The Islamization of Turkish Society

Daily life in Turkey is changing.  Most of us, myself included, are so frog-like that we don’t really notice the gradual environmental changes until someone points it out.  A recent article by the veteran Turkish journalist Mehmet Ali Birand highlighted a number of things which rang true with me:

1.  Religious language (i.e., once outmoded Arabism and Qur’anic expressions) are re-emerging in daily speech patterns of AKP politicians in particular and ordinary citizens in general. 

2. Body language is changing. In the past people shook hands or kissed.  Now the more stand-offish placing of a hand on the heart is in vogue.  Touching women is an iffy business, so a nod will suffice for them.

3. Eating and drinking patters are changing.  Alcohol, as Birand puts it, “is gradually leaving the tables. It is being kept in nooks and corners as proof of tolerance. It is served if it is particularly asked for, but that is all. You also have to be brave or audacious to actually ask for it. It is becoming more usual to drink liquid yogurt, orange juice or other fruit juice with meals.” 

4.  More women are donning the dour, black chador or the head scarf and long coats.  Cover-all bathing suits manufacturers are probably the only boom industry in the country at the moment. 

5. The separation of men and women seems to have become more prevalent.

6.  More people go to the mosque on Fridays for midday prayers

7. There is an increase in the number of newspapers and TV channels that promote religious values.

8. There is an increase in the number of religious foundations.

The full article from which the above was distilled can be found at http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=98857

Why does Islam figure in so many of the world’s trouble spots today?

Middle Eastern languages make liberal use of the world “God” (Allah) in ordinary speech.  Pick up an Arabic or Turkish dictionary and there are columns of mostly positive idioms which incorporate the word God.  Unlike English, the word is usually used to bless, not to curse.

 

It thus seems strange that societies which continually invoke God with respect to every aspect of life are, today, among the world’s most violent.  Most trouble spots today involve Muslims killing each other: Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Sudan, Lebanon, Somalia…  Alongside such troubled nation states supra-national organizations claiming to speak for Islam such as Al-Qaida, the Taliban, and Hizbullah add to the impression that Islam and violence go together.

 

The typical Muslim response to this observation is to blame the West: colonialism, foreign intervention (British, French, and American), the state of Israel, Free Masons, Christian missionaries, etc. etc.  Blaming everything on outsiders does not, however, solve anything; it merely underscored the impression that foreigners are strong, and Muslims weak.  Such defeatism prevents these societies from looking their problems squarely in the face and dealing with them pragmatically.

 

Most other parts of the developing world have managed to come to terms with such scars as they inherited from their 19^th and early 20^th century interaction with the West, and get on with life.  They have integrated into the world economy and are focused on bettering the life of their citizens.

 

The rest of the world, however, is not shackled by a concept of God which seeks social renewal through the imposition of law (sharia).   In contradistinction, Christianity’s God condemns this world altogether.  Instead of focusing on the reformation of society He calls people to form grass-roots, counter-cultural communities in which the world’s hurt and marginalized can find grace and hope.  This allows society to develop naturally, while it allows the church to exercise a humanizing effect in whatever kind of society it happens to finds itself. 

Cover Up!

More and more Middle Eastern women are opting to wear headscarves; I dare say the majority now do so, raising hackles with hard-pressed secularists and westernizers. 

The Netherlands recently banned the burqa (full face covering), and Britain looks set to do the same.  France doesn’t allow any obvious religious symbolism in the public arena.  Tunesian police were recently given a mandate to simply rip the headscarf off women; it has been a politically sensitive issues in Turkey for decades.   An Egyptian cabinet minister recently condemned headscarves as “backwards”.

Some women are convinced that uncovering their hair in public means they’ll end up in hell.  For others it is a quiet revolt against western cultural values.  It is, in any case, a symbol of religious conservatism, social values and ethics, and a public declarion of personal piety. 

Having said that, you’ll see the most fashionable, colorful, silk headscarves sashay along the Nile or Bosphorus.  You’ll also see covered girls wearing clothing which reveals every curve, others are cuddling or walking hand-in-hand  with their boyfriends.  Some girls wear scarves which hold pill-boxes in place on their heads, seeking to complete the appearance of stature begun with high-heels.  In fact, the variety of ways in which scarves can be worn is amazing.  On television covered pop singers and movie stars twist and writhe….  Initially it all strikes one as odd, but you soon get used to it.

