Puerto Vallarta, Mexico: This sparkling and picturesque town on the Pacific coast of Mexico is eons removed from ground zero in New York and the caves of Tora Bora in Afghanistan. I am here with members of the Academy of Medicine of Toledo attending a medical seminar on recent advances in heart diseases, non-conventional remedies, and a host of other topics, including bio-terrorism and civilian mobilization during war and terrorist attacks.
The discussion of the latter subjects raises questions, some unasked out of politeness, about the mindset of people who would, in the name of religion, subject innocent civilians to the horrors of terrorism.
Such questions have triggered a vigorous debate, albeit a belated one, among the Muslims in America and to some degree in muted and hushed tones in the larger Muslim world. The debate has been shifting beyond the condemnation of 9/11 events and has been addressing the pivotal question of how a bunch of fundamentalist militants could distort the teachings of a noble religion to justify their murderous designs.
For too long there has been erosion of intellectual curiosity among the Muslims about their religion. We have unwittingly allowed the men in robes and turbans to guide us through the minefields of doubts, dogmas, and rituals. These men and their occasional counterparts in suits and neckties - whose honesty, integrity, and piety I do not question - are hopelessly stuck in the sands of 7th century Arabia. They scurry to the ancient commentaries and interpretations to look for solutions to contemporary issues. They have failed miserably by living in the past.
And now when the eyes of the world are upon Islam and some self-righteous purveyors of bigotry, the Rev. Franklin Graham, writer Cal Thomas, and Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Weisenthal Center Museum of Tolerance among them, are tarring my religion with a broad brush, the traditional custodians of Islam find it hard to shake off the sand and stand up to the challenge.
They need to explain in no uncertain words that their religion does not under any circumstance condone what happened on 9/11. They need to point out that it is wrong to pick out of context, historic or textual, a solitary passage from the scripture to call Islam a violent religion and at the same time conveniently ignore the recurrent themes of kindness, forgiveness, sanctity of human life, and unconditional respect for other religions. Such dishonesty is akin to quoting passages from the Bible that preach killings of nonbelievers, killing a disobedient and rebellious son, or killing every one of the enemy except the virgin maidens. Scripture need to be understood in the context of the times they were revealed and not in their literal pronouncements. Our imams need to explain our religion not as much to non-Muslims as to Muslims. It just is not enough or pertinent to repeat tales of past glories, the flowering of arts and sciences under the Muslims, or the benevolence of some of the great Muslim leaders. Time has long passed for them to hide behind the common Persian refrain pidram sultan bood- my father was a king.
The people who accomplished those remarkable feats were heads and shoulders above the contemporary midgets we have around in the Muslim world; the Wahhabi Saudis are not the Moors of Spain and the Taliban were not the Ummayyads of Damascus or the Moguls of India. Despite sharing the same name, Mullah Umar the Amir-ul-Momineen of the Taliban was nowhere close to the stature, intellect, benevolence or governance of Caliph Umar that the Kandahari mullah was so fond of emulating.
There comes a time in the history of religion when revival movements, instead of sliding back to the past, should take on a new meaning and a new momentum. Instead of looking back and basking in the reflected glory of their cherished past and getting stuck in the intoxicating conformity of old interpretations, such movements have to look ahead to the future and break new ground in religious thought and religious interpretations. We the Muslims in America and in the West are at that juncture.