Jihad As Explained by USA Today
SCHWARTZ, STEPHEN
Jihad As Explained by USA Today Wahhabi outreach via direct mail. BY STEPHEN SCHWARTZ A FLYER innocuously entitled "Q & A on Islam and Arab Americans" was recently mass-mailed to a list including...
...But USA Today, from whose website the Q & A is reprinted with permission, should beware lending respectability to Wahhabi institutions...
...copyright, by the International Institute of Islamic Thought...
...The Islamic rules for modest dress apply to women and men equally...
...The back of the flyer contains a list of recommended websites and books on Islam...
...To show how the IIIT's "USA Today" flyer serves the nice-and-bland message, consider its treatment of two questions about women...
...Men and women are to be respected equally," we are told, but under the extreme interpretations of Islamic law introduced by Saudi agents in Africa and Asia, adulteresses are subject to death by stoning, while adulterers go free...
...The most notorious of these institutions are the hundreds of Islamic schools the Saudis funded in Pakistan to propagate Wahhabism...
...While most of the volumes embody the academic apologetics retailed by individuals like John Esposito and Karen Armstrong, the list also includes titles by Hassan Hathout, an inveterate apologist for extremism, and the sinister Bill Baker...
...Yet females were excluded from schooling in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan...
...In most Islamic societies, the decision to adopt this practice is a matter of local custom and personal choice...
...If they can persuade the non-Islamic world that no element of Islam threatens them, they will have bought some cover for extremism...
...And at once, the enterprise comes clear...
...The record, we are told, is consistent on this point...
...Q: Why do Muslim women cover their hair...
...It implicitly rules out of order the millions and millions of Muslim women who do not cover their hair...
...A: Jihad does not mean 'holy war.' Literally, jihad in Arabic means to strive, struggle and exert effort...
...There Baker offered this opinion: "The American people better wake up now and take a stand now so they won't allow one American child to be sent to defend Israel...
...Consider the premise of the question, that Muslim women actually do cover their hair...
...The author of a virulent polemic against Israel, Theft of a Nation, Baker has been a guest on Radio Free America, a program backed by fascist agitator Willis Car-to...
...The IIIT is among the innumerable, ostensibly cultural, educational, and religious institutions founded, controlled, and/or influenced by the Saudi-Wahhabi movement, which promotes Islamic fundamentalism worldwide...
...A: Under Islamic law, women have always had the right to own property, receive an education and otherwise take part in community life...
...As for the websites, they tend to be hospitable to the view of America as a rogue state bent on terrorizing its Muslim residents...
...is a doozy...
...Q: What is the role of women in Islam...
...The truth is, military jihad cannot be written out of Islam...
...Conspicuous at the top of the first page, the USA Today logo readies the reader to ingest bite-sized morsels of information, simple but reliable—and only then prompts him to scratch his head and wonder just why USA Today should be seeking to educate him about Islam...
...It is a central and broad Islamic concept that includes struggle against evil inclinations within oneself, struggle to improve the quality of life in society, struggle in the battlefield for self-defense or fighting against tyranny or oppression...
...By inducing Westerners to avoid really learning about Islam, they hope to deflect attention from the crazies who strap suicide explosives onto teenagers or fly airplanes into office buildings or kill nosy reporters like Daniel Pearl...
...IIIT may be comfortable with all this...
...The dress of Muslim women is similar to that of Christian nuns, who also cover their bodies and hair...
...Box 669, Herndon, VA 20172-0669...
...Here we have the money quote: "Jihad does not mean 'holy war.'" A few lines later, however, jihad does include "struggle in the battlefield...
...Women are required to cover their bodies so that their figure is not revealed and only their faces and hands are shown...
...BY STEPHEN SCHWARTZ A FLYER innocuously entitled "Q & A on Islam and Arab Americans" was recently mass-mailed to a list including journalists in Washington...
...This answer would be more honest if it said, "Jihad cannot be reduced to the idea of 'holy war.'" But IIIT seeks only to escape responsibility for the Wahhabi "jihad," which has been terroristic since the founding of the Wahhabi cult in central Arabia 250 years ago...
...Only the eagle-eyed reporter will spot, in minuscule type at the bottom of the last page, the Stephen Schwartz is the author of The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa'ud From Tradition to Terror...
...They certainly mean to deflect any questions about intolerant and corrupt regimes that blow up historic artifacts or stay in power by coercion...
...The long, robelike garment is called an abayah, jilbab or chador...
...Islam is one, and Muslims are uniformly peaceful—don't get hung up on the excesses of the Taliban or believe what you hear about hate-spewing anti-Jewish literature sold in mosques...
...In the Balkans, Turkey, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia, Muslim women who cover their hair are rare...
...The head scarf is called a hijab or chador...
...A: Islam teaches modesty for women and men...
...Speaking of revealing, the flyer's handling of the question "What is jihad...
...The prophet Mohammed himself led armies...
...Similarly, although non-revealing clothing is here called a "requirement" of Islam, it is not the universal practice among Muslim women, as Western designers beholden to wealthy Middle Eastern clients can testify...
...And patriotic Americans, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, should recognize the IIIT's flyer for what it is—junk mail...
...In Saudi Arabia, of course, women are not allowed to drive cars or to travel unaccompanied by males...
...In some places heavily influenced by fundamentalists, women can't so much as set foot in mosques to pray...
...Men and women are to be respected equally...
...The return address is unenlighten-ing: "IIIT, IPO...
...This requirement is designed to protect women and give them respect...
...Those madrassas have their well-camouflaged counterparts in the Western world...
...In the first sentence of that reply, note the words "have always...
...Think of the old Communists defining themselves as "progressives...
...Muslim women are not required to cover their faces as is done in some Middle Eastern countries...
...One strategic purpose of these institutions is to seize control of the definition of Islam...
Vol. 8 • March 2003 • No. 24
