Who Speaks for Islam?

I know who doesn't speak for Islam. Saudi Arabia.

So who does?

If you ask me: nobody. And everybody.

Nobody

As a "divinely inspired" religion, Islam needs no followers. Fundamentally, followers need it. Muslims believe in an omniscient, omnipotent God that needs nothing.

So, if nobody in the world followed Islam, nothing would have changed.

But of course, religion doesn't exist in a vacuum: the sacred laws set forth were done so to enrich our lives.

But mankind is imperfect, and God (and by extension, His religion), by Muslim reckoning, is perfect. Using an imperfect metric to measure something perfect will, at best, be merely indicative, but ultimately incorrect.

Everybody

But the problem with that answer is that it evades the question.

So the nuance that I like to add to the response is that although nobody can really speak for Islam, in reality, everybody does.

In all corners of the world, Muslims have integrated Islam into a massive tapestry of colours, flavours and interpretations. From the Shiites and the Sunnies from Europe to Asia, and even Native American Muslims who are on record when European settlers first moved to the Americas.

As a proselytizing religion, Islam has done a good a job (or bad a job, depending on who you ask) as Christianity to spread its word far and wide to the world.

And that word has been adopted, and mutated, and watered down, and concentrated, and beautified, and mutilated in every possible way imaginable. What results, in effect, is representative of the faith.

It is, and always will be, inextricably bound to the human condition which it was sent to enrich.

I'll Get Down From My Soapbox Now...

I just want people to step away from the idea that Saudi Arabia, in any way, speaks for Islam. Just because it houses the Two Holy Shrines in Mecca and Madinah doesn't mean it's a standard-bearer of 1.5 billion people from almost every nationality and language conceivable.

It's a subliminal conclusion drawn way too easily.

Saudi Arabia speaks for Saudi Arabia. Nobody can truly "represent" Islam. But ultimately, we all do.

Muslims are religious, and irreligious. We are liberal and conservative, left-leaning or right-leaning. We are black, white, brown and yellow. We are ignorant, educated and illiterate, mean-spirited, friendly, helpful, racist, and egalitarian. We are deluded and informed, we lie and we steal and we are helpful and we smile, for even a smile is charity. We love, we hate, we hurt, we bleed, we kill, and we die.

In that sense Muslims, and by extension Islam, are not very different from any of the other peoples and faiths.

We occupy this world among equals.

Now Wait Just A Second...

Oh, so you noticed: all that is a very complex non-answer.

But the question is really a non-question. "Islam" is not a tangible entity, and even by abstract standards, it is amorphous to the extent that you couldn't put an abstract finger on it. My Islam is different from someone else's Islam, based on economic situation, geographical location, personal disposition, age, outlook, etc. So when you ask it questions, you'll wonder whose Islam is actually answering the question?

But that's not really the point. Does anybody ever ask, "Who speaks for Christianity?"

I didn't think so.

This Is Where I Draw The Line

I realize there is a lot of negative backlash against Islam and Muslims because of the pervasive terrorism we tend to breed.

But I'm done apologizing for Muslim terrorists. I am no more associated to Islamic extremists than a Jew in New York is associated to an Israeli soldier sniping an old woman in the Gaza Strip.

I don't need to apologize for them to dissociate myself from them. I am separate from them by definition, from the get-go: I am a law-abiding, peaceful person, and their grievances are political, veiled very thinly with religiosity. And this veil is very easily seen through now that George W. Bush is no longer the leader of the free world, and its moral compass.

"Fixing Islam"

I grow weary of articles and books on "How to Fix Islam," many of which are written by non-Muslims. As if the religion needs an oil change (and that by someone who is not a mechanic).

The discourse that actually matters in Islam, will always remain among the learned Muslims, who will, through the gradual evolution of thought, adapt it, localize it and contextualize it as Muslims have been doing for the millenium and a half past.

In this, Muslims can probably help by encouraging discourse through allowing freedom of expression and not stigmatize dissent with accusations of heresy, violent suppression, and summary judgement. We need to be more tolerant amongst ourselves, something we have never excelled at.

Which is why you can "fix Islam" all you like, but without actually changing cultures, attitudes, and outlooks, all the religious legislation/interpretation in the world won't change a single thing.

