P.K. Abdul Ghafour | Arab News

An Australian convert who embraced Islam in 1981 has been using his television channel — Voice of Islam (VOI) — not only to spread information about Islam but to also promote a better understanding of the faith and its adherents in New Zealand.

In a wide-ranging interview with Arab News, Muhammad Thompson, who recently visited the Kingdom with his family to perform Umrah, gave insights into the challenges facing Muslim minorities in the developed world and emphasized Muslims’ responsibility in presenting the faith in an upright fashion.

“It pains me a lot when I see our Muslim brethren neglect their compulsory prayers, do business without following Islamic teachings and engage in un-Islamic activities without fearing Allah,” said Thompson, who lives and broadcasts VOI in New Zealand.

“Hold fast the rope of Islam and don’t give it up. If you leave it, you are gone and will end up in hellfire. We have to hold on to it in order to enter Paradise,” he said, adding that Muslims are being persecuted for not practicing their religion. “If we practice, we will surely receive the support of Allah, the Almighty.”

Thompson said Muslims should be honest in their dealings. “We have to keep our promises. When we say that we’ll be there, we should be there on time without fail and even while driving on the road, we have to be the best examples.”

Asked why Westerners are reluctant to welcome Islam, he said, “People are frightened of what they don’t know. So, if Muslims become friendly and communicate with others, it would change the situation. We should also open our mosques to non-Muslims so that they can see what is going on there and that there is nothing to be afraid of.”

Thompson expressed his delight over the fast growth of Islam all over the world, especially in the West. However, he expressed his disappointment over the lukewarm approach of many Muslims toward their religion. “The majority of Muslims take their religion for granted. They don’t know the beauty and sweetness of the religion, and consider it as a part-time religion,” he added.

He said 9/11 had encouraged thousands of Americans and other Westerners to study about Islam by reading the translation of the Holy Qur’an and other related books. “This helped them understand that Islam does not preach terrorism and that Muslim women are not oppressed but rather enjoy equal rights. These studies have helped remove misconceptions and enhance knowledge about Islam.”

Speaking about VOI, the chairman said the program has had a huge impact on New Zealand. “Many people have been attracted to Islam through our programs.” VOI programs appear on Triangle TV in Auckland and Wellington, CTV in Christchurch and Channel 9 in Dunedin SKY TV CH 89 and Freeview CH 21.

The TV programs are produced and supplied by a nonprofit charitable trust, formed in April 2004. The trust has plans to expand VOI’s programs to Fiji. “We started the TV to propagate Islam in Auckland and today it covers four main cities in New Zealand. We are now working on a website to enable people all over the world to watch our programs on the Internet,” he said.

The one-hour program, which is aired on Saturdays and Sundays after purchasing airtime on commercial channels, includes recitation from the Qur’an with English translation, lectures on Islam, explanation of the basic pillars of Islam, and Harun Yahya’s Islamic documentaries on the creation of universe and animal life. He commended Yahya’s quality programs saying they are equal to those produced by the BBC.

The TV telecasts Islamic lectures of leading converts such as Yousuf Estes, Bilal Philips, Abdul Hakeem Quick and Abdul Raheem Green. “They present Islam in a convincing manner as they know both sides,” he said.

VOI keeps away from politics, focusing more on general topics such as Islam and terrorism, human rights in Islam, Islam and global warming, the rights of women in Islam and family issues. “I am optimistic about the future of Islam, especially when I see the tremendous response to our TV programs,” Thompson said.

He opposed the emotionally charged outrage that Muslims expressed against the Danish cartoons, which involved the destroying of flags and the attacking of embassies. “This is not the proper way. This is overreaction. We have to deal with such issues in a proactive manner. The boycott of products has been found effective. But this will not solve the problem. Holding dialogue with our opponents in an intelligent manner would be more effective and useful.”

Thompson commended Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah’s call for interfaith dialogue, saying it would give Muslims a chance to present their views. “We can also hear what others have to say. People of different faiths, including Judaism and Christianity, can find a lot of commonalities,” he pointed out.

There are more than 40,000 Muslims in New Zealand with 12 mosques and Islamic centers in Auckland City alone. “Muslims are not rich, as a large number of them are refugees from different countries, including Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, Iraq and Pakistan,” he said.

A born Australian, Thomson moved to New Zealand in 1996 for a change. He embraced Islam in 1981 and met his wife Wafa, a born-Muslim from Egypt, in Australia. They have two children: Aysha and Ahmed.

New Zealand is a very fertile land for Islamic propagation as its people are open to learning new things and eager to know the truth, Thompson said. “When we speak to them about Islam, they are very understanding. Prime Minister Helen Clark has visited our mosque many times,” he adds.

He also spoke about New Zealand’s principled stand on many world issues. It refused to join the US-led Western occupation forces in Iraq. “Even though it is a small country, it is not afraid of saying ‘No’ to America. We don’t support injustice,” he added.

