Daniel Pipes, a new kind of Israel-basher

Bradley Burston of Haaretz's Spin Cycle has some serious questions for "Harvard-pedigree" Daniel Pipes.

"This is not the first time Dr. Pipes has let Israelis have it for letting him down. In a 2003 speech to college students, cited on his Website www.DanielPipes.org, he suggested that Arabs will not truly accept Israel's existence until Israel "punishes violence so hard that its enemies will eventually feel so deep a sense of futility that they will despair of further conflict."

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Blown away by Mohammad al-Hosayn

I don't understand a word of the song, Mawlay, but this moving rendition by Mohammad al-Hosayn stirred something in my heart.

The music video can be viewed here.

Misquoting Muhammad Asad- addendum to previous post

In writing the previous entry, "Pummeling history into dust", I had in my mind some idea on how I wanted to end it. Vaguely, I recalled a passage in Muhammad Asad's splendid "The Road to Mecca", in which he had talked about the "spirit" of Medina and surmised that it was all because of the man buried beneath the "great green dome". Asad's observation was the perfect finishing-touch to a post that revolved more or less round the Prophet's Mosque.

Convinced that the words could be found online, I searched for them, and hit gold. I copied the passage from the website and pasted it into my article:

"Although life in Medina today has only a formal, distant relationship with what the Prophet aimed at; although the spiritual awareness of Islam has been cheapened here, as in many other parts of the Muslim world: an indescribable emotional link with its great spiritual past has remained alive. Never has any city been so loved for the sake of one single personality; never has any man . . . been loved so personally, and by so many, as . . . who lies . . . beneath the great green dome."

I thought little of the ". . ." in between the quoted text. Extraneous words, I suspected.

But there was a tiny, niggling voice inside of me that refused to shut up. Those ugly sets of three dots; what words were they supposed to cover?

As it turned out, I had a copy of Asad's tome. So, upon reaching home, I checked. This is what I found on page 251:

"Although life in Medina today has only a formal, distant relationship with what the Prophet aimed at; although the spiritual awareness of Islam has been cheapened here, as in many other parts of the Muslim world: an indescribable emotional link with its great spiritual past has remained alive. Never has any city been so loved for the sake of one single personality; never has any man, dead for over thirteen hundred years, been loved so personally, and by so many, as he who lies buried beneath the great green dome."

I have underlined the words that are missing from the quotation I originally copied from the website. They don't look very extraneous to me at all: "dead for over thirteen hundred years", "he" and "buried". Why exclude them from the quotation?

I have my suspicions, but like any good skeptic, it's best to give the other side the benefit of the doubt.

Oh, and if you really want to know which website I copied the text from, simply search for "Although life in Medina today has only a formal, distant relationship with what the Prophet aimed at" in Google.

Pummeling history into dust

"Muslims are many in number but few in reality, and the groups that claim to be Muslim are many, approaching 73 sects and numbering more than 1 billion." [1]

Hardliners often confuse me with being a Muslim, or even a Shia sympathizer, whenever I bring up the issue of the demolition of historical sites in Mecca and Medina. Of course, by Muslim, they mean the 'polytheistic' variety, or even ahle-bida'a, which effectively means, "people of innovation". In their view, these lost souls more or less make up the overwhelming bulk of the 1.3 billion strong Muslim world.

Sarcastic questions like: "Do you want to visit the Prophet's grace to pray to him?" are demanded of me, and I give up hope of ever convincing them that my concerns transcend the primitive adab (manners) with which they treat their own heritage.

In an age when Christians, Buddhists and especially Jews rush to unearth and preserve relics of their faith, Muslims are rushing headlong in the opposite direction. There is almost a perverse lust for identifying these relics and then wiping them out, brick by brick by brick.

Nothing is spared. From the planned eradication of the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad to the public latrine that now stands on the home of Khadijah (the love of Prophet Muhammad's life). In the 1980s, authorities even demolished part of the two hills of Safaa and Marwah to make way for a palace for the late King Khaled Ibn Abdul Aziz Al Saud.

Though Safaa and Marwah are not mentioned by name in both the Jewish and Christian scriptures, the event connected to the hills; namely, Hagar's desperate search for water to feed her son Ishmael, is evocatively depicted.