Islam doesn't speak, and you can't fix Islam while evading deep prejudices within yourself. It's always easy to look outward when you think something is wrong, not inward.

So, really. Islam doesn't have much to say. If there is anything to say, Muslims will say it, and hopefully it will be through actions and not just words.

Apportioning Blame in the Mumbai Attacks

The dust has settled. The dead are being put to rest, and collectively, we mourn. As people start to move on, we can name our heroes, our villains, and everything in between.

The Heroes.

1. The victims.

They did no wrong, didn't ask to be heroes, and given the choice, I think they'd choose to continue with their dinners. Yet here we are. These innocent souls now join the many hundreds of thousands of victims throughout India and the world, now, and in history, who were guilty only of being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

And though the victims may have found peace in their eternal slumber, the emptiness they leave behind with their loved ones must be unimaginable.

I am truly sorry for their enormous loss.

2. The policemen.

They were ill-equipped, and under-trained. The gunmen had night-vision goggles, and they didn't. The gunmen had better guns, and had actually trained with their weapons, but the police didn't. They were late in getting to the scene, and they wasted the critical moments when lives could have been saved. They didn't know what to do, they didn't know the layout of the hotel, and nobody bothered to teach them or tell them.

But they went in anyway. When they were needed the most, they were there. And many of them died.

"When they lay us down to rest,
Tell our moms we done our best."

That they didn't know what to do wasn't their fault. They are, unequivocally, heroes.

3. The commandos.

The famed Indian Black Cats. They were trained, and equipped, but they were all the way in New Delhi and couldn't catch a plane because there wasn't any, and couldn't catch the ones that were available because the bureaucracy didn't account for that. But they eventually got the job done, after 60-something hours. Could it have been done sooner? Perhaps. But Indian commandos cleaned up an Indian mess, and that's something to be proud of. The Israelis, apparently, offered help, but India said they had it covered.

Arguably, they didn't have it covered. But it's good to take responsibility.

4. The people of Mumbai. They have suffered many wrongs, and yet they prod on. Like the people of Islamabad, Baghdad, Kabul, and Grozny. What else can one do. You pick up the pieces, and you move on. Common folk are incredibly resilient.

The Villains

In most cases, the hero-villain dichotomy is a false one. But these crimes were so horrific, that the perpetrators of this crime really are villains.

But what devilry is this? Suicide bombing, though I do not condone, I understand. It is the terrorist equivalent of blind rage. A lack of control in your life can lead to suicidal tendencies; it is one of the things you actually can control.

But what is it that these people have suffered that would push them to this controlled burst of terror? The gut reaction is to dismiss them as evil, and perhaps to a certain extent that's true. But most of the deeply messed up things in the world make sense to a level. This doesn't make much sense yet.

No statement was made as to what they wanted, a no-name organization was put forward, the Deccan Mujahideen, and goodness knows why they targeted Americans, Britons and Israelis if they were indeed homegrown terrorists, which the consensus is starting to suggest. What was their goal?

There's more thinking and soul-searching to be done. Questions. Questions that need answers.
___________________________

These are the only two categories that (approximately) fall into the category of white and black. Right and wrong. Good and evil.

Now come the shades of grey.

India

India is no stranger to terrorism. They've been wrangling with it since independence, arguably before. If the Indian civil service traces its roots to the British civil service, that represents a long line of bureaucrats, administrators, and politicians that have dealt with criminal malcontents, rebels, terrorists, anarchists and freedom fighters (from an administrator's perspective, these all fall into the same basket).

And yet look at the pitiable excuse for a response. Their policemen were carrying obsolete weaponry they had previously never used before. Mumbai, a city of 13 million people, doesn't have its own commandos or national guard on stand-by. This, after a truck filled with almost a tonne of explosives laced with aluminium, blew up in the front yard of their neighbour's capital in Islamabad. You think they would have gotten the hint?

The helicopter dropping the commandos off in Nariman House circled overhead three times before dropping them off. So much for the element of surprise! It was almost a perverse comedy, like a Bollywood movie, where the hero takes down a dozen chicken-legged policemen in shorts.

Such a long history of terrorism and insurgency movements, and India still doesn't have a central terrorism database. They don't have a singular authority that handles these kinds of issues, a country with more than a billion people, and numerous separatist and insurgent movements.

