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In Praise of Prejudice: The Necessity of Preconceived Ideas
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Romancing Opiates
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Which Koran?
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by Theodore Dalrymple |
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What The Koran Really Says
by Ibn Warraq |
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Life at the Bottom
by Theodore Dalrymple |
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The Origins of the Koran
by Ibn Warraq |
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Why I Am Not Muslim
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Spanish Vignettes: An Offbeat Look Into Spain's Culture, Society & History
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Leaving Islam
Edited by Ibn Warraq |
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Sunday, 4 May 2008
Tangled Webs
The media and the government are both tying themselves in knots trying to make excuses for Islam. Here is a quote from the government memo issuing guidelines about what officials can and cannot say which belies their assumption that there is nothing wrong with Islam.
In characterizing the broader Muslim American community, the Muslim World: and Islam generally, "mainstream," "ordinary," and "traditional" are preferable to "moderate." One can be deeply religious, strictly adhere to fundamental doctrines, and nevertheless abhor violence.
Imagine having to say that about Buddhists. Here's another story from the New Duranty with the same contradictory message.
KARACHI, Pakistan — Praying in Pakistan has not been easy for Mesut Kacmaz, a Muslim teacher from Turkey.
He tried the mosque near his house, but it had Israeli and Danish flags painted on the floor for people to step on. The mosque near where he works warned him never to return wearing a tie. Pakistanis everywhere assume he is not Muslim because he has no beard.
“Kill, fight, shoot,” Mr. Kacmaz said. “This is a misinterpretation of Islam.”
But that view is common in Pakistan, a frontier land for the future of Islam, where schools, nourished by Saudi and American money dating back to the 1980s, have spread Islamic radicalism through the poorest parts of society. With a literacy rate of just 50 percent and a public school system near collapse, the country is particularly vulnerable...
I see, it's because these people are poor and illiterate that they have this view of Islam, but what about all the professors at Al Azar and all manner of non-poor and non-ignorant "mainstream" clerics, both Sunni and Shi'a? It's also interesting that the author, Sabrina Tavernise, added American money in addition to Saudi money which "nourished" Islamic radicalism. If American money was spent, it was in the naive hope of building schools to educate Muslim children in the norms of the modern world, whereas Saudi money would have been spent openly to strengthen Islam. The Turkish schools being opened in Pakistan, while claiming to inculcate a "moderate," that is to say, non-violent Islam, actually counsel the young to be more cunning and patient. The slow Jihad is more effective than the fast Jihad.
The Turkish schools, which have expanded to seven cities in Pakistan since the first one opened a decade ago, cannot transform the country on their own. But they offer an alternative approach that could help reduce the influence of Islamic extremists.
They prescribe a strong Western curriculum, with courses, taught in English, from math and science to English literature and Shakespeare. They do not teach religion beyond the one class in Islamic studies that is required by the state. Unlike British-style private schools, however, they encourage Islam in their dormitories, where teachers set examples in lifestyle and prayer.
“Whatever the West has of science, let our kids have it,” said Erkam Aytav, a Turk who works in the new schools. “But let our kids have their religion as well.”
That approach appeals to parents in Pakistan, who want their children to be capable of competing with the West without losing their identities to it. Allahdad Niazi, a retired Urdu professor in Quetta, a frontier town near the Afghan border, took his son out of an elite military school, because it was too authoritarian and did not sufficiently encourage Islam, and put him in the Turkish school, called PakTurk.
“Private schools can’t make our sons good Muslims,” Mr. Niazi said, sitting on the floor in a Quetta house. “Religious schools can’t give them modern education. PakTurk does both.”
The model is the brainchild of a Turkish Islamic scholar, Fethullah Gulen. A preacher with millions of followers in Turkey, Mr. Gulen, 69, comes from a tradition of Sufism, an introspective, mystical strain of Islam. He has lived in exile in the United States since 2000, after getting in trouble with secular Turkish officials.
Mr. Gulen’s idea, Mr. Aytav said, is that “without science, religion turns to radicalism, and without religion, science is blind and brings the world to danger.”
Ms. Tavernise obviously hasn't bothered to look into the public statements of this "Sufi mystic," Fethullah Gulen, such as the following:
"You must move in the arteries of the system, without anyone noticing your existence, until you reach all the power centers… until the conditions are ripe, they [the followers] must continue like this. If they do something prematurely, the world will crush our heads, and Muslims will suffer everywhere, like in the tragedies in Algeria, like in 1982 [in] Syria… like in the yearly disasters and tragedies in Egypt. The time is not yet right. You must wait for the time when you are complete, and conditions are ripe, until we can shoulder the entire world and carry it… You must wait until such time as you have gotten all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the power of the constitutional institutions in Turkey… Until that time, any step taken would be too early - like breaking an egg without waiting the full 40 days for it to hatch. It would be like killing the chick inside. The work to be done is [in] confronting the world. Now, I have expressed my feelings and thoughts to you all - in confidence… trusting your loyalty and sensitivity to secrecy. I know that when you leave here - [just] as you discard your empty juice boxes, you must discard the thoughts and feelings expressed here."
"The philosophy of our service is that we open a house somewhere and, with the patience of a spider, we lay our web, to wait for people to get caught in the web; and we teach those who do. We don't lay the web to eat or consume them, but to show them the way to their resurrection, to blow life into their dead bodies and souls, to give them a life."
Back to Ms. Tavernise's article:
“They are totally against extremism,” Mr. Bari said of the Turks. “They are true Muslims. They will make my brother into a true Muslim. He’ll deal with people with justice and wisdom. Not with impatience.”...
In an interview in 2004, published in a book of his writings, Mr. Gulen put it like this: “In the countries where Muslims live, some religious leaders and immature Muslims have no other weapon in hand than their fundamental interpretation of Islam. They use this to engage people in struggles that serve their own purposes.”
Moderate as that sounds, some Turks say Mr. Gulen uses the schools to advance his own political agenda. Murat Belge, a prominent Turkish intellectual who has experience with the movement, said that Mr. Gulen “sincerely believes that he has been chosen by God,” and described Mr. Gulen’s followers as “Muslim Jesuits” who are preparing elites to run the country.
Hakan Yavuz, a Turkish professor at the University of Utah who has had extensive experience with the Gulen movement, offered a darker assessment.
“The purpose here is very much power,” Mr. Yavuz said. “The model of power is the Ottoman Empire and the idea that Turks should shape the Muslim world.”...
But while radical Islamists seek to re-establish a seventh-century Islamic caliphate, without nations or borders, and more moderate Islamists, like Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, use secular democracy to achieve the goal of an Islamic state, Mr. Gulen is a nationalist who says he wants no more than a secular democracy where citizens are free to worship, a claim secular Turks find highly suspect.
The problem with this analysis is Ms. Tavernise ignores goals and focuses solely on means to describe the difference between radical and moderate "Islamists." The goals are religious (Islamic supremacy) and well nigh universal among Muslims, the means are political which includes qitaal or combat (warfare is "politics by other means" - Clauswitz). It is the means to obtain political goals that differ among Muslims.
Still, his schools are richly supported by Turkish businessmen. M. Ihsan Kalkavan, a shipping magnate who has built hotels in Nigeria, helped finance Gulen schools there, which he said had attracted the children of the Nigerian elite.
“When we take our education experiment to other countries, we introduce ourselves. We say, ‘See, we’re not terrorists.’ When people get to know us, things change,” Mr. Kalkavan said in his office in Istanbul.
He estimated the number of Mr. Gulen’s followers in Turkey at three million to five million. The network itself does not provide estimates, and Mr. Gulen declined to be interviewed.
The schools, which also operate in Christian countries like Russia, are not for Muslims alone, and one of their stated aims is to promote interfaith understanding. Mr. Gulen met the previous pope, as well as Jewish and Orthodox Christian leaders, and teachers in the schools say they stress multiculturalism and universal values...
Posted on 7:19 AM by Rebecca Bynum
Comments
4 May 2008
Special Guest
One of Fethullah Gulen's financiers said: "When people get to know us, things change..."
Yes, because by that time, the hook has been set and it is too late to stop "things" from "changing", unfortunately. 5 May 2008
Duderino
Hey foolio, American money was spent to radicalize muslims to fight the Russians. Educating muslims was of no interest. If you believe otherwise, you're even more naive than your silly post suggests.
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