his item is available on the Middle East Forum website, at http://www.meforum.org/article/1000

Why Do Muslims Execute Innocent People?
Islamist Ideology

by Denis MacEoin
Middle East Quarterly
Fall 2006

While often ignored in the Western media, human rights abuses in the Islamic world are a daily occurrence. Both Muslim states and ad hoc religious courts order mutilation and execution, not only of criminals but also of individuals—mainly women—who have not committed anything which would be considered a crime in other societies. In some cases, Shari‘a (Islamic law) tribunals issue death sentences for those acquitted in regular courts.[1] In other cases, religious leaders invoke religion to sanction non-Islamic practices such as honor killings and female genital mutilation.

Original Islamic jurisprudence, however, does not necessarily mandate such severe punishments. In the early twentieth century, it even seemed that the introduction of modern legal codes in Muslim majority countries might ameliorate regular Shari‘a punishments, but in recent decades, traditionalists have pushed a back-to-basics program which has augmented application of Shari‘a punishment. Rather than modifying Islamic practice, many self-described Islamist reformers make matters worse by advocating retrenchment rather than reform.

Unjust Punishment

Many of the crimes for which death is mandated involve sex or honor. While capricious application of Shari‘a punishment is common throughout Muslim majority countries and communities, since the fall of the Taliban and because of the activity of Iranian journalists and bloggers, many of the specific examples which are known in the West come from Iran.

On August 15, 2004, 16-year-old Ateqeh Rajabi, was hanged in public in the northern Iranian town of Neka. Her crime was to have sex with her boyfriend. She had no lawyer, nor could her family find one willing to defend her. The capriciousness of the judge rather than a strict interpretation of the Qur'an contributed to her death. She had talked back to the judge, Haji Reza'i, who later remarked that he would not have ordered her execution had it not been for her "sharp tongue."[2]

In December 2004, Leyla, a 19-year-old girl with a mental age of eight, was sentenced to death for "acts contrary to chastity." The sentencing judge ordered her to be flogged before execution. Her situation was lamentable. When she was eight, her mother forced her into prostitution, letting her be raped repeatedly. She was later sold as a temporary wife (mut'a, sigha), legal in Twelver Shi‘ite law which allows temporary wives to be contracted for set periods ranging from one hour to ninety-nine years. Thirteen-year-old Zhila Izadi also received a death sentence—later commuted—after being impregnated by her older brother.

Other examples abound. In July 2005, Iranian authorities publicly hanged two boys, 18-year-old Ayaz Marhoni and 16-year-old Mahmud Asghari, in the shrine city of Mashhad for homosexual acts. Photographs of the boys with nooses round their necks just before their execution are available online,[3] but never appeared in Western newspapers or on television.

On January 7, 2006, an Islamic court in Tehran passed a death sentence on an 18-year old girl, identified only by her first name, Nazanin. She had stabbed an assailant while fighting off three men who attempted to rape her and her 16-year-old niece.[4] Reports suggested their attackers were members of the Basij, a radical militia charged with upholding the Islamic Republic's revolutionary principles. Nazanin was aged seventeen at the time of her offence, too young for a death sentence even under Iranian law that states that such sentences for minors should be commuted to five years' imprisonment. In Nazanin's case, the judge ignored extenuating circumstances and applied rigidly the law of retaliation (qisas). Under such a system, a life must be paid for by a life, an eye for an eye, except where the family of the victim is willing to accept blood money or compensation (diya) for lost body parts and organs.[5]

Iran is not the only Islamic country practicing spurious punishment. On April 21, 2005, in Spingul, a valley near Faizabad in Afghanistan's Badakhshan province, family members and villagers executed 25-year-old Bibi Amin after she was found in the company of a man to whom she was not married. She was buried to her neck and, for two hours, stoned.[6] There have been similar cases in Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan, Nigeria, and other Muslim countries. Even in Egypt, where Shari‘a law has been modified, men and women are still imprisoned unequally for adultery.[7] That the application of such punishments is widespread and that its perpetrators justify their actions in Islam neither means that a consensus exists among theologians or that such interpretations have been consistent through time.

Qur'anic Attitudes toward Punishment

With only one exception, every chapter of the Qur'an begins with the words Bismillah ar-rahman ar-rahim, "In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate." While such compassion is lacking in modern application of Shari‘a law, this has not always been the case. Many traditional sources argue for limited punishment. The Sunan of Ibn Maja, one of the six canonical collections, cites a saying by Muhammad that reads, "Do not carry out punishments if you can find a way to avoid them."[8]

This example is echoed by another tradition from the Sunan of Tirmidhi: "Wherever possible, do not inflict punishments (hudud; singular hadd) on Muslims; if there is a way out for someone, let him go. It is better for the ruler (al-imam) to err in forgiveness than for him to err in punishment."[9] According to the twelfth-century jurist and philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroes), "hadd punishments are suspended in doubtful cases," echoing another hadith to that effect.[10]

Still, in traditional Islam, adultery and fornication (both termed zina') are considered criminal acts worthy of a hadd punishment, which the Qur'an sets at 100 lashes.[11] Adultery itself is a difficult charge to bring under Shari‘a: it requires four adult male witnesses to the penetration; in contrast, only two males (or four females) need witness murder for the charges to stick. Nor is circumstantial evidence sufficient. Pregnancy is not enough to prove that adultery occurred since the law considers that a woman may have been penetrated in her sleep or, according to some scholars, the possibility that an embryo could have gestated for up to five years. The penalty for false accusation of adultery is seventy-five lashes.

That does not mean that Islamic law does not embrace the death penalty for adultery. At some point—often said to have occurred during the rule of the second caliph ‘Umar (r. 634-44)—jurists began to set the punishment for married people as stoning to death based on a verse that had allegedly been dropped from the Qur'an.[12] Stoning is also mentioned in the Hadith, and there is no doubt that Muhammad sanctioned the punishment. However, strict conditions are determined for accusation and punishment. A distinction is made between unmarried and married offenders; inebriation, force, and errors such as intercourse with a woman mistaken for a man's wife or slave girl are mitigating factors while the demand for four eyewitnesses to sexual penetration makes it almost impossible to bring an accusation. It is because of the difficulties of formal adultery charges that many Islamic societies embrace honor killing.

Historically, there were significant differences in the treatment of free men and slaves. Modern Iranian law discriminates even further against religious minorities. The Islamic Republic might execute a non-Muslim man accused of having sexual relations with a Muslim woman, whereas a Muslim man who has sex with a non-Muslim woman is not subject to any penalty.[13]

Despite the potential for leniency in the application of Islamic rules, states acting in the name of religion have applied harsher penalties than traditional religious jurists. The Islamic Republic of Iran ordered Ateqeh Rajabi hanged even though Shari‘a only permits the execution of married adulterers, whereas she was single. At most, she should have received 100 lashes—and, according to many interpretations, these should not be laid on hard.

The hadith literature is not silent on two of the factors relevant to many of the recent applications of capital punishment in the name of Islam for crimes of honor. Tirmidhi relates an incident when a woman was brought to the Prophet, accused of adultery. It transpired that the man had forced her to have intercourse in acknowledgment of which Muhammad refused to have her punished.[14] Young age can also be cause for leniency. Ibn Maja records a statement by a boy who survived the massacre of the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza in 627, saying he had been spared the fate of the tribe's men because he had not yet grown pubic hair.[15]

What about a case such as Nazanin's, in which a person was killed? In Islamic law, offenses against the person come under the law of qisas. These offenses amount to five crimes: murder, voluntary manslaughter—such as when an offender sets out to beat a victim but kills him or her in the process, involuntary killing, intentional physical injury, and unintentional injury.

Retaliation—a life for a life—is permissible in the two instances of intentional killing or injury, but even in these cases, the victim's family may waive retribution in return for a set financial payment. In all other cases, only blood money may be demanded. If correct Shari‘a rules were applied, Nazanin would not face a death sentence for an involuntary killing, especially when she had acted in defense of her honor.