In all fairness, India alone doesn't suffer from this. All the sub-continent countries display this level of incompetence. When will they realize that their laziness costs lives?

But to give India's democracy some credit, there is a tradition of taking responsibility for gross negligence. The Home Minister resigned in the face of these attacks, and I remember a few years back, a terrible railway accident sparked the resignation of the Railway Minister.

Though these resignations, strictly speaking, don't serve an immediate purpose in improving the situation, the culture of taking responsibility, at least, is there. I say at least, because it is, literally, the least, that could be done.

The terrorists hijacked a boat, took a dinghy to the shore, verbally abused fishermen on the way who asked what they were doing, walked into Mumbai, spraying bullets in the train station along the way, entered the hotels, took the time to ask people their nationalities, searched the hotel, and then kept the authorities at bay for over 60 hours. If that isn't a systemic failure at every level of the intelligence and civil defence administration, I don't know what is.

In short: the government botched this one up really bad.

Pakistan

Pakistan is now getting blamed for it. The Indian foreign minister, before any of the dust even settled, pointed his finger to "elements" in Pakistan. Summary: meaningless.

It's like a night guard asleep at his post hears an explosion which wakes him up, and the first thing he does upon waking is accuse the guy next to him.

People died on their watch, and they're looking for scapegoats, so obviously the last thing on their minds is their sworn responsibility as civil servants.

That being said, is Pakistan blameless? Fareed Zakaria (I'm a fan) said it in a piece soon after the bombings: Pakistan needs to stop choosing between "good terrorists" and "bad terrorists." Terrorists that destabilize India and Afghanistan are the good kind, and those that destabilize Pakistan are the bad kind.

That there are sympathetic elements within the Pakistani ISI is without a doubt. The evidence continues to mount that the attacks were staged from Pakistan. If that is the case, then the Pakistani government shoulders a sizeable burden, comparable to that of the Indian government: why weren't the terrorists on their soil stopped? The Pakistani authorities are, at best, incompetent, and at worst, complicit.

An attack of this scale does not serve any Pakistani agenda. Undermining local interests that stay out of the news media are the kind that would serve a hostile Pakistan's agenda. As the saying goes "Do not attribute to malice that which can easily be explained by stupidity."

The terrorism problem within South Asia is localized and indigenous, and the South Asian countries need to combine forces on this.

I, however, remain sceptical the Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Indians can work together on anything.

Islam

No doubt this will push those that hate Islam and Muslims to hate them even more.

I am not a subscriber to the thought that "you cannot judge a religion by the actions of its followers." No, you can, you should, and everyone does.

But Muslims died in these attacks. Muslims have died in almost every major terorrist attack by Muslim extremists, and pretty much all of the minor ones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As the major perpetrators of terrorism (the Buddhists are a distant second in the religious extremism rankings), Muslims account for most of its victims by number. Mind you, this includes the "collateral damage" suffered by Muslims during coalition air raids.

If you count the casualties in the "War on Terror" (which for all intents and purposes basically means Afghanistan and Iraq), Muslim civilian and combatant casualties outnumber any other casualties in these conflicts, be they civilian, Indian, Israeli, American, or coalition forces. Be they casualties in the numerous suicide bombings in Tel Aviv, New York, Mumbai, or Madrid.

So we suffer as much if not more than anyone else does, it's just that when an Afghan or Iraqi civilian dies, or a Pakistani or an Arab, their government usually lacks the organization, infrastructure, news agencies, public relations apparatus, or diplomatic and political will to make an issue out of it.

In every one of the BBC articles on the Mumbai attacks, they've listed the dead. And at the very end, they take by name the single Briton that died. It's an honourable thing to do, to look out for your own.

Since most Muslim countries are poor and under-developed, our dead don't have a public voice. We bury our numerous, uncounted, innocent dead in Chechnya, the Gaza Strip, and Somalia privately, and the Earth is soaked in our tears. And neither our own governments, nor other governments look to see our pain.

Why don't people realize that our suffering and our grievances is the world's suffering too? It's only when people get pushed to the very brink, when they lose their humanity and like a child, break the vase to get some attention, does the world look at us. With a frown of irritation on its face. Like it would be so much easier if we all just... disappeared.

If you prick us, do we not bleed?

