Muslims against terrorism

Here is an interesting selection of banners that I picked up from Spiritual Tendencies. The creator of these masterpieces has very kindly allowed me to reproduce them here.

If you want to use them on your own websites, kindly drop Abdul Khafid a note.

The Prophet's family makes a stand

Daniel Pipes once posted a series of questions on his website, on the pretext that Muslims who got too many wrong answers were, in all likelihood, extremists. However crude the challenge was, one question seemed reasonable to ask.

"Are Sufis and Shi'ites fully legitimate Muslims?"

You will be surprised at the range of responses this evokes in Muslims. Some simply dismiss it, citing Daniel Pipes' so-called Islamaphobic reputation as ample reason to disregard whatever comes out from his mouth. Some argue that the question is presumptuous, coming as it does, from a non-Muslim. The thoughtful ones might do a double-take, and then express puzzlement. Why is the question even asked? Sufism has been an integral part of Islam from the beginning, addressing the third part of the formula that goes: islam (submission), iman (belief) and ihsan (making beautiful). And scholars of the majority Sunni stream of Islam had long ago recognized the validity of some Shia schools. Yet others would laugh and call Pipes mad. These others would say, in emphatic terms, that Sufis are innovators and Shia the worst kind of apostates.

The existence of this last group makes both the asking and answering of the question vital, because today's sectarian violence is unprecedented in Islam's history. From the political and religious embargo waged against the Shia in Saudi Arabia, to the razing of Shia shrines in Pakistan. From the Hazara massacres of Afghanistan to the suicide bombing of civilians in Shia-dominated Iraq- all of them dip from the same ideological stance that Shi'ism is not Islam. They are signs of a common order, a shared doctrine that has swept across the Muslim Ummah, largely unrecognized for what it is. This group has managed to take over the Islamic discourse. So successful is their pogrom, Western media and commentators actually believe that ideological Islam- whose most visible offspring is Usama bin Laden- is equal to Islam itself.

Fortunately, some Muslim leaders are beginning to stir from self-imposed exile. Battle lines are being drawn; the hearts and minds of Muslims ushered across to the safety of traditional Islam. King Abdullah of Jordan- whose lineage is traced directly to Prophet Muhammad- spent a year gathering fatawa (religious edicts) from the leading scholars of Islam before convening a meeting of enormous significance. 170 Sunni and Shia scholars, including intellectuals from 40 countries, assembled in Amman to retake what had been quietly and criminally handed over to the extremists. 4 July 2005 might well be a date that will go down in history as being the turning point in the fight against extremism. It is the day when Muslims, true Muslims, finally found the courage to say: "Enough is enough!"

By the end of the International Islamic Conference, all representatives of the Islamic world put pen to paper, affirming this document:

'True Islam and its Role in Modern Society'

In accordance with the fatwas issued by the Honourable and Respectable Grand Imam Shaykh al-Azhar, the Grand Ayatollah Al-Sayyid Ali Al-Sistani, the Honourable and Respectable Grand Mufti of Egypt, the Honourable and Respectable Shi'i clerics (both Ja'fari and Zaydi), the Honourable and Respectable Grand Mufti of the Sultanate of Oman, the Islamic Fiqh Academy in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Grand Council for Religious Affairs of Turkey, the Honourable and Respectable Grand Mufti of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the Respectable Members of its National Fatwa Committee, and the Honourable and Respectable Shaykh Dr. Yusuf Al-Qaradawi;

And in accordance with what was mentioned in the speech of His Hashemite Majesty King Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein, King of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan during the opening session of our conference;

And in accordance with our own knowledge in sincerity to Allah the Bounteous;

And in accordance with what was presented in this our conference by way of research papers and studies, and by way of the discussions that transpired in it;

We, the undersigned, hereby express our approval and affirmation of what appears below:

1) Whosoever is an adherent of one of the four Sunni Schools of Jurisprudence (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali), the Ja'fari (Shi'i) School of Jurisprudence, the Zaydi School of Jurisprudence, the Ibadi School of Jurisprudence, or the Thahiri School of Jurisprudence is a Muslim. Declaring that person an apostate is impossible. Verily his (or her) blood, honour, and property are sacrosanct. Moreover, in accordance with what appeared in the fatwa of the Honourable and Respectable Shaykh al-Azhar, it is not possible to declare whosoever subscribes to the Ash'ari creed or whoever practices true Sufism an apostate. Likewise, it is not possible to declare whosoever subscribes to true Salafi thought an apostate. Equally, it is not possible to declare as apostates any group of Muslims who believes in Allah the Mighty and Sublime and His Messenger (may Peace and Blessings be upon him) and the pillars of faith, and respects the pillars of Islam and does not deny any necessary article of religion.

2) There exists more in common between the various Schools of Jurisprudence than there is difference. The adherents to the eight Schools of Jurisprudence are in agreement as regards the basic Islamic principles. All believe in Allah the Mighty and Sublime, the One and the Unique; that the Noble Qur'an is the Revealed Word of Allah; and that our master Muhammad, may Blessings and Peace be upon him, is a Prophet and Messenger unto all mankind. All are in agreement about the five pillars of Islam: the two testaments of faith (shahadatayn), the ritual prayer (salat), almsgiving (zakat), fasting the month of Ramadan (sawm), and the Hajj to the Sacred House of Allah. All are also in agreement about the foundations of belief: belief in Allah, His Angels, His Scriptures, His Messengers, and in the Day of Judgement, in Divine providence — good and evil. Disagreement between the 'ulama' is only with respect to the ancillary branches of religion (furu') and not the principles and fundamentals (usul). Disagreement with respect to the ancillary branches of religion (furu') is a mercy. Long ago it was said that variance in opinion among 'ulama' “is a good affair”.

