The terror attack in Paris last week represents Islamism’s most explicit declaration of war on free society. Non-Muslims were slaughtered in a non-Muslim country to avenge a so-called crime against a blasphemy law that is not even Islamic — but merely Islamist. If there’s any blasphemy here, it’s that of Islamism itself against my religion, Islam.
At last, on New Year’s Day, the President of Egypt, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi called for the rescue of Islam from “ideology”. “We are in need of a religious revolution,” he said. “You, imams, are responsible before Allah. The entire world, I say it again, the entire world is waiting for your next move because the Islamic world is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost. And it is being lost by our own hands.” The remedy, said al-Sisi, was for Islam to recognise and talk about its mutant strain. “We need a modern, comprehensive understanding of the religion of Islam,” rather than “relying on a discourse that has not changed for 800 years”.
Sisi’s speech is significant because the Islamic world has precious little record of leaders discussing Muslims’ collective responsibility for the toxic ideologies within our midst. President Sisi’s candour has shone light upon the urgent need for the Muslim world to denounce Islamism as the imposter and explain the real meaning of the Quran.
In nations gripped by Islamist ideology, it’s deemed “Islamophobic” to be critical of Islam in any way. Even in the West, critical discussion is becoming difficult.
The United Nations has passed several resolutions giving Islamop-hobia the status of a crime under international law. So it’s not enough simply to say that the Islamists will never win. In several important arenas, they are winning already. Their idea of blasphemy is particularly potent: Shahbaz Bhatti, a Pakistani government minister, was executed by Muslim “defenders of the faith” after his brave criticism of Pakistan’s inhumane blasphemy laws.
The jihadists’ other objective, of course, is to speak for the Muslim world and advance the idea of a clash of civilisations. This is going fairly well, if opinion polls are to be believed — more or less half of those in Britain, Spain, France and the United States say they believe that Islam is not compatible with the West. And this is why Muslims cannot rely on Presidents and Prime Ministers to denounce terrorism — the public will be persuaded not by what political leaders say, but what we Muslims say.
To assert that this Islamism is un-Islamic is not a kneejerk response to its atrocities but the only conclusion that can be drawn after serious consideration of its principles. The Damascene Muslim scholar, Bassam Tibi, identifies six tenets of Islamism. The first is seeking a new world order through a new dictatorial global “calip-hate”. Next is the establishment of Islamism within democracies — Islamists are keen to stand for election, but once they get into power they want to shut the democratic gate behind them. The third principle is positioning Jews as Islam’s chief enemy, thereby making anti-Semitism central. Then comes the perversion of classical jihad into terrorist jihadism.
The fifth tenet is sharia law — not sharia as described by the Quran, but a concocted version used to impose a form of totalitarian rule which is without historical precedent. As we see, particularly in Iran and Pakistan, mercy has no place within Islamists’ version of sharia. In his searing study of the subject, the British lawyer Sadakat Kadri makes the critical observation that “pitiless punishment”, while lacking in Islam itself, has found a comfortable home in much of the Islamist world. Judges have been “required to punish but forbidden to forgive”, meaning stonings, amputations and floggings. Medieval barbarity has become a modern-day reality across much of the modern Muslim world — except that such punishment was unusual even in medieval times.
When they are not exacting pitiless punishment, Islamists are busy with the sixth tenet: their concept of purity and authenticity. Any challenge to Islamism is, to them, de facto evidence of an un-Islamic behaviour. As Professor Tibi puts it, this is what makes Islamism “a totalitarian ideology poised to create a totalitarian state” on a par with Nazism and Leninism. “Given that Muslims constitute more than a quarter of humanity,” he concludes, the tension “between civil Islam and Islamist totalitarianism matters to everyone”.
Last month’s massacre of 132 children in Peshawar was a shocking reminder to the Muslim world that Islamism is not just directed at Westerners. It’s also a reminder of why the animus against Islamism is rising — holding out the prospect of real reform. The Muslim Brotherhood’s hold on Egypt did not last long, and the rise of Isis in Syria and Iraq is giving the whole region a growing sense of what unbridled Islamism actually looks like. Crucially, the jihadis are losing the argument.
This is the moment for the Islamic world to expose Islamism — but loosening its hold upon our faith falls upon those Muslims who value pluralism and pursue a civilised, enlightened Islam. The reformation many are calling for isn’t needed of Islam, but rather of Muslims — and specifically of Muslim leadership.
Qanta Ahmed is a British Muslim based in New York, and the author of In the Land of Invisible Women
By arrangement with the Spectator