A former Roman Catholic, Thompson explained the circumstances that led him to Islam. “I used to question many things in Catholicism. I could not agree with the idea of a person telling his sins to the priest in order to cleanse himself from sins. I wondered how a priest, who is a human being like us, can cleanse our sins, especially when we see him as a sinful person,” he pointed out.

He continued his search for truth by joining a group for positive thinking in Australia and began pondering about the creation of God. He later read a translation of the Qur’an and came to understand that Islam is a complete way of life while Christianity has many things missing.

“For me, it was easy to become a Muslim because we believe in the same prophets. I found Islam a continuation of what was taught by Jesus and Abraham,” he said, adding that he accepted Islam while in Australia during Ramadan.

Thompson said he had tried to convince his parents to become Muslims by sending books and Islamic TV programs to them. He hopes God will provide them with the ability to understand the truth. “Both of them are in Australia and we enjoy a very good relationship,” he said.

Dalia Mogahed & Ahmed Younis

The Gallup Organization — a world leader in global opinion research — has recently self-funded a World Poll which gathers opinion data in the areas of leadership, law and order, food/shelter, work, economics, health, well-being, citizen engagement from the peoples of 130 countries.

The World Poll gathers opinions around the world annually following Gallup’s guiding principles of independence and integrity.

The Coexist Foundation, a UK-registered charity, has a mission to promote better understanding between members of the Abrahamic faiths and also their relations with other religions and the secular world through education, dialogue and research.

As part of the World Poll, Gallup gathers data from the Muslim World and the West about people’s beliefs about education, religion, culture and democracy.

The Coexist Foundation has developed a not-for-profit relationship with the Gallup Organization. Together, these two entities share the belief that the accurate collection and dissemination of this data to key opinion leaders will lead to a better understanding between people of different faiths and cultures and consequently better relations.

Gallup and the Coexist Foundation will be pursuing collaborating partners in order to advance the facilitation and dissemination of this information. The first of these collaborating partners is the Coexistence Trust, a UK-based organization of parliamentarians, whose mission is to provide senior Muslim and Jewish political leaders with information to combat Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, worldwide.

Can Conflict Be Avoided?

How do Muslims around the world view relations between the West and the Muslim world? Do they see cooperation or conflict? Where there are problems, who do they think is at fault? Are they optimistic or pessimistic about the future?

Though majority of Muslim populations around the world have a great deal of pessimism about the state of the relationship, they also believe that violent conflict between the West and the Muslim world can be avoided. Though many Muslims believe the West does not respect them, they still believe greater interaction with the West is more a benefit than a threat. Americans and Canadians also believe greater interaction with the Muslim world is a benefit. Though both sides wish for better relations, both sides lack trust in the other’s good intentions.

Palestinians are among the most likely to say Muslim-West relations are worsening, reflecting the acute conflicts currently raging in the Palestinian territories and underscoring the importance of their resolution to the state of the dialogue.

With tensions between Iran and the United States intensifying, one might expect the Iranian public to be among the most pessimistic about the future of Muslim-West relations. It is therefore worth noting the relative ambivalence among the Iranian public on this question. Iranians may be drawing a distinction between disliked US policies directed at their country and the overall state of the Muslim-West relationship, especially because some US actions in the region are considered positive by many Iranians. Hostile to Saddam Hussein’s regime, Iranians have held less negative opinions of the invasion of Iraq than have residents of other Muslim majority countries, for example.

Moreover, Iran’s relatively favorable trade relationship with some European nations may make Iranians less prone to regarding the United States as a proxy for the West. The majority of Iranians also believe that tension between the West and the Muslim world is due to political, not underlying cultural or religious factors, which may make them less pessimistic than one might expect about Muslim-West relations as a whole.

The Reality-Perception Gap

Among both Muslim majority and non-Muslim majority nations, the proportion that say they think the “other side” is committed to better relations rarely rises above a minority. However, majority of residents in nations around the world say that better interaction between the Muslim and Western worlds is important to them.

Three in four US residents say the Muslim world is not committed to improving relations with the West; an identical percentage of Palestinians attribute the same apathy to the West. At least half of respondents in Italy (58 percent), Denmark (52 percent) and Spain (50 percent) agree that the Muslim world is not committed to improving relations.

Israelis represent a notable exception; almost two-thirds (64 percent) believe the Muslim world is committed to improvement.

Among the majority-Muslim nations surveyed, we see roughly the same pattern; majorities in every Middle Eastern country studied believe the West is not committed to better relations with the Muslim world, while respondents in majority-Muslim Asian countries are about evenly split.

Despite low levels of confidence in the commitment of those on the “other side,” majority in most nations surveyed in both the Muslim and Western worlds say that the quality of interactions between the two is important to them. In some Western countries, including Denmark, the United States, Belgium, Italy, Canada and Spain, and Israel, the percentage who say the issue is important to them is even higher than the percentage who give the Western world credit for commitment to improved relations.

