Posted on 11/10/2005 7:17:18 AM PST by F14 Pilot
The growth of political Islam is one of the most important ideological events of the past century. In these features, BBC Radio Four's Analysis programme charts the growth of this ideology - and its stunning effects around the world, including Britain. Islam is a faith and code of conduct for over a billion people worldwide. But for some, Islam is also a political project. On these pages, you can read and hear the history of political Islam's development. Koran and Country: How Islam got Political is broadcast on BBC Radio Four on Thursday 10 November at 8pm.
The news that British Muslims could have bombed their fellow citizens came as a shock to many people - but not one East End Muslim.
Aminul Hoque, a 28-year old journalist and PhD student, says that although support for violence is low, alienation has grown steadily in his Muslim neighbourhood in London's East End.
"This resentment, this level of anger aimed towards anybody who is a non-Muslim has been there for a long time," he says.
Islam, like all major faiths, is primarily spiritual and is a code of conduct for over a billion people. But today, a more political set of Islamic ideas has gained ground in Britain's Muslim community.
The reason for the popularity of "political Islam" is unclear - and many Muslims don't accept the term "political Islam" at all.
Others say politicisation is a reaction to poverty and racism here and Western foreign policy abroad.
What is clear is that "political Islam" is new in Britain. The faith that South Asian Muslim immigrants brought with them in the 50s and 60s was traditional, a spiritual tonic to difficult lives.
Perhaps surprisingly, given that Britain's Muslim community is mostly from Islam's majority Sunni sect and South Asian, much of the early inspiration for people to follow a more political Islam came from the Shia revolution in Iran.
The Ayatollah's British 'Revolution'
The Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 turned political Islam from a dream into a reality.
One of the most powerful and populous countries in the Middle East overthrew its pro-western monarch, the Shah, and replaced him with a theocracy. Iran's new leader was Ayatollah Khomeini, a devout cleric who'd been living in exile in France.
But not many people realise that the Ayatollah had strong British connections.
In London, a small group of British Muslims had created a think tank, The Muslim Institute. It aimed to assert the political identity of the Islamic faith. Its leader was the charismatic Dr Kalim Siddidqui.
The group regarded the Iranian revolution as something genuinely Islamic, not caring whether it was Shias or Sunnis who led it.
Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, one of those involved in the group, felt it represented "anti-imperialist, genuine independence."
"They were going to take decisions on their own," he says. "Even their mistakes would be their own, rather than imposed from outside. This was very, very attractive to us and we were the first people in the whole Sunni world who came out to support the revolution."
In Britain, the public had hardly heard of this group. It was almost a decade later when Dr Kalim Siddiqui used a turn of events to seek the leadership of British Islam.
Rushdie affair
"Burn, Rushdie, Burn!" was one of the cries heard from some British Muslims in 1988 as they protested against Salman Rushdie's novel, The Satanic Verses. The book had infuriated Muslims by apparently ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad.
Rushdie did not of course burn; he went into hiding, after being accused of blasphemy.
While many Muslims felt anger and frustration, Kalim Siddiqui saw a political opportunity.
He and his associates in the Muslim Institute visited Iran in February 1989. On the day of their return, the Ayatollah issued a legal edict, or fatwa, saying Rushdie should be killed.
Dr Siddiqui now took on a leading role, publicly supporting the fatwa. With him at the helm, it was almost as if the Rushdie affair gave British Muslims their own 'Islamic revolution'.
Muslim Parliament
The Rushdie Affair, complete with its book-burnings on the streests, turned into a public relations disaster.
But for Dr Kalim Siddiqui, the fatwa against Rushdie was an essential vehicle for launching his political vision of a "Muslim Parliament" in 1992.
"The Muslim Parliament was a political institution which would govern Muslims for themselves on the understanding that the rest of society doesn't want to know them - and if that's the case, then that's how they should live," recalls Ehsan Masood, a journalist at the time for the Muslim magazine, Q News.
While the concept of the body effectively died with Kalim Siddiqui in 1996, it had put the idea of political Islam on the map.
While the Parliament withered, another group representing a different strand of ideology sought political leadership of the Muslim community. The UK Action Committee on Islamic Affairs rose to prominence and many of its former members are now involved in today's leading Muslim body, the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB).
Some of these people had been, in turn, influenced by a South Asian writer, Syed Abul Ala Mawdudi.
Mawdudi, along with Egyptian Sayyid Qutb, was almost a godfather to the Islamist movement. May of his ideas provided the seeds for future political movements. While he himself opposed violence, some of those who took on his ideas believed they provided a justification for confrontation.
Thank you Jimmy Carter. The Greatest Traitor in World History.
Never has anyone sold out so many for so little in return.
One of the most powerful and populous countries in the Middle East overthrew its pro-western monarch, the Shah, and replaced him with a theocracy. Iran's new leader was Ayatollah Khomeini, a devout cleric who'd been living in exile in France.
The Jimmy Carter Legacy - the gift that keeps on giving...
And I also think I am correct when I say that it was from Paris that Khoumeni was able to infuse the population of Iran with a passion for Islamofascist revolutionary zeal.
It's uncertain whether we will ever know the extent of the long-term damage Mr. Peanut did to our country and the world.
I'm convinced Islam is a mental disorder.
I believe that Jimmy Carter did as much as a Westerner could possibly do to foster, promote, enable and encourage the rise and spread of Islamofacism. No one could have done more.
Jimmy Carter maximized his potential as a traitor to the west, a traitor to our civilization, a traitor to our culture, a traitor to our soldiers, a traitor to our citizens, a traitor to the lives of good people everywhere.
The rank ignorance of the media is amazing. Islam is an integrated whole and has been from its inception. There is no delineation between politics and religion in islam. The islamic terror regime in Iran is not particularly unusual. The history of islam is filled with regimes that warred continually against their infidel neighbors. They war openly when they have the strength to do so and covertly when they do not. This has been the pattern with islam for over 1300 years.
Islam is at war with the non-islamic world and always has been. They wage the war with every means at hand including political subversion and economic disruption. Moslems are commanded to war with infidels - the command to wage jihad is one of the five pillars of islam and all practicing moslems are expected to take part. It can be objected that only a minority of moslems actively engage in jihad and this is true. But it should be pointed out that only a minority actively wage war in any conflict and that the majority work to supply moral and physical support to the warriors. There has been no significant outcry against the current jihad within islam because the majority of moslems support the jihadis.
u r right
<< "Thank you Jimmy Carter. The Greatest Traitor in World History."
You beat me to it. There is not one word in the article about Jimmy Carter, yet he was instrumental in the overthrow of the Shah. >>
Well spoken. True.
And, the evil bastard, who has never embraced an American enemy he hasn't loved, gave away our Panama Canal, ensuring that it fell corruptly into the hands of Peking's predatory and putrid pack of lying looting mass-murdering gangster bastards and Billions in nuclear power plants and capabilities and Billions more in oil and sustenance and other rewards for its tyrannies to Pyangyangs!
Why don't they all go back to Allahland?
Because even they know there is nothing for them in Allahland.
I stopped reading right here.
If an author can't get the fundamental concept right at the beginning of a discussion, what good can whatever follows be?
Granted, the ignorant have an excuse. History is no longer withheld from the masses. Of course one must search it out, but it's available to anyone who wishes to learn.
Thirty of forty years ago, literature about the nature and the history of islam was mostly scholarly and hard to find. That is no longer true, so there is no excuse whatsoever: Just go to Amazon and search "islam". It's a no brainer.
Islam from its inception has been a monster with three heads, and one body: The heas are political, religious and military. The political obviously includes the cultural, and the three heads are permanently attached to the body. Ignore one, or pretend it's not an intrinsic part of islam, and you are no longer discussing islam.
Islam continues to be political today, as it has been throughout its entire history. It can't be a new and surprising development!
And Khomeni declared war on America, then. I think this is serious. However, I fully expect to start hearing that the Iranian people never did anything to us.
Dubya seems determined, if not to give Jimmy a run for his money, to at least firmly own second place:
Muslim celebrations in the White house?
Repeated and insistent proclamations that islam is the Religion of Peace ?
Repeatedly supporting a "palestinian" state?
Continuing to allow annualy 20,000 muslims temporary visas?
Continuing to support (and fund) the United Muslim Nations?
What's wrong with this picture?
The Shah of Iran was no Boy Scout, to be sure. But given the islamo-maniacs that succeeded him I would say he was certainly the lesser of two evils
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