3) Acknowledgement of the Schools of Jurisprudence within Islam means adhering to a fundamental methodology in the issuance of fatwas. No one may issue a fatwa without the requisite personal qualifications which each School of Jurisprudence defines. No one may issue a fatwa without adhering to the methodology of the Schools of Jurisprudence. No one may claim to do absolute Ijtihad and create a new School of Jurisprudence or to issue unacceptable fatwas that take Muslims out of the principles and certainties of the Shari'ah and what has been established in respect of its Schools of Jurisprudence.

4) The essence of the Amman Message, which was issued on the Blessed Night of Power in the year 1425 H. and which was read aloud in Masjid al-Hashimiyyin, is adherence to the Schools of Jurisprudence and their fundamental methodology. Acknowledging the Schools of Jurisprudence and affirming discussion and engagement between them ensures fairness, moderation, mutual forgiveness, compassion, and engaging in dialogue with others.

5) We call for casting aside disagreement between Muslims and unifying their words and stances; reaffirming their mutual respect for each other; fortifying mutual affinity among their peoples and states; strengthening the ties of brotherhood which unite them in the mutual love of Allah. And we call upon Muslims to not permit discord and outside interference between them.
Allah the Sublime says:

"The believers are naught else than brothers. Therefore make peace between your brethren and observe your duty to Allah that haply ye may obtain mercy."
(Al-Hujurat, 49:10)

Praise be to Allah alone.

The inclusion of the line "Likewise, it is not possible to declare whosoever subscribes to true Salafi thought an apostate..." seems almost like an afterthought. Why not? Since virtually half the groups above it are considered by Salafists to be deviants, or at the very least, innovators. Sana Abdallah of United Press International (UPS) bluntly surmises that the document attempts to thwart "...the wrath of the Salafi militants and to try to attract them to the teachings of 'true Islam'."

Nonetheless, it is important to note that one of the signatories was the Islamic Fiqh Academy of Saudi Arabia, the most prominent institution for Salafist thought in the world. The real test lies in whether its various branches mimic the Fiqh Academy's gesture. Are lists like these, for example, going to be pulled down anytime soon? Or is the ideological base merely adopting the very same custom that they delight in accusing the Shia of holding; which is taqiyya, defined loosely as "Concealing or disguising one's beliefs, convictions, ideas, feelings, opinions, and/or strategies at a time of eminent danger, whether now or later in time, to save oneself from physical and/or mental injury.".

What is clear that is that matters can no longer remain the same. The document's five points pull the rug from under Muslim extremists who have, since the beginning of the eighteenth century, sought to dictate what Islam is and should continue to be. The arrogance of today's terrorists spring from the same arrogance that attended the birth of modernist movements which sought to 'reform' Islam, either by combining Western ideas with religion or by reducing the importance of Islam's intellectual tradition. The last is important because there has been a recent tendency to unfetter the constraints that traditional scholars had placed on the interpretation of sacred texts.

The Amman Initiative not only re-affirms the sanctity of the four Sunni Madhhabs, it invokes the traditional adherence of Muslims to them, a process that is known as taqleed. Unlike other religions, Islam has seldom, if ever, been held together by a religious institution, relying instead on the Koran and other texts which in effect interpret it. Religious authority lies therefore in written texts and their interpretations. What the extremists did, before embarking on a murderous rampage, was to reject the traditional internal checks and balances on the interpretation of the Koran and Hadith. Every terrorist act today is based on a pseudo-fatwa either permitting or praising it. The Amman Initiative rejoins Islam to its thousand-year old roots of responsible and confident scholarship, where religious identity is not shaped by an insatiable and genocidal craving to label those outside it as deviants, apostates or innovators.

My first time in a mosque

I visited Singapore two years ago, and was impressed by the strong Muslim presence there. They are ethnic Malays, whose ancestors had been introduced to Islam by Sufis. A majority of them adhere to Imam Shafi'i's School of Jurisprudence, but also follow a set of customs that is known as adat. While the Malays make up only 20% of the population, a mosque can be seen in every residential town. Indeed, on a 45-minute bus journey alone, I passed five.

Their mosques are interesting, because like most mosques across the Muslim world, they follow the basic Ottoman architecture. This, I feel, is the greatest testimony to the global impact that the last Islamic empire had left on the consciousness of Muslims, past, present and in all likelihood, future.

Through a Muslim friend, I was introduced to a hajji, or one who has performed the pilgrimage to Islam's birtplace, Mecca. The yellowed skullcap on his head confirmed this. His name was Abdul Hamid bin Samad. We would never have met if not for the fact that he was the caretaker of Masjid al-Mutaqeen.

Abdul Hamid could not speak fluent English, so passed me on to one of his colleagues. This new fellow was young, barely in his twenties, had a trim beard, wore the traditional Malay headdress known as a songkok. His name was Rashid bin Isa, and he was honest enough to tell me that he found my visit rather extraordinary.

"Normally," he said. "Tourists visit the Sultan Mosque."

I had, of course, seen the Sultan Mosque, one of the oldest in Singapore, and considered to be a local heritage site. But I was curious about the mosques at the grassroots level too. Places that have become tourist areas often possess an artificial quality that does not appeal to me. The Sultan Mosque was a fine-looking building and I was certain that it means a lot to the Muslims, but I had seen its like in almost every Muslim country I visited. Al-Mutaqeen, on the other hand, had caught my eye for its bright, green dome. It resembled an incredibly-fresh bulb of onion. For the sake of politeness, however, I didn't mention that. Nor did I mention that I was Jewish, for I wasn't certain how Rashid would react.

But let me tell you about al-Mutaqeen. The mosque is simple, and certainly not unique amongst other mosques. But in appraising a place, I have often relied on an internal instinct. Call it karma, or vibe, but al-Mutaqeen filled me with warmth and a sensation of being home, even though I was thousands of miles from my native land, of course. Built along an octagonal plan, the geometry, which medieval Muslim mathematicians had considered a sacred discipline, was palpable. I stood below the arched entrance, savoring the faint tingle that was traveling up and down my spine.

