Gnawing at Bones

I’ve always believed it wrong to perceive of Islam as a monolith. There are acute divisions with the faith community beyond the obvious centuries-old conflict between the Sunni and the Shiite. The Taliban represents not just a fundamentalist counter-attack on the west but a challenge also to all alternative paths in Islam, including Sufism, a gentler, more tolerant and far more spiritually-based tradition.

I’ve picked up on some of what’s been happening in Pakistan, things that have largely escaped attention in the west, from a reading of Spiritual Awakening, an essay by William Dalrymple in the Christmas edition of the New Statesman.

As a physical sign of its intolerance last year the Taliban blew up the shrine of Rahman Baba, a seventeenth century Pashtun poet and saint, at the foot of the Khyber Pass. For centuries poets and musicians had gathered here to praise the saint through their art. The rot began ten years ago when a Wahhabi madrasa was built at the end of the track leading to the Sufi shrine. Soon after the students took it upon themselves to halt the allegedly un-Islamic practices of the pilgrims. People were verbally abused and women told to stay at home. Occasional acts of violence followed. Of this the keeper of the shrine said;

Before the Afghan war there was nothing like this. But then the Saudis came with their propaganda to stop visiting the saints, and to stop us preaching ishq [love]. Now this trouble happens more and more frequently.

The end came in March 2009 when dynamite was placed around the dome, completely destroying the inner chamber. In a press release the Taliban blamed the shrine for opening its doors to women and allowing them to pray and seek healing there. Following this there have been other attacks on shrines in areas under the control of the Taliban. Still, if the Sufis of the North-West Frontier are in flight those in Sind are mounting a strong defence, both of their saints and their traditions. One female devotee put it this;

I sometimes feel it is my duty to protect the Sufi saints, just as they have protected me. Today in our Pakistan there are so many of these mullahs and Wahhabis and Tablighis who say that to pay respect to the saints in their shrines is heresy. Those hypocrites! They sit there reading their law books and arguing about how long their beards should be, and fail to listen to the true message of the Prophet. Mullahs and Azazeel [Satan] are the same thing.

It seems to me that the best observation on the mind-set of the Taliban was made over two centuries ago by Shah Abdul Latif, another Sufi saint and poet:

Why call yourself a scholar, o mullah?
You are lost in words.

You keep on speaking nonsense,
Then you worship yourself.

Despite seeing God with your own eyes,
You dive into the dirt.

We Sufis have taken the flesh from
The Holy Quran,
While you dogs are fighting with each other.

Always tearing each other apart,
For the privilege of gnawing at the bones.

Jesus of the Muslims

There is a rather interesting article in the most recent issue of the New Statesman by Medhi Hasan headed Jesus: the Muslim Prophet, based on an appreciation of The Muslim Jesus, a book by Tarif Khalidi, the former Cambridge professor of Arabic and Islamic studies. Khalidi’s book would certainly seem to be an impressive piece of scholarship, drawing together all of the sources about Jesus to be found in the Muslim tradition. These all paint a picture of a man broadly similar to that of the Gospels-a patron saint of asceticism, the lord of nature, a miracle worker, a healer, a moral, spiritual and social role model.

The big difference is that Jesus, known as Isa in the Arabic, is conceived of as a prophet, not as the Son of God. Even so he is given the singular honour of being referred to not only as a Prophet or a Messenger but also as the ‘Word’ or the ‘Spirit’ of God, a designation conferred on no other in the Quran, not even Muhammad himself. Of all of the prophets recognised by Islam, which includes the Jewish figures of the Old Testament, Jesus is considered to be second only to Muhammad, the precursor of the Prophet of Islam.

By the lights of Islamic theology it was Jesus’ task not to bring a new revealed law but introduce a new path or way based upon the love of God, quite different from a Jewish tradition based more upon reverence for the law and fear of God. It’s because of this that he is referred to in the mystic tradition advanced by the Sufis as ‘the prophet of the soul’, which I personally think both profound and rather lovely. I was also fascinated to discover that Muslims also believe in a second coming of Jesus, that he will appear before the end of the world to do battle with the Antichrist, referred to as Dajjal.

Mary, known as Maryam, also has a special place of reverence in Islam, considered to hold the most exalted position among women. Indeed, she is the only woman mentioned by name in the Quran, even having a chapter named after her. According to tradition, Muhammad is said to have described her as one of the one of only four women in history who achieved perfection. Islam also endorses the Christian belief in the Virgin Birth.

I agree with the point made by Hasan that so much more could be made of this common tradition to improve the understanding between Christian and Muslim communities across Europe, especially in times like these, especially when there is so much ignorance, prejudice and fear around, as if a whole faith community were best represented by a few ignorant fanatics.