When the water in the skin was used up, she left the boy under one of the bushes. Then she went and sat down opposite him, about a bowshot away, for she said, "Do not let me see the boy die." And she sat opposite him, and lifted up her voice and wept. God heard the lad crying; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, "What is the matter with you, Hagar? Do not fear, for God has heard the voice of the lad where he is. "Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him by the hand, for I will make a great nation of him." Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water; and she went and filled the skin with water and gave the lad a drink. [Genesis 21:15-19]

Muslim tradition says that Hagar had in fact run between Safaa and Marwah until the angel Gabriel had struck the ground with his wing (or heel) and caused water to gush forth. Hagar's desperate dash is vividly recalled each year on the Muslim pilgrimage of Hajj, where the faithful move as one nation, seven times between the two hills.

In the course of the Hajj, it has also become a custom to visit al-Medina (literally, the City), whose centerpiece is Al-Masjid an-Nabawi (the Prophet's Mosque). Beneath its resplendent Green Dome lies the actual home and tomb of Muhammad.

The mosque is a living paradox within the kingdom, because the state-sponsored strain of Islam- Salafism- traces its ideological lineage back to Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab's own career of ravaging the tombs of Muslim saints. By the time he died in 1792, the domes erected over those tombs had become the favorite targets of his zealous cohorts.

According to Sir Richard Burton, who disguised himself as an Afghan Muslim to perform the Hajj in 1853, the al-Saud tribe went on a pillaging spree across the Arabian Peninsula in 1810, and upon entering al-Medina, became enthralled "by the appearance of the golden or gilt globes and crescents surmounting the green dome".

In their crass attempt to demolish the Green Dome, however:

Two of their number...were killed by falling from the slippery roof, and the rest, struck by superstitious fears, abandoned the work of destruction. [the text of Sir Richard Burton's remarkable journey can be found here]

Saudi suspicions over the Mosque are far from dead. It is disconcerting to note that fatwas (religious edicts) such as this, pertaining to the grave of Prophet Muhammad, even exists.

With regards to some ignorant people who stipulate the permissibility of graves being allowed in Masaajid (mosques) due to the presence of the Prophet's grave and his two noble companions' graves being part of his Masjid, then this can not be presented as an argument or proof, because the Messenger of Allaah and his two noble companions were buried in his house and not inside the Masjid. But when Al Waleed ibn 'Abul-Maalik ibn Marwaan decided to expand the Prophet's Masjid, he included the house of the Prophet as part of the Masjid, due to his intended extension. Al Waleed ibn 'Abdul-Maalik ibn Marwaan committed an error when he did this, and what was obligatory upon him was not to include the house of the Prophet as part of the Masjid...

Taken to its logical conclusion, the fatwa agitates for the so-called error to be rectified. Either the Green Dome of the Prophet's Mosque is to be torn down, finishing what had been attempted by the early Saudi marauders, or the Prophet Muhammad's grave is exhumed and his cadaver transplanted elsewhere.

Lest you think that these notions are too farfetched to have any grounding in reality; they do resonate amongst Saudi Arabia's top scholars. Shaykh Muhammad Nasir-al-din al-Albani, for example, has called for both the demolition of the Green Dome and for shuffling the Prophet's grave outside the mosque in at least five of his books. [2]

According to Gibril Haddad (Albani & His Friends), Shaykh Abdul Aziz Bin Baaz- another leading scholar of the kingdom- minded over a regime of "blatant tampering with the scholarly heritage of Islam" to prop up the otherwise indefensible position that visiting the Prophet's grave is a grotesque rite.

"In the book of al-Adhkar by Imam al-Nawawi as published by Dar al-Huda in al-Riyadh in 1409/1989 and edited by 'Abd al-Qadir al-Arna'ut of Damascus, page 295, the chapter-title, 'Section on Visiting the Grave of the Messenger' was substituted with the title, 'Section on Visiting the Mosque of the Messenger of Allah'..."

In fact, Imam al-Nawawi- one of the most highly-regarded scholars of Sunni Islam- was not alone in upholding the rite and calling it what it is. There is overwhelming accord amongst past and present ulema (religious scholars) that visiting the Prophet's grave brings tremendous benefit to the believer.

This clash between the traditional elements (represented by the majority of ulema) on the one side, and 'reformist' elements that work and rework the line that what they are doing is simply 'purging' the religion of idolatry frankly befuddles most non-Muslims. It is fashionable instead to adopt the simple, black-and-white view of morality, in which the only boundary that exists and should exist lies between moderates and extremists.

