Radical Islam, Liberal Islam

“It is in the battle for Islam’s soul that the United States and liberal Islam share a common strategic goal: the systematic dismantlement and delegitimization of the rogue Islamist discourse that portrays America as an anti-Islam crusader and Islam as an ideology of hate and violence.”

Radical Islam, Liberal Islam M. A. MUQTEDAR KHAN

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revival of Islam depends, in their view, on the defeat of the West and the rejection of Western values. Political, military, economic, and intellectual independence from the West has always been modern political Islam’s overriding goal. In the hearts of those Islamists who believe that Islam should be the sole source of values, laws, and governance in Muslim society, the failure to achieve their goal for nearly a century, in combination with real and perceived injustices committed by the United States and its allies against Muslims, has engendered an extremely vitriolic hatred of America and given birth to radical Islam. These radicals—truly, rogue Islamists—are willing to do anything to destroy America. They and their discourses are globalizing anti-Americanism and spreading an ideology of hatred and killing. In the process they are undermining the moral fabric of the Muslim world by corrupting Islam’s message of justice, mercy, submission, compassion, and enlightenment. Rogue Islamists constitute a threat both to America and to Islam. An effective response to this threat requires a complex strategy that counters the Islamists’ worldview and delegitimizes their discourses. This strategy should expose the fallacies of their radicalism and underscore the devastating consequences it could bring to Muslims and the world by triggering a long and bloody global conflict between America and the Muslim world. An essential element in this strategy is the promotion of liberal Islam. Liberal Islam challenges the radical Islamist worldview. While also using Islam as its foundational idiom, it provides an alternate interpretation of Muslim reality and a more positive vision in which all Muslims can find hope.

merican foreign policy faces a critical threat from the Muslim world in the form of a deeply embedded and rapidly growing antiAmericanism. This anti-Americanism already has resulted in the catastrophic attack on the United States on September 11, 2001, that led to thousands of deaths, two wars, hundreds of billions of dollars of economic losses, and a significant erosion of American democracy in the form of the Patriot Act, which undermines many of the civil protections enshrined in the Bill of Rights. Muslim anti-Americanism stems from two principal causes: the manifestly unjust consequences of current and past US policies toward the Muslim world, and the use of America as the “designated other” in Islamist discourse that seeks to reconstruct an Islamic identity and create a global Islamic political power. The policies that fuel anti-Americanism include US support for Israel, for authoritarian regimes in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and for opposition to Islamic regimes in Afghanistan, Sudan, Iran, and Algeria. They also include past sanctions against Iraq and the recent “preemptive war” against and occupation of Iraq. These actions are seen as proof that the United States is determined to destroy Islam and Muslims. Islamist discourse has made anti-Americanism its centerpiece by constructing the idea of an Islamic civilization that is in direct opposition to a caricaturized West. Islamists first define the contemporary West as imperial, morally decadent, and un-Godly. They posit Western power and values as the cause of all Muslim problems. Then they envision a revived Islamic civilization as just, moral, and Godcentered—the antithesis of their imagined West. The

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LIBERAL HOUR? Islam itself is essentially a set of revealed values designed to guide humanity on the path to enlightenment and virtue. Liberal Islam interprets Islam to

M. A. MUQTEDAR KHAN is a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and director of international studies at Adrian College. His most recent book is American Muslims: Bridging Faith and Freedom (2002). 417

