Return-Path: <sentto-279987-3064-1003368627-fc=all.net@returns.onelist.com> Delivered-To: fc@all.net Received: from 204.181.12.215 by localhost with POP3 (fetchmail-5.1.0) for fc@localhost (single-drop); Wed, 17 Oct 2001 18:31:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 20822 invoked by uid 510); 18 Oct 2001 01:30:06 -0000 Received: from n29.groups.yahoo.com (216.115.96.79) by 204.181.12.215 with SMTP; 18 Oct 2001 01:30:06 -0000 X-eGroups-Return: sentto-279987-3064-1003368627-fc=all.net@returns.onelist.com Received: from [10.1.4.56] by n29.groups.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 18 Oct 2001 01:30:27 -0000 X-Sender: fc@big.all.net X-Apparently-To: iwar@onelist.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_0_1); 18 Oct 2001 01:30:26 -0000 Received: (qmail 88621 invoked from network); 18 Oct 2001 01:30:24 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by l10.egroups.com with QMQP; 18 Oct 2001 01:30:24 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO big.all.net) (65.0.156.78) by mta2 with SMTP; 18 Oct 2001 01:30:23 -0000 Received: (from fc@localhost) by big.all.net (8.9.3/8.7.3) id SAA05276 for iwar@onelist.com; Wed, 17 Oct 2001 18:30:23 -0700 Message-Id: <200110180130.SAA05276@big.all.net> To: iwar@onelist.com (Information Warfare Mailing List) Organization: I'm not allowed to say X-Mailer: don't even ask X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL1] From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net> X-Yahoo-Profile: fcallnet Mailing-List: list iwar@yahoogroups.com; contact iwar-owner@yahoogroups.com Delivered-To: mailing list iwar@yahoogroups.com Precedence: bulk List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:iwar-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com> Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 18:30:23 -0700 (PDT) Reply-To: iwar@yahoogroups.com Subject: [iwar] [fc:Understanding.Islam.and.the.Radicals] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Understanding Islam and the Radicals Asia, October 17, 2001 [ 10:39 ] By David F. Forte, TCA <<a href="http://www.times.kg/">http://www.times.kg/> CLEVELAND. (TCA ) -- The United States is in a war, but it is not a war between Islam and the West. Radical Islamic terrorists hijacked four airplanes and killed thousands of innocent Americans on September 11. But their enmity was not just directed against the United States and the civilization it represents. These terrorists also mean, as President Bush made clear in his speech to the Joint Session of Congress recently, to hijack Islam itself and destroy Islamic civilization. In the developing battle on behalf of these two great civilizations, it is imperative that we understand something about the basic traditions of Islam so that we can establish the historical and principled differences between Islam as it is practiced by the vast majority of Muslims worldwide and the ideas (and tactics) of the Islamic radicals that advocate terrorism. Islam is one of the three great revealed religions of the world. It began in the 7th century with the mission of Muhammad, who, according to the Islamic tradition, received from the Angel Gabriel revelations that were later collected in the book of the Koran. According to traditional Islamic belief, the Koran is a permanent book, coexisting with God through all eternity, whose message was given to every prophet--including Moses and Jesus--starting with Adam. Islam holds that by the 7th century the message of the Koran had not been received fully, or alternatively, that its meaning had become corrupted, and that Muhammad was given the task to complete the proclamation of the Koran. Muslims believe that Muhammad was the last of the prophets, and that the Koran as revealed to him and written down in the years after his death is the true word of God. The essential message of the Koran is that there is one true God and that individual believers must acknowledge this divine sovereignty and lead a righteous life according to the commandments of the one God to attain Heaven. Indeed, the Arabic word Islam literally means "to surrender," and in the religious context means to surrender to the will and law of God. Within a quarter century after Muhammad's death there came a civil war in Islam to determine his proper successor. Should it be a member of his tribe, or should it be a lineal descendent? This civil war led to the division that exists today between Sunni Islam (which represents the vast majority of the world Islamic community) and Shi'a Islam (large numbers of which are found in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, India, Pakistan, and parts of Central Asia). At the same time, and contributing to this larger division, there developed four traditions, and later, a fifth tradition, within Islam that contested with each other to define the essential meaning of the Muslim religion. One tradition and theological school was that of the Mutazilites, who stressed reason and rigorous logic. The Mutazilites were readers of Greek philosophy, and were close to what the Scholastics were in Medieval Europe. They believed that, although reason's fallibility required the Koran, reason could attain significant knowledge about what was good and was a sure way of attaining communion and nearness to God. They contested the idea that the Koran existed from all eternity and instead asserted that it was a creation of God. A second group was called the Murjites, who had a simple and straightforward philosophy. They believed that the political leadership of Islam was not worth a war, that peace was incumbent upon all Muslims, that there was no racial or clerical hierarchy