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Who speaks for Islam? More to the point, who speaks for Political Islam? I’d say whichever answer is apt for the first question should fit the second too. And that answer is not one name but many, though their voices may sound exactly alike to untrained ears. By this I mean the western perception of Islam as a political force is gravely ill-informed, primarily in that Western minds see a monolithic beast that slouches towards Mecca, and thrashes wildly west. This could not be more inaccurate. Islam both theologically and politically is a religion in turmoil. The unity with which the Islamic world seems to condemn the west belies the ideological discord that characterizes the Islamic world today.
Of swords and scholars
There are two chief sources of conflict. First, an ancient theological divide between the two main schools of Islam, the Sunni and the Shia, most easily observed in the sectarian violence in Iraq today, and the longer-standing acrimony between Iran and Iraq. The dispute arises from disagreement over the legitimacy of two competing sources of doctrinal authority: the Sunni follow Mohammed’s example and consider the first four caliphs to be authoritative, while the Shia hold that the Prophet’s progeny are the true guardians of doctrinal authority, and thus denounce the three caliphs after Mohammed on the basis that, being elected, they were essentially the product of human not Divine creation.
The other source of disunity is intellectual. What we now know as “political Islam” grew out of the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and with it a pan-Arab identity that is important for understanding why Muslims tend to identify with one another so strongly across borders. In the west we tend to see nations divided by peoples, it would not be unrealistic to say that many Muslims see the Islamic world as a people divided by nations. Along with it came a Sunni-based doctrine called Salafism, which accords doctrinal supremacy to the first three generations of Islam holding that they alone provide the correct interpretation of how the religion should be practiced. Allied with an older, closely related and extremely puritanical doctrine known as Wahhabism (practiced mainly in Saudi Arabia), the ideological roots of opposition to the West were born.
Brothers of the same blood
These twin ideologies matured to produce, in 1928, an international fraternity known as the Muslim Brotherhood. The confidence acquired from success against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan during the 1980s, created a new organisation – Al Qaeda. The two, although still bound by theological and intellectual fraternity, differ in their tactical doctrines. The Brotherhood officially (and fairly consistently) renounces violence, while Al-Qaeda has made it a central tenet in its methods. Al-Qaeda is inspired by a doctrine known as Qutbism, which stresses the duty to eliminate “Godlessness” without hesitation, through violence if necessary. Along with this enjoinment, is the instruction to avoid in deed and association, the corrupting influences of non-Islamic practices. And there’s the rub.
The election of a Hamas government in the Palestinian Authority, in January last year has demonstrated a willingness of the extreme political margins in the Muslim world, to adopt a realist pragmatism in the pursuit of ideological objectives. Yet this is where the difficulties start to become more apparent. Not all the Muslim world was thrilled to see a Hamas government. For a start, Egypt and Jordan were most unnerved; the Hamas victory was seen as a nod of approval for a pernicious trend of theocratic politics that these two secularist-inclined states are trying to silence. Al-Qaeda’s hoorah was also hushed. Hamas’ methods are more in line with the Brotherhood's flexible approach, while Al-Qaeda’s as explained above, are uncompromisingly Qutbist.
Same idea, different methods
While the two camps are not necessarily antagonistic, the Brotherhood tends to favour a more pragmatic approach to the goals they both share, and this will often mean engaging with the west on its own terms. Political entryism (i.e. infiltration of existing institutions in order to subvert them to push a particular agenda) is a favoured method of the Brotherhood. It has worked with spectacular success both in the west and in the Arab World. One of the Brotherhood’s affiliates, the Muslim Association of Britain, has played a very effective role in the “Stop the War Campaign”, and helped to bring millions of Britons (many completely oblivious to the forces behind the placards) onto the streets in opposition to the UK’s involvement in Iraq. The Brotherhood is thus committed to using the values of liberal democracy to its advantage: freedom of speech, freedom of association and the right to protest. Yet this isn’t simply opportunism; it reflects the genuine confidence that Hassan Al-Bannah – the movement’s founder – placed in parliamentary systems. Their goal is thus to Islamize society first, and then the state thereafter.
This does not go down well with Al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda is first and foremost a terrorist organization and it’s members would not deny this (Al-Qaeda is, by the way, more a loose affiliation of kindred spirits rather than a headquartered multinational with strict lines of communication). Their mission is to sponsor and co-ordinate acts of violence wherever their interpretation of Islamic ideals are under threat, not just in the Arab and Muslim world, but in the west also. They are not averse to directing such violence against other Muslims either. Iraq’s insurgency has become something of a proxy war between Sunni-inspired Al-Qaeda’s vision for Islam and Shia politico-religious objectives. But they all still have one thing – in fact three things – in common.
Between Iraq and a hard place
One might be forgiven for seeing a united Islamic front. Indeed, three factors seem to consistently bind the faithful: A deep rooted opposition to Israel’s existence, a resentment and suspicion of America’s influence in the Arab world, and a burgeoning intellectual confidence in Islam as a viable alternative to liberal democracy. America thus has a double disadvantage in any fight with Political Islam.
First, it unites rather than divides. A divide and conquer strategy will simply not work. The occupation of Iraq has enraged both sides. The Sunnis because many of them see America as a threat to their previously secure political hegemony under Saddam Hussein, by diffusing power to the majority Shia population; and the Shia will oppose any compromise with the Sunnis, fearing that it would encourage unpopular Sunni governments in Saudi Arabia and result in a broader, regional tilt of power in favour of the Sunnis.
The second horn of the dilemma facing the US, is that in the war on terror as a whole, it is lashing at ghosts. There is no “fixed” centre of Islamism, and it is completely erroneous and complacent to assume that air strikes and invasions will offer any long-term protection to America’s interests in the Middle East and solve her own national security concerns.
