In Search of a Moderate Sheikh
SCHWARTZ, STEPHEN
In Search of a Moderate Sheikh A pro-American Muslim cleric is hard to find. BY STEPHEN SCHWARTZ ON SEPTEMBER 27, a group of Islamic scholars in the Middle East issued a fatwa on the duties of...
...armed forces...
...policy changes...
...He praised the terrorist chieftain as "a symbol of the world uprising against American hegemony...
...By official count, there are some 4,100 Muslims in the U.S...
...BY STEPHEN SCHWARTZ ON SEPTEMBER 27, a group of Islamic scholars in the Middle East issued a fatwa on the duties of Muslims serving in the U.S...
...The story of this fatwa —a religious pronouncement with legal force among Muslims— illustrates both the confused state of relations between American society and Islam and the nature of Muslim fundamentalism...
...campaign to the Russian occupation...
...The content of the fatwa was inoffensive...
...In Search of a Moderate Sheikh A pro-American Muslim cleric is hard to find...
...It all began when the first-ever Muslim chaplain to American military personnel, U.S...
...Further, the fatwa declared that American Muslims must fulfill the duties of citizenship, including conscientious service in the armed forces, lest their Stephen Schwartz is working on a book to be titled The Two Faces of Islam...
...But any questions concerning Muslim soldiers' duties and loyalties are less urgent than the questions this episode raises about the proper relationship between American authorities and the ostensible Islamic establishment in the United States and abroad...
...American Muslims who wish to dissociate themselves from these extremists have their work cut out for them...
...But he also defended the Taliban's demolition of ancient Buddhist statues in Afghanistan...
...Qaradawi's outburst of hatred, and his manifest self-contradiction, prompted inquiries from the press, but he declined to elaborate...
...Army Captain Abdul-Rashid Muhammad, sought an authoritative opinion as to whether Muslims could serve in a war against a Muslim enemy...
...The lesson: In reality, there is no "moderate" Wahhabism, for it is an amoral power ideology that cannot accept the coexistence of Muslim and non-Muslim civilizations...
...No wonder it can't explain itself forth-rightly to Americans...
...Captain Muhammad turned to the head of the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences in Leesburg, Virginia, one Taha Jabir Alwani...
...On October 11, the sheikh held a press conference in Qatar where he condemned American military action against Afghanistan...
...At the same time, CAIR and partner groups like the Islamic Society of North America and the American Muslim Council loudly complain of purported hate crimes and civil liberties violations to keep American society on the defensive...
...He incited the pakistanis against their government and concluded with the claim that bin Laden's videotaped self-justifications could not be considered a confession of wrongdoing...
...The September 27 fatwa set off a firestorm in the Arab world, and Qaradawi changed course...
...Some American media seized on the fatwa to prove that Muslims abhor terrorism...
...thus, the notorious Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) expressed condolences after the massacre of 16 Christians during a worship service in Pakistan on October 28, although the organization has never expressed regret over killings by suicide bombers in Israel...
...I can't tell you anything more...
...Sheikh Qaradawi has a record of public statements inciting terrorism...
...His wording was anything but mild: "We support the Afghans who stand firm against the American invasion," he proclaimed, likening the U.S...
...On October 30 he brushed off the Associated press, saying, "I wrote an explanation...
...Some of them appear rattled...
...Sheikh Qaradawi and his cosignatories (three Egyptians, a Syrian, and Alwani) held that, in the face of the recent attacks, American Muslims were obliged to support the United States, since Islamic law prohibits "terrorizing the innocent, killing noncombatants, and the destruction of property...
...Some Islamic websites reported that the original fatwa had been "misattributed," others that it had been superseded...
...As for Sheikh Qaradawi, he embodies the fantasy that there are "moderate" Muslim fundamentalists who can be our allies in the anti-terror fight...
...He blamed the United States for September 11 because of American support for Israel and threatened that a thousand bin Ladens will rise up unless U.S...
...Many Muslim functionaries in the United States maintain an attitude of truculence toward American society, even after September 11...
...As if that weren't unusual enough, Alwani conveyed the request to a "moderate" cleric of the Wahhabi sect living in Qatar and subsidized by Saudi Arabia named Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who drafted the resulting document...
...armed forces (although Captain Muhammad has been quoted claiming 12,000) out of a total force of a million and a half...
...Qaradawi, to be sure, has expounded a "liberal" approach to music, which Wahhabis typically abhor...
...loyalty be doubted...
...But the honeymoon was brief...
...Sam Jaffe, for instance, writing in Business Week Online, characterized Qaradawi as one of those "Islamic thinkers . . . that will defeat bin Laden...
...just last April, he defined suicide bombings as "martyrdom, not suicide," suicide being forbidden by Islam...
Vol. 7 • November 2001 • No. 9