in Islam, but rather that all Muslims were equal. No person, no matter the race or class, had any more or less a right to obtain entrance to Heaven than did anyone else. It is because of the Murjite influence that Islam has a strong egalitarian character. The Murjites were not strong supporters of those who thought of Islam in legalistic terms. Today, the Mutazilites are reflected in many Islamic reformers who seek to make Islam relevant to the modern world, and the Murjites are seen more in the traditional lives of many Muslims: love and brotherhood, respect for equality, following religious devotions to attain righteousness and the benevolence of God. The third tradition was that of the "legalists," who have become a dominant voice in Sunni Islam. They were the ones who eventually formed the Shari'a, the sacred law of Islam. Today the legalists are represented more or less by modern fundamentalists, who think that some or all of the Shari'a should be the life and the constitution of Islam. The fourth tradition was called the Kharijites. These were the radicals--one can fairly call them the fanatics. The Kharijites had a violent, politicized notion of Islam, and committed frightful massacres as a result. Their view was that God would reveal the true leader of Islam on the battlefield and that any Muslim who did not obey the religion exactly as the Kharajites understood it was an apostate and can be and should be killed. They made war on every other Muslim who did not follow their exact version of Islam. At one point, they even assassinated Ali, the fourth Caliph. Their objective was to exterminate any competing version of Islam. It took the rest of Islam two centuries to put down that heresy. The fifth tradition--called Sufism--came two centuries later in reaction to the dominant legalists. The Sufi were mystics, and believed that they could gain oneness with God through the inner life and moral purification. The Sufi tradition and the legalistic tradition have frequently been in severe tension over the centuries. The great reformers of Islam in the 19th and 20th centuries sought in many different ways to limit, reform, or even reject the Shari'a in favor of legal structures that they believed would enliven Islamic norms within their occupied lands. Even today, most Muslim countries are ruled by codes of law that are Western in design or influence. At the same time, however, partisans of the Shari'a, indirectly strengthened by Western imperial rule, believed that the best way to reestablish a society that was truly Islamic was to reintroduce the Shari'a in some or all of its literal details. This is the root of the conflict between the fundamentalists and the more modern Islamic states, which are acting in a way much closer to traditional Islam. The radicals of today are much closer to the Kharijites--a highly politicized form of Islam. They have no compunction with killing Muslims, whether they are in the World Trade Towers or whether there are in Pakistan or Afghanistan, who do not fulfil what they believe is the perfect Islamic code. In this sense they are a throwback to a sect which traditional Islam rejected as un-Islamic. No traditional Muslim, and even a fundamentalist, would say that it is ever legitimate, even in a legitimate war, to kill civilians. The killing of innocents is a sin. But the Islamic radicals have no qualms about violating sacred Islamic law in order to gain power. What Osama bin Laden and the radicals believe is that there is no more realm of Islam--no sphere of peace. There is only a sphere of war. According to the radical view, anyone and everyone opposed to their concept of the world is at war with Islam and must be treated as the enemy. This is why bin Laden attacks Egypt and Jordan; and why he wants to destroy rulers of Saudi Arabia--despite the fact that they, too, are Muslim. Osama bin Laden is making war on Islam the way Joseph Stalin made war on Russia, the way Mao Zedong made war on China. It is in this sense that the radicals have hijacked traditional Islam and are the Marxist vanguard of a new Islam. If bin Laden has his way, the Taliban would be the Islam for all Muslims. It would usher in a dark age that that great civilization has not seen the equal of. Over the past 10 or 20 years, the West has tended to legitimatize those in the Islamic world who claim that they are trying to enforce the law of the Shari'a. For various reasons, the fundamentalist view of imposing some or all of the Shari'a has grown. Some of the Islamic states, such as Pakistan and Egypt, have made compromises with the fundamentalists partly because the West has not been aware of the strength of traditional Islam including its spiritual and rationalist voices. This fundamentalist view itself has significant human rights problems, such as apostasy and religious intolerance, and its treatment of women. But the larger problem is that the extremists themselves gained some legitimization as a byproduct. However, if the extremists can get other Muslims to believe that the United States is the Great Satan, then they can get them to believe that freedom is not valuable, that toleration is not necessary, and that brotherhood is not required even of Islam. Most Muslims around the world, and most Muslim leaders around the world, condemned the terrorist attack on the United States and proclaimed that it did not represent or stem from Islam. The West needs to commend this opinion, and begin to appreciate and celebrate the traditional Islam that rejects such violence. ------------------ http://all.net/ Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
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