Theological Impediments to Reform

So why is there a growing discrepancy between the penalties justified in Islamic jurisprudence and the far more serious punishments applied? Traditional Muslims believe that the Qur'an is immutable. It is not just a sacred text like the Torah or the New Testament but a direct copy of God's word imprinted on the mind of Muhammad via recitation from the Archangel Gabriel. It cannot be rewritten. Indeed, a hadith attributes to Muhammad the saying, "Whosoever disputes a single verse of the Qur'an, strike off his head."[16]

This doctrine has become pernicious for all who attempt a modern understanding of the scripture. Whereas progressive Jewish and Christian scholars and clerics have devised forms of higher criticism that tackle issues of context and period, all efforts to do the same thing with the Qur'an have met with fierce resistance. Several Muslim reformers—notably Pakistani academic Fazlur Rahman (1911-88), Iranian cleric Muhammad Mujtahid-i Shabestari (b. 1936), Iranian philosopher ‘Abd al-Karim Soroush (b. 1945), and the Syrian Muhammad Shahrur (b. 1938)—have tried to develop ways to account for the social, linguistic, and religious environment at the time of the Qur'an's revelation when adjudicating and legislating on matters relevant to the modern world, such as women's rights. Their efforts have pushed the debate in a positive direction, but they are both better understood and better liked in the West than in the Muslim world.[17]

Muslim reactions to such reformist initiatives have been largely hostile and even violent. In the 1960s, a Pakistani religious court sentenced Fazlur Rahman to death.[18] Vigilantes have attacked Souroush on numerous occasions,[19] and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born ex-member of the Dutch parliament;[20] Canadian writer Irshad Manji;[21] and Los Angeles-based psychologist Wafa Sultan, [22] all outspoken critics of Islamic social practice, are in hiding or under guard.

The pressure to reject contextualization of the Qur'an is illustrated by two cases, occurring more than sixty years apart in Egypt. In 1930, a cleric named Muhammad Abu Zayd, published a book of Qur'an exegesis titled Al-Hidaya wa'l-'Irfan fi Tafsir al-Qur'an bi'l-Qur'an, in which he treated concepts such as paradise as metaphors. Other clerics at Cairo's Al-Azhar University, the central seat of religious learning and authority in Sunni Islam, condemned him. Rashid Rida' issued a more forceful condemnation, accused the author of being an apostate, and called for his forcible divorce. All copies of the tafsir were collected by the police and destroyed. Clerics who had read it were dismissed from their posts.[23]

In 1992, history repeated itself. Egyptian academic Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd presented research in application for a full professorship at Cairo University. His work argued that the Qur'an had been written in a human language so that men could understand it. Since it was in a specific language, he argued, it was legitimate to read it with reference to our knowledge of seventh-century Arabic and the human world to which it was directed. His arguments created an uproar. Al-Azhar University condemned him. Leaflets and the popular press accused him of heresy. The Egyptian government tried him before a secular court on charges of apostasy. He was declared a heretic (mulhid) and an apostate (murtadd) and became the object of death threats from radical Islamists throughout the country. An Egyptian court ordered that he and his wife be divorced on the grounds that a Muslim woman cannot be married to a non-Muslim, even as he denied ever abandoning his faith. He now teaches at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.[24] That parallel situations would occur sixty years apart illustrates how stifled scholarly discourse is at Al-Azhar.

A particularly flagrant example of academic suppression in a modern Shi‘ite context may be seen in the case of ‘Abdulaziz Sachedina, a prominent Shi‘ite academic, professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia, and coauthor of Human Rights and the Conflict of Cultures: Western and Islamic Perspectives on Religious Liberty.[25] In August 1998, Sachedina, who had received complaints from his local Muslim community about his teaching and writing about Islam, held a meeting in Najaf, Iraq, with grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. In the course of this interview, as recorded in detail by Sachedina, Sistani demanded that he could no longer "express any opinions in matters dealing with Islam, its religion, and its teachings." Prominent among the many theological errors of which Sachedina was accused was his promotion of an irenic, pluralist approach to Judaism and Christianity, which he saw as equals of Islam.[26]

The net result of such incidents is discouragement of serious revisionist work on the Qur'an and the Hadith. Fear for one's life, the safety of one's family, or one's livelihood are powerful disincentives to saying or writing anything controversial. The only arena in which open debate on such matters takes place is in Western academe, but it is likely here that some Muslim academics living in the West and, indeed, some Western scholars of Islam have chosen safer areas in which to carry out research, knowing the risks they now run from a single accusation of defamation.

Qur'anic Challenges

The problem is that, despite the belief that the Qur'an is the immutable word of God, in its current form the book was compiled only during the reign of the Caliph ‘Uthman (644-56) and organized into suras, ranging in length from a few verses to many pages. While the Qur'an was revealed over a period of twenty-two years, the order of compilation was curious: with the exception of the first sura (al-Fatiha), the longest suras come first and the shortest last. Early scholars debated when particular suras, verses, or groups of verses were "sent down." Determining chronology was often basic, all suras being labeled either Meccan or Medinan, based on in which of these two Arabian cities Muhammad had received a particular revelation. Sometimes it was possible to attribute certain passages to a particular incident, such as the Battle of Uhud or a dispute with the Prophet's wives. These asbab an-nuzul (occasions of revelation), insofar as they are reliable, permit a more nuanced picture of how the text developed during Muhammad's lifetime.

One thing is clear: later verses often express a position contrary to earlier ones. For example, early—mainly Meccan—verses express a positive view of Jews and Christians, whereas late ones—all Medinan—follow the souring of relations between the Prophet and both Jews and Christians. By this reckoning, there are late verses that abrogate (termed nasikh) and early verses which are abrogated (termed mansukh).

Verses commanding jihad against non-believers abrogate those of an ecumenical nature, moving from a position of "There is no compulsion in religion"[27] to "Fight those who do not believe in God or the last day, who do not forbid what God and his Prophet forbid, who do not believe in the religion of truth among those who were given the Book [Jews and Christians] until they pay the poll tax (jizya) by their own hands, having been brought low."[28]

The problem is that earlier sections of the Qur'an tend to be more amenable to a modernist interpretation than later ones. Where modern Muslims emphasize the verse decreeing that there is no compulsion in matters of faith, more radical or orthodox scholars trump such citations with nasikh verses overriding moderate interpretations.

What impact does this have on punishment? Qur'anic verses that mention punishments are invariably late but not very detailed. Although the Qur'an always carries greater weight than the hadiths, it is not uncommon to see a hadith cited to support a harsher legal position. Thus, the verse, "There is no compulsion in religion" is outweighed by the tradition according to which the Prophet said, "Whosoever changes his religion, kill him,"[29] which forms a basis for the law of apostasy as it still stands.[30]

The Emergence of Islamic Neo-radicalism

What happened to some strains of Islam to favor the past over the present and glorify black-and-white interpretations of the Qur'an over more nuanced approaches? While the exact answer varies across regions, certain common factors emerge.

In several cases, a puritan form of Islam has either allied itself with a military or political force—for example the Salafi-Wahhabi movement's alliance with the Saud family in Saudi Arabia—or has itself taken political power, as with the early nineteenth-century Sokoto Caliphate in West Africa or, more recently, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's followers in Iran, the Taliban in Afghanistan, or, perhaps, the Islamic Courts Union in Somalia. In all such cases, the resulting political systems have applied Shari‘a in a harsher form than usual.

In addition, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, there has been a broader struggle between traditionalist and modernizing influences and movements. Growing European influence in Middle Eastern states led to demands for the introduction of Western-style constitutions, educational systems, and laws. Many regional countries adopted modern legal codes modeled on the French, Italian, Swiss, British, or other systems. This represented a great step forward in respect to areas such as family law, tangential women's rights, legal clarity, and modes of punishment.

There were, however, two drawbacks to this brand of modernization. The first was the alienation of the clerical class. Religious leaders are "the learned" (ulema), men who have undergone training as jurists within Shari‘a. Marginalized by the introduction of European criminal codes and the establishment of Western-style courts, divested in many places of their role as educators, and alienated by the overt secularization of many Muslim societies and cultures, the ulema dreamed of a return to basics. They were backed by like-minded lay thinkers, such as Hasan al-Banna (1906-49), a schoolteacher who founded the Muslim Brotherhood, an influential and radicalizing force in several countries in the Middle East and Europe.[31]

The reaction against modernization might have been muted had there been a loose movement for reformation of Shari‘a itself. Mainstream scholars held that it was impossible for modern jurists to challenge or alter the legal precepts set down in the early tenth century by the four main Sunni law schools—Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, and Hanbali. The classical formulation of this precept is that the gates of ijtihad, independent reasoning in matters of religious law, had been closed. The Qur'an—as the immutable word of God—could not be rewritten nor could the records of the Prophet's life and sayings—the other source from which Islamic law derived—be edited or reconsidered.

However, beginning in the late nineteenth century, a number of thinkers argued that, even if the sacred texts could not be altered, it was legitimate to exercise reasoning in order to bring the laws more in line with modern ways of thought and practice. At that time, Muslim attitudes to the West were generally positive. Arab, Iranian, and Turkish political reformers sought to emulate European political systems, science, technology, military know-how, schools, universities, and laws. They argued that Islam could advance by re-configuring itself along Western lines.

