Although calling themselves ‘true Muslims,’ these enemies of the
United States are in fact enemies of Islam itself, and of any Muslim
who does not share their radical Islamist views—whether traditional
or modern in outlook; secular or deeply devoted to the inner, spiritual
dimensions of Islam.
The totalitarian political ideology championed by Osama bin Laden
is no more representative of ‘true’ Islam than the Spanish Inquisition
was of ‘true’ Christianity. Similarly, the difference between bin
Laden’s lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahiri and a contemporary Sufi mystic
is every bit as great as that between a medieval Grand Inquisitor
and Saint Francis of Assisi.
Contrary to the image of Islam in many Western minds, the Muslim
world has never been uniform in culture, or even remotely united
in theological perspective. Spanning fourteen hundred years, three
continents and hundreds of ethnic and linguistic groups, from Spain
and Morocco to China and the Philippines, there is no way uniformity
of culture or religious belief could ever have existed in the Islamic
world, whether spontaneous or imposed by religious fanatics. At least,
not until the 20th Century, when the spread of modern technology
enabled man’s age-old power lust to assume a dangerously mutant and
contemporary form.
Over the past hundred years, the very ‘highways’ which have so effectively
spread the West’s contributions to global culture, for good or ill,
have simultaneously fostered the worldwide dissemination of a competing
ideology which claims the right to conquest through jihad, and to
dominate all other forms of religious and cultural expression on
earth.
Distinct from the religion of Islam itself, 'Islamism' (or 'Islamic
fundamentalism') is a utopian political ideology which posits that
the abolition of the secular nation-state and the establishment of
a totalitarian form of government—ostensibly based on the model of
the prophet Muhammad and his companions—will produce a social paradise
free of human greed and imperfection through the strict imposition
of Islamic law.
Islamism was born in the minds of 20th Century Egyptian intellectuals
theorizing under the sway of those other great 20th Century ‘isms’:
communism and fascism. Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Ikhwan
al-Muslimun,
or Muslim Brethren, in 1928, and Sayyid Qutb, writing in the 1950s,
collaborated to make a unique contribution to humanity’s suffering.
Their accomplishment was to wed the totalitarian impulse and modern
technology to the radically intolerant, fundamentalist strains of
Islam known as Wahhabism, and Salafism.
Islamism is every bit as intolerant, and ferocious, as Hitler’s
Nazism, yet the dynamics of its structure, ideology and diffusion
have more in common with international Communism in its heyday, whose
far-reaching tentacles of ideology seduced men as diverse as Mao
Tse Dong, Alger Hiss, Che Guevara, Patrice Lumumba, Kim Philby, Pol
Pot and Haile Mengistu.
Few political movements have the ideological vitality, or virulence,
to filter across national borders, recruit millions of new adherents
and subvert the loyalties of a nation’s citizens. Communism was dangerous
precisely because it had such power, augmented by the financial support
of a resource-rich nation (Russia) hijacked by that same ideology.
The appeal of Islamism to potential adherents is every bit as
great, today, as was that of Marxist theory in the last century.
And, like
communist revolutionaries in the past, the Islamist movement
relies heavily upon the enormous financial and ideological support
provided
from oil-rich Saudi Arabia and its neighboring Gulf States—or,
in the case of Shi’ite Islamism, by Iran.
Perhaps 10-15% of all Muslims currently share the militant
Islamist views that underlie Osama bin Laden’s radical utopian
vision—which
translates into 130-200 million people, worldwide. With the
exception of the Pakistani Abu al-A'la al-Mawdudi, most leading
ideologues
of Islamic fundamentalism are Arab writers, and to this day,
most radical Muslim leaders in countries as diverse as Tanzania
and Indonesia
are of Arab descent. However, Wahhabi proselytizers are feverishly
seeking to graft their intolerant version of Islam onto local,
native cultures throughout the Muslim world. The results can
be seen from
Indonesia to Afghanistan and Nigeria, where local Muslims—radicalized
by Wahhabi money and influence—commit the most brutal acts,
slaughtering tens of thousands in the name of religion, including
local Christians,
Western tourists and even fellow Muslims who do not share their
radical views.
