For The Times of Trenton 09/26/2011 6:04 AM
By Fakhruddin Ahmed
The specter of domestic Muslim terrorism has petrified Muslim Americans since Sept. 11, 2001. They cringe at news of an aborted attack (e.g. Faisal Shahzad in New York City), and are devastated when the attack succeeds (e.g. Nidal Hasan at Fort Hood). Muslims consider betrayal of one’s citizenship — a binding covenant – to be diabolical.
Anxious to thwart terrorism, Muslim parents have voluntarily informed the FBI of the unexplained absence of their children from home. And it was a Muslim street vendor who alerted the police about Shahzad’s terror vehicle.
A Third World-bred Muslim immigrant has the toughest time raising children in America. As he struggles to master the American lexicon, his American-born children run rings around him when it comes to exploring cyberspace. Were an internet-savvy Muslim terrorist indoctrinating them, the parent would be the last to know.
Muslim terrorism springs primarily from a coterie of ultraconservative, women’s rights- and technology-averse deviants who misconstrue Islamic history and want to drag Islam back to its glory days.
Islam’s Golden Age spanned the seventh to the 13th centuries. As Europe descended into the Dark Ages, Europeans thirsty for knowledge flocked to Baghdad to learn medicine, algebra and astronomy, which Muslims pioneered.
After Genghis Khan sacked Baghdad in 1258, Muslim leadership in intellectual inquiry ended. The “Gates of Ijtihad,” or gates of independent reasoning, closed. Instead of rededicating themselves to reclaiming the world’s intellectual mantle, Muslims regressed, wondering if intellectual pursuit itself caused their doom. That debate rages in some Muslim circles to this day.
Muslim terrorism is mostly the work of a cabal of regressive Muslims, al Qaeda and Taliban among them, who believe that Islam was practiced best during the Prophet’s time in seventh century Arabia.
Although America’s pro-Israel foreign policy infuriates these Muslims, Westerners are not their primary targets; more than 90 percent of their victims are modern Muslims who believe that Islam can thrive in any age and who refuse to follow them back to the past.
America suffers extremists’ wrath because America is the engine that powers the world’s technological innovation and propels the world toward the future, making the dream of hauling Islam back to the past an elusive mirage.
Muslim Americans must encourage their co-religionists to be forward-looking and champions of higher education once again. Universities in the Muslim world number only around 500; none are world-renowned. America alone has 2,363 universities. The Muslim world, which languishes because it lacks higher education, must drain the terrorist-infested swamps of ignorance.
Despite President Obama’s assertion that America is not at war with Islam, and the Muslims’ insistence that all Muslims abhor terrorism, neither disavowal is gaining traction.
Non-Muslim Americans see that behind most terror attacks is a Muslim name and face, and conclude that Islam inspires them. With American troops occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, and American drones firing missiles inside Pakistan and Yemen, collaterally killing civilians, Muslims surmise that America’s war on terror is a euphemism for war on Islam.
Both narratives are dangerous fallacies. As al Qaeda has evolved, mutated and diffused into several Muslim countries stretching from Indonesia to north and central Africa, America’s reach, too, has to be global to keep the new al Qaeda in check.
America must understand that the hapless Muslim world feels utterly humiliated and at America’s mercy because of America’s overwhelming military, economic and political superiority. Muslims expect American foreign policy to be more sophisticated than resorting to invasion and occupation of Muslim lands.
Only the delusional presume that terrorism, the proverbial weapon of the weak, can be eliminated. It will persist as long as the weak exist. However, if America withdrew from Muslim lands, stopped its drone attacks and followed a counterinsurgency strategy that relied more on infiltrating the enemy and eventual political resolution to conflict, it is conceivable that Muslim terrorism against America would cease.
Before the advent of that day, it is imperative that Muslim Americans collaborate with law-enforcement agencies to thwart terrorism, instruct their impressionable children to be law-abiding citizens and to eschew the romanticism of martyrdom, and galvanize them to be builders, not destroyers.
Muslim parents must inspire their children to emulate Nobel Prize winners such as chemist Ahmad Zeweil of Egypt and Cal Tech, and economist Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh, and sports superstars such as heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali, France’s soccer genius Zinedine Zidane and Morocco’s multiple world track record holder, Hicham El Guerrouj.
Immigrants bring to America a culturally tainted version of Islam. Honor killings and female genital mutilation are cultural practices, not Islamic. Unencumbered by the constraints of their native lands, America’s Muslims have the opportunity to shed cultural baggage that encroaches on Islam and expunge the scourge of terrorism from their faith.
Muslims in America can freely pursue Islamic scholarship. Muslim American men and women are studying the Quran and the Hadith to weed out misinterpretations. Through distilling pure Islam from the contaminants, Muslim Americans can salvage the quintessence of Islam. It is conceivable that pure Islam, liberated from the aberrant theology of the terrorists, will emanate from America, enlighten the entire Muslim world and open the Gates of Ijtihad again.
Fakhruddin Ahmed, D.Phil., is a Rhodes scholar. Originally from Bangladesh, he lives in West Windsor.
