ARTICLES
October 2005 ARTICLES
Contents © 2005
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
Jihad, A Beautiful Concept?
Ecumenical Conference Presents a Peaceful Islam
BY RYAN GRANT
On August 28, the archdiocese of Los Angeles held a conference at Mater Dolorosa retreat center in Pasadena, titled, "A Christian Understanding of Islam." This conference featured three of the most well-known Islamic scholars in the U.S. today -- Shaikh Sadullah Kahn, Dr. Muzzamil Siddiqi, and Shaikh Yassir Fazaga, who is said to be the youngest imam in the country. Present as well was Hussam Ayloush, the director of the Southern California branch of the Council on American Islamic Relations.
The Rt. Rev. Alexei Smith, head of the Los Angeles archdiocese's ecumenical office, hosted the conference and gave the opening remarks, saying, "it is actually very important that we meet today for several reasons. For starters, Pope Benedict XVI is meeting with Muslim leaders today in Cologne, Germany. So we are engaged in the same fundamental activity, promoting understanding."
Father Alexei continued, "we are celebrating the 40th anniversary of Nostra Aetate, the document of Vatican II which opened up dialogue with non Christian Religions, and I want to read you a few sections from this document. Keep in mind, too, that some of the language is dated." He then proceeded to quote from Nostra Aetate, which reads, "the Church regards with esteem also the Moslems. They adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all-powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to men; they take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even His inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God." Then Father Alexei announced, "this has been the teaching of the Catholic Church for 40 years, and most of us are only hearing it today. Isn't that incredible?"
Then Hussam Ayloush from the Council on American Islamic Relations gave his opening address and introduction. "I can come [to this conference] knowing," he said, "that this is not an attempt to convert each other. I think we are beyond that."
The first speaker was Shaikh Sadullah Khan, who spoke on the topic, "What is a Muslim?" Shaikh Khan explained that Muslims believe Islam is a way of life. "We do not understand the concept of giving to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's. We can't separate politics in religion, because in our sense Caesar is God." He went on to explain that Islam is a complete system that governs every way of living, from religion to daily living and law. Muslims follow a law called shar'ia, which is derived from the Qur'an (or Koran). "Islam governs and guides every process in life."
Because Shaikh Khan had to leave early, he took a few questions before the formal question and answer section. I asked him about Islam's understanding of original sin and salvation. Shaikh Khan confirmed that Islam does not believe in original sin, that every person starts with a clean slate. (This question however caused a stir -- and not among the speakers but the audience. At the break, a woman came up to me and explained that "it is possible to believe that Jesus didn't die on the cross." I replied that scripture and the Council of Trent, not to mention the Creed, make it quite clear that Jesus did in fact die on the cross and rise again, and it is more or less settled doctrine. However, adding that she had a Ph.D, she said that its not really settled doctrine and that I should go to Vatican II. I replied that I have read all 16 documents of Vatican II, and I didn't remember seeing anything about that there. Then she promptly said goodbye.)
The next lecture was given by Dr. Muzzamil Siddiqi, who is one of the top Islamic scholars in the country and is the religious director of the Islamic Society of Orange County. His talk was on the "Aspects of The Qur'an."
Siddiqi explained, "Islam is a community of faith. The core of our belief is the word of God, which for us is found in the Qur'an, from Muham med. First it is important to have some understanding of the nature of God, to understand the Qur'an in Islamic understanding. The Qur'an is the word of God, but is not God. Rather, the Qur'an is the medium of worship. Though we do not worship the book in Islam, the book is very important." Next, Siddiqi explained that Islam understands that God is one, a personal being with attributes, who loves, hears, sees, etc. "He is not an idea. The aspects of the divine are infinite. It says in the Qur'an that if all oceans became ink, the names of God could not be exhausted." Adding to the Islamic understanding of God, and the limits of man's understanding, he said, "it is not allowed to make any image, because when you make an image, you make Allah lesser. God is always transcending, but, at the same time, he is imminent."
The Qur'an speaks of prophets and messengers, and there is a difference between the two in Islam. "Messengers bring a special message, but the prophet is inspired by God; yet he doesn't have any messages given to him by Allah. There were many, many prophets, and many messengers. There were great messengers and prophets; the names of those mentioned in the Qur'an are Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and of course Muhammed.... It is absolutely required in Islam to believe in all of them." According to Siddiqi, Muslims "believe in the Torah, the Psalms of David, and in the Gospels, the divine message that came to Jesus. However, within the Gospels there is the real gospel of Jesus. Gospels are just human transmissions."