Add to this the recent spate of news articles about covered women: one threatened the jeweler she was robbing with a pistol, another killed her own children… there are covered rip-off artists, prostitutes, you name it… Nearly every day there is a news item about covered women involved in some henous crime or scam.

Of course having more and more women covering up means they end up merely representing the realities of their own culture.  The head covering thus ends up symbolizing nothing more than the values of Middle Eastern society-at-large.  And that cannot be good news for Islam!

The Demonization of Islam in America

The Middle East thrusts itself time and again onto our consciousness. At times the blows strike where it hurts: the oil-price shocks of the early 70s, the Iranian embassy debacle, Kuwait, bomb blasts in US embassies and military bases in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, East Africa and the World Trade Center in New York. A stream of unsettling media images disturbs our tranquillity: the region rocks with recurring political crises; it is run by hostile dictators and indolent monarchs who turn the oil tap on and off at whim; colorful graphs show a proliferation of conventional and non-conventional arms; pundits prophesy wars about water resources. The region’s culture and value system appears utterly incomprehensible, diametrically opposed ours: they embrace death, for us nothing is worth dying for. They force everyone into their sharia mold, we treasure the free inquiring mind. Khomeini vs Rushdie. Scenes of huge, self-flagellating crowds of bearded men with deep-set, glinting eyes and screaming women in purdah float across our TV screens. We are their “Great Satan”.

Did we win the Cold War to be embroiled in a spiral of conflicts, a “global intifada” issuing from the “Crescent of Crisis”?[1] A headline in the January 21, 1996, edition of the New York Times eloquently verbalized that fear: “The Red Menace is Gone. But Here’s Islam.”[2]
The notion that a standoff between Islam and the West has replaced the old Soviet-Western standoff was seized by a number of groups and pushed to such an extent that a rational discussion on the subject has virtually come to be perceived as being, somehow, unpatriotic. But is there any substance to the idea of an Islamic threat? Or is it a mirage, a Boorstinian pseudo-event, created to advance certain agendas? If so, who stands to gain by this demonization of Islam? Who supports them? What is their cumulative impact?

The Arab world is vast and varied, stretching from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. It encompasses countless cultures, languages, political systems, and numerous non-Arab ethnic groups—Berbers, Druze, Kurds, Turcomans, Nubians, etc. In spite of their disparity, however, the vast majority of these people appear to share a common denominator: Islam. This fact has led certain scholars, notably Bernhard Lewis of Oxford and Samuel Huntington of Harvard, to postulate that religion lies at the root of the problems emanating from the region. Huntington predicts a clash between the inherently incompatible civilizations of Islam and the West, arguing that the source of the conflict lies in the contradictory natures of Islam and Christianity.[3] Although, as we shall see, this “clash of civilizations” paradigm is much too simplistic to explain the complex dynamic of change taking place in the Middle East today, it suits the agendas of certain groups to perfection.

By presenting Islam as a global threat which must be curbed, and Islamic cultures as inherently incapable of embracing such aspects of modernity as individual freedom, social tolerance, women’s rights, and democratic government,[4] they have created a terrifying specter easily exploitable for political or religious purposes.

Let us turn to the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Christian Zionist movement as two examples of groups who embrace the “global intifadeh” myth: the first for hard, pragmatic political reasons, the second for certain theological ideas.

Israel, a democratic island living on a sliver of legally acquired and expropriated land, has sound reasons to feel intimidated. It has repeatedly fought for its survival. The expropriation of Palestinian land, the destruction numerous of Palestinian homes, the building of illegal settlements, the invasions of Lebanon, the regular bombings of Beirut, the grievances of the Palestinian diaspora, the deportation of members of Hamas, and a host of other grievances have generated much ill-will as well as a barrage of Arabic invective and hyperbole. The intifadeh is a recent, frightening memory. The next intifadeh, should it break out, will be much worse. It will not be fought by stone-throwing youths but by the armed Palestinian security apparatus. Little wonder that American Jews should muster all means at their disposal in their support of the little country.

