Conversations with a Muslim Friend

I called a close friend of mine in the Middle East recently. I asked him whether we might renew a conversation we’ve pursued over the course of several years about Islam, he a Muslim of Arab origin and I a Christian of the typically mixed American ethnic pedigree.

We both agreed it was important to do so, since Islam is in the spotlight these days and there is so much confusion at large about an Islamic connection to the tragic events of September 11 and at the same time a real desire to know what Muslims and the Islamic tradition have to say about them. I began very frankly, "While political leaders here have done much to disassociate Islam from terrorism and the events of September 11, there is talk in the media of an ‘Islamic volatility’ that could fuel such violence. What’s more, people here still want to know why the suicide bombers did what they did, and that in the name of Islam. That seemed to be one of the biggest concerns among my own nephews and nieces when we were talking of the plane crashes, ‘Why would they crash the plane if they knew they would be killed too?’"

His first response was a sigh of frustration. The burden of self-explanation is not light. "You know, I would like to say first of all that this suspicion of an Islamic connection to terrorism is matched only by the rather widely held suspicion in this region of the world that the American-led war on terrorism is, in fact, a war on Islam. People on both sides, it seems, don’t know what to believe."

He continued, "Our religious tradition, no less than yours, speaks to the permissibility of the use of force. People can find in scripture, ours and yours, verses to support their agenda, and in that sense religion has always been used and will continue to be used for ideological goals. But what does the tradition say, the tradition of religious scholars, their consensus through the centuries, about violence between nations? I think you call it just war theory. There is in Islam a massive corpus of legal literature that speaks to the use of force in terms similar to those of your just war tradition. The bottom line is this: The legitimate use of force is permissible, in your tradition no less than in ours. In other words, force can be used to combat breakdown in the public order and to eradicate what we call in Arabic ‘corruption on earth,’ anything that would hinder the stability a society needs in order to live in security and prosperity, such as crime, anarchy, external threats and even internal revolts if their aims are limited to their own agenda and not the common good. It is within the rights, it is even the duty, of the legitimate political authority to put down insurrection. As a corollary to that, the scholars who produced this legal literature are in essential agreement that patience is the proper response even to unjust rule since rebellion so often results in greater social disorder and loss of the stability upon which security and stability are based. ‘Better stability under a tyrant than chaos in the name of justice,’ is how the thinking goes. It’s not exactly the same as your ‘turn the other cheek,’ but it’s close. Besides, when have you Christians ever really practiced ‘turn the other cheek?’ Perhaps an isolated saint here or there, but not as a community."

"So, what can I say." He insisted. "Terrorism is not from Islam. The tradition defines it as illicit since it would inevitably result in more social disorder. I think your just war theory says essentially the same. And, I am proud to say, our religious and political leaders have universally condemned the terrorist attacks against your people, aside from the isolated exceptions which have received disproportionate attention in your media. If our leaders had not condemned the attack, they would have had to deny their own tradition and beliefs."

"But why," I shot back, "aren’t your religious leaders more vocal in saying this and in saying that any Muslim who supports terrorism has no Islamic grounds for doing so?"

"I think they are." He responded. "It’s just that their voices are not featured in your media." A moment of silence passed before he began again, "It’s one thing for a Muslim religious leader to condemn a terrorist attack, it’s another thing entirely for him to support a war on terrorism that to so many Muslims, including their religious leaders, has not been clearly disassociated from a war on Islam which, in their view, America and its allies have been waging for some time now. You might ask why a Muslim would say that when the United States donates so much to Muslims and Muslim-majority nations. A typical Egyptian feels no tangible benefit from the billions the United States gives to his government and assumes that this aid ends up lining the pockets of the politically powerful. A Palestinian may have some sense of a benefit, but views it merely as a sedative to keep him quiet while American support of Israel, as he sees it, leaves him bereft of a homeland and confined to an existence of nostalgia for the life he once knew. Add to that the widely held position that the American-led embargo on Iraq, which has resulted in so much misery and even death for people who have nothing to do with the crimes of Saddam and his minions, is itself tantamount to a terrorist attack on the innocent."

"So," he concluded, "the less than stellar American track record in the Middle East inclines us to suspect the American motives behind this war on terrorism."

"Can this line of thinking," I offered, "help explain the various degrees of Muslim sympathy in Pakistan and elsewhere for the Taliban and the call for an armed struggle, even a holy war, against American forces?"

"You are now touching upon a very sensitive subject. You see, the just war theory in Islam calls not only for the defense of the public order, but the defense of the Muslim public order. The use of force is a legitimate response to anything that would threaten the Muslim public order. This is a question that has been on the Muslim table for many years. Is the Muslim public order at risk, not merely of a military attack as many now imagine, but of a more subtle attack, that of Americanization? Do you know what it’s like to be a Muslim and see the values that you stand for, your conceptions of social and political life, your belief that religion should be at the heart of the moral life of a polity, gradually eroded as American concepts of civil society spread? We are a very communally oriented people – we understand the human in communal terms. You define the human as an individual first and foremost, even apart from any commitment to a community. That is the basis of your political and economic system, the freedom of the individual to be unencumbered by others. That works in your society, because you can survive there as an individual. It doesn’t in ours. Survival is a matter of mutual dependence and commitment to the community before the individual. Throughout the centuries, it has been our religion which has allowed for social order and prosperity, has managed to maintain a balance between the competing interests in society. The introduction of western, so-called modern values has disrupted that balance, disrupted it terribly. So, what do you imagine we think when presented with a choice between the American and the Islamic public order?