In other words, some respondents believe their personal level of concern is higher than that of their own leadership, not to mention the leadership of the “other side.”

In the Middle East, Iranians are most likely to say the interaction between the West and the Muslim world is important, at 70 percent, followed by Turks at 64 percent. The US-imposed sanctions, as well as the threat of a US-led attack, make better relations with the West a vital priority for Iranians. Turkey’s geographic and economic ties with Europe, as well as its bid for EU membership, make improving relations an imperative there as well.

The implication is that residents in these countries are most likely to see potential for positive or negative change in their individual and regional realities stemming from the actions and policies of the West.

Respect

Though most Muslims say the Muslim world respects the West, many of them feel that the West does not respect the Muslim world.

In 2005, Gallup asked residents of several Muslim majority countries to explain in their own words what the West could do to improve relations with the Muslim world. The most frequent response, from countries as different as Turkey and Saudi Arabia, can be summed up with this statement: “Show greater respect for Islam and stop regarding Muslims as inferior.”

Many Muslim populations believe that the Western world lacks respect for the Muslim world. The vast majority of Palestinians (84 percent) and Egyptians (80 percent) say this is the case, while the numbers from Turkey (68 percent), Saudi Arabia (67 percent) and Iran (62 percent) are only somewhat lower.

These findings illustrate a consistent sense of being disrespected across nations that have very different economic, political and geostrategic relationships with the West.

In contrast, most residents in all but one majority-Muslim nation believe that the Muslim world respects the Western world. Two-thirds of respondents in Indonesia (65 percent), the country with the world’s largest Muslim population, believe that the Muslim world respects the West; similar numbers are seen in Saudi Arabia (72 percent), the Palestinian Territories (69 percent) and Egypt (62 percent). On this question, as on others within the index, non-Arab nations of the Middle East diverge from their Arab neighbors. In Iran the percentage who say the Muslim world respects the West is somewhat lower at 52 percent, while Turkey is the only country in which this figure represents less than a majority, at 45 percent.

However, while most respondents in almost all Muslim-majority countries say the Muslim world respects the Western world, majorities of those in Western countries (and Israel) disagree. Eighty-two percent of Americans and 73 percent of Israelis believe that the Muslim world does not respect the West. Similarly high figures are seen in Spain (63 percent), site of the Madrid terrorist bombing of 2004, Denmark (69 percent), where the international firestorm over the cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) originated in 2005, and the Netherlands (55 percent), where the 2004 killing of a Dutch filmmaker by a young Muslim has sparked controversy.

However, the index reveals that even in the nations studied with no obvious conflicts or significant dysfunction with local Muslim minority communities — such as Italy (70 percent), Canada (67 percent) and Sweden (54 percent) — high percentages of respondents feel the West is disrespected.

If residents of Muslim majority countries mostly say their society respects the West, why do Westerners feel disrespected? A possible explanation is that Westerners may conflate negative opinion of the United States common in the Muslim world with a rejection of the West and its values as a whole.

This perception is intensified by cultural firestorms such as the Danish cartoon controversy, which leave some Westerners feeling that Muslims do not respect “Western values” of free speech, and therefore do not respect the West. For example, nearly 1 in 2 Danes say they consider Islam to be incompatible with democracy, and a slight majority said in 2006 that they believed the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten was right to print the controversial cartoon as a demonstration of free speech. While most Americans (61 percent) said they believed it was irresponsible to print the cartoons, the same percentage blamed Muslims’ intolerance to other points of view rather than Western disrespect for Islam for the controversy. In other words, many Westerners regarded the reaction of some Muslims to the printing of the cartoon as disrespectful to Western values, just as many Muslims saw the wide distribution of the caricature as an assault on their tradition.

Data suggest, however, that Muslims’ unfavorable views of the United States are more often driven by resentment of its perceived policies than by rejection of its values, and that the diverse reactions to the Danish cartoons observed across the Muslim world were much more complex than simply a rejection of free speech. Often incited by local factors and aggravated by longstanding seemingly unrelated political grievances with Western powers, the actions of a violent and vocal minority in response to the caricature do not represent populations who oppose liberty.

In reality, the vast majority of Muslims support the value of free speech in principle. Ninety-four percent of Egyptians and 92 percent of Iranians, for example, say they would guarantee the right of free speech if they were asked to draft a constitution for a new country. Many Muslim-world respondents also cite freedom of expression as among the qualities of the West that they most admire.

And yet, the Danish cartoon was clearly offensive to many Muslims who felt it violated the boundaries of free speech. Some Europeans agreed; 30 percent of the German public, 45 percent French and a majority (57 percent) of the British public said in 2007 that printing the cartoon was not protected by freedom of speech.

Though Europeans were split about the acceptability of printing the Danish cartoon, there was broad consensus rejecting other expressions; strong majorities said that newspapers should not be allowed to print racial slurs, child pornography or jokes about the holocaust. For example, more than 8 out of 10 of the German public said that racial slurs and jokes about the holocaust were not protected by free speech.