That support is considerable, vastly disproportionate to the size of the American Jewish community. There are reasons for this. Though retaining their cultural identity, they have integrated fully into American society. Whether in politics, business, cultural life or the professions, American Jews have distinguished themselves, and often play leading roles in their respective fields. Furthermore, high Jewish turn-outs in elections, the demographic configuration of Jewish communities in key states, and the perceived relationship between Jewish voting patterns and a candidate’s policies on the Arab-Israeli conflict sensitizes political candidates to the wishes of their Jewish constituencies. The Jewish community also possesses a wide-spread grass-roots network which can tap into the community’s tremendous generosity when it comes to the causes it supports, notably Zionism and Israel.[5] One of the best know of these lobbies is AIPAC, the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee.

AIPAC’s influence is so pervasive that, in effect, it strangles American foreign policy with respect to the Middle East. According to Middle East International, for instance, Clinton received 60% of his campaign funds from Jews, and got 80% of their vote in 1992.[6] The American-Jewish community’s strength is compounded by the fact that there is virtually no Arab-American counterweight on the political scene. A convention of the Arab-American anti-Discrimination Committee recently managed to draw only one or two members of Congress for its four days of meetings, while AIPAC is regularly honored by the presence of more than 150 members from both houses, including President Clinton.[7]

AIPAC has formidable media allies. The New York Times, the New Republic, the Washington Post, Near East Report, and a host of other magazines and newspapers regularly demonize Islam in order to re-enforce the image of Israel as America’s sole reliable friend, the only bastion of reason and democracy in an irrational and frightening region upon whose sole natural resource, oil, we depend. But more about that later. Let us first cast a glance at that other pro-Israel, anti-Islamic pressure group, the Christian Zionist movement.

Israel has not failed to recognize the coalition between the pro-Israeli Jewish lobbies and the right-wing Christian Zionist movement. As long ago as 1980, the then Prime Minister of Israel, Menachim Begin, presented the Rev. Jerry Falwell with the Jabotinsky Award.[8] The award was well earned; after the Jewish lobby, the Christian Zionists are one of the most powerful forces preventing US administrations from approaching the Middle East problem evenhandedly. A full page advertisement in the January 27, 1992, edition of the Washington Times shows just how much influence the movement lays claim to: “Seventy Million Christians Urge President Bush to Approve Loan Guarantees for Israel.” Seventy million is a lot of votes.

Christian Zionism is a central plank in the evangelical right’s platform. Its proponents are organized into such assemblages and pressure groups as the International Christian Embassy of Jerusalem, Christians’ Israel Public Action Campaign, Friends of Jerusalem, and Bridges of Peace. Certain eschatological teachings motivates these groups to unswervingly support Israel and, conversely, to demonize Islam.

The eschatological foundations for Christian Zionism are confirmed by the Washington Times advertisement: “We deeply believe in the biblical, prophetic vision of the ingathering of exiles to Israel, a miracle we are now seeing fulfilled.” Rooted in “pre-millennialism”, it asserts that upon His second coming Christ will take up residence in the city of Jerusalem and reign over this physical world for a thousand years. A number or portentous signs, most notably the creation of a Jewish homeland, would precede this event. Based on various symbolic passages and a few verses which refer to the return of the Jews from their Babylonian exile, this doctrine was resurrected in the 19th century and has been embraced by much of North American Evangelicalism (though with notable exceptions). Consequently, the Balfour Declaration, the creation of the state of Israel and the recapture of Jerusalem in 1967 are all construed as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, harbingers of the second coming of Christ. The rebuilding of the temple is perceived as another pre-requisite. In short, Christian Zionists see themselves as “speeding up Christ’s return” by supporting Israeli expansionism. Their fanatical support for Israel often translated into anti-Islamism. Not only is Islam deemed to be Christianity’s greatest missionary challenge today, it is also perceived as the devil’s instrument because it touches Israel, the “apple of God’s eye”.[9]

The Jewish lobby and the Christian Zionist movement have numerous supporters in Hollywood and the news media. Distorting the image of Islam and Arabs has, in fact, characterized American media for much of the 20th century. According to Professor Jack Shaheen of the University of Southern Illinois and author of The TV Arab, Hollywood has produced over 700 films whose contents vilify Islam and Arabs.[10] Feature films such as True Lies and Delta Force, for instance, present Muslims as evil and violent, dangerous gangsters whom the American hero has to kill in order to save the day.