"That," said Rashid, pointing toward a section closed off by a collapsible set of doors. "Is our tadikah. Children are taught basic doa (supplications), solat (prayer) and the mukaddam (a set of simple Koranic verses, meant for education)."

"Aren't they taught Math, Science, English?" I asked.

"They are, but over here, we focus more on religion. Developing a child's character, teaching him to live an honest life, respect their parents, recite zikir (remembrance of God through constant invocations). All these are important. Look at our youth now. Do you know that Malays have the highest abortion and divorce rates in Singapore?"

"I do."

Rashid seemed surprised, but shrugged resignedly. "See," he said. "Our immorality has reached even Israel."

Now, it was my turn to be surprised. I had underestimated his perceptiveness. I could have told him that I did not live in Israel, but chose to keep quiet instead.

The mosque was large, its floor and walls and pillars tiled lovingly with glazed ceramic. The five sides- each perhaps signifying one of the five prayers Muslims must offer every day- surrounded a large open courtyard that provided a snapshot of the sky. Orange clouds moved above. It was late afternoon, about an hour before maghrib, the evening prayer. The timing was deliberate because Muslims believe that in the hours leading up to sunset, creatures of flame called jinn perform their own prayers to God. Muslims therefore try to avoid delaying asar (late afternoon prayers) till this time.

Al-mutaqquin was an empty shell. I stepped forward. A breeze, melting against the tall minaret, swung down and entered the courtyard. I felt my headscarf- a courtesy Abdul Hamid had insisted on- lift from my hair. Patting it down, I glanced at Rashid apologetically. He returned a wry smile.

"You know a lot about Islam?" he asked.

"A little," I said, stock reply in hand . "I am a learner."

"I see." He withdrew into himself, eyes strangely disturbed.

Meanwhile, I carried on with my visual inspection. Tucked between two walls were about twenty bales of mats. These, I presumed, would be rolled out on Fridays for worshippers who would fill the halls close to bursting. Just as a Muslim has to be physically and ritually clean during prayer, the ground on which he worships has to be clean too. Persian rug-makers continue to make a fortune weaving beautiful prayer rugs for the Muslim market.

Lattice work on a wall guided my eyes to an indentation that was closed off by an eight-panel screen. One of the panels was ajar, and through it, I saw a small enclosure, carpeted and with no windows. In a small wooden cupboard, shimmering white cloth had been neatly folded and stacked on top of each other.

"Telekong," Rashid said. "Prayer shawls. The women pray in there."

Muslim women, of course, must pray behind a barrier, away from the eyes of their male counterparts. I nodded in understanding. Synagogues follow the same rules. We are very much alike.

Rashid ushered me into another enclosure. This was larger, its ceiling curved upward into a shallow, almost unpronounced dome. A battered chandelier, its glass pieces stained by age, hung from the apex by a thin chain. My bare toes curled pleasurably against the soft carpet. I closed my eyes and opened them again, trying to adjust quickly to the dimness. In the shadows of one wall, I saw the mihrab, the niche from which an Imam will deliver his sermons every Friday, when the Muslim congregational prayers is convened. I could not help but compare these ritual expressions with a Jewish Temple's. Like the mosque, a Temple also has a wall facing Jerusalem. The wall is known as aron kodesh, and has traditionally been the place of the 'holy cabinet', bearing scrolls of Torah. The fact that the Muslim's  kiblat (direction of prayer) had once been Jerusalem was not lost on me.

"Only worshippers who come here early on Fridays get to sit in this assembly area," Rashid chuckled. "It's quite cool. The breeze always finds its way here."

Unconsciously, I touched my headscarf, just to make sure.

There was a low wooden bookshelf in the corner. Books, some thick, some thin, lined it. I was drawn to it, for I love books. Even if it is not in languages I understand, I love to hold it, smell it, flip through its pages just to hear its silent whisper. Books have remarkable personalities, regardless of the language they are written in. I ran my finger along the spines. Most of them had Arabic characters, some of them were in Romanized Malay, which is actually Malay spelled out in the English language.

"What's this?" I asked, my finger tapping a black, tattered spine with peeling gold trim. Rashid gestured for me to pick it up.

The book was a Koran, its pages inundated with spidery Arabic script. There were no leafy borders, not even vowel marks to differentiate whether an aleph (the first letter of Arabic) was an ee, oo or aa. Bismillah (In the name of God), could just as well be read as Basmallah to the uninitiated. But the mispronunciation is unlikely, since Bismillah is the first phrase from the Koran that is taught to all Muslim children. They say it before embarking on anything, including eating. It's like the Christian prayer of grace before their own meals, only shorter and more formulaic.

"The author is unknown. Someone just left it here with a note saying that it had once belonged to a miskin. A poor man."

I flipped through the pages and settled on one that had an odd feature. A line had been crookedly written, bowing as if it could no longer bear its own weight and needed the support of the second line. I raised the Koran and pointed the foible out to Rashid. "What does this say?" I asked.

He took a moment to study it, pronouncing the Arabic words under his breath. And then nodding, he translated it thus:

"Our Lord! Behold we have heard a voice calling us unto faith: 'Believe in your Lord' and we have believed."

I inhaled deeply. The words moved me. A voice. A voice. Have I heard it before?

I returned the Koran to its gap between the other books. There was nothing more to see, and men were already streaming into the mosque. Some stared  at me questioningly, but looked away when I smiled at them. Unconsciously, even without a physical wall, one had been built up in its stead. This was a Muslim place of worship, and there were rules I had to observe. I cast my eyes down, uncertain what to do next.

"Maghrib is coming," Rashid said in a low voice.

"I understand," I said, nodding in relief.

I left through the mosque's back door. Rashid turned back into al-Mutaqeen and I was alone. Slowly, almost regretfully, I walked in the opposite direction. It wasn't long before the voice of the muezzin rose in the thousand-year old call to prayer. As Bilal, the African companion of the Prophet Muhammad had once done, the man inside al-Mutaqeen issued the same invitation. God is the greatest! I bear witness that there is no god except God. I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of God. Make haste towards prayer. Make haste towards welfare. God is the greatest! There is no god except God.

