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The �mainstream� Muslim and violence
Published on February 13, 2007
Since September 11, 2001 it has often been argued that the Islamist militants are a deviant lot and that mainstream Islam has nothing to do with the violence that its critics have so unfairly attributed to it. The argument is sometimes taken a step further to suggest that Islam in fact condemns violence. Condemnation of terrorism by �moderate� Muslims so far has not by any means been universal and has often carried important caveats. For the present I shall skirt around the latter issue, important though it is, and take a brief look into the question whether �mainstream� Islam is in some major sense to blame for the increased violence Islamist militants commit in the name of Islam. It will be seen that the despite the presence of many decent individuals among Islamic communities who abhor violence, the culpability of the practitioners of mainstream Islam in the spread of violence is real enough.
It is necessary first to define a �mainstream� Muslim. No definition here can be scientific with a capital s and I stand ready to re-examine mine in the light of criticism. By a �mainstream� Muslim I mean someone who believes in one God, even if he, or she, does not always abide by all that He has ordained. He prays daily, even if not five times a day, prescribed by the holy books. He normally goes to the mosque for the Friday congregation. He is expected to fast during the month of Ramadan. He spends for charity, even if what he spends may not add up to the proportion of his wealth that he is supposed to spend under the rules of zakat. He considers a once in a lifetime pilgrimage to Mecca an obligation, even though he finds arguments to avoid it as long as he can. He sacrifices an animal on the occasion of the Eid-ul-Azha; he may not slaughter it himself but is normally present at the gory event, sometimes with his children too watching. He hopes for the mercy of God for his indiscretions. He has a great deal of respect for religious leaders and listens to their sermons as a matter of piety. He accepts the Koran as the word of God, and neither questions its edicts nor sees any contradiction in it. He knows at least the rudiments of the Koran by heart, sometimes recites them or hears them recited. If he is a non-Arab, he recites the Koran, or hears the recitation, without understanding it but he has little difficulty in accepting any translation offered to him by traditional interpreters of the Book.
There is little in him to suggest that he is prone to violence and would probably shudder at the thought of himself as an Islamist suicide bomber. He does not participate in terrorist acts. If he did, Islamist terrorists the world over would be counted in their hundreds of millions, which is obviously not the case. I take issue with those who claim that the terrorists are a �tiny minority� among Muslims, if by this it is meant that there are only a handful of individuals who are engaged in acts of terrorism. The number of terrorists is not longer small. Look at Iraq today and the supply of extremists who would kill themselves in order to kill others seems inexhaustible. But terrorism is not confined to acts of violence by individual or small groups of Islamists. A political regime can use a large number of people who would go to great lengths to kill or maim to propagate their religious ideals. The Taliban in Afghanistan marshalled hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of fanatics around their cause. The number of active members of the Taliban as a political organization was itself large. Add to them their bed fellow and you come up with a very large number. In Iran, since in 1979, a political regime has forced its will on the people. This it has been able to achieve through the use of a machinery of government manned by a very large number of fanatics who terrorize, brutalize and kill, aided by many who are only too glad to help. The number of people in the Islamic world who would use terror to achieve �Islamic� objectives can no longer be counted on the fingers of a human hand.
Nevertheless, in the Islamic world as a whole, mainstream Muslims, defined above, would vastly outnumber those whom we can call Islamist terrorists. They would certainly far outnumber terrorists in countries like Bangladesh where, till recently, Islamist terrorism has been at bay. Even in Pakistan, which has been a major source of supply of terrorists to Afghanistan and elsewhere, mainstream Muslims far outnumber terrorists. This is true of all Muslim majority countries, even though the definition of mainstream will vary from country to country. Ordinary Muslims do not go around killing people. Yet mainstream Muslims bear a large share of responsibility for the surge of Islamist terrorism in these countries. Terrorism and violence, like just about anything else, do not grow out of thin air. They need an environment to thrive. Mainstream Muslims themselves supply that environment. In many cases this may be unwitting; the consequences, nevertheless, are the same. It is in the nature of the religious ideas and ideologies of the mainstream Muslim that he rarely questions the orthodoxy. His lack of will or power to ask searching questions in matters of religion is perhaps the most important factor that creates an environment where Islamist extremism thrives. Take, for instance, the sermons he hears in the local mosque, at the Friday congregations, and elsewhere. In many cases, along with calls for piety, the sermons call for solidarity of the Muslim ummah, as if it has been under attack all over the world. It is strange that over fourteen hundred years after it was born, after it long established itself as one of the major organized faiths, now with a billion adherents to it, Islam is still presented as a religion under threat from the infidels. Imams in mosques still often end their solicitation to God with Fa-ansurna ala al quaomil kaafereen -- �Help us against the community of non-believers� Equally strange it is that such sermons can be heard among expatriate Muslims in western countries, where freedom of worship is fully guaranteed.