A steady barrage of articles and features in the mainline press relentlessly attribute the aggression emanating from the Middle East as coming from Islam, because “that is what Islam is.”[11] Edward Said chronicles an endless array of books and articles disseminating malevolent slurs—pseudo-facts—about Islam. A scathing indictment of magazine and newspaper owners and their writers, the book is a virtual “Who’s Who” of the mainstream media. They include Morton Zuckerman, owner of The Atlantic and US News and World Report, Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post, A.M. Rosenthal, Serge Schmemann, and Judith Miller of the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, CBS, ABC, and a host of press and TV personalities.

Take Martin Peretz, owner of The New Republic. He has, over the years, presented a thoroughly skewed view of Islam and Middle Eastern culture:
“Arab countries have no cultural disposition for scientific and industrial takeoff. Alas, these societies cannot make a brick, let alone a microchip… They are historically doomed to inferiority… This widening gap will produce deep, perhaps intractable resentment against Israel. And while it may not lead to war in the traditional sense, it may well produce more of what Israel has experienced over the past years: terror and ongoing riot.”[12]

Milton Viorst, contributor of numerous articles for the New Yorker, writes:
“Islam succeeded where Christianity failed in shackling man’s power of reasoning… a basic antagonism has come increasingly to characterize Islam.”[13]

Peter Rodman, a former National Security Council member, after acknowledging that he is “admittedly a non-expert” writes the following in the May 11, 1992, edition of the National Review: “Yet now the West finds itself challenged from the outside by a militant, atavistic force driven by a hatred of all Western political thought, harking back to age-old grievances against Christendom… the notion of co-existing peacefully is more our notion that theirs. Their rage is too great, as is the concrete threat of the nuclear, conventional and terrorist weapons it continues to marshal in the service of this rage.”[14]

The Media’s strategy is to portray both Islamic militancy and acts of legitimate resistance, whether in South Lebanon before the Israeli pullout, or in occupied Palestine, as a single phenomena heralding a global conflict between Islam and the West. Daniel Pipes, writing in the National Review, entitles his inflammatory article, “The Muslims Are Coming, The Muslims Are Coming!”[15] F. Ajami, entitles his September 7, 1998, US News and World Report article “Mr. Bin Laden’s Neighborhood”. This neighborhood encompasses Karachi, Lahore, Khartoum, Tripoli, Tehran, Kabul and Cairo![16] A Morton Zuckerman editorial in the same issue of US News & World entitled “It’s Time to Fight Back” states, “The marriage of religious fanaticism and advanced technology creates a potential worldwide threat. Everyone… is at risk… That we must act, and act now, should be clear—or else we will repeat the 1930s, when the virus of fascism stalked Europe. In the end the price that was paid was tragically so much higher than it would have been if the democracies had shed their illusions that they could temporize with evil.”[17]

As a result of such assaults Muslims, to many Americans, are all perceived as potential terrorists and fanatics. During the 1991 Gulf War, for instance, numerous Arab community leaders were victimized. There are various cases in which Muslim immigrants have been targeted for deportations on the basis of “secret evidence” purporting links to a “terrorist” organization without the FBI or the INS divulging the name of the suspect organization. Some immigrants, denied bail as national security threats, have sat in prison for over a year, with no trial date in sight.[18]

Of greater concern, however, is the fact that the three-fold pressure of lobbies like AIPAC, the Christian Zionist movement, and much of the mainline press has made Congress super-responsive to the perceived needs of Israel. In May 1989, for example, Secretary of State James Baker urged Israeli President Shamir to give up his dream of a Greater Israel, only to have 95 senators sign a letter expressing their support for Shamir’s efforts.[19] In May 1995, the Senate passed the Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act, which transferred the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, something the Israeli government under Rabin neither expected nor requested![20] The Clinton administration has increased economic, military and technology transfers to Israel to their highest levels ever, and, most importantly, placed US diplomacy at Israel’s bidding. Since the beginning of the Clinton administration the US has cast its vote eight times at the UN on the Arab-Israeli conflict. On three occasions it vetoed Security Council resolutions which criticized Israeli policies in the occupied territories and East Jerusalem, and on four occasions it voted against General Assembly resolutions with the same purport. On the eighth occasion it abstained. In the General Assembly, the US’s sole partner on these issues, apart from Israel, was Micronesia.[21]

America’s posture as the “honest broker” in the Middle East has been a sham for decades. It took Ronald Reagan one week in office to declare, at his first press conference, that West Bank settlements were “not illegal”. This was a revolutionary departure from declared US policy since 1967. In 1982 there were about 20,000 Jewish settlers on the West Bank, today there are about 140,000, excluding East Jerusalem.[22] US aid to Israel is today is about $5500 per capita, to the Palestinian Authority it is $41.60 per capita.[23]