The view does nothing to address the internal dynamics of the Muslim community, which is characterized by an oftentimes grim struggle for the rights to define orthodoxy. As the voluminous report churned out by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States makes clear, the "civil war" within Muslim ranks will have a dramatic impact on the rest of the world.

Partisan Decisions
The question must be asked: "Are Mecca and Medina the sole preserve of a particular country named after a particular tribe?"

There is, of course, a key difference between the broad representation of past Islamic empires and modernity's conception of the nation-state. Undoubtedly, Saudi Arabia falls into the latter category.

But a nation-state is defined as a form of state in which those who exercise power claim legitimacy for their rule partly or solely on the grounds that their power is exercised for the promotion of the distinctive interests, values and cultural heritage of a particular nation whose members ideally would constitute all, or most of, its subject population and all of whom would dwell within the borders.

The operative phrase is "subject population". Unless Saudi Arabia regards itself as overlords of the Ummah, it is extremely hard to condone its negatory policies, apparently taken on behalf of her Muslim subjects worldwide, without so much as the vestige of a consensus being reached.

There is perhaps a realization that historical sites are dearly important to people, and that any argument against the role of history and tradition is simply a tool in a deliberate campaign of de-culturalization. Joel Spring states that "one's knowledge, images, and emotions regarding the past have an impact on future actions. Individuals often make decisions based on what they believe to be the historical purposes and goals of an institution."

If Spring is right, then the immediate fallout of the sustained demolitions of historical artifacts identified most strongly with the Prophet Muhammad, his family and companions would surely be the lessening of adoration for the Prophet himself.

This intense love- often trumped as an example of 'idolatry' by ideologues- cannot be underestimated amongst non-Arab Muslims who make up the enormous bulk (and hence, consensus) of the Ummah. After all, a religion based mainly on the upholding of legal norms enshrined in an Arabic text could hardly be expected to penetrate the cultures of non-Arab illiterates far removed from the cosmopolitan world of the great Islamic cities of the medieval age. Early non-Arab converts were attracted to the personality of the Prophet Muhammad himself, as emulated by the Sufi missionaries who adhered to the Sunnah (Prophetic behavior).

It is thus no coincidence that the Hanbali Madhhab (School of Thought) which laid particular emphasis on literalistic and non-allegorical interpretation of the scriptures, came to form the near-exclusive backbone of puritanical movements like the Saudi brand of Salafism. Malise Ruthven (Islam in the World) highlights that the same thing had happened in the past; the Hanbali framework inevitably "became a rallying point for Arabs who found their linguistic and cultural hegemony diminishing in a multi-national Islamic society dominated numerically by Turks, Persians, Berbers and other non-Arab peoples".

The Fatal Loss
At any rate, the chronic annihilation of Islam's physical legacy would have floundered if not for the devastating effect that secularization has had on the religious psyche. Karen Armstrong (A History of Jerusalem, One City, Three Faiths) argues that being raised in a scientifically-oriented society has robbed us of the ability to think naturally in terms of symbols.

Sacred places lose their symbolism simply because "we have developed a more logical and discursive mode of thought. Instead of looking at physical phenomenon imaginatively, we strip an object of all its emotive associations and concentrate on the thing itself."

The sight bereft of holism leads people to an extremely narrow view of things, and the attitude is best enshrined in a Koranic story that relates the vulgar challenge that some Jews had flung on Moses."...We shall not believe thee unto we see God face to face!" (Quran 2:55). This is sadly the state of the narrow mind, a state that the Koran firmly eschews in favor of a more circuitous process of introspection:

"The likeness of the life of the present is as the rain which We send down from the skies: by its mingling arises the produce of the earth- which provides food for men and animals: (It grows) till the earth is clad with its golden ornaments and is decked out (in beauty): the people to whom it belongs think they have all powers of disposal over it: There reaches it Our command by night or by day, and We make it like a harvest clean-mown, as if it had not flourished only the day before! thus do We explain the Signs in detail for those who reflect." [Quran 10:25]

Places that attain to sacredness are neither new nor is it a radical departure from the natural evolution of religions. Karen Armstrong notes that "this is not something that happens automatically. Once a place has been experienced as sacred in some way and has proved capable of giving people access to the divine", a great deal of creative energy is spent on helping others cultivate this same sense of transcendence.

