The Caged Virgin - Ayaan Hirsi Ali [9]
At the same time, during those early days after September 11, Muslims writers, theologians, imams, as well as ordinary Muslim men and women, were confronted with the same questions: How could nineteen committed Muslims carry out such a despicable act in the name of their religion? Why does Bin Laden call on all Muslims to participate in a war against nonbelievers in the name of their religion? Why do Indonesian, Pakistani, and even British Muslims want to comply with Bin Laden’s call and sacrifice their lives in the name of their religion?
The reactions of these Muslims were similar to that of Father Atta: both shock and indignation at the idea that Islam was being linked to terrorism. No, they cried emphatically and in unison: the perpetrators were not Muslims; some boys might drink and visit prostitutes, but these are non-Islamic habits that they picked up from the decadent West; they cited verses from the Koran completely out of context. No, Bin Laden is not a Muslim. No, all those shrieking young men celebrating 9/11 in the streets of cities in Muslim countries have misunderstood Islam: Islam is a peace-loving, tolerant, charitable religion. Whoever loves Allah and honors the bearer of His tidings will never want to cause trouble for other believers and nonbelievers, let alone kill them or participate in terrorist activities.
But if this is true, how then are we to explain the facts? What am I, as a Muslim, to think when I read that:
Muslims were responsible for eleven, and possibly twelve, of the sixteen major international terrorist acts committed between 1983 and 2000;
Five of the seven states that support terrorists, and as such appear on the U.S. State Department’s list, are Muslim countries, and the majority of foreign organizations on that same list are Muslim organizations;
Muslims were involved in two-thirds of the thirty-two armed conflicts in the year 2000, while only one-fifth of the world population is Muslim, according to the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies.
If nothing is wrong with Islam, why then are so many Muslims on the run? Of the top ten countries from which people have emigrated to the Netherlands, nine are primarily Muslim. Why do we Muslims move to the West, while at the same time condemning it? What does the West have that we don’t? Why is the position of women in Muslim countries so abominable? If we Muslims are so tolerant and peaceful, why is there so much ethnic, religious, political, and cultural strife and violence in Muslim countries? Why can’t or won’t we acknowledge the seriousness of the situation in which we find ourselves? Why are we Muslims so full of feelings of anger and uneasiness, and why do we carry so much hostility and hate within us both toward ourselves and toward others? Why are we incapable of criticizing ourselves from within?
If I had to characterize Islam, I would say that it has become like Father Atta: incensed, traumatized, shattered, and living in an illusion. Just as Atta fathered his son Mohammed, so Islam has fathered a branch that we alternately call fundamentalism or political Islam. Just as the father didn’t see that his son had a darker side, so too, for a long time, we Muslims have refused to acknowledge that a once peaceful, powerful, and robust religion carried within it elements of fanaticism and violence. We wanted, and still want, a Muslim solution for everything. We have always left the course of our lives, the organization of our society, our economic policy, the education of our children, and the relationship between men and women in the hands of God. Insha’allah (if God [Allah] wills it) is the most common expression among Muslims.
We Muslims have completely lost sight of the balance between religion and reason. Poverty, violence, political instability, economic malaise,