The campaign to distort Islam in the effort to drum up support for Israel has led to such a warped understanding about Muslims and the Middle East that efforts to supply a factual account of the unquestionably deplorable events emanating from the area are subconsciously negated by ingrained patterns of thinking. Let us, nevertheless, conclude with a few salient facts. Firstly, in the confrontations between Islam and the West, Islam is not a major factor. True, Islamic fundamentalist groups, sometimes sponsored by “rogue states” pursuing their own, non-Islamic agendas, vent their spleens by exploding bombs or hijacking aircraft. Lockerbie and the World Trade Center are cases in point. Nevertheless, radical, fundamentalist Muslims today are but a puny percentage of the billion or so Muslims living in dozens of countries, cultures, languages, and backgrounds. The underlying causes to existing tensions are not primarily theological, but political, economic, psychological, strategic and cultural in nature. The 1991 Gulf War demonstrated this: the response of Iran, Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and other Arab countries was clearly driven by pragmatism, not religion.

Secondly, political Islam threatens the established dictatorships of the Middle East and North Africa, not the West. Islam is much too fragmented, much too self-directed, to seriously threaten Western interests. As the fundamentalist Muslim intellectual, cleric, and former President of Sudan, Hasan al-Turabi, put it, “the recent Islamic awaking has little to do with confronting the West and much to do with the constructive regeneration of Islamic societies. Fighting the ‘Great Satan’ is not the Muslim world’s preoccupation”.[24]

Thirdly, the clash of cultures myth and the notion of global intifadeh fail to account for the diversity of Islam and Middle Eastern cultures. The region is too weak politically and economically, and too divided ethnically, to form a dangerous critical mass. By imposing a superficial unity on events taking place is such diverse contexts as Kashmir and Kosovo, Azerbaijan and Algeria, Lebanon and Libya, we have created a pseudo-demon. It has taken on a life of its own and imprisoned us, preventing us from grasping and grappling with the real issues tormenting the region.

 

Bibliography

Ajami, F. “Mr. Bin Laden’s Neighborhood.” US News & World Report, 7 September 1998.Bishara, Ghassan. “Why US Politicians Ignore Arab Interests.” Middle East International, 7 July 1995.

Hunter, Jane. “Arabs and Muslims in the US: Victims of Legal Discrimination.” Middle East International, 31 July 1998.

Huntington, Samuel. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order. New York: Simon and Shuster, 1996.

Khalidi, Walid. “The American Factor in the Arab Israeli Conflict (I).” Middle East International, 16 January 1998.

________, “The American Factor in the Arab-Israeli Conflict (II).” Middle East International, 30 January 1998.

Krauthammer, Charles. “The New Crescent of Crisis: Global Intifada,” Washington Post, 16 February 1990.

Lewis, Berhard. Islam and the West. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.

________, “The Roots of Muslim Rage.” Atlantic Monthly, 26 September 1990.

Monshipouri, Mahmood. “The West’s Modern Encounter with Islam: From Discourse to Reality.” Journal of Church & State, Winter 1998: INTERNET: http://britannica.com/bcom/magazine/article/0,5744,217271,00.html.Neff, Donald. “Clinton Places US Policy at Israel’s Bidding.” Middle East International, 31 March 1995.

Pikkert, Peter. “Christian Zionism: Evangelical Schizophrenia.” Middle East International, 4 December 1992.

Pipes, Daniel. “The Muslims are Coming, The Muslims are Coming!” National Review, November 1990.

Said, Edward. Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World. New York: Vintage Books, 1997.

Sciolino, Elaine. “The Red Menace is Gone. But Here’s Islam.” New York Times, 21 January, 1996.

Sidey, Ken. “For the Love of Zion.” Christianity Today, March 9, 1992.
Tash, Abdul Qader. “The West’s Clouded View of Arabs and Islam.” Arab News, June 22, 1997: INTERNET: http://www.arab.net/arabview/articles/tash27html.Rodman, Peter. “Islam and Democracy.” National Review, May 11, 1992.

Zuckerman, Mortimer. “It’s Time to Fight Back.” US News & World Report, 7 September 1998.

