Islam: Non-Theological Sources

This paper identifies a list of important secular sources that are essential for a study of Islam and its interaction with the modern world. More importantly, these sources provide basic understanding of how Islam "works on the street." As a reader, I need assistance in making sense of news, and the media is of little help, because interpretations of modern Islam require an understanding of its past in order to make sense of its goals. In addition to the books I note, additional interpretative works are noted in the footnotes and commended to your attention. In a modest sense, this paper serves only as an invitation to some fascinating reading and interpretations of Islam. My goals in writing this paper are four-fold. First, I have sought books that attempt to understand Islam within the context of its past, in its present forms, and to attempt to make sense of its future as a political and religious enterprise.

Second, I have deliberately left ample time for your contribution to the subject, because a genuine and fruitful conversation about books and ideas that deal with Islam is more stimulating than for me to speak incessantly. Though my approach is not typical in proceedings such as this, I am open to a fruitful discussion if you are a willing participant.

Third, in the course of reading about Islam in the non-theological literature, I became interested in what is referred to as fundamentalism. I believe the term fundamentalism is not an accurate one, for reasons I discuss in a footnote, but I prefer to describe Islamic extremists or radicals, though I recognize both "extremist" and "radicalism" may be understand in a pejorative sense by some Muslims. The terms seem to fit better than fundamentalist.

Fourth, I have read and continue to read non-theological authors and authorities on Islam for two reasons.

First, to limit one's reading to biblical and theological analyses of Islam is to draw a too narrow circle around one's research, especially so, because Islam is multifaceted and is as much a political as a religious force.

Second, after the tragic events of September 11, 2002 - - the destruction of the World Trade Center towers, a wing of the Pentagon and the fate of the passengers and crew aboard United Airlines Flight 93- - I began to draw from other perspectives and disciplines in order to place Islam in a modern context. This is what I have attempted to do with this presentation, "Islam: Non-Theological Perspectives".

So let us begin.

V.S. Naipaul'sAmong the Believers: An Islamic Journey (1982) and Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples (1995) constitute admirable introductions to the subject of Islam. Because of the constraints of time, however, I am unable to present any passages from Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples (1995), other than note for his second book, Naipaul received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001.

In Among the Believers, the first book, Naipaul's keen eye and listening skills explore the unsettled ferment in four nations where Islam is the majority faith: Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia.

In preparation for writing Among the Believers, Naipaul spent seven months on the road to discover the "real" Islam.

While one does not always believe publisher's blurbs on dust jackets, in the case of Among the Believers, the claims for the book are not exaggerated.

V.S. Naipaul. . . explores the life, the culture and the current ferment inside four nations of Islam: Iran, where the hysteria and rage of revolution continues; Pakistan, tragically underdeveloped thirty-two years after its founding as a homeland for the Muslims of India; Malaysia, governed by Muslims but economically dominated by the Chinese who constitute half of the population; Indonesia, confused about both its Muslim and its national roots, confused by the rule of four regimes (two foreign) in less than forty years. Naipaul depicts an Islamic world at odds with the modern world, fueled only by an implacable determination to believe.

With this overview in mind, what follows, then, is a lengthy conversation between Naipaul and a Pakistani. The extended conversation becomes a magnificent summary of the great themes touching numerous aspects of Islam in its contemporary setting in Pakistan. In the discussion, the reader begins to understand one what bases Islam and how engages the modern world.

Naipaul's insight into Islam on the street approach helps us understand the implications of today's headlines and news reports.

Among the Believers

I had momentarily -- a number of irritations coming together: the political virulence of his newspaper, his wish both to remain Islamic and to exploit the tolerance and openness of another civilization - - I had momentarily allowed myself to be aggressive with him. I felt guilty.

But his rebuke was not a rebuke at all. He believed in the ideal of an Islamic state; he felt that Pakistan fell short of that ideal and deserved the disregard which had read into my words. The Islamic ideal was the theme of a 1951 book, Pakistan as an Islamic State, which he had brought as a gift for me. It would help me to understand Pakistan, he said. And the book showed me that thirty years before, the Islamic idea has been as vague, as much a statement of impractical intent and muddled history (with interim worldly corruption), as it was now. The Islamic state, I read, was like a high-flying kite, invisible in the mist. "I cannot see it, but something is tugging."

Remember Nusrat. Six months later, when I returned to Karachi and wondered whom I should look up, I thought first of Nusrat. I found him changed. That bubbling, intelligent man had gone grey. The Islam he wished to served had pushed him deep in paranoia; and I regretted more than ever that momentary impulse of aggression towards him, who after all knew only Pakistan.

