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Mon. Dec 09, 2002

Whither Radical Islam?

Whither Radical Islam? – (via Dangerousmeta) In light of recent discussions, this article offers an interesting history lesson, starting with the roots of fundamentalist Islam and Wahabbism, and how it might relate to bin Laden and his philosophical bunkies: “If Taymiyya was Osama’s first role model, the second was Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, born in 1703 in Arabia, then a remote, neglected part of the Ottoman Empire. He was steeped in the works of Taymiyya that became religious pillars of back-to-basics Wahhabism. Its creed was that ’innovation’ was a grave sin against Islam. ’Takfir’ was proclaimed, which meant innovators were to be put to death. Wahhab, allied with a local sheikh, Muhammad ibn Saud, fought to restore a strict interpretation of the faith. By the time he died in 1792, Wahhabism had conquered most of central Arabia.”

It also ponders what could be the derivation of much of the anti-Americanism that fuels militant Islamists, one man’s experience in this country a half century ago: “The chief theoretician of the Muslim Brothers was Sayyid Qutb, who wrote non-stop during his desert imprisonment by Nasser. Hanged in 1965, his books are still bestsellers throughout the Middle East. His manifesto, ’Signposts,’ merged all the essential elements of revolutionary Islamism.”

“Qutb’s views of America—derived from his stay in Greeley, Colo., while working on a master’s in education—are widely shared today throughout radical Islam, and presumably derived from his works. Repelled by America’s admiration for Israel, as well as the licentiousness and racism that pervaded the country, he decried American culture as foul and empty.”

This “Year End Roundup” does not paint a pretty picture of our world today. But it does give some historical grounding to the question we’ve all heard a lot lately, “Is Islam, as President Bush keeps repeating, ’a faith based upon peace and love and compassion’ committed to ’morality and learning and tolerance’? Yes and no. Radical Islam is committed to jihad against the United States and Israel, or a war of civilizations between the Judeo-Christian West and the impoverished Muslim world. The Wahhabis and Deobandis hate all things American, and are intolerant vis a vis all religions outside their own warped view of Islam. Moderate Islam is yet to find a voice that will roll back the extremists, a sort of Islamic Martin Luther, or at least a Martin Luther King.”