Why Do People
Call Us Terrorists?
By Professor Nazeer
Ahmed
US
“We believe that Allah
is the Creator and Sustainer of all the worlds”,
the voice of the little Indonesian girl was sincere,
almost pleading. “Our Prophet was sent as
mercy to all creation. We are a people who love
peace. Then, why do people call us terrorists?”
The occasion was a recent visit to a pesentran
(a village madrassah) on the outskirts of Jakarta,
Indonesia. The children had lovingly organized
a reception for a delegation of international
scholars, ministers, princes and dignitaries,
assembled to discuss the issues of extremism and
civil society in modern Islam. In attendance also
were observers from some of the major NGOs and
think tanks in Washington, DC.
It was a serene, almost bucolic environment. The
open reception area was surrounded by tall palm
trees. Tropical birds provided a counterpoint
to the hymns of the children. And then the serenity
of the night was shattered by a question that
thrust up the raging conflicts of the modern world
into the consciousness of the little children
as well as the dignitaries who had gathered to
come to terms with them.
As background material for our readers, the pesentrans
are residential boarding schools in rural Indonesia
and constitute the largest, private system of
education in the world. They are run by the Nahdatul
Ulema in Indonesia which has a membership of over
forty million. More than a million students attend
the pesentrans and receive both religious and
science education. They are supported by private
waqfs and local citizen donations. The Nahda has
shunned the trappings of political power (although
they do have political influence) and has studiously
avoided extremist ideologies in favor of a moderate,
spiritual Islam. Focusing on the poor, forgotten
children from the rural backwaters of the vast
archipelago, the Nahda has built, maintained and
managed an educational infrastructure that is
the object of envy of many a bungling, non-performing
bureaucrat of the world.
Why do people call us terrorists? This is a question
as complex as one wants to make it or as simple
as one is inclined to believe. But it is a question
that no thinking Muslim can sidestep.
When confronted with this accusation, most Muslims
go through a ritualistic denial. Some become defensive.
Others respond with passion. None of these is
an adequate response. A dispassionate self-examination
in the context of global fears on terrorism is
yet to emerge in the Islamic community.
Let us begin with some undeniable facts. On 9/11
America was attacked. There were more than three
thousand civilian casualties, of whom the overwhelming
majority was American. Most of the attackers were
Saudi nationals. The attack was brutal, premeditated
and merciless.
The world has changed dramatically since 9/11.
Freedoms around the world have taken a beating
in proportion to the rising fears of terrorism.
The t-word has been used by many governments to
suppress dissent and silence political opposition.
There have been wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Positions have hardened. Substantial minorities
in Western Europe view Muslims with suspicion.
According to a recent survey conducted by Cornell
University, fully 43 percent of all Americans
favor curtailment of the civil liberties for Muslims
in America. In turn, a general distrust of the
West, and of the United States in particular,
is taking roots in Asia and Africa.
Moderate Muslims must accept some responsibility
for this slide towards suspicion and distrust.
They remained silent even as the specter of extremism
rose like a dark colossus on the Islamic horizon.
The platform was abandoned to a small band of
extremists who set the agenda for the debate and
controlled its outcome.
We will present a historical analysis of the slide
towards extremism in the next article. Here, we
merely point out the need for a rigorous and honest
self-assessment of why extremist groups have surfaced
in Muslim body politic.
That a majority of the perpetrators of the 9/11
attack came from Saudi Arabia cannot be overlooked
in this self-assessment. A large number of questions
present themselves. To what extent is Wahhabism,
the basis of governance in Saudi Arabia, responsible
for the emergence of a violent social archetype?
Is it the Wahhabi dogma, which packages religion
into neat little compartments of bida’,
kufr, shirk and haram? Or, is extremism a reaction
to the cultural and political intrusion of the
West into the rest of the world? If Wahhabism
is responsible for the rise of extremism, then
why has it spread into non-Arab Asia?