These trends suggest that while Western and Muslim communities both claim free speech as a value, each society creates what it considers are appropriate limits to this freedom — sometimes differing even among societies who share a common faith.

Discriminating between a more manageable difference in cultural definitions on the one hand and an insurmountable clash of basic values on the other is essential to moving the dialogue forward.

Greater Interaction

Though some might expect the United States, Israel and the Middle East to be more likely than Europe to feel threatened by the “other”, the opposite is the case. In the United States (70 percent), Canada (72 percent) and Israel (56 percent) majorities say that greater interaction is a benefit. Similarly, residents of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Palestinian Territories, Malaysia, Turkey and Iran were more likely to feel that greater interaction between Muslim and Western worlds is a benefit than a threat.

These findings are supported by a 2005-2006 Gallup World Poll which found that Americans favored greater cultural interaction as a way to improve relations with the Muslim world. The same study revealed that the two statements that Muslim-world residents most frequently associate with the Muslim world were: 1) “Attachment to their spiritual and moral values is crucial to progress” and 2) “Eager to have better relations with the West” suggesting that many Muslims do not regard religious devotion and cross-cultural cooperation as mutually exclusive.

(Dalia Mogahed and Ahmed Younis are respectively executive director of and senior analyst at the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies. With John L. Esposito, Mogahed co-authored “Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think”)

Also Read : What Muslims Think

Abdus Sattar Ghazali, asghazali@gamil.com

Six years and eight months after the 9/11 tragic attacks, Muslims in America remain at the receiving end with the reconfiguration of American laws, policies and priorities to target them. The latest assault on the Muslim community comes in the form of a simulated attack on a fake “mosque” by the law enforcement authorities in Illinois.

On May 1, over 120 officials from almost 30 government agencies participated in the drill in Irving, Illinois, targeting a community facility that had been re-named the “Irving Mosque” for the purposes of the exercise. There were participants from local law enforcement, fire departments and ambulances. In the exercise, officers from the Illinois Law Enforcement Alarm System (ILEAS) stormed the “mosque” using an armored car. One “hostage” was hooked up to an explosive device and the “suspects” in the “mosque” released nerve gas.

For the purpose of the emergency exercise drill, the Continuing Recovery Center in Irving, Ill., had become Irving Mosque, the home base for a radical, heavily armed group with suspected terrorist ties. There were explosions outside and inside the building.

Not surprisingly, a preview of the May 1 training was highlighted by the media with such sensational headlines as: “Pennsylvania’s police prepare for radical Islam,” and “Radical Islam: A Law Enforcement Primer.”

What message that exercise conveys to the American masses who are already conditioned by the anti-Islam and anti-Muslim rhetoric by some radio hosts, electronic and print media as well as some political and Christian right leaders in the post-9/11 America?

Surely, it reinforces the anti-Islam and anti-Muslim image among the masses. According to a March 2008 Gallup survey, a substantial number of Americans have a negative perception of Muslims. The poll shows that only 17 percent have positive perception while 23 have negative. 48 percents were found neutral which are surely not positive. Two polls by CAIR and Washington Post in March 2006 indicated that almost half of Americans have a negative perception of Islam and that one in four of those surveyed have extreme anti-Muslim views. The troubling results of these polls are not surprising in an atmosphere of fear and hatred against the Muslim community created in the name of national security.

There cannot be two opinions that the “Irving Mosque” exercise creates a negative image of mosques and Islamic centers. It is disrespect to the Muslim places of worship and sends a “wrong message” that all Islamic houses of worship may be potential security threats.

To borrow, Khalid Saeed, president of the American Muslim Voice, (AMV), this outrage should be offensive to the sensibilities of all civilized Americans and it should be condemned in strongest possible way as it sends wrong message about a large peaceful segment of American society and great religion of Islam. “There are about eight million American Muslims who are proud and patriotic citizens of this great nation of ours, and are making a positive contribution to this great and diverse nation.”

“The use of a fake ‘mosque’ in this type of drill sends the wrong message to law enforcement officials who may now view mainstream institutions, such as Islamic houses of worship, as potential security threats,” according to Ahmed Rehab, executive director of Council on American-Islamic Relations-Chicago. “Officials must be trained in dealing with hostage-taking and responding to chemical, biological or bomb attacks. We are only questioning the wisdom of linking the American Muslim community and its institutions to such incidents.”

Taking a leaf from New York Police Department’s controversial study “Radicalization in the West and the Homegrown Threat,” Municipal Police Officers Education & Training Commission (MPOETC) has prepared a Mandatory In-Service Training (MIST) Program and Illinois Law Enforcement Alarm System (ILEAS) officials are required to undergo a three-hour class called “Radical Islam: A Law Enforcement Primer.”

The fake mosque attack was part of that training course and aims at “providing an overview of the factors and issues related to a radical view of Islam.”