According to the World Almanac and Book of Facts, the
world's total Muslim population is approximately 1.3 billion
people, of whom
295 million live in Arab-speaking countries, which are at
the heart of the radical Islamist movement.
Islam's center of gravity, however, lies not in Mecca or
Cairo, but much farther East. Nearly twice as many Muslims
(560 million)
live
in Indonesia (190 million), Pakistan (135 million), India
(121 million), and Bangladesh (114 million) as in the entire
Arab
world. Thus the
‘struggle for the soul of Islam’ must inevitably be fought
and won not only in the Arab heartland, but on its periphery
as
well—a fact
which offers a unique, little-known opportunity for those
wishing to promote moderate and progressive interpretations
of Islam.
Non-Arab populations have the power to help define
Islam, and to discredit Wahhabism/Islamism as a heretical fringe
movement
or ‘Bedouin
understanding of Islam’ financed by oil-rich extremists.
Situated on
Islam’s eastern periphery, Indonesia has long been known to
have the most liberal, tolerant version
of
that religion
practiced
anywhere on earth. Its traditions are not the result
of accident, but rather of precise historic circumstances,
which offer
valuable lessons for us in the struggle against religious
extremism
and terror today.
The sixteenth century was a time of
great upheaval and bloodshed on the Indonesian island of Java,
as
newly
Muslim city-states
along its northern coast destroyed the Hindu-Buddhist
kingdoms of Majapahit
and Pajajaran, and extended their power to the island’s
interior.
Flush with victory, fanatical adherents of the new religion—many
of Arab or Chinese descent—spread terror as they sought to eradicate
the island’s ancient cultural heritage, in the name of the One True
God, Allah. Opposing them were indigenous Javanese—now led by Islamic
saints and political figures, such as Sunan Kalijaga—who sought continuity
and a common ground between religions, based on the precepts of tolerance
and mysticism.
For nearly a hundred years, the opposing forces struggled for the
soul of Java—and, ultimately, for that of Islam—in a war whose decisive
engagements occurred not only on the field of battle, but in the
hearts and minds of countless individuals scattered across the lush,
tropical landscape of Java. For in this
conflict between orthodox jihadists and Sufi
(mystically-inclined) Muslims, the Sufis’ profound spiritual
ideology—popularized among the masses by storytellers and
musicians—played a role even more vital than that of economics
or pure military force, in defeating religious extremism in
Java.
In the end, a new dynasty arose, founded on the principle of “the
throne for the people,” which established religious tolerance as
the rule of law, and guaranteed freedom of conscience to all Javanese.
The founder of that dynasty was a Javanese Sufi Muslim and disciple
of Sunan Kalijaga named Senopati ing Alogo. The basis of his victory
was the popular appeal of Senopati’s message of freedom, justice
and profound inner spirituality, in contrast to the fanaticism and
tyranny of his political opponents.
Today, more than four centuries later, Kalijaga’s and
Senopati’s legacy remains, in the form of Java’s distinctly
tolerant and pluralistic culture. Their ideological descendants
continue to resist the tide of religious extremism, now funded
by Gulf petrodollars and entrenched local elites, who use
radical Islam for personal advancement, or to attack and
undermine the process of reform in Indonesian society.
Contemporary leaders—such as Senopati’s lineal descendant,
Sri Sultan Hamengkubuono X; Kyai Haji Abdurrahman Wahid,
Indonesia's former president and long-time head of the largest
Muslim organization in the world; Amin
Abdullah, the rector of Sunan Kalijaga Islamic State University;
and rock superstar Ahmad Dhani—are not alone in their efforts,
but supported by tens of millions of Indonesians, who wish to
preserve their culture’s enlightened embrace of religious
tolerance and diversity.
Radical Islamists hate and
fear Javanese Islam. The fact that the largest Muslim population
in the world (Indonesia’s) does
not share
the radicals’ intolerant Wahhabi/Salafi views is a constant source
of irritation to many Saudis and other militant Islamists. As
a result, Indonesia is in the crosshairs: the target of a sustained
militant
Islamist campaign to destroy the most liberal and tolerant form
of Islam on earth, by: 1) trying to rewrite the Indonesian constitution
to incorporate Islamic sharia law; 2) funding terrorism; 3) instituting
piecemeal legislative change; and 4) domination of towns and
provinces
where the militants can impose their views through local support
or by intimidation.
