The Enemy At Home (16 page)

How, then, did Western civilization grow so strong and Islamic civilization so weak? Western historians emphasize the internal changes in the West—the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution, and so on. Islamic fundamentalists concede that the West discovered a new form of power: technology, created out of the dynamic interaction between science and capitalism. But they stress that if the West has solved the economic problem, it has not solved the moral problem. Although Islam may not be relevant in creating prosperity or military success, it is relevant in showing human nature the way to justice, goodness, and happiness. In the words of Qutb, Islam represents “an unparalleled revolution in human thinking” and far from being superseded or outdated it provides the only solution to “this unhappy, perplexed, and weary world.”
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The Islamic fundamentalists argue that the distinctive contribution of Islam to the world was religious and moral. Coming after, and in a sense transcending, Judaism and Christianity, Islam in this view finalized the triumph of monotheism over polytheism and paganism, and it introduced to the world a new concept of a universal moral law, or sharia, that reflects divine rules for human behavior and human happiness. Consider how Islam transformed the Arabian desert. Before Islam, there was the age of what the Koran calls
jahilliya.
The term, which means “ignorance,” refers to the state of pagan barbarism in the bedouin tribes before the arrival of the Prophet Muhammad.

According to the fundamentalists, the main characteristics of the bedouins of sixth-century Arabia were brutality, immorality, and polytheism. Looting and pillaging were their primary way of acquiring property. The bedouins were famous for never-ending feuds. The bedouins worshiped the sun, the moon, trees, and stones; they had no concept of an afterlife. Reputed for their heavy drinking, the bedouins were also known for their sexual adventurousness, not only with women but also with men and on some occasions with their animals. This carousing promiscuity is celebrated in the
Mu’allaqat, a
collection of sixth-century Arab poetry. One of the courtship styles of the bedouins was to capture a woman from another tribe, stupefy her with blows, and then drag her screaming into a tent. Where the bedouins live, the great Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun writes, “civilization decays and is wiped out.”
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Islam, the fundamentalists point out, civilized these barbarians. It brought them together into a single community unified not by race or tribe but by allegiance to a monotheistic faith and its universal moral law. In addition, Islam outlawed bedouin practices such as rape, adultery, and homosexuality, as well as the bedouin custom of killing infant girls. Charity and almsgiving, unheard of among the tribes, became a legal requirement for Muslims. While the desert Arabs kept no track of time, the Muslims introduced the Islamic calendar. The Prophet Muhammad did not prohibit slavery, but he advocated the emancipation of slaves who converted to Islam, and he insisted on humane treatment for all slaves. Polygamy was not outlawed either, but men were limited to a maximum of four wives, and Muhammad issued strict guidelines for equitable treatment, including a just distribution of inheritance and conjugal favors.

Fundamentalists stress that, for all its rules, Islam is best understood not in terms of obedience but rather in terms of voluntary submission to a divinely established moral order. In his book
Social Justice in Islam
Qutb tells the story of a man and woman who came to the Prophet Muhammad and said, “Messenger of Allah, purify us.” Muhammad asked, “From what am I to purify you?” They replied, “From adultery.” Muhammad asked whether the couple was mad or drunk. Assured that they were not, Muhammad asked them again, “What have you done?” And they said they had committed adultery. Then Muhammad gave the order, and they were stoned to death. While the couple was being buried, onlookers scorned them, but Muhammad silenced the scoffers. The couple had repented, he said, and now they were in heaven.