Wait A Minute...

Muslims are not a single, monolithic entity. Muslims in America are different from Muslims in the UK, who are different from Muslims in India. That there may be some elements shared within common extremist ideologies does not mean that Muslims in general are a problem case.

The Muslim faith's enduring egalitarianism allows for a Muslim in the Philippines to feel for his brother in Palestine, but that does not mean we speak with one voice.

With the exception of a few high-profile cases, the United States is largely immune from the scourge of indigenous Muslim extremism. The Muslim diaspora in the United States (and North America) is among the most well-settled, integrated, and successful of all the Muslim diaspora in the world.

Muslims in Europe have their own grievances by way of Europe's collective social backwardness in integrating immigrant populations into the common fold. That has nothing to do with Islam, but the root problems are socio-economic.

Europe for all its progressiveness has never had an indigenous, enduring Muslim population from pre-modern times. All Muslims in Europe today are modern immigrants. In the Middle East, there are still native Jews and Christians, descendants from the time of the Prophets of yore. This is an indicator of Europe's history of integration.

In Palestine, large swathes of Muslims have been living in refugee camps for generations now, internally displaced, without an identity, continuously intimidated by the Israelis, neglected by the Arabs and the Palestinian Authority, and unwanted everywhere.

Everyone has their problems. Yes, religion may be a catalyst in the process of radicalizing people, once you've hammered into their brains that the gardens of paradise are worth whatever political agenda you may be preaching. But I'm a Muslim, and technically, I'm looking forward to the same gardens as many of the suicide bombers. But I'm not rushing to do anything untoward.

These people are hopeless, and uneducated, and many have lost their families, their dignity, and have nothing to live for. Hate the sin, not the sinner. We have to pull these people out of that rut. If for nothing else, than to save our own skins.

Every region which finds terrorism as an intractable problem is riddled with poverty, corruption, instability, lack of education, and general hopelessness. Palestine. Afghanistan. Sudan.

And let me be clear: As a Muslim, I have nothing to apologize for because the perpetrators were Muslim. I condemn their attacks along with the rest of the world. By saying "Muslims need to speak out more" that's indirectly casting some of the blame of these terrorists on me. I share none of the blame of any of these terrorists, and I never will be. I am not of them, and they are not of me.

But to have a clear conscience and to actually try to identify how to solve the problem, I have to note that the root problem of a lot of terrorism lies within political solutions to non-fictional grievances in Kashmir, Palestine, and Africa. I'm not condoning violence by highlighting the shades of grey, but I'm looking at the root cause as well as the symptoms. Shouldn't everyone be doing that?

By using a faith as a scapegoat, we're not addressing the problem. It is dismissive, and a disservice to the issue. The problem lies within people, and within people lies the solution.

To the Muslims: there's an African saying, "A fool at forty, is a fool for ever." Most post-colonial Muslim countries are nearing 40, it's about time they started to show some progress, because very soon, blaming the thieving white people of half a century ago just isn't going to cut it.

Good governance, education, healthcare, a good economy, free speech. And terrorism will become a much more manageable problem.

Ask a bum in New York (someone who is arguably good-for-nothing and reasonably hopeless) to blow himself up. You think he'll do it? No, because he knows he's not just a bum, but he's a bum in New York, man. He shares in that pride. Don't underestimate the poor and the hopeless. They're very aware of their surroundings.

The Amman Message

Wikipedia is a dangerous thing. Navigate to it to find out a quick fact, and before you know it, you're completely engrossed in a very large article on something completely unrelated. Like what happened to me yesterday.

Here's a link I found out yesterday, perhaps a year or so too late:

The Amman Message

From the Introduction:

It [The Amman Message] sought to declare what Islam is and what it is not, and what actions represent it and what actions do not. Its goal was to clarify to the modern world the true nature of Islam and the nature of true Islam.

A worthy goal indeed!

One of the things about Islam is that its largely decentralized. We don't have a pope, and we really don't have a central body regulating religious activities of Muslims around the world.

Typically, governments and private or non-profit organizations fill the void, of their own volition, to keep things organized, but it's not mandated. Despite all the hoo-haa about Islam being a polity, and it being the antithesis of secularism, and therefore, automatically incompatible with anything "civilized", at the root of it, it's all very personal... and yet impersonal.