Only this time, the cry resounded in a land far, far away and very different from the steppes of Muhammad's desert. This was neither Mecca nor Medina. This was Singapore; Singa-Pura, a Sanskrit word that means Lion City. Within it is a world, a community defined by the faith of a people who continuously hear the voice call out to them, "Believe in your Lord". Like Abraham, Isaac and Moses before them, they answer without hesitation, "We have believed!"

Three flavors of Salafism

Neo-Salafism has no coherent fiqh of its own- it bypasses the orthodox madhhabs (Schools of Thought)- and has only the most basic and anthropomorphic theology. Like Protestantism, it is fluid and tends to produce divisions and sub-divisions. According to Saudi Sheikh Abd Al-Muhsin Al-'Abikan, one of the reasons for this is the habit of Salafist teachers to condemn "the adherence to the legacy of jurisprudence (taqlid)" in young Muslims. The preservation of legible streams of law, after all, asserts a kind of orthodoxy and hence, unity. Other Salafist movements enjoin their members to derive Shariah (Islamic law) from the Koran and ahadith (sayings of the Prophet) by themselves. The result is the appalling state of division and conflict which mutilates Salafism's condition.

Even so, according to Tariq Ramadan, these divisions come in three distinct flavors.

Salafi Literalism- Salafi literalists reject the mediation of juristic Schools and their scholars when it comes to approaching and reading the texts. They call themselves salafis because they claim to follow the salaf, which is the title reserved for pious Muslims of the first three generations of Islam. The Quran and hadith are therefore interpreted without scholarly conclaves. Salafi literalists generally forbid any interpretative, and presumably permissive reading of the texts.

This school of thought believes that it is a direct descendant of those that very early on were called ahl-al-hadith, which opposed interpretations based on the search for an injunction's objective, hence ahl-al-rayy. The literalists insist on the necessity of reference and on the authenticity of the texts quoted to justify the minutest action and behavior, whether it is in religious practices, dress code or social behavior. The doctrinal position of the salafi literalists and their groups in the west, which are in constant communication with scholars based primarily in Saudi Arabia, refuses any kind of involvement in a space that is considered non-Islamic, and this includes, perforce, Muslims whom they put into a list of deviants. Shia and Sufi Muslims rank high in that list, but there is strong reason to believe that this sectarian supremacy extends to all other Muslims outside their fold.

Salafi Reformism- Salafi reformists share with salafi literalists a concern to bypass the traditional schools. They too, claim theological lineage with the salaf, with the aim of avoiding the commentaries of the eighth, ninth or tenth century scholars. However, in contrast with the literalists, their approach is to adopt a reading based on the purposes and intentions of law and jurisprudence. They are doctrinally closer to the ahl-al-rayy. Most groups within this trend that exists in the west grew out of the influence of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century thinkers like Hassan al-Banna, Syed Qutb and al-Afghani. Their views are often divergent, but what unites them is their 'dynamic' approach to scripture and the use of reason to deal with perceived social ills, usually at the national level.

Political Literalist Salafism- While sharing many characteristics with the other salafi flavors, this group gels a literal reading of the texts with political mechanisms usually concerning management of power, law, authority and caliphate. The whole forms a complex blend that leans toward revolutionary action. It is about opposing the ruling powers and struggling to establish the so-called Islamic state in the form of a caliphate, by means of jihad if necessary. Because political slogans are often involved, politically-literalist Salafism is unstable and extremely reactionary. Groups like Hizb al-Tahrir, which faces the distinct possibility of being banned in United Kingdom, best epitomizes this trend.

Getting along
The boundaries between the flavors are by no means cast in stone. Ideologues do express sentiments that cross over to another flavor, often without knowing it themselves. By and large, though, Salafism's exclusivist roots (the "us" versus "them" syndrome) almost certainly rule out the possibility of one flavor getting along with the others.

One of the finest examples of this mutual intolerance is the attitude of Saudi literalists to their reformist counterparts. Literalists like to allege doctrinal corruption in the teachings of al-Banna and Syed Qutb, two of the more famous Salafi reformists of our time. Both had lived in Egypt, under the suzerainty of the affable but iron-fisted Gamal Abdel Nasser. Both had been leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan al-Muslimoon) whose dearest wish had been to replace Nasser's government with an Islamic one.

The literalists compare Syed Qutb's call for revolt to the actions of the heretical Kharajite sect. While this is perfectly justified in the light of traditional Islam, it is conceivable that the Saudis only use this line of reasoning to stop malcontents from nurturing similar ideas about the House of Saud. After all, the same arguments that al-Banna and Syed Qutb utilized against the Egyptian regime can just as easily be laid at Saudi Arabia's doorstep.

Ahlan-wa-sahlan, Ikhwan (Welcome, Brother)
Saudi impressions on al-Banna and Syed Qutb only began to fall into place after the end of the Arab cold war. The ten years between 1960-1970 was a period of uncertainty for pan-Arab unity. Saudi Arabia and Nasser's Egypt seemed to be consumed by diplomatic row after diplomatic row.

Against this volatile background was the ever-growing popularity and threat of the Brotherhood. The group's message was becoming more strident in tone. From prison, Syed Qutb urged for jihad to be waged against Nasser. Egypt was forced to act. It arrested and executed the group's leaders, and kicked many of its members out of the country.

In a grim twist of irony, the fleeing Brothers did not have to look far for a second home. Egypt's diplomatic-devil, Saudi Arabia, was more than willing to accomodate these ousted heroes.

The literalists' campaign against Syed Qutb, and hence, Salafi reformists in general, might seem odd. But there is a facet that is not often picked out by observers who are unfamiliar with Muslim schisms and the rationale and dakwah (activism) that drives them.

