OT. Commentary: A Dearth of Muslim Outrage
Posted April 2, 2004
By Uwe Siemon-Netto
insightmag.com
As the ghastly pictures from Fallujah flashed across the television screen, one of Salman Rushdie's most famous outbursts in recent years came to mind: "Where's the Muslim outrage?"
Here the world saw an ugly crowd beating the charred bodies of Western civilians with their shoes and then hanging them on a bridge over the Euphrates River. And all the while the mob howled, "We sacrifice our blood and soul for Islam."
One was reminded of Rushdie's words in the New York Times in 2002: "As their ancient, deeply civilized culture of love, art and philosophical reflection is hijacked by paranoiacs, racists, liars, male supremacists, tyrants, fanatics and violence junkies, why are they not screaming?"
To be fair, there were protests, but they came chiefly from Muslims in the West, where the still-fledgling movement striving for a moderate, democratic Islam is located.
The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) condemned the Fallujah atrocity, which it said "violated both Islamic and international norms." CAIR said a tradition of the Prophet Mohammed "prohibits mutilating bodies (Hadith 654.3)."
"As a Muslim, I wish all Muslims worldwide would condemn what is wrong," CAIR spokeswoman Rabiah Ahmed told United Press International on Thursday. But what about the Muslim sages in the Middle East? She added, somewhat meekly, "In the past, many Muslim countries have condemned 9/11, suicide bombings and terrorist activities."
That is true, some did. But there has never been a unison outcry. There have never been high-powered delegations of Muslim notables willing to intercede, for example, when northern Nigerian religious courts sentenced alleged adulteresses to be stoned to death. That task fell to European Union officials and international secular organizations such as Avocats sans Frontières (Lawyers Without Borders).
European Muslim scholars interviewed for this column follow what they term the spinelessness of their Middle Eastern counterparts with growing alarm. They observe that some of their most prominent Christian dialogue partners have become extraordinarily blunt when discussing the carnage authored by Muslim militants.
Take another TV image that shocked the international community -- the picture of a Palestinian boy wearing a bomb strapped around his waist. The Vatican, the former archbishop of Canterbury and the state-related Protestant Church of Germany, all three often critical of Israel, were unanimous in their dismay.
"First women, now children are being used, more and more often, in these suicidal attacks," thundered L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's official newspaper.
The Evangelical Church in Germany, or EKD, scolded "Palestinian terrorists" for "recruiting children with deceptive promises to commit suicide bombings."
"We appeal to our Muslim fellow citizens and their organizations to speak up, in the name of their Islamic faith, against suicide attacks and deny them their religious legitimization," the EKD's governing council declared.
And George Carey, the former archbishop of Canterbury, one of the biggest players in the international Christian-Muslim dialogue, stunned his Islamic interlocutors with his outburst: "Sadly, apart from a few courageous examples, very few Muslim leaders condemn -- clearly and unconditionally -- the evil of suicide bombers who kill innocent people."
Four prominent moderate U.S. Muslims, who were asked to comment on Fallujah, did not return UPI's call by late Thursday afternoon.
Carey's criticism came at a time when Christian-Muslim relations arrived at a dangerous crossroads. The terrorist attacks on commuter trains in Spain, killing 190 people, and the reason the perpetrators gave in a video -- revenge for the expulsion of Islam from that country centuries ago -- were a wakeup call to Europeans, church leaders included.
Now there are unconfirmed reports from Rome that a terrorist attack on Pope John Paul II may be looming as he presides over Holy Week celebrations in the Vatican.
In this situation, Western Christians wonder: We were near-unanimous in our support for Muslims as they faced bigotry after Sept. 11, 2001; when will we hear comparable expressions of support from Muslim leaders now that we are increasingly under threat from the Islamists?
Madrid, the Palestinian boy and now Fallujah seem to have caused a paradigm shift in Muslim-Christian relations. The days of naïveté on the Christian side evidently are drawing to a close.
As Carey said, Christians share many values with Muslims -- family values, for instance. But, he implied, sympathy must be a two-way street. "The welcome we have given Muslims in the West, with the accompanying freedom to worship ... and build their mosques should be reciprocated in Muslim lands," he declared in a speech at Rome's Gregorian University.
With great sorrow, rather than anger, Carey spoke of the decline of the Islamic culture. "Although we owe much to Islam handing on to the West many of the treasures of Greek thought, the beginnings of calculus, Aristotelian thought during the period known in the West as the Dark Ages, it is sad to relate that no great invention has come for many hundred years from Muslim countries," he said.
He attacked the "glaring lack of democracy" in Muslim countries. "Throughout the Middle East and North Africa we find authoritarian regimes," he complained. Then Carey pleaded with moderate Muslims to resist the usurpation of Islam by radicals and to "express strongly, on behalf of the many millions of their coreligionists, their abhorrence of violence done in the name of Allah."
The Muslim League of Britain condemned Carey's statements, saying, "Mainstream Muslims have consistently condemned terrorist attacks of all kinds."
But this prompted the kind of commentary that often causes despair among Western Christians perfectly willing to coexist amicably with Islam: "Muslims must not denounce other Muslims," militant Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad told the British Broadcasting Corporation. "Cooperation with the authorities against other Muslims, that is an act of apostasy."
Uwe Siemon-Netto is a religious-affairs editor for UPI, a sister news organization of Insight magazine. |
