Who are the Taliban?

The Wahhabi Myth (TWM)- a website created two years after 9-11 to discredit links between Usama bin Laden and Salafism- states quite categorically that "...the Taliban are Deobandi Sufis."

The Deobandi are Muslims of South Asia and Afghanistan who follow the fiqh (tradition of jurisprudence) of Imam Abu Hanifa. The name comes from Deoband, India, where the madrassa (religious school) Darul Uloom Deoband is sited.

According to Fuad S Naeem (Islam, Fundamentalism and the Betrayal of Tradition), Deobandi schools are completely orthodox and traditional, even though they oppose certain popular Sufi practices in the subcontinent. Their opposition though, needs to be seen not as a puritanical reform, but rather as an attempt to focus on essential Sufism.

Pinning the word "Sufi" onto Deobandi is about as useful as calling a madhhab (school of thought) within the Islamic family "monotheists", since all Muslims are, by default, monotheists.

Are the Taliban then the offspring of a purely Deobandi upbringing? By all accounts, yes, but it is not as simple as it appears to be.

One benefit of TWM's characterization of the Taliban as Deobandi Sufis is the implication that there exists different streams within that particular school.

The stream that concerns us is the one that has gained most from the imported ideology of Salafism. According to Ahmad Rashid (Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia), a gradual politicization of many Deobandi schools in Pakistan has been taking place in the last twenty years, which has resulted in a form of Deobandism that resembles militant Salafism and is far removed from the traditional Sufi piety of the school's founders.

Soviet involvement
In many ways, it was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that provided Salafists with an opportunity to stamp their influence on the region. Muslims from all over the world, copiously backed by Saudi Arabian money and Pakistani intelligence, descended on Afghanistan to wage what was seen at that time as a jihad against a brutal occupation.

Many of the volunteers originated in the Muslim Brotherhood or other radical Islamist organizations. Saudi Arabia, which played host to prominent Brotherhood figures, organized both the new recruits, and disbursement of assistance through the Islamic Coordination Council . In Pakistan, Arab volunteers staffed numerous Saudi Red Crescent offices near the Afghan frontier.

The Arab volunteers also disproportionately gravitated to the Ittihad-i Islami (Islamic Union), led by Abd al-Rabb al-Rasul Sayyaf. Sayyaf was a Pushtun, but he long lived in Saudi Arabia, had studied at al-Azhar in Cairo, and spoke excellent Arabic. Sayyaf preached a strict Salafist version of Islam that was rabidly critical of Sufism in Afghanistan.

After the war, his activism found moribund support amongst Afghans, but did not completely go away. It resurfaced in Pakistan.

Ahmad Rashid says that the five key leaders of the Taliban were graduates of a single madrassa, Darul Uloom Haqqania, Akora Khattak, near Peshawar which is situated in Pakistan but which was largely attended by Afghan refugees. This institution reflected Salafist beliefs in its teachings and much of its funding came from private donations from wealthy Arabs for which Usama bin Laden provided a conduit.

Yet, the signs of the Taliban's evolving ideology only became apparent when, exploiting the bitter infighting between Afghan warlords, they took control of the states and provinces. One of the first things they instituted was the mass killing of the Hazara Shia, allegedly in retaliation for past aggression.

The scale of the Taliban's response to the Hazara is indicative of a hostility that runs deeper than mere politicking. It was a position that had been carefully worked out, and relied on a selective choice of classical literature to justify what was really a genocidal hatred for Shia Muslims.

Upon the fall of Mazar-e-Sharif, Mullah Manon Niazi was the first to articulate his movement's priorities to the masses:

"Hazaras are not Muslim. You can kill them. It is not a sin."

It is important to note that while relations between Sunni and Shia Muslims have always been stormy, only certain groups within the Sunni fold place an inordinate priority on this sectarian enimity, and have acted on it with violence.