A standing principle of the spiritual gnostics has been: nothing is personal in the universe, except your relationship with God.

And this perhaps has been Islam's bane in the modern world. People could pick up tattered, neglected old books, and where nationalism had previously failed to deliver, they hit where the heart is soft: faith. The despots told the people do this, and God will love you, and the people loved the despots.

And so perhaps things like the Amman Message are slowly arising. Standards bodies, that define terms, good practices, and fundamental concepts. Much like the IEEE standards or the RFC internet standards. These are the protocols, the concepts. Now implement them as you wish.

(I'm very sorry for the geek reference. I had to do it.)

The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has an advantage I think that most of the other Muslim countries don't have.

1. It's relatively unimportant, so there's not much Western meddling going on.
2. It's king was educated in the West, but with deep roots in the Middle East.
3. And the pox that is the United States's war on terror in Iraq has meant millenia's worth of handed down knowledge and wisdom, embodied in rare, skilled professionals in trades we no longer know about, like calligraphy and traditional Islamic scholarship, are making their way there to make a new life.

Last I heard, they were undergoing slow democratic reforms in Jordan. Here's to wishing them the best.

My $0.02 on the Danish Cartoons

2 weeks after the Danish cartoon controversy began, I'm going to pitch in my 2 cents. Since the Muslim world has flooded the West with their loose change, here are my pennies.

First of all, let me rank the things I like, and the things that I don't like about the controversy, in order of importance.

The things I don't like:

1. The violence and deaths. Put a mindless caricature of our beloved Prophet (peace be upon him) on the left end of a scale, and the loss of a single life on the other end, and the balance will fall through floor on the right. This is our tradition.

I can't imagine that Muslims protesting over something they found offensive will result in their own deaths. For those who have eyes, please, see how fragile and sensitive we are, and deal with us with care.

2. The caricature. I have not seen any of the cartoons. If I got a penny for every link to the cartoons I stroked over with my mouse, I'd have a few dollars now. I saw a glimpse of the one of the Prophet (peace be upon him) with the turban, but it was a thumbnail, and I was quick to close.

Let me be clear. I only found that cartoon distasteful, and quite thoroughly so. I've heard of a few of the other cartoons, and I think they weren't that bad; in fact, I might go as far as saying, they had a point. One of them had men at the gates of heaven, yelling, (paraphrased) "We've run out of virgins!" and another one had a cartoonist nervously drawing pictures with bloodthirsty terrorists watching over his shoulder. Some of these might even have warranted a giggle from me.

But you can fill a sermon with all the wisdom of the world, and end it on an extreme note, and completely lose your audience. It is the same with us, why is it not the same for the Danish media, I wonder. Osama bin Laden's tapes are replete with historical references and kind words to the American people. "Leave us alone, and we will leave you alone," he says. How appealing, don't you think? And yet nobody listens. Why? Because when his face fades away from the screen, we remember what he did to two very beautiful buildings in New York. Maybe we can do without his wisdom, we think.

3. The reprints. They say the reprints are there because of freedom of speech. I say, no. They're there to make us angry. This example has been cited, but let me say it again. If the Jews were targeted in this manner, in some obscure newspaper in Iran, and the Jews (rightly) took offense, nobody would defend that newspaper's right to free speech. When Mahmoud Ahmedinejad made stupid remarks about relocating Israel to Europe, none of his peers in the West defended his right to free speech by reproducing his act when universally condemned by world leaders. The question to ask is why. Why didn't they defend his right? Beause the things he said were stupid.

The reprints are not to defend freedom of speech. When I was little, I found out a cousin of mine was ticklish, and tickling him would make his face go red, and he'd have trouble breathing. That's why I did it again. And again. Until my mother came and pulled me away. Our tickle spot has been found, it seems.

Now, a newspaper in Iran is having a competition on drawing a cartoon about the holocaust. Well, even if every newspaper in the world reprints them, that would not change my opinion, or make me say, "Oh, what a silly person I've been! This is all about free speech." It would have no meaning, because had the Danish incident not happened, they would not have done any reprints. This is a, "Oh, yeah? You're saying we wouldn't? Well, watch this!" dare by an emotionally immature media.