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emphasize liberal values such as religious tolerance, freedoms of conscience and speech, civil liberties, social justice, public welfare, and educational development. Islamic Spain, the Emperor Akbar’s rule in Mughal India, and the Abbasid caliphate are the best-known historical examples of liberal Islam. These regimes practiced religious tolerance, promoted educational and scientific achievement, and made pluralism a state as well as a social value. Often the terms “moderate” or “liberal,” when used as an adjective before Muslim, are interpreted to mean lukewarm. Many Muslims traditionally believe that there is only one essential interpretation of Islam, the “true Islam,” and deny that there can be liberal as well as extremist interpretations of Islamic sources. For them the term liberal Islam implies casual or loose adherence to fundamentals rather than a different understanding of the fundamental principles of Islam. This is misleading and demeaning. Many progressive Muslims are passionate about their values and beliefs. Today moderate Muslims are those who have achieved a negotiated peace with modernity. They recognize that modernity is the existential condition of our time, and they also submit to the message of Islam. They understand the distinction between historical Islam and Islamic principles. They recognize ijtihad, an Islamic tradition allowing reinterpretation of religious texts, as the most important tool for intellectual revival and social reform within the Islamic context. By focusing on Islamic principles and advocating ijtihad, moderate Muslims are able to bridge the gap between text and context through rational interpretation. They underscore that Islam is a religion of peace, mercy, and toleration. (The word Islam itself is a conjugation of the Arabic term for peace, salam.) They also advocate democracy, religious tolerance, interfaith relations, peaceful co-existence, and secular education. Moderate Muslims are not as well organized as Islamists, but they are a global presence. Liberal Muslim intellectuals who are speaking up and writing critically include Maulana Waheeduddin Khan and Asghar Ali Engineer in India, Farish Noor and Chandra Muzaffar in Malaysia, Nourcholish Majid in Indonesia, Tarik Ramadan in Europe, Fetullah Gülen in Turkey, and Abdul Kareem Soroush in Iran. These individuals also enjoy a degree of popular support within their communities, where their ideas are generating debates not only at home but in the Muslim world generally through the Internet and other media. In addition to being critical of US foreign policy in the Muslim world, moderate Muslims also deplore

the prejudiced view of Islam in the West, particularly among members of the policy elite, who are ignorant about Islam and life in Muslim lands. But Muslim moderates do not blame the United States or the West or modernity for the problems of the Muslim world. They recognize that the decline of Islamic civilization preceded colonialism. They are aware that Western powers did not cause the decay of free and creative thinking in the Muslim world, which came about because of internal dynamics. Moderate Muslims are critical of polemics against the West, rising anti-Semitism, and the tendency to blame Israel for everything problematic in the Muslim world. They condemn the growing intolerance, sectarianism, and authoritarianism in Muslim societies. Above all, they lament the Muslim world’s intellectual decline.

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BATTLE FOR ISLAM’S SOUL Moderate Muslims are engaged in a battle for the soul of Islam. They argue that Islam embodies a message of compassion and peace sent by God to civilize humanity and to give human existence a transcendent and divine purpose. They are aghast at—and reject—the use of Islam to incite terror, justify bigotry, and discriminate on the basis of faith, gender, or ethnicity. They recognize that Islam has been appropriated by political and extremist groups that are using it as an ideology to pursue a counterhegemonic agenda both within the Muslim world and against the non-Muslim world, especially the United States. They acknowledge the global problem created by rogue Islamists and insist that the extremist interpretations of Islam by the jihadis and their crusades are not only creating a global fitna (crisis), but are also corrupting the essence of Islam and worsening the sociopolitical, economic, and cultural crises in the Muslim world. Liberal Islam deconstructs the jihadi discourse to reveal the extremist tendencies behind this interpretation of Islam and exposes how radical Islamists use rather than serve their religion. Moderate Muslims aim to rescue Islam, Islamic symbols and traditions, Islamic scholarship, and Islam’s intellectual legacy. It is in the battle for Islam’s soul that the United States and liberal Islam share a common strategic goal: the systematic dismantlement and delegitimization of the rogue Islamist discourse that portrays America as an anti-Islam crusader and Islam as an ideology of hate and violence. It is in this arena of interpretation and reinterpretation of global political realities and the essence and objectives of an Islamic society that the war on terror will be won or lost. It is also in this contested realm that the hearts and minds of Muslims will be won or lost. Although