Nusrat had spoken to the black-capped man in the registry about Islamic laws. I thought they were laws that had yet to be brought in. I didn't know that seven months before, a set of ten Islamic laws had been passed by the military government: laws about Islamic courts and Koranic taxes on wealth and agricultural produce, together with laws about drinking, theft, and illicit sex. These last were hardly laws; they were more about punishments.

Drinking was to be punished by eight stripes. The punishment for illicit sex, for an adult Muslim, was to "be stoned to death at a public place"; for a non-Muslim, a hundred-stripe public whipping, with the possibility of death for rape. "The punishment of stoning to dead was awarded under section 5 or section 6 shall be executed in the following manner, namely: Such of the witnesses who deposed against the convict as may be available shall start stoning him and, while stoning is being carried on, he may be shot, whereupon stoning and shooting shall be stopped."

For theft-- above a certain amount (above the value of 4.457 grams of gold), and not theft by a close relative, a servant, or a guest, and not theft of "wild grass, fish, bird, dog, pig, intoxicant, musical instrument, or perishable foodstuffs for the preservation of which provision does not exist" -- for theft outside these circumstances the punishment for a first offense was the amputation - - "carried out by an authorized medical officer" - - of the right hand "from the joint of the wrist"; for a second offense, the amputation of the left foot "up to the ankle"; for the third offense, imprisonment for life. There was to be no amputation "when the left hand or the left thumb or at least two fingers of the left hand or the right foot of the offender was either missing or unserviceable."

Generally, for many offense, there was to be a lot of whipping, and "The Execution of the Punishment of Whipping Ordinance, 1979" laid down the rules. "The whip, excluding the handle, shall be of one piece only and preferably be made of leather, or a cane, or a branch of a tree, having no knob or joint on it, and its length and thickness shall not exceed 1.22 meters [about 50 inches in length] and 1.25 cm. [about a half-inch] respectively." Whipping, if it was likely to cause death, was to be spread out or postponed. A pregnant woman was to be whipped "two months after the birth of the child or a miscarriage, as the case may be." The weather had to be considered. "If. . . the weather is too cold or too hot, the execution shall be postponed until the weather has become normal." The decencies were to be observed. "Such clothes of the convict should be left on the body of the convict as are required by the injunctions of Islam to be put on." Men were to be whipped standing, women sitting. From the 1951 book Nusrat gave me, it seem that almost as soon as Pakistan had been established, pious people had begun to chat about stoning to death and cutting off hands: "classical" punishments to be worked toward as part of a far-off Islamic ideal, when men became again as pure as (in his fantasy) they had been at the beginning of Islam. It couldn't be said that that had happened in Pakistan; but from Hamid Ali, M.A., M.Ed., LL.B., the editor of Combined Set of Islamic Laws, 1979 (the book I have used here), there was a more than legal welcome to the new laws. They made the nation "proud." Outsiders had "wrong notions" about Islam. "Islam is a system aimed at bringing about a welfare, progressive and forward looking society." It ensured "fair play"; its principles were for all time; its penalties were meant "to purge the society as a whole."

But if I hadn't so far been aware of these laws, it was because in the seven months they had been in force they hadn't been applied. One case had caused a scandal. A pir or holy man in a provincial town had been charged with raping the thirteen-year old daughter of one of his followers. The case against him couldn't get far in the sessions court because the new Islamic law under which he was tried required four witnesses to act.

Why four witnesses? This wen back to a famous incident in the Arabian desert during one of the Prophet's early military adventures, in 626 or 627, when the new faith was just about establishing itself, reducing small hostile communities, one by one. The Prophet's favorite wife, Aisha, then perhaps thirteen, had for some reason been left behind by the caravan one evening. She didn't join it again until the morning, and then in the company of a handsome young soldier. There was an uproar among the Prophet's companions. Ali, the Prophet's cousin, thought the Prophet should get rid of Alisa.

The Prophet - - now in his mid-fifties - - was distressed of days. But Allah intervened; the Prophet had a revelation that Aisha was innocent; that four witnesses were needed to prove adultery; that people spreading unfounded rumours about adultery deserved eighty lashes.