4. I also must say, I don't like the state of Muslims in Europe. Whatever the reasons that they haven't managed to get integrated into the cultures of their host nations, it is sad that they are in such a state. Yes, we have some issues. But we're really not that bad.

5. Boycott of Danish products, burning their flags, and attacking their ambassadors. I've had the pleasure of meeting some very nice Danes in Singapore; exchange students. They're not all bad, just like Muslims are not all good (which is rather the wrong way round; we should be saying we're not all that bad, since we cause so much trouble around the world).

I'm not sure boycotting their products is a wise thing to do. Sure, we can do without those delicious Danish butter-cookies my mother used to buy us back home, and that I bought as recently as last winter. Lots of other people make them now. Sure, Lego is an amazing Danish brand which I link to some of the most fun toys I've ever owned. I still own a huge Lego set of pirates that I played with as recent as my last trip to Bangladesh earlier last month. But I'm not sure about the message we are sending with the boycott.

I think by grouping people into countries, we are doing what we are asking our oppressors in the West to stop doing. Stop thinking that just because I'm Muslim, and some Muslims blow things up along with themselves, that I'm going to blow something up. Just because some irresponsible newspaper printed something stupid doesn't mean they're all bad. The boycotts have caused some people to go out of work, which is sad. Getting into the job market myself soon, I feel for those who are affected.

I'm also sad that the ambassadors and embassy-workers in Muslim countries are spending their days in fear. The famed hospitality of the Arabs has turned to dust, along with most of their civilization.

What I like.

1. How the Muslims responded. I was offended when I read about the cartoons on Google News. I remain offended, and I'm glad that all Muslims have reacted. It's a worldwide response, and I think it's beautiful. Looking at how divided we have become, it seems love of the Prophet (peace be upon him) has united us, which I find to be extremely powerful and at times, simply overwhelming. I'm glad we responded.

2. The United States decided by and large, not to reprint them. Thank you for your unending sense of political correctness, Yanks. Now just leave us the hell alone. No? Well, okay.

3. Some of the cartoons had a point. Satirical cartoons have their place in media. They make excellent points in entertaining ways. They reflect a better part of the dark human psyche, bloodthirsty and evil-prone as it is. They show the complexity of thought that is possible. The good that can be done with this powerful tool that we call our mind. I'm sure Sheikh Abdul Hakim Murad will agree with me here.

Anyway. I don't know what kind of publication Jyllands-Posten is, but they have shown bad judgement and simply bad journalism. I don't know what they were taught in school, but my informal understanding of the role of the media in society is that they are the glue between the people and the government, and sometimes the people and themselves. They are the left hand, watching the right hand. They are the voice of reason, the light when all lights go out. Their role is not to inflame but to douse.

Freedom of speech is precious to me, though I have lived in countries that do not endorse them in any way my whole life (United Arab Emirates and Singapore). Freedom of speech has done much for us in Bangladesh. People speak what they want, and do what they want. This is not always a good thing, and has done some harm in the short run, but that's because we're in a transitional period. Like a man traveling the desert for days and nights, and coming upon water, drinks his fill and then lies on the ground convulsing in stomach cramps, we're just getting over the taste of water. We'll grow out of it, eventually, and we'll get better, it's just a matter of time.

I'd like to conclude this rather long entry with my thought on something that's a little lacking in Western cultures: sanctity. Sanctity to the West seems something archaic shed long ago. That an object may hold intrinsic value, or that a mountain known to have turned to wax considered holy, or a simple patch of land called precious for it holds in its bosom a man of great worth. Too much knowledge may have done modern man as much bad as too much freedom has done Bangladesh. Explaining away things with science do not belittle them, for science doesn't seek to ask the questions that really matter.

This on-going incident may have proven to do one very good thing. It's come to show those who wish to see, what each side in this conflict holds sacred. For us, the Prophet (peace be upon him) and his memory. And for the West, I guess it is freedom of speech. We're not threatening freedom of speech with our protests. We're demanding freedom of thought, the acceptance of responsibility, and the sincere desire to help the world become a better place.

Difficult Times Lie Ahead

Alas! Google has but two spots for major international news. On the one hand, we're burning and blowing things up because of cartoons, and on the other hand, we're doing nuclear energy research in an oil- and gas-rich country.

Afraid of us? I think they should be.