There is a new book published on the world’s religions that ought to give Muslims pause. “The Norton Anthology of World Religions,” edited by Jack Miles, a Pulitzer Prize winner and religious scholar, gives Osama Bin Laden a prominent position in the 4,200-page two-volume set.
I have not read the anthology so it’s impossible for me to pass judgment on its merit. And to be fair it gives alternative viewpoints of most of the world’s major religions. The anthology covers Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism and Taoism, and offers conventional histories. It also allows scholars, according to the New York Times, to “deliver their wisdom ‘in their own words.’” In an apparent effort in intellectual honesty, Miles and his team of editors also gave voice to such outliers as the Mormon Joseph Smith and the atheist Bertrand Russell, who wrote the 1927 essay “Why I Am Not a Christian.” Also given space is the Israeli scientist Yeshayahu Leibowitz who once said that Israeli soldiers occupying Palestine “risk becoming Judeo-Nazis.”
And then there is Bin Laden. Along with the conventional approach to Islam by western scholars is Bin Laden’s 1998 essay, “The World Islamic Front,” on jihad. Jane Dammen McAuliffe, the editor on the Islamic section, is an Islamic scholar noted for her participation in signing a public document in 2001 with other Islamic scholars that explained that terrorism was a corruption of true Islam. McAuliffe told the New York Times that omitting voices like Bin Laden who “really shaped the more radical agenda operative in the Muslim world today” would be “disingenuous.”
Whether we like it or not, Bin Laden has been seared into our collective consciousness as a figure in Islam of the 21st Century. We can, and we should, argue at every opportunity that Bin Laden does not represent true Islam. But we can’t ignore the fact that non-Muslims worldwide conflate terrorism with our religion. Bin Laden’s declaration on jihad can easily be found anywhere, so why would it make a difference if it ends up in a book?
It makes a significant difference. The anthology’s publishers plan to divide the book into six university textbooks that may be delivered at some point to a quarter-million students of religious studies in North America.
Yes, Bin Laden was a fundamentalist who politicized Islam, but for the layman and university student diving for the first time into religious studies, the book promises to solidify extremist ideology as another version of Islam. Bin Laden’s ideology is now documented and offered as course study. Of course, Bin Laden’s fundamentalism for the past decade has been the topic of university courses, but now we have an instruction manual that puts political Islam on the same level as true Islam.
By inculcating western students with this false perception, universities are embarking on a path that could turn the world against Islam. The anthology could very well set the standard for future religious textbooks. We can’t complain — as Muslims are often wont to do — that the secular West is unfairly singling out Islam as inherently evil because the anthology’s editors, by the conventional standards religious academics, are equal opportunity blasphemers. They give equal weight to unpopular alternative views of the six major faiths.
But the editors fail to consider that writing dissenting Jewish or Mormon viewpoints do not carry the same weight as dissenting Muslim ideology. The rise of the Daesh and the resurgence of Al-Qaeda in Syria and Iraq have further politicized Islam to the point that they have virtually obscured the true meaning of Islam in the minds of many westerners and non-Muslims. This gives more ammunition for non-Muslim governments to pass anti-Shariah legislations, restrict the construction of mosques and generally curtail the religious freedoms of their people.
By giving extremism the same consideration as religion practiced in moderation, our faith is further denigrated by good intentioned but naïve western scholars. We can trace the rise of Daesh to the more than 100,000 Iraqis killed following the US invasion. When the US launched the invasion, 10-year-old boys saw their fathers and older brothers disappear. Now they are 21 and damn angry. The US military jailed thousands of military-age men without the benefit of due process. Those men spent years in prison without trial and trained as militants by believers already incarcerated.
Forget the Islamic utopia of a caliphate. There are thousands of angry, hateful young men looking only for vengeance. Add to this mix a profound misunderstanding of Islam by blurring the lines of spiritual and political faith and we have a recipe for a never-ending war on terrorism that will lead to thousands of more needless deaths.