Muhammad Asad, a Jewish convert to Islam, best sums up the power of the mind's ingenuity in his epic, The Road to Mecca:

"Although life in Medina today has only a formal, distant relationship with what the Prophet aimed at; although the spiritual awareness of Islam has been cheapened here, as in many other parts of the Muslim world: an indescribable emotional link with its great spiritual past has remained alive. Never has any city been so loved for the sake of one single personality; never has any man, dead for over thirteen hundred years, been loved so personally, and by so many, as he who lies buried beneath the great green dome..."

---

References:
[1] Page 47 of Deen al-Haqq (The True Religion), authored by Abdul-Rahman Ben Hamad Al-Omer. Printed by the Ministry of Islamic Affairs and Endowments, Riyadh.

[2] According to Gibril Haddad's notes in Albani & His Friends, the five books are: Akham al-Jana'iz wa-Bida'uha, TalkhisAhkam al-Jana'iz, Tahdhir al-Sajid, Hijjat al-Nabi, and Manasik al-Hajj wal-'Umra.

My brother Zac

Britain's The Guardian features some tantalizing excerpts of a book on Zacarias Moussaoui, who is the only person to be charged in the US in connection with the September 11 attacks.

Zacarias Moussaoui: The Making Of A Terrorist, is authored by Zacarias's brother, Abd Samad Moussaoui.

He went to the Friday sermon in the Narbonne mosque. "I'm going to give you a lesson," he declared. The congregation was surprised but polite, and let him speak. Zacarias started to explain the Wahhabi creed to them. The discussion became heated. Just as Zacarias was reciting verses of the Koran in French, the imam walked into the mosque. He listened to my brother for a few seconds and then asked: "Can you speak Arabic?" Zacarias answered, no. "So how do you know that what you are saying is the true meaning of what is said in the Koran?" Zacarias lost his temper. He got to his feet and tried to hit the imam. The young people intervened and threw him out. Zacarias walked off hurling insults at them and calling them kouffar - heathens.

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Sunday in Seville- Rabbis and Imams meet

72 Jewish Rabbis and 72 Muslim Imams met on Sunday to kick off the Second World Congress of Imams and Rabbis for Peace. That this organization even exists is something that might come as a shock to many.

For too long, Jewish-Muslim relations has been overshadowed by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Between the three Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, it is Judaism and Islam that is closest to one another, and also the most antagonistic.

The choice of Seville for the occasion is poignant because Spain was once the center of an unprecedented degree of cooperation between Muslims and Jews. I recall a speech made by the roving Stephen Schwartz in which he had speculated that if Jews and Muslims ever came together with the same fervor, the rest of the world would be left far behind in high culture and scientific progress.

The list of participants reveals an eclectic mix of Muslim representations; from Muslim minorities living in ostenibly secular countries like Singapore to more traditional states with large Jewish populations like Morocco.

The list is also interesting for the Muslim countries not represented.

The particular constituency dominating the Muslim half of the Congress is therefore traditionalist, and this is evidenced by the remarkable rendition of a song praising the Prophet Muhammad, performed after the opening ceremony.

Intense love for the Prophet has always been a feature of classical Islam. In one of his many lectures (I can't recall which), the prolific Shaykh Hamza Yusuf (Director of the Zaytuna Institute) explained quite rightly that this is due, in large part, to the fact that most Muslims are not native Arabs, and consequently, have no easy access to the purported beauty of the Quran's Arabic script.

Thus, the first bridge between these ordinary Muslims and Islam is often the Prophet Muhammad himself, or more specifically, the noble character that emanates from the Sunnah (the Prophetic model of behavior and custom). It was through this exceptional conduit that early missionaries won many of Islam's first converts.

Usama bin Laden's bedtime story

"The unluckiest man in the world is he who rides the lion or rules Yemen" -
from an ancient Yemeni poem

In the so-called war on terrorism, propaganda is as critical as military might. Propaganda bolsters personal morale and conviction, and is liberally employed by both sides of any conflict. President Bush's invocation of God in his decision to invade Iraq, for example, is indistinguishable from Usama bin Laden's fatwas (religious edicts) that lash out at the West. But there is a third strand of propaganda that does not seek to demonize, but to protect the status quo.

In the aftermath of 9-11, Western commentators pointed at the disproportionate number of Saudi nationals involved and quickly deduced that the regime, together with its religious establishment, had contributed to the terrorist mindset. The numbers- all but four of the hijackers had been Saudi- were mind-boggling to a country that had always regarded Saudi Arabia as a major ally.

