By Michael Brown
Sunday, May 26, 2013
I am sometimes criticized for using the term “radical
Islam” when describing acts of Islamic terror, the argument being that this is
really normative Islam. In contrast, the more peaceful expression of the faith
is understood to be a liberalized, non-representative form of Islam. Could this
criticism be valid?
Writing from Australia, CultureWatch commentator Bill
Muehlenberg asked, “So how many more 9/11’s do we need before we wake up? How
many more Bali bombings? How many more attempted beheadings like in London
today [namely, May 23rd]? When will we wake up and realise that Islam is in
fact a political ideology which has always been spread by the edge of the
sword?
“When will we believe the words of Muhammad? When will we
believe the Koran? When will we believe the hadith? When will we take them at
their word when they tell us they intend to kill us? When will we understand
that they want to see the entire world under submission to Islam and sharia
law?”
Has he overstated his case?
In the aftermath of the shocking murder and beheading of
a British solider this week by two Muslim men (in broad daylight, no less, and
with a video commentary and explanation by one of the murderers), British Prime
Minister David Cameron immediately issued this statement: “This was not just an
attack on Britain and on the British way of life, it was also a betrayal of
Islam and of the Muslim communities who give so much to our country. There is
nothing in Islam that justifies this truly dreadful act.”
This was echoed by the Muslim Council of Britain, which
condemned what it called a "truly barbaric act" which has "no
basis in Islam.”
In contrast, Tommy Robinson, leader of the right-wing
English Defense League, said: "They're chopping our soldiers' heads off.
This is Islam. That's what we've seen today."
On the Islamic side, Omar Bakhri, a “Syrian-born Islamist
cleric who taught one of the men accused of hacking to death an off-duty
British soldier on a London street praised the attack for its ‘courage’ and
said Muslims would see it as a strike on a military target.” And the radical,
England-based Islamist preacher Anjem Choudary “has said he was ‘shocked’ by
the murder of a soldier in Woolwich, but has refused to condemn the attack,”
noting that “I think not many Muslims can disagree with” what the murderer said
in his video explanation.
So, who is speaking for normative Islam, or, more
precisely, what is normative Islam?
No one would argue that there are multiplied millions of
Muslims, perhaps several hundred million Muslims, who are peace loving, who
abhor violence in the name of Islam, and who are repulsed by the actions of the
Boston Marathon bombers or the London machete murderers. The question is
whether these Muslims are being true to the core values of their religion.
Looking at this from a Christian perspective, while we might
engage in a war with the Taliban in Afghanistan, this is not a holy war for us
but a military campaign, even if Christian soldiers in the military feel they
are doing God’s work in protecting America and rooting out terrorism.
But no one – or at least, hardly anyone with a working
brain – is thinking that it is our Christian duty to kill Muslims or that by
decimating the Taliban we are advancing the gospel. (We can safely ignore the
ridiculous claims of Mikey Weinstein here.)
Even the exceptions to the rule, like Fred Phelps of the
notorious (and tiny) Westboro Baptist Church, are not advocating murdering
Muslims (or other Christians or Americans in general), and they are completely
repudiated by virtually every recognized Christian group in the land.
Yet this universal repudiation of Islamic terror is never
to be found in Muslim circles for at least two reasons: 1) Muslim leaders do
not universally repudiate these acts, since many consider this to be a valid
expression of jihad. 2) In many cases, those Muslims who want to speak out will
not for fear of their lives. As an anonymous (!), atheist Pakistani blogger
writes, “I have ideas and opinions that are unconventional, as far as most
Pakistanis are concerned. I’m not the only one who thinks differently, but the
systematic silencing of our nation’s free-thinkers, has reduced the
non-religious and liberal population to a small, scattered class of
individuals.”
This reminds me of Muslim protesters in England a few
years back who basically said, “How dare you call us terrorists! We will kill
you!”
But there’s something far weightier to consider as we
look at the severe Islamic persecution of Christians in countries like Iraq and
Egypt and Syria and northern Nigeria. The fact is that this has happened before,
and it took place during the so-called Golden Age of Islam.
Church historian John Phillip Jenkins tells the story in
his important book The Lost History of Christianity.
“As late as the eleventh century,” he writes, “Asia was
still home to at least a third of the world’s Christians, and perhaps a tenth
of all Christians still lived in Africa—a figure that the continent would not
reach again until the 1960s. Even in 1250, it still made sense to think of a
Christian world stretching east from Constantinople to Samarkand (at least) and
south from Alexandria to the desert of the Ogaden, almost to the equator.”
What happened to this thriving, intellectually vibrant
Christianity? Jenkins explains, “And yet this older Christian world perished,
destroyed so comprehensively that its memory is forgotten by all except
academic specialists.”
It was virtually wiped out by violent Islamic
persecution, “especially during the fourteenth century, [when] church
hierarchies were destroyed, priests and monks were killed, enslaved, or
expelled, and monasteries and cathedrals fell silent. As church institutions
fell, so Christian communities shrank, the result of persecution or ethnic and
religious cleansing.”
Perhaps radical Islam is more normative than many of us
would like to believe. At the very least, Islam has a potentially violent core
that is deeply associated with its fundamental principles of faith.
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