It doesn’t help that to a people already inclined to imagine that anything that goes wrong in the region is America’s fault, America’s strong arm tactics merely provide evidence of what they already assumed to be true. As such, however sweet the fruits of democracy are, there is every chance that they will be spat out in disgust at where they have grown.
Among all the great crimes of history – the wars, the genocides, the systematic rape of nature – one great crime has passed unnoticed. It is the crime of deicide. The American journalist H. L Mencken described this oddity in cultural evolution in his Treatise on the Gods. Once we exalted the gods; we built monuments to their great names and beseeched their blessing, prayed for their protection and sought favour with them. Yet now their temples lie dormant and desecrated; mere curiosities of our past and testimonies to the superstitions and folly of the ancients perhaps. From the Aztec gods like Mictlanteculhtli through to Mars of the Romans; Osiris, Egyptian god of the underworld, and the Nordic Odin, it seems that Nietzsche was right when he declared “God is dead and we have killed Him – you and I”.
It is more than a little ironic that beings, whose defining characteristics were omniscience, omnipotence, and immortality, have slipped away from this world without so much as an obituary in the press. Most of the great religions books agree that when we die we are called to account for all our deeds while living. The good proceed to heaven and a life of eternal bliss. Meanwhile, we are told, the bad, the sinful and the downright abominable will have to be content with the rather less salubrious atmosphere of Hades. That’s the basic idea. But how do gods die, and where to they go when they die?
At one point in history there was no Jehovah (or at least we did not know of Him), nor was there a Baal, or a Zeus, yet by some process whether of divine, artistic, or political instigation, they sprung into existence. Deities and religions seem to be spawned out of thin air. In the Bible, the book of Genesis tells us that “In the Beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” all in six days, leaving Him time for a divinely deserved break on the seventh. But the book of Genesis doesn’t really start “in the beginning” – it doesn’t mention where God came from.
Considering that numerous gods and religious traditions came before the God of the Bible, it is a matter of some curiosity when the Jewish God, Jehovah, was first recognised as a Supreme Being. How are deities born? Perhaps by some monumental misapprehension – a mirage or an hallucination – a great chase of Chinese whispers ensued, and turns a simple error of perception into a self-perpetuating myth, spurred on by mankind’s gluttonous appetite for the supernatural and the incredible.
I am prepared to accept that perhaps gods become known to us by gradual divine revelation. Yet by the same cultural-sleight-of-hand that spawns them, they disappear; just as inexplicably as they had come to being in the first place.
In the case of the Abrahamic Faiths, each successive revelation, first to Moses, and then through Christ, and finally through the Prophet Mohammed, claimed that the preceding one was inaccurate or needed updating (if you ask me, it seems a little similar to the way that Microsoft releases a new version of windows virtually every year, despite the fact that the previous version always seems perfectly fine).
Each new incarnation of the Supreme Being brings something new to the idea. The Judaic tradition enshrined the concept of a monotheistic deity whose nature was incomparable, name ineffable and being was unique. But as often happens with deities, the idea went out of fashion.
Through Christ, divine wrath and vengeance became divine compassion. The Christian belief is that God became man, and the friend of sinners. The idea of a direct link to God is central in Christian doctrine and was largely alien to previous monotheistic religions.
The final section of the trilogy, revealed half a millennium after Christianity, proclaimed that the previous two were wrong or at least in need of editing (although to be honest, it doesn’t seem profoundly different from the previous versions). Muslims believe that this last version was a sort of direct tele-fax from God, and unlike Christianity, is proved by the absence of intermediaries between the message and its recipients.
Today we are left with the sombrely hilarious scenario in which none of the three conceptions of God will give way to the other, and the harmony that they were intended to bring, is all but an elusive aspiration with no near possibility of coming to fruition. Perhaps this is the reason why gods die. This world ain’t big enough for all of them, so they fight one another – physically through wars and ideologically through holy books and PR campaigns. And because deities and legends thrive on memetic perpetuation rather than necessarily on substance, the one with the greatest popular appeal will always win the day.
This is why the way we see them today probably bears little resemblance to the way their initial worshippers saw them. This is also perhaps why they eventually die. They die of neglect.
Perhaps deities die because they are too human. We all know how susceptible the gods of the Greek pantheon were to all those vices that make us human: greed, envy, lust and gluttony, and I suppose fatigue too (why else would God need to rest after speaking the world into existence?). But we tend to ignore all that and place exaggerated emphasis on those attributes we hold in esteem – bravery, beauty, justice and perfection. This led Socrates to comment that “if the lions have a god he must surely be a lion.” No doubt too, when fish conceive of a god, if they can conceive of a god, they consider such a being to have fins, and gills, larger in proportion and superior in appearance to their own.
I am not saying that religion is merely a figment of our imagination nor am I deriding belief – there must be something in it for it to have held such sway over humanity for so many thousands of years. Rather I am saying that the wise words of yesterday’s prophets must be interpreted for today and with an appreciation for the context of their times. When we fail to do this – to adapt the message – it becomes incongruous and arcane, eventually defunct and dead.
Maybe Gods don’t die at all. They are merely reincarnated in a form to suit the wisdom of the times. In the legend of King Arthur, when he is wounded in his final fight, Arthur is returned to the island in the middle of the lake, to be kept "until he is needed again". Perhaps it is the same with the gods; Ra, Woden, Dagon and Apollo may well indeed return when we have need of them again. They may now be consigned to the Realm of Ideas, whence they came, but from there they have as much hold over our imaginations as they did when their statues and temples graced the earth.