Then Siddiqi moved to the meat of his talk, the history and format of the Qur'an. "Allah's word was given to the last prophet Muhammed, transmitted by the angel Gabriel, in the precise words of Allah, and given by other sources both written and orally," he said. "The Qur'an is not Muhammed's word, but God's word. It came upon his heart and his mind, and he was used to transmit God's word in its precise meaning. That is to say, the meaning is precise, though that isn't to say we understand it precisely. We strive to achieve that understanding." In addition, Siddiqi explained that the Qur'an must be read in Arabic by scholars and that a translation is not considered the Qur'an.
Siddiqi concluded with why he feels terrorism is not a part of Islam. "We must be just, and to be pious is to be just. You can not murder and be just. If a man murders anywhere, it is like he kills the whole of humanity. Unless of course it is the course of due process. If anyone saves a life, [it is] like saving the life of all humanity." In the Qur'an, "Allah commands justice, doing of good, and liberality too, and forbids all shameful deeds. Here you have justice, doing of kindness, taking care of family; [it] forbids murder, injustice, and rebellion."
What of the Qur'an texts that command violence? Siddiqi said, "you must not take the Qur'an out of context. In your Bible it says, in Deuteronomy. that you 'shall cast down their altars, and kill all the men in the land, and the women, and the animals, and the women under 14 you shall enslave.' Now is that what the Bible teaches Jews and Christians to do?"
After lunch, Shaikh Yassir Fazaga gave the final talk. Shaikh Fazaga is Sudanese, and as such was the only non-Arab speaker. He spoke on the subject of the "Aspects of Daily Muslim life."
This talk focused primarily on Muslim life in America and the understanding that Muslims are actually Americans too. Fazaga said that the image of Islam is of airplanes diving into the World Trade Center. However, he said, "we must keep in mind there is Christian terror, like the Irish Repub lican Army. Protestants and Catholics have fought each other for centuries." Furthermore, "there is also the misunderstanding of a beautiful concept like jihad," Fazaga continued. "When people see things like 9/11, they say to me, this is a jihad. But [jihad] means the struggle with oneself, it means the striving to have a relationship with God. Maintaining that relationship requires effort, a struggle against the flesh, that is called the jihad."
During the question and answer period, questions were not taken verbally, but were written down on cards and submitted to Father Alexei, who then presented a sampling of the questions present. The questions and their responses are too numerous to reproduce here. However, we will go over the most important ones.
A questioner asked if the sections of the Qur'an Muhammed wrote in Mecca, which contain the peaceful meaning of jihad, had been abrogated by the parts later written in Medina, which call for war and violence? The questioner also asked for a definition of infidel.
Siddiqi replied, "you may find that a very large portion of the Qur'an was written in Mecca and much less written in Medina. And no, it was not abrogated; there is a big portion of the [Muslim] world that says these are valid and applicable. There are a few verses that are indicated speaking about rules and certain laws and the history of that. Scholars have debated the meaning of the word abrogation, is this rule abrogated, and certain things are more applicable in certain cases, etc."
After that Siddiqi distinguished "infidel" from Jews and Christians, who are called "People of the Book" by the Qur'an. Then all three speakers agreed that Christians are not infidels but are "People of the Book."
Another questioner asked Shaikh Fazaga how the terrorists are able to justify their terrorism with jihad if its meaning is primarily spiritual. Fazaga responded that the terrorists merely pick and choose. "They have already formulated the opinion, and it is just selective reading," he said.
To respond to the views presented at this conference, I asked Srdja Trifkovic, the foreign-affairs editor of Chronicles Magazine, to give a counterpoint. Trifkovic is director of the Illinois-based Rockford Institute's Center for International Affairs and an expert on Islam.
"The statements by these gentlemen is part of a well-established presentation of Islam to non-Muslims and called Taqiyya, which means dissimulation in front of the infidel or misrepresentation of the intentions of Muslims before they are strong enough to take over a community," Trifkovic said. "This is mandated by the prophet Muhammed in the Haddith, that is, the [oral] traditions of the prophet regarded as the guide and morality [of Islam]. This was introduced by the skirmishers sent into Arabia by Muhammed. It is a process of assimilation.
"The true face of Islam is the shar'ia, the introduction of the tax on non-Muslims, and persecutions by Islamic government," Trifkovic continued. "The view of terrorists is somewhat ambivalent and somewhat ambiguous. When a terrorist cell is discovered, either before or after it is enacted, there is the feigning, shock, and surprise within the Muslim community, coupled with the accusations of Islamophobia and over eagerness by law enforcement. The majority of Muslims want to stay out of the screen. But, if they are true Muslims, their loyalty is not only to Mecca but the example set by the prophet Muham med and the word of God."
