BEFORE DISCUSSING ISLAM, it is necessary to discuss the acceptability of critiquing a religion.
At the present time in the Western world, people are free to morally assess and critique any ideology, and to morally assess, critique, or even mock any denomination of Christianity. But any moral assessment of Islam that is not entirely positive is unacceptable. In parts of Europe it is actually illegal. And if the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) has its way, criticism of Islam will be illegal throughout the world. In 2009, at the urging of the OIC, the largest bloc of nations in the United Nations, the UN Human Rights Council, passed a resolution condemning “defamation of religion”—with special attention to defamation of Islam—as a human rights violation.1
Even the European countries, some of them containing large populations of Muslims, and many of them fearful of Islamist retaliation, voted against the resolution. But just about everywhere, criticism of Islam is taboo, and sometimes life-threatening. One only has to compare the ease with which Christianity is criticized to appreciate how difficult it is to criticize Islam. An American “artist,” Andres Serrano, placed a crucifix in a glass jar filled with his urine, certain that he would not be harmed by even a single one of the world’s two billion Christians. Indeed Serrano’s work Piss Christ won an arts competition, funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.2
Were anyone anywhere to do to a Koran or to a picture of Muhammad what Serrano did to a crucifix, that person would in all likelihood be murdered, as the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh (for his film about the plight of Muslim women) and others have been; and violent demonstrations, probably involving fatalities, would take place in various parts of the Muslim world.
And that understates the problem. One need not place a sacred Muslim object in urine in order to incur violent retribution. One only needs to write that Muhammad would take for a wife one of the women who compete in the Miss World contest, or publish cartoon images of Muhammad.
Why, then, can one criticize, even mock, Christianity—not to mention Zionism, the Jewish (and Christian) religious-national movement to reestablish the Jewish state in Israel—and, of course, every other ideology and movement in the world, but not Islam? For that matter, why is there a word—Islamophobia—that pathologizes any critique of Islam, no matter how fair, but no word for the most rabid hatred of Christianity and Christians?
There are three answers: the Left, Muslim wealth, and fear.
First, the Left, which dominates the media, the arts, and most of intellectual life in the West, has rendered criticism of Christianity and Zionism acceptable, even laudable, but criticism of Islam unacceptable. Why has the Left done this? Because the enemy (radical Islam) of my enemy (America and Israel) is my friend, and because the Muslim world is regarded as the underdog vis-à-vis powerful America and Israel, and the Left supports what it perceives as the underdog.
A second reason for Islam’s protection from criticism is money. Muslim nations have paid for a number of important professorial chairs and institutes at Western universities (such as Harvard and Georgetown). Those professors are unlikely to write or say anything critical of Islam, and they are likely to attack critics of anything Muslim. Meanwhile, it is very difficult for a scholarly critic of Islam to earn a living in academia.
Third, there is a legitimate fear of antagonizing Muslims. People who criticize Islam fear for their safety—even when they may have little reason to. That is the reason Yale University Press would not even print the Danish Muhammad cartoons in a book it published in 2010 about the Danish Muhammad cartoons. Yale forthrightly conceded that the reason was fear for its staff.
Regarding criticizing Islam, from 9/11 to this day, callers to my syndicated radio show have asked, “Is Islam a religion of violence?”
And since that day, I have responded: “I don’t judge religions; I judge practitioners.”
It is easy to dismiss this response as a politically correct cop-out, but there were valid reasons for this response.
First, in medieval Europe, many people would have asked, “Is Christianity a religion of violence?” And 2,500 years ago, people might have asked, “Is Judaism a religion of violence?”
Second, the question is often impossible to answer because practitioners of religions are rarely unified in their values (and often not even in their theology). For example, most evangelical Christians share a belief in the Christian Trinity with fellow Christians of the National Council of Churches (NCC), but they share almost no values. Most evangelical Christians share far more values with traditional Catholics, Orthodox Jews, and practicing Mormons than with fellow Protestant Christians of the NCC or of the Anglican Church in the United Kingdom. And liberal Jews (not only secular ones, but many Conservative and Reform Jews) share more values with liberal Christians and liberal atheists than with Orthodox Jews. So when assessing Christianity or Judaism, whose Christianity and which Judaism are we assessing? And when we assess Islam, are we assessing the Islam of most Indonesian, Indian, and American Muslims or of most Arab Muslims, or of Islamists within and outside the Arab world?
