Liberals and Hardliners: Islam at War with Itself

By Bramantyo Prijosusilo, New America Media. Posted December 17, 2008.

To keep and nurture a following, a scholar must be careful about where he or she receives funding. American Muslims must produce not only Islamic rap and Islamic youth novels. They need to nurture Islamic scholars who are educated in the classical subjects of Islam but who can also independently offer an Islamic way of life that is compatible with and beneficial to the global village of the 21st Century.

Islamist terror did not begin with perceived injustices committed by the United States; it started with ideology. Islamists respond violently to the perceived injustices of America's foreign policy because their ideology demands it. Islamists have plenty of charismatic scholars whose works glorify their thirst for violence. Often these scholars lived through a time of profound suffering, such as Ibn Taimiyyah, who experienced the fall of the Abbasid Caliphate to the Mongols in the 13th Century.

Islamist ideologues see the Muslims' predicament as punishment from Allah for not adhering to religion. In what can be seen as an inferiority complex, they feel compelled to purify the expression of Islam in their societies by word and by sword. The enforcement of a total acceptance of Islam is the main theme of all Islamist ideologues. The total acceptance of Islam requires a state that implements Sharia law expressed through the adoption of 7th Century customs of Arabia.

In a way, Islamdom today faces a situation similar to the time when Islamist fundamentalism was born in the ideas of Ibn Taimiyyah. While he faced the destruction of the Muslim community at the hands of the grandson of Genghis Khan, currently, mankind faces obliteration by the failure of states, nuclear wars, and natural and man- made environmental breakdowns.

The problem is that the Islamists' responses to current issues are stuck in the 13th Century. The Mongols have become the United States, the United Kingdom and their allies. Muslims and the world need a new, relevant, expression of Islam, one that can stand up to the militancy and the desperation of the jihadi Islamists. It must be an expression of Islam that is true to the spirit of the Qur'an and the examples of the Prophet Muhammad, but it must also contribute towards the humanism and ecological awareness of the 21st Century.

American (and Western) Muslims are the best equipped to produce this desperately needed expression of Islam. Traditional Islamic scholars are not well educated on current environmental issues, and do not relate to modern humanistic concepts such as gender equality and democracy. Islamic scholars brought up in the West have a much broader understanding of the issues facing mankind today.

Could these scholars now please stand up and speak?

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