Trifkovic said that in asserting that there is no abrogation in the Qur'an, "Siddiqi would have to explain how come there are such fundamental contradictions" in the text. "Sayyid Qutb, a well known scholar of Islam, wrote a book, Jihad in The Cause of God, published in 1933; in it he said, 'Muslims should not be misled by these verses that say to be peaceful to the people of the book.' Classical Islamic scholars do not doubt that you abrogate, and it is accepted by the university al-Azhai in Egypt, the foremost institution of Islamic scholarship."
At the conference, none of the speakers addressed how Islam became such a powerful religion, which seemed a strange omission, since the so-called extremists claim they must make war on the infidels and conquer their lands. As Trifkovic explained, "Islam spread through the ancient world by jihad, misrepresented in the western world as one's simple religious struggle. But it is a struggle against non-Muslim religions." In that religious war, one of three things must happen, said Trifkovic: "the community that is not Muslim is invited to convert to Islam. If it refuses, it is then invited to accept Muslim overlords and pay the tax as a cost for remaining Christians or Jews. The third option, if they don't accept that, is the sword. In Islam there is no natural law or morality, and all is based on the Qur'anic text and the example of the prophet, the Haddith.
"This process has been repeated throughout Asia Minor and the Iberian Peninsula and the Balkans through all of Islam's history," Trifkovic continued. "Suffice it to say that the divine duty of waging war in the path of Allah is the unique contribution [of Islam to] the religions of the world. It resembles the objectives of the Bolsheviks. Ultimately the whole world will be Muslim, just as for the Bolsheviks the whole world would be Communist. It is also important to bear in mind that terrorism is, in terms of orthodox Islamic teaching, justified by the example of Muhammed in the siege of Ta'if. There, Muhammed used catapults (which where were the WMD of that time), [throwing] rocks, Greek fire, or diseased bodies. In the Qur'an itself it says 'I will inspire terror into the hearts of unbelievers.'"
Trifkovic denied the claim of conference speakers that "People of the Book" are not infidels. "As far as the Qur'an, the Haddith, and shar'ia are concerned, Jews and Christians are unbelievers; they cannot attain salvation and are to be subjected to dhimitude (from the Arabic dhimis), which is discrimination, accepting that they are second class citizens. When the Muslims conquered Palestine, a tax on all Christians and Jews was levied and no rebuilding of churches and monasteries was allowed. When paying the tax [Christians and Jews] had to do so with the 'hand of humility.' This means that they needed to pay on their knees, or that the tax collector would sit on a stool to receive the tax, while the Christian would have to kneel.
"In India, Hindus were treated mercilessly, given no mercy even if they were willing to accept Islamic law. They had no grounds to expect mercy. Even if they were tolerated for a while, that didn't mean that a new ruler, or the same ruler on a whim, wouldn't change his mind."
Trifkovic disagreed with conference speaker Shaikh Fazaga, who said that in Islam jihad is to be understood only spiritually. "Traditional Muslim thinkers and jurists have elaborated on this distinction through the centuries, and there is no doubt that there is a meaning of jihad that means to be in a spiritual struggle. Yet one author after another primarily treat it as conquering the world with the ghazis [Islamic swordsman]. So to claim jihad is to be understood with a spiritual meaning is something that only occurs once the physical jihad is over. It's simply disingenuous to claim otherwise.
"For three centuries after Muham med, jihad was a natural thing for Arabic warriors. Muhammed provided both the rationale and the organization and the divine justification. More importantly, this still motivates jihadists; there is only one category of Muslim assured of salvation, and that is the jihad warrior."
Trifkovic does not think it fair for Siddiqi to compare Old Testament violence, "Christian" terrorism (as with the IRA), or the historical battles between Catholics and Protestants with the commands to violence found in parts of the Qur'an. "It is infuriating for a gentleman to compare the IRA to Muslim terrorism, and it is preposterous," said Trifkovic. "Is the IRA threatening anything other than British targets in Northern Ireland? No. The IRA has Marxist roots, and at no time did the Catholic Church or any Catholic prelate endorse or consider the IRA as their spokesman. There has been much hostility between the two.
"On the other hand, with Islam there is a tradition of terrorism that is not only the expression of the sizeable segment of the community but a scriptural command and is treated by some Islamic scholars as pardonable and desirable. What should be said is that we have not heard of [Christian] Orthodox suicide bombers, or Episcopalians taking over schools in Muslim cities and slaughtering hundreds of children in front of their parents. [Siddiqi's] is a very unfair comparison, because when God ordered the Israel ites to slaughter the inhabitants of Canaan, it was specific to their identity and concerned a limited number of people in a limited place. The Qur'an is unlimited and applies to all Muslims and in all times. It is interesting that Siddiqi doesn't quote the New Testament, which refers to a loving God, quite the contrary to the Qur'an. If there was a rising tide of Christians in Saudi Arabia who committed acts of terrorism and gave pulpits to defend that, then there could be a comparison."