Diplomatic ties
Having seized the reins of government, the Taliban then proceeded to impose Islamic law, or what they deemed to be Islamic law, on Afghanistan.

The new social order completely excluded women from public and political life. Their rights were regulated with rigorous zeal.

This was what Muhammad al-Ghazali once described as the "ascendancy of Bedouin fiqh." What he meant by this term is that in much of contemporary culture, the world revolves around men and everything is channeled to their service.

At its peak, the Taliban regime was recognized by only three countries; the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The last is interesting because in many ways, the Taliban programs for social and religious reform mirrored the equally spectacular career of Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab, an 18th century preacher from Central Arabia whose activism had met with fierce opposition from the worldwide ulema (scholars).

Furthermore, Afghanistan was an impoverished country with only opium as a dubious source of revenue. Saudi Arabia's links with the regime was, in all likelihood, an ideological one; a project for Saudi missionaries to work on.

The latter's success could be seen in the similarities that blossomed between both regimes- and this was the fervent emphasis on conformity of external appearance and behavior.

In this, the Taliban was greatly aided by Usama bin Laden, whose personal charisma and wealth had drawn together a group of veteran Arab fighters. Calling itself al-Qaeda, or the base, members enthusiastically helped out in the transformation of the state.

In the wake of 9-11, the United States intensified its demand that the Taliban hand over Usama bin Laden, whose terror network is widely believed to be the mastermind of the terrorist attacks on New York. The language that America used was provocative and couched to humiliate the Taliban regime. Expectedly, the Taliban refused and in late 2001, the US invaded Afghanistan.

The invasion was a failure if one considers the primary mission to be the capture or liquidation of Usama bin Laden, but it threw up other interesting facts that should have put analysts on the alert.

The American Taliban
One of these revolves around a young American named John Lindh Walker; captured by US forces in Afghanistan with a group of Taleban and al-Qaeda fighters who had survived a bloody Mazar-e-Sharif prison revolt.

A rigorous Time Magazine investigation revealed that Lindh had received his Islamic education from Yemen, and had specifically inclined toward the Salafist stream when he was there.

When he returned to America...

...Lindh started to wear Arab, not Pakistani, dress. He also spent less time at the Mill Valley Mosque and began frequenting mosques in San Francisco where Salafi Yemenis worshipped. To reach the mosques on Sutter and Jones streets for Friday prayers, he would take a bus ride into the city, leaving the sunny hills of Marin County for the streets of San Francisco.

It is tempting to infer Salafism's exclusivist blueprint from Lindh's own preference for worshipping in a Salafist mosque, but this analysis is too simplistic because overt sectarianism is discouraged by some Salafist preachers, at least in public.

What is important here is Lindh's own set of values, which he derived from the ideological underpinnings of the religion he had picked up from Yemen. It was this very ideology that caused him to shun Muslims in his hometown who did not share his Salafist tendencies.

Conceivably then, Lindh must have viewed the Taliban either as ideological comrades, or else, Muslims on the way toward what many Salafists are fond of describing as "the pure, untainted Islam of the Pious Predecessors".

The New Shirt

This is a work of fiction. I wrote this last year when I heard on the news that a Palestinian mother had lost her baby because she had come in between an exchange of fire between Palestinian militants and Israeli soldiers.

Ten o'clock. The cigarette in my hand has burned to a butt. I don't even notice that the fire's gone out. I've been sucking a cold stick for the past hour. Cries arise from the wards behind the automatic swing doors.

Shrieks, guttural and almost beastlike, drown the soft music playing from the ceiling's speakers. Not that I am even listening to either the screams or the music. It's too cold to concentrate on anything in here.

I walk towards the doors and they sweep open on whirring motors. I've been dancing with those motors since morning, and have grown to like the power I have over them.

"No, I can't take it." a voice sobs hysterically from one of the wards along the sterile corridor. "Take it out! Please take it out, doctor!"

