Stephen Schwartz is the author of Intellectuals and Assassins. Written September 23, his article appears in the current edition of The Spectator, London, England.
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Radical Islam:
The first thing to do when trying to understand "Islamic suicide
bombers" is to forget the clichs about the Muslim taste for martyrdom.
It does exist, of course, but the desire for paradise is not a safe
guide to what motivated the appalling suicide attacks on New York and
Washington 12 days ago.
Throughout history, political extremists of all faiths have willingly
given up their lives simply in the belief that by doing so, whether in
bombings or in other forms of terror, they would change the course of
history, or at least win an advantage for their cause. Tamils are not
Muslims, but they blow themselves up in their war on the government of
Sri Lanka; Japanese kamikaze pilots in the Second World War were not
Muslims, but they flew their fighters into US aircraft carriers.
The Islamo-fascist ideology of Osama bin Laden and those closest to him,
such as the Egyptian and Algerian "Islamic Groups", is no more
intrinsically linked to Islam or Islamic civilisation than Pearl Harbour
was to Buddhism, or Northern Irish terrorists are to Christianity.
Serious Christians don't go around killing and maiming the innocent;
devout Muslims do not prepare for paradise by visiting Florida strip
bars and getting drunk, as one of last week's terrorist pilots was
reported to have done.
The attacks of September 11 are simply not compatible with orthodox
Muslim theology, which cautions soldiers "in the way of Allah" to fight
their enemies face-to-face, without harming non-combatants, women or
children.
Most Muslims, not only in America and Britain, but in the world, are
law-abiding citizens of their countries - a point stressed by President
Bush and other American leaders, much to their credit. Nobody on this
side of the water wants a repeat of the lamented 1941 internment of
Japanese Americans.
Still, the numerical preponderance of Muslims as perpetrators of these
ghastly incidents is no coincidence. So we have to ask ourselves what
has made these men into monsters? What has so galvanized violent
tendencies in the world's second-largest religion (and, in America, the
fastest growing faith)? Can it really flow from a quarrel over a bit of
land in the Middle East?
For Westerners, it seems natural to look for answers in the distant
past, beginning with the Crusades. But if you ask educated, pious,
traditional but forward-looking Muslims what has driven their umma, or
global community, in this direction, many of them will answer you with
one word: Wahhabism. This is a strain of Islam that emerged not during
the Crusades, nor even at the time of the anti-Turkish wars of the 17th
century, but less than two centuries ago. It is violent, it is
intolerant, and it is fanatical beyond measure. It originated in Arabia,
and it is the official theology of the Gulf states. Wahhabism is the
most extreme form of Islamic fundamentalism.
Not all Muslims are suicide bombers, but all Muslim suicide bombers are
Wahhabis - except, perhaps, for some disciples of atheist Leftists
posing as Muslims in the interests of personal power, such as Yasser
Arafat or Saddam Hussein. Wahhabism is the Islamic equivalent of the
most extreme Protestant sectarianism. It is puritan, demanding
punishment for those who enjoy any music except the drum, and severe
punishment up to death for drinking or sexual transgressions. It
condemns as unbelievers those who do not pray, a view that never
previously existed in mainstream Islam.
It is stripped-down Islam, calling for simple, short prayers,
undecorated mosques, and the uprooting of gravestones (since decorated
mosques and graveyards lend themselves to veneration, which is idolatry
in the Wahhabi mind). Wahhabis do not even permit the name of the
Prophet Mohammed to be inscribed in mosques, nor do they allow his
birthday to be celebrated. Above all, they hate ostentatious
spirituality, much as Protestants detest the veneration of miracles and
saints in the Roman Church.
Ibn Abdul Wahhab (1703-1792), the founder of this totalitarian Islamism,
was born in Uyaynah, in the part of Arabia known as Nejd, where Riyadh
is today, and which the Prophet himself notably warned would be a source
of corruption and confusion. (Anti-Wahhabi Muslims refer to Wahhabism as
fitna an Najdiyyah or "the trouble out of Nejd".) From the beginning of
Wahhab's dispensation, in the late 18th century, his cult was associated
with the mass murder of all who opposed it. For example, the Wahhabis
fell upon the city of Qarbala in 1801 and killed 2,000 ordinary citizens
in the streets.
In the 19th century, Wahhabism took the form of Arab nationalism against
the Turks. The founder of the Saudi kingdom, Ibn Saud, established
Wahhabism as its official creed. Much has been made of the role of the
US in "creating" Osama bin Laden through subsidies to the Afghan
mujaheddin, but as much or more could be said in reproach of Britain
which, three generations before, supported the Wahhabi Arabs in their
revolt against the Ottomans. Arab hatred of the Turks fused with Wahhabi
ranting against the "decadence" of Ottoman Islam. The truth is that the
Ottoman khalifa reigned over a multinational Islamic umma in which vast
differences in local culture and tradition were tolerated. No such
tolerance exists in Wahhabism, which is why the concept of US troops on
Saudi soil so inflames bin Laden.