Despite this, a small number of intellectuals developed a countervailing trend that emphasized the religious and legal thought of the first three generations of the faith. This became the Salafi movement, derived from the Arabic term salaf (predecessors).[32] Salafi thinkers such as Muhammad ‘Abduh (1849-1905)[33] reexamined the two basic texts, the Qur'an and the body of traditions or hadiths that make up the Sunna, the living record of how the Prophet and his companions behaved and thought. From this emerged a belief that, far from needing to be modernized, Islamic law and, by extension, Muslim life in general, had to return to how it was at the time of the Salaf. Most of the movements Western commentators term "fundamentalist" are Salafi.

While the first modern Salafi thinkers sought reform, later Salafi theoreticians narrowed the debate. Egyptian cleric Muhammad Rashid Rida' (1865-1935) published a periodical, Al-Manar (The Lighthouse), which influenced intellectuals across the Islamic world. His ideas formed a bridge between Salafi reformers and more radical movements such as Banna's Muslim Brotherhood.[34]

These new Salafists focused on improving Muslim morals and what has come to be known as "Shari‘a-mindedness." Sayyid Qutb (1906-66),[35] probably the most influential Islamist thinker of the twentieth century, took this moral emphasis and extended it to include violent action against both non-believers and unfaithful Muslim rulers. He argued that the term al-jahiliya, which had normally been used to define the "Age of Ignorance" that preceded Islam, should now be applied to the present day to the extent that modern society—including Muslim society—had distanced itself from Islam. Just as Muhammad fought a holy war against the forces of paganism in seventh-century Arabia, so, too, true Muslims should fight the barbarism of the modern age. Qutb outlined these ideas in a short book, Ma'alim fi' t-Tariq (Milestones on the Road), based on notes he kept in prison.[36] The text launched the new, radicalized, jihadist style of Salafi thought and activism.

It is this world-view that is echoed today by theorists such as Osama bin Laden and groups such as the Afghan Taliban. They argue that Islam cannot adapt to the changes imposed by history but must remain rigidly faithful to the existing interpretations of scripture, the models laid down by the Prophet and his companions, and the legal rulings developed from these sources by the first generations of legal scholars.

Reform without Reformation

There have been and are a number of reformers working to bring Islam into closer harmony with universal standards of justice, tolerance, pluralism, and human rights. These include Nurcholish Madjid (1939-2005), the founder of a school of Islamic neo-modernism in Indonesia, in which contextualized, independent reasoning in matters of religious law, ijtihad, is put forward as a path to renovation, and radicalism is understood as an obstacle to progress because of its authoritarian and intolerant nature; Mohammed Arkoun, an Algerian thinker, who teaches at the University of Paris III, for whom secularization and modernization are essential elements of Islamic progress; and feminists such as Asra Q. Nomani who have called for major liberalization in the sphere of women's rights.

Others present a liberalizing face to the Western media and academia but retain an essentially conservative position on everything from hijab (veiling) to jihad. This charismatic but, essentially, two-faced trend promotes an image of Islam as protective of human rights while sticking to an agenda in favor of strict Shari‘a limitations to such rights. Two notable figures in this context are Tariq Ramadan and Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Ramadan is the Swiss-born grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna. With a broad academic background including Swiss doctorates in philosophy and Islamic studies, and Arabic and Islamic studies qualifications from Al-Azhar University, he has taught at several Western universities, including the University of Fribourg and St. Anthony's College, Oxford. While he is banned from the United States,[37] he has been accepted in Europe as a Muslim intellectual with a reputation for moderation. That said, many French intellectuals describe him as "The Master of Doubletalk" and regard him as an intégriste or fundamentalist. He has argued, for example, that Muslims should enter into mainstream society only to move it closer to Islam; that he accepts Western laws but only so long as they do not oblige him to do something against his religion; that stoning for adultery should be subject only to a moratorium until Muslim clerics discuss the matter; that Muslim women should insist on wearing the veil; that swimming pools should be segregated, and so on.[38] His support for radicals such as Yahya Michot, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, or Sayyid Qutb lays bare an agenda far from that of the moderate he likes to pass himself off to be.

Qaradawi (b. 1926) is another Azharite with an international following. Considered by most Muslims as a "moderate conservative" and lionized by London mayor Ken Livingstone, Qaradawi's moderation on issues such as elections and women's enfranchisement is a thin disguise for radicalism. He has issued fatwas and commented in lectures, television broadcasts, and on the Internet that wives should submit to their husbands; men may beat their wives "lightly;" men and women should mix only to a very limited degree; and women must wear hijab. He has deemed female genital mutilation, flogging of adulterers, and execution of homosexuals and apostates permissible and has endorsed suicide attacks against Israeli civilians or U.S. soldiers and civilians in Iraq. He has also condemned liberal democracies and urged Muslims to vent their anger publicly on issues such as the Danish cartoon controversy.[39]

Some Western governments have relied upon Ramadan, Qaradawi, and others to develop appropriate policies towards Islam and Muslims. Western media have painted them as authorities on Islam, enabling them to speak without an explicit mandate on behalf of Muslims. By drawing media and government attention to themselves while keeping their agendas hidden, they come to overshadow more authentically reformist figures. This problem is compounded by the numerous self-appointed bodies claiming to represent Muslims in Western countries, such as the Council for American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim Council of Britain.

None of these individuals have used their prominence to speak out about harsh punishments, the execution of minors, or the stoning of those whom most modern cultures would call innocent women. It is probable that many self-described reformers practice a form of taqiya or religious dissimulation in order to show a moderate face to the West and quite a different perspective to their constituents in the Muslim world.

Indeed, when challenged about the harshness of Shari‘a penalties, many Muslim writers and Islamist politicians state their dislike for the alternative—human rights as defined by the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights"—on the grounds that such agreements are of Western origin, that they will undermine the norms of Islamic societies, and that they are not themselves based on Shari‘a rulings. Some Muslim intellectuals have even argued that human rights do not exist in Islam. In 1985, Sa'id Raja'i-Khurasani, the permanent Iranian delegate to the United Nations, stated that the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which represented secular understanding of the Judeo-Christian tradition, could not be implemented by Muslims and did not accord with the system of values recognized by the Islamic Republic of Iran … his country would, therefore, not hesitate to violate its prescriptions."[40] According to Ayatollah Muhammad-Taqi Misbah-Yazdi, a contender for the role of Iranian supreme leader upon the demise or removal of ‘Ali Khamene'i, "Islamic human rights differ from the ‘Declaration of Human Rights.' … Human rights must be Islamic human rights."[41]

Conclusion

There are, then, several reasons why severe punishments and unreasonable judgments continue in parts of the Islamic world and why certain human rights—the freedom to change one's religion, to convert Muslims to another faith, to enjoy full civil rights as a Baha'i, Zoroastrian, Armenian, or Jew, to marry by free choice, to write about controversial religious issues—are nowhere recognized. In the absence of fully secularized educational systems and with the increasing political involvement of groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood or Hamas, the day when genuine reform arrives in most Muslim countries seems to be as far off as ever.

A hardening of sentiment against the West and an increasing tendency to fall back on conspiracy theories to explain Islamic problems seem to make insistence on tough Shari‘a -mindedness a desirable option for many if only as a weapon to use against perceived Western weaknesses. Desperate not to offend, the West has done little to make issue of abuses such as those promoted by judges like Haji Reza'i. While crimes such as his go unpunished, the continued stoning, hanging, flogging, and even beheading all serve to intimidate Western critics and are, therefore, encouraged by Islamic states and groups.

On a wider scale, a major debate needs to take place between advocates of Islamic or other relativist human rights agendas and supporters of the principle that such rights are, by their very nature, universal and applicable to all people at all times and in all places. Unfortunately, that debate cannot take place openly while there is a threat of violence from those who oppose the notion of human rights as a Western or Zionist evil.

What are the policy implications of this situation for Western countries, the U.N., and international human rights organizations? One is that they should give more genuine support to Muslim reformers, their conferences and publications, and, where appropriate, their teaching positions. Another is to pressure Islamic governments to make arrests when death threats and similar menaces are used instead of open argument. A recent Saudi doctoral thesis listed two hundred names of intellectuals who must be killed while, in May 2006, Osama bin Laden declared open season on all Muslim freethinkers. Neither the Saudi government nor the Islamic establishment elsewhere have moved to counter such provocations.[42]

Human rights issues must be linked more firmly to trade and other agreements. The multiculturalist notion that Muslims may not be criticized for the use of unjust and cruel punishments must be countered. The stigma of political incorrectness is counterproductive. Islamic countries and ordinary Muslims must be given incentives to observe human rights norms within their borders and disincentives to apply the Shari‘a in harsh and unjust ways.