Third, when groups are violent, how much of their violence is directly caused by their religion—or by their irreligion? Alongside Hitler, who believed in no religion, Stalin and Mao were history’s greatest mass murderers, and they were atheists who attempted to destroy organized religion. Could one have asked, “Is atheism a violent ideology?” As for religious evildoers, did medieval European Christians who persecuted Jews do so because of, or despite, their Christianity?
Fourth, even when a group does attribute its violence to its religion, as in the case of Muslim terrorists, does that mean the religion preaches violence to its adherents?
Nevertheless, despite these arguments for assessing adherents rather than religions, the amount of violence that has historically been committed, and that is committed at the present time, in the name of Islam makes some assessment of Islam necessary and inevitable. Even if there were little or no Islamic violence, such an assessment would be mandatory—because Islam offers itself as the best answer to humanity’s problems.
How could a book purporting to evaluate competing ideas for humanity’s improvement not evaluate Islam, an intensely proselytizing religion with over a billion adherents? And how could one of the world’s most popular doctrines—one that offers itself as incomparably superior to all other ways of life, secular or religious—not expect to be evaluated?
Of course, many people, and probably nearly all believing Muslims, might object to such an evaluation on the grounds that evaluating any religion—and especially Islam in light of the emotions it evokes at the present time—is an inherently biased, even bigoted, exercise. Muslim institutions also argue that outsiders have no right—and certainly no ability—to judge others’ religions.
But these objections simply place religion in the unique position of being above criticism. We judge secular ideologies all the time. Why would we not similarly assess religions? People on the Left regularly criticize conservatives and conservatism and people on the Right regularly criticize the Left. Why is that permissible and even expected but it is not permissible to assess a religion? Likewise, one could fill a library with books critiquing the Bible and Christianity. Why not the Koran and Islam?
It is true that many of those who judge or criticize a religion are prejudiced. This is frequently the case when one’s agenda is to prove one’s own religion true and all others false, when one simply hates members of another faith (anti-Semites, for example), or when one hates all religions (such as many of the popular atheist writers). But none of these apply here. Not only do I have no interest in proving Islam “false”; I believe that all people, including believing Muslims, who do good because they believe God commands them to do so are practicing a form of true religion. I believe that whatever rewards God will have for good members of my faith await the good people of all faiths (and of no faith, for that matter).
In any event, the existence of bigoted writing on religion hardly argues against all writing on religion other than praises by admirers and adherents. People should be allowed to evaluate religion just as they are allowed to assess anything else. Judaism and Jews have been the targets of a morally indefensible hatred. But not every critique of Judaism is anti-Semitic. Likewise, many contemporary attacks on Christianity and Christians are bigoted—such as when Christian fundamentalists are likened to Islamist terrorists. There are no Christian groups comparable to the Islamist groups that murder innocents or seek to violently impose Islamic law on both Muslims and non-Muslims. But not every criticism of Christians or Christianity emanates from anti-Christian bigotry. And one need not be prejudiced against Islam or Muslims to ask challenging questions about Muslims and/or their religion.*
Why Islam Is Included
IF ISLAM WERE NOT as powerful a force as it is and if it did not seek to make the world Muslim, it might not be necessary to include Islam or Islamism in a book on the alternatives available for humanity at the present time. But from its inception, its primary aim has been to bring humanity to Islam. There is no normative version of Islam that does not have as its ideal the conversion of mankind to Islam. Muslims may differ at times as to how to attain this goal, but there is no mainstream Muslim movement that does not hold that the world must accept Allah as the one God, Muhammad as his final and most authoritative Messenger, and the Koran as that perfect message. The creedal sentence of Islam, known as the Shahada, states: “There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his Messenger”; the other part of the Islamic creed is that the Koran is the one perfect and final revelation from God.
