posed by John McAlister
answer by Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, Ph.D.
Q. I would love to get your take on the "Global
Jihad" article on worldnetdaily based on a Freedom House report
(http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42603).
A. A considerable number of Saudi (Wahabi)
preachers hold the views described in the article "Global Jihad" and
they do promote their ideas abroad, sometimes get support from the
Saudi government, and have a small but scary following outside the
country. Further, many of the violent extremists who have obtained so
much bad press for Muslims lately have been in part inspired by such
preachers (as well as some from our other U.S. government ally Egypt).
Having said that, however, I must say that I find the exaggerated tone
and spin in the article and the sloppiness of the report on which it is
based appalling, especially insofar as it contradicts the fact that the
number of American Muslims who buy in to this view is miniscule and
some of the mosques mentioned in the report have policies completely
opposed to the views the article seeks to associate with them. Even Joe
McCarthy never claimed that owning a copy of Das Kapital in your
library made you a Marxist!
Here are some specific comments:
Many Wahabis do believe it is forbidden to be friends with Christians
and Jews, but this is not necessarily a call for "hatred" of Christians
and Jews. The Qur'an demands that Muslims be tolerant of the People of
the Book and makes clear that there is no reason not to be kind and
just to those who do not fight against Muslims. Of course, there are
some Christians and Jews who feel they have a religious obligation to
fight against Muslims (perhaps former CIA man James Woolsey is amongst
them).
It is sad that Freedom House would choose to attack the Wahabis for
having doubts about democracy. Anyone who believes in moral absolutes
(including liberty) will have doubts about a system in which people can
make up laws willy-nilly. Substitute "libertarian" for "Wahabi" and
get: "[Libertarian] documents promote contempt for the United States
because it is ruled by legislated civil law rather than by
libertarian natural law. They condemn democracy as unlibertarian." I am
not denying the authoritarian nature of the Saudi system (totalitarian,
however, is an overstatement, given their jealous protection of the
right of privacy), simply saying that opposition to human-invented
positive law is not necessarily authoritarian, let alone totalitarian.
The article suggests that the millions of Muslim immigrants to the
United States are here not because they like America better than their
homelands, but because they are actively seeking to destroy our
country. This will be cognized as palpable nonsense by any American not
too bigoted or narrow-minded to have Muslim friends and
acquaintances. The notion that naturalized Muslim Americans are
religiously opposed to becoming naturalized American citizens is a
self-contradiction.
American Muslims do not condemn Sufis or Shi`a. While one can find the
same kind of sectarianism between American Sunnis and Shi`as as divides
American Catholics and Protestants, American Muslims are very open to
Sufi ideas. While it is unfortunate in the extreme that some Muslims
can't distinguish between opposing the Israeli apartheid and opposing
Jews, the authors of the article demonstrate a similar lack of
discernment when they lump together opposition to Israel with belief in
the authenticity of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Some of the same mosques which they accuse of possessing literature
that condemn participation in the American political process are
leading the voter registration drives among Muslims. The bottom line is
that this article and the report on which it is based do not have their
sights trained on the Saudi extremists who write and promote
intolerance, but on the Muslim mosques that they claim have these books
in their libraries (for whatever reasons). In other words their target
is not intolerance, but freedom of expression. The effect of such
articles and reports is not to decrease Muslim bigotry, but increase
bigotry against Muslims.