Is that Husha? No, the voice is too deep. The doors swing close, muffling the woman's agony and joining two halves of a sign that proclaims in Hebrew and Arabic: No Smoking beyond this point!

I'm running out of cigarettes and my lighter has run out of fluid. Not a good time to starve. The wait is terrible. I've been waiting for eight hours and it's not going to end anytime soon.

A nurse passes by and looks at me strangely.

"Are you alright, sir?" she asks.

I nod and smile.

"Sure?" she insists with the good nature of someone who has known no tragedy in her life.

"Yes."

"Don't worry, sir. I'm sure your wife will be out shortly."

"She'll be fine," I reply, more to assure myself.

Thankfully, the nurse moves away, a prim smile pasted on her face.

I drop my spent cigarette into a shiny bin and sit in one of the orange, plastic chairs beside it. It is too large, too hard. I jump back up and the doors swing open again. The harsh cry of an infant trickles through, and I am sure Husha has delivered. My baby is safe! A voice in my mind shouts out triumphantly. My baby is safe! True enough, before the doors shut, I see a green-robed doctor emerge from Husha's ward. I move back and step forward. The motors whir and the doctor comes through. The smell of antiseptic is strong.

"Mister Muhammad?" the doctor speaks fluent Arabic. Not a good sign since this means he works for the military. "Mister Muhammad, are you?"

I nod.

"Husha," I manage to croak.

"She is fine," says the doctor, eyes traveling down to my shirt.

"My baby?" I dare not wait for the answer. I feel like running away before he can open his mouth to answer such a foolish question.

The doctor looks back up.

"I'm sorry, Mister Muhammad. The child…he's dead."

"Why?" I sputter. "Why? Aren't you a good doctor?"

"I am," he returns with a paternal look. "But the boy…shrapnel penetrated the womb and lodged into his back. Shattered his spine," he shook his head as if to marvel that so much damage could be done with so little. "I couldn't save him. I'm truly sorry, Mister Muhammad."

I stumble backwards, falling into one of the plastic seats. It still feels hard, unyielding, so unlike the cushions that my beloved Husha makes.

"I have a son?"

"You had a son, Mister Muhammad," the doctor corrects gently, staring again at my shirt.

I grasp the sides of my seat, not really understanding.

The doctor moves to the opposite wall and picks up a newspaper from a rack. He stares a moment at the front page and grins.

"Look here," he says, turning the page towards me.

I see a color photograph filling up almost the entire paper. I cannot read the spidery words printed on the Jerusalem Post, but the picture is enough. It shows the site of another suicide bombing, very much like the one that had injured Husha at the roadblock. Although the people in the photograph are frozen in time, I know, somehow, that they are running about, shouting, screaming. There are roars and sirens only I can hear.

"Look," says the doctor, pointing at the corner of the photograph. "Don't you see? It's you."

It is! There I am- a desperate face amongst other desperate faces. A face that is sad and resigned, with eyes that are looking sideways in the hope that someone, perhaps someone beyond the frame of this photograph, would come help him carry the beautiful woman in his arms to a safe place. But no one came, and the photographer was too busy capturing the devastation for the news wires.

The suicide bomber had turned up at a place I had gone to beg for food- food that my pregnant Husha needed. I had brought Husha along because I thought that the young Israeli soldiers manning the post would take pity on me and hand out some of their rations. They were kids. They had mothers. And not all of them were beasts.

What I got instead was a bomb, and through the bomb, the death of my son.

Did the suicide bomber have a mother too? Was she weeping over her own son? Or was she even now celebrating her son's bravery?

"I'll cut this out and paste it on the wall of my office," the doctor says sympathetically. "And the hospital fees…they'll be paid by the IDF."

"IDF?" I stumble on the letters.

"The Israel Defense Forces. It's reviewed your case and decided to compensate you."

"Tha…thank you," I reply. "Can I see my Husha now?"

"Yes, of course," the doctor smiles expansively. "Come, I'll bring you to her."