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moderate Muslims are beginning to have an impact in this battle in the United States, they are not yet an important player in the Muslim world. American policy makers must recognize the strategic value of liberal Islam and promote and protect it. Moderate Muslims do not see the war on terror as a war against Islam or all Muslims. The liberal Islamic view of global politics disagrees fundamentally not only with the jihadi views, but also with those who see this struggle as a clash of civilizations between Islam and the West. Some American analysts, in an attempt to explain Islamic militancy and anti-Americanism in a way that also finds fault entirely with Islam or certain Islamic fundamentalists, have centered their focus on key Islamic thinkers, such as Sayyid Qutb. Qutb is easily one of the major architects and strategists of the contemporary Islamic revival. Along with Maulana Maududi, the founder of Jamaat-e-Islami, the revivalist movement in South Asia, and the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran’s Islamic revolution, Qutb gave shape to the ideas and the worldview that have mobilized and motivated millions of Muslims worldwide. But Western analysts and Islamists alike have tended to filter his messages to fit their agendas.

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RADICAL READING OF QUTB Any discussion with Islamists about America and modernity brings out familiar themes: America is secular and un-Godly, materialist and immoral, corrupt and decadent, un-Islamic and anti-Islamic. An empirical study of contemporary American society would of course reveal that it is less corrupt than many Muslim nations; is far less militant about radical secularism than many Muslim nations, such as Syria, Turkey, and Iraq under Saddam Hussein; and most important, is neither un-Islamic nor anti-Islamic. More than 6 million Muslims who live in the United States thrive economically and are free to practice their religion. Most radical Islamist images of America systematically eschew discussion about Western achievements such as relative religious and ethnic harmony, economic prosperity, work ethic, and appreciation for knowledge and scientific developments. To sustain a caricaturized construction of decadent America, many anti-Western Muslims turn to the polemics of Qutb, which were written in the 1950s after his two-year educational visit to the United States. Indeed, the use of America as a foil for constructing Islamic identity stems in part from a radical reading—or misreading—of Qutb. The social critic, who was executed in Egypt in 1966, directed his diatribes on secularism and modernity more

against the regime and society of Egyptian leader Gamel Abdel Nasser. But today rogue Islamists transfer Qutb’s criticisms of Nasserite Egypt to America. What he said about Egypt in the 1950s is exactly what jihadis now say about America. Qutb was a prolific writer. He wrote literary criticism and on Islamic theology, including a multivolume exegesis of the Koran. Anti-Western ideas occupy only a small part of his body of work. To define Qutb only on the basis of his anti-Western ideas and how rogue Islamists read him is to create a caricature. Qutb helped shape the consciousness of many politically active Muslims. He and other writers, such as Pakistan’s Maududi, produced a discourse that created an identity, provided a worldview, and presented a critique of modernity and a polemic against the West. Setting aside the polemics and the jingoistic rhetoric clears a space to see liberal thinking. And that liberal thought is there because Islam has a strong affinity for liberal values. Islamists are not alone in misreading Qutb. Paul Berman in a March 23, 2003, article in the New York Times Magazine sketched a humane profile of Qutb, but nevertheless argued that his philosophy and understanding of Islam underpinned the ideological basis of Al Qaeda and its affiliates. A hatred of liberalism and the desire to defend Islam from the cultural impact of modern secularism, combined with a desire for martyrdom in the cause of Islam, are the cornerstones of Qutb’s ideology, according to Berman. He also insists that, while Qutb was indeed critical of the United States and its hypocritical foreign policy and support for Israel, Qutb did not focus on those policies. Berman argues—correctly—that Qutb was less concerned with geopolitical conflicts than with the ideas, values, and norms that shape society. Berman asserts that it is not American foreign policy but the challenge of liberalism, particularly its morality, that vexed Qutb. But Berman misreads Qutb by treating his critique of the West as the dominant and defining theme of his thinking. Berman argues that Islamism is necessarily opposed to liberalism. The strategic implications of Berman’s reading of Qutb suggest that the United States could change its foreign policy in the Middle East and elsewhere without affecting the conflict with Islamists. Those who are motivated by a fear of liberalism will continue to seek the destruction of the West so long as its culture continues to influence the world—the Muslim world in particular. Berman’s misreading absolves US foreign policy as an important cause for rebellion and resistance by Islamic militants and suggests that this is indeed a clash of civilizations— Islam versus liberalism.