“This is Islam,” Qutb wrote. Analyzing the incident, he pointed out that no one had witnessed the adultery, and the prophet initially sought to attribute the couple’s confession to the influence of alcohol or mental disturbance. Still, they had persisted. Finally Muhammad had no choice but to have them stoned in accordance with God’s law. Qutb posed an interesting question: why did the couple demand to be stoned? His answer: “It was the desire to be purified of a crime of which none save Allah was cognizant. It was the shame of meeting Allah unpurified from a sin which they had committed.”
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The moral outlook of Islam, the fundamentalists say, is codified in a way of life based on the divine government of society. This worldview requires that religious, economic, political, and civil society be based on the Koran, the teachings of Muhammad, and the holy law. In this analysis, Islam cannot be confined to the private or spiritual domain; rather, it governs the whole framework of life. The ayatollah Khomeini noted that “the ratio of Koranic verses concerned with the affairs of society to those concerned with ritual worship is greater than a hundred to one.” In addition to regulating religious belief and practice, Islam also regulates the administration of the state, the conduct of war, the making of treaties, divorce and inheritance, property rights, and contracts. Khomeini writes that Allah has “laid down injunctions for man extending from before the embryo is formed until after man is placed in the tomb…. There is not a single topic in human life for which Islam has not provided instruction and established a norm.”
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Qutb argues that an Islamic society is not merely one that contains a majority of Muslims, or even one in which Muslims govern themselves. Rather, he says, “There is only one place on earth which can be called the home of Islam and it is that place where the Islamic state is established and the
sharia
is the authority and God’s rules are observed and where the Muslims administer the affairs of state with mutual consultation.”
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This is what the fundamentalists mean by an Islamic society.

None of this means that Islam cannot embrace science, commerce, or modern technology. Qutb himself praises science and writes that even when it poses dangers, those dangers must be faced because there is no real alternative to scientific and technological development. The real difficulty, the fundamentalists say, is not with “catching up” to Western modernity. Anyone can do this, as the Chinese, the Indians, and many others are demonstrating. Many of the Muslim radicals are themselves scientifically literate and technically trained. The real challenge, in their view, is to embrace modernity without moral degradation. For all his enthusiasm about science, Qutb concedes that modern institutions like capitalism and science, invented in the West, must be integrated into an Islamic ethical framework that puts them at the service of full human development and the common good of society. Material development must not be at the expense of religious truth or social morality.

