Dr. Parvez Hoodbhoy is a Professor of nuclear physics at Islamabad’s Quaid-i-Azam University and a visiting research scientist at MIT. He is also a regular contributor to the Karachi newspaper DAWN. This week he has written his view of the post- 9/11 era for the Muslim World. In his frank and critical analysis of the reaction of Muslims living in the western world, Hoodbhoy says, “Fearful of backlash, most leaders of Muslim communities in the US, Canada, and Europe have responded in predictable ways to the Twin Towers atrocity. This has essentially two parts: first, that Islam is a religion of peace; and second, that Islam was hijacked by fanatics on September 11, 2001. They are wrong on both counts.” Wow! Now that will surely get him into serious trouble. Commenting on the status of Muslims today he says, “Held in the vice-like grip of orthodoxy, Islam choked ... Meanwhile, the rest of the world moved on.” He goes on to suggest that “If the world is to be spared what future historians may call the ‘Century of Terror’, we will have to chart the perilous course between the Scylla of American imperial arrogance and the Charybdis of Islamic religious fanaticism.” Read and reflect. - Tarek Fatah
America has exacted blood revenge for the Twin Towers. A million Afghans have fled US bombs into the cold wastelands and face starvation. B-52s have blown the Taliban to bits and changed Mullah Omar’s roar of defiance into a pitiful squeak for surrender. Osama bin Laden is on the run. But even as the champagne pops in the White House, America remains fearful - for good reason.
Subsequent to September 11 we have all begun to live in a different, more dangerous world. Now is the time to ask why. Like clinical pathologists, we need to scientifically examine the sickness of human behavior impelling terrorists to fly airliners filled with passengers into skyscrapers. We also need to understand why millions celebrate as others die….
“Why do they hate us?”, asks George W. Bush. This rhetorical question betrays the pathetic ignorance of most Americans about the world around them. Moreover, its claim to an injured innocence cannot withstand even the most cursory examination of US history. For almost forty years, this “naiveti and self-righteousness” have been challenged most determinedly by Noam Chomsky. As early as 1967, he pointed that the idea that “our” motives are pure and “our” actions benign is “nothing new in American intellectual history - or, for that matter, in the general history of imperialist apologia”.
Muslim leaders have mirrored America’s claim and have asked the same question of the West. They have had little to say about September 11 that makes sense to people outside their communities. Although they speak endlessly on rules of personal hygiene and “halal” or “haram”, they cannot even tell us whether or not the suicide bombers violated Islamic laws. According to the Virginia-based (and largely Saudi-funded) Fiqh Council’s chairman, Dr. Taha Jabir Alalwani, “This kind of question needs a lot of research and we don’t have that in our budget.”
Fearful of backlash, most leaders of Muslim communities in the US, Canada, and Europe have responded in predictable ways to the Twin Towers atrocity. This has essentially two parts: first, that Islam is a religion of peace; and second, that Islam was hijacked by fanatics on September 11, 2001. They are wrong on both counts.
First, Islam - like Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, or any other religion - is not about peace. Nor is it about war. Every religion is about absolute belief in its own superiority and the divine right to impose itself upon others. In medieval times, both the Crusades and the Jihads were soaked in blood. Today, Christian fundamentalists attack abortion clinics in the US and kill doctors; Muslim fundamentalists wage their sectarian wars against each other; Jewish settlers holding the Old Testament in one hand, and Uzis in the other, burn olive orchards and drive Palestinians off their ancestral land; Hindus in India demolish ancient mosques and burn down churches; Sri Lankan Buddhists slaughter Tamil separatists.
The second assertion is even further off the mark. Even if Islam had, in some metaphorical sense, been hijacked, that event did not occur on September 11, 2001. It happened around the 13th century. A quick look around us readily shows Islam has yet to recover from the trauma of those times….
Today’s sorry situation contrasts starkly with the Islam of yesterday. Between the 9th and the 13th centuries - the Golden Age of Islam - the only people doing decent science, philosophy, or medicine were Muslims. For five straight centuries they alone kept the light of learning ablaze. Muslims not only preserved ancient learning, they also made substantial innovations and extensions. The loss of this tradition has proved tragic for Muslim peoples…. The Renaissance brought an explosion of scientific inquiry in the West. This owed much to Arab translations and other Muslim contributions, but it was to matter little. Mercantile capitalism and technological progress drove western countries to rapidly colonize the Muslim world from Indonesia to Morocco. Always brutal, at times genocidal, it changed the shape of the world. It soon became clear, at least to a part of the Muslim elites, that they were paying a heavy price for not possessing the analytical tools of modern science and the social and political values of modern culture - the real source of power of their colonizers….
Muslims must not look towards the likes of Osama bin Laden; such people have no real answer and can offer no real positive alternative. To glorify their terrorism is a hideous mistake - the unremitting slaughter of Shias, Christians, and Ahmadis in their places of worship in Pakistan, and of other minorities in other Muslim countries, is proof that all terrorism is not about the revolt of the dispossessed.
The United States too must confront bitter truths. It is a fact that the messages of George W. Bush and Tony Blair fall flat while those of Osama bin Laden, whether he lives or dies, resonate strongly across the Muslim world. Osama’s religious extremism turns off many Muslims, but they find his political message easy to relate to - stop the dispossession of the Palestinians, stop propping up corrupt and despotic regimes across the world just because they serve US interests….
Our collective survival lies in recognizing that religion is not the solution; neither is nationalism. Both are divisive, embedding within us false notions of superiority and arrogant pride that are difficult to erase. We have but one choice: the path of secular humanism, based upon the principles of logic and reason. This alone offers the hope of providing everybody on this globe with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.