The United States retaliated on two fronts. At home, closer scrutiny was imposed on such places as mosques, Muslim institutions and charities. On the international stage, the United States invaded Afghanistan to punish the Taliban regime for protecting Usama bin Laden, widely believed to have been the mastermind of the 9-11 attacks.

The Muslim world was incensed. Leaders railed from pulpits that the war on terrorism was an excuse to wage war on Islam itself.

In all this, Usama bin Laden remained a pivotal figure. For many Westerners, he was made out to be nothing less than an enemy of humanity. For Muslims, though, another theater unfolded. Usama was carefully crafted by Salafists to fill the shoes of an enemy that is generally described as the very "antithesis of 'Wahhabism'".

Muslims and non-Muslims were informed (through such channels as The Wahhabi Myth) that even though Usama bin Laden had been involved in 9-11, he was not necessarily a true or worthy representative of the Saudi brand of Islam. The latter, of course, being Salafist in ideology and literalist in flavor.

Instead, Usama was conceived to be a Sufi, the so-called antithesis of 'Wahhabism'. His alleged Sufi-ism was first and foremost based on his pedigree. It was disclosed that the bin Laden clan had originated from Hadramout in South Yemen, an area ostensibly crawling with Sufis.

The logic is absurdly simple, and because it is so simple, many people overlook how superficial it really is.

Muslims in South Yemen belong to one of Sunni Islam's Schools of Thought which is named after the early mujtahid (those qualified to issue expert legal opinion) Imam Shafi'i.

Because the detachment of Sufism from normative Islam only makes sense from an Orientalist and a Salafist standpoint, it is misleading to generalize any region in South Yemen as being uniquely Sufi in character.

The majority of ulema (religious scholars), and this includes Muslims residing in Malaysia, Indonesia, Algeria, Chechnya, Bosnia, Egypt, the Hijaz and significantly, South Yemen, hold that the spiritual discipline of Sufism is an indispensable component of Islam.

The ulema of Singapore, for example, unequivocally states in an official "Charter on Moderation in Religious Practice" (Moderation in Islam) that:

Sufism and tasawuf are accepted as practices which aim to purify the soul and bring oneself closer to Allah.

However, all this was set to change dramatically in 1970s and 1980s when poor Yemeni laborers were allowed to work in Saudi Arabia for their upkeep. Enthralled by Saudi activism, these men brought back with them the first seeds of Salafism.

In typical fashion, sectarian violence spiked; with the first wave of attacks leveled against the Zaydi Shi'a who dominate North Yemen and the second wave targeting the mosques of Shafi'ite Muslims in South Yemen.

Word for word, the narrative of Salafism's entry into Yemen mirrors that of Afghanistan through the vehicle of the Taliban.

9-11 had of course forced the Saudis to reevaluate their ties with the Taliban regime, if only because of the Taliban's refusal to surrender Usama bin Laden. The Taliban were unceremoniously ditched, their embassy in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia was one of only three countries to recognize the Taliban's legitimacy) shut down exactly two weeks after the attacks on New York.

Yemen is a more delicate issue than Afghanistan because of its closer proximity to Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom has always regarded Yemen as a troublesome neighbor, whether it is on account of its republicanism, its larger population, its whimsical path toward democratization, or the unruly ways of some of its people.

In addition, Yemen dredged up sour memories of the 1962 civil war fostered on the one side by Saudi Arabia and on the other by its cold war rival, Egypt.

Any talk about unification between North and South Yemen was therefore met with alarm, and the Saudis did everything they could to prevent the expansion from taking place.

Billions of Saudi riyals were thus pumped into benevolent causes, like conventional parochial education, legal training and private religious charities; the better to advance Saudi influence. Money also found its way into the creation of a group known as al-Tajammu al-Yamani lil-Islah (Islah, or Reform); helmed by the paramount chief of the powerful Hashid tribe, Shaykh Abdallah bin Hussein al-Ahmar.

Now, this is where the Salafist take on bin Laden's Sufi credentials gets a little slippery, because the Hashid tribe also happens to be the tribe of the bin Laden family. Unlike most other Arab countries, Yemen's tribal system remains extremely vibrant. Deviation from tribal norms remains a rare occurence.

It is therefore unlikely for the Hashid-Islah co-operative to have held any significant "Sufi tendencies" in the first place. If the Saudis had even caught a whiff of this, money for the movement would have vanished in an instant.

As it stands, Saudi money for the movement is drying up, though for a very different reason.

In 1993, President Ali Abdullah Salih won elections and received the remarkable mandate to rule over both North and South Yemen.