For a visitor in the Pakistan Times - - defending the government against accusations of Islamic slacking, and criticizing the mullahs who had advised the government about Islamic laws - - the law about rape was faulty and absurd ("because the act is never performed in public") and was based on a misreading of the Koran. The Prophet's revelation was about "lewdness" and feminine lewdness specifically. It couldn't be said to refer to rape. So it didn't require four witnesses. Ordinary witnesses would have sufficed; even medical evidence might have been offered. Who, Islamically speaking, was right? The mullahs, sticking literally to the most applicable revelation in the Koran? Or the Pakistan Times man, bending that revelation a little to make it fit the case, and giving a modern extension to the idea of witness? It was easy to state the Koranic punishment; it was another matter to work out the law. To work out the law, with only historical, geographical, and cultural (and sometimes folksy) particularities of the Koran as a guide, was to become entangled in textual-religious-sectarian disputes of this kind, and very quickly get away from the idea of equity.

The Pakistan Times man could not hide his rage about the mullahs. They were politically ambitious; they had "shrewdly entrapped" the government by framing laws that couldn't work and then blaming the government for not operating these laws: they had divided Islam into conflicting sects and made Islam a mockery. The answer was to go by to the holy book. Do that, and "we will find light all around. But once we wriggle out of the Koran, there is nothing but darkness and confusion in store for us."

But was it as easy as that? To raise just one point: how old was Aisha when she married the fifty-year old Prophet? Was she six or nine or nineteen? Did she, as one tender story, take her dolls and toys to the Prophet's tent? The Koran doesn't help. Aisha's age has be worked out from other sources. The question was gone into at length one Friday sabbath in the Pakistan Times; and the question is of more than historical interested, because Aisha's age of marriage - - and there were nine different opinions - - can fix the legal marriage age for girls.

In Islam, and especially the Islam of the fundamentalists , precedent is all. The principles of the Prophet - - as divined from the Koran and the approved traditions - - are for all time. They can be extended to cover all disciplines. The Prophet was reported to have said that the best Muslims were going to be his contemporaries, the second best the generation after, and so on, the decline continuing till the end of time. Can that be read as a condemnation of "Darwinism"? It is what the new, educated fundamentalists say. And it is at once sound faith, and part of their rage against the civilization that encircles them and which they as a community despair of mastering.

In the fundamentalist scheme the world constantly decays and has constantly to be re-created. The only function of the intellect is to assist that re-creation. It reinterprets the texts; it re-established divine precedent. So history has to serve theology, law is separated from the idea of equity. and learning separated from learning. The doctrine has it attractions. To the student from the University of Karachi, from perhaps a provincial or peasant background, the old faith comes more easily than any newfangled academic discipline. So fundamentalism takes root in the universities, and to deny education can become the approved educated act. In the days of Muslim glory Islam opened itself to the learning of the world. Now fundamentalism provides an intellectual thermostat, set low. It equalizes, comforts, shelters, and preserves.

"In this way the faith pervades everything, and it is possible to understand what fundamentalists mean whey they say that Islam is a complete way of life. But what is said about Islam is true, and perhaps truer, of other religions - -Hinduism or Buddhism or lesser tribal faiths - - that at an early stage of their history were also complete cultures, self-contained and more or less isolated, with institutions, manners, and beliefs making a whole.

"The Islamic fundamentalist wish to work back to such whole, for them a God-given whole, but with the tool of faith alone - - belief, religious practices and rituals. It is like a wish - - with intellect suppressed or limited, the historical sense falsified - - to work back from the abstract to the concrete, and to set up the tribal walls again. It is to see to re-create something like a tribal or city-state that - - except in theological fantasy - - never was. The Koran is not the statue book of a settled golden age; it is the mystical and oracular record of an extended upheaval widening out from the Prophet to his tribe in Arabia. Arabia was full of movement: Islam, with all its Jewish and Christian elements, was always mixed, eclectic, developing. Almost as soon as the Prophet made his community secure he sought to subdue his enemies. It was during a military march in the fifth year of the Muslim era that Aisha spent the night alone in the desert.

"The West, or universal civilization it leads, is emotionally rejected. It undermines; it threatens. But at the same time it is needed for its machines, goods, medicines, warplanes, the remittances from the emigrants, the hospitals that might have a cure for calcium deficiency, the universities that will provide master's degrees in mass media. All of the rejection of the West is contained within the assumption that there will always exist out there a living, creative civilization, oddly neutral, open to all to appeal to. Rejection, therefore, is not absolute rejection. It is also, for the community as a whole, a way of ceasing to strive intellectually. It is to be parasitic; parasitism is one of the unacknowledged fruits of fundamentalism. And the emigrants pour out from the land of faith: thirty thousand Pakistanis shipped by the manpower-export experts in West Berlin alone, to claim the political asylum meant for the people of East Germany.

