It is proper to challenge Islam

UK Telegraph ^ | November 25 2007 | Jemima Khan

[knighthawk]

recently attended a debate entitled "Is Islam good for London?" Despite its billing as the most important issue facing Londoners today, the "for London" in the title proved superfluous. It was the intellectual equivalent of reality TV: excruciating to watch but impossible to walk away from. At that kind of very confrontational debate, people turn up to support their own team. It's more about who is wrong than who is right. Rarely does anyone leave with a changed view.

The spectacle kicked off with an assertion by the journalist Rod Liddle that "the pernicious, bigoted, misogynistic, totalitarian, fascistic ideology of Islam must be rejected".

There was a spirited defence of Islam by Ed Husain, reformed extremist and author of The Islamist. He argued that Islamism and Islam are distinct: Islamism is a political ideology, which proposes a profoundly conservative religious vision for state and society which in its attitudes to apostasy, women, homosexuality and free speech is generally anathema to Western liberal convictions (including, emphatically, his and, for the record, mine). The social conservatism and separatist mindset of Muslims in the West, he argued, must be challenged.

He was let down by his teammate Inayat Bunglawala (bungle by name…) of the Muslim Council of Britain, who went down in the first round to the braying of the audience.

Those arguing in favour of the Liddle point of view prefaced their arguments with the usual spiel about it being an attack on the ideology and not the people, but it all got horribly personal. When a female member of the audience asked a question about Palestine, a man behind me shouted "Nazi!" For the faint-hearted it was almost too bloody to watch.

It wasn't just me who found the title, tone and content of the debate disturbing. The liberal rabbi, Pete Tobias, described it as a "damaging and hurtful exercise", sinisterly reminiscent of the campaign a century ago to alert the population to "the Problem of the Alien" - namely the Eastern Jews fleeing persecution who had found refuge in the capital.

My view is that it was symptomatic of a much wider and deeper hostility to Islam and, contrary to the claims of the panellists, to Muslims too.

Martin Amis recently said it was the ideology of Islam and not Muslims he had a problem with, but added: "They are gaining on us demographically at a huge rate. A quarter of humanity now and by 2025 they'll be a third. We're just going to be outnumbered." It's clear when he talks of the dangers of being outnumbered and outbred, that Amis is not talking about the ideology or even militant Islamists, but about ordinary Muslims.

He continued (in what he later defended as a "thought experiment"): "There's a definite urge - don't you have it? - to say the Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order. What sort of suffering? Not let them travel. Deportation - further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or from Pakistan… Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole Muslim community and they start getting tough with their children."

On the subject of Muslims, liberal intellectuals like Amis find themselves uncomfortably in bed with the neocons. They even sound alike. British Muslims that I know feel overwhelmed in the face of such hostility.

In my experience, having lived for 10 years in a Muslim country and visited many others, there is a huge variety of beliefs within Islam and a cultural diversity amongst Muslims that is not often taken into account. Islam is not a monolithic entity. Which Islam, which Muslims do they hate? Mystical Sufi Islam? The culturally-influenced Islam of the Subcontinent? The literalist and extreme Wahabbi Islam? Militant jihadist Islam?

The Albanian Muslim is different from his Saudi brother. There are devout Muslims and less devout Muslims. Some drink, some don't. Some believe in arranged marriages, others have sex outside marriage. A minority believe that homosexuals and infidels should be murdered. A majority find such views repugnant.

It's true that the Muslim community is bad at introspection and self-criticism. Labelling all critics Islamophobes, as often happens (though Rod Liddle outed himself: "Islamophobia? Count me in") is an old ploy to close down debate. It was used 70 years ago, when a critic of the Soviet Union could expect to be called a fascist. A critic of Israeli government policy today is often labelled anti-Semitic.

And although Muslims increasingly feel like a demonised minority, even by liberals, it is also true that Islam is an ideology. As such it must expect to be challenged in an open society, no matter how uncomfortable or personal that debate becomes. Not only must Islam - with its social and political mandate - expect to be challenged by modern secular society but, more importantly, it must also expect to be challenged from within the Islamic tradition. Its evolution depends on such a challenge.

But it would help greatly if critics of Islam would give as much attention to the moderate Muslims engaged in that vital internal debate as they do to the hook-handed, effigy-burning few.

[no-to-illegals]

the muslim’s so-called god...allah is the devil....I agree.

[Capt. Tom]

In my experience, having lived for 10 years in a Muslim country and visited many others, there is a huge variety of beliefs within Islam ....

It's called heresy. And that is why the fundamentalist Muslims don't have a problem with killing so-called moderate Muslims. - Tom

[sheik yerbouty]

It’s a unified field. Under a little pressure, they’re all the same..