In an overt rebellion against Saudi wishes, the Hashid-Islah movement accepted President Ali Abdullah Salih's (himself a member of the Hashid) invitation to join a coalition government; thereby supporting his ambitious bid to strengthen Yemen's tenuous unity.

Matters took a turn for the worse when President Ali Abdullah Salih opposed the first Gulf War and explicitly called democracy "the rescue ship" for all political regimes. The latter was a direct challenge to Saudi Arabia's role in the 1964 civil war on the side of the ill-fated royalists.

Playing up Usama bin Laden's progeny is a deft move which fulfills several objectives, implicit as some of them are. First, it deliberately seeks to demonize Sufism in general. Second, through the crass generalization of labeling a whole region as Sufi, it also demonizes the Shafi'ite Muslims of South Yemen. The documented attacks on Sunni mosques in South Yemen attests to this aspect of the propaganda.

Lastly and most significantly, it transplants the context of Usama's personal ideology and upbringing to a place little known outside Yemen. The progeny-argument clearly benefits from a studious effort to ignore the fact that Usama had not only been born and raised in Saudi Arabia, but also graduated from the prestigious King Abdul Aziz University.

If a test is to be placed before the bin Laden family, it should rightly fall on the shoulders of Usama's father, Mohammed bin Laden. He was the first to migrate from the "Sufi-infested" region of Hadramout after all.

The test fails miserably, however, when one considers that the bin Laden family remains one of the largest construction conglomerates in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East. More importantly, the ties between the bin Laden family and the Saud monarchy continue to be intimate and lucrative.

There is little reason to compare bin Laden's case with that of the Hashid-Islah movement, although both share a profound tribal bond. It is more accurate to describe Saudi Arabia's generous financing of the Yemeni movement, however, as nothing more egregious than an attempt to interfere with another country's political destiny. Nevermind that it directly contravenes Saudi Arabia's own stated foreign policy.

The relationship with the Hashid-Islah movement was also ideological from the outset, as verified by the wave of Yemeni Salafists who flocked to join al-Ahmar's movement.

Indeed, Dr David Buchman (Hanover College) describes the Islah movement to be a hotchpotch of factions professing varying levels of "puritan" zeal.

One faction follows the Saudi-sponsored Salafism, which rabidly opposes Sufi practices; the other follows the teachings of the Egyptian-based Muslim Brotherhood, which is less hostile to Sufism. What is striking is that under different circumstances, both sides would have gone for each other's throats.

While it is true that South Yemen continues to host a strong Shafi'ite presence, the Hashid tribe that Saudi Arabia once munificently supported remains committed to the ideology of neo-Salafism.

The great reunification question

"...the eloquent hypocrite."
---The Prophet Muhammad, on what he feared most for his Community.

Is it possible to bring about a reunification between traditional Islam and neo-Salafism?

Some Muslims think that is the only way to install a measure of unity in the Ummah (Muslim community). While intentions are laudable, I doubt the question has any real meaning.

The epistemology of 'traditionalism' and 'neo-Salafism' is too incompatible to co-exist. There is a stark dichotomy between what is called the traditional Islam of the Four Madhhabs (Schools of Thought); and Salafism, which characteristically eschews the authority of the Maddhabs. Differences in epistemology are what separates ostensible co-religionists into sects.

Because sects function by monopolizing key signposts of the religion, including the religion's name itself, they dominate at the expense of other sects.  In modern times, sects are a dimension most Muslim movements place high on their agenda, despite the Koran's stance on sectarianism.

"You shall uphold this one religion and do not divide it." (42:13)

Some Muslims speak of the two 'forces'- traditional Islam and neo-Salafism- as being healthy for Islam. That they act as a check and balance for the other's extremism. The mere existence of Salafism, it is alleged, creates a "viable traditionalism", free from the fetters of "hidebound conservatism".

I call this line of reasoning subliminal propaganda, because it bolsters some tenuous opinions. The unwitting are forced to surrender the fact that first, neo-Salafism stands on the same intellectual and historical stage as traditional Islam; and second, that neo-Salafism and traditional Islam share more in common than they differ. Both are subtle points, and like most ideological statements, totally dogmatic.

Also, the statement plays up a deliberate misunderstanding of what traditional Islam is. Joseph Lumbard (Islam, Fundamentalism, and the Betrayal of Tradition) describes it as divine revelation and the unfolding and development of its sacred content, in time and space, such that the forms of society and civilization maintain a "vertical" connection to the meta-historical, transcendental substance from which revelation itself derives.