"The patron saint of Islamic fundamentalists in Pakistan was Maulana Maudoodi. He opposed the idea of the separate Indian Muslim state because he felt that the Muslim were not pure enough for such a state. He felt that God should be the lawgiver, and, offering ecstasy of this sort rather than a practical programme, he became the focus of millenarian passion. He campaigned for Islamic laws without stating what those laws should be.

"He died while I was in Pakistan. But he didn't die in Pakistan: the news of his death came from Boston. At the end of his long and cantankerous life the maulana had gone against his high principles. He had gone to a Boston hospital to look for health; he had at the very end entrusted himself to the skill and science of the civilization he had tried to shield his followers from. He had sought, as someone said to me (not all Pakistanis are fundamentalists), to reap where he had not wanted his people to sow. Of the maulana it might be said that he had gone to his well-deserved place in heaven by way of Boston, and that he went at least part of the way by Boeing.

'If we seek guidance from the Koran,'" the writer in the Pakistan Times said, "'we will find the light all around.'" The mullahs' laws about whipping and stoning to death had come to nothing, but the Islamic social order was still possible in Pakistan. A new "methodology" was needed. Bypass the mullahs; do away with the religious sects, give up the attend to mix Islam, based on the sovereignty of Allah, with Western democracy, based on the sovereignty of the people; do away with the political parties.

"The political advice was followed within weeks. The elections that had been promised were scrapped. But the state had to be governed, the people had to be policed. Public floggings were decreed, and there was no nonsense this time about eyewitnesses. The army sent out whipping vans to the bazaars: instant law, Islam on wheels.

"Step by step, out of its Islamic striving, Pakistan had undone the rule of law it had inherited from the British, and replaced it with nothing."

Seventeen years later, or in 1995, Naipaul visited Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan, and Malaysia. He reports on the lands where descendents of Muslim converts, mostly non-Arabs as in the case of Indonesia and Malaysia, lived and where the dreams of Islamic purity, a return to faithful observance of the Koran, clash with realities of economic, political and often other religious traditions.

The Prologue to Beyond Beliefsets forth Naipaul's reasons for writing the second book.

This book is about people. It is not a book of opinion. It is a book of stories. The stories were collected during five months of travel in 1995 in four non-Arab Muslim countries - - Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia. So there is a context and a theme.

Islam is in its origins an Arab religion. Everyone not an Arab who is Muslim is a convert. Islam is not simply a matter of conscience or private belief. It makes imperial demands. A convert's worldview alters. His holy places are in Arab lands; his sacred language is Arabic. His idea of history alters. He rejects his own; he become, whether he likes it or not, a part of the Arab story. The convert has to turn away from everything that is his. The disturbance for societies is immense, and even after a thousand years can remain unresolved; the turning away has to be done again and again. People develop fantasies about who and what they are, and in the Islam of converted countries there is an element of neurosis and nihilism. These countries can easily be set on the boil.

Antony Black's The History of Islamic Political Thought Antony Black's The History of Islamic Political Thought prepares the reader to wrestle with Islam fundamentalism. His contribution to the discussion merits our attention, because he traces the history of Islamic political thought from the Prophet to the present. Though I believe the use of the word "fundamentalism" is not an accurate usage of the word, violating its original meaning and ripping the word from its original context, however, I will not quibble. Fortunately, Black is informative and insightful when it comes to understanding the thrust` of modern Islam in its most extreme and radical forms.

"Questions facing Islamic political thought today"is an important section in Professor Black's book. The section's strength is that he offers a timely summary of the different questions Westerners ask and the questions upper most in the mind of Muslims.

But when he "softens" his interpretation of Islam in the modern world by claiming in the past, until two or so centuries ago, "Western Christianity" championed many of the same practices we, in the modern West, find objectionable in contemporary features of Islam, he is either misinformed or naïve or attempting to placate his Muslim friends.

Regardless, his critique of Islam and the West merits our most thoughtful attention.

Questions Facing Islamic Political Thought Today

"For most Westerners, the main issues today are Islam's relationship to liberal democracy and international order. Many Muslim might see the implementation of justice, including specific precepts of the Shari'a, as more important. Many Christians and Marxists might take a similar view, substituting for the Shari'a specific precepts of the Bible, or social and economic rights.

"The principles of popular sovereignty and the rule of law are supported by the great majority of Islamic thinkers, fundamentalist as well as modernist, but only in very general terms. What precisely they mean by these, and how they would see them be implemented, is of less clear. This is precisely the crux of the matter.

