The Onus is not on Us. The Onus is on Islam.
Guangzhou, China, September 12, 2010
Salaroche

After reading a report on the state of Mosques in America, and after reading the writer’s final exhortation to remember the founding fathers’ call to “reinforce the traditions of religious pluralism” on American soil, I say, “sorry sir, but the onus is not on us, the onus is on Islam”.

The writer talks about the different strands of Islam dominating the interpretation of the Koran preached in the different American mosques, but he also talks about how interpreters of the “literalist” version of Islam often intimidate many American Muslims against their efforts to modernize, so that their religious practices may cope with the reality of the American environment where they now live.

The writer’s aim is to look for reconciliation between the “Religions of the Book” and for reconciliation between Islam and the western world, but he’s actually showing us how such reconciliation is made very difficult by the followers of the literalist version of Islam, which, according to the reporter, emanates mainly from Saudi Arabia, which is exactly the country where most of the 9/11 hijackers hailed from.

Recently, America and the western world have shown the Islamic world that we’re willing to accommodate their religion up to a certain point, meaning, as long as their religious practices don’t break the law, or the spirit of the law, of the western countries where they may now live.

But the report in question plainly shows that there are very active and influential members of the American Muslim community who even consider the idea of democracy as an evil thing. It’s OK to have antidemocratic ideas in countries like the US and the EU, where freedom of thought and freedom of speech are part of the law of the land, but when those antidemocratic instigators also incite their fellow Muslims to go kill Christians and other Americans and do so while speaking from pulpits based on American soil, that’s another question.

And that’s another question particularly because America, more than any other nation in the world, knows firsthand how deadly such instigators can be.

As we all know, Saudi Arabian society is perhaps the most strict society in the world when it comes to the interpretation of the Koran, rivaled perhaps only by Iran, even as the former has a majority Sunni and the latter has a majority Shia.

And if we look at the totalitarian regimes reigning in those countries, it’s not difficult to tie the knot between Islam and politics. Obviously, Islam is a political tool for Saudi and Iranian leaders, although it is the other way around as well, politics is a religious tool for some of them too. Is it any wonder that so many people think of Islam as a political ideology?

Saudi Arabia is very extreme in its interpretation of Islamic tenets. And this I say knowing firsthand that not all Saudis are of the extreme ideological kind. Some of the brightest students I had while teaching in Riyadh, for example, attest to that. Young Saudis that, while deeply proud of their religion and of their King and country, were also very open minded when it came to plurality of thought and plurality of faiths.

But many people in the west already share that open mindedness with those students and such mental predisposition was clearly on display just a couple of days ago when millions of people, including some heads of state and high-placed functionaries, raised their voice in condemnation of the intended Koran burning day in Florida.

We obviously need to find common grounds on the issue of Islam and whether it copes with western ways of living or not, but the onus is not on the western world. The west is not perfect in any sense, but it is not the west that has been sending Jihadists of any kind to blow themselves up in the east or to blow themselves up on their own native soil; it is the other way around. It is some deranged sects and organizations within the Muslim world that have been sending Jihadists to blow themselves up in the west and in their own native soil.

So, to the writer who exhorts Americans to follow the founding fathers' call to “reinforce the traditions of religious pluralism” on American soil, I say, “sorry sir, we are willing to accommodate our Muslim brethren's religion, but the onus on whether that's possible is not on us; the onus is on Islam”.

To read the related report on American Mosques, please use the following link:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/09/09/inside_americas_mosques?page=0,0

Salaroche