Colleagues: Several of you wrote in support of the hard line I took recently against what I referred to as “Islamofascism”. Others took exception to the post and found the characterization of the Muslim religion too one-sided and having failed to take note of moderate elements within the movement.
I asked that group to send me a rebuttal that I could send out to the NSF. Dr. Jill Derby, Mark Glenn and Dr. Carina Black drafted the post below that I think is quite succinct, persuasive and worthy of consideration.
Ty
Response to Islamofascism and the Threat to Western Civilization
Jill Derby, Mark Glenn and Carina Black
Characterizing a whole religion, by the acts of the fundamentalist extreme, paints a distorted view of that religion. Furthermore, inflammatory and ideologically charged words such as ”Islamofascism” aren’t helpful in generating balanced, thoughtful and fact-based dialogue. Unless of course, the idea behind discussing the current situation of Muslims in the Middle East and the broader world is not the truth, but instead fear-mongering and issues related to national security.
There is a large divide between fundamentalist Islam and the 1.8 billion Muslims in the Muslim mainstream who reject the tenets, actions, and interpretation of the fundamentalists. Similarly, mainstream Americans reject fundamentalist Christian efforts to erode the separation of church and state and teach creationism in U.S. schools.
There are many root causes for the rise of religious fundamentalism in some of the world’s regions over the past two decades. The reasons are complex and connected to number of factors, but at a most basic level, fundamentalists seek to reclaim an imagined earlier time of simplicity and religious purity. Today many of the societies in the developing world are faced with extreme stress and disruption, causing some in those societies to retrospect to earlier simpler times.
There is a big difference between secular societies that encompass religious diversity, as we find in both the west and the Muslim east, and societies like Iran and Saudi Arabia where religious law, Sharia, is the law of the land. There are 47 Muslim majority nations and only 6 or 7 of them use Sharia law as their legal system. The rest use civil codes more similar to our own. So the idea that Muslims believe that Sharia should be the law of the land in all Muslim majority nations, (much less the world) as the article states is simply false. What the Ayatollah Khomeini said about Muslims conquering the world is comparable to prominent American fundamentalists, for example Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell’s pronouncements that September eleventh was God’s revenge for “gays, lesbians, abortionists, pagans, the ACLU and other Christ-haters”. The Ayatollah doesn’t speak for all Muslims anymore than Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell speak for all Christians. (We further know from recent Iranian election turmoil that such sentiments are rejected by large numbers of his fellow Iranians).
But moderation rarely makes the front pages. When the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwah against novelist Salmon Rushdie, the highest and most respected Islamic authorities, (the ulema), in Saudi Arabia and Cairo declared the Fatwah un-Islamic. Furthermore 48 out of 49 member states of the Islamic conference did as well – an overwhelming rejection of the Iranian cleric’s action. That was moderate Islam speaking for the overwhelming majority of Muslims, but it didn’t get the press Khomeini got.
Islam over the course of history, in fact, has shown great tolerance for Christians and Jews whom they regard as “People of the Book” – those who hold the Old Testament as a sacred text, to which Muslims also subscribe.
It is critical to point out that fundamentalist Islam is but one factor in a complicated history of events over the last 100 years, in which we, the United States, played a prominent role, (as have other western powers), and share responsibility for the current state of affairs. That chapter of history began after WWI with the imposition of state boundaries totally indifferent to ethnic and cultural divisions, particularly with respect to the creation of Israel; and is book-ended by our misguided invasion and occupation of Iraq during which as many as 600,000 Iraqis have died from violence since 2003.
Karen Armstrong’s Book, Islam, a New York Times best seller, offers a balanced view. She is a prominent and widely respected scholar on religious affairs. Edward Said’s Orientalism discusses intelligently the false assumptions underlying western attitudes toward the East and the persistent Eurocentric prejudice against Arabic-Islamic peoples and their cultures. And as last week’s events in Tunisia, Egypt and other North African Muslim countries have shown, Muslims, especially younger generations, are interested in exactly the same things people in the West want—economic opportunities and the ability to change their government if it does not serve them.
Jill Derby Ph.D., Mark Glenn, Carina Black, Ph.D.