Trouble with Islam isn’t what you think
Islamic modernizers’ waning influence is key, writes John Richards.
Recently, a young Québécois killed six Muslims inside what, by all accounts, is a tolerant mosque, many of whose members are professionals involved with nearby Laval University. The alleged assassin appears to have been radicalized by the ideas of extreme conservative anti-immigrant online sites. Across the country, Canadians have spontaneously denounced the crime and the purveyors of intolerance toward Muslims. It’s right to condemn such hatred. But …
Irshid Manji is a liberal Muslim, originally from Vancouver. The title of one of her books is, The Trouble with Islam Today. She is right: There is trouble with Islam. Fortunately, little of this trouble involves Canadian Muslims.
The “trouble with Islam” is the waning influence of Islamic modernizers in the tradition of Ataturk in Turkey, Jinnah in Pakistan or Bourguiba in Tunisia, and the rising influence over the last half-century of Islamist movements, such as the Mus- lim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Wahhab-inspired imams of Saudi Arabia.
Today, many Muslim leaders in the Middle East and Asia subscribe to a variant of Salafism, an austere reform tradition in Sunni Islam that claims the writings of Mohammed and the early generations of his followers be read literally.
Why Salafism has achieved prominence is open to several explanations. Following collapse of the Ottoman Empire and of European colonialism, most of the new democratic states in the Middle East degenerated into corrupt, hyper-centralized regimes dependent on a politicized police force. Salafism provides a counter-discourse.
That is one explanation. Another is the role of Saudi Arabia, where imams guarding Islam’s two most sacred sites enjoy an implicit contract with the Saud family.
Which brings me to Bangladesh, the third-largest, Muslim-majority country in the world. For over two decades I have worked closely with a Bangladesh university. I have the privilege of undertaking research projects with Bangladeshi colleagues and introducing students and faculty from my university to that country’s history, literature, politics and economy.
The rising influence of Salafism in Bangladesh is evident in many ways. The day before I reached Dhaka on my most recent trip (last July), a half-dozen, welleducated, heavily armed young Bangladeshi occupied an upscale restaurant in the diplomatic zone.
They killed 22 people, including seven Japanese engineers designing a subway system for Dhaka and nine Italian women working with garment exporters. According to their leader, they wanted to rid Bangladesh of foreigners, who give legitimacy to a corrupt nonIslamic government that doesn’t implement Shariah law.
During our 2015 Canadian election campaign, the court decided that a Pakistani woman could wear a niqab (face veil) while swearing citizenship. It was a matter of religious freedom. At precisely the same time, in Bangladesh, the university in which I volunteer was facing daily protests accusing it of hostility to Islam. Why?
Since its beginning, the university dress code has specified that women are free to cover their head as a sign of piety, but they shouldn’t cover their face. To do so unduly limits interaction with students, staff and faculty. Learning of this provision, a powerful Islamist organization mounted daily protests at the university entrance, harassing women not wearing a niqab.
Assuming all Muslims accept Salafist ideas is nonsense, the kind of nonsense that persuaded U.S. President Donald Trump’s entourage to ban Islamic immigration from certain Middle Eastern states. But responding to the Quebec City murders merely by pleas for multicultural tolerance implies the core “trouble” is Islamophobia among nonMuslims. It’s a problem I admit, but it’s not the core problem. The first step toward resolving the “trouble with Islam” is honest talk.