The case of Egyptian democracy activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim is instructive and suggests that outside pressure can work. In 2000, following his criticism of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's anointing of son Gamal as his successor, an Egyptian court arrested Ibrahim on spurious charges involving finance of his nongovernmental organization, the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies. The Bush administration responded by withholding nearly $200 million in aid pending Ibrahim's release. The Egyptian government responded by setting him free.

The payoff from support given to positive reform is potentially enormous. If genuinely reformist thinkers are enabled to have an impact within Muslim societies, violence, unjust punishments, and abuse of human rights in the name of religion will decline. In the end, a space for dialogue can only be opened up when intellectual debate joins forces with a determined war on terror—not only terror against Western interests but also against all violence done to Muslims themselves in the name of religion.

Denis MacEoin holds a Ph.D. in Persian studies from the University of Cambridge. He taught Arabic and Islamic Studies at Newcastle University and was for many years an honorary fellow at Durham University. He is currently the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Newcastle University.

[1] The Washington Post, May 20, 2006.
[2] Amnesty International U.K., news release, Aug. 24, 2004.
[3] BBC News, July 28, 2005.
[4] Etema'ad (Tehran), Jan. 7, 2006.
[5] For examples from a Shi‘ite perspective, see Ayatullah Sayyid Abulqasim al-Khoei, Islamic Laws of Ayatullah Khoei, trans. Muhammad Fazal Haq (New York: Islamic Seminary Publications, n.d.), ch. 35, pp. 2808, 2814-5.
[6] AdvocacyNet, news bulletin, no. 37, May 23, 2005.
[7] "Punishment for Non-Marital Sex in Islam," Religious Tolerance.org, accessed June 6, 2006.
[8] Abu ‘Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Yazid ibn Maja ar-Rab'i al-Qazwini, Sunan Ibn Maja, Bab al-Hudud, Al-Islam.com, Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Waqf, Missions, and Guidance, Saudi Arabia, accessed July 5, 2006.
[9] Abu ‘Isa Muhammad at-Tirmidhi, Sunan at-Tirmidhi wa huwa al-jami' as-sahih, 4 vols., 2nd ed., ed. ‘A. ‘Abdallatif (Beirut: n.p., 1983) Al-Islam.com, Bab al-Hudud, hadith 2, accessed July 5, 2006.
[10] Ibn Rushd, Bidayat al-Mujtahid, vol. 6, p. 113, cited in Asifa Quraishi, "Islamic Legal Analysis of the Zina Punishment Awarded to Bariya Ibrahim Magazu, in Zamfara, Nigeria," Islam for Today, Jan. 20, 2001.
[11] Qur'an, 24:2.
[12] John Burton, Encyclopedia of the Qur'an, s.v "Abrogation," accessed June 21, 2006; Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari, Istitabat al-Murtadin, 82: 816, 817; Ahmad Ibn Hanbal and Musnad al-Imam Ahmad Ibn Hanbal, ed., Samir al-Majzub (Beirut: Maktab al-Islami, 1993), vol. 2, p. 39.
[13] "Discrimination against Religious Minorities in Iran," report to 63rd session of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Fédération Internationale des Ligues des Droits de l'Homme (Paris) and Ligue de Défense des Droits de l'Homme en Iran (Geneva), Aug. 2003.
[14] At-Tirmidhi, Sunan, Bab al-Hudud, hadith 22, Al-Islam.com, accessed July 5, 2006.
[15] Ibn Maja, Sunan, Hudud, 14:4:2532.
[16] "Hadith," Ibn Maja, Sunan Ibn I Majah (Lahore, 1995), Arabic with English translation by M. Tufail Ansari, Bab al-Hudud, Al-Islam.com, accessed July 5, 2006.
[17] On these and others, see Suha Taji-Farouki, ed., Modern Muslim Intellectuals and the Qur'an (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Charles Kurzman, ed., Liberal Islam: A Sourcebook (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
[18] M. Yahya Birt, "The Message of Fazlur Rahman," Association of Muslim Researchers, June 27, 1996.
[19] "Letter to President Rafshanjani," Human Rights Watch, New York, July 22, 1997.
[20] Ayaan Hirsi Ali, "Danger Woman," interview with Alexander Linklater, The Guardian (London), May 17, 2005.
[21] Johann Hari, "Islam's Marked Woman: Irshad Manji," The Independent (London), May 28, 2005.
[22] John M. Broder, "For Muslim Who Says Violence Destroys Islam, Violent Threats," The New York Times, Mar. 11, 2006.
[23] Ami Ayalon, "Egypt's Quest for Cultural Orientation," Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, Tel Aviv University, 1999.
[24] Fauzi M. Najjar, "Islamic Fundamentalism and the Intellectuals: The Case of Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd," British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 27:2 (2000): 177-200.
[25] Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1988.
[26] Abdulaziz Sachedina, "What Happened in Najaf?" accessed June 6, 2006.
[27] Qur'an, 2:256.
[28] Qur'an, 9:29.
[29] "Hadith," cited in Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari, Istitabat al-Murtadin, 68:2:1.
[30] For an Iranian view of the law on apostasy, see, Sayf Allah Sarami, Ahkam-i murtad az didgah-i Islam va huquq-i bashar, in Tahqiqat-i andisha-yi Islami series, vol. 4 (Tehran: Markaz-i Tahqiqat-i Istratizhik-i Riyasat-i Jumhuri, 1997).
[31] Lorenzo Vidino, "The Muslim Brotherhood's Conquest of Europe," Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2005, pp. 25-34; The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, vol. 3, s.v. "Muslim Brotherhood," comprising the following articles: Nazih N. Ayubi, "An Overview," pp. 183-7; Denis J. Sullivan, "Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt," pp. 187-91; Philip S. Khoury, "Muslim Brotherhood in Syria," pp. 191-4; Beverley Milton-Edwards, "Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan," pp. 194-7; Gabriel R. Warburg, "Muslim Brotherhood in the Sudan," pp. 197-201.
[32] The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, vol. 3, Emad Eldin Shahin, s.v. "Salafiyah."
[33] ‘Uthman Amin, Muhammad ‘Abduh, trans. Charles Wendell (Washington: American Council of Learned Societies, 1953), pp. 1-103.
[34] Charles Adams, Islam and Modernism in Egypt: A Study of the Modern Reform Movement Inaugurated by Muhammad ‘Abduh (London: Oxford University Press, 1933); Malcolm Kerr, Islamic Reform: The Political and Legal Theories of Muhammad ‘Abduh and Rashid Rida (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966).
[35] Ahmad Moussalli, Radical Islamic Fundamentalism: The Ideological and Political Discourse of Sayyid Qutb (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1993).
[36] Sayyid Qutb, Ma'alim fi ‘t-tariq (Cairo: Dar as-Shuruq, 1980).
[37] The Guardian, Dec. 17, 2004; Daniel Pipes, "Why Revoke Tariq Ramadan's U.S. Visa?" The New York Sun, Aug. 27, 2004.
[38] Caroline Fourest, Frère Tariq: Discours, stratégie et méthode de Tariq Ramadan (Lyon, France: Lyon Mag' Hors Serie, 2004).
[39] "The Qaradawi Fatwas," The Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2004, pp. 78-80; The Daily Telegraph (London), Feb. 3, 2006; Lamia Radi, "Qaradawi: Prophet Cartoons Is (sic) War Waged against Us," Middle East Online, Mar. 23, 2006.
[40] See Mayer, Islam and Human Rights, p. 8.
[41] Quoted in Ann Elizabeth Mayer, "Islamic Rights or Human Rights: An Iranian Dilemma," Iranian Studies, Summer/Fall 1996, p. 294.
[42] "Saudi Doctorate Encourages the Murder of Arab Intellectuals," Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Special Dispatch Series, no. 1070, Jan. 12, 2006; "To Kill a Muslim Freethinker," FrontPage Magazine, May 3, 2006; Aluma Dankowitz, "Arab Intellectuals: Under Threat by Islamists," MEMRI Inquiry and Analysis, no. 254, Nov. 23, 2005; Aluma Dankowitz, "Accusing Muslim Intellectuals of Apostasy," MEMRI Inquiry and Analysis, no. 208, Feb. 18, 2005.