In many ways, Indonesia resembles Britain
in World War II. Hitler’s failure to seize the UK cost him that
war, as Britain was transformed
into an “unsinkable aircraft carrier,” and the base from which
the liberation of Europe was launched. Similarly, Indonesia can
serve
as a launching pad for an intellectual and cultural assault upon
extremist ideology throughout the Muslim world. By integrating
its rich spiritual traditions with the best of modern practices,
Indonesian/Javanese
Islam can serve as a model for Islamic civilization worldwide.
Radical
Islamists are determined to prevent this from happening. For
decades, the Saudis have been quietly promoting strict Islam
in Indonesia: financing educational institutions; providing scholarships
to study at Saudi universities; funding radical Islamist groups
to wage jihad against Christians and Westerners; building mosques
and
hiring Islamist imams (religious leaders); churning out translations
of militant Islamist texts from Arabic to Indonesian and subsidizing
their distribution to millions; and attempting to discredit progressive
Islamic leaders.
Money is ammunition in a war of ideas,
and Saudi activities in Indonesia are only part of a $70 billion
campaign to spread their
fundamentalist
Wahhabi sect worldwide. These Saudi proselytization efforts
constitute “the largest worldwide propaganda campaign ever mounted—dwarfing
the Soviets’ propaganda efforts at the height of the Cold War.”
— “How billions in oil money spawned a global terror network,”
U.S.
News & World Report, (12/15/03).
As Daniel Pipes of the
Middle East Forum has written, “Militant Islam is the problem.
Moderate Islam is the solution.” Unfortunately,
moderate
Muslims are in disarray, and nearly voiceless throughout
the world today. They have few organized sources of international
encouragement
and support—unlike radical Islamist networks, which enjoy
immense
financial backing from Saudi and other patrons.
By pressuring Saudi Arabia to eliminate its funding of Islamist
groups, and applying the lessons of Java’s historic struggle,
we can help
to reduce religious extremism and discredit the use of
terror worldwide. That means helping moderate and progressive
leaders
promote the cause
of liberty, tolerance and justice in other Muslim countries,
and encouraging true inner spirituality as an antidote
to religious fanaticism.
The appeal of these ideas is evident, with calls for
political reform now echoing throughout the Middle East.
They are also essential to counter the growth of hard line
fundamentalist parties that seek to exploit the desperation
engendered by decades of economic and political corruption, and
the emerging process of democratic reform, in order to dominate
their respective societies—much as Hitler rose to power by
cleverly exploiting the suffering and resentments of the German
people in a newly democratic Weimar Germany.
Muslim immigrants to
the West can also play a vital role in this historic process, helping to reconcile and
integrate traditional Islamic
faith with the
contemporary world. Although the Muslim population of
Western Europe (15 million)
and North America (3 million) is relatively small, the
existence of modernist, Sufi and secular Muslims in the
West offers
the opportunity of developing “Euro-Islam” and “North
American Islam”
as bulwarks
against destructive religious extremism. Euro- and North
American Islamic ideas may be translated and fed back
into the mainstream
of Islamic thought worldwide—creating a powerful synergy
with Indonesian, South Asian and Middle-Eastern counterparts—in
order
to marginalize
and ultimately defeat radical Islamism’s appeal to new
generations of Muslims.
Of course, the Wahhabis have long been trying to accomplish
the exact opposite. They seek to prevent assimilation and
convert immigrant Muslim communities in the West to their own
brand of militant Islam, as evidenced by the mounting terrorist
attacks, social upheaval and widespread attempts to silence any
criticism of radical Islam that now plague Europe.
We thus find ourselves in a race against time, in which the
future of our interconnected world depends upon the outcome of
this global struggle for the soul of Islam. For the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, combined with a
virulent, nihilistic ideology, will inevitably place such
weapons into the hands of those eager to use them—unless the
people of the world discover a common ground based on the inner,
spiritual
teachings of every religion, and a
recognition of our common humanity, which gives rise to mutual
understanding and tolerance, rather than hatred.