In the nineteenth century, as European dominance
spread across Asia and Africa, the thrust of reform
movements was internal. It was considered acceptable
to wage jihad against fellow Muslims to rid the
society of what were thought to be un-Islamic
practices. Uthman Dan Fuduye (d 1812), for instance,
waged an incessant armed struggle against the
Muslims emirates of West Africa.
However, it was the so-called jihad waged by a
reformer in the depths of the Arabian desert that
was to prove to be of long-term consequence to
the Islamic world. Towards the end of the eighteenth
century, Shaikh Abdel Wahab of Najd, fired by
a zeal to reform the bedouins in the Arabian desert,
who he believed had lapsed into un-Islamic practices,
waged a jihad. Rejected by his neighbors, his
fortunes improved when he married into and formed
an alliance with the Saudi ruling family. His
raids into neighboring territories brought him
face to face with the Ottomans who were the nominal
rulers over Arabia. Mohammed Ali, the Ottoman
viceroy of Cairo, dispatched an army from Medina
and contained the Wahhabis.
A hundred years later, the First World War saw
the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. It was
broken up and its pieces were swallowed up by
the European powers. One of the British objectives
in the Great War was the dissolution of the Khilafat
or its movement away from Istanbul to a more controllable
location. When the Khilafat was dissolved by Turks
themselves (1924), the deck was clear for bolder
political moves. Saudi armies moved into Hijaz
in 1925 and the cities of Mecca and Medina was
brought under Saudi control.
An immediate Wahhabi onslaught on the historical
edifice of traditional Islam began. The graves
of the Suhaba which had stood the test of time
for more than thirteen hundred years were leveled.
The dome of the Prophet’s mosque, and his
very grave, were saved, from last minute demolition,
thanks to the protests from Muslims around the
globe.
But Saudi Arabia was a poor country at the time,
dependant to a large extent on income from the
hajis and donations from rich Muslims such as
the Nizam of Hyderabad. The economic paradigm
changed as the export of oil picked up momentum
after the Second World War. By 1960, thanks to
its oil largesse, Saudi Arabia was on the global
stage, and its voice was heard both in Washington
land Moscow.
There began a determined effort on the part of
the Saudis to spread their brand of Wahhabi Islam
around the globe. Madrassahs and masjids alike,
too poor to sustain themselves, appeared in Riyadh
and Jiddah, bowls in hand. To their credit, the
Saudis helped, pouring billions of dollars into
building the infrastructure of education and houses
of worship around the globe.
Since the 1960s, the Saudis have made substantial
investments into madrasahs and masjids around
the globe. While the infusion of oil money did
help in the construction of the much needed infrastructure,
the price paid was the abandonment of the spiritual
Islam that had grown over a thousand years and
its replacement by a largely ritualistic, puritanical
Islam emphasizing rigidity over flexibility, intolerant
to the core, riding roughshod over history and
culture alike. Dissent was not tolerated. Contempt
for other religious traditions was openly expressed
by word and in print. The result was the creation
of a religious edifice without spirit, a body
without soul. Into this spiritual vacuum, the
extremists walked in, hoisting their political
agendas, creating mayhem around the globe.
Moderate Muslims tolerated the rise of this dark
colossus for almost fifty years. Indeed, many
were willing to sell their services to this historical
madness for pittance.
America was not spared the reach of Wahhabism
and its offshoots. The debate here was not just
between sufi and salafi. The debate was also between
moderate salafis and radical salafis. Generous
funds flowed from the Gulf to the New World to
assist and co-opt selected masajid into havens
for radical salafis.
The wind shifted in the 1990s. Successive Gulf
wars have impoverished the nations of the Middle
East. Today, Saudi beggars are a common sight
in the Gulf. The rising armies of unemployed and
unemployable youth provide fertile recruiting
grounds for the radical salafis.
To explain a complex issue to a little girl in
Indonesia was not easy. When she asked why they
call us terrorists, we simply said: they call
us terrorists because the rest of us did not speak
up.
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