0.6 The end of the west  (Page 17/19)

Islam implies submission to the will of Allah; the sources of revealed truth, the Qur’an and sunna, are available to all. The Sunni orthopraxis (islam) is familiar: It involves a testimony of faith (shahadah - what Christians call the Creed), daily prayer (salah), charity (zakah), fasting in Ramadan (sawm) and (if one’s circumstances permit) the pilgrimage to Mecca (haj). The Shi’ite orthopraxis is similar: daily prayer (salāh), fasting in Ramadan (sawm); the pilgrimage to Mecca (haj); charity (zakāt); a tax of 20 percent on untaxed, annual profit (khums); and struggling to please God. (jihād). The ‘greater’ jihad is the struggle against the evil in one’s soul; the ‘lesser’ jihad is the struggle against evil in every aspect of life. Islamic orthodoxy (iman) encourages one to seek God’s truth though one’s intellect; and its defining elements are common to Christianity and Judaism: belief in God, his angels, the scriptures and the prophets, and the Last Day and the Hereafter. Ihsan – loving God and being open to union with him – is common to all the Abrahamic traditions; in Islam it is associated with cleansing the soul of greed, egotism, lust, gossip, envy and other sicknesses. None of this makes for psychopathic behaviour, or is inconsistent with good citizenship.

Why then have some descendents of the Islamic scholars and innovators of earlier centuries become jihadists and suicide-bombers?

Many militant Islamists resent Western political, economic and social dominance and reject what they see as corrupt, irreligious Western mores and consumerist values. This has led to a desire to reassert idealised ‘traditional’ identities and norms. Western political and military power were sharply apparent after the first Gulf War, while the war in Afghanistan, in which a generation of young Muslims had been encouraged to fight the Soviet Army for the liberation of their country, had come to an end, with a radical government applying the shari’a in power in Kabul. Thousands of experienced zealots were looking for new victories and new recruits to the cause. The ground was ripe for revolutionary messages, and al-Qaeda stepped into the breach a decade ago.

Sustained, violent insurrection usually has its origins in threats that marginalised groups perceive to their identity and collective security. As Michael Scheuer has noted, analysis of Islamist broadcasts and websites indicates that the call to jihad has been couched in terms that require devout Muslims to respond. The Islamists claim, with scores of examples that Islam, Muslims and Islamic lands are under attack by the United States and its allies. Jihad is an imperative, according to Mohammed abd al-Halim of al-Azhar University, “…to repulse tyranny and restore justice and rights.” Attacks on Islam are said to be constituted by US demands for change in educational curricula and the monitoring of charitable donations; attacks on Muslims are said to be evident in US support for Israel’s actions in Palestine, those of India in Kashmir, Russia in Chechnya, the Uzbek government in Uzbekistan, the Philippines government in Mindanao, and in sanctions imposed over the years on Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Libya and Sudan ‘to control oil production and dispossess Muslims’. Islamic lands under attack or ‘occupation’ range from Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine (where Israelis are said to be intent on destroying Islam and establishing a Greater Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates), though the Arabian peninsula, the birthplace of the Prophet, to the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, notably Qatar and Kuwait.