This item is available on the Middle East Forum website, at http://www.meforum.org/article/1000

This item is available on the Middle East Forum website, at http://www.meforum.org/article/168

At War With Whom?
A short history of radical Islam

by Jonathan Schanzer
Doublethink
Spring 2002

There's a "War on Terror" going on, says President George W. Bush. Sometimes we're even told it's a war against "evil." But regardless of nomenclature, the Bush administration takes great pains to emphasize that this is most certainly not a war on Islam. Is it?

The short answer is "no." We're not battling Islam, because there is no such thing as one Islam. One Islam cannot be extracted from the numerous offshoots, branches, and sects that make the world's 1.3 billion Muslims as ideologically, religiously, and politically fractured as the other two monotheistic faiths, Christianity and Judaism.

Still, all of the 19 hijackers on September 11 were Muslims. Every one of the FBI's 22 most wanted terrorists are Muslims. Nearly all the groups and individuals listed in President Bush's executive order blocking terrorist funds were Muslims, too. So how is this not a war on Islam?

Correction: Militant Islam

The "War on Terror" should really be called the "War on Militant Islam." The terrorists of September 11, Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and the Taliban all adhere to an ideology we have come to know as militant Islam, a minority outgrowth of the faith that exudes a bitter hatred for Western ideas, including capitalism, individualism, and consumerism. It rejects the West and much that it has to offer (with the exception of weapons, medicines, and other useful technologies) seeking instead to implement a strict interpretation of the Koran (Islam's holy book) and shari'a (Islamic law). America, as radical Muslims see it, is the primary impediment to building an Islamic world order.

Accordingly, militant Islam directs its venom towards America and the West. The Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, said after September 11 that "the plan [to destroy America] is going ahead and God willing it is being implemented, but it is a huge task beyond the will and comprehension of human beings. If God's help is with us, this will happen within a short period of time."

Sheikh Ikrama Sabri, a Palestinian Mufti (Islamic religious authority) said in a radio sermon broadcast in 1997, "Oh Allah, destroy America, her agents, and her allies! Cast them into their own traps, and cover the White House with black!"

"The American regime is the enemy of [Iran's] Islamic government and our revolution," said Iran's religious leader, Ali Khameine'i, in 1998. "It is the enemy of your revolution, your Islam, and your resistance to American bullying."

Accordingly, radical Muslims back up their words with deeds. They have a history of violence against American, Western, and even Muslim interests. But the movement did not appear spontaneously. Rather, it has taken 14 centuries to evolve.

From Conquests to Conquered

The history begins with the birth of Islam in the year 610, when the prophet Muhammed received his divine mission and accepted Allah's instructions for a new religion that commanded belief in one God. For the next 22 years, Muhammed served as a transmitter of Allah's message, and his Muslim empire grew to encompass most of the Arabian Peninsula. After the prophet's death, the Muslim empire continued to expand until the 17th century, when Muslims were unquestionably the world's greatest military force, having conquered extensive territory and converted millions throughout the Middle East and Southern Europe. Islam had also achieved unmatched advances in architecture, art, law, mathematics, and science.

With the exception of battling Christian Crusaders, most Muslims had little to do with the West. In fact, Ottoman Turkey, the dominant Islamic power in the 16th century, viewed the West with what Islam expert Bernard Lewis, in his book Islam and the West, calls "amused disdain" for its inferior culture and religion.

By the 17th century, however, as the West achieved military superiority, Lewis writes that the tone shifted to "alarmed dislike." By 1769, the Russians handed the Turks their first sound defeat, pointing to a new and difficult road ahead for Islam. Instead of conquering, the Muslims were conquered.

The empire soon unraveled. In 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte led his expedition into Egypt. In 1830, the French seized Algeria. Nine years later, the British coopted Aden (modern Yemen). In 1881, the French occupied Tunisia, and in 1882 the English tightened their grip on Egypt. In 1911, Russia captured parts of Persia. That same year, Italy announced the annexation of Tripoli, leading to the eventual creation of the modern state of Libya. In 1912, the French extended their influence to Morocco. By the end of World War I, the Ottoman Empire had lost the Middle East, as France and England carved up the Muslim empire as spoils of war. The Muslim world could do little more than look on helplessly.

But the most painful Western penetration into the Islamic world was undoubtedly the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. To the embarrassment of the Muslim world, a unified front of Arab armies lost a bitter war to the newly formed country of only 600,000 Jews.

While the West may no longer have long-term imperialist designs on the Middle East, its influence is ubiquitous. This includes advancements in practical and physical sciences, modern weaponry and military reform, mass communication, law, and political reform, not to mention its fair share of McDonald's golden arches. These Western concepts and institutions, when transplanted to the Muslim world, are often destabilizing. They threaten the status quo, and are often too radically different to fit comfortably within a deeply rooted, traditional, and generally static Muslim culture. In short, the Islamic world may not have been ready for some of these changes.

The Rise of the Radicals

While many Muslims adapted to the fast-paced changes common to Western industrialization and modernization, some Muslims rejected them. Instead, they created a rigid ideology imbedded in the traditional values and laws of the Koran. This is the phenomenon known today as Islamic fundamentalism, or Islamism.

Islamism came to be seen as a struggle to return to the glorious days when Islam reigned supreme. It represents a yearning for the "pure" Islam as practiced by the prophet. Not unlike the American Amish, the movement rejects much that is innovative. Islamists, however, take the rejection of modernity a step further. They perceive those who have introduced these innovations (the West) as its enemy.

Western influence, however, was unstoppable. Consequently, writes Islamic fundamentalism expert Emmanuel Sivan in his book Radical Islam, a sense of "doom and gloom" developed among religious Muslims. Some perceived this world to be "the prison of the believers and the paradise of the unbelievers," according to Lewis. To them, this explained why Islamic values were losing out to the secularism of the West. Others argued that Allah was angry with Muslims for straying from the righteous path and was therefore punishing them for their disobedience.

In time, the Islamist vision crystallized. They not only rejected the influence of the West, they rejected the legitimacy of their own governments in the Arabic world, which they saw as subservient to the West. Thus, the overthrow of these regimes became an important part of the Islamist agenda.

The Makings of a Movement

The biggest push for this agenda came in 1928, with the founding of the Ikhwan al-Muslimun or Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. This organization became the cornerstone for most of today's Islamist movements, advocating Islamic beliefs and values as expressed by the common Egyptian. The organization, founded by Hassan al-Banna (1906-1949), rejected western rule and England's secular influence over Egypt. Without religious governance, al-Banna believed the Muslim world would be "a society of cultural mongrels and spiritual half-castes."

"Politics is part of religion," he wrote. "Caesar and what belongs to Caesar is for God Almighty alone Islam commanded a unity of life; to impose upon Islam the Christian separation of loyalties [into church and state] is to deny it its essential meaning and very existence."

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood soon developed armed cells that attacked the government and its supporters. Not surprisingly, the movement was soon outlawed. But this did not stop the group from continuing its activities. In an attempt to quell the movement, al-Banna was executed in Cairo in 1949.

However, al-Banna's death did not hinder the growth of Islamism. The Muslim Brotherhood found further inspiration in the 1950s and 1960s from Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), a radical exegete who provided Koranic justifications for attacking secular Arab leaders that called themselves believers, but who did not run their governments according to the shari'a or Islamic law. In his most famous book, Milestones, he advocated jihad, or holy war, as a means to shake off the shackles of repressive secular regimes.

"This movement . . . harnesses material power and invokes jihad for eliminating the Jahili [ignorant] order and its supporting authority, for they interfere with and prevent the efforts to reform the beliefs and ideas of humanity at large, and by dint of its resources and aberrant methods forces them to obey it and makes them bow before human lords instead of the Almighty Lord... The very purpose of this movement is to set human beings free from the yoke of human enslavement and make them serve the One and Only God."
Qutb was executed by the Egyptian regime in 1966 for propagating Islamic radicalism and political violence. Still, the movement survived. In fact, the Muslim Brotherhood movement has since gone global. The organization today has hundreds of branches in over 70 countries worldwide.

Militant Islam also gained momentum after the devastating Arab loss to Israel in the Six-Day War of June 1967. Yet another defeat for the Muslim world came at the hands of the Jews, a people Muslims regard as religiously inferior. Worse was the fact that Jerusalem, Islam's third holiest site, had been conquered. Looking for answers, increasing numbers of Middle Eastern Muslims returned to their Islamic roots.

In 1969, Colonel Mu'ammar Qaddaffi took power in Libya by military coup. Qaddaffi, notes historian Raphael Israeli, soon began to emphasize "the trend toward the predominance of Islam in the making of the domestic and international policies of Islamic nations." With vast oil wealth behind him, Qaddaffi financed various terror operations against what he perceived to be an imperialist West. Qaddaffi, today, remains one of history's largest financiers of militant Islamic terror.

