A Wide Spectrum of Cultures and Beliefs
While many Westerners picture Islam as a religion of angry fanatics
surging through narrow, crowded streets, the reality is much more
complex and diverse. Long established on three continents and among
hundreds of ethnic and linguistic groups, from Morocco to China and
the Philippines, Islamic culture, practice and faith are characterized
by widespread variety and local color.
The
world’s total Muslim population is approximately 1.3 billion people,
of whom less than
twenty percent are Arabs (shown here in blue). Islam's center
of gravity lies not in Mecca or Cairo, but much farther East. More
Muslims live on the Indian subcontinent (380 million, shown
in orange), than in the entire Arab world, while Indonesia (190
million, shown in green) has the largest Muslim population of any
country
on earth.
This cultural and ethnic diversity is also reflected in
the spectrum of religious thought within Islamic societies, which
can be said
to fall within several categories:
RADICALS are fundamentalist Muslims who seek immediate, violent
confrontation (jihad) with their perceived enemies, in order
to impose their rigid
interpretation of Islam on all members of society, and unite
the world's 1.3 billion Muslims in a pan-Islamic caliphate stretching
from Morocco to Indonesia and the Philippines. Many such radicals
also aim to extend the “rule of Islam” to Europe, North America
and the rest of the world.
OTHER FUNDAMENTALISTS share the radicals'
desire to restore the imaginary perfection of the early Islamic
community established
by Muhammad
and his companions (al-Salaf as-Salih, "the Righteous
Ancestors")
but shy away from immediate violent confrontation with their
opponents due to a belief that the time is not yet ripe for
global jihad. In
the words of Cheryl Benard, fundamentalists “want to gain
political power and then to impose strict public observance
of Islam,
as they themselves define it, forcibly on as broad a population
worldwide
as possible. Their unit of reference is not the nation-state
or the ethnic group, but the Muslim community, the ummah.”
TRADITIONALISTS
seek to maintain a conservative society, which is often rooted
in local practices and beliefs distinct from
Arab or
fundamentalist belief structures, and hence opposed to
radical and fundamentalist agendas. Traditionalists are
often, but
not always, suspicious of modernity, innovation and change,
and some
are close to the fundamentalists.
SUFIS are Islamic mystics
who usually place a premium on inner religious experience and union
with God vis-à-vis doctrinaire formalism,
and are thus generally (but not always) at odds with radical
and fundamentalist Islamic organizations. In many parts of the
world, those with links to various Sufi brotherhoods constitute
a
majority
of the local population.
MODERNISTS generally advocate a separation of religion and
state, as they seek to reform Islam, and to help integrate
Muslim societies
with the rest of the global community.
SECULARISTS are firmly committed to the separation of religion
and state, with religion relegated to the private sphere.
Islam also consists of various competing sects, most notably the
dominant Sunni tradition, and the minority Shi’ites, who represent
a preponderance of the local Muslim population only in Iran, Iraq,
Bahrain and Lebanon.
Although the vast majority of Muslims are peace-loving
and moderate, for decades radical and fundamentalist
Muslim groups
have been
seeking to force their intolerant versions of Islam
onto local, native cultures
throughout the Islamic world.
Over the past thirty
years, Saudi Arabia alone has spent over $70 billion to spread
its fundamentalist Wahhabi sect worldwide.
Experts
estimate that 10-15% of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims currently
share the militant fundamentalist views that underlie Osama
bin Laden’s radical vision… which translates into roughly 120-180
million Muslim extremists, worldwide.
