifted a nation and chose a ‘select few of his spirits’ to establish the city on a hill in the New World (Winthorp 1929-1947), is reflected in Ronald Reagan’s statement in 1981 that “When God put this continent here, He had a plan that it would be peopled by people who uprooted themselves from the comfort of their homes to found the most wonderful nation called Americans” (Walters 1981). More recently, Carl Rove decided that “God postponed the discovery of America until after the Protestant Revolution”, and Dick Cheney in 2004 quoted the historian Bernard DeVoto’s: “When America was born, the stars danced in the sky” (Cheney 2000).
This special place God has assigned to America carries with it a tremendous responsibility towards the whole world. To take only a few examples from recent history, consider the implications of the following statement by President George Bush, Sr.: “It is a big idea: a new world order … Only the U. S. has both the moral standing and means to back it up” (State of the Union Address, 29 January 1991). And the following statements by George W. Bush: “America will lead the war on terrorism because this call of history has come to the fight nation”, and that this is “a divine plan that supercedes all human plans” (State of the Union Address, 28 January 2003). Or that “history has given us a unique opportunity to defend freedom, and we are going to do it,” or, finally, when asked if he had consulted his father before going to war against Iraq, he replied that he had “checked with a higher authority.”
It is this dogmatic certainty and self-righteous stance that allowed Americans from the beginning of the settlement of the New World to make decisions on behalf of and for the sake of the world. Paul Johnson, Richard Pearl and David Frum have put forward statements to support this view. Paul Johnson’s History of the American People is prefaced by a quote from Shakespeare: “Be not afraid of Greatness” and Johnson dedicates the History “to the people of America—strong, outspoken, intense in their convictions, sometimes wrong-headed but always generous and brave, with a passion for justice no nation has ever matched” (Johnson 1999).
More recently, Richard Pearle and David Frum stated in their fairly recent work, An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror: “A world at peace; a world governed by law; a world in which all peoples are free to find their own destinies: that dream has not yet come true, but if it ever does come true, it will be brought into being by American armed might and defended by American might, too” (Pearle and Frum 2003). Paul Johnson’s History, published ten years ago, has received universal acclaim and has become a standard reference on American history. And Pearle and Frum have been active influential players on the American contemporary political stage and in American intellectual circles.
Closely associated with this eschatological ideology are two major undertakings held by the Christian Right to be sacred missions in the context of what it describes as the ‘Judeo-Christian’ faith:
- The duty to labor, especially in the Muslim World and the Holy Land, to redeem the lost souls of the unsaved, mainly Muslims, but at times also Catholics. This is the ‘Missionary Enterprise’—also called ‘The Great Commission’.
- The preparation for the return of Christ and the coming of the Kingdom in Jerusalem on Zion Hill.
Both activities have caused a number of wars and a great deal of bloodshed, besides the heavy price paid by millions of displaced Palestinians who lost their homeland in the process and are still living in Diaspora. And both activities, by their nature and their goals, have caused a war of ideas against Islam and Muslims waged by many groups and individuals who subscribe to the agendas of the Christian Right and Political Right.
These groups and individuals have hurled grave insults against Islam, Mohammad and Muslims of an unprecedented degree. It is sufficient in this regard to mention names such as Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Jerry Vines, Benny Hinn and many others to obtain a short catalogue of these insults and attacks.
One significant recent example is Rod Parsley, John McCain’s ‘spiritual guide’, who has called on Christians to wage war on Islam, ‘the false religion’, and destroy it. In his book Silent No More, the pastor who leads thousands in prayer in his World Harvest Church of Columbus, calls Islam ‘the Deception of Allah’ and warns the West that there is a “war between Islam and Christian civilization.” “The fact is,” Pastor Parsley says, “I do not believe our country can truly fulfill its divine purpose until we understand our historical conflict with Islam. The fact is that America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed.” According to Parsley, Christopher Columbus sailed to “the New World in 1492” to defeat Islam. He concludes that the war against Islam has been decreed in heaven. “We have no choice. The time has come.” Parsley states emphatically that the Prophet of Islam was inspired by demons and thus Islam is an anti-Christ religion, and Allah was a demon spirit (Parsley 2005). This frightening exclusive dogmatic certainty is common to most of these extremists in the Islamic World as well as in the World of Christendom. Actions and beliefs of both have been dictated by this dogmatic certainty. The actions and beliefs of extremists on both sides have been dictated by the belief in a divine dispensation for the world and the resulting God-given rights and duties.