The MPOETC has its own sweeping definition of “radical Islam’: Radical Islam assumes the authority to “nullify, abolish, or do away with” previously established religions and systems of government, establishing Islamic rule based on the Qur’an and the “example of Muhammad.”

Muslim civil rights groups have expressed concern over this program. In a letter to the MPOETC Training Director Rudy M. Grubesky, CAIR-PA Civil Rights Director Justin Peyton wrote:

“We are concerned that this course may provide inaccurate, incomplete or stereotypical information about Islam to state law enforcement officers and could serve to reinforce negative stereotypes of Muslims and Islam. The promotion of such stereotypes could negatively impact the daily interactions of law enforcement officers with members of the Pennsylvania Muslim community.”

“While CAIR applauds MPOETC’s effort to educate police officers about the potential threats posed to American society by extremist individuals and groups, we would like to emphasize that the violent ideologies those individuals falsely attribute to Islam are not characteristic of the American Muslim experience.”

In short, such drills as a mock attack on the fake mosque in the name of national security will only alienate and marginalize the American Muslims who remain a victim of guilt by association in the post-9/11 era.

Mosque is a symbol of worship just like church, synagogue or temple and not a symbol of radicalism as portrayed by this simulated attack on the fake mosque.

- Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the executive editor of the online magazine American Muslim Perspective:

Jonathan Power, jonatpower@aol.com

LONDON, 12 May 2008 — Once again the CIA and MI6 are publishing dire warnings of the vitality of Al-Qaeda. Once again the Islamic world as a whole is being tarnished by association.

US presidential contender John McCain is saying that America needs a leadership to confront the transcendent challenge of our time: The threat of radical Islamic terrorism.

And the words still ring in our ears from Samuel Huntington’s treatise, “The Clash of Civilizations”, the book that in many ways triggered this paranoia that infects the politicians, the press and the public discourse. “The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism, it is Islam”, he wrote.

Few, if any, in the Western leadership seem to make the point that Al-Qaeda is a deviant phenomenon within the Islamic world, just as Hitler was a deviant phenomenon within the Christian world (commentators seems to overlook Hitler’s early speeches calling on Catholic principles). But Islam has a much better record over the ages of dealing with its deviants who take violence to excess. Islamic culture has never been tolerant of Nazism, fascism or communism. Christianity has spawned all three. Buddhism failed to resist Japanese militarism and Confucianism provided hospitable to Maoism. Yes, there was Saddam Hussein but he was an atheistic brute without an ideology.

Of course, there have been many incidents in the long history of Islam when there have been large-scale losses of life. The massacres and starvation of the Armenians in 1915 still stirs the waters of contemporary debate. But Islam has never spawned anything comparable with Hitler’s systematic genocide of the Jews — indeed throughout its history Islam has been protective of the Jews, regarding them as “people of the book” to whom it had a special responsibility. Nor has it settled other parts of the world and systematically obliterated other civilizations as did Christian Spain with the Aztecs and Incas. Nor have Islamic societies created anything equivalent to South Africa’s apartheid or the racist culture of the old American South. Unlike many Christian churches, the mosque has never separated people by race. Even today Americans confess that nowhere is there more segregation in their society than at the Sunday noon hour.

Western memories are highly selective. When at Easter time the Greek peasants of the Peloponnese began to kill all the Muslims in the land there was silence. But fifty years later when there were mass killings of Christians in Bulgaria there was a great outpouring of moral outrage. Delacroix immortalized the massacre in his painting, “Massacre of Chaos”, with Christian women pursued by Turkish lancers and Gladstone wrote a best-selling pamphlet in which he described the Ottomans as leaving “a broad line of blood marking the track behind them, and as far as their domination reached civilization vanished from view”.

Almost forgotten today is that it was the Ottomans who gave refuge to the Jews when they were expelled from Iberia, as were fleeing German, French and Czech Protestants, but every cultivated Westerner knows Voltaire’s “Fanaticism or Muhammad the Prophet” or Dante’s portrayal of Muhammad in hell.

Christianity has always been led or dominated by people of European descent. But the leadership of the Muslim world has been much more fragmented — between AD 661 and 750 it was the Arab Umayyad dynasty. Between 750 and 1258 it was the multiethnic Abbasid dynasty. And from 1453 to 1922, the Turkish-dominated Ottoman Empire. In India there was the separate Moguls and in Persia the Safavids. In sub-Saharan Africa there were the Muslim empires of Mali and Songhai.

Despite their relative poverty today, with great teaming cities like Cairo, Dakha and Jakarta, criminal violence is much, much lower than in Christian-influenced societies.

Muslim countries, according to the UN’s annual Human Development report, have the world’s lowest murder and rape rates. In Tehran, the capital of Iran, and according to the CIA the most important single source of terrorism today, you can go out at 11 or 12 p.m. at night and find families with children picnicing in city parks. When my daughters’ friends ask me where can they safely travel alone in an interesting Third World city I say Cairo. Certainly not Catholic Rio or Protestant Cape Town. Not only are murders and muggings comparatively rarer, there is much less prostitution and hard drug use. Neither is there that much AIDS.