Yes, Christianity, too, seeks to have the world accept Christ. But there are at least four significant differences between these two religions that seek to convert the world.
First, and most obvious, Christians do not pose a threat to non-Christians. Non-Christians who live among Christians are not only not threatened—they are lucky. On the other hand, virtually all non-Muslim communities living among Muslim majorities live in fear for their safety. There is, therefore, all the difference in the world between a religion that wishes to be universally adopted, none of whose adherents threaten outsiders, and a religion that wishes to be universally adopted, many of whose adherents threaten others.
Second, Christianity not only accepts a separation of religious and secular authority; it essentially founded the idea with the New Testament statement, “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21). The concept of separation of church and state is alien to Islam, where the ideal has always been a Sharia-based government.
Third, Christianity does not seek to impose life-controlling religious laws on all Christians, let alone on non-Christians living in their midst. Christianity does not have an analogous body of religious laws in any way comparable to the Sharia (Islamic law). The Sharia is, as believing Muslims proudly explain, an all-encompassing code of conduct. It instructs the Muslim how often to pray, when to arise each day, when and what he may eat, what he may not drink, how to dress, and among stricter Muslims, what music may be listened to, prohibits almost any contact between unrelated men and women, directs women regarding where and how they may be seen in public, what subjects, if any, they may study, and much more. In addition, what we call Islamism seeks to create Islamic states that impose Sharia on all Muslims, and some of those laws on non-Muslims who live in Muslim-majority states.
Fourth, having written a book on anti-Semitism and taught Jewish history at the college level, I am well aware of Christian maltreatment of Jews in Europe during the Middle Ages in particular. But whatever sins Christians engaged in the past, and they were extensive, the fact is that the most humane and decent countries in the world nearly all have Christian origins. That is not true of states that grew out of Islam.
For these reasons, one cannot honestly liken the Christian desire for a Christian world to the Muslim desire for a Muslim world.
When fears concerning Islam are expressed, those who dismiss such fears argue that Islam had a golden period when it surpassed the Christian West in learning, art, and morality. That is true. The Muslim world transmitted the Greek philosophers, Muslim explorers were navigating much of the known world, Muslim math and science surpassed the West’s, and social organization exceeded the West’s.
But as the great scholar of Islam Professor Gustave E. von Grunebaum, after whom the Center for Near Eastern Studies at UCLA is named, wrote, Islamic science developed for a while despite, not because of, traditional Islamic beliefs: “Those accomplishments of Islamic mathematical and medical science which continue to compel our admiration were developed in areas and in periods where the elites were willing to go beyond and possibly against the basic strains of orthodox thought and feeling.”3
In addition, the existence of a golden period well into the past does not signify much regarding the present or the future. There is hardly a civilization that has not had a golden period. The Chinese, Mongolian, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Aztec, French, Vietnamese, and Indian civilizations all had golden eras when they surpassed much of the world in many areas. But no one would argue that because any of these had a golden period, the culture should be assessed only by that period, let alone that it should lead the world today.
This does not constitute a criticism of any of these civilizations, and it does not constitute a criticism of Islam. Every civilization goes into a decline after its golden age. Indeed, one reason for this book is the fear that American civilization will decline if its core values are abandoned.
Why Islamism and Not Only Islam
THIS BOOK DESCRIBES the competition between American, Leftist, and Islamist values and argues that the world needs American values to prevail. The use of the term Islamist rather than only Islam, Islamic, or Muslim is deliberate and needs to be explained.
What renders one an Islamist as described in this book is holding the belief that not only should all mankind be converted to Islam—something a non-Islamist Muslim can wish for—but that all Muslim societies (and eventually the world) be governed by the Sharia. An Islamist does not necessarily advocate violence to achieve this goal. “Islamist” does not mean “Muslim terrorist.” But given Islamists’ belief that true Islam is only practiced in a Sharia-led Islamic state, it is almost inevitable that this belief will lead some Islamists to religious violence.
