By Syed Mansoor Hussain, "Moderate Muslims" - Daily Times - Lahore, PakistanMonday, December 15, 2008
It is an historical fact that no state has been able to suppress terrorism that is based on a territorial dispute without finding an acceptable political solution. Once a cycle of violence starts, it only escalates and positions on both sides of the conflict become hardened with time
Every time a bunch of terrorists with Muslim names blows up something important anywhere in the world, everybody starts looking for moderate Muslims. The reason is that there is a general consensus that ‘moderate’ Muslims can somehow counter this phenomenon of “Islamist” terrorism.
I have often wondered what moderate Muslims looks like and stand for. For this reason I started to think about whether there were ‘moderate’ followers of other religions.
Having lived in the US for more than three decades, I count many Catholics as good friends. But a moderate Catholic I never found, either they were practicing Catholics or non-practicing Catholics, but Catholics nevertheless. Many of these Catholic friends had stopped attending mass or confessional; some were divorced and almost all believed in birth control, some even in a woman’s right to choose. All of these would essentially become reasons for excommunication but none of them had been so treated by the Church.
Concerning Protestants, they have such a dizzying array of denominations that any outsider would have to spend a lifetime figuring out the doctrinal differences between them. In spite of a wide array, there is no such entity as a moderate Protestant, at least I never heard of or met one of them. Here it is important to point out that the term ‘fundamentalist’ was initially used to describe some of the more literalist among the Protestant denominations.
About the Hindu physicians that I worked with closely and became friends with, their willingness to eat meat was always a matter of some interest. The saying among us residents (junior doctors) went like this: when a Hindu doctor first comes off the boat, he is often a complete vegetarian. Some in a year or so start visiting KFC, and in a few years even move on to a hamburger if not a medium-rare steak. Yet all of them remain Hindus. The fact that they were willing to consume meat did not in any way make them ‘moderate’ Hindus.
As far as my Jewish friends were concerned, there was an entire range for them. At least Judaism is formally divided into different categories with the reform Jews on one end and the orthodox and the Lubavichers at the other. But I never met somebody I could call a ‘moderate’ Jew.
Muslims also have many different doctrinal groupings and these range from the very conservative to the less conservative, and if we include those inclined towards Sufism, then perhaps even bordering on the heterodox. However, all of them would insist that they are Muslims and only Muslims and resist being called moderate.
The point essentially being that moderation in religion is essentially an oxymoron. Nobody believes only moderately in whichever religion they belong to, either they believe or they do not. However, in all religions, there are people that might hold political opinions that could be labelled conservative, moderate or liberal.
Returning to the question of terrorism, almost all terrorist movements during the last century and some into this century have been movements of national liberation or parts of some such movement. Many leaders of these ‘terrorist organisations’ went on to become legitimate leaders of their countries after independence. Even today, India is faced with many separatist movements. But for those movements that involve the disputed territory of Kashmir, most terrorist activity in India is not being initiated or perpetuated by Muslims. And the Indian record in Kashmir is not such that India can claim moral high ground in that conflict.
After 9/11, it became quite fashionable to conflate many different movements of national liberation into one amorphous international enemy of civilisation. The Russians, the Israelis and the Indians were only too happy to jump on this bandwagon. The subsequent US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan only made matters worse for Muslims. But for Al Qaeda, which at this time is more like an international anti-US franchise as International Communism once was, most terrorism including that perpetrated by Muslims is aimed at achieving a particular political goal. Be it Kashmir, Palestine, Chechnya, Afghanistan or Iraq; and for the Tamils, Sri Lanka.
It is important to make a few observations. First, any organisation or political entity that kills ordinary citizens and non-combatants to achieve its goals is horribly wrong. Second, interference in the affairs of one country by its neighbour(s), especially when it comes to fomenting terrorist activity, is just not acceptable. Third, terrorism rarely is successful in achieving political goals since the violence perpetrated frequently alienates the very people whose political support the terrorists need.
Frankly, non-violent agitation has proved much more successful in this regard.
It is an historical fact that no state has been able to suppress terrorism that is based on a territorial dispute without finding an acceptable political solution. Once a cycle of violence starts, it only escalates and positions on both sides of the conflict become hardened with time.
After sixty years, the positions on all sides of the Kashmir problem have become quite fixed and there seems to be no way out of the existing impasse.
Even if things get better in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir and Palestine, we as Muslims will still have to confront fringe movements that wish to impose an austere version of Islam in our countries. That will then be our problem and when such a time comes upon us, surely we will see a lot more of moderate Muslims, moderate not in terms of religion but rather in terms of politics.
This was well demonstrated in the elections earlier this year when the MMA Islamist alliance was routed, even in its strongholds.
My message then to those in the west looking for ‘moderate’ Muslims is: take care of the Palestinians, the Kashmiris, the Iraqis, the Afghans and the Chechens and then you will have so many moderate Muslims coming out of the woodwork that you won’t know what to do with them.
