Among their historic grievances, Muslims often point to the
Crusades and the sacking of Jerusalem in 1099, the expulsion of the
Moors from Spain in 1492, the battle of Lepanto in 1571, the Treaty of
Karlowitz in 1699, and the colonization of the Levant, Palestine,
Egypt, Algeria, Morocco by the French and British in the 19th and early
part of the 20th centuries.
The Western World has its own
narrative. Long before the Crusades, in 711, Islamic armies invaded
Spain from North Africa and destroyed the Ostrogothic kingdom. In
October 732, at the Battle of Tours, Charles Martel (the Hammer),
marshaled a force of Franks and Burgundians who defeated an invading
army of the Umayyad Caliphate led by 'Abdul Rahman, the Goveneror-Gernal
of Al-Andalus (Spain), and saved what later became France from becoming
a Muslim principality. In 1453, Constantinople was conquered by the
Ottomans who desecrated St. Sophia's desecrated and converted it into a
mosque. And Muslim armies continued to besiege Eastern Europe well into
the 17th century.
Gradually, as the fear of Islam retreated
from Western Europe, a triumphant Catholic Church consolidated its
religious and political power throughout vast expanses of the region.
Thousands upon thousands of those who were deemed to be heretics,
apostates, Jews, or other enemies of the Church were brutally
suppressed by the Holy Office - the Inquisition. Torture, dismemberment
and auto de fes became the preferred methods to enforce orthodoxy.
Hussites, Albigensians, Jews and other heretics and non-believers lived
in constant fear of exposure and persecution.
As the fear of
further invasions by Christian armies receded, Islamic rule in the
Middle East was also consolidated. Under the rule of the Ottomans,
non-Muslim subjects (dhimmis) were allowed to practice their religion,
subject to certain restrictions; were granted some measure of autonomy
within their own communities; and their personal safety and property
were guaranteed, in return for paying a tax and acknowledging Muslim
supremacy. While he conceded their inferior status, Bernard Lewis in his
book, The Jews of Islam, observed that, in most
respects, the position of non-Muslims was "was very much easier than
that of non-Christians or even of heretical Christians in medieval
Europe."As Lewis notes, dhimmis rarely faced martyrdom or exile, or
forced compulsion to change their religion, and with certain exceptions,
they were free in their choice of residence and profession.
Today, the relative positions of believers and non-believers alike in
Western society and in the Muslim world have largely been reversed. How
did this happen? In the Western world, the Protestant Reformation, and
the ensuing wars between Catholics and Protestants persuaded an
exhausted population and their leaders that toleration of one another's
religious beliefs was the only viable way to avoid incessant warfare,
death and despoliation. The Peace of Westphalia, a series of peace
treaties signed between May and October 1648, ended the Thirty Years'
War. Most importantly, the treaties allowed the rulers of the signatory
states to independently decide their religious preference. Protestants
and Catholics were declared to be equal before the law, and Calvinism
was accorded legal recognition.
Slowly, as a result of
these treaties, the concept of toleration took root in the Western
world. From this root, as democratic societies blossomed, nurtured by
the Reformation and the Enlightenment, the ideas of personal autonomy
and freedom became central. As a consequence, by the later part of the
19th century, an important set of distinctions had been drawn between
the realm of the church and its responsibilities, and the proper role of
elected governments toward their citizens.
In the Middle
East, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the existence of autocratic
governments, pervasive economic backwardness, illiteracy and intense
anger spawned by the emergence of the State of Israel- exacerbated by
its mistreatment of its own Arab citizens and the Palestinian population
- have created an unstable region in which the concept of tolerance has
all but disappeared. With the demise of the Ottoman Caliphate, during
the past seventy years the Middle East has become virtually depopulated
of Catholic, Orthodox and Nestorian Christians, while the few who remain
endure constant discrimination and persecution. Sadly, the Middle East -
which was the birthplace of Christianity - has become hostile to the
adherents of a major religion whose presence there predated Islam by
more than six centuries.
Today in the Middle East the rise
of Islamic fundamentalism, fueled by fanatics, poses a threat to the
Western democracies and to the entire world. The current wave of
demonstrations against the movie trailer allegedly created by an
Egyptian-born Copt who is now an American citizen is the latest
manifestation of what can only be described as a collective psychosis in
which all principles of proportionality and rationality have been lost.
While many uninformed Muslims demand the execution of the Copt who
satirized their prophet, they remain unfazed by the recent burning of
bibles by Muslim mullahs in Cairo, and oblivious to the constant pogroms
throughout the Muslim world against non-believing innocents who bear no
ill-will toward their religion. This sad spectacle, compounded by an
educated Muslim elite who have been cowed into silence, reminds us of
the words of Yeats, "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are
full of passionate intensity."
A series of articles in the Economist
("Islam and democracy: Uneasy companions," August 6, 2011) quotes a
Lebanese woman, who is described as a sophisticated Sunni Muslim in her
50s, who could easily navigate from English, to French and to Arabic.
"Of course, they say nice things these days,"They know who they're
talking to. But you cannot trust them--absolutely not." As the magazine
reported, "Again and again, in secular and liberal circles in Beirut,
Cairo, Rabat, Tunis and even Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian
Authority, you hear almost identical
dark warnings against the
Islamist movements that are gaining ground across the Arab world as
dictators are toppled, tackled or forced into concessions."
As a religion, Islam asserts an exclusive claim to the Truth. That
Truth is derived entirely from the Qur'an - which is accepted as the
unmediated word of the living God. The religion's teachings are
supplemented by the Hadith, the commentaries that recount statements and
deeds attributed to Mohammed.
Hence, Islam does not
present a challenge to the Western world as a political philosophy.
Rather it represents a challenge posed by a set of religious dogmas that
have been hijacked by Wahhabis and other fundamentalists who insist
upon interpreting the Qur'an as a rigid and unforgiving set of religious
dogmas. Their fanaticism has widened the chasm that separates Western
secular democracies from much of the Muslim world, imposed insuperable
obstacles that impede the development of civil societies and their
institutions, and constrained critical economic development. Their
demand that truly observant Muslims must focus upon the next life rather
than the present condemns millions of Muslims to lives of penury and
misery, and left many with only rage and a false sense of victimization
to sustain them.
The insistence by some Islamic imams of
their right to impose Shar'ia upon believers and non-believers, coupled
with the appallingly subordinate status to which so many women in the
Muslim world are subjected, are inimical to the core values of the
European Enlightenment. Those within the Western democratic political
traditions, whether conservative, liberal or socialist, will continue to
criticize Islamic practices so long as apologists refuse to condemn an
extremism that refuses to distinguish between the province of God and
the province of man, denigrates the rights of women and non-believers,
and eschews the quest for social justice here on earth in deference to
some future, heavenly reward.
Absent the equivalent of the
Protestant Reformation or the Thirty Years War followed by an edict of
toleration such as that expressed in the Peace of Westphalia, the
Islamic world is unlikely to embrace the idea of toleration, as a
central social concept, anytime soon. Until Islamic leaders endorse that
concept unequivocally and acknowledge the importance of other Western
notions, admittedly more often preached than observed in practice, - i.e
- that social change can be sought and achieved through political
discussion, by the emergence of new ideas, and by the evolution of
policies - the chasm between the West and Islam will remain wide and
deep.
In the short term, infinite patience is the best
response, along with a firm commitment by Western polities to promote
and to provide extensive financial support for the education of Muslim
women. Only when women have become an educated force throughout the
Middle East will the forces of religious fanaticism be stilled.