The doors open and I walk through them, at last. I don't notice the cries of the other women, the first bawling of the other newborns. All I want to do now is see Husha- kiss her and tell her that even though our son is gone, we still have each other.

"The shirt you are wearing," says the doctor from behind me. "Do you like it?"

I turn around, not really believing what the doctor is asking.

"It's soft…comfortable."

He smiles in satisfaction.

"I bought it from United States. I donated it last week and here it is, on you. I must say, you look smart in it."

"Do you have a son, doctor?" I ask.

The doctor looks at me in surprise.

"Why, I do. He's twenty-two this year, serving in the Army, in fact."

"If I were you, doctor, I would have given this shirt to him."

I turn and walk towards Husha's ward.

Google can help in the war on terrorism

The US Department of Justice (DoJ) wants Google to hand over data about what people are looking for on the Internet. Ostensibly, it's to shut down child-pornography rings, which is good and proper, but what must worry terrorists is the possibility that the DoJ is putting up a smokescreen; that what the Americans are really after is information on their online habits.

After all, in the World Wide Web, Islamists have found a place where they can act out all their sadistic fanatasies. From providing detailed instructions about how terrorists could attack and kill individual Westerners on the streets of Jakarta, to posting video clips of frightened hostages in Iraq. From elaborate bomb-making manuals to releasing the latest suicide-endorsing fatwas- it's a wiki-wiki world for these Islamists.

Thanks to its almost daily crawls of the Internet, Google is armed with an extensive database on website contents; unless of course, Islamists have enough tech-savvy to place a robots.txt file in their root servers, effectively telling Google's "webspiders" to stay out.

But Islamists want their websites to be found. They can't stand nonchalance from us. That's why they're so into bombs.

No doubt, if the DoJ succeeds in bringing Google to heel, it would be well-placed to sieve out what's terrorism-related, and what's not. However, there's always the question of how much intrusion is too much?

The Bush Administration is currently reeling from recent revelations that it authorized the bugging of phone lines, without the DoJ's approval. More astonishingly, federal authorities have been monitoring the radiation levels of some mosques.

Though a recent study conducted by the non-partisan Freedom House has highlighted the existence of 'hate materials' published by Saudi Arabia in American mosques, I hardly think that a mosque is an appropriate place to store an atomic bomb. I am forcefully reminded of the intrusive raids by the FBI into mosques after the 9-11 attacks. An attorny representing 18 Muslims who had been held in connection with 9-11 investigations retorted:

"Why is our places of worship the focus of your attention, when you know the hijackers weren't worshipping at religious centers, but they were hanging out at bars?"

Little known to the general public, though, are the efforts taken by Google to resolve once and for all, some burning questions on the "war on terrorism". The outcome of a showdown between Hamas and Israel, for example, has been emphatically decided. Of more interest to Islam-insiders is this ongoing battle.

Rules of Learning

Here is sound advise from Abd al-Latif (1162-1231), a Muslim medical scholar of Baghdad.

I commend you not to learn your sciences from books unaided, even though you may trust your ability to understand. Resort to professors for each science you seek to acquire; and should your professor be limited in his knowledge take all that he can offer, until you find another more accomplished than he. You must venerate and respect him...

When you read a book, make every effort to learn it by heart and master its meaning. Imagine the book to have disappeared and that you can dispense with it, unaffected by its loss...

One should read histories, study biographies and the experience of nations. By doing this, it will be as though, in his short life space, he lived contemporaeously with peoples of the past, was on intimate terms with them, and knew the good and the bad among them...

You should model your conduct on that the early Muslims. Therefore, read the biography of the Prophet, study his deeds and concerns, follow in his footsteps, and try your utmost to imitate him...

You should frequently distrust your nature, rather than have a good opinion of it, submitting your thoughts to men of learning and their works, proceeding with caution and avoiding haste...he who has not enured the stress of study will not taste the joy of knowledge...