It began from an attempt to explain away the alarming number of Saudi nationals who had participated in the 9-11 attacks on New York. The hijacked airplanes had not only brought down the twin towers of the World Trade Center, they had also demolished the relationship that Saudi Arabia had carefully nurtured with the United States. A new intitiative had to be drafted; old friendships rekindled.

As an opening shot, Saudi officials and ulema (religious authorities) began to adopt the stance that extremism had been, quite literally, imported into the kingdom. Under no circumstances were the state and religious policies of Saudi Arabia to be blamed. This absolution was enthusiastically hailed by some Western academics. In her book, Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad, Natana J. DeLong-Bas wrote:

"Although it is often posited that bin Laden's ideology of global jihad has its origins in Ibn Abd al-Wahhab's writings because both are Wahhabis, the reality is that bin Laden's ideology owes far more to the writings of the medieval scholar Ibn Taymiyya and his contemporary interpreter, Sayyid Qutb, than it does to the writings of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab."

While DeLong-Bas' book was a welcome addition to Saudi Arabia's campaign of disavowal, the kingdom is by no means alone in its charm offensive. It's backed by an influential lobby group known as Aramco Expats. The group consists of retired managerial and technical staff of the Arabian-American Oil Company (ARAMCO).

Black gold to share around
A little perspective here. Aramco's history dates back to May 29, 1933, when Saudi Arabia signed a concessionary agreement with Standard Oil of California (Socal) allowing them to explore Saudi Arabia for oil. Standard Oil of California (Socal) passed this concession to an affiliate called California-Arabian Standard Oil Co. (Casoc). In 1936 with the company having no success at locating oil, the Texas Oil Company (Texaco) purchased a 50% stake of the concession. It wasn't until 1970 that Aramco was fully owned by the Saudi Government, yet managed by American venture partners. Into this heady mix was added two more successors of the Standard Oil Trust, namely Standard of New Jersey and Socony-Vaccuum, the progenitors of ExxonMobil.

These enterprises, together with the House of Saud, control the world's largest tap for petroleum. They also bind successive American presidents to an unthinking defense of the Saudi status quo. Recent Frontline interviews with James Baker and Brent Scowcroft clearly illustrate the degree of interest that the United States has in this issue. Although Aramco later became Saudi-Aramco, its relations with the United States continue in two vital fronts:

1. The continued employment of Americans through Saudi-Aramco's branch office in Houston, Texas; intriguingly, America's oil-capital.

2. Robust contracts with firms like Halliburton, whose CEO-ship once sat in the lap of the current Vice-President Richard "Dick" Cheney.

Not surprisingly, Aramco Expats has always devoted itself to defending Saudi interests in America. After 9-11, its role became especially important and visible. Together with its sister site, the Saudi-American Forum (SAF), it assumed the Saudi cause via the mystifyingly precise means of extricating Usama bin Laden from the 18th-century movement founded by Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab. Their hearty endorsement of DeLong-Bas' book should be seen in the context of the latter supplying the lobby with an effective weapon.

National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States
In 2002, George Bush established a committee to investigate the nature of the terrorist attacks on New York. After nearly two years, the fruit of this endeavor is out. The report is thick but adroitly written, due largely to former President Bill Clinton's insistence on plain writing in government documents. Imagine my surprise, or non-surprise, however, when I stumbled upon this compelling proviso for 9-11's terrorists:

"The main ideas and ways of thinking that drove men to carry out the September 11th, 2001 attacks in the name of Islam can only be understood by tracing them back to the writings of the Egyptian, Sayid Qutob and the Pakastani Abu Al-Ala Al-Maudoudi...All Islamic radicalism today springs from their teachings."

Bad spelling aside (what's up with Pakastani?), the Commission's report is a word-for-word rundown of what the Saudis and their American proxies- what I call the 'oil lobby'- had maintained all along. Syed Qutb, the man of the hour, had been a prominent thinker in the Muslim Brotherhood. The organization, so the Commission cheerfully continues, had been:

"...born in the Egyptian coastal city of Ismaeliya in 1928. After they were thrown out of Egypt during the Arab cold war between Nasser and King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, (1960-1970), the Muslim Brothers went to Saudi Arabia. There they worked in the field of education. They were responsible for radicalizing Saudi students who were raised in the strict but quietist Wahabi tradition. Although many people in America have come to see Wahabyia as the source of all evil in Islam, in fact the Wahabi doctrine developed over the years in Saudi Arabia has been status quo oriented rather than radical. When the Saudis welcomed the members of the Muslim brotherhood they did so naively- not thinking that they were giving them a chance to influence young Saudis."

So far, the literalist flavor has enjoyed great success in killing two birds with one stone. That is, disclaiming responsibility for the extremism of Saudi radicals, and shifting critical attention toward Salafi reformists instead. To force the point, Prince Nayef of Saudi Arabia accused the Muslim Brotherhood of being "the mother of all problems in the Arab world." Elsewhere in the Salafi playground, the Muslim Brotherhood was re-dubbed the Bankrupt Brotherhood. Because insults don't often work as well as official-sounding names, the term Qutbism was invented to fill the gap. Clearly, it was in everybody's interest not to play up the Bankrupt Brotherhood's salafist base.

Nonetheless, it takes quite a bit of imagination to pin al-Qaida's worldwide terrorism onto what is today a toothless lion. From the outset, the Brotherhood's main concern was emancipating Egyptian society from tyranny and "corrupt teaching" through a pogrom of Salafi reformist thinking. This is where they diverge from the literalist flavor, which was imposed through the sword by Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab, and later by his cohorts.

Although the Brotherhood had a military wing (the "secret apparatus"), al-Banna muzzled its use throughout World War II. Egypt's elite was more threatened by the group's popularity than its ability to launch terrorist attacks. When al-Banna was assassinated by the police in 1949, Hassan Isma'il al-Hudaybi succeeded him. The first thing the former judge did was to abolish the secret apparatus, but it resumed operations without the leadership's knowledge. With few exceptions (and none since the 1970s), the Brotherhood's leaders and members have demonstrated a commitment to a nonviolent approach to their activities, the latest being their call for ordinary Egyptians to participate in an election that they themselves were banned from contesting.