The Western debate about Islam is frankly infantile. Even Barack Obama, with his own personal experience to go off, either is ignorant or just scared of going into battle on these issues. I have not read one speech by one Western politician who seriously attempts to educate public opinion. We live in a slough of ignorance.

By Uri Avnery
From Media Monitors

Since the days when Roman Emperors threw Christians to the lions, the relations between the emperors and the heads of the church have undergone many changes.

Constantine the Great, who became Emperor in the year 306 – exactly 1700 years ago – encouraged the practice of Christianity in the empire, which included Palestine. Centuries later, the church split into an Eastern (Orthodox) and a Western (Catholic) part. In the West, the Bishop of Rome, who acquired the title of Pope, demanded that the Emperor accept his superiority.

The struggle between the Emperors and the Popes played a central role in European history and divided the peoples. It knew ups and downs. Some Emperors dismissed or expelled a Pope, some Popes dismissed or excommunicated an Emperor. One of the Emperors, Henry IV, ‘walked to Canossa’, standing for three days barefoot in the snow in front of the Pope’s castle, until the Pope deigned to annul his excommunication.

But there were times when Emperors and Popes lived in peace with each other. We are witnessing such a period today. Between the present Pope, Benedict XVI, and the present Emperor, George Bush II, there exists a wonderful harmony. Last week’s speech by the Pope, which aroused a world-wide storm, went well with Bush’s crusade against ‘Islamofascism’, in the context of the ‘Clash of Civilizations’.

In his lecture at a German university, the 265th Pope described what he sees as a huge difference between Christianity and Islam: while Christianity is based on reason, Islam denies it. While Christians see the logic of God’s actions, Muslims deny that there is any such logic in the actions of Allah.

As a Jewish atheist, I do not intend to enter the fray of this debate. It is much beyond my humble abilities to understand the logic of the Pope. But I cannot overlook one passage, which concerns me too, as an Israeli living near the fault-line of this ‘war of civilizations’.

In order to prove the lack of reason in Islam, the Pope asserts that the prophet Muhammad ordered his followers to spread their religion by the sword. According to the Pope, that is unreasonable, because faith is born of the soul, not of the body. How can the sword influence the soul?

To support his case, the Pope quoted – of all people – a Byzantine Emperor, who belonged, of course, to the competing Eastern Church. At the end of the 14th century, the Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus told of a debate he had – or so he said (its occurrence is in doubt) – with an unnamed Persian Muslim scholar. In the heat of the argument, the Emperor (according to himself) flung the following words at his adversary:

‘Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached’.

These words give rise to three questions: (a) Why did the Emperor say them? (b) Are they true? (c) Why did the present Pope quote them?

When Manuel II wrote his treatise, he was the head of a dying empire. He assumed power in 1391, when only a few provinces of the once illustrious empire remained. These, too, were already under Turkish threat.

At that point in time, the Ottoman Turks had reached the banks of the Danube. They had conquered Bulgaria and the north of Greece, and had twice defeated relieving armies sent by Europe to save the Eastern Empire. On May 29, 1453, only a few years after Manuel’s death, his capital, Constantinople (the present Istanbul) fell to the Turks, putting an end to the Empire that had lasted for more than a thousand years.

During his reign, Manuel made the rounds of the capitals of Europe in an attempt to drum up support. He promised to reunite the church. There is no doubt that he wrote his religious treatise in order to incite the Christian countries against the Turks and convince them to start a new crusade. The aim was practical, theology was serving politics.

In this sense, the quote serves exactly the requirements of the present Emperor, George Bush II. He, too, wants to unite the Christian world against the mainly Muslim ‘Axis of Evil’. Moreover, the Turks are again knocking on the doors of Europe, this time peacefully. It is well known that the Pope supports the forces that object to the entry of Turkey into the European Union.

Is there any truth in Manuel’s argument?

The pope himself threw in a word of caution. As a serious and renowned theologian, he could not afford to falsify written texts. Therefore, he admitted that the Qur’an specifically forbade the spreading of the faith by force. He quoted the second Sura, verse 256 (strangely fallible, for a pope, he meant verse 257) which says: ‘There must be no coercion in matters of faith’.

How can one ignore such an unequivocal statement? The Pope simply argues that this commandment was laid down by the prophet when he was at the beginning of his career, still weak and powerless, but that later on he ordered the use of the sword in the service of the faith. Such an order does not exist in the Qur’an. True, Muhammad called for the use of the sword in his war against opposing tribes – Christian, Jewish and others – in Arabia, when he was building his state. But that was a political act, not a religious one; basically a fight for territory, not for the spreading of the faith.

