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When a Welsh resistance leader was captured and brought before the
emperor in Rome, he said: "Because you desire to conquer the world, it
does not necessarily follow that the world desires to be conquered by
you." Today one could offer an echo of this sentiment to western
liberals: "Because you wish your values to prevail throughout the
world, it does not always follow that the world wishes to adopt them."
The imperial voice is based on ignorance of the rich traditions of
other civilizations, and on an undue optimism about what the west is
doing to the world politically, economically and environmentally.
The
entrenched beliefs many westerners profess about Islam often reveal
more about the west than they do about Islam or Muslims. The Ottomans
were history's longest-lasting major dynasty; their durability must
have had some relation to their ability to rule a multi-faith empire
at a time when Europe was busily hanging, drawing and quartering
different varieties of Christian believer.
Today Islam
is said to be less, not more, tolerant than the west, and we need to
ask which, precisely, are the "western" values with which Islam is so
incompatible? Some believe Islam's attitude towards women is the
source of the Muslim "problem". Westerners need to look to their own
attitudes here and recognise that only very recently have patriarchal
structures begun to erode in the west.
The Islamic
tradition does show some areas of apparent incompatibility with the
goals of women in the west, and Muslims have a long way to go in their
attitudes towards women. But blaming the religion is again to express
an ignorance both of the religion and of the historical struggle for
equality of women in Muslim societies.
A careful
reading of modern female theologians of Islam would cause western
women to be impressed by legal injunctions more than 1,000 years old
that, for instance, grant women legal rights to domestic help at the
expense of their husbands. Three of the four Sunni schools consider
domestic chores outside the scope of a woman's legal responsibilities
toward her husband. Contrast that with US polls showing that working
women still do 80% of domestic chores.
Westerners,
in their advocacy of global conformism, often speak of "progress" and
the rejection of the not-too-distant feudal past, and are less likely
to reveal their unease about corporate hegemony and the real human
implications of globalisation.
Neither are
the missionaries of western values willing to consider why Europe, the
heart of the west, should have generated two world wars which killed
more civilians than all the wars of the previous 20 centuries. As
Muslims point out, we are asked to call them "world wars" despite
their reality as western wars, which targeted civilians with weapons
of mass destruction at a time when Islam was largely at peace.
We Muslims
are unpersuaded by many triumphalist claims made for the west, but are
happy with its core values. As a westerner, the child of civil rights
and anti-war activists, I embraced Islam not in abandonment of my core
values, drawn almost entirely from the progressive tradition, but as
an affirmation of them. I have since studied Islamic law for 10 years
with traditionally trained scholars, and while some particulars in
medieval legal texts have troubled me, never have the universals come
into conflict with anything my progressive Californian mother taught
me. Instead, I have marvelled at how most of what western society
claims as its own highest ideals are deeply rooted in Islamic
tradition.
The
chauvinism apparent among some westerners is typically triggered by
Islamic extremism. Few take the trouble to notice that mainstream
Islam dislikes the extremists as much as the west does. What I fear is
that an excuse has been provided to supply some westerners with a
replacement for their older habit of anti-semitism. The shift is not
such a difficult one. Arabs, after all, are semites, and the Arabian
prophet's teaching is closer in its theology and law to Judaism than
it is to Christianity. We Muslims in the west, like Jews before us,
grapple with the same issues that Jews of the past did: integration or
isolation, tradition or reform, intermarriage or intra-marriage.
Muslims who
yearn for an ideal Islamic state are in some ways reflecting the old
aspirations of the Diaspora Jews for a homeland where they would be
free to be different. Muslims, like Jews, often dress differently; we
cannot eat some of the food of the host countries. Like the Jews of
the past, we are now seen as parasites on the social body, burdened
with a uniform and unreformable law, contributing little, scheming in
ghettoes, and obscurely indifferent to personal hygiene.
Cartoons of
Arabs seem little different to the caricatures of Jews in German
newspapers of the Nazi period. In the 1930s, such images ensured that
few found the courage to speak out about the possible consequences of
such a demonisation, just as few today are really thinking about the
anti-Muslim rhetoric of the extreme-right parties across Europe.
Muslims in general, and Arabs especially, have become the new "other".
When I met
President Bush last year, I gave him two books. One was The Essential
Koran, translated by Thomas Cleary. The second was another translation
by Cleary, Thunder in the Sky: Secrets of the Acquisition and Use of
Power. Written by an ancient Chinese sage, it reflects the universal
values of another great people.
I did this
because, as an American, rooted in the best of western tradition, and
a Muslim convert who finds much of profundity in Chinese philosophy, I
believe the "Huntington thesis" that these three great civilisations
must inevitably clash is a lie. Each civilisation speaks with many
voices; the best of them find much in common. Not only can our
civilisations co-exist in our respective parts of the world, they can
co-exist in the individual heart, as they do in mine. We can enrich
each other if we choose to embrace our essential humanity; we can
destroy the world if we choose to stress our differences.
C
(Shaykh Hamza Yusuf Hanson is the
director of the US-based Zaytuna Institute) |