This does not however deny that the Brotherhood's model is susceptible to violence. All ideologies ultimately meet up at the same junction- that of extremism. The core ideology of the Brotherhood, especially, made the descent an almost foregone affair. One of the most notorious examples of this is the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine, more famously known as Hamas. They are savage and support suicide bombing innocent civilians. Nonetheless, the point must be made that their violence is only confined to a single region and enemy.

Uprooting faith
Because Salafi reformism does not have a central creed, but relies instead on contextualizing itself against wherever it takes root, it can generate interesting, far more benign experiments, such as the Muhammadiyah movement founded in 1913 by Kyai Haji Ahmad Dahlan.  Its focus, however, has primarily been uplifting the Indonesian masses through education. It exists side-by-side with the traditionalist Nahdlatul Ulama, which was founded in 1921 in response to the Saudi conquest of Mecca and the spread of Islamic fundamentalism in the Netherlands Indies. Its original purpose was to promote and defend Sunni Muslim traditionalism against aggressive Saudi activism to undermine the authority of the madhhabs (Schools of Thought). It adeptly combines adherence to the teachings of the four classical legal traditions with Sufi devotional practice and spiritualism. Interestingly, this peaceful co-existence is almost never a feature in literalists' strongholds.

Unfortunately, the ideology that informs all three flavors is a relatively truncated approach to Islam. It is remarkably prone to erroneous and dangerous combinations of Islamic and secular ideas through ijtihad (deduction of the law). Study of Islam's rich intellectual heritage is strongly discouraged, thus crippling the intimate link between work, spiritual education and sacred ambiance in traditional Islamic civilization that is forged by the Islamic sciences. Put bluntly, the logic that al-Qaida employs in its arguments would not be possible and could never appeal to any Muslim if not for this degeneration.

Observers inside Saudi Arabia are beginning to question the culture of denial in their society- al-Watan's columnist Abd Al-Qadr Tash writes:

"We must object to the interpretation by a few among us that the phenomenon of violence and terror is entirely imported from outside our Saudi society. These [few] claim that the ideology that feeds this phenomenon was injected into our midst, and is foreign to our culture. Although there is some measure of truth in this claim, it explains only part of the phenomenon. Therefore, accepting it unreservedly is a type of escapism, blame-shifting, and self-exoneration. We have become accustomed to handling many of the negative phenomena in our Saudi society in this way."

Tash goes on:

"The time has come for us to admit the bitter truth – the phenomenon of violence and terror has a domestic dimension... in our social culture, and primarily in its religious part. This culture suffers from many flaws that prepare the ground for growth of the ideology of violence and clashing with the others, instead of acting with tolerance. This flawed culture pushes our young people towards the same suspect streams [i.e. Al-Qaeda and other Islamist movements] that brainwash them and ultimately produce terrorists from among them."

Naturally, if the war on radicalism, and hence the so-called 'war of ideas' is to be won, all the ideological flavors need to be placed under the microscope, with no qualifications or agendas to dictate who or what goes under a serious and objective study. History must be harnessed in its entirety; not just flattering portions that some apologists use as devices to deflect and more often than not stifle criticism.

Why Bali?

Once again, the resort island of Bali is hit. Three suicide bombers, taking with them the lives of 36 people. Police are hunting Noordin Mohamed Top, a Malaysian Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) operative and elsewhere, Vice President Yusuf Kalla urges Muslim leaders to condemn terrorism that is worked on Indonesian soil. He says:

"Suicide bombings in Afghanistan and Iraq are perhaps understandable because there is an 'opponent' there..."

I must confess. Yusuf Kalla's statement makes absolutely no sense. First of all, Afghanistan has seen very little suicide bombings and the almost weekly suicide bombings in Iraq have killed more Muslim civilians (albeit Shia) than Americans, whom I presume are Yusuf Kalla's real opponents. Yusuf Kalla himself makes for a remarkable study, but I'll leave him for another time.

From the outset, suicide bombing gravitates toward a specific kind of target. Proximity to the victim, coupled with the aim to inflict maximum damage almost ensures that the target will not be military, but a civilian one; what is known today as a soft target. Doing the math, terrorists know that between a military and a civilian target, the latter is entirely predictable and can always be relied on to produce a devastating result.

Unlike the medieval holy warrior or assassin, who was willing to face certain death at the hands of his enemies or captors, the new suicide terrorist dies by his own hand. This raises an important question of Islamic teaching. Islamic law books are very clear on the subject of suicide. It is a major sin and is punished by eternal damnation in the form of endless repetition of the act by which the suicide killed himself [1].

A sahih (authentic) hadith narrated by Abu Hurarira strikes right into the heart of the matter:

"We witnessed along with Allah's Apostle the Khaibar (campaign). Allah's Apostle told his companions about a man who claimed to be a Muslim, "This man is from the people of the Fire." When the battle started, the man fought very bravely and received a great number of wounds and got crippled. On that, a man from among the companions of the Prophet came and said, "O Allah's Apostle! Do you know what the man you described as of the people of the Fire has done? He has fought very bravely for Allah's Cause and he has received many wounds." The Prophet said, "But he is indeed one of the people of the Fire." Some of the Muslims were about to have some doubt about that statement. So while the man was in that state, the pain caused by the wounds troubled him so much that he put his hand into his quiver and took out an arrow and committed suicide with it. Off went some men from among the Muslims to Allah's Apostle and said, "O Allah's Apostle! Allah has made your statement true. So-and-so has committed suicide."

Obviously, Muslims who try to justify suicide bombings in the light of either Islam or jihad tread a virtually non-existent line, since the real face of suicide bombing, unmasked in places as diverse as Iraq, Israel and Indonesia, is its perverse taste for unwitting women, children and the elderly. The latter are categories of people that the Prophet Muhammad steadfastly forbade his followers from molesting, even in the fever-pitch of battle.