In fact, the Muslim radicals believe that the Islamic restoration will bring not only unity and happiness but also economic and political success. According to Maulana Mawdudi, founder of the Jamaat-i-Islami (Islamic Society) in Pakistan, the Koran promises that if Muslims follow the teachings of Allah they will have prosperity in this world and paradise in the next world. And for a thousand years, Mawdudi wrote, this was true. Islam was winning. But now, he sighed, Islam is losing, and why is that? Mawdudi’s simple answer has become very famous throughout the Muslim world: it is because we have stopped following the teachings of Allah. Muslims have fallen away from the true faith, a faith understood not merely as a creed but as a system of government and a way of life. Mawdudi’s conclusion is that only by recovering true Islam and restoring Islamic societies under the rule of sharia can Muslims recover their wealth, strength, and former glory.
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“AMERICA IS THE GREAT SATAN
.”
This is the second great theme of Islamic radicalism. In the view of the radicals, Muslims are prevented from reestablishing Islamic society by two factors. The first is what Iranian sociologist Ali Shariati calls
gharbzadegi
. The word means “intoxication with the West” or, since the West is the place where the sun sets, “intoxication with darkness.” Shariati, who was one of the intellectual architects of the Khomeini revolution, was himself Western-trained, having earned his doctorate at the Sorbonne. Shariati’s argument is that ordinary Muslims become so mesmerized with the wealth and power of the West that they become blinded to its severe defects. Moreover, they become ashamed of their own religion and culture. Consequently they become vulnerable to Western occupation, control, and influence. They are seduced by Western propaganda that identifies Westernization with “progress” and “freedom.”
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This freedom, the ayatollah Khomeini contended, is nothing better than the “freedom of debauchery.” Addressing the West in 1979, Khomeini said, “You, who want freedom, freedom for everything, the freedom that will corrupt our youth, freedom that will pave the way for the oppressor, freedom that will drag our nation to the bottom. You do not believe in any limits to freedom. This is a freedom that would lead our country to destruction.”
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The second obstacle to the revival of Islam, fundamentalists say, is the well-orchestrated campaign by the United States to impose its values on the Muslim world. Thus even Muslims who wish to reject Western values and American culture are prevented from doing so. Fundamentalists argue that America does this partly through force, by occupying countries like Afghanistan and Iraq and then pressing them to adopt American institutions and values. “The West wants to distract you with shiny slogans like freedom and democracy,” Kadhem al-Ebadi, a Muslim clergyman, told his congregation after the fall of Baghdad. “Infidel corruption has entered our society through these concepts.”
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Another way that America thrusts its values on Muslims, fundamentalists say, is through the United Nations and various nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). In a 1997 interview, the radical sheikh Omar Abd al-Rahman accused America and other Western nations of “allocating huge amounts of money to the United Nations conference on population that came out with resolutions allowing adultery, abortion and homosexuality, resolutions encouraging girls to give up their honor and chastity, resolutions to weaken the authority of parents over children.” Americans, Rahman suggested, promote their immoral practices without regard to the desire of other societies to protect the morality of their institutions. Consequently, Rahman concluded, Americans “have freedom for themselves, but they do not allow any freedom to others.”
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A further mechanism for the imposition of American values is the rule of U.S.-supported dictators like Musharraf in Pakistan, Mubarak in Egypt, and Abdullah in Jordan. These dictators typically restrict or even eliminate Islamic laws and rules, replacing them with Western laws and institutions. In this way, the ayatollah Khomeini said, “they strive to annihilate Islam.” Khomeini gave the example of the shah’s decision in 1976 to abolish the Islamic calendar and replace it with a secular calendar. The Islamic calendar dates time from the Prophet Muhammad’s migration from Mecca to Medina in the year 622 of the Christian era. The shah instituted a new calendar based on the supposed date on which Emperor Cyrus established his monarchical rule over ancient Persia. Khomeini also condemned the shah for getting rid of sharia rules regarding marriage and divorce, and extending voting rights in local elections not only to women but also to non-Muslims. Khomeini was most vehement in castigating the shah for decriminalizing alcohol, gambling, and adultery, noting that “Islam makes no provision for the orderly pursuit of these illicit activities.”
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The general charge that fundamentalists make against despots past and present is that in exchange for U.S. military and political support for their regime, they open up their countries to the polluting influences of American social institutions and popular culture. Fundamentalists charge that in every case, the United States seeks to strengthen those forces that are operating in the Muslim world to secularize the society, destroy the family, corrupt the children, and degrade the culture.

Here, then, is the heart of the radical Muslims’ case against America and the West. Fundamentalists portray America as a nominally Christian but de facto atheist society. Although people in America call themselves Christian, Qutb writes, their actions prove that they are indifferent to God and that their real religion is materialism. In this respect, “The materialistic outlook on life is the same in Communism and in the civilization of the West.” Moreover, Qutb says, even when Americans do go to church it is usually for social display or to meet members of the opposite sex. Protestant preachers, he writes, are mainly entertainers who put on all kinds of circus antics to attract listeners and then measure success by how many people come marching down the aisle.
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Qutb is especially revolted by the fact that in America religion has been driven out of public life and has nothing to do with the institutions of government. So the de facto atheism of the people is reinforced by the de jure atheism of the laws. As a consequence of the American doctrine of separation of church and state, Qutb writes, “God’s existence is not denied, but His domain is restricted to the heavens and his rule on earth is suspended.”
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The best indication of American depravity that Muslim fundamentalists point to is the collapse of the traditional American family. Qutb writes, “If free sexual relationships and illegitimate children become the basis of a society; and if the relationship between man and woman is based on lust, passion, and impulse, and the division of work is not based on family responsibility and natural gifts; and if the woman is freed from her basic responsibility of bringing up children; and if, on her own or under social demand, she prefers to…spend her ability working for material productivity rather than in the training of human beings, because material production is considered more important, more valuable and more honorable than the development of human character, then such a civilization…cannot be considered civilized, no matter how much progress it makes in industry or science.”
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