If this sounds like gobbledygook to Salafists, it is no more dogmatic than Salafism's own claim of being unqualified heirs to the untainted Islam that was practiced by al-salaf al-salihin (the Pious Predecessors). The main difference between both dogmas is that while traditional Islam has always labored to be inclusive; Salafism- especially the literalist flavor- remains devoted to the idea of being a 'saved' minority.

Traditionalism, at least from an Islamic-historical perspective, isn't simply a set of rules and rituals. It arrives as a package that enjoins 'adherence' to a Madhhab. Traditional scholars call this adherence taqleed (following qualified scholarship) and teach that it is obligatory for ordinary Muslims to follow the opinions of individuals known as mujtahids (those qualified to issue expert legal opinion).

Sunni (the majority group of Muslims) epistemology rests on the belief that valid fiqh (the science of Islamic jurisprudence) is consistent fiqh emerging from the deductive efforts of specialists. These mujtahids use tools established by their respective Schools to interpret Islam's primary sources- the Koran and Hadiths.

Consistency and transparency are important facets in Sunni thought. As the name suggests, rigorous preservation of the Sunnah (the model established by the Prophet Muhammad) has always been a preoccupation of this group.

No ruling reached by ijtihad (independant reasoning), for example, is spared critical analysis from other scholars. Where there is unanimous consensus (ijma), the rule is then made binding on the Ummah.

That is not to say that the science of Islamic jurisprudence has always been exclusively dominated by the Four Schools. There were other schools in the past, but as Shaykh Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri (Reliance of the Traveler) explains:

"...the difference between their work and that of the four living schools is firstly one of quality, as their positions and evidence have not been reexamined and upgraded by succeeding generations of first-rank scholars..."

So, when commentators speak of "viable traditionalism", they only mean to harness the meticulously-researched positions of the Madhhabs, without emphasizing taqleed, which they rechristen as "fanatical loyalty".

It is clear then that "viable traditionalism" is nothing more than an ideological (aka Neo-Salafism) construct, made to take what is consistent with Salafist ideology, and discard what opposes it. Disingenuously, it expects "traditionalists" to sacrifice what they consider to be sacred values without exacting the same price on neo-Salafists. So where is the compromise? One sect grows at the expense of the other.

C.S Lewis hits the nail on the head when he explains that the attempt to discard "traditional" values cannot succeed without first assuming that there is some other higher set of values. The great irony is that a great many of those who "debunk" traditional values have in the background values of their own which they believe to be immune from the debunking process.

He goes on to observe: once you have rejected a part of religious tradition, you have ipso facto rejected the entire tradition. This is especially true for the whole idea of "viable traditionalism", which purports to separate what is perceived to be good in traditional Islam from what is bad.

I'll just call it vandalism which throws up, as an incidental thought, "bastardized traditionalism". And that is merely an oxymoron for the ideology that inspires today's so-called reformists.

The Wisdom of Musab al-Zarqawi

One thing that the Jordan Initiative exposed is the existence of groups within the fold of Islam. Two facts bear repeating- one, that Muslims, especially today's Muslims, are not a monolithic bloc; two, that Muslim reform movements have taken on the tendencies of messianic cults. These movements share with their Christian counterparts an intolerance for those factions most similar to them than those who more starkly disagree with them.

Hardly surprising since we have historical examples. The Bolsheviks hated the Mensheviks in the Russian Revolution far more than the czar. The Communists hated the Trotskyites far more than capitalists. The Nazis hated the Communists far more than the French.

Thus, we find in Musab al-Zarqawi's letter to Usama bin Laden the first hints of the ideology that drives militant groups. Almost three-quarters of the letter attack Muslims themselves. He either considers them plain enemies or at the very least, misguided. Of the shaykhs and ulema (religious authorities) who lead the Ummah (Muslim community), he describes as being mostly "Sufis doomed to perdition".

Since Musab al-Zarqawi is not a scholar by any stretch of the imagination, his ideas are neither original nor unique in the ideological framework he claims to operate in, which is Salafism.

But he brings up a valid point. The claim that shaykhs and ulema are Sufis might sound strange at first, but it clarifies the point that ilm-al-Tassawwuf (the science of Sufism) has always held an integral position in traditional Islam.  Certainly, what is meant by traditional Islam today is the implementation that emanates from the Koran and the Sunnah, as interpreted by the four major Madhhabs (Schools of Thought). Normative Islam, in other words.