The Malaysian press' use of the label pengebom berani mati (or men who are brave enough to die) to describe suicide bombers, especially in Bali's context, seems especially sadistic. The journalists lament that they don't have another apt term for it; one that properly highlights the bomber's cause.

What eludes them is that these acrobatics; the reluctance to use the far more accurate Malay word, pengebom bunuh diri (men who kill themselves) leads directly to justifying the act itself, and hence the deaths of its victims. Or perhaps, that is the deal all along. Suicide, after all, is clearly condemned in Islam. Thus, if a linguistic loophole is available, exploit it.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's quick characterization of the Bali bombings as terrorist acts is to be commended. His government had received reports of an impending attack on Jakarta, so had only made security arrangements for the capital. However, if the President had attended to regional analyses of JI, he'd have known that a split had emerged within its fecund ranks. The 2002 Bali and Marriot bombings, in which JI members had been implicated, had killed a lot of Muslims. This had sickened many, including JI members.

Sidney Jones, from the International Crisis Group, said JI could be moving back towards its vision of setting up an Islamic state, distancing itself from the hardline pro-bombing faction led by Malaysians Azahari bin Husin and Noordin Top.

Sadly, if this had been taken into account, President Yudhoyono would have quickly realized that in the terrorists' minds, the demographics of islands like Bali, Bintan and Irian Jaya (where 'disbelievers' outnumber Muslims) make them succulent targets. In killing non-Muslims, the terrorists seek perhaps to reach a compromise with their war-weary brothers and sisters. This isn't far-fetched at all, since the terrorists' core audience remain the Muslim community itself. Al-Qaida's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri clearly grasps this reality in a recent letter to the terrorist organization's Iraqi front-man. In it, he flatly warns Abu Musab al-Zarqawi that his brutal tactics might serve to alienate the wider Muslim population.

The question that should have been asked is "Why not Bali?

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[1] The Crisis of Islam, Bernard Lewis

The Officially Sanctioned Dictionary

I have always admired how most Salafists seem to talk and think alike. Out of the 6346 verses in the Quran and the millions of ahadith (sayings of the Prophet), they even seem to quote the same ones. Maybe there's a microchip implanted in their brains. Every night, during ishaak prayers, satellite transmissions apprise the chip of the latest happenings, polemics and fatwa (religious edicts). Sadly, that isn't the case. The true reason has more to do with the slim range of materials that Salafists normally tap into.

The word Salafist, of course, is derived from the word Salaf, which in turn refers to the early succeeding generations of the Prophet Muhammad. Salafist scholars claim to obtain their understanding of Islam directly from these Pious Predecessors, as opposed to the majority who follow the understanding of a traditonal madhhab (School of Thought).

The word madhhab is derived from an Arabic word meaning "to go" or "to take as a way", and refers to a mujtahid's (a scholar entrusted with deducing law from scripture) choice in regard to a number of interpretive possibilities in deriving the rule of Allah from the primary texts of the Qur'an and hadith on a particular question. In a larger sense, a madhhab represents the entire school of thought of a particular mujtahid Imam, such as Abu Hanifa, Malik, Shafi'i, or Ahmad--together with many first-rank scholars that came after each of these in their respective schools. [source: Masud.co.uk]

Salafists often quote a hadith that seems, on the surface at least, to doubt the value of madhhab and cement the merit of their viewpoint .

"The best of my Ummah is my generation, then those who follow them."

Then again, the claim faces a logical hurdle. It undoubtedly implies that early jurists, who were closer in time to the Pious Predecessors, inherited neither the complete Salaf's understanding of religion nor their methodology.

This couched superiority is still very much in evidence, where scholars trained in the classical tradition are discouraged, if not banned from teaching and preaching in Islam's holiest precincts. Oddly, their cause has been picked up by The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. In a 2004 report, the Commission highlighted that "those who do not adhere to the officially sanctioned strain of Sunni Islam practiced in the country can face severe repercussions from religious police."

But how do we tell the difference between followers of the officially sanctioned strain and those that aren't? Easy- by their idiolect. Here is a list of 7 keywords (in descending order) that crop up often in any conversation with officially sanctioned Muslims:

7. Wahhab- Wahhab is one of the 99 Names of God, meaning knowledge. When a Muslim is named after one of the Divine Names, he has to add an 'abdul' in front, which effectively means 'servant of'. Abdul Wahhab thus means 'servant of God', just as Abdul Rahman or Abdul Rahim does. Most Westerners use the term Wahhabi to refer to the Salafist movement started by Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab in the 18th century. This flies wildly off-the-mark since Abdul Wahhab is actually the name of Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab's father. The ibn means 'son of'. Except for a few nonconformists, Salafists by and large detest being called Wahhabi.

Nonetheless, the Salafist strain which now controls Mecca and Medina had an unmistakable beginning in Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab's polemics.

I rank Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab in the last place because his name is seldom mentioned by Salafists outside Saudi Arabia. This, I attribute to the divergence between the historical Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab and the ideological entity that apologists have propped up.

Bin Baaz's (a name I shall come to in due time) biography of Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab, for example, mentions his father as a great jurisprudent and judge without mentioning that the latter had been one of his son's earliest and most vociferous critics. Bin Baaz cannot have been unaware of this since he reserves quite colorful terms for Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab's detractors; terms like 'characterless', 'envious', 'ignorant' and the ever-functional 'idiot'.

In reality, the idiots included Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab's father, his brother Suleyman ibn Abdul Wahhab (also a respected judge), both his earliest teachers Muhammad ibn Sulaiman al-Kurdi and Muhammad Hayat al-Sindhi, the sage Muhammad ibn Sulayman Effendi, the four traditional jurists of Mecca and last but not least, the chief mufti, Sayyid Ahmad Zayni Dahlan who was, as the Sayyid appellation suggests, a descendant of Prophet Muhammad.