"Behind these general observations lies the simple but basic fact that Muslims as Muslims have a different starting point from Western liberals. Basically they are non-humanist: that is, for all but the most radically liberal and Westernized Muslims, people only become legitimate persons by being Muslims, or adherents of some other revealed monotheistic faith with a revealed moral code. Until a century or two ago, much of the same was true for inhabitants of the Christian West, if you substitute the priority of Christianity for that of Islam. This, to start with, fundamentally alters one's view of citizenship.

"Secondly, what is above all else important to a Muslim as a Muslim is that the law of God should be observed, by oneself and, so far as possible, others. How this is achieved is of secondary importance. This gives a very different set of political priorities. It means that human rights, liberties, the rule of law and democratic procedure, however important they may be, are of second worth. So far as democratic procedures are concerned, the same might also have been said of inhabitants of the Christian West up to a couple of centuries ago (one might be tempted to say, until it ceased being in a full sense the Christian West). But human rights, liberties and the rule of law have become fundamental and incontrovertible principles in Western society (however often they are neglected in practice, particularly with regard to outsiders). This, I would contend, is due not so much to Christianity but to ancient Stoicism and similar philosophies which have for centuries permeated Western culture.

"One must see these points together with a third point, which strikes anyone who has studied the history of Islamic political thought, namely the overwhelming tradition, in practice and in theory, of dynastic monarchical government, limited (only) by the Shari'a. Alternative forms and practices have only come onto the agenda in the Islamic world since, and one is forced to conclude, because it became subject to Western influence. (Of course, something broadly similar might be said about other non-European political cultures today). What this means is that the tendency towards one-man rule, whether in the form of hereditary monarchy or of 'dictatorship' (meaning government by one person in the name of some principle or common interest), is not accidental but written into the political culture of many if not all parts of the Islamic world (though Iran and Turkey now provide exceptions). In other words, such regimes are held to be legitimate because they exist, provide some form of 'law and order', and encourage or sanction the implementation of Islamic justice (the Shari'a). It seems to be, quite surprising in view of much recent American propaganda, that the only serious exception is Iran.

"Having said that, let us make the following further observations. First, among Muslims generally, everyone including rulers is held to be subject to the rule of law; but this may only mean that they must adhere to the Shari'a. It is generally assumed that a ruler should be elected, or, if he is not, that there should be clear evidence of his popular support. In most predominantly Muslim countries, there is an elected representative assembly. This can be legitimised by the Islamic norms of shura (consultation) and ijma (consensus). Few would oppose democracy itself in the name of Islam. For example, 'political power . . . is neither valid nor exercisable except by and on behalf o the community through the process of (shura, consultation). No-one is authorized to . . . rule by personal discretion' (Islamic Council of Europe 1980 and 1981). The Islamic Council of Europe also made political participation a right and a duty, based on hisba [overseeing public morals, especially in trade]. "Putting this in the context of what was said above, the point is that a variety of forms of dictatorship are not ruled out by the value dominant in much of Muslim political culture (although they may nowadays be considered imperfect and disapproved of by man) so long as they do not infringe on the fundamental values of Islam (belief in God, the prophecy of Muhammad, the Shari'a). Here, let us also note that, quite apart from mainstream political culture, fundamentalists, in particular, emphasis leadership among with shura (consultation). There is an 'incessant quest for a charismatic chief' (amir, military commander, ruler), who would rule by virtue of his personal qualities: 'in general, the more radical the party, the more central the figure of the amir'. Such a person would be a religious as well as a political leader. This springs out of another monarchical element in Islamic culture, namely the belief that certain individuals (analogous to Muhammad himself, albeit acknowledged to be of lower status) are from time to time inspired, or chosen, by God to lead the community. Such persons are recognized not by popular vote but by the religious criteria of piety, virtue, personal presence and the like.

"Fundamentalists explicitly quality popular sovereignty, and the authority of elected representatives, by the sovereignty (al-hakimiyya: absolute rulership) of God. In theology, again, all theists would agree. But Islamic fundamentalists employ the theory of divine sovereignty in a special way. First, they emphasis the need for representatives to be properly qualified, that is to have certain more and intellectual qualities that are regarded as desirable on religious grounds. One finds a broadly similar idea in John Stuart Mill and T.S. Eliot. In practice, it easily leads to subordination of elected governments to a self-appointed religious elite, in the case of Iran.

"Second, the legislative scope of parliament is limited by the Shari'a for the obvious reason that this is a divinely legislated code. For example, Turabi believes that 'an Islamic order of government is essential a form of representative democracy', but he qualifies this in a remarkable way: 'an Islamic government is not strictly speaking a direct government of and by the people; it is a government of Shari'a. But (he goes on) 'in a substantial sense, it is a popular government since the Shari'a represents the convictions of the people and, therefore, their direct will. This limitation on what a representative body can do is to guarantee the supremacy of the religious will of the community. This is a fairly typical statement. It obviously has the effect of removing real authority from democratic elections. It reinterprets the Western idea of democracy in an interestingly Rousseauistway, and so reunites it with the Islamic ideal.

"The question of course is, how and by whom is the Shari'a to be interpreted? How are we to know what 'the religious will of the community' is? This is, characteristically, left unanswered. A Christian might hold similar view, but her/she would be more likely to leave the interpretation of religious Right, at least in a political context, to the individual voter. An issue like abortion, however, provides an exception in some countries.

"Finally, on constitutional matters, Islamic political though as a whole, both modernist and fundamentalist, is characterised by a remarkable lack of detail. The Muslim Brethren said that they would leave the 'specifics' to 'time, place and the needs of the people'. For Qutb, it may be said, 'the form of government … based on the principles of Islam is not of vital importance. In theory, it is a matter of indifference … whether the Islamic state has a republican or other form of government.' For him, 'the goodness of the state does not depend on its institutions but … on its underlying principles.' Fundamentalists tend to dismiss the details of constitutions and governmental procedures - - the stuff of practical politics - - as 'futile arguments about mere technicalities'. Choureiri comments that 'this aversion to discuss concrete politics … has become the hallmark of contemporary Islamic radicalism. The role played by Outb's negative approach in this respect was undoubtedly the most decisive factor. V.S. Naipaul captures this in his record of interviews in the Islamic world, conducted just after the 1979 revolution, when expectations were are their highest and the fundamentalists project at its peak:

The late twentieth-century Islam appeared to raise political issues.But it had the flaw of its origins - - the flaw that ran right through Islamic history: to the political issues it raised it offered no political or practical solution. It offered only the faith. It offered only the Prophet, who would settle everything - - but who had ceased to exist. This political Islam was rage, anarchy.

Similarly, Ayubi comments, 'one may search the manifestoes of the Muslim Brethren or the Iranian clerics for a detailed description of what an Islamic state or an Islamic economy should look like, but such a search will be in vain' (p. 42). This is partly due to the implicit belief that moral principles and virtue of those in power are what really matter; that, once these are settled, everything else will fall into place. The result is that when people speak of popular sovereignty and the rule of law, one cannot always be clear whether it is a serious proposition or a rhetorical device.

In the section that follows, Black explains, "Liberty as a social and political norm has entered Islamic political thought only during the last 150 years or so and in response to European influence. The progress of liberal values in generally depends, partly through not wholly, upon the separation between religion and the polity. But, for both traditional Islamic thinkers and fundamentalists, the function of the state must include enforcement of religious values in public life; this is stated time after time as the state's most serious, indeed its only duty . . .

'A state which does not take interest in establishing virtue and eradicating vice and in which adultery, drinking . . . obscene literature, indecent films . . . immoral display of beauty, promiscuous mingling of women and men, co-education, etc. flourish without let or hindrance cannot be called an Islamic state.' [He cites Khomeini as one source for this estimate of the proper role of the state and religion.] . . . . . .

Equality "traditionally has meant by [the term an] equality among male Muslims. This raises the question of human rights in an Islamic state or in a state with a Muslim majority. Zubaida observes that 'Islam has no specific doctrine of human rights', but that Muslims have endorsed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and have found it fully compatible with Islamic doctrine; indeed, they have claimed that Islam got there first. One strength of Islamic moral culture has certainly been the informal exercise of moral duties regardless of the state. But, once again, the real issue is how rights are applied in detail, and, of course, to whom.

"On the whole, the greater the influence of traditional Islam, or of fundamentalism, the more restricted women are, and the more difficult is the situation of non-Muslims, especially non-theists. Many modernists, but among fundamentalists only Turabi, have championed equality of women in marriage, including monogamy and an equal right to divorce, and the equality of women in education."

Black continues his interpretation of Islam and its engagement with the modern world, that is, the West, by noting that "the rights of non-Muslims have received less attention in the West, for obvious reasons of political correctness. But this is no less a serious matter; it is a matter of life and death. The prospects for political, or even legal, equality for non-Muslims are tied in with the people's perception of their political and social identity."

The Christian or humanist seems to have more difficulty than a Muslim in detaching citizenship from religious or non-religious affiliation, according to Black. The divergence goes back to historical origins and first principles, which he notes on page 10 of this book. In effect, Christianity started as an alien society and detached itself from the state; Islam took over political society. The authoritative texts of the two faiths, Black argues, reflect this difference. Until an intellectual revolution, a revolution equivalent to the Reformation of the sixteenth century in Western Christianity, occurs in Islam, things will not change.

It is against the background provided so helpfully by Naipaul and Black that enables a reader to make sense of a story that appeared in a recent issue of The Economist.

The Economist carries a story dealing with American born members of Al-Qaeda.The story line reads: American born members of Islamic extremist groups have shed their American citizenship in order to serve Islam either overseas or to assist terrorists in the United States.

Perhaps it was an oversight on my part, but in countries where "political correctness" tends to obfuscate issues and in lands in which "tolerance" is carried to extreme ends, stories such a this one are buried in news rooms. If so, then the press or media are highly selective, as a noted novelist had discovered.

United Press International reports in its October 9, 2002, 14:15 news dispatch that Oriana Fallaci, 72, an Italian novelist, was in the dock in Paris.

Her offense? Fallaci's best-selling book in Italy and France, Rage and Pride,is a work in which she characterizes Muslims as "vile creatures who urinated in baptisteries" and "multiply like rats." This recent work by the celebrated author is what she calls "a sermon." She pulls no punches when she challenges bureaucrats and politicians who refuse to enforce the laws of their country or defend its citizens against the encroachment of Muslims who do not want to assimilate. Most notably, she speaks harshly of the leaders of Italy, and leaders of other once major European nations, who fold under the pressure of political correctness and other fads, and do not enforce their laws. On this issue, Fallaci is not willing to retreat, however, in spite of pressure to capitulate to the prevailing winds of cultural abandonment.

Because of her outspoken remarks in this new book, an anti-racist group petitioned a French court to ban the book from publication. Unwilling to go that far - - banning the book! - - , The Human Rights Leaguesimply wants to have disclaimers appended to The Rage and the Pride because, the petitioners to the court claim, the disparaging passages do not reflect the Muslim religion accurately.

However, one must asks, Are Fallaci's observations and description of Muslim behavior in European cities or elsewhere an inaccurate depiction? Does she speak the truth?

After reading The Rage and the Pride and reading Naipaul's Among the Believers, she indeed finds Islam repulsive, but Naipaul expresses his disdain more softly. He, too, is not impressed for reasons obvious to any intelligent person. As for Fallaci's severe criticisms and trenchant and bold and brash commentary, one justifies it on the basis that she has seen Islam in action in her many years of travel as a journalist and novelist.

Equally important is the fact that though she was raised a Roman Catholic, she now is an atheist, but, in some sense, remains a devout cultural Roman Catholic, which explains her outrage. Furthermore, because of her past religious upbringing, she asks the Pope to act like a Pope and defend the Church against this alien religion.

In retrospect, these two seemingly disparate episodes - - Al-Qaeda in Lackawanna, New York, and Oriana Fallaci in a Paris dock - - provide a context for reading Robert Spencer's book.

Robert Spencer's Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions about the World's Fastest-Growing Faithtackles a wide range of subjectsthat gives the reader a new means of assessing Islam within the words of the Koran.

Spencer, a student of Islam for twenty years, apparently has read ever-important book on the subject, or so it appears, including the Koran. In this impressive synthesis, he demonstrates how the interplay of social forces that drive the extremist and terrorist movements in Islam are encouraged not only by passages in the Koran but, he adds, how the Koran and among the extremist religious leaders, become deadly in the modern world.

Toward the end of his work, however, Spencer concludes the West may have lost its will to resist this powerful religious-political force, a horrible idea in my estimation. Spencer's lament certainly fits what Fallaci preaches about toward the end of The Rage and the Pride.

Although the Spencer's text is may be read as largely explanatory or interpretative of events that are accumulating on an almost daily basis, I have also included in footnotes important texts that illuminate or explain the historical context.

The question that keeps returning in my mind is a simple one: "Will the real Islam please stand up?" However, an answer to that question is not as simple as the question is, because the record of Islam's dealing with the world, historically speaking, is sometimes clear, sometimes ambiguous. The ambiguity appears to fall on a fault line between the Arab forms of Islam and the Islam of non-Arab countries.

Some Closing and Personal Observations

The audience for this annual meeting will welcome abundance of presentations on Islam and other non-Christian or world religions, and with the context of biblical and theological understandings. These are important and useful.
Nevertheless, I believe those of evangelical persuasion have the duty to read widely non-theological authors, who in the course of the travels and research provide other perspectives on Islam, and fill in the gaps that make us aware what Islam is.

Yet, in offering this limited portrait of Islam, it may be that like in France, the subject of Islam and of Muslims may be considered in poor taste if authors, who have conducted field or academic research, provide an unflattering portrait of the practical side of Islam.

However, most of my experiences during brief excursions in the Middle East do not fit the expectations of political correctness, though on some occasions I have met some Christian Arabs and a few Muslims who are genuine and decent.

For now, in American governmental circles, Islam remains a protected issue, as it does in many American and European universities and among some American denominations. Naively, we desperately want to believe Muslims are like us, that is, they are totally peaceful in all its dealings.

While many Muslims are, there are those who are absolutely rigid and unyielding belief in Islam's superiority over all religions and their allegiance to the demands of citizenship in nation-states is of no consequence. This Islam becomes unavoidably part religion, part politics, as Black makes clear.

When Islam achieves a status in a state or culture the call for all people to submit becomes unrelenting and powerful. And when Islam enjoys majority status in a land or state and is able to dictate the rules of the state, the practice of Islam among those peoples becomes compulsory or failure to convert to Islam places the non-believer in jeopardy.

Quite naturally, my interest in Islam was revived as a result of September 11, 2001. Much earlier in college, however, I remember my first encounter with a Muslim came when, as a pledge to a fraternity in a small Methodist college in Texas, I met Greg M., an Iraqi. Greg M. and I were two of ten pledges in the spring of 1954.

We were on a field trip - a pledge event! - when Greg, a young Muslim from Baghdad, voiced a threat against one of the fraternity members who he believed as mistreating him. Greg M. literally shouted, "'If I ever get you back to Iraq, I will kill you.'"

The offense, minor in nature and something these Texas boys and Protestant Christians did not find offensive even when it happened to them, too, was minor in nature. But that instructive moment was filed in my memory, and remembrance of that incident during 1954 surfaced when September 11 unfolded, forty-seven years later.

Then, in 1968, a year almost to the day after the Six-Day War in which Israel whipped the combined forces of five countries, I was a member of the Princeton Seminary Study Tour of the Bible Lands.

Our tour took us to Lebanon (before the Civil War that began in 1971), to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, to Israel (the 1948 state and the newly worn territory of the West Bank and East Jerusalem), to Egypt and finally to Greece.

Among the many vivid memories of this trip, however, one memory surfaced again when the events of September 11 unfolded. Our party went to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. In twenty years, the Jews had brought a sense of biblical restoration to the land - - trees were planted and growing and the modern roads were paved and the Negev was reclaimed in whole or part.

These details are merely suggestive of the modernization the Jewish State undertook with its establishment. But also the State of Israel brought the modern world of sanitation, health, and economy to the Arab peoples who resided within its borders. But the denouement came on the day our party took to a day trip to Masada near the Dead Sea. We left Jerusalem and began our descent toward Jericho, not that long ago before June 1967, when Jericho was an Arab town and under the administration of King Hussein of Jordan.

In one year's time, the Bedouin, whose flocks and herds grazed on the hills of the Judean Wilderness, were able to draw water from a faucet rather than drawing water from other sources. Why hadn't the King of Jordan provided water, I asked myself.

The old and modern and the ancient and the contemporary ways were meeting in what we take for granted: water piped to the location.

Since 1984, I have not visited Israel and I do not know what transformations the Palestinian Liberation Organizationand Yasser Arafat have brought to Gaza and those enclaves on the West Bank that are under control of the PLO. My expectation is they have stopped material progress in its tracks.

But events of September 11, 2001 cannot be divorced from the ongoing violence that engulfs the Middle East, especially within the State of Israel. As Islamic terrorism spreads its tentacles around the world, touching Indonesia and Bali, and threatens other nations, including the Europeans as well, we must view Islam as seamless robe in spite of the desire to think otherwise.

This is not a time for sentiment or unreciprocated good will.

James A. Glasscock, H.R.
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A)
5 Sherwood Drive
Fallsington, PA 19054-2607
215-337-8176
E-mail: Longdrycreek@aol.com
Web Page: Longdrycreek.com

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