When you have finished your study and reflection, occupy your tongue with the mention of God's name, and sing His praises...

Do not complain if the world should turn its back on you, it would distract you from the acquisition of excellent qualities...know that learning leaves a trail and a scent proclaiming its possessor; a ray of light and brightness shining on him, pointing him out...

(G Makdisi, The Rise of Colleges)

Pope Benedict on Islam

Hugh Hewitt did an interesting interview with Father Jospeh Fessio, Provosty of Ave Maria University in Naples, Florida, and student and friend of Benedict XVI. The most interesting part concerned a gathering at Castle Gandolfo with the Pope and his students in September 2005, where the subject was Islam.

Read it here.

The reason for simplicity

We've all come to the place where our fingers itch to "improve" our blogs. After all, we blog wherever we are- at work, in transit, shopping, even sitting in the cinema, when advertisements begin their infernal roll. Our minds constantly return to the blog; more specifically, the concoction of the next post.

Those bloggers who say, "I don't care if my blog is read or not", are really kidding themselves. They obviously care enough to put it in so many words. Therefore, I shall unshamedly state that yes, I do care about my readers.

My readership is still a paltry number, though. Compared to giants like MereIslam or Deenport, I am a mere gadfly.

It was demoralizing at first, but at some point, something in my mind clicked. It was more a self-affirmation, and it went like this: I care more for what I write than for maintaining a large fan base.

I use the term 'fan' loosely, of course. Some will no doubt leave this blog with a bitter taste in their mouths.

Have I digressed enough? I was going to talk about itchy fingers, yes? Listen, I know that my blog is criminally simple, as most blogs go. There is a distinct lack of graphics and animated gifs. No fancy features like blogrolling, piped-in news snippets and the requisite tagboard that adorns most other blogs. Plus, the layout and fonts seem all wrong...so *gasp* old school.

I am old school, truth be told. So whenever the itch to improve hits me- that is, a voice nags at me to add an arabesque background, throw in a Flash game or two in the sidebar- I pause. Two words come to me- dial up.

Yes, believe it or not, there still exists a significant portion of Internet users whose only access into the World Wide Web is through a crackly and snail-paced phone line. I don't want them to wait forever for my blog to load.

I also convince myself- though I am only halfway there- that a good looking blog might distract me from the real meat. I am neither an aesthetic person like Shaik Abdul Khafid, nor what I'd call a life-conscientious person like UmmZaid.

So without being too apologetic, I shall maintain this blog's simplicity and pray that you like things just the way they are.

Positive hatred

You would think that Pat Robertson is a unique individual; that his kind of opportunism is only possible in the all-powerful West, where big money and big resources enable one to act on the darkest goals. You would, most respectfully, be wrong.

An ocean and some sand might divide the United States of America and Saudi Arabia, but both contend with people who are cast from the same mold.

Take Sheikh Abdul Aziz Fawzan Al-Fawzan, for example. He's a professor of Islamic law at Al-Imam University and frequently appears on Saudi television. It's not too farfetched to say that he is the Saudi regime's answer to al-Jazeera's populist Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, whom Salafists playfully tag with labels such "Wicked Mufti", "Pauper" and "Hounding Dog".

Sheikh Abdul Aziz Fawzan is well-known in Saudi Arabia for his staunch resistance to women driving cars on the streets of Saudi Arabia, even though King Abdullah has elsewhere contradicted him.

The world was pleasantly introduced to the Sheikh when after the Indian Ocean tsunami, he advanced this consolation to its victims:

"These great tragedies and collective punishments that are wiping out villages, towns, cities, and even entire countries, are Allah's punishments of the people of these countries, even if they are Muslims."

Let's have a little perspective here. The tens of thousands of Muslims who perished lived mostly in the Indonesian province of Aceh, whose practice of Islam is deeply influenced by Sufism.