Jesus said: ‘You will recognize them by their fruits.’ The treatment of other religions by Islam must be judged by a simple test: How did the Muslim rulers behave for more than a thousand years, when they had the power to ‘spread the faith by the sword’?

Well, they just did not.

For many centuries, the Muslims ruled Greece. Did the Greeks become Muslims? Did anyone even try to Islamize them? On the contrary, Christian Greeks held the highest positions in the Ottoman administration. The Bulgarians, Serbs, Romanians, Hungarians and other European nations lived at one time or another under Ottoman rule and clung to their Christian faith. Nobody compelled them to become Muslims and all of them remained devoutly Christian.

True, the Albanians did convert to Islam, and so did the Bosniaks. But nobody argues that they did this under duress. They adopted Islam in order to become favorites of the government and enjoy the fruits.

In 1099, the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem and massacred its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants indiscriminately, in the name of the gentle Jesus. At that time, 400 years into the occupation of Palestine by the Muslims, Christians were still the majority in the country. Throughout this long period, no effort was made to impose Islam on them. Only after the expulsion of the Crusaders from the country, did the majority of the inhabitants start to adopt the Arabic language and the Muslim faith – and they were the forefathers of most of today’s Palestinians.

There is no evidence whatsoever of any attempt to impose Islam on the Jews. As is well known, under Muslim rule the Jews of Spain enjoyed a bloom the like of which the Jews did not enjoy anywhere else until almost our time. Poets like Yehuda Halevy wrote in Arabic, as did the great Maimonides. In Muslim Spain, Jews were ministers, poets, scientists. In Muslim Toledo, Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars worked together and translated the ancient Greek philosophical and scientific texts. That was, indeed, the Golden Age. How would this have been possible, had the Prophet decreed the ‘spreading of the faith by the sword’?

What happened afterwards is even more telling. When the Catholics re-conquered Spain from the Muslims, they instituted a reign of religious terror. The Jews and the Muslims were presented with a cruel choice: to become Christians, to be massacred or to leave. And where did the hundreds of thousand of Jews, who refused to abandon their faith, escape? Almost all of them were received with open arms in the Muslim countries. The Sephardi (‘Spanish’) Jews settled all over the Muslim world, from Morocco in the west to Iraq in the east, from Bulgaria (then part of the Ottoman Empire) in the north to Sudan in the south. Nowhere were they persecuted. They knew nothing like the tortures of the Inquisition, the flames of the auto-da-fe, the pogroms, the terrible mass-expulsions that took place in almost all Christian countries, up to the Holocaust.

Why? Because Islam expressly prohibited any persecution of the ‘peoples of the book’.[1] In Islamic society, a special place was reserved for Jews and Christians. They did not enjoy completely equal rights, but almost. They had to pay a special poll-tax, but were exempted from military service – a trade-off that was quite welcome to many Jews. It has been said that Muslim rulers frowned upon any attempt to convert Jews to Islam even by gentle persuasion – because it entailed the loss of taxes.[2]

Every honest Jew who knows the history of his people cannot but feel a deep sense of gratitude to Islam, which has protected the Jews for fifty generations, while the Christian world persecuted the Jews and tried many times ‘by the sword’ to get them to abandon their faith.

The story about ‘spreading the faith by the sword’ is an evil legend, one of the myths that grew up in Europe during the great wars against the Muslims – the reconquista of Spain by the Christians, the Crusades and the repulsion of the Turks, who almost conquered Vienna. I suspect that the German Pope, too, honestly believes in these fables. That means that the leader of the Catholic world, who is a Christian theologian in his own right, did not make the effort to study the history of other religions.

Why did he utter these words in public? And why now?

There is no escape from viewing them against the background of the new Crusade of Bush and his evangelist supporters, with his slogans of ‘Islamofascism’ and the ‘Global War on Terrorism’ – when ‘terrorism’ has become a synonym for Muslims. For Bush’s handlers, this is a cynical attempt to justify the domination of the world’s oil resources. Not for the first time in history, a religious robe is spread to cover the nakedness of economic interests; not for the first time, a robbers’ expedition becomes a Crusade.

The speech of the Pope blends into this effort. Who can foretell the dire consequences?

Uri Avnery is an Israeli journalist, peace activist, former member of the Knesset, and leader of Gush Shalom.

NOTES

[1] Not only “Peoples of the Book”, but oppression of all others as well.

[2] The author is mistaken in this statement, as the tax imposed upon non-Muslims was insubstantial to other means of generating public income. Rather, all Muslims encouraged and will continue to encourage others to enter its fold .

Aijaz Zaka Syed

Opinion polls fascinate me. They are, if honestly conducted, perhaps the best possible way of gauging public opinion. At a time when spin is the norm and global media is controlled, manipulated and dictated by powerful corporate interests and governments, it’s not easy to get a clear picture on any given issue.

This is especially true when the story involves marginalized minorities and dispossessed groups. And of late the Muslims have been at the receiving end. After the disintegration of Soviet Union, the West found itself a new enemy in Islam.

