[Peace-discuss] Friedman Wrong About Muslims Again

[David Green]

Informed Comment
Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion
Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of
Michigan

Saturday, July 09, 2005

Friedman Wrong About Muslims Again 
And the Amman Statement on Ecumenism

Tom Friedman is a Middle East expert who knows a lot
about Islam. Why, 
then, 
does he keep saying misleading things? He wrote in his
latest column, 
"To this 
day - to this day - no major Muslim cleric or
religious body has ever 
issued 
a fatwa condemning Osama bin Laden." 

A "fatwa" is simply a considered opinion of a Muslim
jurisconsult. Such 
opinions are numerous. First of all, almost all the
major Shiite Grand 
Ayatollahs 
have condemned Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. You could say
that is easy, 
since 
Shiites don't generally like Wahhabis. But they are
the leaders of 120 
million 
Muslims (some ten percent of the 1.2 billion). So that
is one. Tracking 
these 
things down is time-consuming, but this should do: 
Ayatollah Muhammad Husain Fadlallah of Lebanon
condemns Osama Bin 
Laden.

So then what about the Sunni world? The leading moral
authority for 
Sunnis is 
the rector or Grand Imam of the al-Azhar Seminary/
University in Cairo, 
Egypt. Al-Azhar is perhaps the world's oldest
continuous university and 
has been 
since the time of Saladin a major center of Sunni
religious authority. 
The 
current incumbent is Shaikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi.
So what about 
Tantawi and Bin 
Laden? 

Grand Imam of Al-Azhar seminary, Shaikh Muhammad
Sayyid Tantawi, 
condemns 
Osamah Bin Laden. And:

The Grand Imam of al-Azhar Seminary, Shaikh Muhammad
Sayyid Tantawi, 
condemns 
Osamah Bin Laden.

What about Pakistan? Admittedly, it has some clerics
who are fans of 
Bin 
Laden, or at least who would avoid condemning him. But
the allegation 
Friedman is 
making is that no major cleric has condemned him. Try
this: Prominent 
Pakistani Cleric Tahir ul Qadri condemns Bin Laden.

I don't personally care for Yusuf al-Qaradawi. He is
an old-time 
Egyptian 
Muslim Brotherhood preacher who fled to Qatar and now
has a perch at 
al-Jazeera. 
But he does have some virtues. He is enormously
popular among Muslim 
fundamentalists. And, he absolutely despises Bin Laden
and al-Qaeda. 
Al-Qaradawi has 
repeatedly condemned the latter. He even gave a fatwa
that it was a 
duty of 
Muslims to fight alongside the US in Afghanistan
against al-Qaeda! See 
also: 
Yusuf al-Qaradawi condemns al-Qaeda.

There are also substantial Muslim communities in
Europe with 
leaderships that 
have explicitly condemned Bin Laden. E.g.:

Spanish Muslim Clerical authorities Issue Fatwa
against Osamah Bin 
Laden. 
There are on the order of 250,000 Muslims in Spain.

High Mufti of Russian Muslims calls for Extradition of
Bin Laden. The 
Russian 
Muslim community is about 20 million strong, or 15
percent of Russia's 
143 
million population, and is growing rapidly, so that in
a century Russia 
may be 
50 percent Muslim. So this is not a pro forma thing
here. 

A good round-up on this sort of issue has been put up
by al-Muhajabah.

See also Charles Kurzman's page.

Friedman also does refer to a major conference of
Muslim clerics, 
thinkers 
and notables wound up just Wednesday that made a
powerful statement 
about 
religious tolerance and condemned everything Osama Bin
Laden stands 
for. But he 
seems oddly unaware of the significance of having
Grand Ayatollah 
Sistani, Grand 
Imam of al-Azhar Seminary Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, and
many other great 
Muslim 
authorities sign off on this epochal statement of
Muslim ecumenism.

The statement forbids one Muslim to declare another
"not a Muslim" if 
the 
believer adheres to any of the mainstream legal rites
of Sunnism and 
Shiism. The 
whole basis of al-Qaeda is to call the Muslim leaders
of countries like 
Egypt 
and Saudi Arabia, as well as Shiites, "not Muslims."
The statement also 
demands that engineers should please stop pretending
to issue fatwas, 
which should 
be left to trained clerical jurisconsults. This para.
is also a slam at 
Bin 
Laden.

PS As for Friedman's main point, that Muslims haven't
done a good job 
of 
fighting jihadi ideology and terrorism, it is bizarre.
The Algerian 
government 
fought a virtual civil war to put down political
Islam, in which over 
100,000 
persons died. The Egyptians jailed 20,000 or 30,000
radicals for 
thought crimes 
and killed 1500 in running street battles in the 1990s
and early 
zeroes. 
Al-Qaeda can't easily strike in the Middle East
precisely because 
Syria, Egypt, 
Algeria, etc. have their number and have undertaken
massive actions 
against them. 
What does Friedman want? And, besides, he is wrong
that this is only a 
Muslim 
problem. In the global age all problems are
everybody's. That's part of 
flat 
world, too, Tom.posted by Juan @ 7/09/2005 06:15:00 AM

http://www.juancole.com/2005/07/friedman-wrong-about-muslims-again-and.html

  


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