[1] Charles Krauthammer, “The New Crescent of Crisis: Global Intifada,” Washington Post, (16 February 1990): A23
[2] Elaine Scioline, “The Red Menace is Gone. But Here’s Islam,” New York Times, (21 January, 1996): 41.
[3] Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1996): 212. See also Bernard Lewis, “The Roots of Muslim Rage,” Atlantic Monthly 226 (September 1990): 22-49.
[4] Bernhard Lewis, Islam and the West (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 136-137.
[5] Walid Khalidi, “The American Factor in the Arab Israeli Conflict,” Middle East International, (16 January 1998): p. 19.
[6] Donald Neff, “Clinton Places US Policy at Israel’s Bidding,” Middle East International, (31 March, 1995): 17.
[7] Ghassan Bishara, “Why US Politicians Ignore Arab Interests,” Middle East International, (7 July, 1995): 16-17.
[8] Ken Sidey, “For the Love of Zion,” Christianity Today (March 9, 1992): 47.
[9] “For whoever touches you (Israel) touches the apple of His (God’s) eye.” Zechariah 2:8 (NIV). For a fuller treatment of Christian Zionism see: Peter Pikkert, “Christian Zionism: Evangelical Schizophrenia,” Middle East International 439 (4 December, 1992): 20; also, Peter Pikkert’s Desecrated Lands, (Belleville, Ont: Essence Publishing, 1996) deals with the subject in historical novel format.
[10] Quoted by Dr. Abdul Qader Tash, “The West’s Clouded View of Arabs and Islam,” Arab News (June 22, 1997). INTERNET: http://www.arab.net/arabview/articles/tash27.html.
[11] Edward Said, Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World. (New York: Vintage Books, 1997), XXII.
[12] Martin Peretz, The New Republic (August 13, 1996). Quoted in Said, p. XXIV.
[13] Quoted in Said, p. XXV.
[14] Peter Rodman, “Islam and Democracy,” National Review (11 May 1992): 28.
[15] Daniel Pipes, “The Muslims are Coming, The Muslims are Coming!” National Review 42 (November 1990): 28.
[16] F. Ajami, “Mr. Bin Laden’s Neighborhood,” US News & World Report (7 September 1998): 26.
[17] Morton Zuckerman, “It’s Time to Fight Back,” US News & World Report (7 September 1998): 92.
[18] Jane Hunter, “Arabs and Muslims in the US: Victims of Legal Discrimination,” Middle East International 580 (31 July 1998): 19-21.
[19] Walid Khalidi, “The American Factor in the Arab-Israeli Conflict (I),” Middle East Internationa (16 January 1998): 19.
[20] Ibid., p. 19.
[21] Ibid., p. 16.
[22] Ibid., p 16.
[23] Walid Khalidi, “The American Factor in the Arab-Israeli Conflict (II),” Middle East International (30 January 1998): 17.
[24] Mahmood Monshipouri, “The West’s Modern Encounter with Islam: From Discourse to Reality,” Journal of Church & State, (Winter 1998) INTERNET: http://britannica.com/bcom/magazine/article/0,5744,217271,00.html

Islam (Submission) = Violence > Paradise?

All the brouhaha in the Islamic world with respect to the Pope’s undoubtedly tactless statements recently has, once again raise the question of the relationship between Islam and violence.

Everyone knows that much violence is perpetrated in the name of Islam. In the name of Islam terrorists carry on their vile deeds and numerous nation states blithely ignore basic human rights. Does Islam really regard Palestinian suicide bombers are martyrs who go straight to paradise? Is Seyyid Qutb, the “father” of the modern concept of jihad in Paradise? What about the 9/11 bombers? And what about Mullah Omer, whose Taliban regime was darker than anything existing in the Middle Ages? Are those Saudi authorities who command women to be stoned to death for infidelity going to Paradise? And what about the religious police there who club women they think are inapropriatly dressed, force everyone to pray at set times, and break up Christian house groups seeking to worship the triune God? What about those who killed a nun in Somalia in response to the Pope’s words, or those who burned Orthodox churches? What about the kid who killed a priest praying at the altar of his church in Trabson, Turkey?

For Muslims to simplistically point out that the etymoloby of the word “Islam” (submission) is the word “salaam” (peace) just isn’t good enough. Nor is it good enough for the Muslim world to wipe their hands from the problem by stating that “those who carry out such acts aren’t real Muslims”.

The Pope’s words may have been tactless, but let the Muslim community not prove them true…