OPINION: No such thing as a monolithic Muslim state of mind ...

Politics and foreign policy can be so confusing. Let's look at Iraq, for example. The conventional wisdom is that we went to war against Saddam Hussein in 2003 and overthrew his government for a variety of reasons, including that Iraq was a crucial battleground in the so-called war on terror. The former Iraqi dictator is said to have had direct links with an Islamist terrorist organisation, al-Qaeda. We were at war with al-Qaeda. Hence we had to make war on Saddam.

Now let's move to the present and another conflict. Israel claimed to be fighting a war on terror of its own recently in its bombardment on Gaza. Israeli spin doctors told us that their war wasn't against the people of Gaza but against Hamas, an Islamist terrorist organisation dedicated to Israel's destruction through firing thousands of rockets and sending suicide bombers into Israel.

See the connection? The war on terror is always a war on political Islamists. It isn't a war on Muslims as such, nor is it a war on the Islamic religion or on nominally Muslim countries. The battle we wage is against political Islam, an ideology that seeks to establish an Islamic state.

That's the rhetoric. But what is the reality?

Before the outbreak of the first Palestinian intifada in 1987, what we now know as the virulently anti-Israel militia Hamas was created from an Israeli-backed network of social welfare projects (including clinics, schools, libraries and other facilities) operated under the auspices of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist movement founded in Egypt by one Hasan al-Banna. At the time, Israel and the Tunis-based PLO had not signed the Oslo Agreements. Israel's line was that it would not negotiate with Yasser Arafat's PLO because it was a terrorist organisation. Israel also knew that the Brotherhood' s reputation for scrupulous honesty would make it an excellent alternative to the PLO.

So when it suited Israel's desire to drive a wedge between Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories and the Palestinian diaspora-based PLO that Israel then labelled a terrorist organisation, Israel was quite happy to deal with another organisation it now labels terrorists.

The Muslim Brotherhood's Islamist credentials and ideology weren't seen as an obstacle to its establishing a host of institutions in the West Bank and Gaza.

But don't take my word for it. A report from United Press International on June 18, 2002 cites documents obtained from the Israeli-based Institute for Counter Terrorism to the effect that Hamas was legally registered in Israel in 1978 by Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the movement's spiritual leader, as an Islamic association by the name of Al-Mujamma al-Islami, which widened its base of supporters and sympathisers by religious propaganda and social work.

The report also cites US administration officials saying funds for the movement came from the oil-producing states and, directly and indirectly, from Israel.

Back to present-day Iraq. Thousands of US and British soldiers have lost their lives defending a democratically elected Iraqi Government. After the 2003 invasion and the toppling of its Ba'athist regime, an Iraqi Governing Council was set up and an interim constitution drawn up, which became the basis for Iraq's current constitution. Among the experts assisting in the drafting of this document was Noah Feldman, Rhodes scholar and Harvard University professor of law and Islamic studies.

Feldman is hardly what some might describe as an apologist for political Islam. He has intimate first-hand knowledge of Iraqi governance and law. Feldman openly says Iraq's constitution establishes an Islamic state. Coalition troops are putting their lives on the line to defend the very political agenda the war on terror was supposedly designed to fight.

In other words, all this hysteria about political Islam is little more than a rhetorical cover for what are really just the usual political manoeuvrings one expects in relations between states.

This isn't so much about defending our freedoms against those who allegedly hate our way of life though in the case of anarcho-Islamist syndicates like al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiah the rhetoric largely reflects reality.

What we need to understand is that political Islam isn't in itself the enemy. If it were, American and British troops wouldn't be in Iraq today. And if, as President Barack Obama has promised, US troops are withdrawn, it will not be because the US has abandoned Iraq's democratically elected Islamist Government. Indeed, President Obama has indicated that US troops from Iraq will more than likely be deployed in Afghanistan to fight combined Taliban and al-Qaeda forces and the odd insurgency movement. Even in Afghanistan, our allies, led by President Hamid Karzai, are (at least on paper in the Afghan constitution) committed to maintaining Afghanistan as an Islamic republic, albeit a democratic one. The Afghan Government consists of the remnants of old Afghan jihadi factions which once waged war on the Soviet Union, again with support from the West.

In his 2008 book The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State, Professor Feldman argues that the struggle is not between secularism and theocracy. Religion and government are not necessarily seen in many Muslim-majority states as polar opposites. Instead, in the primary battlegrounds of Afghanistan and Iraq, democratic political Islam is allied with the West against what are in essence forces of anarchy.