And the mainstream Muslim never thinks it proper to ask why is it necessary to call for divine protection for Islam. He probably does not even ask himself what the impact of the relentless anti-infidel rhetoric may be on young and excitable Muslim minds. The example of Islam �in- danger sermons is an important one in the present context, because here is an issue where mainstream Muslims could ask pertinent questions. But there are many other examples of mainstream reticence. Critical inquiry is in general not something that an average Muslim would go for in matters of his religion.
It is important to examine some of the ways the critical spirit is thwarted and fanaticism spread. It has of late been recognized that madrasas, or religious schools, have been a potent breeding ground for religious hatred and intolerance. That the Taliban in Afghanistan were actually the eponymous madrasa students, mostly raised in Pakistan, were too obvious an example, and an extreme one too. But tens of thousands of these schools are spread across the Islamic world and they certainly do not spread a message of tolerance to dissent and unbelief. Yet Muslims would in general do not speak against the spread of madrasa education, though there has been some criticism from them in recent times. It looks as if it is a matter of impiety to disparage madrasas. On the other hand, the role of the mosque in the spread of Islamic extremism has still to be adequately recognized by mainstream Muslims. It is only after the London suicide bombings of July 2005 that their role came to public attention. An often repeated argument of Islamic apologists eager to dismiss any Islamic connection of some of the acts of terror in recent times has been that the terrorists were �modern educated� and were not products of madrasas. But many of them were regular mosque goers and in all probability avid listners of fiery sermons from their imams.
And the very same mosques attended by the extremists are also the ones that mainstream Muslims attend. Extremists do not have mosques of their own. They share the house of God with other Muslims. These Muslims do not protest fiery speeches and the prospective young fanatic does not hear the protest. The passivity of mainstream Muslims is not born simply of fear of retribution, though such fear is all too real. An important reason why they do not protest against extremist sermons in mosques is that it is not in their tradition and training to ask critical questions about the major precepts of Islam. They can discuss matters of religion as much as they like so long as the discussion strengthens their Faith itself, and are in the nature of piety or devotion, but they may not ask probing questions that sounds like criticism of Islam. There are, moreover, areas where the world of the extremist and that of the mainstream Muslim come dangerously close to each other. Many mainstream Muslims are often sympathetic to causes that extremists also promote and are eager to die for. There are regions of the world where Muslims have suffered gross injustices at the hands of foreign powers. The Middle East is an obvious example. Many extremists have taken up the cause of the oppressed here and elsewhere. Mainstream Muslims have also voiced protest and frustration at such injustices. It is not, however, usual for them to make it abundantly clear that their support of the cause of the oppressed has nothing to do with religion, or that they would protest with equal vigour injustices to other communities around the world. If the extremist thinks in the circumstance that he has the support of the mainstream Muslim, the latter is not entirely without blame. Unthinking acts of shame, such as jubilation among Muslims at large in many countries following September 11, 2001, only strengthen the extremists� impression of support from their community that they may not have in reality.
For the mainstream Muslim, to be Muslim is still an overriding consideration that guides his conduct, far more so in fact than being a Christian is in a Christian�s life. In the zeal to be Muslim, he often ignores the danger signs which should have told him to stop, think and talk. Extremists exploded some 500 bombs in Bangladesh in a single day in August this year. The bombs killed and maimed and spread terror throughout the country. It is hardly conceivable that the scores or so of the extremists who planted the bombs did not pray in the same local mosque where other Muslims prayed hours or days before the attacks. They may even have rubbed shoulders against each other as they stood in serried ranks before God the Merciful. But they never talked to each other. Mainstream Muslims never asked what the extremists were up to and why. They never drew the extremists into a debate about their ideas, ideologies, and the reasons for their rage.
Or could it be that many mainstream Muslims did actually notice the militants, even talked to them, and merely gave them a wink and a nod? Is there a fringe of mainstream Islam that meets the extremist in clandestine alliance for Islam?
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Mahfuzur Rahman, a former United Nations economist, is currently researching in religious fundamentalism.