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Posted on 09/30/2001 6:30:27 PM PDT by Utah Girl

    Possibly there are 25,000 Muslims in Utah, 6 million followers of Islam in the United States and a billion members worldwide -- one out of every six people on Earth. Islam won't go away; in fact within a decade, Islamic Americans may surpass this country's Jewish population in numbers.
    Americans are confused about Islam. How could anyone who professes a way of peace crash an airplane into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon? Why would someone who begins their five-times-a-day prayers with, "In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate" kill thousands of innocent civilians who didn't have a chance?
    That turns us to the web of people who will use terrorism and to Osama bin Laden, 43, the militant son of a prosperous Saudi Arabian construction contractor, and the global network he supports. But first the observation that such people, scattered across many countries, are a distinct minority within Islam.
    It's hard to say what exactly is mainstream Islam, for Islam has no pope, no Council of Elders to determine doctrine, and no national or international organizations that have any power. Each mosque is independent of others, and there are no ordained clergy. The basic test of membership is a declaration in front of two witnesses, "There is no God but God and Mohammed is the messenger of God," followed by prayer, almsgiving, fasting during the holy month of Ramadan, and a pilgrimage hajj to Mecca if you can afford it. The Koran, written down by the Prophet Mohammed in the seventh century, like the Bible, is a work of soaring devotional poetry, ethical teaching, and historical material. A study of it will allow different readers to find passages of compassion and tolerance and militant ones as well.
    Back to the terrorists. Since at least the 1920s a distinct but populous minority of people in countries from Egypt to Iran, Kenya to Saudi Arabia, have held such rigid views, but without the extremes of violence recently unleashed. Most such people are called Islamists, and their recent pedigree is traceable to the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (1928). (The word "fundamentalist" needs to be carefully defined. Here it means an active, reform-oriented uncompromising way of looking at the world, a militant minority within a larger movement.)
    For such people, Islamic law sharia should govern all life and tactics to advance their cause. Tactics can range from political accommodation to assassinations. Western ways, such as a consumer culture, allowing women to be educated, and cooperation with Christians and Jews can be the cause of swift reprisals. That is one reason Islamists liquidated Egypt's progressive President Anwar Sadat in 1981. In Cape Town, South Africa (1999), their symbolic target was the Planet Hollywood restaurant. And recently the World Trade Center (materialism) and the Pentagon (militancy) were marked for destruction.
    Bin Ladin and four colleagues, two from Egypt, and one each from Pakistan and Bangladesh, laid out a game plan in a 1998 fatwa, a comprehensive legal opinion. In it, they interpret recent history exactly the opposite as we might. Of the Gulf War, they wrote, "for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples." Those of us who eagerly followed General H. Norman Schwarzkopf's briefings about the war against Saddam Hussein need to know that a totally different view of the war was being formulated within the Islamic world, one that found its expression in the Sept. 11 devastation.
    The jihad authors went further. "The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies -- civilians and military -- is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the holy mosque at Mecca from their grip." Traditionally, a jihad would be first of all a jihad-of-the word, an attempt to convert people to a position.
    The final jihad-of-the-sword would be carefully limited, usually to apostates, or for a distinct military purpose such as conquest of a city. In taking the extremist position they did, the authors advocated a terrorist position that finds no justification in mainstream Islam. That being said, it is worth spending time on what the Islamists said, for a sizable body of their writings is emerging in pamphlets, on cassettes, and, most recently, on Internet Web pages.
    Another important difference between them and us is in how the two traditions employ the word "Crusade," popularized in recent history by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who peppered his speeches with it. In junior high school our choir learned a "Crusader's Hymn," which we were told the little children sang on their way to liberate the Holy Land. But Muslims see the Crusades differently -- as a three-century unjustified invasion and pillaging of their Holy Places, a war as shocking as anything Hitler or Stain ever undertook later. The word has a centuries-old negative connotation for Muslims. Bin Laden called his proclamation a "Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders." And the Turk who tried to assassinate Pope Jean Paul II in 1981 had written, "I have decided to kill Jean Paul, II, supreme leader of the Crusades." When President Bush recently spoke of launching a new crusade against terrorists, Arabs would not view the remark as helpful, even if they agreed with its underlying purpose.
    It is tempting to say that terrorists are poorly educated people, social discontents living on the fringes of society. But that is not the case. Many have a stronger technical than humanistic education, but the pilots who flew large aircraft into buildings knew what they were doing. The officers who planned the murder of Sadat were well-educated. Many of the young men who wired themselves for the 28 suicide bombings in Israel since 1993 could have passed for the person at the next table at the coffee house.
    This leads to the question: how does Islam justify the taking of innocent lives, mass destruction, and suicide bombers. Islam doesn't. The Koran clearly forbids suicide, "make not your own hands contribute to [your] destruction" (2:195). The Hadith, the additional teachings of the Prophet, say that those who commit suicide are doomed to eternally re-enact the means of their destruction. A grim prospect.
    Another strain of thought among Islamists fixes on a passage in the Koran, "Think not of those who are slain in Allah's way as dead. Nay, they live, finding their sustenance from their Lord" (3:169).
    In such thinking, martyrs are given expedited passage to a place in paradise next to the Throne of God, where their wounds will smell like musk and they will live in a beautiful garden with delightful companions. That may be what a potential 16-year-old suicide bomber had in mind, "I know my life is poor compared to Europe or America, but I have something awaiting me that makes all my suffering worthwhile."
    On balance, such extremist talk is no more typical of Islam than the religiously packaged language of vigilante groups or the Klan could be called representative of mainstream Christianity. It has been around in Islamic thought as a distinctly minority position, one now given new currency by recent events.
    The world has changed. Islam won't go away, needn't go away. There are plenty of opportunities for us to make common cause with its believers, who represent the increasing pluralism and diversity of American and global society. This will mean the teaching of a new geography and history. Children in Moab will need to know the names of the countries on Afghanistan's borders. Sunday schools in Logan will need to study the Koran. Multiple-choice tests will include names like Anwar Sadat, and words like shari and jihad.
    _________

    Frederick Quinn, a retired senior Foreign Service officer, recently moved to Salt Lake City. The author of several books on international, legal, and religious affairs, the author's "Democracy at Dawn, Notes from Poland and Points East," was named a Times Literary Supplement International Book of the Year. His "African Saints, Martyrs, and Holy People" will be published this year.

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