The chief point about the Muslim Jesus is that he is a historical figure, much like Muhammad himself, the kind of figure who would have been recognised by the early Christian sects like the Ebionites and the Nazarenes, with the later man-made Christology, introduced by Saint Paul and others, stripped away. Again it’s worthy of note that American evangelicals like Franklin Graham are prepared to describe Islam as a ‘wicked religion’ while identifying with Judaism which allows no place for Jesus at all.

Shaykh Ibrahim Mogra, an imam in Leicester and the assistant general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, has urged Muslims to engage in the public and outward celebrations of Jesus, his birth in particular. He is entirely scathing of those absurdist politically correct councils like Birmingham, who attempted to substitute ‘Winterval’ (ugh!) for Christmas. “It’s a ridiculous suggestion to change the name of Christmas”, he said, “Britain is great when it comes to celebrating diverse religious festivals of our various faith communities. They should remain as they are, and we should celebrate them all.”

Anyway, Kahlidi’s book sounds completely fascinating. I’m happy to report that it’s now on my Christmas list. :-)

Dancing with the Devil

There is a rather unsettling piece in the November issue of Standpoint by Nick Cohen on the fate of Derek Pasquill, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) mole who exposed that lamentable branch of government’s (whose government, I wonder?) contacts with Islamo-fascists when it was under the control of the Man of Straw. I know the FCO has a long tradition of working against the interests of this country but I would have thought that even it had clear limits, points beyond which it would not go. No, it does not.

The documents released by Pasquill show that the FCO was actively assisting organisations that promoted extreme Islamist views, most notably the Muslim Brotherhood. It was part of a political strategy that was developed in a section headed Engaging with the Islamic World. For Jack Straw and his civil service myrmidons ‘engagement’ clearly meant appeasement of the worst and most extreme sections of Muslim opinion.

It was a betrayal not just of the interests of this country but also of more moderate Muslim opinion throughout the Middle East. You see, the assumption seems to have been that the fanatics in the Muslim Brotherhood were the only alternative to moribund Arab oligarchies. So, the FCO actively promoted and legitimised extremism. It’s difficult to believe, I know, even of them, but it happens to be true.

Pasquill was seconded to the Engaging with the Muslim World unit in 2005, just before the general election of that year, standing in for one Mockbul Ali, a ‘non-political’ civil servant who just happened to be off campaigning for the Labour Party among British Muslims.

Before taking up the post he decided to research the Muslim Brotherhood in the British Library, discovering that it was an organisation set up by admirers of European fascism; that it believed in the subjugation of women as well as in the murder of apostates and homosexuals; that it denied democracy and human rights as an ‘imperialist imposition’, and that it embraced the racist conspiracy theories once put into motion by the Okhrana, the Tsarist secret police. The movement, defined by the FCO as ‘moderate’, stood in opposition to every western principle of freedom and liberty.

It was because of this that Pasquill began his campaign, leaking documents to the press. But the revelations received almost no support on the liberal left, already compromised by the same forms of appeasement and muddle-headed thinking that had corrupted the FCO: they had embraced forms of reaction that they barely understand in the name of ‘liberation’. The damage that the FCO was doing to British interests at home and abroad, the damage that it was doing to national security, surely stands comparison with the actions of the Cambridge Spies. The latter were acting under the guidance of a perverse idealism. I can see no understandable motive at all behind the FCO’s policy other than crass stupidity.

Pasquill was eventually exposed as the whistleblower-he deliberately left a trail that could be followed by an elephant-and sacked. By rights he should have been prosecuted for breach of the Official Secrets Act, a path he actively sought, but the case was dropped.

In the course of his article Cohen poses two questions. Who is the traitor and who the patriot in these circumstances: the dissident civil servant or the two-faced government? Who, to be blunt, is more deserving of summary dismissal? I know the answer to these questions; I feel sure most of the people who read this will also know the answer.

In addition to this there are surely serious questions to be raised about the conduct of Jack Straw, that one-time Communist, both in the Foreign Office and the Home Office. In the former he tried to engage with people inimical to the interests of this country; in the latter he seems to have lost all control of mass immigration, either deliberately or because of incompetence and incapacity for high office I can’t say with certainty. I would so like the affairs of this shabby administration to be subject to a major public inquiry once Brown, Straw and Peter Mandelson,aka Lord Rumba of Rio, have been cast on to the rubbish tip of history.

Being Nicer To Women-Change Comes to the Kingdom

I have no great enthusiasm for the message of Freudian psychology, the contention that neurosis is reducible to forms of sexual sublimation and repression. I have no liking in particular for the social psychology of the likes of Wilhelm Reich. Still, there is something to be said for the argument that he advances in The Mass Psychology of Fascism, that certain forms of political enthusiasm, forms of fanaticism, are really misdirected libidinous impulses. George Orwell essentially says the same thing in Nineteen Eighty-Four. In his dystopia the Anti-Sex League is a symptom of the state’s suspicion of any activity that leads away from worship of itself.

