The best way to deny accountability is to run towards insanity. Even the sane welcome this prospect as long as the burdens of responsibility are lifted from their shoulders. Madness negates any shred of moral responsibility, which opens up a disturbing world. Breivik’s massacre was not an act of madness. It was a cruel and vicious act of terrorism no doubt but it was brutally calculated. There was nothing indiscriminate in his mind about his attacks — he deliberately targeted people who were part of the ruling party.
Tammy Swofford’s article, ‘A madman in a new century’ (Daily Times, August 5, 2011), is symptomatic of many Euro-American commentators scurrying to hide the reality of Islamophobic rhetoric that has seeped into and become part of the mainstream political discourse. Breivik quite clearly targeted what he thought were traitors to Norway and most importantly to “western civilisation”, i.e. the left-leaning ruling party in Norway. Breivik’s act was one of not necessarily religious extremism but rather of political extremism. His was an act of brutal political violence targeting a people with particular political beliefs especially vis-à-vis immigration. Slowly but surely in Europe and the US, those dissenting with the Right’s (there are different trends but as a whole) increasingly xenophobic tone in regards to the touchy subject of immigration are dismissed as desiring ‘dhimmitude’ or some other concocted conspiratorial slur.
Bruce Bawer’s work, which Swofford seems to have claimed was innocent of Breivik’s massacre, is her mistaken view. True, Bawer and other ideological nutcases in Europe such as Bat Ye’or who dangerously talks of ‘Eurabia’ or perhaps Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller and other prime examples of right-wing xenophobia may not intend violent reaction but they constantly talk about the subversive threat posed by Muslim citizens in Europe and the US without any real proof or justification. Their ideology constantly revolves around the demographic threat posed by Muslim citizens (which is unfounded), or the “creeping threat of shariah” (which again is nonsense) and even the prospect of the Left working with jihadists to bring down the US! As if Zaid Hamid was not enough, the world needed more hell-bent conspiracy makers. These people are professional conspiracy theorists, not academics.
Let’s make it clear — right-wing politicians and ideologues in Europe and the US are exploiting genuine fears and concerns and manipulating these grievances, channelling them into violent confrontation and social strife. What we need is reconciliation and dialogue, but these ‘talking heads’ promote an ethic of division that does no one any good. Ask the difficult questions but do it with dignity rather than the Fox News way by using bombastic rhetoric.
But does the unacceptable xenophobia that these ideologues inspire (even if they do not intend it) mean we must stop asking difficult questions? Not at all. Muslims all over the world still need to face some very difficult but perfectly legitimate questions. Issues about religious freedom, gender rights, democracy, human rights and pluralism all have to be addressed by Muslims. These are genuine and legitimate issues worthy of discussion and they deserve time and patience, not hatred and populist anger that is used for politicians to gain power. Whilst Italy drowns in economic catastrophe its parliament had enough time to ban the burqa! If this is not fiddling with the carpet while the house burns down I do not know what is. Politicians, in order to score cheap political points, pick up ‘Muslim bashing’ as a way to portray themselves as ‘patriots’ or some other jingoistic construct while those politicians trying for reconciliation are dismissed harshly by the Right.
Breivik was a product of Islamophobic rhetoric and his violence did not emerge in a vacuum. Breivik was no madman — he was in enough control of his mental faculties to substantiate his ideological views over a 1,500-page dossier extensively quoting journalists, writers and philosophers. Breivik was clearly well read and saw himself as part of the ‘cultural resistance’ to preserve ‘western civilisation’.
But it was Swofford’s irresponsible reading of religious discussion in Muslim minority communities that is unsettling, such as her unqualified statement: “Islamic literature does exhibit a doctrine of expansionism combined with a doctrine of non-assimilation to a host nation.” I spent many minutes afterwards trying to decipher the meaning of this statement and its relation to the topic at hand but I could not find any answer. For Swofford’s information, Muslim minorities are elaborating an independent judicial tradition of reasoning removed from the cultural settings of Muslim majority countries and connecting the Islamic juristic tradition to the cultural setting in Europe and the US.
In recent decades, Muslim scholars and thinkers have elaborated a Fiqh al-Aqalliyyat (Islamic legal theory for Muslim minorities) that has allowed Muslim minorities to practice their faith sincerely whilst being dutiful citizens in Europe and the US. Andrew March’s brilliant paper, ‘Sources of Moral Obligation to non-Muslims in the Jurisprudence of Muslim Minorities’, concludes that “many of the works of the contemporary Islamic literature on the ‘jurisprudence of Muslim minorities’ attempt to provide an Islamic foundation for a relatively thick and rich relationship of moral obligation and solidarity with non-Muslims’.” In other words, western Muslims have been working on and are indeed practicing a religious ethic that guarantees the practice of robust citizenship in liberal democratic societies.
Her use of ‘orthodoxy’ is also vague. Does she mean the orthodoxy of Al-Azhar that recently released a document confirming the need for a democratic system that guarantees human rights or perhaps the Turkish orthodoxy (Fethullah Gülen, for instance, represents a Turkish constituency that is devout in its practice of traditional Sunni Islam) that has reconciled religious identity with a secular state? Or perhaps she means the orthodoxy of the popular reformist Tunisian cleric Rachid Al-Ghannouchi. The irresponsible use of Islamic and political terminology by many in Europe and the US has created fear and not created an atmosphere of dialogue. It has closed minds paralysed by paranoia and painted a monolithic reductive picture of a religious tradition that has millions of adherents and spans time periods and continents. Swofford’s use of the Harvard example was also dishonest if not deceitful and using the phrase “soft shariah application” is ludicrous particularly when one reads the case in greater detail. The phrase is irresponsible — it stirs up emotional frenzy by using threatening imagery rather than generate thoughtful engagement.
Dialogue is needed and it must be honest and open asking difficult questions but those who twist their words and facts to paint the threat of an ‘Islamic’ Trojan horse in Europe are doing little better than the hate manifesto Breivik produced.
* The writer is a freelance columnist. He tweets at http://twitter.com/AhmadAliKhalid and can be reached at ahmadalikhalid@ymail.com
Published on Daily Times, 10 August 2011, Wednesday
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