6. Baaz- I must confess that when I first encountered his name, I thought he was an African-American rapper. Abdul-Aziz bin Abdullah ibn Baaz served as Saudi Arabia's chief mufti from 1993 until he died in 1999. He is greatly admired by Salafists the world over for his staunch commitment to Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab ideals. He might have been cast from the same mold.

In a book published in 1974, entitled "Evidence that the Earth is Standing Still", Bin Baaz famously revoked a theory that had been first advanced by Muslim scientists:

"If the earth is rotating as they claim, the countries, the mountains, the trees, the rivers, and the oceans will have no bottom and the people will see the eastern countries move to the west and the western countries move to the east."

It's not surprising that the first thing he did when attaining high office was to issue this fatwa:

"The earth is flat, and anyone who disputes this claim is an atheist who deserves to be punished."

Even Carl Sagan, author of the superstition-busting Demon-Haunted World, was led to comment that the shaykh's "...opinions have often raised eyebrows or embarrassed worldly Saudis..."

I wonder what Bin Baaz had to say about Astronaut Sultan bin Salman's (on the right) tight shorts.

Later, on being informed of the reality by a Saudi astronaut, Bin Baaz grudgingly gave ground, but not by much.

5. Ikhwan- Ikhwan means brother. Not to be confused with the Egyptian Al-Ikhwan Al-Muslimoon (Muslim Brotherhood), the Saudi Ikhwan nonetheless had its fair share of tribulations. The second Saudi state created the militant-cum-religious organization in 1912 to revive its alliance with the inheritors of Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab's flagellant ideology. Ikhwan shock-troopers were extremely successful in Saudi conquests but committed numerous atrocities against Muslims who refused to dance to their tune. Their treatment of the Bedouin tribes, especially, was particularly cruel.

Their extremism and eventual rebellion against what they saw as the Saud clan's betrayal of Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab's ideals forced the kingdom to disarm and disband them. They were reorganized and became the Saudi National Guard, one of whose duties is to protect the royal family from possible coups instigated by the regular army.

The religious face of the defunct Ikhwan did not entirely vanish but re-materialized as the Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, or Mutaween, whose achievements include the deaths of 15 children in an inferno.

4. Taimiyya- One of the great scholars of the 14h century, who attracted controversy for his disdain of the four classical schools of Islam. He was nonetheless a towering exponent of Imam Hanbal's jurisprudence. I covered Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab's connection with ibn Taimiyya in this essay. I will only add that some Salafists are so awe-struck by ibn Taimiyya to the point of excluding all other great thinkers and scholars of historical Islam. The Biographies link on this website says it all.

3. Bid'ah- Or innovation. Traditional scholars classify innovations as good and bad. I'll take the practice of using prayer beads in zikir (remembrance of God through sustained chanting of Quranic verses or even God's name) as an example. A Salafist website lists it as being a reprehensible innovation, while Sheikh 'Atiyyah Saqr, former head of Al-Azhar (an institution that has thus far avoided the Salafist stream) Fatwa Committee, adopts an opposite view and goes on to reiterate the traditional Islamic view that "it is not permissible at all to brand any act as bid'ah just because it did not exist during the Prophet’s lifetime."

Saa'd Ibn Abdul Rahman Al-Saud. Incriminating evidence? Or fashion statement?

Nonetheless, Bid'ah figures prominently in Salafist discourse. One THC reader speculated that Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab's extreme methods of spreading his ideology had been prompted by the extreme bid'ah of his time. This is unnecessarily dense, since nowhere in Islam is the phrase "the ends justifies the means" given any serious thought. And it also presumes that Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab had faced a greater trial in evangelicalism than Prophet Muhammad himself, who scorned extremism in religion, did.

2. Rafidha- Or 'rejectionists of religion'. Salafists use this pejorative term on Shia Muslims in general. This approach is informed by ibn Taimiyya's and Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab' own resentment of the Shia. Ibn Taymiyya, once asked rather rhetorically of the Shia: "Is there to be found (anyone) more astray than a people who show enmity to the first and foremost (in faith)...and who ally themselves with the disbelievers and hypocrites?"

The demonizing of the Shia has found fullest expression in what I term the Salafist Triangle; made up of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan. It's hardly surprising that when the Taliban were running affairs in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia were two of only three countries to recognize them.

1. Firqa al-najiya- The Saved Sect. This incorporates the belief that only one sect out of a multitude of others is bound for paradise. No prizes for guessing which sect that will be. Saved Sectees (I once shortened it to SS in an online forum as a personal joke. It could either mean Saved Sect or the more infamous Waffen-SS, you see) assiduously believe themselves to be in a minority. Almost all websites that purport to represent Firqa al-najiya use, in one form or another, a tract written by Muhammed ibn Jameel Zaynoo. It's enthusiastically reprinted here, here and here. If you've been reading THC a long time, you'd know that some of the most influential thinkers have heartily endorsed the notion that only a few Muslims within the Ummah are true Muslims.

The moral? It's not a mystery, is it? Go get an officially-sanctioned dictionary.

Deconstructing an insult

Two posts ago, I wrote on Saudi Arabia's fresh concerns about Iran's (and hence Shi'ism's) growing influence in Iraq. Foriegn Minister Saud al-Faisal archly suggested to Iraqi Shias that Sunnis be given equal treatment.

The Iraqi Interior Minister, Falah al-Naqib (not normally known for his tact) promptly countered with a scathing:

"We do not accept a bedouin on a camel teaching us about human rights and democracy."

His retort is probably justified, given that the situation of Iraqi Sunnis nowhere approaches the outright persecution of the Shia minority in Saudi Arabia.

But the insult rankles on another level. The House of Saud is not Bedouin (nomad) but Hadar (settled community). The Hadar, incidentally, despise the Bedouin.

Oh, Mr Falah al-Naqib, you certainly know your insults.