I brought these examples to mind on reading a recent article on women in Saudi Arabia in Time magazine. The point is made that fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, a country where a conservative version of Islam, high unemployment, limited democratic rights and an archaic attitude towards women helped feed a mood of unchecked radicalism among young men, people who accept the prospect of ‘martyrdom’ because this world, their world, is frustrating and unfulfilling. This is not the Anti-Sex League; this is the No Sex League, the No Women League.

Whether King Abdullah is mindful of this possibility or not is of no matter. What does matter is that Saudi society is changing, if by slow degrees. Women are beginning to make an appearance. Mixed gender workplaces are now more common, some with women in senior managerial positions. The government is expanding educational opportunities for women by building dedicated universities as well as encouraging more women to enter the workforce. Women have even been appointed to the Shura council, the advisory body appointed by the King.

There are other changes too, big and small, that show the Kingdom is at least trying to make some progress into the modern age. Norah al-Faiz, the Deputy Minister in charge of girls’ education, the fist woman ever to hold a cabinet-level post told Time that “Fifty-five years ago there was no education for girls. Fifty years ago people didn’t accept the idea of women working. Now everyone wants their girls and or wives to work or go through higher education. I don’t think these kinds of changes have happened in any country as quickly as here.”

It would be wrong to read too much into these signs, wrong to overestimate the rate of change in a country that remains deeply conservative, the home of the Wahhabi branch of Islam. But even in this sensitive area, the area of religious fundamentalism the government is taking action against the more obvious perversions. Extremist websites have been shut down and people calling for a jihad muzzled or arrested. The religious police, moreover, are no longer acting in such an overbearing fashion, even attempting to be more ‘people friendly’, if one can imagine such a thing. On TV and billboards a campaign has been launched urging men to be nicer to women.

Yes, by slow and careful degrees change does come. I would like to think that all the misdirected passions channelled into a debased form of religious passion, into a debased form of jihad will also come to an end. The point is to understand the Muslim world, not to hate it.

Ethnic Cleansing-the End of Moorish Spain

The fate of the Spanish Muslims in the late Medieval and early modern period uncovers what might be considered as the first serious act of 'ethnic cleansing' in all of European history. They were to be the victims of a state policy that had as many racist as religious overtones.

The surrender of Granada in 1492 was accompanied by a treaty, allowing the Spanish crown's new Muslim subjects a large measure of religious toleration. They were also allowed the continuing use of their own language, schools, laws and customs. But the interpretation of the royal edict was largely left to the local Christian authorities. Hernando de Talavera, the first archbishop of Granada after its fall, took a fairly tolerant view.

This changed when he was replaced by Cardinal Cisneros, who immediately organised a drive for mass conversions and burned all texts in Arabic. Outraged by this breach of faith, in 1499 the Mudejar rose in the First Rebellion of Alpujarras, which only had the effect of giving Ferdinand and Isabella the excuse to revoke the promise of toleration. That same year the Muslim leaders of Granada were ordered to hand over almost all of the remaining books in Arabic, most of which were burned. Beginning in Valencia in 1502 Muslims were offered the choice of baptism or exile. The majority decided to accept this, becoming 'New Christians', of very great interest to the newly-established Spanish Inquisition, authorised by Pope Sixtus IV in 1478.

It is important to understand that the Converts, though outwardly Christian, continued to adhere to their old beliefs in private, a conduct allowed for by some Islamic authorities when the faithful are under duress or threat of life, a practice known as taqiyyah or precaution. Responding to a plea from his co-religionists in Spain, in 1504 the Grand Mufti of Oran issued a decree saying that Muslims may drink wine, eat pork and other forbidden things, if they were under compulsion. There were good reasons for this; for abstinence from wine or pork could, and did, cause people to be denounced to the Inquisition. But no matter how closely they observed all of the correct forms, the 'Morisco' or Little Moors, a term of disparagement, were little better than second-class citizens, tainted, it might be said, by blood rather than by actions.

Despite all of these pressures some people continued to observe Moorish forms, and practice as Muslims, well into the sixteenth century. In 1567 Philip II finally made the use of Arabic illegal, forbidding the Islamic religion, dress and customs, a step which led to the Second Rebellion of Alpujarras. This was suppressed with considerable brutality. In one incident troops commanded by Don John of Austria destroyed the town of Galera east of Granada, after slaughtering the entire population. The Moriscos of Granada were rounded up and dispersed across Spain. Edicts of expulsion were finally issued by Philip III in 1609, against people who were now perceived to be a threat to the 'purity' of the Spanish race.