Bin Laden is a Wahhabi. So are the suicide bombers in Israel. So are his
Egyptian allies, who exulted as they stabbed foreign tourists to death
at Luxor not many years ago, bathing in blood up to their elbows and
emitting blasphemous cries of ecstasy. So are the Algerian Islamist
terrorists whose contribution to the purification of the world consisted
of murdering people for such sins as running a movie projector or
reading secular newspapers. So are the Taliban-style guerrillas in
Kashmir who murder Hindus. The Iranians are not Wahhabis, which
partially explains their slow but undeniable movement towards moderation
and normality after a period of utopian and puritan revivalism. But the
Taliban practice a variant of Wahhabism. They employ ancient punishments
- such as execution for moral offences - and they have a primitive and
fearful view of women. The same is true of Saudi Arabia's rulers. None
of this extremism has been inspired by American fumblings in the world,
and it has little to do with the tragedies that have beset Israelis and
Palestinians.
The Wahhabis have two weaknesses of which the West is largely unaware;
an Achilles heel on each foot, so to speak. The first is that the vast
majority of Muslims in the world are peaceful people who would prefer
Western democracy in their own countries. They loathe Wahhabism for the
same reason any patriarchal culture rejects a violent break with
tradition. And that is the point that must be understood: bin Laden and
other Wahhabis are not defending Islamic tradition; they represent an
ultra-radical break in the direction of a sectarian utopia. Thus, they
are best described as Islamo-fascists, although they have much in common
with Bolsheviks.
The Bengali Sufi writer Zeeshan Ali has described the situation
touchingly: "Muslims from Bangladesh in the US, just like any other
place in the world, uphold the traditional beliefs of Islam but, due to
lack of instruction, keep quiet when their beliefs are attacked by
Wahhabis in the US who all of a sudden become 'better' Muslims than
others. These Wahhabis go even further and accuse their own fathers of
heresy, sin and unbelief. And the young children of the immigrants, when
they grow up in this country, get exposed only to this one-sided version
of Islam and are led to think that this is the only Islam. Naturally a
big gap is being created every day that silence is only widening. The
young, divided between tradition and the call of the new, opt for
"Islamic revolution" and commit themselves to their self-destruction,
combined with mass murder.
The same influences are brought to bear throughout the 10-million-strong
Muslim community in America, as well as those in Europe. In the US, 80
per cent of mosques are estimated by the Sufi Hisham al-Kabbani, born in
Lebanon and now living in the US, to be under the control of Wahhabi
imams, who preach extremism, and this leads to the other point of
vulnerability: Wahhabism is subsidised by Saudi Arabia, even though bin
Laden has sworn to destroy the Saudi royal family. The Saudis have
played a double game for years, more or less as Stalin did with the West
during the Second World War. They pretended to be allies in a struggle
against Saddam Hussein while spreading Wahhabi ideology, just as Stalin
promoted an "antifascist" coalition with the US while carrying out
espionage and subversion on American territory. The motive was the same:
the belief that the West was or is decadent and doomed.
One major question is never asked in American discussions of Arab
terrorism: what is the role of Saudi Arabia? The question cannot be
asked because American companies depend too much on the continued flow
of Saudi oil, while American politicians have become too cosy with the
Saudi rulers.
Another reason it is not asked is that to expose the extent of Saudi and
Wahhabi influence on American Muslims would compromise many Islamic
clerics in the US. But it is the most significant question Americans
should be asking themselves today. If we get rid of bin Laden, whom do
we then have to deal with? The answer was eloquently put by Seyyed Vali
Reza Nasr, professor of political science at the University of
California at San Diego, and author of an authoritative volume on
Islamic extremism in Pakistan: "If the US wants to do something about
radical Islam, it has to deal with Saudi Arabia. The 'rogue states'
[Iraq, Libya, etc] are less important in the radicalization of Islam
than Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is the single most important cause and
supporter of radicalization, ideologisation, and the general
fanaticisation of Islam."
From what we now know, it appears not one of the suicide pilots in New
York and Washington was Palestinian. They all seem to have been Saudis,
citizens of the Gulf states, Egyptian or Algerian. Two are reported to
have been the sons of the former second secretary of the Saudi embassy
in Washington. They were planted in America long before the outbreak of
the latest Palestinian intifada; in fact, they seem to have begun their
conspiracy while the Middle East peace process was in full, if short,
bloom. Anti-terror experts and politicians in the West must now consider
the Saudi connection |