Finally, a decade later occurred what many historians call "the earthquake." In 1979, Iran became the first modern Islamic republic, as Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini overthrew Iran's secular regime and established a new order in which shari'a became law. Suddenly, Islamism was no longer an ideology of movements. It had inspired a state.

The 23-Year War

America's first violent introduction to militant Islam came shortly after Khomeini's Islamic Republic was established in 1979, when Islamic extremists seized the U.S. embassy in the Iranian capital of Tehran. For 444 days, the militants held 52 Americans hostage. After a botched helicopter rescue attempt, America agreed to release nearly $8 billion in Iranian assets to free the hostages. The hostages were returned and America breathed a sigh of relief. Most people felt the nightmare had ended. In fact, it was only beginning.

Iran, we soon learned, had successfully "exported" radical Islam to other parts of the Islamic world. Perhaps the easiest target of all was Lebanon, a small, war-torn state that had been bloodied by years of internal conflict.

When American soldiers arrived in Lebanon for a peacekeeping mission, militant Islam struck again. There were two deadly attacks against Americans in 1983. The first was the April 18 bombing of the American embassy in Beirut. Six months later came a suicide attack on the U.S. Marine barracks on October 23 that killed 241.

The suicide attack was America's first experience with this kind of terror. In time, it was learned that the attack was sanctioned by an Iranian-backed guerrilla movement called Hizbullah (Party of God). The group's spiritual guide, Muhammed Hussein Fadlallah, contended in a fiery speech that "the oppressed nations do not have the technology and destructive weapons America and Europe have. They must thus fight with special means of their own." These special means were apparently too much for America. U.S. forces left Lebanon several months later.

Encouraged by an ambivalent America, a rash of militant Islamist violence followed. First, the American embassy in Beirut was bombed again on September 20, 1984. Then, in December 1984 on a hijacked plane in Tehran, Islamic extremists tortured and murdered two Americans. This came alongside the abduction of more than a dozen Americans in Beirut between March 1984 and January 1985. Finally, in June 1985, Islamic militants hijacked yet another flight with more than 100 Americans aboard, killing one of them.

Militant Islam resurfaced on December 21, 1988, when Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 people on board, as well as 11 residents hit by the fuselage on the ground. The flight was en route to New York from Frankfurt, Germany, via London.

The movement found further impetus in 1989 from the furor over Salman Rushdie and his controversial book, The Satanic Verses. Taking into account the passage below, it should come as no surprise that the book offended Muslims worldwide.
"Amid the palm-trees of the oasis Gibreel appeared to the Prophet and found himself spouting rules, rules, rules, until the faithful could scarcely bear the prospect of any more revelation, Salman said, rules about every damn thing, if a man farts let him turn his face to the wind, a rule about which hand to use for the purpose of cleaning one's behind. It was as if no aspect of human existence was to be left unregulated, free. The revelation the recitation told the faithful how much to eat, how deeply they should sleep, and which sexual positions had received divine sanction, so that they learned that sodomy and the missionary position were approved of by the arch-angel, whereas the forbidden postures included all those in which the female was on top."
Rather than merely stating that the book was offensive, or banning the book from Muslim bookstores, Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini sentenced Rushdie to death for blasphemy:
"In the name of God the almighty. We belong to God and to Him we shall return. I would like to inform all intrepid Muslims in the world that the author of the book Satanic Verses . . . and those publishers who were aware of its contents, are sentenced to death. I call on all zealous Muslims to execute them quickly, where they find them, so that no one will dare to insult the Islamic sanctities. Whoever is killed on this path will be regarded as a martyr, God willing. In addition, if anyone who has access to the author of the book does not possess the power to execute him, he should point him out to the people so that he may be punished for his actions. May God's blessing be upon you. Ruhollah Musavi al-Khomeini."
Khomeini's fatwa, or decree, sparked an unprecedented wave of international Islamist violence. In the year to come, book agents were stabbed, newspapers were firebombed, and demonstrations regularly resulted in bloodshed.

The Battle Comes Home

In time, the Rushdie Affair subsided, but the war continued. On February 23, 1993, a large bomb exploded in New York's World Trade Center, killing six and wounding 1,000. Led by Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the "Blind Sheikh of New York," the plot was pinned to al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, a radical Egyptian group previously thought to be contained in that country. The American government did a terrific job of putting the culprits behind bars, but left the real counter-terrorism dirty work to Egyptian President Husni Mubarak, who continues to battle the insurgent group today.

But perhaps more shocking than the first World Trade Center attack itself was the realization that the culprits had been living in America for years. Worse, their intentions had been made clear well before the attacks. Earlier that year in Brooklyn, Rahman fingered America as the foremost enemy of Islam. "We must be terrorists," he said, "and we must terrorize the enemies of Islam and frighten them and disturb them and shake the earth under their feet." When the case was brought to trial, it was learned that the bombers had hoped to bring down the World Trade Center something that would take another eight years to accomplish.

On October 3, 1993, America suffered another defeat against militant Islam, this time in Somalia. As depicted in the recent movie Blackhawk Down, two American Army Blackhawk helicopters were shot down and a third crash-landed on a botched mission designed to capture a radical Muslim warlord. The result was that 18 Americans died and 78 were injured.

In 1995, a suicide car-bomber targeted a military training school in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing five American instructors. A year later, a truck bomb exploded, destroying part of a housing complex used by American Air Force personnel in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. In that attack, 19 Americans were killed and 240 were injured. The U.S. responded by imposing sanctions against Sudan's Islamist regime, where a terrorist named Osama bin Laden was staying as a guest.

Meanwhile, in 1995, a previously unknown group called the Taliban made headlines when it captured more than half of Afghanistan after years of bloody internal conflict. While brutal violence became commonplace and human rights were virtually nonexistent, the group only began to receive notoriety when it provided asylum for the fugitive bin Laden in 1997. With safe haven in Afghanistan, bin Laden's al-Qaeda (pronounced al-Ka-ee-da, not al-Kay-da) organization began to operate with increasing potency.

Al-Qaeda Coalesces

Despite all the media hype, al-Qaeda (literally, "the base") is actually just an umbrella group that facilitates and orchestrates the operations of Islamic militants around the globe. It's a kind of Internet for terrorists, whereby information, resources, and people are connected and funneled through a hub. In other words, Osama bin Laden may or may not be directly responsible for the attacks of September 11, the USS Cole, or the twin embassies in East Africa. However, bin Laden's organization, since its inception in 1988, can be tied to planning these operations, as well as to other plots around the globe.

Al-Qaeda's roots are in the CIA-sponsored Afghan war against the Soviets (1980-1989). During that time, with the help of U.S. weapons and funding, radical Muslims from all over the world came to Afghanistan to fight the Soviet occupation. Bin Laden, the son of a Saudi millionaire, was among them. He reportedly won the hearts of his fellow mujahedin (jihad fighters) by not only fighting valiantly, but by financing a recruiting office for the Afghanistan jihad.

Specifically, bin Laden and a Palestinian militant named Abdallah Azzam opened Maktab al-Khidamat, or the Services Office. Bin Laden reportedly paid to bring the new recruits to Afghanistan and built training camps for them. Further, "the Prince," as he is called, imported experts to train his new mujahedin in guerilla tactics and terror warfare. Over the years, thousands trained at his camps.

In 1988, as the war wound down, bin Laden began to forge an official network out of these Muslim extremists. He called this network al-Qaeda. For 14 years now, although many of these jihad fighters have returned to their home countries around the world, bin Laden has kept that network alive through the Internet, cell phones, faxes, and other high-tech means.

The goals of al-Qaeda are three-pronged. First, the organization seeks to overthrow what it sees as the corrupt and heretical governments of today's Muslim states, specifically bin Laden's home country, Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden sees the Saudi regime American lackeys, especially since the royal family has allowed U.S. servicemen to stay in Saudi Arabia since the 1991 Gulf War. Accordingly, al-Qaeda views the U.S. as the primary enemy of Islam, and seeks to destroy it.

Finally, al-Qaeda seeks to bolster the efforts of jihad groups throughout the world. This includes, but is not limited to, Algeria, Chechnya, Eritrea, and Somalia. Afghanistan and Sudan, two regimes that had adopted strict Islamist laws, were also heavily influenced by al-Qaeda.