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strong disapproval of rebellions and armed opposition to state authority. Qutb’s emphasis on freedom and the legitimacy of government is reminiscent of the works of John Locke, the seventeenth-century English thinker whose ideas strongly influenced American democracy. Having pursued graduate education in the United States, Qutb may well have been acquainted with Locke’s ideas and philosophy. Both Locke and Qutb imagined freedom in the same absolutist terms. The individual is, by virtue of his divine creation, subordinate to God and God alone and therefore is a free agent. Locke argued that “The natural liberty of man is to be free from any ISLAM’S JOHN LOCKE? superior power on earth, and not to be under the will Sayyid Qutb means many things to many people. or legislative authority of man, but to have only the For some, as we have seen, he is the key ideologue law of nature for his rule.” For Locke, freedom is of Islamic militancy. For others, such as the Muslim inalienable, a God-given attribute prior to civil sociBrotherhood—the most important Islamic moveety. Qutb echoed Locke’s ideas about natural rights. ment in the Arab world and Arab diaspora—he is the For Qutb, Islam is freedom from human authority. beacon of light who has explained with clarity why And Islamic society is civil society, which is prior to and how Islam can and should play a central role in the state. In his book Milestones, Qutb called the Muslim societies and polities. For many he has kept alive the hope that the Muslim and Arab world might Muslim faith “a universal declaration of the freedom one day free itself of man from slavery from internal and to other men and his external occupation. American policy makers must recognize the strategic desires.” Qutb added For a liberal Musin the same vein, “its value of liberal Islam and promote and protect it. lim seeking reform, purpose is to free Qutb’s use of ijtihad those people who is especially appealwish to be freed from ing. Ijtihad is a juristic tool employed to articulate enslavement to men so that they may serve Allah Islamic legal positions on a specific issue using alone.” It should not be surprising that Qutb came independent reasoning when traditional Islamic to value freedom as necessary even for the practice sources are silent on it. Today, liberal and progresof faith. He was living in an authoritarian state— sive Muslims advocate ijtihad as a rethinking tool Egypt—that imprisoned him and eventually hanged to bridge the gap between Islamic texts and our him for his ideas. contemporary context. But ijtihad is also a philosBoth Locke and Qutb were deeply concerned ophy of renewal that allows access to the reservoir about the legitimacy of government, in part because of Islamic wisdom in guiding life in the here and they saw that governments necessarily compromise the now. If Islam is to take its rightful place in the the absolute freedom that individuals enjoy in the world today, Muslims will have to embrace ijtihad. state of nature. For Locke, the key to legitimacy is It is the way forward to the renewal of their civicontinued consent. He regarded government as the lization and community. product of a social contract that would identify the Qutb’s key ijtihad redefined the Islamic ideal of objectives and limits of government authority. If jihad. The traditional understanding of jihad (struggovernments, whatever their form, transgress their gle) in its military sense was that it was a war of limits or fail to fulfill their designated objectives, defense against infidel nations, not individuals. Qutb they become illegitimate and can be dissolved. argued that jihad could include not only offensive Qutb divided societies into two kinds, Islamic war but also war against internal enemies (even if and ignorant. Ignorant societies are bereft of Islamic they were Muslims)—including the state, if it had principles, values, and the Islamic way, and are lost its legitimacy. His call for jihad against illegitihence illegitimate. The Islamic rhetoric aside, Qutb mate rulers was contrary to traditional Islamic legal was essentially seeking a correspondence between thought, which tended to privilege stability and order social norms and political norms. He regarded such over justice and legitimacy and which expressed correspondence as the key to Islamic legitimacy. Yet there is another reading of Qutb—a liberal Muslim reading—that emphasizes the common undercurrents of liberalism in even the most strident of Muslim narratives. Qutb’s works contain themes that closely track those found in Enlightenment thinking but are also influenced by the political context in which the author found himself. Liberal readings of philosophers like Qutb can have the effect of disarming extremists. By questioning their readings, an opportunity arises to de-radicalize dialogue between moderates and radicals.