These rights and duties are obvious to them because they are, after all, carrying out the ‘will of God,’ or are only instruments in God’s hands. And these beliefs cause Ben Laden and other extremists Islamic groups think that their acts of violence will bring about the end envisioned in God’s dispensation. The will of God, in this case, is naturally linked, in their scheme of thought, to liberation of their countries from foreign presence, whether this presence manifests itself in armies of occupation or in cultural domination.
These beliefs also prompt Baruch Goldstein and the thousands of Jews who supported his crimes and those who paraded his funeral procession and built a shrine for him; they are also ‘warriors’ in the fight to fulfill ‘God’s will’. And, finally, Michael Rohan and the school of religious ideology he belongs to believe that the destruction of the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque is an imperative first step towards fulfillment of the divine prophecy of ‘rebuilding the Temple’, which is in turn a part of the end-time scenario.
The atrocities and violations committed against human rights, and human beings in general, become for those people an acceptable, if regrettable, necessity in the course of fulfilling the sacred rights and duties assumed by those who commit these atrocities. The American Religious Right extremists—in their continuous support of Israel’s policies of annexations, closures, destruction of Palestinian homes, building of settlements on Palestinian land, construction of an apartheid wall and constant violation of human rights—also act on their belief in the “will of God.”
It is indeed comforting to realize that these extremists are really in the minority on both sides. They are countered by the actions and statements of sane tolerant leaders, political, religious and civic. To take one example, Madeline Albright, in The Mighty and the Almighty, remarks:
As a practical matter, however, a nation (or group) that believes its success or failure is a direct consequence of the wishes of God is likely either to invite or create trouble.
I was not qualified to deliver a sermon, but I did want to capture as precisely as I could what 9/11 did and did not mean: I see no sign of God’s hand in these crimes, not any trace of religious faith or social conscience in their motivation. The perpetrators could not be loyal to Islam, for, by their acts, they have betrayed the teachings of that benevolent faith. The perpetrators of these outrages do not care about the Palestinians, whose leaders have expressed anger and sorrow at the attacks. They do not care about the poor, for they use their resources not to teach skills but to install hate. They are not crazy, for they acted with frozen-hearted calculation. These were crimes of purest evil, wholly unjustified by any reason of politics, culture, or faith.
And Karen Armstrong describes her understanding of Islam and the Prophet Muhammad:
As a paradigmatic personality, Muhammad has important lessons, not only for Muslims but also for Western people. His life was a jihad: as we shall see, this word does not mean ‘holy war,’ it means ‘struggle.’ Muhammad literally sweated with the effort to bring peace to war-torn Arabia, and we need people who are prepared to do this today. His life was a tireless campaign against greed, injustice, and arrogance. He realized that Arabia was at a turning point and that the old way of thinking would no longer suffice, so he wore himself out in the creative effort to evolve an entirely new solution (Armstrong 2006).
On the bright side also, communication has been maintained between religious leaders of all faiths: the Archbishop of Canterbury has visited Al-Azhar University in Cairo and gave a sermon at the mosque. The head of the Catholic Church, Pope John Paul II, was also welcomed in Damascus by the Grand Mufti of Syria and addressed the congregation in the Umayyad Mosque. Scores of examples of this kind of interaction give people hope that the extremists will not succeed in bringing about a war between cultures and religions.
The vast majority of people in the world rejects and condemns these extreme elements in the East and West and their ideologies. It remains for the saner heads of this majority to make themselves heard and to renounce violence and terrorism practiced by extremist groups, incitement to violence and terrorism practiced by civil and religious leaders, and wars and invasions made in the name of civilization and practiced by states.