Bin Laden Emerges

At first, bin Laden's name was only loosely linked to several acts of terrorism. According to the U.S. State Department, his network was implicated in the December 1992 attacks on a hotel in Yemen that injured several tourists, but was probably intended for American servicemen. His name came up again in connection with the first World Trade Center bombing and the 1993 attacks against American servicemen in Somalia. Bin Laden's network was additionally said to have assisted the terrorists who tried to assassinate Egyptian President Husni Mubarak in 1995, and those who were responsible for the November 1995 attack on American training personnel in Riyadh. He was also tied to the bombing that killed about 30 people in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, in June of 1996.

But it wasn't until February 23, 1998, that we began to see the real face of Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network, with the creation of an organization he called "The Islamic World Front for the Struggle Against the Jews and the Crusaders."

In the Islamic World Front statement, the group called upon "Muslim ulema, leaders, youths, and people" to "kill the Americans and their allies civilian and military This is in accordance with the words of Almighty God."

With the creation of this umbrella group, it was apparent that al-Qaeda had a wider reach than previously imagined. Signatories of the statement included leaders of the radical Egyptian groups al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya and al-Jihad, as well as the Pakistani Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Pakistan and the Jihad Movement in Bangladesh.

Still despite these links, and the newly-revealed network of terror, U.S. attorney Mary Jo White could only indirectly link al-Qaeda to the training of the tribesmen who attacked U.S. soldiers in Somalia. This changed in August 1998, when al-Qaeda operative Mohammed Sadiq Odeh was arrested in Pakistan. Under FBI interrogation, Odeh provided details of bin Laden's international network, as well as his role in the embassy bombings. Since then, other suspects have provided equally vital information.

In June 1999, Bin Laden was added to the FBI's most wanted list. One month later, U.S. President Bill Clinton imposed sanctions on the Taliban for harboring him. Despite the pressure, bin Laden continued to run al-Qaeda from caves in Afghanistan with increasing efficiency. In fact, U.S. intelligence obtained a copy of a six-volume terrorism manual used by bin Laden to train his recruits for al-Qaeda.

U.S. intelligence has since foiled many al-Qaeda plots, including one designed to disrupt millennium celebrations in December 1999. Still, while countless attacks have been averted, the USS Cole bombing in 2000 and the September 11 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center are proof that al-Qaeda plots against American interests can still slip beneath the radar.

With the destruction of the Taliban regime, and Osama bin Laden on the run, al-Qaeda has had to restructure. If bin Laden is caught, al-Qaeda will suffer another serious blow. Still, because it is only a facilitating network for militant Islam, the likelihood of al-Qaeda's longevity is almost certainly assured. Thus, the prospect of a long and protracted war against militant Islam is effectively guaranteed.

A Little Perspective

Given that militant Islam has plagued America for 22 years, and that bin Laden has terrorized America for 14 years, the attacks of September 11 should not have been surprising. A trend had been established. So, perhaps the biggest shock of that tragic day was the nation's utter surprise. Psychologically, America was completely unprepared for the attacks. Why?

Former CIA director James Woolsey has one explanation. In a presentation to the Middle East Forum in New York City on March 7, 2001, he compared the 1980s and 1990s in America to another period in U.S. history the Roaring Twenties. In the 1920s, America was euphoric after its resounding recent victory in the First World War. A feeling of invincibility swept through America that led the nation to completely overlook the rise of Hitler in Germany. As Europe descended into war, America stood idly across the Atlantic in a state of denial. Finally, with a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, America was shocked, angered, and thrust unwillingly into war.

Today's America is not much different. Thanks to exponential economic growth, an unprecedented technology boom, and its status as the world's lone superpower, America grew by leaps and bounds through the 1980s and 1990s, and understandably became somewhat complacent. Our government, all the while, refused to face up to a new enemy. Militant Islam had already conquered three Middle East countries: Iran, Sudan, and Afghanistan. All the while, more than a dozen other regimes around the world were fighting for their very existence against a militant Islamic movement that grew stronger by the day. It took a horrific day like September 11 for Americans to realize the problem could no longer be ignored.

In fact, our consistent disinclination to respond to earlier attacks lies behind the events of September 11. Consider bin Laden's own words. "We have seen in the last decade the decline of the American government and the weakness of the American soldier. He is ready to wage cold wars but unprepared to fight hot wars...We are ready for all occasions, we rely on God."

What bin Laden said back then, in 1998, is that America didn't deter him. Three years later, he felt emboldened enough to attack America because we had balked at almost every prior showdown. America might have the strongest military in the world, but it has a history of ineffectuality against militant Islam. In the absence of U.S. reprisals, without deterrence, militant Islam found the confidence to strike again.

America Fights Back

With the launch of Operation Enduring Freedom, America is now struggling to reassert that deterrence. America handily picked apart the Taliban in Afghanistan, and is carefully weighing its options for a next target. The next target, however, will not be as easy to identify.

For one, the target is not easy to see. From Morocco in Northwest Africa to Malaysia in Southeast Asia, militant Islam continues to grow by stealth. Adherents of militant Islam account for some 15-20 percent of the Muslim world, according to Daniel Pipes, an expert on the subject. This means that more than 150 million people are part of the problem. To make matters worse, they hide among the moderates. They don't wear uniforms and rarely identify themselves.

Fortunately, we can pinpoint a few of their centers of influence. Accordingly, America has turned up the heat in such countries as Saudi Arabia and Yemen, where radical Muslims have operated freely for decades. Working to stay in the good graces of an awakened (and angry) United States, these countries, among others, have worked to coordinate with American intelligence, crack down on their militants, and preempt an American operation. Indeed, one could call this Operation Enduring Freedom's "Phase 1.5." Only time will tell if these countries can battle terror effectively on their own.

Looking Ahead

After that, America faces hard decisions. In this new and long-overdue war against the forces of terror, the path ahead is daunting. Militant Islam has strongholds in Algeria, Egypt, Somalia, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Jordan, Yemen, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Pakistan, to name just a few countries. The challenge now will be finding ways to destroy the radical infrastructure and arrest or kill militants while simultaneously bolstering the influence of moderate Muslims. How to accomplish this task is unclear.

To its credit, the Bush administration has made all the right moves so far. For the moment, radical Islam appears to be beating a retreat. But the battle is not yet won. The roots of militant Islam run deep and may take many years to eradicate. Accordingly, this country must prepare itself for future confrontations. More importantly, Americans must understand that this is not a war on terrorism. Indeed, terrorism is only a tactic. This struggle is against a radical, utopian ideology and those who carry out violence in its name.

This item is available on the Middle East Forum website, at http://www.meforum.org/article/168

The Almohad Dynasty (From Arabic ???????? al-Muwahhidun, i.e. "the monotheists" or "the Unitarians," the name being corrupted in Iberian Romance languages) were a Berber Muslim religious power which founded the fifth Moorish dynasty in the 12th century, and conquered all northern Africa as far as Egypt, together with Al-Andalus (Moorish Iberia).
Contents
[hide]
1 Origins
2 The Dynasty
3 Muwahhadi (Almohad) Caliphs, 1145–1269
4 Bibliography
5 See also
6 External links
[edit]Origins

The dynasty originated with Ibn Tumart, a member of the Masmuda, a Berber tribe of the Atlas Mountains. Ibn Tumart was the son of a lamplighter in a mosque and had been noted for his piety from his youth; he was small, and misshapen and lived the life of a devotee-beggar. As a youth he performed the pilgrimage to Mecca (or "Makkah"), whence he was expelled on account of his strictures on the laxity of others, and thence wandered to Baghdad, where he attached himself to the school of the orthodox doctor al-Ash'ari. But he made a system of his own by combining the teaching of his master with parts of the doctrines of others, and with mysticism imbibed from the great teacher Ghazali. His main principle was a strict Unitarianism which denied the independent existence of the attributes of God, as being incompatible with his unity, and therefore a polytheistic idea. Ibn Tumart in fact represented a revolt against what he perceived as anthropomorphism in the Muslim orthodoxy.
[edit]The Dynasty