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Rulers, he asserted, must govern by the values of those governed. When governments do not reflect and defend the society’s values, they lose legitimacy and can be dissolved or replaced. Locke, too, developed a justification for revolution. Systematic, not occasional, violation of the social contract merits dissolution, and if dissolution is not possible peacefully, it must be carried out by force. “Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people who are thereupon absolved from further obedience and are left to the common refuge which God has provided for all men against force and violence.” Unlike Locke, who saw the role of government essentially as the defender of property and freedom, Qutb argued that the role of the state is to free individuals to pursue their moral values. He lived in the age of socialist authoritarianism and he desperately sought the freedom to practice his faith. Qutb believed that tyranny could only be undermined through activism and the use of force: “When they have no such freedom, then it becomes incumbent upon Muslims to launch a struggle through individual preaching as well as by initiating an activist movement to restore their freedom, and to strike hard at all those political powers that force people to bow to their will and authority, defying the commandments of God, and denying people the freedom to listen to the message of Islam, and to accept it even when they wish to do so.” But it is on the question of social justice—a subject for which Locke laid the foundations in his discussion of tolerance and property—that we can see Qutb most clearly as a philosopher not of terror, but of justice. Qutb wrote an entire volume on the importance of social justice, its Islamic philosophical roots, and its centrality to his imagined Islamic republic. In Social Justice in Islam, Qutb advanced a basis for the idea of social justice within the Islamic framework. He maintained that social justice in Islam is based on three principles: absolute freedom of conscience, the complete equality of all people, and the firm mutual responsibility of individual and society. Freedom, equality, and responsibility: these are the three pillars around which Qutb dreamed of establishing an Islamic republic that would be dedicated to the values of social justice. With this vision, he also provided a more fundamental understanding of Islam as a religion of freedom and justice. Qutb underscored the importance of balancing the material and moral needs of society and he

demonstrated through a rigorous analysis of Islam’s fundamental sources—the Koran and the Sunnah— the Islamic basis for freedom, equality, and responsibility. The outstanding aspect of Qutb’s approach was his attempt to emphasize collective harmony and collective identity while still safeguarding the importance of individual rights and freedoms. Qutb’s idea of social justice in Islam was an intricate effort to balance materiality with morality, collective responsibility with individuality.

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COMPLEXITY OF ISLAM Although this is a liberal reading of Qutb, it is also a liberal reading of Locke. (There are moments when Qutb shows sparks of intolerance and even totalitarian proclivities, but then so does Plato.) Unlike Locke, who focused on his own society, Qutb also included a polemic against the West. Yet, if Locke had seen his own society colonized and ravaged by the West, as the Muslim world was by European colonialism, he too would have found fault with the colonizers. Locke believed in the absolute right of private property. He certainly would not have withheld criticism of those who forcibly robbed other civilizations of their freedom and their resources. In arguing that there can be an alternate reading of Muslim ideologues, I am also suggesting that discourses are what we make of them. Ideas affect reality, but reality also affects the formation of ideas and how ideas are apprehended. Some Muslims read Qutb and are motivated to use violence against their regimes and the West, which they perceive as tyrannical. Other Muslims read Qutb as an advocate of freedom, social justice, and responsible governance. The different readings of Qutb underscore the diversity within Islam and among Muslims. Profiles of Islam and Muslims cannot be painted with broad brushes. US policy makers in particular must realize that if America is to remain deeply engaged with the Muslim world, then they and indeed most Americans will have to remain deeply engaged with Islamic thought and intellectuals, and with how Muslims understand and interpret their faith. There are no short cuts. There are also no quick singlevariable explanations of Muslim anger with the United States. Muslim realities, like Muslim thought, are complex, diverse, and challenging. As policy makers in Washington rethink the Muslim world, they must remember that ethnocentric interpretations and sweeping judgments will only enhance misunderstanding and lead to bad policy. And bad policy has bad consequences. ■