A rchive Date
[ 30-01-2004 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Islam ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/mansur_toronto.html
The struggle for Islam's soul - part II
By SALIM MANSUR -- For the Toronto Sun
January 30, 2004
The struggle for Islam's soul in the modern world is as old as Islam itself. The first victims of this struggle soaked in blood were the family of Mohammed, the prophet of Islam, within a few decades after his demise.
In this sordid story, tribalism prevailed as leaders, including those responsible for the destruction of the prophet's family, seized upon Islam as an instrument of their tribal politics.
Ever since, there has been an official Islam of power-holders whose politics gutted the transcendent message of a sublime monotheism.
Beyond the shadows of power exists the Islam of the people, a faith shaped by longing for justice and surrender to the infinite compassion of God.
Those most responsible for spreading Islam as a message of peace and submission to providential justice - from the deserts of Arabia to distant islands in the Pacific and the shores of the Atlantic - are known as Sufis. They kept their distance from the power-holders, and emphasized Mohammed's teachings on learning and charity, on the fraternity of all seekers for truth and in seeking God's mercy and love.
Official Islam grew intolerant of Sufis. They have been hounded by power-holders, abused from pulpits by clerics in the service of power and frequently killed.
If we fast-forward to modern times, the tribal usurpers of Islam now sit as potentates of nation-states.
Tyrants, dictators, kings and their assembled courtiers, sycophants, diplomats, clerics and soldiers are the reincarnated faces of those who emptied Islam of its eternal truths and furnished it with their hypocrisy and vulgar politics.
The "nationalized" or politicized Islam of the Muslim fundamentalists has as much affinity with Mohammed's message as the politics of the brownshirts in Nazi Germany did with the gospel of Jesus.
In North America, apologists of politicized Islam have often operated from behind the sanctity of religious institutions. The events of 9/11 should have revealed their intent and activities, but did not as fully as warranted.
The reason is paradoxical. Liberal democracy is secular, and non-Muslims unfamiliar with the intricacies of another culture and its history are loathe to question suspect political behaviour that deliberately dons the garb of religion.
Many mosques and religious schools in North America, as in cities across the Muslim world, are centres propagating their own fundamentalist message of hostility against the liberal and democratic values of the West.
Friday sermons are often emotionally laden polemics against so-called enemies of Islam, and a recruiting message for individuals and funds for conflicts waged in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Democratic politicians, particularly those of the liberal-left persuasion, trolling for electoral support among newly minted citizens originating from the Arab-Muslim world, bend backward to accommodate, conciliate and support political demands from various community leaders and their hirelings, who are adept at stretching the limits of liberal democracy and its legal system for purposes at variance with the foundational principles of a free society in North America.
Such political courting of "nationalized" Islam's representatives and apologists by North American politicians emboldens them and enhances their positions within their local communities.
The demand in Ontario for sharia - religious tribunals to counsel and adjudicate disputes among Muslims - is one such example of introducing a system of rules from another culture and another historical period that is at odds with values of liberal democracy and secularism.
A liberal acceptance of such a demand amounts to appeasing those making such demands who oppose North American values.
Freedom of worship
The lib-left in North America - frequently self-righteous, gullible and driven by its own failed ideology of anti-capitalism - has indulged in a Faustian pact with representatives of official Islam to promote their causes under the banner of freedom of worship.
A little examination will reveal how little of any freedom is permitted where official Islam rules.
The 9/11 terror attacks should have awakened North Americans to the fact that official Islam, a tribal political system refashioned into a lethal ideology, is unalterably opposed to the modern world of democracy, science and individual freedom.
North Americans, if their doubts persist, should listen to Muslim victims of official Islam.
Salim Mansur is a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario. His column appears alternate Thursdays. He can be reached at smansurca@yahoo.ca Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@tor.sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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