"Remember that your history is not ours. Religion may have often been a divisive element in western society, especially between Catholics and Protestants. Their wars fought for the sake of a uniformity between confessional affiliation and political membership amounted in a lot of bloodshed. In such a historical context, it made sense to separate religion from politics, to free the public arena from questions of confessional identity. In Islam, in contrast, what has united the people politically – since the time of the prophet Muhammad – has been the religion. Certainly, there have been sectarian divisions and armed struggle in the name of an interpretation of Islam, but it can be said, generally speaking, that the religion, specifically the religious law, has worked to minimize the violence endemic to any society."

"So, yes, we do feel our way of life is under threat, has been under threat for some time now. We are not so naïve, however, to expect America to stop being so energetic and so creative. America has suffered tremendous losses as a result of the attacks of September 11, and no one expects America to be sympathetic to those it feels has injured its power and somehow embrace its enemies in some type of Woodstock of nations. No Muslim or anyone else, I imagine, expects America to be understanding of other peoples or to cease exerting a tremendous influence on the formation of the global village. This is the law of nations. I mean, nations have sought to dominate one another throughout history, militarily, economically, socio-culturally. Ibn Khaldūn, the great Muslim intellectual of the fourteenth century whom the West recognizes as the father of modern sociology, said as much, that human groups rise and fall in their attempts to dominate one another. Spain, Portugal, Britain and France all worked to spread their culture and religion along with their imperial reach. European colonization meant not only European conquest but the introduction of European ways, the white man’s burden of "civilizing" the non-European. As we see it, American global hegemony through its military and economic strength is accompanied by the introduction of American ways. Ask any state department official assigned to the embassies of the Middle East whether his mission includes the diffusion of American values."

"So, tell me, what are we to think as we see the gradual breakdown of our Muslim public order under the barrage of American global influence. We do not, as I said, expect you to stop playing the role you play in the world, but do not expect us to support you in your global dominance which for many Muslims represents the gravest threat to the perpetuity of the Muslim public order. In fact, many Muslims are ready to defend the Muslim public order no less than their American counterparts are ready to defend the American public order. Our tradition, as yours, does not question the goal of defending the public order from internal or external threat. Again, this is the law of nations. The concern in our tradition of law as in your just war tradition is that this goal be pursued through non-terrorist means. So, while we are ready to condemn acts of terrorism of any kind, we are not ready to support anything that appears to represent a threat to the Muslim public order. I will go further and say that many will work to defend it. I imagine any Christian, Hindu, Jew or even atheist would do the same if he believed his society, his way of life, the values he cherished and the principles to which he adhered, to be at risk, no?"

"The concern of your nephews and nieces is a good one. I imagine many Americans are not satisfied with the cavalier conclusion of mindless fanaticism as an explanation of the suicide bombers’ motivations. Consider the suicide bombers as you would the Japanese kamikaze pilots of World War II, only in religious rather than national terms. In my opinion, both were at the point of despair, like those who commit suicide anywhere, but now a despair over one’s way of life, whether national or religious. Both had complete conviction in their cause. And both believed themselves to be in a context of war, the kamikaze pilots in a more conventional war between nations, the suicide bombers in a war where two visions of life were in conflict, the American and the Islamic. It takes little for a mastermind the likes of Osama bin Laden and his Taliban partisans to pervert this felt need to defend the Muslim public order -- combined with an anger among Muslims and non-Muslims in many nations at the unilateral way in which America dictates world order at their expense -- into a just cause worth sacrificing one’s life. It is not un-Islamic to sacrifice one’s life for a cause, any less than it is un-American or un-Christian to sacrifice one’s life for a cause. What is un-Islamic, no less than it is un-American or un-Christian, is to commit an act of terrorism when sacrificing one’s life for a cause."

"It goes without saying, I might add, that violence in the name of religion necessarily involves the claim to the exclusive validity for one’s own position, excluding others as having a share in truth. You can find that among fundamentalists in any tradition. American evangelical Christians, as far as I encounter them in their attempts to convert peoples in the Middle East, firmly believe that anyone who does not affirm not only Christianity but their conception of Christianity will not be saved. They have somehow universalized what is a belief system valid for a particular community. This is a great risk, in my opinion, to global peace, when one group feels its ways are universally valid. Some Americans have this tendency too, to believe that American ways are universally valid. Muslims also make this mistake at times, believing that the realization of justice is dependent upon the implementation of Islamic law. There are Muslims, it should be said, who believe that what holds for the Muslim community also holds for humanity universally. American jingoism, in my humble opinion, is fed by the belief that the American way of life is the only way, is the solution for the problems of any people anywhere, just as ‘Islamic volatility,’ if that’s what you want to call it, is fed by the belief that Islam is the solution. It can result in the belief that Islam needs to be defended not only from the introduction of American norms of life, but even from the leaders of many Muslim-majority nations who, some believe, do not rule in the name of Islam, do not work to preserve the Muslim public order, but are ready to compromise or even sell themselves to the seductions of American dollars."

I told my friend that I agreed, that while an American and proud of the contributions America has made to humanity (as he was proud of the contributions Islamic civilization has made), I was also ready to acknowledge my hope for greater attention to international law as a way to counter the tendency we all have to universalize our own particular way of life. If we could work to educate ourselves in the knowledge that our ways are only a single part of an international order greater than all of us, then perhaps our differences would not be a source of conflict. If I could see that my American cultural convictions, and he his Islamic convictions, were not universally valid, that there was a greater order to which we might assent while still maintaining our own ways in our own communities, we might not be so tempted to believe that others should be like us.

We concluded our conversation on that note as well as the promise to continue the conversation. We were friends, we were different. We belonged to different religions, different cultures, looked at the world completely differently. I could not help wondering, "Why were we friends, then, instead of enemies? Why were our differences a motivation to dialogue rather than clash?"