Being moderate isn't the same as separating mosque from state. Saudi Arabia is classed as a moderate ally of the West but could hardly be described as secular. Muslim-majority states such as Indonesia, Turkey and Kosovo are fiercely secular, even if religion plays a significant role.

With George W.Bush back at the ranch and his neo-conservative advisers and their array of think-tanks and mercenary commentators (including pundits who during the US presidential campaign were obsessed with the Democratic candidate's middle name) largely discredited, now is a good time to adopt a more nuanced approach to our relations with Muslim countries, among them our closest neighbour, Indonesia, which also happens to be the world's most populous Muslim nation.

As President Obama said in his inauguration speech, we in the West must seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.

That can be achieved only when we seek to understand the interests of Muslim electorates and to respect their political aspirations, whether these have more secular or religious outcomes.

Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney lawyer and author of the forthcoming book Once Were Radicals. First published in The Canberra Times on 30 January 2009.


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COMMENT: Tanveer on terror ...

Some time ago, a friend of mine (Tanveer Ahmed) wrote an article for The Australian that tried to link Islamic theology to terrorism.

Tanveer made this interesting observation in his article ...

Muslim communities must openly argue precisely what it is they fear and loathe about the West.

I'm not sure which Muslim communities he is talking about. Perhaps the Bangladeshi Muslims he grew up with might hate the West. But most Muslims I grew up with would rather live in Australia than any nominally Muslim country.

However, what interests me about this quote is Tanveer's invitation for us to "openly argue". With that in mind, I wanted to start a conversation based on my own observations of Tanveer's article.

At its core, Islam is deeply sceptical of the idea of a secular state. There is no rendering unto Caesar because state and religion are believed to be inseparable.

I'm not sure if Tanveer can provide evidence for this claim beyond the rants of groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir. Tanveer should provide relevant texts (verses from the Qur'an and/or ahadith), as well as references from classical and modern jurists of Islamic sacred law.

Perhaps Tanveer doesn't quite understand Islam or even secularism in the same manner as I do. I touched on this topic in an article for The Canberra Times on May 26 2006:

Classical Islamic sacred law was codified by private imams supported by Muslim civil society with minimal state involvement. The earliest and most authoritative imams of Islam frequently found themselves on the wrong side of rulers ... Islamic history is, therefore, a case of reverse secularism. In the Catholic West, the State fought to keep itself independent of the Roman Church. Throughout the Islamic world, Muslim religious authorities struggled to remain independent of rulers who attempted to usurp the mantle of religious leadership.

In Sunni theology, religious and temporal leadership was united in the person of the Prophet Muhammad and his four, rightly-guided successors. In Shi'ite theology, the two forms of leadership were united in the prophet and his 12 direct descendants, whom Shi'ites refer to as the 12 imams of the prophet's household, and who are also held in high esteem by Sunnis.

Yet rulers of both persuasions have tried to re-unite the two leadership forms, and have often suffered greatest resistance from imams themselves. Modern Muslim states have tried to regulate religious institutions by establishing ministries to employ and train imams, often with only minimal success.

Surely to claim that Islamic sacred law insists on the unity of religious and temporal authority is a highly suspect position.

Tanveer's article continues ...

It was completely normal to view Jews as evil and responsible for the ills of the world. It was normal to see the liberal society around us as morally corrupt, its stains to be avoided at all costs. It was normal to see white girls as cheap and easy and to see the ideal of femininity as its antithesis. These views have been pushed to more private, personal spheres amid the present scrutiny of Muslim communities.

How is anti-semitism, racism and sexism the norm in non-Bangladeshi (or even Bangladeshi) Muslim societies? Is Tanveer suggesting Bosnian and Albanian Muslims teach their children to regard white women as cheap?

Further, how does this tie in with the fact that, for many Muslim migrants and in many Muslim communities, friendship with Jews is a given? Is Tanveer suggesting, for instance, that my mother's relationship with my Aunty Annie is something atypical? Is Imam Khalil Chami's and Sheik Fehmi El-Imam's close friendship with people in the Jewish community something strange?

Has Tanveer done any fieldwork among different ethnic Muslim communities, or is he aware of any fieldwork among ethnic Muslim communities, which supports this thesis?

Finally, Tanveer makes this claim, already mentioned above ...

Muslim communities must openly argue precisely what it is they fear and loathe about the West. Much of it centres on sexuality. This is the first step in rooting out any Muslim ambivalence about living in the West.

On what basis does Tanveer assume that Muslim comm unities fear and loathe the West? Has he done, or is he aware of, any research which suggests Muslims in Australia loathe the West? Further, on what basis does he suggest this is based on sexuality?

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf