| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: WoT |
| An American Muslim defends his faith. But where are the fatwas condemning terrorism? |
| 2004-08-04 |
| Feisal Abdul Rauf is the spiritual leader, or imam, of a mosque just blocks from Ground Zero. Though he had long been active in "interfaith dialogue" with his Christian and Jewish counterparts, he was galvanized by the horror of 9/11. He has emerged since then as an articulate and sometimes eloquent spokesman for a moderate form of Islam, more specifically, an "American Islam." In his new book he presents what he terms "a new vision" of both Islam and America; it is a picture that is at once quixotic and maddening, particularly because it is so well-intentioned. One of the more puzzling and, indeed, agonizing aspects of the aftermath of 9/11--especially for those who, like myself, have spent many years teaching and writing about Islam--has been the relative silence of American Muslims, a silence that by and large continues unbroken. In "What's Right With Islam," Mr. Abdul Rauf makes an effort to come to grips with this disastrous passivity on the part of Muslims, but his comments fall far short. To state that "suicide bombing is a tragic phenomenon that strikes at us all" and to follow this up with the remark that "it takes a terrible toll of innocent lives, while it also reflects the deep despair and hopelessness of its perpetrators" hardly seems commensurate with the magnitude of the disaster. Mr. Abdul Rauf notes, rightly, that both suicide and the taking of innocent lives are expressly and unequivocally forbidden in Islamic teaching. In fact, Islam goes much further than that. In a sacred tradition recounted by the medieval mystic and theologian al-Ghazali (to whom Mr. Abdul Rauf devotes some admiring pages) we read that "if a man is murdered in the East and in the West another man takes delight in the murder, both he and the murderer are partners in the crime." Mr. Abdul Rauf doesn't mention this tradition, so dear to Sufis, but it would have strengthened his case. |
| Posted by:ed |