After his return to Morocco at the age of twenty-eight, he began preaching and heading attacks on wine-shops and on other manifestations of laxity. He even went so far as to assault the sister of the Almoravid (Murabit) amir `Ali III, in the streets of Fez, because she was going about unveiled after the manner of Berber women. Ali III allowed him to escape unpunished.
Ibn Tumart, who had been driven from several other towns for exhibitions of reforming zeal, now took refuge among his own people, the Masmuda, in the Atlas. It is highly probable that his influence would not have outlived him, if he had not found a lieutenant in Abd al-Mu'min al-Kumi, another Berber, from Algeria, who was undoubtedly a soldier and statesman of a high order. When Ibn Tumart died in 1128 at the monastery or ribat which he had founded in the Atlas at Tinmel, after suffering a severe defeat by the Almoravids, Abd al-Mu'min kept his death secret for two years, till his own influence was established. He then came forward as the lieutenant of the Mahdi Ibn Tumart. Between 1130 and his death in 1163, 'Abd-el-Mumin not only rooted out the Murabits, but extended his power over all northern Africa as far as Egypt, becoming amir of Marrakech in 1149. Al-Andalus followed the fate of Africa, and in 1170 the Almohads transferred their capital to Seville, a step followed by the founding of the great mosque, now superseded by the cathedral, the tower of which, the Giralda, they erected in 1184 to mark the accession of Abu Yusuf Ya'qub al-Mansur. From the time of Yusuf II, however, they governed their co-religionists in Iberia and Central North Africa through lieutenants, their dominions outside Morocco being treated as provinces. When their amirs crossed the Straits it was to lead a jihad against the Christians and to return to their capital, Marrakech.
The Almohad princes had a longer and a more distinguished career than the Murabits (or Almoravids). Yusuf II or "Abu Ya'qub" (1163–1184), and Ya'qub I or "al-Mansur" (1184-1199), the successors of Abd al-Mumin, were both able men. Initially their government drove some Jewish and Christian subjects to take refuge in the growing Christian states of Portugal, Castile and Aragon. But in the end they became less fanatical than the Almoravids, and Ya'qub al Mansur was a highly accomplished man, who wrote a good Arabic style and who protected the philosopher Averroes. His title of al-Mansur, "The Victorious," was earned by the defeat he inflicted on Alfonso VIII of Castile in the Battle of Alarcos (1195). But the Christian states in Iberia were becoming too well organized to be overrun by the Muslims, and the Almohads made no permanent advance against them. In 1212 Muhammad III, "al-Nasir" (1199–1214), the successor of al-Mansur, after an initially successful advance north, was defeated by an alliance of the four Christian princes of Castile, Aragón, Navarre and Portugal, at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in the Sierra Morena. The battle destroyed Almohad dominance. Nearly all of the Moorish dominions in Iberia were lost soon after, with the great Moorish cities of Córdoba and Seville falling to the Christians in 1236 and 1248 respectively. All that remained, thereafter, was the Moorish state of Granada, which after an internal Muslim revolt, survived as a tributary state of the Christian kingdoms on Iberia's southern periphery, until it too fell in 1492.
The Almohads encouraged the establishment of Christians even in Fez, and after the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa they occasionally entered into alliances with the kings of Castile. In Africa they were successful in expelling the garrisons placed in some of the coast towns by the Norman kings of Sicily. The history of their decline differs from that of the Almoravids, whom they had displaced. They were not assailed by a great religious movement, but lost territories, piecemeal, by the revolt of tribes and districts. Their most effective enemies were the Beni Marin (Marinids) who founded the next Moroccan dynasty. The last representative of the line, Idris II, "El Wathiq"' was reduced to the possession of Marrakesh, where he was murdered by a slave in 1269.
[edit]Muwahhadi (Almohad) Caliphs, 1145–1269

Abd al-Mu'min 1145–1163
Abu Ya'qub Yusuf I 1163–1184
Abu Yusuf Ya'qub al-Mansur 1184–1199
Muhammad an-Nasir 1199–1213
Abu Ya'qub Yusuf II 1213–1224
Abd al-Wahid I 1224
Abdallah 1224–1227
Yahya 1227–1235
Idris I 1227–1232
Abdul-Wahid II 1232–1242
Ali 1242–1248
Umar 1248–1266
Idris II 1266–1269
[edit]Bibliography

History of the Almonades, Reinhart Dozy, (second edition, 1881)
Conquest of Spain by the Arab-Moors, Coppée, (Boston, 1881)
Le livre d'Ibn Tumart, Luciani, (1903)
Les Benou Ghanya, Bel, (1903)
[edit]See also

History of Algeria
History of Islam
History of Morocco
History of Spain
History of Portugal
[edit]External links

Almohads Dynasty Berber dynasty
Categories: Almohad dynasty | Muslim dynasties | Berber people | Murcia

February 16, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Will Russia Bet on Its People or Its Oil Wells?

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
In a high-rise building with a view of Lenin’s Tomb, the U.S. aerospace giant Boeing is designing key parts of its new 787 Dreamliner, using hundreds of Russian aerospace engineers. Yes, President Putin may be talking cold-war tough, but down the street from the Kremlin, America’s crown jewel industrial company is using Russia’s crown jewel brainpower to design its next crown jewel jetliner.

Boeing’s Moscow Design Center, which employs 1,400 Russian engineers (earning less than their U.S. counterparts) on various projects, symbolizes Russia’s unique potential: Russia is that rare country that not only has a treasure trove of natural resources — oil, gas and mines — but also has a treasure trove of human talent: engineers, mathematicians and other valuable minds.

Most nations with highly developed human talent — like Singapore or Taiwan — have few natural resources, and those that are rich in natural resources — Venezuela or Sudan — tend not to develop their people’s talents. The exceptions, like Norway, which is rich in both human and natural resources, usually built their democratic institutions before they got rich on oil, so the money was well spent.

The meta-question with Russia today is this: Will it become more like Norway, a democracy enriched by oil, or more like Venezuela, a democracy subverted by oil? Is the Boeing center Russia’s future or its exception?

You see signs of both trends. On the positive side, Russia has been smarter than most petro-states. It has set up a rainy day fund and tucked away $100 billion from its oil and gas windfall. Direct foreign investment in Russia hit $30 billion last year, according to The Economist, and not all of it goes to the oil and gas sector anymore.

And then there’s Boeing. Its impressive Moscow center operates two shifts of engineers: 7 a.m. until 3 p.m., and 3 p.m. until 11 p.m. — which is shortly before the workday begins in the United States. A Russian Boeing engineer might be designing part of the 787’s nose during his day, and then initials and stores his work in the computer. A U.S. Boeing engineer, working on an identical computer, then picks it up during her day and engineers it some more. With regular teleconferences, it’s as if they are in one virtual 24-hour office.

“There is no paper at all,” said Sergei Korolev, the deputy head of Boeing Moscow. “We do the presentations electronically and have online sessions with Wichita and Seattle, and everyone looks at the same part and talks about it. Our center is the reason people are not emigrating.”

But Russia has a unique legacy in aerospace from Soviet days, so the educational centers and talent were in place for Boeing to tap. What Russia still glaringly lacks is an ecosystem of secure property rights, venture capitalists and homegrown innovators, and universities and business schools churning out idea-entrepreneurs. “Made in Russia” will never be a global brand as long as research spending by Russian companies remains among the lowest in the world.

The Moscow Times recently reported that only two Russian colleges — Moscow State and St. Petersburg State — are listed among the world’s top 500 universities. When you walk down the streets in Bangalore, India’s high-tech capital, it feels as if there’s a computer school or English-language school on every street. You walk in Moscow, and it feels as if there is a new shoe store or beauty salon on every street.

A former top aide to President Putin remarked to me that Russia had a huge interest in building a postindustrial knowledge economy, not an energy-intensive industrial one, so it can export most of its oil and gas, not consume them at home. But that would take a big investment in education, which is not being done.

Noting that Russia today spends far less of its G.D.P. on higher education than Europe or America, Sergei Guriyev, rector of Russia’s New Economic School, wrote in The Moscow Times, “Russians simply are not prepared to pay the taxes that would be necessary to finance science and education at Soviet-era levels, and no incentives have been created to attract more private funding.”

So here’s my prediction: You tell me the price of oil, and I’ll tell you what kind of Russia you’ll have. If the price stays at $60 a barrel, it’s going to be more like Venezuela, because its leaders will have plenty of money to indulge their worst instincts, with too few checks and balances. If the price falls to $30, it will be more like Norway. If the price falls to $15 a barrel, it could become more like America — with just enough money to provide a social safety net for its older generation, but with too little money to avoid developing the leaders and institutions to nurture the brainpower of its younger generation.

In a message dated 15-Feb-07 12:10:35 A.M. Pacific Standard Time, danhare@cox.net writes:
Below is a statement from Dr. Ahmed during my interview with him.
The context was the age old argument of the wrongs of the Christian Crusades.

I was curious to learn from Larry Stirling article (also shown below) about the specifics to Islamic expansionism.
This along with your comments about the imperialistic nature and the conquest of geography of Islam.
complex topic

1 - Muslims don't see Islamic conquests as imperialism, non-Muslims do

2 - Muslims were generally more tolerant of non-Muslims in premodern times (but not always - see the Almohads); the reverse is true today.

yours sincerely,

Daniel Pipes