Syed Mansoor Hussain has practised and taught medicine in the US. He can be reached at smhmbbs70@yahoo.com
It is an historical fact that no state has been able to suppress terrorism that is based on a territorial dispute without finding an acceptable political solution. Once a cycle of violence starts, it only escalates and positions on both sides of the conflict become hardened with time
Every time a bunch of terrorists with Muslim names blows up something important anywhere in the world, everybody starts looking for moderate Muslims. The reason is that there is a general consensus that ‘moderate’ Muslims can somehow counter this phenomenon of “Islamist” terrorism.
I have often wondered what moderate Muslims looks like and stand for. For this reason I started to think about whether there were ‘moderate’ followers of other religions.
Having lived in the US for more than three decades, I count many Catholics as good friends. But a moderate Catholic I never found, either they were practicing Catholics or non-practicing Catholics, but Catholics nevertheless. Many of these Catholic friends had stopped attending mass or confessional; some were divorced and almost all believed in birth control, some even in a woman’s right to choose. All of these would essentially become reasons for excommunication but none of them had been so treated by the Church.
Concerning Protestants, they have such a dizzying array of denominations that any outsider would have to spend a lifetime figuring out the doctrinal differences between them. In spite of a wide array, there is no such entity as a moderate Protestant, at least I never heard of or met one of them. Here it is important to point out that the term ‘fundamentalist’ was initially used to describe some of the more literalist among the Protestant denominations.
About the Hindu physicians that I worked with closely and became friends with, their willingness to eat meat was always a matter of some interest. The saying among us residents (junior doctors) went like this: when a Hindu doctor first comes off the boat, he is often a complete vegetarian. Some in a year or so start visiting KFC, and in a few years even move on to a hamburger if not a medium-rare steak. Yet all of them remain Hindus. The fact that they were willing to consume meat did not in any way make them ‘moderate’ Hindus.
As far as my Jewish friends were concerned, there was an entire range for them. At least Judaism is formally divided into different categories with the reform Jews on one end and the orthodox and the Lubavichers at the other. But I never met somebody I could call a ‘moderate’ Jew.
Muslims also have many different doctrinal groupings and these range from the very conservative to the less conservative, and if we include those inclined towards Sufism, then perhaps even bordering on the heterodox. However, all of them would insist that they are Muslims and only Muslims and resist being called moderate.
The point essentially being that moderation in religion is essentially an oxymoron. Nobody believes only moderately in whichever religion they belong to, either they believe or they do not. However, in all religions, there are people that might hold political opinions that could be labelled conservative, moderate or liberal.
Returning to the question of terrorism, almost all terrorist movements during the last century and some into this century have been movements of national liberation or parts of some such movement. Many leaders of these ‘terrorist organisations’ went on to become legitimate leaders of their countries after independence. Even today, India is faced with many separatist movements. But for those movements that involve the disputed territory of Kashmir, most terrorist activity in India is not being initiated or perpetuated by Muslims. And the Indian record in Kashmir is not such that India can claim moral high ground in that conflict.
After 9/11, it became quite fashionable to conflate many different movements of national liberation into one amorphous international enemy of civilisation. The Russians, the Israelis and the Indians were only too happy to jump on this bandwagon. The subsequent US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan only made matters worse for Muslims. But for Al Qaeda, which at this time is more like an international anti-US franchise as International Communism once was, most terrorism including that perpetrated by Muslims is aimed at achieving a particular political goal. Be it Kashmir, Palestine, Chechnya, Afghanistan or Iraq; and for the Tamils, Sri Lanka.
It is important to make a few observations. First, any organisation or political entity that kills ordinary citizens and non-combatants to achieve its goals is horribly wrong. Second, interference in the affairs of one country by its neighbour(s), especially when it comes to fomenting terrorist activity, is just not acceptable. Third, terrorism rarely is successful in achieving political goals since the violence perpetrated frequently alienates the very people whose political support the terrorists need.
Frankly, non-violent agitation has proved much more successful in this regard.
It is an historical fact that no state has been able to suppress terrorism that is based on a territorial dispute without finding an acceptable political solution. Once a cycle of violence starts, it only escalates and positions on both sides of the conflict become hardened with time.
After sixty years, the positions on all sides of the Kashmir problem have become quite fixed and there seems to be no way out of the existing impasse.
Even if things get better in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir and Palestine, we as Muslims will still have to confront fringe movements that wish to impose an austere version of Islam in our countries. That will then be our problem and when such a time comes upon us, surely we will see a lot more of moderate Muslims, moderate not in terms of religion but rather in terms of politics.
This was well demonstrated in the elections earlier this year when the MMA Islamist alliance was routed, even in its strongholds.
My message then to those in the west looking for ‘moderate’ Muslims is: take care of the Palestinians, the Kashmiris, the Iraqis, the Afghans and the Chechens and then you will have so many moderate Muslims coming out of the woodwork that you won’t know what to do with them.
Syed Mansoor Hussain has practised and taught medicine in the US. He can be reached at smhmbbs70@yahoo.com
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