CAMBRIDGE, England, 6 May 2007 — Last month, three Muslim men were arrested in Britain in connection with the London bombings of July 2005. In light of such situations, there are non-Muslims and Muslims alike who yearn for “moderate,” peace-loving Muslims to speak out against the violent acts sometimes perpetrated in the name of Islam. And to avoid association with terrorism, some Muslims adopt a “moderate” label in describing themselves.
I am a Muslim who embraces peace. But, if we must attach stereotypical tags, I’d rather be considered “orthodox” than “moderate.”
“Moderate,” in this context, implies that Muslims who are more orthodox are somehow backward and violent and that, in our current cultural climate, progress and peace are restricted to “moderate” Muslims. To be a “moderate” Muslim is, thus, to be a “good,” malleable Muslim in the eyes of Western society.
I recently attended a debate about Western liberalism and Islam at the University of Cambridge where I am pursuing my master’s degree. I expected the debaters on one side to present a bigoted laundry list of complaints against Islam and its alleged incompatibility with liberalism, and they did.
But what was more disturbing was that, those on the other side — who, in theory, supported the harmony of Islam with Western liberalism — based their argument on spurious terms. While these debaters — which included a former top government official and a Nobel Peace Prize winner — were well intentioned, they actually wrought more harm than good.
Through implied references to moderate Muslims, they offered a simplistic, paternalistic discourse to suggest Muslims would one day catch up with Western civilization.
In the aftermath of 9/11, much has been said about the need for “moderate Muslims.” But to be a “moderate” Muslim also implies that Osama Bin Laden and Co. must represent the pinnacle of orthodoxy; that a criterion of orthodox Islam somehow inherently entails violence. Therefore, by the same reasoning, if I espouse peace, I, as an orthodox Muslim, am not adhering to my full religious duties.
I refuse to live as a “moderate” Muslim if its side effect is an unintentional admission that suicide bombing is a religious obligation for the orthodox faithful. True orthodoxy is simply the attempt to adhere piously to a religion’s tenets.
The public-relations drive for “moderate Islam” is also injurious to the entire international community. It may provisionally ease the pain when so-called Islamic extremists strike, but it actually creates deeper wounds that will require thicker bandages, since it indirectly labels the entire religion of Islam as violent.
The term “moderate Muslim” is actually a redundancy. In the Islamic tradition, the concept of the “middle way” is central. Muslims believe that Islam is a path of intrinsic moderation, wasatiyya. This concept is the namesake of a British Muslim grass-roots organization, the Radical Middle Way. It is an initiative to counter Islam’s “violent” reputation with factual scholarship. This concept of wasatiyya was demonstrated at a daylong conference that the organization sponsored in February. There, the best speaker of the night was Abdullah Bin Bayyah, an elderly Mauritanian sheikh dressed in traditional white Arab garb, offset by a long gray beard. The words coming out of the sheikh’s mouth — all in Arabic — were remarkably progressive. He confronted inaccurate assumptions about Islam, spoke of tolerance, and, in gentle admonishment, told fellow-Muslims an unpleasant truth: “Perhaps much of this current crisis springs from us.” He chastized Muslims for inadequately explaining their beliefs, thereby letting other, illiberal voices speak for them.
I was shocked by his blunt, albeit nuanced, analysis, given his traditional, religious appearance. And then I was troubled by my own reaction. To what extent had I, a hijabi (veil-wearing) Muslim woman pursuing Middle Eastern/Islamic studies, internalized the untruthful portrayals of my own fellow Muslims? For far too long, I had been offered a false snapshot of what Islamic orthodoxy really meant.
As the sheikh continued his address, he challenged Bin Laden’s violent interpretation of jihad (holy struggle), citing Qur’anic verses and Prophetic narrations. He referred to jihad as any “good action” and recounted a recent conversation with a non-Muslim lawyer who had asked if electing a respectable official would be considered jihad. The sheikh said he had answered “yes,” since voting for someone who supports the truth and upholds justice is a good action.
This sheikh, not Bin Laden, is a true representative of Islamic orthodoxy. He, not Bin Laden, is a man trained in Islamic jurisprudence. He is the authentic religious scholar, not Bin Laden. But to call him a moderate Muslim would be a misnomer.
— Asma Khalid is pursuing her master’s degree in Middle Eastern/Islamic Studies at the University of Cambridge, England. This commentary was featured by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