Unfortunately, what today's Muslims lack is Musab al-Zarqawi's blunt honesty. They blithely accept the charge that Sufism, for example, is pantheistic, corrupting and a fringe cult. Thus informed, they flee far away when they hear terms as Tassawwuf or Kalam (Islamic theology). The argument goes that since these disciplines arrived later on the historical stage- generations after the what Salafists like to call the time of al-salaf al-salihin (Pious Predecessors)- they should be regarded as negative accretions.

This is unnecessarily dense. All religionists depend on their cultural and social background to interpret religion. Other more methodical tools like philosophy, logic and even textual criticism are utilized when a sufficient level of understanding has been reached. It is social evolution at play. Because religion is essentially interpretative, the human relationship with divine scripture is hardly frozen, regardless of Salafist claims that traditional Islam is fossilized Islam.

The whole purpose of the Madhhabs- a key ingredient of traditional Islam- is to streamline the interpretative. Because subjectivity is an invariable fact standing between man and divine text, a certain 'norm' must be established, and the Madhhab culture provides a tool to address this. That tool is called taqleed (adherence) and it is a covenant that was formulated not for the purposes of oppressing thought, but protecting orthodoxy.

Yet isn't the Golden Age of Islam, the supposed Time of the Pious Predecessors, a far better criterion to go by? Neo-Salafism champions the idea of receiving religion from a direct access to the Koran and Hadiths. More specifically, the emphasis should be on how the Salaf had interpreted and implemented Islam, and less on how classical ulema had done so down the ages. It is from this platform that neo-Salafists rail against Tassawwuf, Kalam, Ashari'ism etc, which did not exist in any coherent sense during the time of the Prophet.

The line of reasoning is tempting but intellectually dishonest.  No matter what criterion is used, religion remains interpretative. Muslims don't see God, yet they are told that He exists. The Koran enjoins believers to strengthen belief through inward contemplation of things as simple as natural phenomenon. Significantly, these are referred to as ayats (signs).

The only means we have of studying the Time of the Pious Predecessors is through writings and customs passed down generations of upright persons or groups. The striking thing is that Salafists do not, in actuality, possess a special manuscript or a more direct access to sacred history than say, the scholars of traditional Islam.

What they do bring is an insight, a filter that is made up of preconceived notions. Ultimately, their insights are as subjective as the next one.

The Time of the Pious Predecessors was an objective reality to those who had literally witnessed and partook from it, immersed in the cultural and linguistic norms of that time. Contemporary groups that claim descent from it are merely constructing a subjective framework. There is no real significance to attaching the word 'Salafi' to a movement or an idea. The illusion and subjectivity of such claims is evident from the sheer number of movements that wear the same mantle, but differ so dramatically (and violently) from each other.

Salafism- and by this I refer to almost all the reformist movements that eschew the necessity of Schools of Thoughts, militant or otherwise- is neither normative nor orthodox. In many ways, it posits a system that directly revolts against traditional values, though it claims respect for the great Imams after whom the Madhhabs are named.

Such paradoxes are endemic to the discourse. Some apologists claim, for example, that extreme Salafism is just as dangerous as extreme Madhhabism, but this is a ridiculous comparison. Extreme Madhhabism, which manifests itself in a blind partiality toward a particular school to the extent of excluding other Madhhabs, has always been an exception and remains outside the normative practice of traditional Islam.

In contrast, exclusivity forms the very basis of Salafism. The varying expressions of Salafism one sees is merely a result of Salafists differing on just how subtle this aspect of Salafism should be. It must be said, however, that extreme Salafists form only a minority of the whole movement.

The formula most repeated by non-Muslims and even Muslims is that takfeerism (exclusivity so extreme it excommunicates other groups) is the result of interpreting Islam in an extremist fashion. While non-Muslim commentators might be forgiven for their superficial treatment of Islam, the Muslims who defend this point make for an interesting case-study. These are Muslims who shroud ideology with the cloak of religion, because in reality, takfeerism is not extreme Islam, but extreme Salafism. Takfeerism is the logical and inevitable conclusion of the particular worldview enjoined by exclusivity.

The distinction must be made since Salafism is neither orthodox nor representative of Islam. One is a faith providing spiritual succor to billions of peace-loving individuals; the other is an ideology that continues to motivate bloodthirsty terrorists.