Both Islamists and most critics of Islam would argue that there is no meaningful difference between Islam and Islamism. And the truth is that for much of Muslim history there has not been a great difference. Islam was largely spread by the sword—more so than other religions; normative Islam never held that non-Muslims were to be treated as equals; and great numbers of non-Muslims—with the partial exception of Jews and Christians (known as dhimmi)—were either enslaved or slaughtered. Jews and Christians were sometimes killed or enslaved, but when they were allowed to live, they were treated as humiliated inferiors.
I believe that Islam can evolve into a non-Islamist, that is, nontheocratic, religion. It would not entail overthrowing the Koran or abandoning the Shahada, the Islamic creed—“there is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.” It would essentially entail “individualizing” Islam—living an observant, even a Sharia-based, life—without seeking to establish an Islamic state that would impose Sharia law on anyone, Muslim or non-Muslim.
There are noble religious Muslim voices advocating that ideal. But those voices are rare and they are drowned out by more normative/traditional Muslim voices. If anything, Islamists constitute a more influential model and powerful force in the Muslim world today than they have in the past few centuries, when much of the Muslim world was politically, economically, and militarily weak, and largely dominated by outside forces.
Such an evolution within Islam will be possible only if non-Muslims support the Muslim reformers and if non-Muslims pressure the Islamic world to practice the same norms of tolerance and peaceful coexistence demanded of the rest of the world.
Finally, some personal notes concerning Islam.
First, as noted at the beginning of the book, it should go without saying—but in our time where any critical remarks about any group (other than Americans, Israelis, and Christians) are frequently declared to be bigoted by definition—I fully recognize that there are hundreds of millions of Muslims who lead lives morally indistinguishable from much of the rest of mankind.
Second, whatever critical comments are made in this section are not intended to hurt, and are written accordingly. But it helps no one, least of all the many decent Muslims who suffer at the hands of Islamists and Islamist regimes, to deny what is problematic about Islam and/or the Islamic world.
Third, in thirty years of radio broadcasting, writing, and lecturing, I do not recall ever having made an unfair, let alone bigoted, statement about Muslims or Islam.* For many years, in fact, I was so respected and trusted by the Muslim community in Southern California that I was invited to speak at one of the largest mosques in America, the Southern California Islamic Center. This was because I was among the only individuals in mainstream American media who routinely invited Muslim spokesmen to appear on a major radio show—in my case on a widely listened-to show on the ABC Radio station in Los Angeles. Moreover, I did not invite them to discuss terrorism or to defend Islam or Muslims. They were invited as equal partners along with Jewish, Protestant, Catholic, Mormon, Buddhist, and other representatives of virtually every religion in the world. I also invited Muslim spokesmen to appear at Jewish institutions in order to foster goodwill between Jews and Muslims.
One of the credos of my life is taken from Viktor Frankl, a Jewish survivor of Nazi concentration camps, who was a psychiatrist and author. In his highly influential book, Man’s Search for Meaning, he related that after the war someone asked him if he “hated the German race.” He responded that he did not because in his view, “There are only two races, the decent and the indecent.” That is how I divide the world. Not between Muslim and non-Muslim, black and white, or American and non-American, but between the decent and indecent. The issues I raise about Islam are not about the decency of Muslims, but about whether Islam in its traditional Islamist configuration is more or less likely than the American value system to produce good societies.
If this book were written in the Middle Ages, I would have addressed moral problems in Christendom—its anti-Semitism, its intolerance, its inquisitions, its theocratic tendencies. But this is the twenty-first century, not the fifteenth. And Christianity has been a major force for good for some time, most especially, though not only, in its American incarnation. The abolitionist movement—the movement to end slavery—was overwhelmingly a Christian movement; the civil rights movement in America was led by a Christian pastor, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., largely in the name of God and Christianity;4 great numbers of Christians have gone to the poorest and most remote places on earth to build hospitals, teach children, and care for the dying; and Judeo-based Christians founded the United States of America, the most successful experiment in large-scale social decency ever conducted.
With those introductory comments as background, we can proceed with a discussion of Islam and Islamism.