Graves of holy persons, known as wali, are encountered as frequently as mosques. Group sessions of zikir (repeated chanting of God's name) are characterized by graceful bodily motions; reminiscent of the traditional Malay dikir barat. All these, of course, are anathema to the 'officially-sanctioned' strain of Islam that Saudi Arabia perpetuates. The apparent lack of sympathy is hardly surprising.

However, in his tsunami pronouncements, Sheikh Abdul Aziz Fawzan reserved his choicest words for the celebration of Christmas.

"The fact that it happened at this particular time is a sign from Allah. It happened at Christmas, when fornicators and corrupt people from all over the world come to commit fornication and sexual perversion. That's when this tragedy took place, striking them all and destroyed everything."

More recently, he encouraged Muslims to hate Christians with "Positive Hatred" on Al-Majd TV. Of course, this attitude isn't particularly earth-shattering. If there is one thing that the Shia and Saudi Salafists passionately share, it is their acute mistrust of the West. The only difference is that while Shia Iran is considered by President Bush to be part of an "axis of evil",  Saudi Arabia's ruling elite is allowed to own key American corporations.

Bush's "axis of evil" includes an Iraq that was ruled by Saddam Hussein, a dictator who was enthusiastically supported by Saudi Arabia in the eighties against Iran.  In the aftermath of the American invasion of Iraq in 2004- seemingly on the pretext [1] of destroying Saddam's biological arsenal- Sheikh Abdul Aziz Fawzan immediately declared that:

"Jihad is an individual duty applying to the Iraqi people. They need to wage this Jihad against this enemy until it leaves their country, especially as this enemy hurts their honor, blood, and property."

This was music to the ears of jihadists with a name but no work. Iraq became infused with fighters who played the 'insurgent' card before their growing brutality against Shia shrines and rituals exposed their true nature.

Ahmed Shah Massoud- greatly feared by Afghan Islamists.

In February 2004, an attempt was made to kill Iraq's top Shia leader, Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani. In this, the strategy of eliminating key and charismatic leaders mirrors that of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, who succeeded in killing Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Lion of Panjshir and hero of the Afghan mujahideen, two days before the 9-11 attacks on New York.

Thankfully, there are sane voices who are just as emphatic as Sheikh Abdul Aziz Fawzan's. Aside from the tantalizing contradictions offered by King Abdullah on Saudi Arabia's future directions, another Sheikh, Abd Al-Muhsin Al-'Abikan, asserted that those scholars who agitate for war "should stand trial for the damage they had caused to Iraq..."

Now, that's music to my ears.

=============

[1] On hindsight, it was a false pretext.

Pat Robertson's zeal for Israel

The man who once called the Prophet Muhammad a "terrorist" and Islam a "very evil and wicked religion" has done it again. This time, 'divine providence' has laid Ariel Sharon's massive brain hemorrhage at his doorstep, and Reverend Pat is not one to pass up such an opportunity.

"He was dividing God's land, and I would say, 'Woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the [European Union], the United Nations or the United States of America...'"

This ardent support for Israel from the Christian camp is hardly new.

For many Jews, Israel is the fulfillment of national aspirations after thousands of years of minority status, of being alienated from their host socieities, and in many cases actually barred from becoming full citizens of the lands in which they lived.

Christian Zionism, on the other hand, is the belief that the return of the Jews to the Holy Land, and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, is in accordance with Biblical prophecy, and is a necessary precondition for the return of Jesus to reign on Earth. This is supposed to occur near the end of the world, a turbulent period known rather anti-climatically as the End Times.

As a specifically theological belief, however, Christian Zionism does not necessarily entail sympathy for the Jews as an ethnicity or for Judaism as a religion. Hal Lindsey has written in one of his books about the End Times:

"...the valley from Galilee to Eilat (a town in southern Israel) will flow with blood and 144,000 Jews would bow down before Jesus and be saved".

According to Lindsey, the rest of the Jews- an alarming two-thirds- will perish in a great conflagration called Armageddon.

So influential is this lobby in the United States, Daniel Pipes comments that Christian Zionism is probably Israel's "best weapon".

I disagree. Utilizing such 'assets' to cement Israel's position in the world might do more harm than good in the long run. Statements such as Pat Robertson's are the natural consequence of the set of End Time beliefs that is called 'dispensationalism', which many commentators say is a kind of self-willed fulfillment of prophecy.

Where language fails Islam

English is not a neutral language. Because it evolved in a Christian civilization; it comes loaded with a slew of Christian concepts and assumptions. If you find yourself asking questions like: "What do Muslims believe about Jesus?", or "What is more important in Islam, faith or works?", or "Is the Koran copied from the Bible?", you have got off on the wrong foot. You approach Islam with cultural baggage imported from Christianity.

Try to discover how Islam looks like from within. As a start, Islam is not a bastardized (or heretical) form of either Judaism or Christianity. There are enough differences that make Islam a unique religion of its own, although theologically and culturally, it is closest to Judaism. The monotheism that both assert is uncompromising. Daniel Pipes, the alleged Islamaphobe, remarks that:

"Of the three great monotheistic religions, Judaism and Christianity appear far more closely linked to each other than either is to Islam. As the term 'Judeo-Christian tradition' implies, these two faiths share deep bonds and a long history; in contrast, Islam seems alien.

There are many reasons for this. Theologically, the Old Testament is central to Judaism and Christianity, while Islam ignores the Bible in favor of the Qur'an. Demographically, the once-flourishing Jewish communities in Muslim countries have been decimated, and it is easy to forget that most Jews once lived among Muslims; for the last 500 years most Jews have lived in the Christian world. Culturally, Christians and Jews live at the vanguard of human experience, whereas Muslims had a harder time with twentieth-century life.

Notwithstanding these points, Judaism and Christianity differ profoundly in religious terms; the real resemblance is between Judaism and Islam."

No religion is an abstraction. Adherents may claim that God inspired it, or even that He dictated its sacred texts and that it is valid for an eternity. But the texts have to be interpreted by people and implemented in the lives of people. At the most superficial level, Islam (submission) is the religion of Muslims.

However, there are small-lettered versions of both words- islam and muslim- and these refer to the primordial state of submission that afflicts all men and women, believer and non-believer.

"...there is not a single leaf that falls without His knowledge, there is neither a grain in the darkness of the earth nor any thing fresh or dry which has not been recorded in a Clear Book." (Quran 6:59)

Instead of Original Sin, Muslims believe that mankind is born with fitra. It is the natural religious state of humankind when left to their own devices. Fitra enables men and women to recognize the innate truth of submission when they confront it with open hearts.

A non-Muslim who converts to Islam is thus said to have reverted. The soul returns to the only truth that matters; and that is the unity of God.

Gus Dur speaks out on Salafism

I had previously highlighted an Indonesian scholar who had resisted all efforts by the government to enlist Islam into politics, warning that it could become the 'thin end of the wedge' for Islamist agendas to creep into Indonesia's tolerant society.

"As long as they think Islam is an ideology, then I will not participate. Islam is a way of life. Its adherents should follow it voluntarily, not needing any legislation from the state."

His name is Abdurrahman Wahid, but is more affectionately known as Gus Dur. He helms the largest Muslim group in Indonesia, the traditionalist Nahdatul Ulama (NU).

Recently, he contributed this article entitled "Right Islam vs Wrong Islam" to the Wall Street Journal. Here is a tantalizing excerpt:

This crisis of misunderstanding--of Islam by Muslims themselves--is compounded by the failure of governments, people of other faiths, and the majority of well-intentioned Muslims to resist, isolate and discredit this dangerous ideology. The crisis thus afflicts Muslims and non-Muslims alike, with tragic consequences. Failure to understand the true nature of Islam permits the continued radicalization of Muslims world-wide, while blinding the rest of humanity to a solution which hides in plain sight.