The 9/11 attacks in the US and 7/7 strikes in the UK were only excuses, not the causes, to hasten this process. They might have contributed to the current hysteria against everything Islamic but they never were the Original Sin as we’ve been given to believe.

Myths like this have been demolished in a most interesting survey conducted by Gallup. What makes this opinion poll like no other is that it was conducted over a period of six years, beginning after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Gallup conducted research in 35 Muslim countries, interviewing more than 50,000 people, to come up with what it calls the first comprehensive survey of Muslim world opinion.

The results have also given birth to a book called, Who Speaks for Islam? What a billion Muslims really think by John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed.

The poll and the book offer a much-needed reality check on the relations between the West and Muslim world. Some of the findings are genuinely surprising even for someone like me who has been obsessed with the issue.

Many conclusions of the poll only go to confirm what we in the Muslim world have always known but couldn’t succeed in putting them across to our friends in the West. For instance, the fact that it’s not Islamic teachings that drive some individuals to violence but historical injustices inflicted and perpetuated by some Western powers.

Which is why one so hopes that the urgent message this poll seeks to convey reaches the Western audience — and the wider world. It would be such a shame if it doesn’t. Because, as Dalia Mogahed argues in the book, this ostensible conflict between Islam and West is far from inevitable.

Many concerned commentators have repeatedly argued that what is fuelling the so-called clash of civilizations is not some absurd hatred of Christian West sanctioned by Islam but Western ignorance about Muslims. The poll backs this argument.

Most Muslims, regardless of where they live, whether in Saudi Arabia or Iran, are surprisingly well informed about the West and its values and ideals. In fact, most of them admire the West for its scientific achievements, economic progress and celebration of knowledge and excellence. The West is admired for the political freedom, democracy and rights it offers its people.

There are other findings that are equally interesting. Contrary to common perceptions in the West, the majority of respondents think men and women have equal rights. A whopping 94 percent of Indonesians share this view. Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim nation. In Iran, the figure is 89 percent. And in Saudi Arabia, it’s 73 percent.

A great majority of Muslims also believe a woman can work outside her home in any job for which she is qualified (88 percent in Indonesia, 72 percent in Egypt and 78 percent in Saudi Arabia). And they also believe women should be able to vote without interference (87 percent in Indonesia, 91 percent in Egypt, 98 percent in Lebanon).

And what about the supposed Muslim sympathy for terrorism? While 6 percent of the Americans think attacks involving civilians are “completely justified,” in Saudi Arabia this figure is 4 percent. In Lebanon and Iran, it’s 2 percent.

And mark this, it’s important. The majority of Muslims absolutely rejects violence and terrorism. In fact, many of the respondents quoted Qur’anic verses to point out that extremism goes against Islamic teachings.

Going by these findings, would any reasonable person in his right mind blame Islam for extremism and violence? And remember, the survey was not sponsored by Al Jazeera, Bin Laden’s favorite channel, but by Gallup, the biggest name in the business.

So what is it then that drives the West and Muslim world apart? The answer lies in Western indifference, nay casual contempt, for a billion believers and all that they believe in. I am not saying this; Gallup poll does.

Again this shouldn’t come as a surprise. While admiring Western values such as democracy and freedom, Muslims feel these values are conveniently cast aside when it comes to applying them to Muslim world.

More than 65 percent of Egyptians, Jordanians and Iranians believe the US will never allow people in the Middle East to run their own affairs and chart their own course.

When the Gallup pollsters asked Muslims around the world what the West could do to improve relations with the Muslim world, the most frequent responses called for greater respect for Islam and treatment of Muslims as equals, not as inferior.

The Western contempt for Islam, especially the ignorance of Americans, is not something imagined by us. The poll findings speak for themselves. The majority of Americans (66 percent) admit to having “some” prejudice against Muslims; one in five say they have “a great deal” of prejudice. Almost half do not believe US Muslims are “loyal” to their country; and one in four doesn’t want a Muslim as a neighbor!

Given these views, is it any surprising that Muslims are invariably portrayed as terrorists in the US media, including that big propaganda machine called Hollywood?

If the Muslims harbor some degree of anti-US sentiment, it’s not because of what the Americans are but because of what they do or have been doing in the Muslim world. But how would you explain the deep-seated paranoia and Islamophobia in the US and West?

Whatever its causes, this divide is unfortunate and unnatural. Because there is a great deal lot that unites the Muslims and Americans. In an increasingly materialistic world, they continue to hold on to their belief in God.

Unlike in Europe and much of the world, religion plays a healthy role in the day-to-day life of the Americans as well as Muslims. They both cherish universal values like honesty, truthfulness, hard work, accountability and being always loyal to your family.

Just look around. What we have in common is much more than what we do not. Which is why this divide is such a tragedy. We Muslims want to bridge this gulf. Is the other side equally willing?

Recommended External Links :

1. Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think

2.Muslim World